Congratulations to the 2017 Markie Award Winners!

Last night was... well it was amazing! We celebrated our 11th Annual Markie Awards in front of a raucous crowd at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. 

Let's get right to the winners. And look for a highlight video a little further down. 

Account-Based Marketing Team of the Year

The following organizations have embraced an end-to-end view across the entire buyer journey and across all channels. They know their buyer profiles and have created targeted campaigns that drive engagement and ROI. They created visibility into which accounts have the greatest propensity to buy and have implemented Account-Based Marketing (ABM) to target the right individuals and accounts to deliver personally relevant and well-timed messaging.                      

• Covance Inc -  Covance’s ABM showed an overall lift of 57% from their targeted companies, 19% who were not previously engaged with Covance in a meaningful way.

Best Cross-Channel Marketing Program  

These Marketers are creating personalized experiences with messages and promotions across web, social, mobile, email, display, or other digital channels and ultimately attracting or retaining their ideal customers. They have demonstrated their ability to create fiercely loyal customers who have become brand advocates and driving revenue within their organization.

• Cisco 

Best Digital Marketing Ecosystem              

Digital marketing integration can often enhance processes or improve analytics. These organizations have created an integrated ecosystem with CRM, third-party cloud apps, or other applications to automate, streamline, and enhance their marketing efforts.       

• Juniper Networks – Juniper Networks was able to cut cost per conversion from media targeting in half, double their marketing sourced pipeline, increase organic traffic conversion into the demand funnel by 40%; increase form conversion rates by 65%.

Best Email Marketing Campaign

Email can be extraordinary. In fact, there are some email communications that are so well written, so masterfully designed, that it's only a question of when people will respond, not if. These submissions show that achieving extraordinary response rates isn't luck – it's the result of great targeting, content, personalization and timing.                       

• Jetstar - After 70 days in the market and live only in Australia, Jetstar saw a business uplift of $42K in flight revenue; $43K in ancillary revenue; $92K in total revenue, 110 new flight bookings and 615 ancillary purchases.

Best Emerging Company Marketing Campaign        

These fast-growing, emerging companies of $100M in revenue or less have lean, mean marketing teams that are forced to do more with less. But, as a Modern Marketing heroes, they have chosen marketing automation to do the work of ten people with just themselves and a trusty sidekick running the show. They have made marketing magic with online creativity, digital communication, and compelling content.

• National MI - Since implementing the LOAN program, National MI saw their average click through rate skyrocket by 235% from an average of 2.8% to an astounding 6.6%.

Best Integrated Mobile Experience              

For these Marketers, mobile is the platform of choice for the majority of their customers. They’ve got web, email, social, and display at their fingertips and they have created personalized experiences with messages and promotions optimized for mobile.     

• Mountain America Credit Union - Mountain America increased the number of year-over-year approved Visa cards by 624% and approved balance transfers on mobile devices by 740%.

Best International Campaign        

The Best International Campaign honors the company with a successful marketing campaign outside the United States - in multiple countries in multiple languages, modification of a program originally created in the U.S. and re-launched in another country, or any variation in between.      

• Tableau Software - The campaign’s collective campaign assets drove high engagement numbers globally, seeing more than 100k opens on the emails and, in some regions click-thru rates as high as 50%.

Best Lead Management Program

These Marketers have a sophisticated lead management program that delivered measurable results. They demonstrate their use of lead scoring and deliver compelling results. In this award, people, process and technology all come into play.       

• Morningstar - Within one quarter, Morningstar saw an increase in lead volume of 1,602%. Furthermore, they saw a 158% total YOY increase in leads sent to sales

Best Overall Customer Experience                

Every company says they are customer focused, but few actually deliver. These Marketers have created a customer retention or loyalty program that has successfully transformed their customers into fiercely loyal brand advocates. They have shifted their culture from consumer transactions to customer relationships to drive loyalty.    

• Avon - Through marketing automation via Responsys, Avon has had an increase of 400% in email revenue and 495% in e-mail participation as a channel.

Best Social Campaign     

For finalists in this category, Social Media is more than just a buzz word. These Marketers have found creative ways to utilize both new and traditional social mediums in order to build sustained dialogs with customers and prospects, and have seized the opportunities available through social media to generate proven results.

• TD Ameritrade Insitutional - TD Ameritrade Institutional’s campaign resulted in 31% of total Tool completions referred from social media - 34% from Facebook; 66% from Twitter; 47% from sponsored post activity

Best Testing and Optimization

These Marketers have optimized the online customer experience with testing, insights, and personalization. They have maximized revenue potential across web, mobile, social, apps, and other digital channels as a result and have taken the leap to multivariate sophistication. Nominees for this award have incorporated testing and optimization of their campaigns and programs to mitigate risk, drive better decisions, increase revenue, and improve the customer experience.                      

• Hilton Worldwide – Hilton’s multivariate test drove trade-up from discounts to higher rated packages, and increased the overall conversion for their most vital users: members of their frequency program, Hilton Honors.

Best Use of Data        

The data-driven Modern Marketer targets and engages their ideal audience for specific business initiatives These finalists are successfully using data to target, personalize, measure and win. They are using data in innovative and strategic ways, and have seen their efforts pay off with improved customer experiences and ROI.

• Calçados Bibi - Using an omni channel strategy, Calçados Bibi increased its online sales by 70%, its overall revenue by 5%, its own store revenue by 19% and reduced its traditional media investment by 64%.

Best Use of Insights & ROI            

These Marketers are interpreting data for actionable recommendations that improve business results and customer experience. This award recognizes an organization that has moved beyond reporting (old methods of organizing data into informational summaries to monitor performance) towards analysis (new data and meaningful insights that improve performance).       

• Deltek - Deltek can accurately put a monetary value on each and every action they do, seeing the difference between direct correlations of campaigns to pipeline.

Modern Marketing Leader of the Year      

Just as great people are the foundation for successful businesses, innovators are often the driving force behind exceptional marketing. These nominees are the passionate senior people that push their teams to succeed, lead decisive change, set the vision for the entire marketing organization and introduce innovative concepts.       

• Kenya Airways - Chris Diaz - Chris Diaz has not only driven transformation as a thought leader but he embraces the changes which comes with it by supporting new product innovation.

Most Creative Marketing Campaign                 

Sometimes all of the pieces align to create a fantastic marketing campaign – the perfect idea, the right target, the memorable artwork, the personalized follow-up, and of course, the measurable results.

• Eaton - Eaton’s Things Have Changed campaign led to a 15% increase in brand familiarity among all participants and a 48% lift for net new contacts, which resulted in $2.4M in pipeline opportunity and a 353% ROI for Eaton.

Rapid Transformation     

Enabling a high performance marketing culture isn’t always easy. For most organizations, it can take time to master the intricate blend of messaging, segmentation, data orchestration, organizational alignment and other disciplines. So how do some businesses make Modern Marketing transformation look easy in their first year? The Rapid Transformation award honors those who have successfully implemented any Oracle Marketing Cloud technology in the past year, for their superb planning, execution, and results.       

• FIS – Within 6 weeks of implementation, FIS has been able to Increase efficiency through orchestration tools and reduce time to create campaign canvases in half; generate 146% more unique opens through increased emails while keeping their opt-out rate below 1% and created 44% more web traffic, increasing their total social engagement by 222.49% YOY.

People's Choice Award - Best Video Submission  

This award honors the best video submission with a people’s choice award voted on by your peers. These finalists submitted exceptional videos enhanced by creativity, humor or human interest touches.

• Juniper Networks 

 

from Oracle Blogs | Oracle Marketing Cloud http://ift.tt/2pzC3Vm
via IFTTT

How to Leverage Your Creativity to Convert Leads

Creativity (cre·a·tiv·i·ty)
krēāˈtivədē
noun

1. the use of the imagination or original ideas, especially in the production of an artistic work.

Creativity may not immediately seem incredibly relevant to CRO. After all, CRO is often thought of as a study in best practices and procedural experimentation.

Today, I’d like to challenge you to look a little deeper.

Following best practices does matter of course. You should absolutely continue to optimize your pages with A/B testing, focusing on message-match and ensure your CTA’s are clear and concise.

But there are a number of interesting and entirely useful ways that you can “shake the trees” so to speak.

Let’s take a closer look at how you can flex your creative muscle to increase conversions.

Remind Me Why We Have to Do This?

One word. Oversaturation.

Users are increasingly “blind” to traditional forms of advertising. Just take a look at banner ads.

Users are essentially numb to them, and have been for a long time. In fact, studies show that users generally don’t even give site siderails a single consideration. I know I don’t, and I bet you don’t either.

This study showed that across all mediums and placements, CTR on banners lands somewhere around .05%. Yikes.

Same goes for spam emails, banners, popups… the list goes on.

I’m not saying these tactics don’t work, remarkably some of them still do. Banners are still valuable to expose new audiences to your brand identity even if they don’t garner clicks. Popups can still gather leads when implemented appropriately.

My point is, they’re no longer “fresh” enough to grab someone’s attention and create a memorable experience.

This is why leveraging creativity matters now more than ever. Without further ado, here are three wacky ways to do just that.

1. Be Original. Be Memorable.

“Just be yourself.”

I know, I know. This sounds like the advice Mom gave you before you went to summer camp. How’d it work out for you then? Stolen lunch money? Teasing?

While there are some potential downsides to being unique, particularly when surrounded by kids or teenagers, the perks can be pretty fantastic as well.

I’d go so far as to say that in the business world, being memorable is worth its weight in gold.

Many customers make buying decisions based off emotional responses to brands. Whether it be to an ad, an email, or maybe a customer review they saw on YouTube.

The brands that tell compelling and memorable stories are the ones that land the most sales.

By being memorable and evoking a positive response from leads, you too can capitalize on this. A few ways to accomplish this…

• Curate a quirky imagery style that you feature on ads, social platforms and your website. Moz does a fantastic job of this, check out their ad portfolio on MOAT.
• Come up with a memorable and unusual catch phrase, then shout it to the world. When I think about slogans, my mind always races to Redbull. “Redbull gives you wings” is to this day, one of the most impactful, concise, and informative slogans I can think of.
• Be disruptive with your advertising (screw the norms). Facebook canvas ads are a fantastic way to get creative with your approach. Check out this example by tieks.

Sticking out like a sore thumb is a good thing when it comes to converting leads. Making a lasting impression and being personable will endear your brand to leads.

Remember, you always want to view your digital funnel from the eyes of the visitor.

Discerning visitors have an inherent sense of authenticity. If you’re genuine with your approach to your product or service, that will come across loud and clear, and in turn builds trust.

The icing on the cake? The more a lead trusts you, the more likely they are to convert.

TLDR: Developing your brand’s unique voice and “personality” encourages consumer trust, which in turns produces sales.

2. Email Nurturing with Authenticity

We all know that email is massively effective when it comes to converting leads. It’s safe to assume each and everyone of you reading this tracks email signups as “goals” in your analytics platform of choice.

Hell, at RankPay we even have a tradition of lining up for high-fives when our MailChimp subscription level increases.

Here’s the problem with emailing nowadays: Email users, aka the vast majority of people, are increasingly savvy as to what constitutes something of value in their inbox. You can’t just send an email with any old subject header and expect a double-digit open rate.

It’s time again to bust out our creativity and buck the trend.

In short, we want to be the unforgettable brand that’s unique but not bizarre enough to be off-putting.

For instance, I recently landed an opportunity by breaking all of the rules. Even the ones deliberately laid out in the denial letter I first received.

With this in mind, start by taking a closer look at your own lead nurturing email campaigns. Are the subject lines innovative, quirky or unique? Do they have any personality?

Have some fun and try A/B testing novel subject lines where you let your personality shine through. Note that it’s OK if you hear your brain protesting…

“Play it safe! What are you doing? Best practices are established. You can’t go rogue like this!”

But do it. Click send. That quirky but endearing email subject line might be just what the doctor ordered.

When you have fun, your audience will recognize this intuitively. Smiles are infectious. Positive brand associations mean more conversions.

3. Write Marketing Copy to Appeal to Emotions

Every chance you have to put words in front of your leads, is a chance to sell them on your solution. But without appealing to a lead’s emotions, we’re wasting these opportunities.

It’s understandable that us marketers occasionally struggle with this part. We become intimately familiar with our products and services, and it can become difficult to see the forest for the trees. That is to say that we lose sight of what a customer journey looks like from the prospect’s point of view.

Image Source

One negative outcome of this lack of perspective can be uninspired copywriting. No need to be hard on yourself, it happens to all of us! Present company included.

Just the other day I caught myself writing a headline for a lead-nurturing email as follows: “The Best SEO Service for Small Businesses”. That’s all well and good. It’s a fairly standard headline in that it clearly highlights our company’s service and our target audience. But it’s not memorable and I’m not sure it will truly “connect” with readers.

Luckily I realized it, and took a step back to brainstorm. In the end, I decided to go with “The easy, affordable way to earn higher rankings.” This version has a lot going for it.

• It’s punchy
• It’s catchy
• It connects with the problems this reader faces (budget and difficulty)
• It conveys authority
• It explains what we do

And again, I’d point out that being memorable matters. Generic = forgettable. Unique = memorable.

Let’s take a look at a few places you can put this to work for your business.

Company motto or slogan

Day in and day out I see brands without a good catch phrase.

Look at it this way: every single person is inundated with brand exposures from the moment they wake up. Some studies show individuals being exposed to literally thousands of ads each day.

Yankelovich, a market research firm, estimates that a person living in a city 30 years ago saw up to 2,000 ad messages a day, compared with up to 5,000 today. – New York Times

The thing is, there’s only so much room in our brains to remember all of these brand impressions. It’s thus critical that we aim to be one of the few brands that leaves a truly lasting impression.

When I’m helping clients develop these “quick pitches”, my process looks like this:

• Brainstorm as many ideas as I can (25-100)
• Pick the best 10-15
• Iterate and improve
• Get third-party feedback
• Finalize 3-5 versions
• A/B test for resonance

It’s so simple it hurts. But at the end of the day, it works.

Headlines

When it comes to being creative with your headlines, start by asking yourself a few key questions.

• Does this convey our solution’s value to the customer?
• Is it punchy and concise?
• Does it appeal to emotions?
• Is it consistent with our overall “story”?

These questions should get your gears turning and the creative juices flowing.

Remember, we want to craft a memorable message that our leads will not forget. We also want to make sure that we evoke an emotional response and appeal to the potential customer’s needs or desires.

Check out this killer example…

It’s got everything going for it. It’s punchy and unique. The wording matches the imagery. The use of the word savor as a verb is particularly great because it elicits a clearly emotional response from the audience. Who wouldn’t want to eat whatever they’re serving at this place?

Calls to action

You’ve probably already spent a lot of time optimizing the button size, color and placement. If not, be sure to check this guide on how to improve the efficacy of your CTAs in general.

Regarding the wording however, it’s important to take the chance to put something personal in the actual text. Instead of using a button that says “Submit” try something like “Start My Trial” or “Boost My Rankings”.

Copyblogger clearly showed data that corroborates using “first-person” CTA text will increase conversions. Cool right?

Last but not least, remember to be unique. Don’t be afraid to let personality shine through. Here’s an example of both a CTA and a form that I immediately loved.

Remember, Being Weird Isn’t So Bad

If you’ve watched Freaks and Geeks, you probably already believe this statement. If you’re more of the Biff type, there’s nothing wrong with you either. We love everyone here.

But I hope you’ll take the time to consider the advice above, as it can really work wonders on your conversion rate.

The key takeaways are to embrace personality, be genuine, and appeal to your customers emotions. The more a customer trusts your brand and remembers your message, the more likely they are to buy.

Write interesting copy, be weird with your subject lines, and be memorable! Let your freak flag fly!

About the Author: Sam Warren is the Manager of Marketing and Partnerships at RankPay.

from The Kissmetrics Marketing Blog http://ift.tt/2pzFFH1
via IFTTT

Surviving the Social Web: 7 Things You Need to Know

Oh, those idealistic good old days. Back when we truly believed that the global digital community would fact-check lies, make us smarter, and force our institutions to serve the greater good.

As the man said, “How’s that working out for us?”

It turns out that the social media utopia, like other utopias, didn’t end up as rosy as we’d hoped — mainly because it’s made of human beings.

But the social web is still an extraordinary tool. The ability to instantly communicate with thousands of people isn’t to be scoffed at — if you can do it without losing your mind.

I’ve been using social media since 1989. The remarkable thing for me isn’t what’s changed … it’s what’s stayed the same. Here are some of my survival tips from decades in the digital realm.

#1: Watch out for the ant-shakers

Remember ant farms? These were glass cases filled with sand or gel, where you could watch ants building tunnels and carrying things back and forth.

In grade school we all had that one mean friend who would shake it hard, just to destroy the tunnels and watch the ants scurrying around trying to fix the mess.

Every one of those ant-shakers got a Facebook account when they grew up.

Some people just crave chaos — and if they can’t find it, they create it. There’s always a storm brewing around them, some bitter flame war that pits half the community against the other half. It doesn’t seem to occur to them that the pain and anger they cause are real emotions attached to real people. Either they can’t see it or they don’t care.

Keep an eye out for the ant-shakers. A lot of them are attracted to the web, and spend a disproportionate amount of time there. They’re at the center of endless dust-ups, and it may take you some time to realize they’re engineering them.

Putting distance between yourself and the ant-shakers — even if (especially if) you’re related — will calm your social media experience down considerably.

#2: Realize that digital privacy is a lie

When we socialize over the web, we tend to reveal a lot. It can feel like a small, intimate space. After all, we’re sitting there on the sofa with our laptops, and we recognize those names that fly by, even if we might never have met them face to face.

Every day, I see people starting a post with something like — “I’ve never told anyone this before, not even my family” — and they’re sharing in a Facebook group with four million members.

Digital privacy depends on the goodwill of every person who has access to the material. Anyone can screenshot anything. Once they have, you have very little control over what they do with it.

In the real world, that means that digital privacy is a complete illusion.

If you aren’t willing to make it public, don’t share it on the web. Not in a private group, not on Snapchat, not in email.

Rather than trying to make these decisions on the fly, decide in advance what kinds of material you will — and won’t — share. There’s no one set of rules that will suit everyone — it’s really about your own comfort zone.

But it may clarify your thinking to ask yourself how you’ll feel if your mom, your boss, and a professional identity thief can see a particular type of content you’re sharing. Because chances are, eventually, all three of them will.

#3: If you’re in business, act like it

You may not feel particularly social about social media … maybe you’re there to promote a business or product.

Nothing wrong with that, if you handle it well.

A stream of pitches gets obnoxious fast. Trust me, your friends don’t want to buy your essential oils, nutrition shakes, skincare, or whatever the latest thing is. And they desperately wish you would stop trying to push it onto them.

Quit trying to spam your friends (it isn’t working), and start acting like a business.

Get a business account or page. Be clear about your purpose there — to sell something you believe is valuable. Educate yourself about real marketing — the kind that reaches people you didn’t go to high school with. (We have free resources to help with that.)

Promote content at least 10 times as often as you promote a product. “Content” is the stuff that most people are on the social web to look at and share — useful and interesting images, videos, articles, and audio.

Social media is an amazing way to get business-oriented content shared — either for free or for a very moderate cost. You can focus on organic reach, paid advertising, or a mix, depending on the platform and your resources.

#4: Seek (and create) smaller communities

Remember that four-million strong group I mentioned on Facebook? It’s got great energy … and it’s almost completely unmanageable.

The large common spaces on the web can be fascinating, but they’re also exhausting. For a greater sense of community, more useable information, and better connections, look for smaller groups.

Groups that are too small will run out of steam — there’s definitely a point of critical mass. But smallish online groups can be nurturing, delightful little communities.

If there isn’t a group like that in your topic — maybe you’re the right person to start one. It will be a lot of work (and you’ll probably have to manage a few ant-shakers), but it can also be wonderfully rewarding.

#5: Manage your time

Here’s the great, big, gigantic problem with social media — it will eat every minute of your life if you let it.

There’s always another great conversation. And there’s always another opportunity to explain to someone how wrong they are.

I’ve taken a tip from Cal Newport and I schedule my social media time. And because I have no self-control (and I prefer to use what I do have on other things), I use an app to manage that.

There are quite a few of these out there that will block certain sites at certain times, so you can be a productive member of human society. I’m partial to Freedom — it’s a paid app, but it has a flexibility I find highly useful.

#6: Mind your manners

This seems like it would be obvious, but we all blow it from time to time.

Be a kind, respectful, and polite person when you’re online. (Offline would be great too, of course.)

Don’t say ugly things you don’t mean. Don’t say ugly things you do mean.

Your extensive collection of racist knock-knock jokes isn’t funny. Never was, isn’t now.

Condescension and the attitude that you are entitled to other people’s time are as unpopular on the web as they are in real life.

Good manners are free, and they can open amazing doors … especially as they become rarer.

#7: Know when you need to back away

I’ve been online so long, I can remember when virtual community was going to save the world.

Now we know better. Over the years, I’ve realized that no one has to be on social media. Even social media managers could presumably find a different way to make a living. If it’s diminishing your life, you can change how you use it. You can also decide to go without it.

Sometimes I need to implement what I call the FFS rule. When I find myself muttering, “Oh FFS” (Google it if you need to), it’s time to log off.

People are irritating, and some of them are mean. Those people consistently get meaner and more irritating on the web.

Block and report trolls. Remember that you don’t have to reply to everything.

Dan Kennedy, of all people, had some rather good advice about this years ago. He wasn’t talking about social media, but he could have been.

“If I wake up three mornings thinking about you, and I’m not having sex with you, you’ve got to go.”

Pretty savvy social media advice from a guy who refuses to use email. Because it turns out, what tends to work well in social media … is what works well in real life.

The post Surviving the Social Web: 7 Things You Need to Know appeared first on Copyblogger.

from Copyblogger http://ift.tt/2qevZhu
via IFTTT

The Rise of the APAC Modern CMO

I’m always asked by marketers and CMOs across APAC “what is the key for a successful marketing strategy?” My response: Put your customer first and create a seamless journey. The aim is to convert them into brand advocates.

With the number of new digital channels available, the CMO of Tomorrow has the kind of granular behavioral data that earlier generations of marketers only dreamt about. The CMO of Tomorrow (or even Today) clearly has it better than their predecessors. Nevertheless, marketers need to understand the science of analyzing the data, and be as comfortable with that process as their predecessors were, especially with the notion of Product, Promotion, Place and Price.

To succeed, marketers will need the most complete view they can create for the customer journey — that means collecting, organising and analyzing data from anywhere they can find it, whether they own and control it or it belongs to a third party.

The Power of Technology

At the Modern Marketing Experience (MME) happening right now Las Vegas, we will witness how successful brands utilize the power of technology to create their customer journey. While content is king, data is certainly queen and we will be learning from these brands how they use other aspects of technology to create a strong brand experience for their customers and most importantly, how they transform their customers into loyal advocates.

This event reminds me how the technology maturity of the markets can impact marketing strategy. Developed markets like Australia and Singapore have the advantage of mature consumers, high mobile penetration rate and stable high speed internet. As such, they’ve readily adopted cloud-based services resulting in a customer shift on how, when and why they purchase.

Whereas in more developing markets like India, Indonesia and Vietnam, this shift is still a work-in-progress. The opportunity here for traditional brands will be to level up and be ahead of the crowd, and to lead their customers on the journey to think differently on what their preferred brands can do for them.

Despite the challenges for APAC marketers, I am also proud to say we have a strong APAC representation at MME and the highest number of APAC Markie Awards finalists. With 122 attendees from 9 countries this is the largest APAC delegation in MME’s 11 years history. APAC’s marketers are catching up to their peers from North America and Europe..

At Oracle Marketing Cloud, we celebrate the marketers that have led digital transformation in their organizations. We invite you to explore these innovative best practices at MME with us. They will inspire you to become the next CMO of Tomorrow and to shape a more rewarding journey for your customer.

For more details on Modern Marketing Experience and the Markie Awards Show in Las Vegas on April 25-27, please reach out to us here. 

Exclusive APAC Marketing Report: CMO of Tomorrow

We surveyed 460 marketers across Asia Pacific to discover how their roles are evolving and what the key skills are that our leaders of tomorrow will need in order to be successful. The CMO of Tomorrow report identifies the core skill gaps across the different regions and what channels marketers are investing in both the long and short term. Download the report to read the results, including a country by country breakdown. 

 

 

from Oracle Blogs | Oracle Marketing Cloud http://ift.tt/2q3nYzH
via IFTTT

3 Copywriting Mistakes That Could Be Hurting Your Free Trial Engagement (And How to Fix Them Right Now)

Find a box with a CD-ROM in it, buy it, then learn how to use it.

That’s how I bought software as a kid. So when I first started working, I assumed that if I wanted to start using work-related software, I would have to pay for it the same way: upfront — site unseen! — just like the software of my youth.

I worried that I would have to justify the cost with only the specs, reviews, and sales guy’s word to make my case. (And if I was wrong, it would be my butt on the line.)

So I’m not exaggerating when I say that discovering I could try software for free actually improved my job performance and reduced new-on-the-job anxiety by ~62%.

Using a tool BEFORE I had to recommend it to my colleagues and pull out the corporate credit card gave me a chance to see which tools actually did what we wanted them to do.

All of a sudden, the risk that we’d pay for something that didn’t have a key feature or turned out to be a user-unfriendly nightmare shrank to almost zero.

What’s the Point of a Free Trial, Anyway?

Your serious prospects approach their free trials of your software with a mindset similar to mine circa 2000-something: they want to reduce the likelihood of buying something that doesn’t work.

They’ve got a problem to solve, they’ve discovered that your app might solve it for them, but they’re not yet certain that your app will be quite right. The free trial is a chance for new users to see for themselves what it’s like to use your app.

But. It’s not up to your free trial users to figure out how your SaaS app actually works. It’s not your new users’ job to figure out how your app will turn them into a better version of themselves.

It’s yours.

Too many SaaS apps lose free trial users with erratic, boring, or vague lifecycle emails.

If you run a SaaS app in pretty much any niche, you have an enormous opportunity to outmaneuver your competitors during the free trial process.

I sign up for free trials all the time to see how they onboard new users, and most don’t do a good job. Most onboarding emails don’t make it easy to understand what to do next. Most apps leave it up to me (the brand new user) to figure out how to get started.

Why is this a problem?

Because every time you make your new readers pause and try to figure out what to do next, you create an opportunity for them to give up and just do nothing instead.

What should you say to new free trial users?

Alas, there is no single hard and set rule. Every SaaS app is unique. What you say in your free trial, how you say it, and when you deliver your message will be specific to your app.

But if your biggest problem is that you’re sending triggered emails to new free trial users but they still aren’t signing back in after the first 10 minutes of using your app, there’s a strong chance that the copy in your emails is to blame.

To fix it, pull up your emails and see if they’re are suffering from one of these 3 engagement-killing mistakes.

Mistake 1: Your emails ask people to do too much.

When you offer more choices, you inspire less action.

The famous jam paper that explained the paradox of choice (and the TED talk that made it famous) showed us how we may be unintentionally taxing our prospects’ decision-making resources by offering too many choices.

But that’s not the whole story.

A 2015 meta-analysis of the research found that the total quantity of options is just one of many factors that can contribute to decision fatigue.

Another factor is the way that options are presented to us. When the presentation of options makes it hard to determine what choice is right for us, we’re likely to defer making a decision.

So if you’re sending your free trial users emails that look like this one, then there’s a strong chance you’re causing some serious decision-deferring choice overload.

It would probably take all afternoon to do everything this email mentions, and I might not get any closer to my goal.

This message tosses out 9 links (including one that’s hidden by my redaction) without a clear messaging hierarchy to help me figure out what order I should click on them.

This email provides login info, asks me to read help articles, watch help videos on 3 separate channels, ask for help via email, read interviews, or read a blog that might be helpful–all under the umbrella of “important information”.

But for your trial users, the real important information is the information that helps them decide what to do next.

The Fix: Write each email for the sole purpose of getting your users to complete a single action–and remove text and links that don’t support that action.

This particular message might be rewritten to focus on getting a single reader to respond to the important request hiding at the bottom of that email:

In the now-famous experiment, sending a welcome-why-are-you-here email helped Groove get response rates of 41% while also providing juicy voice of customer data to power future messaging development and laying the foundation for more personal relationships with new users.

Whether you’re following Groove’s lead or not, your free trial emails should all follow the Rule of One for best results: get one reader to take you up on one offer.

One email, one action. That’s it.

Mistake 2: Your emails don’t ask readers to do something specific and measurable.

When you rewrite your emails so that they’re focused on a single action, make sure that action is a discrete, clearly defined task on the user’s path to activation.

Your reader should be able to complete the task you’ve asked them to complete–and they should be able to tell that they’ve completed it.

Unfortunately, lots of emails offer vague and nonspecific CTAs. Some of them even sound exciting — especially CTAs that use the word “explore”. Exploring is fun! It’s adventurous! Brave souls explore!

Just because it sounds fun doesn’t mean it is.

All true of actual exploring. But your SaaS app is not the Louisiana Purchase.

When you ask someone to “explore” something — anything, really — you put the onus on the reader to figure out what to do.

And because exploring doesn’t have a clearly defined end, it’s impossible for your reader to figure out exactly what to do next–and when they’ve actually completed the thing you’ve asked them to do.

The Fix: Reduce cognitive overwhelm with a CTA that calls for readers to complete a clearly defined single task.

Zapier does this well. This app helps you connect what feels like an infinite number of apps to do all sorts of cool things (including powering the technical logistics behind managing your lead nurturing messaging).

With so many options, it would be easy for free trial users to get overwhelmed. They could explore their options, but then decide not to do anything.

So instead of leaving it up to new users to decide what to do next, Zapier’s first email removes some of the cognitive drain of “Shoot, how will I choose?” and offers a CTA tightly bound around completing a single task.

I love this email, and if I was going to rewrite it I would try other CTAs that don’t sound like they’re asking your reader to do work.

You already know what steps a new free trial user needs to complete to get to the point where your app suddenly becomes a can’t-live-without-it tool. You might even know the different steps different populations take to get to the point of activation.

Use your knowledge to guide your free trial users along the steps of that path.

Mistake 3: Your emails don’t connect the CTA to the outcome your free trial users want.

If you’ve rewritten your emails to get users to complete one and only specific and measurable action, that’s a great start.

Unfortunately, one of the most common grade-F CTAs I see in onboarding emails are the ones that don’t connect completing the action to solving a problem.

They make a call to action (the CTA “sign in” and its synonyms appear with devastating frequency), but they don’t make a call to value–so readers have no reason to expect that anything good will happen after they log back in.

Did logging into anything ever solve anyone’s problems? Of course not.

It’s what happens after you log back in that makes the difference.

The Fix: If your email’s CTA could easily appear in the free trial email sequence of another app outside of your category, change it.

If you’ve conducted your jobs-to-be-done research, you also know why your readers are using your app–and the outcome they hope to achieve.

Instead of “Log in to Your Account” or “Sign Back In Now”, your free trial email CTAs should make it clear that someone who clicks on this link will be moving closer to the goal they want to achieve with your app.

Buffer does a great job of sending an email that connects my click to what happens after the click.

After I signed up for a trial but didn’t finish setup, I got an email asking me to connect my accounts that also had some background info on what accounts, exactly, we’re talking about here. (In case I forgot what Buffer is.)

This email shows me everything I can connect to Buffer and makes it abundantly clear what I need to click to move forward.

Buffer could have sent an email that said “log back in” or even “connect a profile”. But “login” = boring and “connect a profile” = kind of vague.

Instead, this email makes it abundantly clear what to do with this email (click on the link that says “click here”) and the meaningful reason why you should take that next step (because it’s what you need to do to connect your social profiles).

Are You Making it Easy for Free Trial Users to Disappear?

When I first learned about free trials for software, I was over the moon. “Look at all this stuff I get to try!” “Look at all these opinions I get to form!” “Look at how few people I have to talk to before I make my decision!”

But what are all these thoughts really about?

What are your new free trial users really thinking when they sign up for your app?

My hypothesis is this: free trial users are really thinking some version of: “Look how little risk there is to trying this software. Let’s see if it works.”

The free trial reduces the risk of having to buy before you try. Your free trial messaging is what helps your prospect understand for themselves if your software will solve a problem.

What can you do to help free trial users understand that yes, your product can change their life?

Make it easier for free trial users to evaluate your app with focused, specific, and meaningful lifecycle emails.

About the Author: Alli Blum helps SaaS apps build messages that get customers. Click to get her copywriting checklist for high-converting SaaS onboarding emails.

from The Kissmetrics Marketing Blog http://ift.tt/2pi17iM
via IFTTT

Your No-Nonsense Guide to Getting Started with Social Media Ads

The first time I rode a motorcycle, I fell in love. Between the power, the speed, and the freedom, I knew it was something I wanted to keep doing for a long time. But I also knew I had a lot to learn.

Learning to ride a motorcycle requires several new skills. You have to learn how to maneuver and balance a heavy, two-wheeled vehicle, how to change gears, how to let the clutch out smoothly and at the right time, and how to work the hand and foot brakes.

And that’s before you leave the parking lot.

Learning to advertise on social media is a similar experience: there’s a lot to be excited about, but all the options, features, and adjustments can leave you dazed.

Start with the fundamentals

After that first ride, I spent a couple months brooding. I knew I wanted to ride, but I didn’t feel ready for a full-sized motorcycle.

Then, one day, I decided to check out the local Vespa dealership, just to see … A week later, I bought myself a scooter.

On my scooter, I learned the fundamentals of riding — how to balance, how to maneuver on two wheels, and how to stay safe on the road — without having to worry about the full weight of a motorcycle or shifting gears.

By the time I bought my first full-sized bike a year later, all I needed was 45 minutes in a parking lot and I was ready to roll.

If you’ve always wanted to try social media advertising, but found it overwhelming, I’m here to hand you the keys to your scooter.

How ads help new prospects discover your content

“But they already like my page! Why should I have to pay for them to see my content?”

Yes, it was a bit crummy of Facebook to give brands amazing organic reach and then take it away. But they have a business to run, just like you.

I, for one, welcome our benevolent-ish (read: self-interested) paid social overlords. In fact, I would still recommend you use social media ads, even if the reach of “organic posts” never changed. Why?

Because social media ads are great for content discovery. They help your content reach new, targeted audiences rather than people who already know and like your brand.

And, how much do you even know about people who like your page?

For example, if you’re running a promotion with Facebook ads, you want to reach people who have recently considered buying your product, and are therefore most likely to buy — not necessarily an existing, longtime customer.

With organic content, you communicate with existing fans. With ads, you can seamlessly reach new prospects when they are most likely to convert. Your tweet isn’t going to do that!

So, ready to get rolling?

Let’s start with five foundations that produce powerful social media advertising campaigns.

1. Set up tracking on your website

After you open your ads account, the first thing you should do is set up website tracking, which sends your website visitors’ information back to the ads platform.

On Facebook, you’ll get a “pixel.” On Twitter and Pinterest, you’ll get a “tag,” but it’s all the same thing: a snippet of code to pop in the header on every page of your site.

If you use the Rainmaker Platform, StudioPress Sites, or just about any site builder, there should be a “header scripts” box where you can paste in this code so it’s automatically output on all your pages. Otherwise, you will need to work with your developer to make sure the code is deployed properly.

Even if you’re not going to run ads for a while, you should still do this now.

The ads platforms will start building your website audiences as soon as you set up tracking. Doing this early will ensure that, when you do start running ads, you will have as many people as possible to retarget.

Also, set up tracking for your primary conversions (sales, subscriptions, email list opt-ins, free ebook downloads — basically any transaction with a “thank you” page) inside each platform, so you have that data available when you’re ready.

2. Define your strategy

It’s tempting to get into the weeds with social media ads, but just like with most marketing channels, a smart strategy will have a bigger impact than any number of tiny, detailed tweaks.

A good, basic ads strategy includes the following elements:

• Goal: What are you trying to do?
• Audience: Who do you want to do it?
• Tactics: How are they going to do it?

And you don’t have to start from scratch. In fact, it’s probably better not to start from scratch.

This is the time to bring out your best resources and let them shine.

An approach we’ve come to rely on at Rainmaker Digital goes something like this:

• Promote (to a new, targeted audience) solid, persuasive content that leads readers to a product.
• Retarget people who have read that content with an offer for that product.

Yep, it’s that simple. By priming people with persuasive content — good, persuasive content, that has inherent value and builds trust — you create a specialty retargeting audience, ready to hear your offer.

As for the “new” audience, I recommend starting with a lookalike audience on Facebook — either based on people who purchased your product or people on an email list. It’s a great way to use the power of Facebook ads without getting too complicated.

3. Develop the ad creative

If you’re using your existing content, you should already be well on your way to a solid campaign. But whether or not you’re starting from scratch, here are a few pointers for developing ad creative that converts:

• Know the placements. Without worrying about anything fancy, just make sure your creative makes sense for each placement you use. For example, Facebook’s “Right Column” ads are much smaller and shorter than their typical “Feeds” ads, so the same creative might not work for both.
• Be as direct as possible. Write clearly and succinctly in your ads — don’t hype them up with flowery copy. Think of ad copy as a type of headline. The goal is to grab your readers’ attention and get them to click.
• Stand out from the feed. Images with color, faces, expression, and action tend to perform better. Video is great, too. Remember, grab their attention.
• Forget “perfect.” Don’t stress too much about getting the best image or the most polished video. I’ve seen examples where iPhone photos performed better than their polished counterparts, just because they stood out.

4. Launch … and monitor

Take a deep breath, double-check your links and budget, and just go for it! The longer you agonize over your ads, the less time you spend learning what works.

If you get overwhelmed by all the settings, just use the defaults. Remember, Facebook and Twitter want your ads to do well so you’ll spend more money with them. There will be plenty of time for you to tweak and test as you go.

While the ads run, check in on them regularly. If some ads spend a lot but don’t convert, stop them and work on new variations to replace them. Maybe you optimize the text. Maybe you change the audience.

Whatever you do, take your time, and don’t lose sight of your goal.

5. Measure

Speaking of goals, it’s easy to get bogged down in all the metrics these platforms provide.

In all frankness … most of them are not very useful. If your campaign is doing its job — i.e., if it’s accomplishing your goal at a reasonable cost to you — then it’s a success. Period.

Other metrics, such as click-through rate or reach, are useful in diagnosing problems with your campaign, but they mean jack squat if your campaign isn’t doing what you need it to do. Keep your eye on the ball.

Aim for results over time

Overall, yes, social media ads can be a lot to swallow. But don’t feel that you have to succeed right away, and don’t get discouraged if your ads take a while to show results.

It’s like riding a motorcycle — honing your skills takes time and practice.

The technology of social media ads is new, but the strategy is exactly what you’ve known all along. You’ve got this.

The post Your No-Nonsense Guide to Getting Started with Social Media Ads appeared first on Copyblogger.

from Copyblogger http://ift.tt/2oGmVRa
via IFTTT

VerticalResponse named a Top 3 email marketing solution

We know it’s not polite to brag, but today we have good reason to pat ourselves on the back. We’re excited to announce VerticalResponse has been named one of the Top 3 most popular email marketing solutions. You like us, you really like us! And the feeling is mutual — everyone here at VR headquarters is honored to have so many great customers.

Capterra, a digital resource for business software users, ranked each email marketing provider on their list according to a market score. This score was measured by the total number of software users and customers combined with social media presence.

“[Capterra’s] report assigns each vendor a unique market score that is calculated by number of users and customers (80 percent of score) combined with social media presence and Gartner Digital Market Reviews (20 percent),” said Rachel Wille, a Senior Product Research Analyst at Capterra. “With 600,000 customers and 1 million users, VerticalResponse was able to land in the Top 3.”

We’ve always been committed to building easy-to-use tools that help small businesses achieve their marketing goals. In fact, this is the fourth time in the past two years that VerticalResponse was ranked in Capterra’s Top 3. So we’re thrilled to have those efforts recognized in this way. Of the Top 3 providers on the list, VerticalResponse distinguishes itself through its affordability, features like A/B testing and the recently launched Spanish-language version of our leading platform. Our customers also gave us high marks for seamlessly integrating with social media and CRMs, for being “super easy” to use, for our “awesome” customer support and for our “fabulous” templates.

While we celebrate, we’re also looking forward to pushing VerticalResponse to new heights. Our development team is hard at work building new, exciting tools that will make your email marketing more efficient in 2017.

 

embed code: <a href=”http://ift.tt/2oI3pVh; target=”_blank”><img width=”640″ border=”0″ alt=”Top Email Marketing Software” src=”http://ift.tt/2orLKFn; /></a>

Spend less time reaching more customers Try VerticalResponse today (It’s free!)

© 2017, Amber Humphrey. All rights reserved.

The post VerticalResponse named a Top 3 email marketing solution appeared first on Vertical Response Blog.

from Vertical Response Blog http://ift.tt/2q2jSYs
via IFTTT