Since lately I’ve been interested in small tweaks we can all make to improve our communication skills (even if we...
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It’s estimated that by 2020 nearly 75 billion devices worldwide will be connected through the Internet. They would range from consumer devices like home appliances and cars to industrial machines such as cargo containers and wind turbines. The volume of data generated and used by all of these devices will be astronomical but analyzing the right data quickly and efficiently to make smart decisions will be the main challenge.
Internet of Things, or IoT, is the key technology that makes the interoperability among these devices possible. Oracle already offers a robust IoT Cloud Platform that is used by hundreds of companies like Gemü worldwide. Although, currently the majority of IoT applications are for industries like transportation and manufacturing, great opportunities are fast emerging for integrating IoT with marketing automation platforms, like Oracle Marketing Cloud. This article briefly explores a number of use cases for integrating IoT with a marketing automation platform to create better user experiences. You may also like to read a related article by Oracle’s Austin Miller titled How IoT Can Help Marketers Increase ROI.
Behavioral data collectionJust like mobile devices that transmit data about user interactions with mobile apps, IoT-enabled consumer devices, e.g., home appliances and automobiles, can be used to collect behavioral data. Behavioral data collected from IoT-enabled devices can in turn be combined with other customer data in a marketing platform for segmentation, personalization and reporting. For example, information about how often a consumer uses a washing machine, how long and on what settings, could help an automated marketing system to send personalized coupons for specific types of detergents or scheduled maintenance service. Also, real-time events coming from IoT-enabled devices could control the flow of a consumer through a multi-stage orchestration program. For example, discovering when a consumer starts driving a new car could initiate a series of personalized messages based on the consumer’s profile and her driving patterns in subsequent weeks. Data privacy is certainly very important and consumers must explicitly allow collection and usage of their behavioral data.
Alerts or promotions based on usageConsumers or businesses may specifically request to receive alerts or promotional messages based on how their IoT-enabled device is performing or used. For example, a consumer may like to be notified if the air filter in their home furnace needs to be replaced or if her car is due for an oil change. Similarly, a large enterprise may need to keep track of their office printers worldwide for ink cartridge replacement. Interestingly, Johnnie Walker in 2015 developed a prototype for their Blue Label bottle to use extremely thin, electronic sensors that can tell if the bottle has been opened or not and where it is in the supply chain. These sensors can also be used to send promotional messages to consumers who scan the bottle with their smartphones.
Messages pushed directly to IoT-enabled devicesAn IoT-enabled device could potentially be another channel to which a marketing platform can send personalized messages. Smart TVs already are able to display personalized messages to consumers based on what shows they have been watching. So, it’s quite possible that appliances, automobiles, office equipment, or even “smart” active wear can receive relevant, personalized messages to create a greater customer experience. Such messages can be displayed either directly on the device (e.g., a printer) or sent to the consumer’s mobile phone tethered to the IoT device (e.g., “smart” shoes send messages to the runner’s iPhone).
An ecosystem of IoT applicationsOracle Marketing Cloud already has a compelling framework for enabling third-party applications to be integrated within its platforms, like Responsys and Eloqua. The same framework can be extended to include applications integrated with IoT-enabled devices. For example, in a Responsys Program, there could be a specific stage within an orchestration to execute a task on an IoT-enabled device, like display a promotion for leasing a new car on the car’s dashboard if the driver has been looking for a new car and is in a “new car lease” orchestration program.
Marketers, if you are looking to benefit from the unlimited potentials of IoT to delight your customers with highly personalized and relevant customer experiences, make sure your marketing automation platform allows for integrations with IoT technologies.
The big news for us this week is, of course, the new copywriting course. If you didn’t see the announcement...
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Successful businesses share a number of common characteristics, but one of the most important is satisfied customers. Luckily, you don’t have to be a mindreader to discover what your customers want — you simply have to ask them. One of the best ways to do this is by using surveys.
Customer satisfaction surveys are always beneficial to businesses. If the responses are overwhelmingly positive, you can stick with what works. On the flip side, negative responses point the way toward improving your customers’ experience.
Here we examine what goes into effective customer satisfaction surveys, including the types of questions you should ask and how to use survey results to make your business better.
Customer satisfaction surveys can be used to help you get feedback on a new product or service, determine how your customers feel about your level of service, or even to gather testimonials. To set up an effective survey, follow this 12-step checklist:
When putting together a survey, try to keep it relatively short. The sweet spot is generally 5-10 questions. Anything longer, and you risk customers losing interest and abandoning the survey halfway through. The questions you ask may vary based on the type of business you run, but here is a short list of sample customer satisfaction survey questions for three different types of businesses to get you thinking:
Service businesses
Retail businesses
Restaurants
These examples are meant to serve as a guide. Consider adjusting them to match your business type and goals, and adding questions that may be relevant to your specific business, products or services.
There are also certain types of questions you should avoid asking. Here are some examples to avoid:
Once you’ve sent out your customer satisfaction survey, it’s time to collect and analyze the results. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to analyzing and acting on the results, as that will depend on the type of business you run and the goals you set prior to the survey.
That said, there are some insights you’ll learn that generally apply to most businesses. For example, many surveys will include a question such as “How did you hear about our business?” If a majority of the responses indicate customers heard about your business through online advertising, it’s a sign that your online ads are working. Conversely, if you placed a radio ad, but customers didn’t indicate that’s how they heard about you, you might consider cutting radio advertising out of your budget.
Every business wants to receive positive results from their survey. These results give you a sense of what your business does well and what your customers like about it. Meanwhile, negative responses may be somewhat discouraging, but it’s important not to let them get you down. Instead, use negative responses as motivation and an opportunity to improve your business and grow it even further. If a particular survey is glaringly negative, the customer may appreciate a follow-up call or email to resolve their issue.
Every owner knows how challenging it is to run a small business, and busywork is the last thing an entrepreneur wants to focus on. Customer surveys shouldn’t be viewed as tedious, though. They’re valuable tools that give you insight into how customers view your business, including what they like and what you may need to improve on.
Creating a customer satisfaction survey does require a time investment, but luckily there are many tools available to make the process as simple as possible. Making customer surveys a part of your regular routine will set you up for success because you’ll have your finger on the pulse of what should be considered the lifeblood of your business: your customers.
© 2018, John Habib. All rights reserved.
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Last week, one of our very dear community members, Hashim Warren, said something I loved about our new persuasive copywriting...
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Knowing what to track in your marketing can help shape your future tactics. Today's marketing success comes from the ability to make the right improvements at the right time. This sounds fairly straightforward. However, with the increased number of metrics available, it can be difficult to know which to incorporate in your cross-channel marketing strategy. Plus, not every metric is meaningful to what you’re trying to achieve for your business or audience.Not every metric is meaningful to what you’re trying to achieve for your business. How do you choose what to focus on?
Therefore, consider key metrics that include channel approaches and an integrated framework. Here is one way to approach analytics for each channel in your marketing strategy:
Website Channel MetricsYour website has the power to inform, engage, and, most importantly, influence purchase decisions. With your other channels, you’re trying to direct prospects to your website. Hence, it's important that they stay after all the effort you put in on the other channels to get them there.
Site speed significantly impacts the user experience. It determines if customers decide to stay or turn to your competition. Also, review each visitor's session duration. This indicates their level of engagement. Heat maps assess where each visitor spends the most time, what pages they like best, and what page they were on before they bought something or left your website. When and where they leave can indicate where you need to improve content or website navigation.
Social Media Channel MetricsWhether you’re participating in social media ads or just generating your own social media content, this channel needs to be assessed for engagement and influence. Your posts influence if followers take the next step to buy from you. To get more companies to advertise and spend their marketing dollars on social media, the major social platforms offer all type of analytics.
These tools track these metrics without having to learn or pay for additional tools. This adds to the value of investing in the promotional features on these social media sites.
Email Marketing Channel MetricsSince email continues to be a results-driven marketing channel, it's important to measure certain metrics for email campaigns. Look at how many subscribers are added as a result of each campaign. This tells you if the content was compelling enough to peak their interest on future content you may share.
Additionally, you can find out how many recipients opened the email and followed through based on the call to action. Of course, knowing how many unsubscribe is also good. It's a sign you’re not connecting with certain people. Understanding why can direct how you alter future email campaigns.
Integrated Channel MetricsWhile these metrics are all a key part of your overall cross-channel marketing effort, the reality is that today's audiences are influenced by numerous channels and don’t necessarily have a pattern or habit for which channel they prefer or feel influences them the most. After all, this is why you’re crossing channels in your marketing efforts to reach more people. Therefore, your analytics have to do the same in terms of following an integrated customer journey that determines how different channels work together to convince their target audience.
Examining metrics in an integrated way identifies cross-channel synergies that increase influence and, in return, ROI. Therefore, integrated analytics can reveal how much each tactic and channel contribute to conversions. This also points to what combination wields the greatest influence over purchases. There are powerful analytics platforms available that incorporate forecasting algorithms for digital and traditional channels.
Also, machine learning capabilities can identify changing customer behavior that separate metric analysis cannot deliver. Incorporating artificial intelligence will then provide a way to predict traffic and pinpoint the exact time to post content on a particular channel and in what sequence across channels.
Therefore, cross-channel marketing will need to go beyond looking at key metrics and evolve into a model that takes an integrative approach through applying statistics, modeling, machine learning, a range of algorithms, and predictive analytics. Cross-channel marketing becomes more of a whole-business approach when it comes to analysis, bringing together online and offline data from across the organization and the external environment. By doing so, your company can more effectively track and respond to customer behaviors with real-time changes to campaigns across all channels.
Want to read more? Check out our Cross-Channel Fundamentals Guide and Streamline CX Guide here.
Are you frustrated that no one will link to you? Have you tried all of the basic link building methods like email outreach to find out that none of them are working for you?
Don’t worry, we’ve all been there.
Everyone says you need to write amazing content to build links. And although that helps, what if I told you it isn’t a requirement.
Yes, link building is hard, but not impossible.
And if you are struggling to build links, here are the tactics you need to follow… even if your website, product, or content aren’t as good as your competition, these tactics will work.
If you email a site asking for a link, the chances are they are going to ignore it. I get these requests all the time… and I ignore them too.
But on the flip side, if you emailed someone that linked to 3 or 4 of your competitors there is a good chance they will also link to you.
When someone links to a few of your competitors, this tells you that they don’t mind linking to sites within your industry and that they are more open to linking to more sites as they already link to 3 competitors.
So how do you find sites who link to at least 3 of your competitors?
The way you do this is by heading over to Ahrefs and selecting their “Link Intersect” feature (it is under the “more” navigation menu option).
You’ll want to enter your 3 closest competitors and then your domain at the bottom. This will generate a report of sites that link to your competition but not you.
From there you’ll want to drill down to specific pages to see what pages are linking to your competition.
As you find common sites that link to a few of your competitors, you’ll have to dig in to figure out in what context they are linking out.
For example, if someone is linking to your all of your competitors’ blogs in a resource page, you have to make sure you have a blog before hitting them up. Because if you don’t, why would they add you to the list?
Once you find a handful of sites that are a good fit, you should email the site owner, build a conversation, and then ask for a link.
Here’s an example that my team used for a site that I own:
And here was the response we got:
We use this tactic at scale. For every 100 websites that we emailed we picked up 9.7 links. We got this ratio for sites in a competitive niche and we aren’t using my name.
People love images… just look at social networks like Instagram. They’ve built a multi-billion-dollar company by encouraging people to take more photos.
As you’re blogging, you should consider using custom images on your site. If you aren’t a great designer, no worries, you can just use tools like Canva. Or if you have a bit of money to spend, you can always head to Fiverr and spend a few bucks paying someone to create custom images.
A good example of this is how I created a handful of custom graphs about Facebook for this blog post. The graphs look something like this:
Over time, you’ll notice that other sites will take your images without linking to you. This may sound bad, but in reality, it is great because you can reach out to each of those sites and tell them to give you credit and link back.
Note, I am not telling you to “ask,” I am telling you to enforce that they need to link back to you.
Here’s how you find all of the people who have taken your images.
First, head over to Google Image Search. Once you land there, click on the camera icon.
Once you click it, you’ll see a box that looks like this:
From there you will either want to paste in the URL with your custom image or upload it. And once you hit search you’ll see a list of sites who have taken your image.
Some of these sites will have linked to you while others may have not. For the ones that have not linked to you, email them something that goes like this…
Subject: Copyright infringement – [name of their site]
Hey [their first name],
I noticed on this url [insert the url on their site that has used your image without linking back] you used an image that I created, and the rights of that image are owned by me.
I don’t mind you using it, but please link to back to [URL on your site where the image could be found] and give me credit. I spent a lot of time and money creating the images on my site, and I would appreciate it if people knew that it was originally created by me.
Please make this change in the next 72 hours.
Thanks
[insert your name]
Out of all of the link tactics mentioned in this post, this one has the highest success rate. It’s close to 100%.
If you email someone and they don’t link back, try them a few more times.
As your site grows in popularity, more people will steal your images, which will make it easier to build backlinks.
As your website gets older, you’ll notice that people will naturally mention you and your company. But when they mention your company name they won’t always link to you.
So why not email all of these people and ask them to turn the mention into a link?
It’s a simple strategy, and it works really well.
Just think of it this way, if someone has mentioned you or your company without you having to convince them, it typically means they already like what they see.
So, when you email them, not only will they feel flattered, but there is a high probability they will respond as well.
This means it will be easy for you to convince them to link to you.
But when you shoot off the email, I highly recommend that you also share the content that mentions you on the social web and let them know that you did this.
Here’s an example email:
Subject: I’m honored, thanks [insert their first name]
Hey [insert their first name],
I’m flattered! I really appreciate you mentioning me on your site [insert link to the article that mentions you but doesn’t contain a link].
I just wanted to let you know that I shared your article on Twitter to show my appreciation.
On a side note, I would appreciate it if you adjusted the mention of my name, “[insert your name]” and turned it into a link that pointed people to [URL of your site].
Cheers,
[insert your name]
PS: Let me know if I can do anything for you
Your success rate should be well over 50%. For me, my rate is close to 83%, but again a lot of people in marketing know who I am, so your success rate will be lower.
The key to leveraging this tactic is to email people right when they publish a post that mentions your site but doesn’t contain a link.
If you ask people to add a link to a post that is older than 6 months, you’ll find yourself generating only 1 link for every 5 or 6 emails you send.
In other words, if you want a high success rate, you need to be on top of it. The easiest way is to create alerts using Buzzsumo.
Just sign in and click on “monitoring.” Then click on “create new alert.”
Then click “brand mentions.”
Fill out the name of your site or company. Make sure you also add any misspellings.
Select how you want to be notified anytime someone mentions you.
Click finish, and you’ll then see a see a report that shows you how many mentions there are over the last week, month or even 2 months. As well as a list of sites that mentioned you.
Again, I can’t emphasize this enough, but you should try and email people within 24 hours of having a brand mention. That’ll give you the highest chance of generating a link.
Do you want mentions on sites like TechCrunch and Entrepreneur? And no, I am not talking about guest posts.
Well, of course, you want to be mentioned on those sites. But how?
There are companies like PRserve that offer performance-based press. If they get your press, then you pay. If they don’t, you won’t spend a dollar.
The cool part about PRserve is that it is a real legitimate PR agency. They don’t sell links, they aren’t familiar with link building, and they don’t leverage author accounts or guest posts. They pitch editors to write about you and your company.
These editors will either say yes or no. If they say no, again, you don’t pay a dollar. If they say yes, PRserve charges you a performance-based fee that ranges depending on the site (you’ll negotiate this rate with them in advance).
Now, there is one big thing to note about PRserve. There is no guarantee that when they get you an article there will be a link to your company. For example, if they convince TechCrunch to blog about you, there is no guarantee that TechCrunch will link to your site. They will mention you, but again there is no guarantee of a link.
But if you take this strategy and combine it with tactic 3, you should easily be able to turn that mention into a link.
As for all of the tactics, this one is my favorite. The reason being is that it drives revenue.
When sites like Venture Beat and TechCrunch cover you, expect to get more leads, sales, and traffic.
The guy I’ve dealt with at PRserve is named Chris. He typically knows before taking on a project what he can produce and how long it will take. As a heads up, things move a bit slow, but that is because he is actually pitching editors of big publications who tend to have busy schedules.
You’ve heard me talk about infographics before, but this tactic has a slight spin.
See, whenever you create content (whether it is blog posts, videos, podcasts) there is no guarantee that it will do well.
Here’s a screenshot of some my latest blog posts…
As you can see from the image above, some posts have done much better than others. You can tell by the number of comments on each post (the higher the comment count, in general, the more popular the post was).
Can you guess why some posts have done better than others?
I put in a lot of time to each of my posts, so that’s not it. To be honest, no one really knows the answer. Content marketing tends to be a hit or miss, in which some of your content will do really well and others won’t.
You are going to have many more misses than hits, which is why I am about to explain a strategy that will only produce hits (at least from a link perspective).
I want you to go to Ahrefs, click on “content explorer,” and type in keywords related to your space.
Ahrefs will show you all of the popular articles based off of social shares and links. Look for articles that contain at least 100 backlinks.
Here’s an article I found in the content marketing vertical that has over 3,600 backlinks.
What’ll you’ll want to do is read that post and turn it into an infographic.
You’ll need to cite the original source. You can easily do this by adding their logo to the footer of the infographic and include the text “data provided by.”
If you don’t know how to create an infographic, you can pay people on Fiverr or you can use tools like Infogram.
Once you create the infographic, publish it on your blog and, of course, link to the original source. Now you’ll want to email each of the sites that linked to the original article and mention how you have turned it into an infographic. You’ll even want to give them the embed code.
The email would go something like this…
Subject: I think you need to see this
[insert their first name], would you agree people are more visual learners?
Well of course you do. We all tend to learn better from looking at visuals than reading text. 🙂
I noticed you linked to [insert the article they linked to] and I get why. It is an amazing resource for your readers. I also enjoyed it, which is why I turned it into an infographic.
[insert link to your infographic]
If you think it will help your readers digest the information, feel free to embed it within your blog.
Oh, and if you are wondering where you linked to [name of the article they linked to], it’s here [URL of on their website that links out].
Cheers,
[insert your name]
PS: Let me know if I can do anything for you.
This approach to link building requires a bit of work, but it works really well. The reason being is you are taking out the guesswork of what people love.
As long as you pick informational articles that can be turned into infographics and these articles have at least 100 links, you’ll be able to generate links.
Again, I can’t emphasize this enough, but you need to go after articles with at least 100 links. Some of the sites linking in will be junk and not everyone will embed your infographic… so going after a site with 100 links, in general, should help you build 16 or 17 links.
If you also don’t know how to create an embed code for your infographic, just use this WordPress plugin.
A good working example of this strategy is this science of social timing infographic we created. The data was originally gathered by Dan Zarrella. We just turned it into a visual graphic. This strategy helped me generate 1,070 backlinks.
Do you know how many businesses shut down each year? I don’t know the exact number, but it has to be a lot because 7 out of 10 businesses fail.
When these businesses shut down it opens up a lot of link opportunities… hence broken link building exists. But today I’m not going to teach you about broken link building as you are already familiar with it.
Instead, I am going to share with you a similar strategy, that has a slight twist, called the Moving Man Method. It was created by my friend, Brian Dean and it has helped him generated high domain authority links.
If you want to leverage the Moving Man Method, you need to find businesses who:
Brian used this strategy to get a DA 87 link.
If you want to leverage the Moving Man Method you need to first find sites within your space that have done one of the 5 things above.
For example, in the marketing space, Search Engine Watch used to be a popular research site within the marketing community, but since they got bought out years ago the current owners haven’t done much with it. The business isn’t doing well, and they don’t put much time into it.
And Blueglass was once a popular SEO agency until they shut down their main US operations. Here are some sample emails Brian sent to gain links.
In most cases, people respond because you are helping them ensure their site stays up to date by not linking to URLs that won’t benefit their readers and, secondly, you are giving them a new option to link to, so they don’t have to waste time finding a replacement.
And here’s the response Brian got:
This strategy works similar to broken link building. All you have to do is take the link that meets one of the 5 requirements above and put it into Ahrefs.
I know link building is hard. I’ve been where you are today. You spend countless hours trying to build links, but for some reason, you just can’t convince anyone to link to you.
No matter how tempting it sounds, don’t take shortcuts by buying links. Focus on long-term strategies as it will ensure that you will do better in Google in the long run.
And if you are struggling, start off with the first tactic I mentioned in this post. It tends to be effective and you can leverage it at scale.
Tactic 2 and 5 take a bit more effort, but they also work really well. For example, the infographic I showcased in tactic 5 has more backlinks than the original article. 😉
Tactic 3 and 4 also work, but they won’t generate you hundreds of backlinks. You should still leverage them as the more links you get the better off you are. You just have to be patient with these two.
And lastly, tactic 6 works well too, but you can’t always control the timing. Reason being is you have to wait for sites within your industry to meet one of the 5 requirements I gave you in tactic 6.
If you are struggling to build links, use all of these tactics. They work well and you’ll notice results within 30 days.
Are you struggling to build links? Have you tried any of the tactics I mentioned above?
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