4 Simple Ideas to Personalize Your Email Campaigns Today

Those of us who craft email campaigns are always searching for ways to personalize our messages. Sending the right message to each subscriber at the right time can seem hard to achieve, because our email newsletters are such workhorses for our brands - we get reliable returns (opens, clicks, and sales) from emailing our subscribers. How do we balance the need for personalized campaigns (which we know consumers want) with achievable and reliable results (which our businesses need)?

Our advice: don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Keep your email newsletter humming along and start to siphon off sub-audiences for more targeted, just in-time messages with tailored content. This approach to personalization will improve your clicks and opens and ultimately revenue, with the added bonus of delighting your customers with relevant and timely messages they will want to read.

Here are 4 ways to personalize your email programs that you can implement right now:

1. Create Sub-audiences of Customers

Not all email subscribers are the same and different messages will perform better for some audiences over others. Take any piece of data you have on your subscribers, for example, when they joined your list, how responsive they are with your emails, and the time of day they open and create a sub-audience of people for a targeted message. Simple examples are a welcome series for new subscribers or an “evening edition” for night-owl readers.

2. Take into Account the Health of Your Relationship

We've all received the buy one get one free email from a brand that we are currently on customer service hold with. Instead of leaving that bad taste in their mouth, let them know you care, because you don't want to lose them as a customer. Identifying this sub-audience and delivering the right tone in your email can keep them as a loyal customer through their customer service experience.

3. Use Their Site Browsing & Mobile Behavior to Tailor the Message

Your customers show tremendous individuality while browsing your site or using your mobile app. Nudge them along in their journey by matching your message to their experience. Examples of these emails would be abandoned cart emails or low inventory messages on products they've viewed on site. These are great ways to drive relevance and results in your email programs.

4. Match the Content to Their Interests

It is tempting to send the same promotional offers to everyone on your list, but even a little bit of personalized content can deliver big wins. Take a page from Netflix or Amazon and inch your way towards personalized emails by delivering an offer or a link to something they have shown interest in in the past. Great examples of this would be sending them another product or article in the same category as their last purchase or web visit with a simple “we thought you might be interested in this” message.

Depending on the quality of your customer data, some of these personalized messages may be easier to achieve than others. There is no question that consumers expect personalized messages, so our job as marketers is to use the tools and data we have to start to deliver on that promise. And we know it can deliver results. According to a recent MarketingLand study, personalized email delivers 6% higher transaction rates, but 70% of brands fail to use them.

Are you having trouble getting email delivered to the inbox, download Email Deliverability: Guide for Modern Marketers to orchestrate and deliver messages that are relevant to your audience.

Secret's founder returns with Bold, a Medium for enterprise

 David Byttow learned just how much goes unsaid inside companies while he was running Secret. Blasting private information out publicly causes harassment, which led Secret to flame out and give investors back some of their money. But now Byttow is channeling his insight into a new startup called Bold, which he tells me is a “platform for writing long-form content at work. Use cases… Read More

Tumblr blocked in China before Tiananmen Square massacre anniversary

 Tumblr is now apparently completely inaccessible in China. GreatFire.org, a non-profit that monitors censorship by the Chinese government, first spotted the lockout earlier this week. Read More

3 Landing Page Optimization Myths EXPOSED

There's a metric ton of information out there about landing page optimization. This is awesome for small businesses and marketers trying to improve their conversion rates.

However, you can't trust everything you read online, and bad (or outright false) information can often disseminate faster online than factual, data-driven information. This leads to the perpetuation of bogus “knowledge,” the adoption of inferior “best practices,” and a general decline in the quality of good, reliable, actionable guidance on how to increase your conversion rates.

 

Last week, my colleague Erin Sagin teamed up with Margot Mazur from Wistia to offer a great webinar that debunked some of the most pervasive myths around landing page and conversion rate optimization. (You can watch the whole webinar here!)

In today's post, we'll take a page from Erin and Margot's webinar and look at three of the most stubbornly common misconceptions about landing pages, and why you shouldn't listen to conventional wisdom surrounding these myths. We'll explain why these myths are often accepted as truth without question, as well as what you should be focusing on instead. By the time you reach the end of this post, you'll be armed with the knowledge you actually need to start improving your conversion rates.

Myth #1: Low Conversion Rates Always Mean You Have Landing Page Problems

This is arguably one of the most prevalent of the landing page myths we come across, and it's one that many marketers struggle to get to grips with. In all fairness, it's a logical enough assumption; if your conversion rates are low, then there must be a problem with your landing pages, right?

Wrong.

 

The reality of the situation is that you can improve your conversion rates without even touching your landing pages, and rethinking the audiences you're targeting is a great start.

Think about it. If you're targeting the wrong people, it doesn't matter whether your landing pages are exceptional or mediocre – they're not going to convert. This is a targeting problem, not a landing page problem. Simply put, sending more qualified traffic to your landing pages can be much more effective than tweaking your landing pages themselves. So what can you do?

Consider Keyword Intent

To send more qualified traffic to your landing pages, start with your keywords. How many of the keywords you're targeting are informational or navigational? Is the intent of other keywords unclear? Is there room for potential ambiguity? If so, start over. Focus on high commercial-intent keywords that have strong buying signals.

Refine Location Targeting Options

Geotargeting is amazingly powerful, but it does present unique challenges, such as targeting too broad an area. Examine your location settings. Did you cast your proverbial net a little too widely? Tighten up your location settings to provide greater relevance to local and regional markets.

 

Adjust Keyword Match Types

Something else to monitor is the match type settings in your PPC account. If your conversion rates seem low, carefully examine your Search Query report, paying particularly close attention to your match types. Are you using the best match types for the keywords you're bidding on? Are you excluding irrelevant or low-intent search queries using negative match types? Make sure your match types are working for you, and that your list of negative keywords is comprehensive enough to disqualify low-intent traffic.

Making sure you're only sending qualified, motivated traffic to your landing pages is one of the most effective strategies you can employ to increase your conversion rates. Don't let lower conversion rates spook you – the problem may lie with the traffic.

 

Use Call-Only Ads

One of the best ways to increase your conversion rates without messing with your landing pages is bypassing the landing page altogether using Call-Only ads.

This type of ad format allows visitors to click a single button and call your business directly from an advertisement. Given that landing pages are often the “leakiest” part of the conversion funnel, skipping this stage altogether can have a dramatic impact on your conversion rates.

 

Call-Only ads are perfectly suited for businesses that handle a great deal of mobile traffic. The last thing prospects want to do when browsing on a mobile device is to be taken to a landing page and forced to fill out a web form. Let your users get in touch with you directly from your ads and stop shepherding traffic through unnecessary landing pages.

Myth #2: A/B Testing IS Landing Page Optimization – Period

We talk a great deal about A/B testing here on the WordStream blog. Although we regularly advise marketers to base their decisions on rigorous A/B tests (and never on assumptions), another of the most stubbornly enduring myths about landing pages and conversion rates is that A/B testing is the alpha and omega of conversion rate optimization.

Many marketers develop myopia when it comes to their testing parameters. They become obsessed with tiny details and minute adjustments in the pursuit of the “perfectly” optimized landing page. While there's nothing wrong with being a stickler for the small stuff, focusing too narrowly on small changes is likely to lead to meager results.

It's also a mistake to assume that simply by A/B testing various page elements that you're making the most of your time and resources. Some tests aren't just minor, but offer virtually no benefits whatsoever. To make matters worse, it's all too easy to fall into ruts and testing habits that waste time.

 

The image above shows the results of a typical conversion rate A/B test. Notice how the performance of the control and the variant level out over time? The reason for this is that it's common to see variations in behavior – and subsequent conversion gains – whenever a change is made. However, over time, this behavior “normalizes” and can result in those initial gains being lost. This is why it's important to allow your A/B tests to reach true statistical significance before stopping a test, as what appears to be a “winning” variation may actually perform similarly to the control version of the landing page in the long run.

So what's the solution? Think bigger.

Experiment with Different Offers

Stop wasting time obsessing about button colors. Instead, focus on bold, ambitious changes that are more likely to yield greater results. One of the best elements to focus on is your offer itself.

Too many marketers force their agenda or goals on prospects, when they should be doing the polar opposite – namely, giving prospects what they want. Here's an example of an offer we ran for a time on the WordStream homepage:

 

Now, we thought a free trial was a solid offer. However, we were less than blown away by the offer's performance. Conversion rates were average at best. Even worse was the fact that prospects were requesting frequent help from our sales team, a clear indication that the benefits of the offer weren't clear to users at that stage of the funnel.

With that in mind, we made a drastic change and switched up the offer completely, creating a free tool that is super-easy to use and shows the value of our software up-front:

 

Instead of pushing the sale from the outset, we instead switched gears to focus on what prospects wanted (help with their AdWords accounts). This resulted in a conversion rate increase more than five times better than the original offer.

Change Your Sign-Up Flow

Sign-up and other types of landing page forms are a common, everyday part of the often-transactional nature of the Web. However, just because sign-up forms are commonplace doesn't diminish the trust involved, or lessen the potential deterrent that asking for users' personal information can present. That's why you should consider radically changing your sign-up flow if you think your conversion rates are lower than they should be.

 

Many sites go straight for the throat and ask users to sign up for whatever they're offering immediately. While this approach can work, it may be putting users off and harming your conversion rates. Before you start tweaking your landing pages, consider adjusting your sign-up flow. If you're asking for user data earlier in the process, try asking users to sign up toward the end instead. Alternatively, empower your users to make their own decisions and let them choose when they sign up for your offer by implementing a more flexible sign-up process.

Myth #3: The Landing Page Is the Last Opportunity to Get Visitors to Convert

Of these three myths, this one is perhaps the most prevalent. However, once you move past this outdated mindset, you'll never think of your conversion rates in the same way again.

Not so long ago, many marketers viewed the landing page as the last-chance saloon; the final stage in an attempt to get visitors to cross the line and convert. Unfortunately, this approach assumes that visitors will do everything you want them to do, in the order in which you want them to do it, the first time they interact with your site.

This is rarely how this plays out.

 

People get distracted, or tire of your site, or simply assume they can come back to whatever it is you're offering at a time that's more convenient for them. Conversion pathways in today's always-on, multi-device environment are rarely linear, and most consumers simply won't sit down and move steadily through the funnel you've created in a single sitting. That's why it's so important to use remarketing.

Remarketing allows you to capture many conversions that a more rigid user flow would lose. If a visitor doesn't convert first time, it doesn't matter – your messaging can “follow” them around the Web, keeping your brand or products top-of-mind, and allow the visitor to convert when they're ready.

Remarket on the Display Network AND Social

Social media is perfect for remarketing. Not only do many people spend a great deal of time on social media (Facebook in particular), but the visual nature of ads on Facebook lends itself very well to remarketing messaging.

 

Facebook's extensive remarketing options offer marketers a remarkable degree of flexibility and targeting options, making it an essential strategy for businesses hoping to increase and optimize their conversion rates. Check out our comprehensive guide to remarketing on Facebook to learn more about how to implement this strategy.

Of course, you'd be crazy not to devote some of your AdWords budget to remarketing, too.

Make Saving Shopping Carts Effortless

For e-commerce retailers, flexibility in the check-out process is crucial. Very few people complete an online order in one sitting – many consumers prefer to purchase goods online over time. This can be due to distractions, hesitations, and other common obstacles that interfere with the conversion process. That's why you should make it as easy as possible for your visitors to pick up where they left off, whether you're selling them a product or offering them a free download.

Remember – it's about giving users what they want.

 

Check out this post about combatting shopping cart abandonment to learn more about increasing conversion rates on e-commerce landing pages.

Only Ask for the Information You REALLY Need

Whether you're selling a product or promoting a content offer, it can be tempting to ask for everything from a visitor's name and email address to their income level and job title. As valuable as this data is to marketers, asking for too much information is a sure-fire way to tank your conversion rates.

When constructing web forms, only ask for the information you really need. Yes, you'll be potentially missing out on that sweet user data, but your conversion rates could improve considerably.

There's More to Conversion Rates Than Landing Pages

Remember, although landing page optimization is important, it's not necessarily essential in every instance, nor should it always be your first course of action. Sometimes, your landing pages are just fine – it's the rest of the process that needs tweaking.

Find out how you're REALLY doing in AdWords!

Watch the video below on our Free AdWords Grader:

Visit the AdWords Grader.

Kodak tries its hand at social with new “Kodak Moments” storytelling app

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How Organizations are Leveraging Content Across the Buyer Journey

When you hear the word content in a business context, you probably automatically associate it with marketing.

As a tactic, content marketing has been around for hundreds of years, while the term content marketing has only surged into popularity (and regular marketing lexicon) in the past 6-7 years. And it shows no sign of slowing down in 2016, 88% of organizations claim to be using content marketing as a key B2B marketing tactic.

The undeniable popularity and widespread usage of content marketing points to the effectiveness of content. However, content isnt only effective in the strict marketing sense content satisfies the entire buyer journey, from awareness, to engagement, to lead generation, to sales enablement, and even to customer success.

Consequently, the way we think about content is changing: content no longer lives exclusively in the marketers domain. In fact, content is the lifeblood of your entire organization.

Content in every corner

Content certainly starts with marketing, playing important roles in generating awareness, engagement, and of course, leads. But this is only the start of the buyer journey.

As a lead converts to an opportunity and enters the sales realm, content can (and should) be leveraged by sales teams to handle objections, build relationships, and target key accounts. Building a content library for sales enablement is a powerful way to educate and nurture potential customers, clarify value proposition, execute account-based marketing tactics, and ultimately, expedite the sales cycle.

Content plays an equally important role once the prospect has converted into a customer. Your customer support or success team can (and should) leverage content to coach and empower your customers. Building a knowledge base or resource center with product-centric content improves customer marketing effectiveness by allowing the nurturing process to be continued even further. Filling your knowledge base with bottom-of-the-funnel content that enables customer self-service will increase your success teams productivity and, more importantly, improve your customer retention rates.

Why content isnt enough

Understanding why and how content satisfies the entire buyer journey is the easy part, and creating content to better satisfy the journey is an important first step.

Simply creating the content, however, isnt enough. Organizations must be able to easily leverage this content for more than one purpose and one campaign in order to satisfy the buyer journey. This is where marketing automation comes into play content fuels lead nurturing campaigns and helps build up your lead data based on conversions.

But as much as your marketing automation platform can help you deliver the right content to the right person, it cant help you deliver the right content experience for the end user (be it a reader, a prospect, or a customer).

What do I mean by this? Well, your content experience is the place where all the user action takes place. It's the destination that you send your prospects to. It's where your visitors consume your content, where they convert to a lead, and where you can measure how effective your content is at every stage of the journey.

Sending your end user (regardless of where theyre at in the buyer journey) to a non-contextual, generic blog or resource center wont help them find the information they need to move further down the funnel, and it certainly wont compel them to continue their content journey. Your content will be far more effective if youre able to send the end user on a tailored engagement path.

Delivering a well-optimized content experience

Lets take a look at this in action.

Your marketing team produces an eBook. They can leverage this eBook for lead generation, targeting the particular buyer persona for whom they created the eBook using marketing automation and paid promotion tactics. Adding this eBook to your internal library for sales enablement, your sales team can leverage it to speak to a particular pain point that one of their prospects is experiencing. Or, similarly, your customer success team could also leverage this eBook in their knowledge base to provide more high-level information for your customers.

Those are three different use cases from just one eBook, within one organization. Each use case has different end goals and requires different context.

So, how do you optimize the content experience for each?

Tailor the experience Ensure your content is targeted, personalized, and strategically organized for the particular use case. For instance, if its an advanced-level eBook, dont include a CTA to sign up for a beginner-level webinar.

Facilitate further content discoverability Dont let your content pile up by date, or by type of content. Regardless of the use case, people are much more likely to search for a specific answer than they are to search for a white paper.

Include targeted and contextual CTAs Provide a logical and contextual next step to continue the buyer journey.

Conclusion

Content begins with marketing generating awareness, engagement, and leads but it also feeds into sales enablement and customer success, fueling your entire organization and propelling your end users throughout the entire buyer journey.

However, organizations must think beyond individual content assets and start producing relevant and contextual content experiences for the desired end user. By leveraging content experiences at every stage of the buyer journey, your content will not only become more valuable to your end users, but also to your organization.

Content can do a lot of things for your organization, but not if you don't start thinking about it in a larger context. Download theModern Marketing Essentials Guide to Content Marketingand start thinking. And doing.

How to REALLY Run a Twitter Lead Generation Campaign

Do you want more qualified leads?

Twitter can generate qualified leads at a lower cost than most of the other major ad platforms. It's true! But not if you follow Twitter's instructions. Why? Because Twitter's advice for creating lead generation cards is completely wrong.

In this post, you'll discover my unusual six-step strategy for using Twitter lead generation cards for ludicrously successful lead gen.

Step 1: Set Up Conversion Tracking. Just Do It!

This is kind of buried in the user interface, but it's actually the most important thing you need to do. Without conversion tracking set up you're blind.

All the major platforms, except for Twitter, have a "universal tag" - where you put in one tag on your site so you can figure out the conversions just by typing in the URL.

But on Twitter you have to create different JavaScript tags for each thank you page. Each one gets a name and you can categorize the type (download, purchase, sign-up) so that you can report on it later.

I'm blown away how many people forget this critical step. Basically you need to define a different conversion pixel for every goal completion on your site so that you can track whether everything is working.

Step 2: Choose Your Twitter Ads Campaign Type Wisely

There are six pay-per-performance campaign types, depending on your marketing objective. You specify the most you're willing to pay for each type of campaign.

Why not just specify $0.01 as your cost per action? Well, basically if you set the bids too low, you'll get no impressions. It's an auction. Chances are other Twitter advertisers are willing to pay more than a penny.

The more you're willing to pay, the more likely your ads will be shown. You have to figure out what it's worth to you; Twitter will figure out how much quantity you'll get for that amount.

As for the campaign types, even though tweet engagements are the most popular type of ad campaign, they offer the absolute worst ROI. Avoid like the plague!

Why? Twitter charges per "engagement." This includes engagements such as a person viewing your profile page, expanding your image, expanding the tweet from the tweet stream, or clicking on a hashtag. Twitter will love taking your money, but these campaigns won't help you achieve any of your marketing objectives as you waste your budget.

What you should really be interested in paying for is website clicks, app installs, followers, leads, or actual video views.

Step 3: Adjust Your Twitter Ad Targeting Options

At the basic level, you can simply target Twitter users by location, gender, and language.

Twitter also provides somewhat more advanced options:

These advanced targeting options include:

• Keywords: You will target specific searches or users who use with certain keywords in tweets.


• Followers: You will target accounts of people with interests similar to followers of those accounts. For example, entering @SMExaminer will target people who are likely to be interested in social media.


• Interests: You will target users interested in any categories you enter.


• Tailored audiences: This is the crown jewel of Twitter advertising. Remarketing and custom lists are so powerful. Spend here first! Tailored audiences offer the best ROI because you have certainty over who you're targeting. People who are more familiar with your brand are more likely to buy - it's your lowest-hanging fruit.


• TV targeting: You will target people who are interested in a specific program, TV network, or TV genre.


• Behaviors: You will target users who share specified online and offline behaviors and characteristics.


• Tweet engager: This is a brand new option - it's kind of like remarketing for Twitter. It's targeting people who interacted with your tweets in the last few days. If you have a business where you need to get lots of people really excited about something (like a political party trying to energize the base ahead of an election), then this can be a powerful type of targeting.


• Event targeting: You will target people who are interested in global or regional events.

Step 4: Create Your Ad - But DON'T Use Twitter Lead Generation Cards!

Now it's time to create your lead gen ad. Twitter tells you to use a lead generation card. WRONG!

Never, ever use Twitter's Lead Generation Cards for lead generation. I have run thousands of campaigns and the lead generation cards consistently lose and lose badly.

Even though it has a nice layout with customizable call-to-action buttons like "buy now" and all sorts of fancy bells and whistles, it looks more like an ad. Twitter people are allergic to advertising; when they see a Twitter ad it makes them want to click on it less!

If something looks like an ad on Twitter, users will ignore you! That means lower engagement and 2-4x higher costs.

Instead you should just attach a funny photo. Use images that have done well organically to save money.

Go nuts on the image you choose. Don't be afraid to be a bit snarky or goofy. Use funny images or memes, even if it means going a bit off-brand. Twitter is a place where you'll be rewarded if your brand shows it can have a bit of fun (within good taste, of course), or you'll be ignored if you go all corporate.

And of course, use emojis to further increase engagement rates by 30%.

Step 5: Set Bids - No Automatic Bidding Allowed

OK, first: Never ever use Twitter's Automatic Bidding. It's for suckers.

Automatic bidding will make sure your budget is spent very quickly. Sure, it helps you win ad auctions, but you don't really have to or want to win every auction.

Keep in mind it's not like search advertising where you're bidding on rare priceless keywords that get searched on 10 times per year. This is display advertising and there are plenty of ad spots available to buy.

Always use maximum bidding. For most companies doing lead generation, it's not the end of the world if the lead comes in tomorrow vs. today.

The only time you would use automatic bidding is if you need to promote something heavily and you need those ad impressions today (e.g., you have a 24-hour sale) or if you're targeting a very tight audience, maybe 1,000 people. In these cases, then you do have to use auto bidding - or just bid really high.

OK, so how the heck do you set bids? It's seriously complicated - it's pretty much rocket science.

You need to use The Force.

Basically, you're trying to get as many impressions as you can for as little money as possible. If you bid too low your ads won't show. But if you bid too high your budget will die.

When you bid too high, you're essentially paying for premium next-day air service when usually (99% of the time) a regular postage stamp will suffice. You're paying much more for the same clicks in order to be delivered faster.

Twitter has a tool that shows how your reach changes based on different maximum bid amounts.

Ignore! Ignore! Ignore! It's completely wrong. Even when it says I will get no impressions, I get millions of impressions. It is just trying to get you to raise bids.

I've reverse-engineered the Twitter ad auction. Basically Twitter determines if your ads show or not based on your effective CPM. (Your max bid times applicable predicted engagement rate). So if your bid is $1 per click and you're doing a click campaign using an ad that is averaging a 1% click-through rate, then your predicted effective CPM is $10.

To win more ad auctions, you have two choices: either bid more or post higher engagement stuff.

I love promoting high engagement tweets (15%+ engagement rates) with very low maximum CPCs (5-10 cents). The higher the engagement, the less you'll need to bid for your ads to be eligible to show.

Step 6: Report, Rinse, Repeat

Your last step is to figure out how things did. You can get detailed information about exactly what happened after spending money on Twitter ads: Clicks, Retweets, Followers, Conversions (etc.)

In the above campaign you can see that we were able to generate 440 downloads for just $6.50 per action. That's extremely cost-effective compared to other marketing channels. In comparison search ads in this vertical can cost closer to $5 per click (not per download).

Delete campaigns that aren't working. Double down on stuff that works. Repeat.

Conclusion

Twitter can be very powerful. For example, Twitter ad campaigns can deliver a great return on your investment once you master the Twitter ads quality score algorithm.

But you have to avoid the pitfalls (hello, Tweet Engagement campaigns!). When it comes to advice, Twitter can't be trusted. Forget everything Twitter has tried to tell you about lead generation. Ignore Twitter's "best practice" advice on bidding, creative, audience targeting, campaign types ... and pretty much everything else.

Instead, do Twitter lead generation my way. The RIGHT way. :)

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