Effective Email Subject Lines & How To Write Them

Good advice on how to get your emails opened. Do you have any further tips to add? Leave a comment below.

David Ogilvy’s 7 Tips for Writing Copy That Sells

David Ogilvy is an advertising legend.

Often described as the “Original Mad Man,” and “The Father of Advertising,” Ogilvy is known largely for his advertising work while serving as the founder of Ogilvy & Mather. In addition to building a multibillion dollar company, he also helped create hugely successful campaigns for clients such as Dove, Shell, and Rolls-Royce.

If you spend any amount of time reading or watching David, you’re sure to be inspired to write better copy, so I’d encourage you to read his book or watch some of the videos floating around the web. In the meantime though, I’d like to present you with what I believe to be the best of Ogilvy’s arsenal:

1. Go Big or Go Home

Don’t bunt. Aim out of the ball park. Aim for the company of immortals. -David Ogilvy

The product you represent is depending on you, and if you allow yourself to take shortcuts or present a less than compelling argument, then you’ve failed. As an entrepreneur or business owner, you simply cannot afford bad copy. If you cannot achieve perfection on your own, then you should hire someone who can.

2. Do Your Homework

Advertising people who ignore research are as dangerous as generals who ignore decodes of enemy signals. -David Ogilvy

Ogilvy spent years working for George Gallup, founder of the Gallup Poll, and it was during this time that he realized the true value that comes with knowing exactly what your target audience is thinking.

You cannot write copy unless you know:

• Who you’re writing it for
• How that person thinks
• What that person needs

If you haven’t done your research, then you’re simply faking it, and it’s that type of copy that gets marketers in trouble, either with the government or with their boss.

To write great copy, you need to understand your audience to the letter, so that you know how you can best serve them. Nothing else will do.

3. Never Talk down to Your Customers

A consumer is not a moron. She’s your wife. Don’t insult her intelligence, and don’t shock her. -David Ogilvy

This is a great Ogilvy quote (for the video, click here), speaking on behalf of consumers everywhere. As great as your product may be, speaking down to your audience is going to turn them away, and as much as you’d love them to be infatuated with your charming pitch, understand that, at the end of the day, they simply want to solve a problem.

Treat your customer with respect and dignity. You’re on equal footing, or perhaps a bit lower, considering you’re the one who needs the sale. Reflect that position in your copy.

4. The Headline is 80%

On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar. -David Ogilvy

Headlines are as close to a magic bullet as you’re going to get, and if you’re going to be perfect in only once place, do it here. Write a strong headline that works.

Here’s how:

• Use headline templates, which are based on headlines that have worked in the past
• Lead with a strong benefit, making them want to read more
• If you can, split test different headlines to see what works best

5. Don’t Get Distracted from Making the Sale

If it doesn’t sell, it isn’t creative. -David Ogilvy

Couldn’t be more true. Marketers love to be cute and funny, original and innovative, but it’s also dangerous.

People don’t set aside time to read ads; they are probably in a hurry, just taking a quick glance before they move on to something else. If your point isn’t immediately obvious, chances are they won’t get it, and you’ll lose them forever.

If you want people to buy, you need them to see your product in their hands and be able to envision how it’ll improve their lives. Everything else is secondary. If you can awe them with your words in the process, fine, but don’t do it at the expense of the sale.

6. Explain Why They Should Buy

The more informative your advertising, the more persuasive it will be. -David Ogilvy

You’ve hooked them with the headline, and you’re telling them all about the product, but before they decide to buy from you, they want to know one thing:

Why?

Why is the product important? Why is it a good deal? Why should they be interested? Why should they buy it from you? Why should they buy it now, rather than later? Why should they trust you?

Consciously or subconsciously, all of those questions are going through a customer’s head. If you want them to act, you need to answer them, and that means making your copy informative.

7. Your Copy Is Important. Treat It That Way.

Like a midwife, I make my living bringing new babies into the world, except that mine are new advertising campaigns. -David Ogilvy

All too often, business owners treat their sales copy like an afterthought. They scribble down a few notes, have someone check it to make sure it’s grammatically correct, and send it out. Then they wonder why it doesn’t get results.

David Ogilvy, on the other hand, looked at each of his campaigns like his babies. He nurtured them, fought for them, helped them develop. And he produced some of the best-selling campaigns in the history of advertising.

The truth is, writing great copy takes time and energy. Some of the best copywriters will spend weeks just crafting the headline, and they might take months to write the body copy.

It’s not because they’re slow. It’s because they know the importance of getting it right.

Are you committed to that type of excellence?

If not, you should be.

By David Ogilvy

Article Source: https://blog.kissmetrics.com/david-ogilvy/

5 Killer Email Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

Post summary:

• The number of promotional emails
• Why should readers open your email?
• 5 email marketing mistakes to avoid

Most businesses do email marketing.

In fact, more than 294 billion emails are sent daily, which means each morning you wake up and check your inbox you will most likely see a lot of unread emails.

How many emails did you wake up to this morning?

It’s important that when your business sends an email to your customers, you stand out from the other hundreds of emails that your reader will inevitably receive the same day you send yours. Sending an email requires an investment and it’s important that this time is not wasted on an email not being read or acted on.

In my last post on email marketing, we covered tips on what you can do the next time you send out a newsletter. This post will cover five tips on what NOT to do.

1. Sending From donotreply@yourdomain.com

No-reply@ or DoNotReply@ sender email addresses are uninviting and unwelcome. If you send an email from one of those email addresses, don’t be surprised if your open rate is low.  Always send an email from an address your customers can reply to and be sure to include phone numbers, and links to your social profiles as well to let the customer contact you in any channel they want to.

If you’re the Managing Director of a large corporation, you’re most likely not the one sending your emails out, however, you are the person that people in the industry will know. Whether or not they’re written by you or not, emails should be sent from a recognizable name.

2. Sending Image-only Based Emails

Only 33% of email subscribers have images turned on by default. This means that your email will display as one long empty box and cannot be read by up to 67% of your email list (see example below). There are times when image-only emails make sense. If you sell visual products such as clothing, or travel then going with an image only based email might be the most obvious choice.

The two examples below are with images not enabled. The example on the left is an email that is image-only whereas the image on the right is 50% image and 50% text. Which one do you think is easier to read?

Text only mails have a 40% higher click through rate than those picture emails. If you do use images, make sure you repeat everything in simple text so that readers can take action and ensure you link to a web version of your email (You can get more tips on on how to create the perfect email marketing template here)

3. Not Linking to Your Website

The average number of links within an email marketing campaign is 23.3 links – That’s a lot of links!
At the other end of the scale, you have marketing campaigns with zero links! The goal of the email is to get people to click through to your website, but if your link sends subscribers to your home page they are less likely to scroll through your website to find the offer.

Your email should include at least one link and it should link to a dedicated landing page that continues the message within the email. Similar to search marketing campaigns, build a dedicated landing page for your email marketing campaign that makes it easy for readers to buy from you. KISSmetrics do a great job at linking to an email-focused landing page. The email includes one call-to-action, which sends me to this page:

4. The ‘One Size Fits All’ Approach

The most effective form of marketing is relevance.  The one size fits all approach no longer works (did it really ever work?). Your message needs to be relevant to the reader. A CEO of a Fortune 500 company in New York does not have the same needs as a small business owner on a farm in the middle of England. Being relevant shows you care and as only 11% segment their email lists, relevant marketing is a competitive advantage.

Segmentation can be basic or it can get complex. If you segment your list into different groups and customize your messaging to each reader, you’ll see higher click-through rates—and more-engaged customers.

5. Ignoring Mobile

43% of people check emails on their smartphones every day and more than 40% of mobile email users check email four or more times per day. Whether you use mobile for reading emails or managing customer contacts, mobile is here to stay. If your email is not optimized for mobile devices, regardless of how relevant your message is, people will not be able to read it.

However, optimizing images in emails is only one part of the mobile marketing process. The second part goes back to the purpose of email marketing; driving traffic to your website to convert. Keep the process as easy as possible. Make sure that readers can complete their desired action such as registering for a webinar or completing a purchase.

By Steven MacDonald

Article Source: http://www.superoffice.com/blog/5-killer-email-marketing-mistakes-to-avoid/

8 Essential Concepts Every Digital Marketer Should Understand

There’s an old story about a reporter who visited a skyscraper construction site. He approached one worker and asked what he was doing. “I’ve got to pour this cement before it sets, don’t bother me,” was the reply.

The reporter asked another man the same question. “I’m setting this rebar, don’t bother me,” the man said. Over and over, when asked what they were doing, each worker irritatedly explained their task at hand.

Finally, the reporter interviewed the lowest man on the job totem pole—the hod carrier. His job was to scoop up clay on a flat board, then hold it for someone to trowel it onto a wall. Not exactly the most interesting or inspiring work. “What are you doing?” the reporter asked.

The young man stopped and looked up to where the top of the building would be someday and said, “I’m building a skyscraper.”

There is no shortage of specialties in an average marketing department. There is certainly no shortage of small, incremental tasks to be completed, either. But it’s important to ask yourself: Am I pouring cement, or am I building a skyscraper?

The most successful marketers tend to be skyscraper builders. They understand how their role fits into the overall plan. Which means they have a base understanding of what everyone else is doing, too. Having that context can only make your work better. What’s more, you can avoid being commodified—being thought of as “the content guy” or “the SEO woman”—and expand your role.

You don’t have to be an expert on everything, of course. But even if you never touch one of them in your current role, it’s important to have a basic understanding of these eight concepts:

#1 – SEO

SEO is rapidly becoming a highly specialized field. It’s one of the fastest-changing aspects of marketing, too, as search engines continue to refine their algorithms to provide a better searcher experience. A major part of SEO now is simply having content that is the best answer for your potential customers.

That said, there are some old-school basic SEO elements that every piece of content should have:

• A title tag fewer than 80 characters long, to avoid being shortened in results pages
• A meta description that describes the content in 160 characters or fewer
• Header text (H1 tags) for the most relevant text
• Alt descriptions for images that describe the content of the image
• Descriptive text for links (not just “Click Here” or “More”)

If you want to dig deeper into SEO basics, Google’s SEO starter guide is a great resource.

#2 – Optimizing Content for Web Reading

Even if you’re not a content creator, it’s important to know how people read content online versus print. Online reading habits affect everything from SEO to design.

People tend to ‘scan’ online content rather than read it top-to-bottom. Long paragraphs and lack of navigational elements can send readers back to their search engine results for a more reader-friendly page.

Keep paragraphs short and to the point. Just two to three short sentences is enough, for the most part. Make sure there is plenty of white space breaking up your content into snackable sections.

Add headers (with the H1 tag, as above) for each topic. That way, skimming readers can see your most important points at a glance.

#3 – Content Planning

As a content creator, this is an important bit of context that I sometimes have to go out of my way to get. It’s easy to relax into being told, “here’s your topic; fill up a bucket with words and send it off.” But that’s ground-level thinking. It’s important to know how content planning works, where the topics are coming from, and how to do that research for yourself.

Learning the process of content planning can help you achieve content mastery. You’ll write better content because you fully understand the need you’re trying to meet.

#4 – Full-Funnel Content Strategy

We have a three-stage funnel model at TopRank Marketing: Attract, Engage, and Convert. Buyers in the Attract stage may not be actively looking for a solution. They might not even be aware they have a problem. Those in the Engage stage are looking for a solution, researching their options. Those in the Convert stage have made a decision to buy, and need a final nudge to our client’s solution.

That model drives nearly everything we do. We develop content for each stage of the funnel, each with radically different SEO strategy, amplification strategy, and targeting. It’s important to know your funnel, and how your role fits into the overall full-funnel strategy. 

#5 – Paid Social Media

It used to be simple to get reach on social media. You put out great content, build an audience of followers, and they shared your content to their networks. Easy. Simple. And above all, free.

Now, the big social media guns like Twitter and Facebook are undeniably pay-to-play. Without advertising, you’re only reaching a fraction of your followers, let alone attracting new ones. Even on LinkedIn, which has yet to embrace the algorithm scourge, you can reach a much broader audience with a little strategic boosting.

Learn the basics of social media advertising with this post.

#6 – Online Advertising (Pay Per Click)

Pay per click (PPC) is for organic search what your paid social media is to your organic reach—a way to reach a broader audience and prioritize your content over others. For a price.

This LinkedIn Marketing blog post has a ton of resources to help you grasp the basics of PPC.

#7 – Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is rapidly becoming a go-to solution for co-creating great content and increasing content amplification. It seems simple enough—find influential people, get them to share your stuff, profit—but each of those steps has plenty of sub-steps built into it.

Influencer marketing involves content strategy, content creation, and amplification. Since it touches multiple roles, it’s a good idea for every marketer to at least have a grasp of the fundamentals.

#8 – Measurement

Unless your role specifically requires it, you may not need to know exactly how to track, measure, and report on the results of your marketing efforts. But it is important to understand your department’s overall goals, the goal for each piece of content, and how progress will be measured. Goals and metrics vary widely, so I recommend tapping the metrics & analytics experts in your organization for an overview.

Reach for the Sky

The difference between a ground-level grunt and a skyscraper builder is a sense of context. That knowledge of the bigger picture can inform how you do your day-to-day tasks, set you up for future success, and even inspire you to build a taller skyscraper. If you’ve had your eyes on the ground, get together with your team and share information about each other’s roles. Learn a little bit of what they all do, and make sure you’re all building the same building.

Need help with any of these 8 areas of expertise? Our team of skyscraper builders is standing by.

By Joshua Nite

Article Source: http://www.toprankblog.com/2016/05/essential-concepts-digital-marketer/

Aweber VS GetResponse Review - Which Autoresponder Is Best?

Which is your preferred choice, guys? I personally prefer Aweber as my default service.

WHY YOUR FRIENDS AND FAMILY DON'T CARE ABOUT YOUR BUSINESS VENTURE

Have you experienced this? How have you tackled it? I personally try not to engage in conversation about my business ventures with friends and family. I let the results speak for themselves as I don't like to deal with the negativity and scepticism. Once they begin to see my success, they come to me with a bit more interest and some have even asked that I show them how to do it for themselves! I'd be interested to hear your advice as I'm sure many of us have experienced this at some point. Leave a comment below.

How to Create the Perfect Social Media Post

How to Create the Perfect Social Media Post

Taking the time and effort to create the perfect social media post has never been more important. All social media platforms are swamped with content – both good and bad. After you’ve taken the time to create great content or curated something to share, you need to present it in the smartest possible way.

“Content is currency — something we trade for our audience’s attention.” Frank Strong

I think that social media is the new television and that you need to be entertaining and informative with your social media. You’ve worked hard to build your content strategy but having a laser beam focus on only your brand doesn’t always build or maintain people’s attention which is as best around seven to ten seconds. The average attention span was twelve seconds in 2000 and was eight seconds in 2012 according to Statistic Brain. Wow, right?

So, what does this mean for today’s social media marketers and professionals? You need to be entertaining and add some fun into your social media content mix. Promoting only your product, book or blog non-stop won’t be interesting to anyone, most likely not even yourself. Keeping your ratio of content at 90 percent other people’s content (OPC) and 10 percent your own content will help you but don’t be too dry or stuffy when you create your editorial calendar.

Tips by social media platform

 Google+:

1. Use great images on each post. 800 pixels x 600 pixels or 800 pixels x 1200 pixels look fantastic.

2. Make your posts stand out! — It don’t mean a thing if it don’t have that bling! Use some formatting to give your posts some pizzazz. Give your post a bold title, and use some italics, sprinkle in a few relevant hashtags and voila! Your post is ready to go.

3. Make sure you give credit to the source of the text and photo that you are sharing. Being a good citizen by giving proper credit is very important.

Pinterest:

1. Create niche boards with a tight theme.

2. Add descriptions of 200 characters with keywords to help people find your pins through search.

3.  Create vertical images to maximize your real estate. Pinterest images should be long and narrow to take up the maximum amount of visual space and get noticed! Look at your favorite pins and see what the images have in common so you see what types of images are repinned and shared. I create images that are up to 735 pixels by 1102 pixels. This creates an engaging invitation to repin your pinned article. Edit the pin to add the link in the source.

Twitter:

1. Write tweets between 120 and 130 characters – leave room for retweets with comments. 2. Tweet links at a slow pace – use Buffer or Hootsuite to schedule your tweet. 3. Use action words in your tweets.

View image on Twitter

 Follow

SimpleReminders.com @SimpleReminders

Every day when you wake up, you have a choice. You can choose to be negative or positive... —@PegFitzpatrick

8:44 PM - 23 May 2014

 
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Facebook:

1. Post consistently to stay in the News Feed. 2. Add variety to your content by posting photos, videos, and articles. 3. Have fun with your Facebook posts – this is a more personal network so let people get to know you here.

LinkedIn:

1. Be relevant. LinkedIn is the place to show your smarts. I don’t recommend posting quotes as status updates here. I love them on Pinterest and Twitter but I don’t feel they carry enough weight for a LinkedIn update.

2. Be consistent. Post at least one update per day and up to four per day spread out through the day to remain active in the LinkedIn stream.

3. Quality counts. Share your own content as well as the best content in your field of focus. The content that you curate and share reflects your own content and should be strong.

By Peg Fitzpatrick

Article Source: http://pegfitzpatrick.com/create-perfect-social-media-post/

More Than a Website: Digital Marketing

A website is a great starting point and an important centerpiece of your digital marketing efforts, but you really need more than a website to optimize market performance.

Why you need more than a website

Here are 4 reasons:

1. SEO
2. Build relationships with customers and prospects
3. Amplification and de-commoditization
4. Analytics help optimize performance

SEO

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) creates awareness of your brand by moving it up on the results pages when folks in your target market search for products and services.

With over 200 ranking factors, Google includes more factors than just those on your website. In fact, in an effort to deliver the most valuable links first, Google looks for indicators that folks approve of your page — things like social engagement (all those likes, shares, and comments).

While there’s no indication that bringing more visitors to your site results in higher sales, but, all things being equal, it’s better to have more visitors than less as visits represent opportunities.

Moving on to conversion, a blog delivering fresh, valuable content on a consistent basis is key for both SEO and conversion, according to Hubspot.

While a blog is technically part of a website, not all websites contain a blog, so I list it as something more than a website.

Build relationships with customers and prospects

First, let’s talk about why you want to build relationships, not just engage in transactions with customers.

• they help promote your business to friends [source]
• customers who engage with the company are more likely to be repeat customers [source]
• retaining existing customers is cheaper (by 5X) than replacing them [source]
• customers who have a relationship with a business are more loyal and less likely to be lured away by competitors [source]

So, building relationships has a huge benefit for organizations that flows directly to the bottom line rather than just giving customers and managers some touchy feeling goodness.

That said, it’s really hard to build relationships with customers on a traditional website. Certainly, adding a forum or other user elements can help your website engage customers, although those efforts will be mostly invisible to prospects. And, forums and other tools are really more than a website.

Social media is a great tool for building customer relationships and, because these interactions are public, it brings in new customers, as well. Social media, however, is the biggest addition to digital marketing and is much more than a website, although the website and social profiles are likely linked. Here are some great tools for using your social networks to build a relationship with customers and prospects.

Email marketing, which is also more than a website, not only help build valuable relationships, they have the highest conversion rates of any tactic except your website.

Amplification and de-commoditization

Social networks, not only amplify your message, especially on Facebook where every like, comment, and share shows your post to the user’s network, but it acts to de-commodify the message.

Not familiar with the term, de-commodification, no problem.

We’ve become jaded in our culture by commercial messages. We’re bombarded with messages telling us that products will salve our problems and that each is the greatest, yet we’re disappointed time and time again by these products. Eventually, we don’t believe anything the brand tells us.

Enter our social networks. We like the folks in our social network despite the fact we may not know many of them personally.

And, we really don’t care. Those of us old enough to remember Blockbuster video stores had the experience of a total stranger offering suggestions on renting movies — and we believed them because we viewed them as objective recommendations.

Well, the same thing works in social media.

We believe our friends’ assessments (good and bad) over commercial messages sent by brands. Even when the friend is simply sharing the brand’s message rather than constructing a recommendation.

Analytics

It’s hard to have any conversation about digital marketing performance without discussion analytics.

Even though some of your most important analytics may come from your website, they’re certainly more than a website.

In crafting your marketing strategy, consider KPIs (key performance indicators) across your various marketing tactics, then monitor performance using something like this BI dashboard from Microsoft.

Be careful in constructing KPIs to ensure you’re assessing both bottom of the funnel results (sales, lead generation, average order size, etc), but those at the top of the funnel that impact bottom of the funnel performance (visits, CTR, time on site, shares, and vanity metrics such as number of followers).

Final thoughts

While a website is a necessary tactic in today’s world, it’s not sufficient to optimize your market performance. Consider adding:

1. A blog and creating valuable content you share at least once per week
2. An email marketing campaign supported by both list building activities and newsletters that share valuable information not distributed through other sources like your blog and social networks
3. Social media, which again requires a two-prong approach of building and sharing
4. A BI dashboard capable of informing future actions to optimize returns
5. Two-way communication between customers and your brand that builds engagement and encourages sharing
6. A customer journey map detailing the sources and sites your customers travel in their journey to buying your product

By Angela Hausman

Article Source: http://www.business2community.com/digital-marketing/website-digital-marketing-01763177#eUS6SuPV4ovCG4JB.97