Getting Started with Behavioral Email Marketing

When sending out automated emails to your list, how personalized are they?

I’m not talking about things like $firstname, or order by $date for free shipping – but actual personalization based on their behavior.

According to MarketingSherpa, 39% of marketers found that sending emails automatically based on user behavior was their most effective email marketing strategy. At the same time, DMA reports that emails triggered by behavior were responsible for 30% of revenues in 2014, up from 17% in 2013, and that 77% of ROI comes from segmented, targeted and triggered campaigns.

Let those numbers sink in a minute.

The potential for making the most of behavioral email marketing is wide open, and yet, according to eConsultancy, only 20% of marketers are using behavioral targeting.

Only 20% of marketers surveyed use behavioral targeting (Image Source)

Why is that? Let’s take a closer look at the core issues and learn how to get started with behavioral email marketing.

Getting the Big Picture with Behavioral Tracking

Oftentimes, marketers want to start behavioral targeting, but they have no idea how or where to start. The first step, if you haven’t done so already, is to monitor how people are interacting with your brand.

Kissmetrics can deliver this kind of invaluable behavioral analytics data. Like the brain of your behavioral marketing outreach, it seeks out and stores details about your visitors, including:

• Who they are, and when they converted
• What they viewed, where they clicked on your website, and when they purchased
• Group visitors based on shared criteria
• Identifies where people are dropping off before converting
• Whether or not they submitted any forms, conducted any live chats, and so on

Because of this powerful people-based analytics platform, you can tailor your behavioral email triggers to suit precisely what your audience is looking for.

Decide Which Customer Actions Warrant an Email

Now, not all of these points will be email “action-worthy”, so it’s up to you to figure out what actions the user takes (or doesn’t take) that are worth sending an email. You may have even seen this kind of behavioral targeting at work when you sign up for a service, but don’t complete your profile or don’t verify your email address. If the company is smart, they’ll send you an automated email reminding you to do so.

But re-targeting the user in this way isn’t the only way to leverage behaviorally targeted emails. You can also send out targeted messages, for example, when a customer:

• Submits a form to download your white paper, video, case study or other free item
• Views certain content on your web page. If they spent some time browsing the FAQ, you can set up a behaviorally targeted email to check in and see if they have any specific questions
• Leaves an item in their cart without checking out. You could send them a reminder email with a small discount, remind them of limited stock (or that their cart will expire) and so on

Remember, with behavioral email marketing, it’s the customer at the wheel — not you. They’re making choices while interacting with your content. Behavioral marketing is designed to act on those choices with the kind of engagement that increases conversion rates, grows profits and vastly improves customer retention.

Unearthing More Behavioral Email Trigger Opportunities

Once you start collecting and analyzing the information that you gather on your customers, new opportunities for behaviorally targeted emails will percolate to the surface. You’ll start getting all kinds of great ideas on how to guide users back into your service. To help get you started, however, here are some of my favorites:

The “Getting Started” Email

Also known as an “onboarding” email, this message is usually sent after you create an account or register for a service. It’s designed to get you clicking and interacting with the service as quickly and fluidly as possible. Here’s an awesome example from Stocksy, a stock photography site:

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Notice how they’ve carefully curated images on a specific theme – then encourage you to click through and check them out for more design inspiration. Here’s another example from Airbnb:

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If you’ve been browsing trips to wine country, this targeted email can help make your tour much more palatable through the offer if discounts, local guides, special attractions and more.

The Notification Email

The notification email is generally just a canned response from your account or user management software that tells people their username and password, and maybe has a link to some documentation to get started. That’s where most of the getting started process ends — which results in a lot of confused or frustrated users.

Instead, encourage them to take the first step toward trying out your product by offering more of a guided, hands-on tour. If you have a SaaS, walk them through using it by helping them to create their very first _____ — such as a website, playlist or campaign. This sort of guided, pop-up tour will help them feel more at ease, and can also give you even more valuable data for your behavioral targeting goals.

The Icing on the Cake Email

These are the unexpected but highly welcomed emails that encourage better customer retention. Here’s a great example from Shopify that lets users extend their free trial of the service:

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Another example comes from TurboTax, which is designed to pique the user’s curiosity about how much their tax refund could be, before they ever see a check in the mail:

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It also promotes the benefits of using the TurboTax service, but without being overly “sales-y” or pushy. Rather it shifts the focus onto the customer and their end goals – which revolve around getting the biggest refund possible at tax time.

The Reward Email

Everyone loves getting an unexpected reward — even if it’s a digital “good job!” Here’s an example of an email from Withings, which is a Fitbit-style product that helps inspire healthy habits by tracking your activity. Here, you can see a user has won a badge for taking 8,000 steps in a day, and unlocked the Marathon reward. They can also share their progress on Twitter or Facebook.

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The Recommendation Email

Oftentimes, great customer service from a company is enough to get you to recommend them. But what if the brand sweetened the deal? Bombas, which sells socks online, provides free socks, with no limit, to people who tell their friends about them. Those friends get a discount on socks, and the referrer gets more socks. And we all know you can never have enough socks.

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Transactional Emails

Did you know that transactional emails (receipts, shipping notifications, etc.) are opened up at 8x the rate of regular emails? With this in mind, it’s worth going through the ones your company sends and doing away with those dusty old “order confirmed” messages, to make every note you send one that not only thanks the customer for their order, but does so in a way that’s more akin to having a conversation than making a statement.

So Just How Do I Set All This Up?

Until now, behavioral email targeting was difficult to set up because so many pieces of technology had to communicate with each other. With the new Kissmetrics Campaigns, behavioral targeting via email (and other channels) is built right in, so you can customize precisely when automated emails are sent to your customers, based on their behaviors. It’s better targeting, discovery, engagement and retention all rolled into one.

Be sure to check out the detailed article link above to learn how to use this new feature to the fullest, and be sure to share your behavioral targeting email success stories with us in the comments below!

About the Author: Sherice Jacob helps business owners improve website design and increase conversion rates through compelling copywriting, user-friendly design and smart analytics analysis. Learn more at iElectrify.com and download your free web copy tune-up and conversion checklist today!

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The Career-Expanding Discovery Many Profitable Writers Have Made

The struggle when I started my freelance writing service business looked like this:

• I was fascinated with crafting words that accurately conveyed a message.
• I hadn’t extensively studied journalism or entertainment writing because those weren’t career paths I wanted to pursue.
• I knew that offering basic content writing services for businesses — filling up pages with words — would not pay high rates.

And I completely understood why filling up pages with words was not valued. Nothing is worse than paying for a service that doesn’t produce results.

When writers charge low fees for content writing that doesn’t persuade prospects to take action, two dangerous things happen:

1. It’s difficult to support yourself through your writing services.
2. Your clients don’t make new sales.

If a client thinks that the money they paid you was a waste because they didn’t make it back in sales, they’ll view you as interchangeable with any other writer — and there’s probably someone else who charges even less than you for a comparable lack of results.

This situation perpetuates the cycle of writers thinking that making a living off of their craft is unrealistic and businesses devaluing writers because they aren’t familiar with the power of the right words.

When clients see what the right words can do, though, everything changes.

Smart businesses value copywriting

To end the disappointing cycle, you need to offer the proper balance of content marketing and copywriting.

As Jerod wrote yesterday:

“Copy’s for closers.”

Once I learned about copywriting, my writing business benefitted in two main ways:

1. I was able to write copy that persuaded people to hire me.
2. I had a skill set that justified competitive rates and delivered a return on investment for clients.

If the work you do for a client makes them a profit that exceeds the cost of paying you, everyone wins. You get paid what you’re worth and they are happy to pay high rates for your services.

Copyblogger’s Certification program teaches you how to be the kind of writer that businesses value.

If you’re interested in joining our list of Certified Content Marketers who we recommend to businesses, make sure to add your email address at the end of this post. You’ll be the first to know when the program reopens to new students.

3 resources to help you take control of your writing career

If you’re anything like I was, you’re looking for enjoyable, artistic writing work, but you’re also disciplined and practical.

So, you’re asking yourself questions like:

• What types of new clients would I like to retain in the next year?
• Am I open to learning new skills to attract those types of clients?
• How can I prioritize the different steps I need to take?

You may even be thinking about possibilities down the road like becoming a different type of entrepreneur or joining a larger organization. (I joined the Copyblogger team after running my freelance business for six years.)

Here are three resources that will help you bridge the gap between the writing career you have now and the one you want in the near future.

7 Real-World Ways to Think Like an Artist for Better Content Marketing

Somewhere along the line, we got the idea that marketing was another word for lies. Don’t buy it.

Smart marketers don’t accept the excuse of “It’s just marketing” to hide the truth or produce crummy work that benefits no one.

Wise marketers embrace art as integral to what they do, as much as strategy and execution are.

5 Writing Techniques that Stir Your Audience to Action

Emotion moves us to act.

In fact, the Latin root for the word emotion means “to move,” because emotions motivate what we do. We don’t necessarily want to make them seethe with anger or burst into tears, though.

The goal is not necessarily to get someone to feel, but rather to want — and to act on that want.

How to Run a Sustainable Writing Business (Where the Backbone of Success Is Simply … You)

The success of a writing business depends on so much more than your ability to write.

It’s often difficult to balance writing for your existing clients and attracting new clients. Consequently, your writing income may vary at different times throughout the year and the work you love to do never quite feels sustainable.

Whether you’re just starting your writing business, or you’ve been building it for a while and are hoping to make it more financially secure, these 15 tips support a healthy, productive solopreneur venture.

Writers: Looking for even more proven ways to position yourself for greater success?

Our Certified Content Marketer training is a powerful tool that helps you learn new writing strategies and position your business for greater success.

We’ll be reopening the program to new students very shortly — add your email address below to get all the details. Registration will be open for a limited time, so procrastination is not advised.

Find out when our Certified Content Marketer training program reopens:

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AgilOne’s Customer Data Platform Enhances Oracle Marketing Cloud: Three Integration Highlights

This week, AgilOne announced new integrations with Oracle Marketing Cloud. With AgilOne’s customer data platform powering engagement through Oracle Marketing Cloud, marketers can create more consistent, orchestrated, and authentic relationships across channels.

So, how do we do it? AgilOne feeds a single view of the customer data into OMC that incorporates first party information unified across omni-channel event, engagement, and transactional data sources, and enriched with predictive analytics. AgilOne is the customer intelligence layer that makes personalization through Oracle Marketing Cloud solutions more impactful -- increasing conversion rates, boosting average order value, and maximizing customer lifetime value. AgilOne integrates data from all offline and online data sources and cleans, de-dupes, and enriches the data into one master customer record which is used by Oracle Responsys, Oracle Maxymiser, Oracle BlueKai data management platform (DMP), and any other system of engagement that connects with the customer.

In addition to integrations with OMC, AgilOne also integrates with Oracle Data Cloud (e.g., Oracle DataLogix), as well as Oracle Service Cloud, Commerce Cloud, and Enterprise Data Warehouses.

Highlight #1: Oracle Responsys & Oracle Mobile Marketing

AgilOne provides bidirectional connectors for ESPs in order to enable hyper-personalized email marketing, and better orchestration of email as part of cross-channel campaigns. Our integration with Oracle Responsys gives marketers:

• Enhanced targeting. Send segmented audience lists, along with personalized content based and enriched omni-channel single view of customer, to Oracle Responsys and engage customers via hyper-targeted and personalized campaigns.
• Enhanced Oracle Responsys profiles. Responsys profiles are continuously updated and enhanced with AgilOne’s data. This allows for deeper email segmentation and better targeting leveraging Responsys profiles.
• Enhanced single view of the customer. Oracle Responsys data enhances the AgilOne single view of the customer, which in turn enhances all OMC engagement. In addition to event data like email opens, clicks, etc., this data also includes any standard or business-specific profile attributes tracked in Responsys. It is easy to configure AgilOne’s Responsys connector to meet these specific business needs.
• Better user identification rates. With AgilOne, you can identify the user all the way from email click to interaction behavior on the website, and stitched across other channels such as social, mobile, call center, etc., regardless of the browser or device used, and regardless of whether the user logs in to the website. This further enriches Oracle Responsys’s single view of the customer.

AgilOne also enriches mobile marketing by pulling mobile events into our single customer profile, and by providing rich segmentation and personalization for more personalized push messaging and mobile campaigns.

Highlight #2: Oracle BlueKai DMP

AgilOne’s integration with Oracle BlueKai DMP increases advertising ROI by enriching audience data with the first party AgilOne data. This integration gives marketers:

• Smarter cross-channel targeting. The AgilOne integration allows marketers to identify customers who aren’t responding on other channels and target them via display advertising. Products browsed or purchased through any channel (mobile app, physical store, website, etc.) can also be used in better targeting and personalization of the display campaigns. AgilOne’s predictive analytics help target customer segments for these display campaigns.
• Smarter ad suppression. AgilOne lets marketers intelligently suppress customers from display advertising. For example, you can suppress customers who purchased an item in the store from retargeting campaigns, or suppress recent buyers from incentivizing promotions.
• Better return on ad spend. By being smarter with targeting and ad suppression, marketers boost ROAS.

Highlight #3: Oracle Maxymiser

AgilOne’s integration with Oracle Maxymiser enhances website personalization with the single view of the customer. This integration gives marketers:

• Enhanced website messaging that reflects experiences based on omni-channel data. For example, the website can include personalized repair status updates when a customer logs in, or the website can exclude promotions for items already purchased in another channel.
• Enhanced segmentation powered by machine learning. With AgilOne, marketers can enhance website targeting based on marketing metrics, clustering models, and response models such as likelihood to buy.
• Orchestrated personalization across channels. The integration allows marketers to leverage website personalization as part of coordinated, multi-channel, multi-touch campaigns. For example, marketers can create orchestrated welcome, win-back, or any other campaigns that include email, direct mail, social, and website personalization, or any other channel, all with consistent, coordinated personalization.

To learn more, check out AgilOne’s app on the Oracle Cloud Marketplace or visit our website.

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7 Travel Tips For CMOs

Whether you traveling to a marketing conference or visiting one of your company’s locations around the world, as a CMO you need to ensure have an efficient travel strategy that keeps you on a budget, maintains your productivity on the road, and helps you actually enjoy the business travel experience.

1. Always travel light. Pack with the idea of just bringing a couple changes of clothes that will fit in a carry-on bag. It is cheaper to use a hotel’s laundry service than it is to check luggage and pay those excessive fees. Consider shipping any presentation materials or digitizing anything you have to take with you for meetings to save additional suitcase room. You will save time disembarking and have much less to drag around with you to your transportation, hotel, and back again.

2. Focus on your rest. Since you are most likely not flying business or first class in order to keep travel costs low, you may fear that sleep is out of the question back in those cramped coach quarters. It’s nothing that noise-cancelling headphones, an eye mask, and a neck pillow can’t solve for you. The ability to be fresh and ready for your meetings on the other side of the flight will make all the difference in how well that business trip goes.

3. Don’t panic when the unexpected happens. Traveling is full of surprises — and typically not the good ones. They come in the form of things like flight delays and cancellations, reservation issues, and even lost passports or visa problems. First and foremost, it’s important to remember that everyone realizes these types of things happen and are beyond your control. Second, focus on the unexpected that you can fix like lost or stolen passports. Companies out there to help you get an expedited passport sent to you no matter where you are in the world.

4. Use travel apps for everything. Apps exist for the sole purpose of making everything more convenient so take advantage of them for all aspects of your trip. This includes booking an Uber to get you around or using a parking locator app like Spot Hero to reduce time finding that airport or garage parking spot. You can also take advantage of apps like Yelp to find restaurants or service providers in cities you are unfamiliar with so that you can guarantee a great experience.

5. Stay powered up and ready to work. While those long flights may be good for a nap, you can also use part of that time to get some work done so you can enjoy the sights and relax when you arrive at your destination. The last thing you want is to get on board and find out none of your devices work because you used them up in the flight lounge and all the power stations were taken or you didn’t have the right converter. Companies like Travel Inspira provide adapters, cables, and hubs that allow you to work anywhere. Their converters include dual USB charging ports so you can juice up multiple devices at once to be ready to work.

6. Avoid standing in any type of line — even customs. With a little planning and the right websites, you can avoid dealing with those excruciating lines that always appear at airports. Use sites like Global Entry, TSA Precheck, and Nexus through your airline or Universal Enroll. Also, use your airline’s service for online advance check-in to skip that lengthy process.

7. Embrace the experience of travel. Most people seem to dread business trips, but the best thing you can do is adjust your attitude and consider it as a great experience to enrich your life. So many don’t get the opportunity to see new cities, so do the best to plan your time so you can carve out some free time to have an experience in each place you visit. Even if it is just for a short time, get out of the hotel, take a walk, hit a local attraction, or grab a meal at a town favorite to take some of the flavors of each place with you. This positive approach will also permeate your business presentation and any other reasons for the trip, perhaps even helping you to close a deal on the road.

Now it’s time to hit the road and the airways with a travel strategy that will deliver on both your professional and personal goals that go into planning and taking business trips.

Reading Material

As you travel the highways and bi-ways allow us to provide you with some reading material. I know you love reading the inflight magazine of your preferred airline as much as I do but... after consuming take that consider something: As customer expectations continue to rise, businesses need to appoint a senior executive like the Chief Marketing Officer to deliver exceptional, end-to-end customer experiences. 

Could that senior executive be you? 

Download and yes read Should The Chief Marketing Officer Oversee The Whole Customer Experience? While there's no ads for growing hair by wearing a hat or matchmaker services for executives on the go, I think you'll find it a worthy read. 

Image source: Pexels

Article based on original piece in Forbes. 

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Strategic Automation: Using automatic email series to nurture leads and re-engage readers [WHITE PAPER]

We often talk about the effectiveness of email marketing, and for good reason. After all, no other tool available to the small business owner boasts a 4,300% return on investment, according to the Direct Marketing Association.

That’s why email automation is so exciting. Our free white paper, Strategic Email Automation, shows why email automation is such an effective strategy for small businesses, and it illustrates how to set up automation in your own email marketing. Here are some highlights:

What is email automation?

Email automation is the practice of automatically sending a specific group of subscribers one email or a series of emails. Automated email campaigns are different from one-off campaigns or newsletters in that the email or series of emails are predicated on an action the subscriber takes, or an interval of time that has passed since the previous email. 

Automation allows you to build trust and credibility with your subscribers (just like with individual emails) but with the added benefit of saving you time because you don’t need to create and send each campaign manually.

Common types of email automation

You may want to automate different kinds of email campaigns depending on your goals. Here are the most common types:

• Promotional: Keep customers in the loop on upcoming events, sales and limited-time promotions, building interest and reminding them to shop.
• Educational: Teach customers to use your products or services, and educate them on tips or tricks by highlighting one or two features per email.
• Top-of-mind: Send emails nurturing repeat business, regularly reminding customers you stand ready to serve.
• Re-engagement: Keep in contact with older, inactive or less frequent customers to win back their business or bring them in more often. Or remind customers about abandoned online shopping carts.
• Onboarding: Share information relevant to new customers, and upsell them to upgrades or additional products.
• Product launch: Update customers on new items or product enhancements, or build anticipation to new releases.

What are the advantages of email automation?

Research shows that email automation is one of the most effective forms of marketing. Open rates are 80 percent higher with an automated series than with emails sent on a single basis, according to MarTech Zone, while average click-through rates are three times higher. Similarly, companies that excel at email automation generate 80 percent more sales at 33 percent lower costs than other firms.

Moreover, this level of automation provides greater insight, more quickly, into which email topics perform better with particular segments than tracking the results of solitary emails does.

Additional benefits of email automation

• Automated series have a defined beginning and end, such that every new prospect is welcomed and nurtured using the same cycle of messages, instead of random addresses jumping in during the middle of your strategy.
• Automated series nurture relationships, credibility and trust without the need for direct human intervention.
• They keep your brand, product or goal at the top of people’s minds until they’re ready to commit.
• They’re versatile and can be used for various purposes, depending on your goals as a small business or nonprofit. Some campaigns are geared primarily toward promotion. Others focus almost entirely on education, training, re-engagement, following up on abandoned carts or promoting an event.
• Automated email content can include copy, graphics, photos, animation, videos and audio footage. Topics might include brand or product features, surveys, survey results, information on using products, industry news, FAQs and interviews with people relevant to the business.
• When combined with the latest analytics tools, automated series can gather customer insight that provides further guidance for future campaigns.

To learn more about email automation and how to set it up for your own email marketing, download our free white paper, Strategic Email Automation. Our helpful email automation infographic also offers a useful, albeit whimsical, example of email automation in action. 

Automate your email marketing Use email automation to nurture leads, generate sales and save time. Learn how with our FREE white paper. Download Now

© 2017, John Habib. All rights reserved.

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Your Content Marketing Won’t Work Without This

“What is copy?”

My wife asked me this a few days ago.

I had been going on and on at dinner, hands gesturing, spittle flying, talking about something work-related. She waited patiently until I was finished to ask.

Her question jarred me. It had been a while since I’d thought about what “copy” is. And in that moment, my immediate reaction was to remember how I used to hate the word.

It always felt … pretentious … to me.

I used to hear phrases like “ad copy” and “website copy” and cringe. I’d think:

“Just say ad text or website text. Who calls it ‘copy?’ That doesn’t even make sense.”

Then I started working for Copyblogger. I also binge-watched Mad Men right around that time.

Needless to say, I quickly got what “copy” meant. And it’s made all the difference.

It’s also easy to take for granted.

Because it’s easy to get so focused on the latest content marketing technique that we overlook the most important element of any single piece of content marketing that actually works: the writing.

The copy.

So let’s refresh …

What is copy?

Copy is a type of writing intended to drive a specific action.

Simple.

Email copy includes words sent in an email that have a specific goal in mind (getting you to click on a link, for example).

Website copy includes words published on a website that have a specific goal in mind (getting you to fill out a contact form, for example).

Ad copy includes the words I read during a podcast ad spot that have a specific goal in mind (getting you to buy tickets from SeatGeek, for example).

There is text — flaccid, lazy, directionless text.

And there is copy — words with a purpose that drive a result.

Copy’s for closers.

Who should write copy?

Everyone.

I mean it.

Even people who aren’t marketers will benefit from internalizing copywriting principles.

Take my aforementioned wife. She has an accounting background. She works as a consultant. Unless she someday branches off on her own, she’ll never have to write one word of marketing copy.

Yet every day in her job she encounters situations in which she needs action to be taken. Thus, she needs to understand how to write words that will drive the specific actions she needs. In other words, she needs to be able to sell the person on the other end of her email on why they should take the requested action.

It’s all copy.

And the fundamentals of good copywriting — empathy, clarity, diction, focus on benefits, etc. — apply to any situation in which you want (or need) a person to take a specific action.

When should you write copy?

Any time you want (or need) someone to take a specific action.

That’s easy.

Where should you write copy?

Any place words are used to drive a specific action.

• A blog post (like this one) in which you have a very specific and beneficial action you want readers to take — more details on that in a bit
• A podcast — to convince someone to join your list or support your sponsor
• An ebook — to drive readers back to your website or to connect with you on social media
• A video overlay — to drive subscriptions or donations
• Even direct mail flyers, which professional copywriters have been using for decades with great success (otherwise you wouldn’t keep getting them in your mailbox!)

The examples could go on for weeks, and they aren’t constrained to the types of online content you and I spend our days creating.

But you didn’t come to Copyblogger to have me convince you to consider subtly slipping copywriting into your text messages and personal emails … although, if you’re hoping to drive a specific action, why wouldn’t you?

You came to Copyblogger to learn how to write words that work, and how to communicate those words over time via a content marketing strategy that teaches people what they need to know to do business with you.

Which leads to our next question …

Why write copy?

Because all good content marketing starts with good copy.

Content marketing without good copywriting as its foundation is like a house built on a sink hole. Sonia said it best.

You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t trying to convince other people to pay attention to, and possibly invest in, something you know or something you’ve built. Those are specific actions. Smart copy is how you’ll drive them.

How do you write good copy?

Start here.

What should you do next?

If you’re a serious content marketer who knows the value of great copy — the kind that people will pay big bucks for — then our Content Marketer Certification training may be perfect for you.

But don’t guess right now if it’s right for you. Find out for sure.

Enter your email address below and we’ll send you some information before we reopen the program. Then you can make an informed decision before you make a commitment. We’re opening the doors again soon, but they’ll only be open for a short period of time.

Find out when our Certified Content Marketer training program reopens:

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When ‘Fear’ Works & When it Backfires

Fear works.

Except for when it doesn’t.

There’s no better way to force prospects to pay attention than by striking the fear of God into them. It interrupts patterns and interests the unaware.

But.

That doesn’t mean it always works.

In fact, in many cases using fear or negative messaging can actually backfire.

Here’s why, and how to do it correctly.

Why do we do what we do?

We used to be cavemen. Cavewomen too.

At least, that’s what science says.

In these primitive times, there was no cold brew. No netflix. No alco… well, there was probably something fermented of some sort.

But there were harsh conditions. The environment was unstable. And they were constantly surrounded by scary beasts.

So life was probably pretty straight-forward. Here’s the GTD ‘next action’ list of a caveperson millions of years ago:

1. Don’t get eaten.
2. Don’t fall off a cliff.
3. Find food.
4. Fornicate. (Hey — we all got here somehow. This is science people!)

Today we’re not much different. Except monsters and cliffs have been replaced by bosses and email respectively.

Pain and pleasure are the primary motivators of human behavior. Humans gravitate towards pleasure while avoiding that which causes pain.

Fear is a stressor; a reaction to anything that’s threatening, dangerous, or likely to cause pain. Which explains why fear-based messaging has long been used in marketing and advertising: People don’t want pain. Triggering their fear for pain incites them to action.

A reported 25% of Americans have “high stress levels,” with another 50% reporting “moderate stress.”

Stress signals can chemically alter your brain. Your emotional processor (the amygdala) sends bright, flashing WARNING signs to your critical command center (the hypothalamus), which instantly decides whether you should run like hell or suit up like a gladiator.

Image Source

But response to fear is highly personal, the same way not all fear are created equal. What George will run away from John may tackle with gusto. Different people react to the same stressful situation differently (or ‘fight’ vs. ‘flight’).

And here’s the kicker.

The Harvard Health Publications says that “chronic activation of [the ‘fight or flight’] survival mechanism” is bad for the health. You don’t want to be that company people associate with negativity. Therefore, incessant badgering of your target audience with fear-based marketing can be catastrophic for your company’s overall brand health.

Even though it almost always works in the short-term.

Does fear-based marketing work?

Yes. Fear-based marketing works.

(Wow that was easy. On to the next section…)

Just kidding, but seriously. It does.

Turns out Gordon Gekko was onto something: Greed, and its inverse, fear, does matter.

(What — you think the stock market goes up and down based on math alone? Don’t make me laugh.)

Inciting fear has been proven to be the absolute best way to grab attention. And in a world where millions of blog posts go out and trillions of emails are sent daily, grabbing attention is freaking critical!

Exhibit A comes courtesy of ConversionXL which comes courtesy of QuickSprout (there’s a meta joke in here somewhere):

The first subject line resulted in a 65% conversion lift. You see this so often that it’s not even surprising anymore.

Here’s Victoria’s Secret emphasizing how long this deal is going to last — three times on the same page:

1. “Ends tomorrow!”
2. “Today only!”
3. “Last Day!”

(Yes, this is just a bad excuse to conduct “research” on Victoria’s Secret’s website.)

So yes. Fear works.

There’s no going around that. So might as well give credit where credit is due. However, while it does work… you can only push it to a point. Go beyond that point and it’s sure to backfire.

Messaging based on fear isn’t empowering. It’s not always delightful. It’s fo sho clickbait-y. It manufactures urgency to re-create a ‘fight or flight’ response.

And sometimes can be perceived as dishonest.

But can fear backfire?

Fear works… until it doesn’t.

Until it backfires and works against you.

Several experiments from MarketingExperiments.com (again, searching for a meta joke) have proven this time and time again.

First up, two tweets.

One with a “positive, empowering message” and another that focused on the pain of potential loss. Turns out, the first fun loving one won. (Say that ten times fast.)

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Next up, a CTA. The first was negative and fear based. The second focused on “peace of mind.”

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Once again, the positive message was victorious.

Ok one last example. Norton antivirus compared two campaigns: one that incited fear vs. another that tried to “empower” customers.

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And the winner?

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Incredibly, the soft, touchy, feely one won. And check out that difference!

So… WTF. What’s going on? One minute fear works. And the next it doesn’t. What’s going on?

MarketingExperiments.com posits:

“The most effective marketing campaigns focus on the impact of action, rather than the result of inaction. Our goal is to create positive (non negative) momentum in the psychology of our customer’s mind.”

Turns out that while fear works wonderfully in order to first get attention, it starts to backfire when it comes to a transaction.

When you optimize for sales from customers (and not just emails or blog post headlines) the nuance appears. That context can make all the difference.

Fear can also backfire during certain times of the year. For example, the holidays. During this blissful time, positive emotions tend to fare better.

A Fractl study in the Harvard Business Review, visually illustrates this. The most shared content related most to anticipation, surprise, trust, and joy (so happiness overall). While fear-based ones were a ghost town.

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Focusing on what people are going to get during this time pays off. (As opposed to what they might miss out on or the ‘cost of inaction’).

Why people want (to buy) reassurance

People don’t need your thing.

So there’s only one reason they buy: to solve a pain point. One that kinda bothers them but isn’t life or death.

What they don’t want, is to be disappointed. They don’t want to take a chance on your thing and be sorry they purchased it. They want to know it’s going to work like it should. It (and you) will be there when it (and you) should.

Fear mongering sometimes crosses that line. Exhibit B comes courtesy of a Gallup poll that showed car salesmen are trusted more than your local politicians (and at this rate, the White House most likely, too).

That’s why 81% of people look to peers for decision making (as opposed to branded messages).

So there’s a line. Somewhere. Under all of those fear-based headlines.

Fear works wonderfully at capturing attention. There’s almost nothing better. But… too much, too often can be harmful.

Negative messaging might pique the interest of those ‘cold’ prospects who lack need awareness (for your product or widget). Fear makes them sit up and take notice. It makes them realize — for the very first time — that they might have a problem that needs to be solved.

Outbrain ran a study on 65,000 paid links in order to find out which worked best: positive or negative messages (in syndicated ads).

The results weren’t even close. Negative ones crushed it (by 60%).

Sometimes, people need that shot of adrenaline in order to stop and pay attention.

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But ‘warmer’ ones who already ‘get it’ don’t need the same heavy-handed approach.

Another study compared a few different headlines. They were:

1. Passionate about betting? We are too.
2. Make More Money on Your Bets — Get Free Betting Tips
3. Stop Losing Money on Your Bets — Get Free Betting Tips

Unsurprisingly by now, the second and third (positive and negative) ones dominated the first generic one.

But… the positive message outperformed the negative one.

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The positive one focused on what people were going to get (as opposed to what they were going to lose out on).

That’s where you back off a bit. Switch the value proposition to what your widget will bring them (as opposed to what NOT having it will do to them). Otherwise it becomes overkill. And it backfires.

Conclusion

Fear-based messaging works. In many cases.

It plays upon our evolutionary biology; stimulating our fight or flight response in order to get us to take notice.

However… it also requires the right context. Many studies have shown that negative message works wonders when you’re targeting people who might be unaware of what your widget does. Unaware that they even have a problem or need for what you do in the first place.

But. When it comes to ‘warmer’ traffic who does understand, fear can backfire.

These people see through the fear mongering. They’re looking for reassurances instead. They want the truth. They want to know what they’re going to get out of it. The value or end result.

About the Author: Brad Smith is the founder of Codeless, a B2B content creation company. Frequent contributor to Kissmetrics, Unbounce, WordStream, AdEspresso, Search Engine Journal, Autopilot, and more.

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