Email marketing guide for novices

Email Marketing Guide

 
Email marketing is probably the most common form of marketing. Marketers in large companies, small companies and everything in between use email marketing. Email marketing crosses all sectors and is used for all sorts of communication. This Email marketing guide gives you an insight.
 

Why is email marketing so popular?

 
Email marketing is probably the most common form of marketing. Marketers in large companies, small companies and everything in between use email marketing. Email marketing crosses all sectors and applies to all sorts of communication.
 

Which email platform should you choose?

 
In truth, you’ve likely already got a system in place. The first thing to do is make sure you’re utilising it to it’s full potential. The discipline of regular email marketing is something marketing teams must be well versed in. You should only consider changing what you’re already using if you’ve identified shortcomings. If you have, are they hindering results?
 
With so many variables what do you need to get right with email marketing? A point hotly debated by many, we at renew use an evidence-based approach as our standard.
 

Data

 
The number 1 critical factor with email marketing is data. The quality of your data determines the scope of your success. As such some sectors achieve great success, while others continue to struggle.
 

Subject line

 
Millions of emails don’t get past the subject line and go straight to the trash can. Your subject line is the first part of your email marketing that’s easy to test. It’s also easy to determine what works.
 

Responsiveness

 
Does your email marketing work on a mobile phone?
A huge proportion of email marketing is viewed on mobile. If you haven’t thought of your target audience and user, you risk the trash can. Why risk recipients unsubscribing by sending emails they can’t view on all devices.
 

Content

 
As with websites, is the content of your email focused on the recipient? First step is forget what you want to say and consider what the recipient wants to read. The more you bring content round in line with this, the greater your successes are likely to be.
 

Call to action

 
What should someone do upon reading your email? What action do you want them to take? What’s in it for the recipient? Your call to action needs to be obvious and direct. Make it easy for your recipients.
 
By using good data, a subject line that will grab the right kind of attention. A format that can be easily read, content that they’ll want and a clear call to action. The basic formula for successful email marketing.
 
At Renew Marketing, email marketing delivered for clients takes all this into account..
 
Our email marketing clients contact us because they want better results from their marketing.
 
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Does Social Media improve your Search Ranking?

Does Social Media Improve Your Search Ranking

Whether you like it or not, the days of SEO only being about relevant keywords are a thing of the past. A common question from our customers is does social media improve your search ranking
 
Google has found a different way to measure the popularity of your website – social media.
The world’s most popular search engine now uses social signals to tell them what’s popular. The more shares, +1s  and re-tweets you get, the higher your SEO ranking. So does social media improve your search ranking, it does now.
 
[typography font=”Quattrocento Sans” size=”24″ size_format=”px”]Improve your social efforts; help with that all important search engine ranking – Some tips.[/typography]

Content

 
[typography font=”Quattrocento Sans” size=”16″ size_format=”px”]Get your content right  – It’s not all about you. 
[/typography]
Do – Get inside your potential customer’s mind. What might interest them, what useful information might they want to read about? Think beyond what your company offers. It’s OK for your content to have nothing to do with your product, you’re trying to encourage users to engage with you. Don’t – talk about yourselves and start talking about your customers. If you want people to share your content this is one piece of advice that’s important to take on board.
 
[typography font=”Quattrocento Sans” size=”16″ size_format=”px”]Write how you speak 
[/typography]
Do – Try writing as you speak, as this is how people search. Interesting, free flowing content is also much more likely to attract social interaction.
Don’t  – Bother with boring, keyword stuffed content. Google is smart and will be able to tell that your content is all just keywords & they won’t bother ranking it!
 
[typography font=”Quattrocento Sans” size=”16″ size_format=”px”]Make Sharing Easy [/typography]
Do -. Always include social icons on all your content to allow users to share your stories with the click of a button Don’t – Get obsessed about how many likes you get for your posts. The shares and re-tweets are what count most. Social sharing is the new word of mouth marketing – and we all know how valuable that is for a brand.

Images And Image Based Social Media

 
[typography font=”Quattrocento Sans” size=”16″ size_format=”px”]Don’t overlook the use of images 
[/typography]
Do – Use Images to add depth to your content. Images allow you an opportunity to extend your message’s reach. Make the most of image specific searches. Don’t – Be too wordy. Remember that most people these days engage on their smart phones or tablets. Smaller screens mean scrolling, your user’s attention will be easier to hold if you keep it short and sweet.
 
[typography font=”Quattrocento Sans” size=”16″ size_format=”px”]Review your Performance – Plot a Trend[/typography]
Do – Record your results. Look at what works, spot trends and focus on how to make this even better. Don’t – Post at the wrong times. Example – Vodka companies will have greater success posting on Friday afternoon than on Monday morning.
 
Remember, receiving likes for each post is great. However the thing gets you up those search rankings is shares and re-tweets.

How Email Marketing Automation can streamline your sales process

What is email marketing automation?

Email marketing automation is a valuable marketing tool which enables you to build customer relationships. By automating your email campaigns you can build a profile of your prospects and customers so that you only contact them with information they are likely to be interested in. This is based on their previous interactions, meaning you don’t overload people with information that is of no interest to them.

An example of a simple Email Automation Campaign

A car dealer sends out an introduction email to its database detailing their latest offers on their new models. Our email automation software (rmcom) will automatically record which link each email record clicks on. Based on this information, a second email will automatically be sent giving more information on the model of the car/s they (have previously clicked on) are interested in.

[typography font=”Quattrocento Sans” size=”24″ size_format=”px”]Number of email accounts in the world = 3.2 billion
91% of email users check their account daily[/typography]

Read on to discover the many benefits of Email Automation and how it can help your business increase sales.

[typography font=”Quattrocento Sans” size=”18″ size_format=”px”]Develop Prospects[/typography]
Email is a tried and tested way of engaging prospects and existing customers alike. With automated email campaigns you filter your marketing campaigns so that you only send relevant messages to your prospects. The more you can relate to people with engaging relevant information, the more likely they are to interact with you and ultimately become a customer.

[typography font=”Quattrocento Sans” size=”18″ size_format=”px”]Timing is everything[/typography]
You can programme rmcom to automatically contact records at timely intervals. This can be based around key buying dates (contract renewal dates) or you can send emails  one day, one week or one month after a previous email has been opened- Anything is possible!

[typography font=”Quattrocento Sans” size=”18″ size_format=”px”]Personalised Communication[/typography]
One of the most basic functions of rmcom is that you can personalise your email campaigns effortlessly.

[typography font=”Quattrocento Sans” size=”24″ size_format=”px”]A personalised subject line can increase your open rates by over 35%[/typography]

[typography font=”Quattrocento Sans” size=”18″ size_format=”px”]Unopened email still gets your brand gets promoted[/typography]
Every time emails are sent you increase your brand awareness, just by appearing in their inbox. Remember 93% of emails are checked daily, so even if your email is not opened the odds are high that your company name has been seen just by landing in their inbox.
[typography font=”Quattrocento Sans” size=”18″ size_format=”px”]Every communication will (eventually) be read[/typography]
If your email isn’t read within a specified time scale, rmcom can be programmed so that your communication will automatically re-send, again and again until it is opened.
[typography font=”Quattrocento Sans” size=”18″ size_format=”px”]Work your hot sales leads[/typography]

By automating your email campaigns, you free up your sales team’s time to focus on the hot sales leads your campaigns produce.
Every time someone interacts with your email a notification can be sent to your sales team so that they can follow this up….in real time if required!
[typography font=”Quattrocento Sans” size=”18″ size_format=”px”]Ongoing Promotion of your Business[/typography]
Email automation continuously keeps in contact with your customers. The more frequently your name appears in someone’s inbox, the more likely they are to recognise your company name, remember it, and buy from you when the time is right.

[typography font=”Quattrocento Sans” size=”18″ size_format=”px”]Reach customers on mobile[/typography]
People check emails on their smart phones. Reaching your customer on their mobile gets your email read, clicked-through and converted. We can also set up campaigns to reach your customers via SMS campaigns.

[typography font=”Quattrocento Sans” size=”24″ size_format=”px”]You will increase your website traffic through email automation.[/typography]

[typography font=”Quattrocento Sans” size=”18″ size_format=”px”]Drive traffic to your website and record it[/typography]
Email gets people who are interested in your brand to click-through to your website. rmcom will record the pages they click through to and even what time of day they are likely to read your email. All this makes targeted marketing campaigns much easier and extremley cost effective.

Get in touch with Renew Marketing if you would like to understand more about how rmcom can streamline your sales process and generate additional sales using email marketing automation.

By Lorraine Mullins

Why do you need marketing automation? Reduce the cost of communication

Marketing automation is big news in business because it helps reduce costs of communication.

It’s simple, machines do things more efficiently than human beings.

So what’s actually meant by marketing automation?

Communicating can be a costly exercise. When you consider call centres and what it takes to run a call centre. Many businesses have off shored call centres to try to reduce cost. In many businesses this has been criticised as people don’t feel like they get a personal touch.

Personalisation of communication is at the heart of quality information exchange.

Communication has success critical features that, when handled correctly, improve quality, success and efficiency. In turn this reduces cost.

[unordered_list style=”tick”]
  • Timing of contact
  • Relevance of content
  • Information Exchange
[/unordered_list]

Reducing the cost of running a call centre and sales operation.

For a business that has 35 teleappointers making outbound sales calls 9-5, 5 days a week. It would also take a sales team of 15 on the road to sit appointments generated by the outbound team.

This business has access to databases of thousands of businesses around the UK. Each teleappointer makes c.100 calls a day generating 2 appointments each. This means 70 appointments a day are being booked. Of these appointments, around 50% drop out and there is a sales conversion of 25% of sat appointments.

With these kinds of stats it doesn’t take a genius to work out that the sales value of wins needs to be 5 figures upwards to satisfy the wages demand, let alone the commissions and operational costs.

This kind of wastage in sales is undesirable but all too common.

The benefits of marketing automation in sales.

So going on the figures above, the outbound sales team are hitting 3500 contacts a day to deliver 70 appointments. One intelligent e-shot with open and click through notifications would provide enough information to determine warm prospects at the time they are most likely to take a call.

Based on an open rate of 25% and a click through rate of 20%, this activity would generate 175 warm leads, requiring 2 teleappointers to work through. This may provide sufficient leads to convert to 70 appointments. Thats would provide a reduction in cost of 90%.

What’s the cost of marketing automation?

There are 3 major considerations when setting up marketing automation.

[unordered_list style=”tick”]
  • Data
    If you’ve already got plenty of data, you’re onto a winner. Data can be costly dependent on how targeted your audience.
  • Content
    If you’re already have tons of content and produce tons of content, you’re in a stronger position than those who do not.
  • Complexity
    The simpler your processes, the less they cost to set up. As you add complexity, programming and testing become more arduous.
[/unordered_list]

Where should you start with marketing automation?

[ordered_list style=”decimal”]
  1. Gain the assistance of providers who done it before.
  2. Set out your objectives.
  3. Determine your budget for phase 1.
  4. Agree Milestones and KPI’s with your team.
  5. Set out a realistic timeline.
[/ordered_list]

Marketing automation is quickly becoming a need of any business that wishes to communicate regularly with any group of recipients. Whether it be new business, existing clients or simply news subscribers, marketing automation is one of the most effective methods of keeping costs of mass communication to a minimum.

By Ryan Mullins

Successful content marketing: 5 rules of brilliant engaging content

Successful content marketing needs brilliant, engaging content.

Every single one of your competitors that takes their marketing seriously is now working on their content marketing strategy. As a result, the competition is hottin g up and you need to really get it right if you want to stand out from the rest. This blog post is here to help you to get it right with some simple steps.

Content marketing is recognised as being the way to draw traffic into your site. How do you make your content brilliant and engaging?

Content is the king of todays media world. Consumers crave information. The issue for businesses is creating content that their target audience wish to read. Emails get binned so very easily; but we all still read a few. We read articles when we need advice or we are referred by our peers. What is it that make she difference between a great article we share and all those we ignore?

1. Relevance

Why should your audience care? Does your content make any difference to them? If the answer is no or not sure, you’re missing something. It may be something as simple as an introduction that makes your content relevant. It may be that you need to educate your audience to make it relevant.

2. Attractiveness

So, going beyond relevance, this is the question of whether your audience really cares. Lets face it, even when we should care, sometimes we don’t. Part of that is the packaging. Whether it be the way a message is delivered, how it’s dressed up, what it looks like or even whether it is a path to eternal happiness. How attractive is your message? Remember, attractiveness is in the eye of the beholder, what you consider attractive is not always the same as your target audience. Use focus groups, conduct market research and make sure you know what your audience desires before you begin. It will make the journey easier, less painful and more rewarding.

3. Emotion

Once you’ve caught the right people’s attention, you need to make sure your message is memorable. What makes memorable? For me, it’s inspiring emotion, it’s about making someone, the reader, feel. The emotion you inspire is important and fairly obviously it wants to be a positive message. In order to draw out emotion, you may need to provoke, you may need to cite examples or tell a story. Being brutally honest, if your content doesn’t inspire emotion, it will get lost among the world of mediocre. Take your time, tap into the nerve centre of your audience; you’ve worked hard to gain their attention, you just need to do enough to be remembered too. Be daring, be bold, gain criticism and most importantly, gain an audience who are touched by your message.

4. Convenience

With the modern world being the way that it is, consumers want everything ‘on demand’. People have less and less patience, they want to be able to access information on their terms, in their time, at their convenience. Remember, this is not about you, it is not about what you are able to provide, it’s about your target audience, it’s about their routines, their convenience. If your audience wants film and you release hard backed books, take a guess at the outcome. If, however, you provide relevant, attractive and emotive content to your consumers convenience, you have a much greater chance of success. If your target audience prefers SMS once a week, that’s what you should deliver! Make it easy, deliver it in the way they want it and they expect it. Anything less and you may be wasting your efforts entirely. Do the very best you can!

5. Shareability

If you’ve managed to achieve the success of getting someone to read and digest your content, the supreme success comes in getting them to recommend it to others by sharing. Remember, people won’t joust share anything. Even recommending a holiday read can be challenging so recommending content that may make a professional difference to someone needs to be well founded. Assuming you’ve achieved the first 4 points, it may be as simple as having ‘share this’ buttons, you may need to ask for a referral. Whatever you need to do to get the referral, do it, there is nothing as successful in conversion as personal testimonials. Another thought to leave you with is the use of incentives to gain the referral. Be creative, stimulate desire and gain recommendations from your target audience. Achieve these and you’ll be we’ll on your way to a rewarding sales channel with high conversion ratios.

Finally, remember your call to action!

What do you want your recipients to do? Contact you? Share with a friend? Comment?
Make sure you tell them!

If you follow these simple steps for creating more successful content marketing you’re likely to stay a step ahead of your competition and convert more of those all important subscribers.

By Ryan Mullins

Google hack – how to achieve page 1 ranking

How do you get your website onto page 1 on google and other search engines?

The secret to achieving a Google page 1 ranking

Achieving a Google search page 1 ranking has swiftly become the Holy Grail for online businesses—after all, how many punters ever bother to go onto the second page of a search? And reaching this nirvana has spawned a whole new industry of SEO consultants and experts who would have you believe there is some arcane and complex magic for nudging your way up the search results.

But…getting onto page 1 for a Google search isn’t difficult at all!

Yes—that’s true, despite what SEO and internet gurus might have you believe. It’s simply a matter of following a specific formula and being mindful of competition for the phrases you want to rank for. And we’re willing to share the secret with you, so you can reconfigure your pages to achieve the Google, Bing or Yahoo search ranking you want.

Just a word before you start…

Take this example: a local insurance broker approached us and said, “We want to appear on page 1 of Google.”

We asked them what search term they wanted to achieve page 1 for.

“Insurance!” they said, naturally enough.

We had to ask, “How deep are your pockets?”

With the pressure of online competition, not deep enough! And this is the root of the problem. This company, by wanting to rank on page 1 for “insurance” was setting itself up in competition with all the hundreds of thousands of other insurance companies all over the world. And although “insurance” is an applicable search term for this small local business, it does nothing to set them apart from the rest of the competition.

The problem is, how do you rank on page 1 without diluting your message?

It’s all to do with the search terms you choose. If you pick a high competition key phrase that attracts a huge volume of searches, you’ll find it nigh on impossible to achieve a page 1 rank on Google or any of the other search engines. Not totally impossible—but if you do get to the top, your competitors will be snapping at your heels and you’ll find it incredibly difficult to maintain your position.

So how can you achieve a page 1 ranking?

Here’s our guide to raising your page up the search engine ranks.

  1. Research your keywords to differentiate your business. For example, if you’re an insurance broker in Bedford, specialising in commercial risks, don’t attempt to be page 1 for “insurance”. You’ll be better served by ranking for “commercial insurance Bedford”.
  2. Understand search volumes. Once you’ve identified some possible search phrases for your business, you need to be mindful of how many people are using them. After all, being number 1 for a phrase that nobody is using isn’t going to make you particularly discoverable.
  3. Identify your site’s key pages. There will be certain pages on your site that are valuable to you and your customers. You need to know which pages these are and what information your visitors are looking for. Use analytics to identify your top ranking pages.
  4. Optimise your site to make it easier for Google to read. Google isn’t human and it needs information to be configured in a specific way in order to find it. If you leave out what it’s looking for, your pages won’t rank.  Every single page needs to contain the following information:
  • Key phrases that are specific to the page
  • META Title – this needs to contain the key phrase(s)
  • URL – must contain the key phrase(s)
  • META Description – also needs to contain the key phrase(s)
  • The first, second and final paragraphs must all feature the key phrase(s)

If this still seems a little daunting or if you simply haven’t the time to review all the pages on your site, we can help you to gain a page 1 ranking for Google and other search engines, such as Bing and Yahoo. Our first step is to assess your site and make a recommendation on how much work will be required. Then you can decide whether you’d like us to transform your search engine rankings.