We’re all guilty of it at some point. I know I certainly am. Glamorizing writing is an easy trap to fall into … You forget about the countless hours of drafting and imagine a cushy writing life where the right words flow effortlessly from your finger tips as you sit in your ideal setting and
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Anyone who’s done customer outreach via email marketing understands that the bigger your subscriber list, the more people you can reach with any given email campaign. That means more leads and sales. An additional benefit of a large readership: the ability to segment those readers into groups based on demographics, buying habits and other factors. Targeting your readers with messages they want also increases your leads and sales.
In other words, increasing your email list is all upside. Yet many business owners don’t utilize all the tools at their disposal. One of the most powerful ways to grow your email list is with social media. Here are four ways to put your social media accounts to work:
A business page on Facebook is essential in today’s digital landscape. Assuming your business already has a Facebook page, you can add a call to action button to your business page, and set it to collect sign-ups. When you create the button, point it to a page on your website where the visitor inputs his or her contact information. A VerticalResponse Landing Page or plugin makes this information especially easy to collect. If you don’t already have a Facebook page for your business, now is the time to get one.
Here’s VerticalResponse’s sign-up button on Facebook, along with a few other examples:
If you want something from your social media visitors — in this case, their email addresses to add to your subscriber list — offer something in return. Handing over premium content (rich information that isn’t easily accessible elsewhere online) in exchange for an email address is a tried-and-true practice.
This exclusive content could be, for instance, product-specific tips and tricks, thought leadership related to the services you provide, downloadable white papers or ebooks, or a link to a video not yet available to the general public. Be sure it’s something of value or interest to your followers and visitors. If it’s not enticing, they won’t trade their email address for it.
Our partner company Deluxe recently offered exclusive early access to Small Business Revolution videos in exchange for email sign-ups:
Facebook Ads are extremely effective at narrowing in on your target audience and enticing them to take the action you want, thanks to Facebook’s wealth of data on its users. Use a low-cost Facebook Ad campaign to put your advertising in front of the people most likely to want and need your services. You can control the call to action in a Facebook Ad, so take this opportunity to solicit email sign-ups.
For more on Facebook Ads, download our free eBook.
Everyone loves contests and freebies. Create a contest or giveaway to promote on your social media channels. Advertise that you’re giving away a free product or service, and consider asking users to submit photos or videos of themselves using your products. Or simply allow anyone willing to provide their email address with a contest entry. Direct your social followers to a landing page you’ve created to collect the entries. Make sure your website is updated to send visitors to the entry page as well. Capture participants’ email addresses and make it clear that entering the contest also entitles them to receive your email campaigns.
Don’t forget to create a fun and catchy hashtag to go with the contest, so you can promote it across your social channels. Encourage your followers to share it with their own networks, possibly offering them additional entries for helping spread the word.
Prolific romance author Marie Lavender recently ran a contest offering a whopping 164 prizes, but required an email address in order for people to participate:
Another way to encourage people to sign up for your email list is to show them what they’re missing by not subscribing. Publish your past newsletters, or parts of them, on your social channels. This gives your followers an idea of all the useful news, information and specials they’re missing by not being on your list.
For more than 100 additional ways to grow your email list, check out these can’t-miss tips and ideas.
Join 140,000 small business ownersGet expert tips and email inspiration biweekly. Subscribe today and download our FREE Guide to Email List Management eBook.
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Editor’s note: This post was originally published in October 2015 and has been updated for accuracy and relevance.
© 2017, Contributing Author. All rights reserved.
The post 4 ways to use social media to increase your email list appeared first on Vertical Response Blog.
Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) lead teams of forward-thinking, creative people that find ways to make the ordinary a little more exciting. Unfortunately, I’ve witnessed more than a few CMOs forgetting their audience during critical presentations.
As they unleash “death by PowerPoint”, everyone’s eyes start to glaze over. And, before you know it, the enthusiasm is sucked out of the room.
I’ve had the privilege of working on projects with organizations of all shapes and sizes. If you want to get the best out of the team you rely on for creative, out-of-the-box thinking, you need to allow them to run with their ideas.
Here’s my recipe for creative success.
Use Real-Time Communication & Fire the Conference RoomRegular meetings with your entire team are a waste of time that have a real price tag. According to a Ted Talk by David Grady and Jason Fried, here are the numbers:
We live in an instant world where communication happens at the speed of light — literally. Leverage the technology at your fingertips. Slack, Hangouts and Skype offer compelling alternatives to traditional email and in-person meetings.
Using on-demand communication allows for busy creatives to engage only when necessary for them. You’ll find that you gain a huge improvement in productivity, and your team is more creative, thanks to the additional mental capacity they have to apply their brainpower to their work, instead of trying to stay awake through 50 PowerPoint slides.
The Best Alternative MeetingSome of the world’s best ideas have sprung forth from passionate people free to pursue their vision. When you combine passion with all of the tools a large marketing team has at their disposal, magic happens.
It’s important to give your creatives space to be creative, without the suffocating demands of corporate tasking.
Don’t just take my word for it. In 2004, Larry Page and Sergey Brin felt so passionate about this, that they dedicated a paragraph of their IPO Letter to shining a light on the strategy:
“We encourage our employees, in addition to their regular projects, to spend 20% of their time working on what they think will most benefit Google. This empowers them to be more creative and innovative. Many of our significant advances have happened in this manner. For example, AdSense for content and Google News were both prototyped in “20% time.” Most risky projects fizzle, often teaching us something. Others succeed and become attractive businesses.”
The 20% Rule Doesn’t Have to Be ExpensiveBy using the time that would have been wasted in old-school meetings, you can give your creatives the space they need without decimating the bottom-line. I’ve seen this strategy deliver huge dividends.
Without naming names, I have an example to share. I was working with an in-house web design team to craft a digital footprint for a Fortune 500 company. Each member of the team had a specialized skill that, when combined with the rest of the organization, created a force to be reckoned with.
But, there was a problem. The individuals that specialized in creating works of art in photoshop lacked the coding skills to build the site. And the coding gurus lacked any real design sense. Because of this, their visions were limited to the specific areas of the site that they were responsible for.
I encouraged the team to use their 20 percent time to learn about the free CMS platforms available to them. The company had plenty of server space, and these designers could gain a fresh perspective by unlocking the creativity of the entire team.
The three most popular CMS platforms were WordPress, Joomla and Drupal. There were strengths and weaknesses to each free CMS and some projects switched platforms a time or two.
But, within a few weeks, every member of the team had created their very own website. And the projects were taking on a life of their own — new design elements emerged. These new ideas were combined in increasingly unique ways.
This freedom to create led to major advances in how their corporate projects were handled. Suddenly, even the most boring site elements started to spring to life — everyone had the power to showcase their craziest ideas in ways that were far more effective than a boring wireframe edit.
Kill the Meeting, Long Live Creative TimeIf you want the best from your team, stop forcing them to sit through mind-numbing, expensive meetings. Empower them to communicate and collaborate in real-time through one of the hundreds of chat and collaboration platforms available for business. And use the time you save to give them the freedom to make their wildest ideas a reality. You’ll be amazed at how quickly your creatives come to life.
If you're not ready to kill the meetings, at least check out how leading CMOs weigh in on other challenges, including how they can skillfully decipher, understand, and leverage the abundance of available data to engage with customers. Download the Argyle: The Data Driven CMO guide today!
Here are your content challenge prompts for October! Each month this year, we’ve offered our community a pair of prompts. One is designed to improve the creativity and quality of your content. The other is designed to help you get more of that great stuff done. Feel free to jump in this week with either
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We spoke to one of the most prolific and successful course makers we know, Vanessa Van Edwards, about how we can all improve our online courses.
For any of you course makers out there these insights are going to help you make much more successful courses — both for you and your customers.
Online courses are being created like crazy these days because the market for e-learning has exploded in the past decade.
Now average people like you and I can use tools that come built-in to phones, tablets and laptops to create training that people are desperate for.
Today you can’t just make a course that sells, you have to make a course that students complete and rave about.
What we need to do is make every one of our students a walking testimonial for our course.
“Don’t just make a course that *sells*, make a course customers RAVE about”
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That’s what Vanessa knows all about. She has over 150,000 students on Udemy, and over 120,000 students on CreativeLive.
And we got a bunch of incredible insights from her :)
In the conversation below we get into three areas you can focus on to improve the “complete-ability” of your course.
Although this is a graduate level conversation for course-makers, Vanessa’s advice for completely new course creators is profound and clear.
If your online course is not “complete-able” you’re wasting your time and the time of your students.
Here’s some more of the goods you’ll find in this conversation:
“How “complete-able” is your online course? here’s 3 things to improve ”
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People School | Science of People
Nancy Duarte uncovers common structure of greatest communicators – YouTube
Start Feeling It Now – Chase Reeves at Craft + Commerce 2017 – YouTube
According to a study by Walker, customer experience will be the key differentiator for consumers by the year 2020. Currently, price and product are the key drivers for the decision-making process. The speed of change is rapid and companies will learn to adapt quickly or fail based on the inability to effectively compete. Long gone are the days of profiting despite touchpoints being misaligned with the core essence of the brand. Most of us have had an experience of recognizing an astoundingly beautiful restaurant only to be surprised by a service faux pas whilst dining. There is irony in that most brands believe they are creating satisfactory, personalized, and robust experiences but in reality, the customers are often dissatisfied. Why is this gap in perceptions so common?
Why is Customer Experience Important?Customer experience begins with an organizational effort to meaningfully engage the customer across all touchpoints, but a customer’s own perception of the experience crafted for them is of vital importance to consider as brands continue to rework their experience. The old adage “People buy from who they like” is the Northstar that organizations should always keep in mind. Consumer expectations are rapidly changing and they increasingly demand exceptional, personalized experiences. Some estimate that 70% of consumers make their decision to purchase or utilize a service before they ever walk in the door. Further complicating the delivery of experiences is the continuous lack of consistency. According to Kamplye, 87% of consumers believe brands fail to deliver consistent experiences. Brands must ensure they have metrics and strict procedures to standardize the process while making the consumer feel special. This is quite the task but it is doable.
What Should Brands Do?1. Listen
First and foremost, it is incumbent upon brands to listen to the good, the bad, and ugly. Brands don’t have the luxury to cherry-pick feedback in an attempt to shift consumer perception. The access to information is ubiquitous and their credibility is at stake. Savvy brands create a feedback loop to ensure they are capturing consumers’ perception of their product or service. By asking open-ended questions to help engage consumers, brands can capture necessary data to make intelligent decisions to help grow and maintain a solid customer base.
Three quick questions to begin that engagement with the consumer are:
Customers now expect a consultative approach versus a selling approach. Consulting the customer provides balance when appropriate and also holds organizations accountable to implement or at least consider the customers' feedback. The consultative approach also requires that brands actively listen to customer interactions, taking into account what is said and acting on the information received when necessary.
2. Analyze
Consumers have become very savvy about consumer choice, frequently turning to the internet to find the latest information. The internet has democratized information, and newly informed consumers expect the brand or organization to use this information to deliver a personalized experience. The good news is that “big data” can be your greatest ally if captured and utilized effectively. According to Google, 98% of Americans alternate between a number of devices daily, making it imperative to gain insight into every touchpoint involved with each customer. Feedback must not only be collected but also analyzed in order to continuously improve and deliver consistent, meaningful customer experiences.
3. Execute
According to the Aberdeen Group, companies with the most robust omni-channel customer engagement strategies retain an average of 89% of their customers versus companies who retain 33% of their customers due to weak omni-channel strategies. The ability to speak consistently in the same voice, thus enriching the experience, is an absolute necessity. Savvy brands utilize data across all channels to partner with the consumer across the lifecycle; recognizing they are less of an individual and more a part of an ecosystem. To that end, they have a greater ability to add value if they perceive and realize a positive experience and vice versa for a negative one. Brands must be fastidious and also must flawlessly exceed customers' expectations by continuously improving so that consumers remain loyal.
Without question, this is the new arena with a plethora of moving parts that companies must not only understand but must also master quickly. It is highly unlikely that a consumer will do business again with a company that already delivered a negative experience. Brands will either adapt or fail to deliver successful customer experiences based on their ability or inability to adapt to constant changes.
In this evolving industry, many organizations find themselves facing the question: to what extent should the CMO be involved in the marketing experience? If your company is also met with this same quandary, check out the Constellation Research: Should the Chief Marketing Officer Oversee the Whole Customer Experience? to find beneficial answers.
Webinar shock. Familiar with it? Probably not, because I just made up the term. But you’re probably familiar with Webinar Shock’s sister term, Content Shock. It’s the idea, first described by Mark Schaefer, that we have entered an age in which “exponentially increasing volumes of content intersect our limited human capacity to consume it.” In
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