I’ve been a sporadic journaler all my life. About once every three months, when inspiration struck, I’d seize my journal and dash out several pages. But most of the time, it sat on my shelf, collecting dust. About six months ago, I decided it was time to start a daily journaling habit. We’ve all heard
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The post How 6 Months of a Daily Journaling Habit Changed My Writing appeared first on Copyblogger.
What separates the mild-mannered retail store owners from the retail heroes? Heroes use surveys to find out what customers think about their business and products, so they can take action and deliver an amazing experience. Ready to be a hero to your customers? Create a super survey with six powerful, result-focused questions:
This question reveals what makes your store and products unique and irresistible. Do you offer the largest selection of vinyl records in town? Are your educational games created by teachers? Do you have a lifetime guarantee? Focusing on these differentiators can help you create powerful advertising messages that attract customers.
Is the customer a regular? If so, you’ll want to do everything you can to keep them happy and coming back to your business. Gartner Group statistics tell us that 80 percent of your company’s future revenue will come from just 20 percent of your company’s existing customers. Use their feedback to guide your business and marketing decisions. And don’t be afraid to ask them for a testimonial or referral.
If the product wasn’t easy to find, you’ll want to dig a little deeper to find out why. Were the sales associates available to help the customer? Does your store even carry those items? Whatever the reason, this is your opportunity to improve your processes and create a better shopping experience for your customers.
If you get a negative response to this question, don’t panic or try to sweep it under the rug. Reach out to the customer to get more details about the situation, and you may be able to turn it around. Remember, the customer is doing you a favor by letting you know there is an issue, so you can make it right.
You could ask your customers how satisfied they are with your products. But to collect more actionable information, Inc. Magazine suggests making the questions specific and focused on a recent time frame.
Instead of trying to come up with the next best-selling product on your own, why not enlist the help of your customers? Gather their ideas and share them with your product development team to create a product that matters to your customers, sells like gangbusters and sets you apart from the competition.
What’s more, asking customers for their opinion can also turn them into faithful fans. A survey by Cint revealed that consumers are 62 percent more loyal and 56 percent more likely to buy from businesses that ask for their opinion.
To be a hero to your customers, you need to make them feel heard, respected and cared about. Ask the right questions with a super survey. Then harness this valuable feedback to exceed their expectations and keep them coming back for more.
© 2018, Bella Girardi. All rights reserved.
The post 6 super survey questions for retail heroes appeared first on VerticalResponse Blog.
Are you looking to book some amazing speaking gigs? Do you feel like speaking at events is essential to really level up in your business? How do we go about getting into the game?
Here at Fizzle we have all felt the pull and experienced the benefit of getting on stage and sharing what we do and who we are. There are reasons why speaking and presenting have such a high reputation in the entrepreneurial world!
In this episode, we are going help you reach that next stage in your career, where you are one step closer to landing and delivering that inspiring speech at your ideal event. We’ll be looking at the ways in which you can approach securing these opportunities and then unpacking some tips and techniques to sharpen your presentation skills until they are razor sharp!
We also talk about finding your own niche in the market and choosing the approach that suits your ambitions. We cover some ideas for getting over nervousness and anxiety and also give a few examples of potential frameworks to use for your speeches.
So if this a goal in which you would like to take the next step, come with us as we give you the low down on the game of speaking!
Oracle’s Alessandro Vallega discusses the need for cultural change to ensure GDPR compliance, and why that change must come from the top.
GDPR is now in effect. (Companies across every industry have been under pressure to become compliant since the law was introduced in 2016.) Some responded by changing their IT processes, others placed the burden on their legal team, but others only began to adapt in earnest just before the May 25 deadline was approaching.
Data protection must be treated with the right level of gravitas. It might be tempting to think you can steer clear of regulatory issues as long as you are not doing anything untoward with people’s personal data, but this is short-term thinking. GDPR may only mark the beginning of a global regulatory push to improve data protection, and regulation will only become more demanding.
Real change requires a shift in culture. The way companies govern data has not yet caught up to the way employees use technology, which is why we still see staff taking a lackadaisical approach in many organizations. They save company information to personal devices, use (and sometimes lose) business laptops on the train, and turn to file sharing sites to share sensitive information. All these practices pose a security risk, and they are all too common.
The cost of not complying with GDPR can be significant. Business leaders will be aware of the potential risk of non-compliance (up to 20 million euros or 4% of the company’s global turnover) but there are less obvious consequences too. Data breaches must be made public to the supervisory authority within 72 hours once a company becomes aware of them, and the reputational damage that comes with these if the company does not have a good handle on security, has its own cost.
In addition, a supervisory authority has the power to impose a temporary or definitive limitation including a ban on processing, and data subjects have the right to bring claims for compensation.
This makes GDPR a boardroom issue, but this does not mean companies can just appoint someone to take charge of compliance and let them run with it. With an imperative this important, the bucks stops with the CEO.
Business leaders must be figureheads for data protection. For an organization to manage data more responsibly and stay on top of its data in the long term, it needs buy-in from all staff. Each individual must be accountable for their actions and play their part in compliance, and this understanding must be driven from the top down.
How can business leaders help achieve this? The first step is to make training compulsory. This could include anything from data management training, to workshops on protecting data or even running phish-baiting tests to help employees identify suspicious emails.
Incentives also help drive change. Data protection needs to be as much a part of someone’s job as doing their timesheets, so why not reward team leaders who have ensured all their staff have taken the appropriate training, or include security training as part of employee performance objectives? It will ultimately come down to HR, IT or legal teams to develop these initiatives, but the imperative must come from a company’s leadership.
For more information on GDPR and its implications for leaders across the business, check out our GDPR hub page.
I’ve never admitted this to anyone before: I don’t always change the radio station right away when a Nickelback song comes on. See? That first line wasn’t hyperbole. How embarrassing. Here’s about how far I’ll let “How You Remind Me” play before finding something else to listen to: “Never made it as a wise man
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The post Weak Email Marketing and Nickelback Have Less in Common than You Might Think appeared first on Copyblogger.
Shopify, Facebook, FedEx and the likes have made it easier than ever to birth ecommerce brands. And that’s exactly what’s been happening. Three people in a garage can launch, look and execute like a 100+ person company of old. I’m not saying it’s easy, there’s way more to it than that, but the triangulation of tech, logistics and online-all-the-time buyers have certainly paved the way for the ecommerce boom.
And, just as the number of ecommerce companies have exploded, so too has the consumer’s opportunity and willingness to switch brands. Consumers are inundated with Facebook and Instagram ads, and don’t bat an eye at the notion of switching from one shop to another, or to Amazon. And it won’t stop–unless you can establish your brand and value to make them loyal.
One thing that hasn’t changed since the brick-and-mortar days, is the fact that customer loyalty and lifetime value are critical to company growth and long-term survival. And that has never been more true. While store location could practically drive loyalty before–now location don’t mean diddly. It’s how you interact with your customers and build a relationship with your brand that matters most.
Getting customers to your site is one thing, but converting them into loyal, repeat customers is an entirely different challenge. That’s exactly why we created Alliioop. A customer marketing platform that makes it easy to engage each customer precisely the way they want and expect–and build a relationship that lasts forever.
Alliioop is far from just another email marketing tool like Mailchimp. The biggest difference is Alliioop was built on a customer analytics platform. That means we can deliver deeper customer insights and more granular segmentation than ever before, so you can deliver messages that are more on target and stay personalized as you scale.
Clearly, building a large, loyal customer base takes time and effort–and both art and science. It requires that you understand what make customers tick, and not. It’s not always about sending discounts and special offers, though those do work. Delivering well timed content, advice, product recommendations, as well as those special offers is what adds value, builds appreciation and drives loyalty. We combined the key features in Alliioop to make it easy to catch people at the right time, with the right message.
We’re thrilled with the results our customers are getting with Alliioop. They’ve seen immediate insights on how to engage their customers with highly targeted Facebook and email campaigns to increase conversions and sales.
Getting started and getting results is easy with our Shopify and Facebook integrations. Plus our pre-built reports, segments and campaigns come to life right after you turn it on, with these key capabilities:
Reporting: We’ve pre-built a suite of reports that will show you everything from high-level conversion metrics, to campaign performance, LTV and the details of every customer path. You get insights that will highlight what you should do next to increase conversions.
Segmentation: Sending highly targeted messages requires powerful segmentation. You can segment on anything and the segments are dynamic–meaning people are added and removed from segments in real-time–not stale, static lists.
Facebook: Keeping your Facebook Custom Audiences fresh and on target is cumbersome. We automatically add and remove people from your Facebook Custom Audiences based on their behavior. This keeps your audiences fresh and your ads more on target–and effective.
Email campaigns: Create and automatically send great emails that can be connected to your segments for highly targeted, timely delivery. Build flows that map to customer profiles and behaviors to get more clicks and purchases.
Automation: Driving all these engagements requires serious automation. Alliioop monitors all your customer behavior and triggers the engagements automatically. So as you build more granular targeting over time, we manage all the delivery so you can scale.
Alliioop is the first Customer Marketing Platform built from the customer data perspective and specifically for ecommerce. The power, simplicity and automation are combined in a platform that will scale your business and be as critical to your growth as your ecommerce platform is to your operations.
If you’d like to see how Alliioop can grow your ecommerce company, request a personal demo here
Enjoy!
About the Author: Brian Kelly is the CEO of Space Pencil. Space Pencil is the creator of Alliioop, Sherlock and Kissmetrics.
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