The Social Wave

Choosing an email marketing platform

The evolution of email marketing has gone from simple one-on-one emails and auto-responders, now referred to as “email 1.0,” to a much more sophisticated way of communicating with your customers, “email 2.0.” This is a totally new way of doing business two where companies or entrepreneurs collect specific data on the behavior of their ideal clients so they can send them more targeted emails that will yield greater results. With advances in technology today entrepreneurs now have the capability to tailor the messages they send to their audience based on their customer’s interests, preferences, and purchase history.

Calls to action (CTA)

Having an effective “call to action” is an essential part of any web page. A call to action is not just limited to ecommerce sites. Every website should have an objective it wants users to complete, whether it is filling in a contact form, signup for a newsletter, or volunteering their time. A call to action provides

• Engagement

• Valuable, non-sales-bitchy offer

• A sense of urgency or exclusiveness

To create your CTA you need to:

• Lay the groundwork. Before a user is willing to complete a call to action they have to recognize the need. Infomercials do this very well. Before they ask people to respond, they first identify a problem and present a product that solves that problem. You also need to communicate the benefits of responding. What will the user get out of completing the call to action?

• Sweeten the deal. Offer a little extra to encourage users to complete a call to action. Incentives could include discounts, entry into a competition, or a free gift. This is the approach Barack Obama used on his fund raising website. If you made a donation of $30 or more, you got a free T-shirt. Of course, the beauty of this offer was that not only did he persuade you to donate, he also turned you into an advertising billboard!

• Have a small number of distinct actions. It is also important to be focused in your calls to action; too many CTAs will overwhelm the site visitor. Studies have shown that if the shopper is presented with too many varieties, she is less likely to make a purchase. By limiting the number of choices a user has to make, you reduce the amount of mental effort. Effectively you guide the user around the site, step by step. It is not so much the number of actions as the uniqueness of each offer. Here is an example of three quick and to-the-point actions:

1. Create a profile

2. View demo

3. Buy now

Digging into this example deeper, presenting all three on one page creates confusion because the visitor doesn’t know whether to create a profile first or if she can just ”buy now.” A better approach would be to push the buy option later in the process, once the user has committed to creating a profile and a level of trust has been built.

• Make sure that you use active, urgent language. A call to action should clearly tell users what you want them to do. They should include active words such as call, buy, register, subscribe, donate. All of these encourage the user to take an action. To create a sense of urgency and a need to act now, these words can be used alongside phrases such as: offer expires; for a short time only; order now and receive. When you are running an event or product special, offer an incentive to take action right away and include an action-taking early bird discount. You should do this with all of the events and trainings that you offer. Don’t just do it because the urgency approach works; do it because you want to connect with action takers who make things happen that help grow your business in exciting ways.

• Use white space. It’s not just the position of your call to action that matters; it is also the space around it. The more space around a call to action, the more attention is drawn to it. On the opposite side, if you clutter up your call to action with surrounding content, it will be lost in the overall visuals and noise of the page. Some of the most powerful calls to action are surrounded by white space.

• Raise the call high. Another important factor is the position of your call to action on the page. Ideally it should be placed high on the page, and in the central column above what is called the fold of your site, meaning if people have to scroll down to see the offer, you will lose half of the visitors immediately when they land on your site.

• Fly the right colors. Switch up the colors on your call to action and test what visually works better for your audience. For example, fast food restaurants tend to use the colors red, yellow, and blue because studies have shown that they insinuate fast as well as prompt hunger. Color is an effective way of drawing attention to elements on page, especially if the rest of the site has a fairly limited visual color palette.

Contrast is also a visually powerful approach to use. By making your site muted by low tones and colors such as blues and grays, you can then make a call to action stand out by placing it in orange. this extreme contrast leaves you in no doubt as to the next thing you should do. Of course, never rely solely on color. Keep in mind that a large number of computer users will not see some color combinations if they are color blind.

• Size matters. The size of your call to action is equally important. The bigger your call to action, the more chance it will be noticed. Check this out by browsing the web to see which calls to action stand out most. You will likely notice that you are more likely to not only find but click through the larger ones.

• Use the call to action site-wide. Include some type of call to action on every single page of your website, because you never know where some people will enter your site. Don’t assume that visitors will land on your homepage. As links to your site begin to build visibility in search results, people wind up landing on your blog, product area, about us page, and even your contact page, especially if they Googled your contact information. A call to action should not just be limited to the homepage. Every page of your site should have some form of call to action that leads the user on, especially if they landed on your contact page—you do not want them to just write down your number and then leave the site. If the user reaches a dead end they will leave without responding to your call. Your call to action does not need to be the same for each page. Instead you can use smaller actions that lead the user towards your ultimate goal.

• Carry the call through. Consider what happens when a user does respond to your call to action. The rest of the process needs to be as carefully thought through as the call to action itself. A word of warning: If you require users to provide personal data about themselves, resist the temptation to collect unnecessary information. The less you ask, the more likely they are to provide their information to you. Start with the basics of just name and email. Do not ask for their address, phone (unless you are running mobile campaigns, but it’s better to keep a mobile call to action on a separate page.) Marketing people in particular like to build up demographic information. Although valuable, many regard demographic information as personal and asking for it increases the chance that a visitor will drop out of the process. Remember that you need to build trust and that people will connect with you and buy from you only at the level they trust you.

An effective call to action is the number one focus of a successful site and involves bringing together the best practices in usability, visual design, and powerful copy writing. If it is done right it can generate measurable returns and being that we are focused on growing our brand online, that is what the goal should be, a return.

Lead capture

It’s easy to set up forms on your site or blog to allow for visitors to give you their contact information such as email, name, and phone number. Choosing the right email marketing software system is a start, but setting up the actual forms throughout your site that automatically capture the visitor information when entered and sends it into your organized email database is vital. Without automation, manually trying to enter, track, and send emails to visitors can become a logistics nightmare. This type of lead capture form can be created on your site by doing what is called “capturing code,” and cutting as well as pasting it onto your site. If you have some basic html knowledge, then this is really a no-brainer, but for those of us that would rather have our teeth pulled than learn html, there are thousands of specialists online that can do this in a matter of minutes for you. You can also ask your email software company if they can make it happen as well. Some of them have special packages when you sign up with them to set up your first three call to actions.

The point of having an email capture is to automatically gather and organize the user’s information from your site. Once they willingly give you their information, or “opt-in,” you then need to have their information organized so you can better communicate with them moving forward. For example, if your call to action offers them something related to tips on how to build their wealth, you would want them to go into a wealth-building campaign database. If they clicked on the call to action that helps them locate investments, then they should automate over to an investment location campaign database.

Email messaging

Even if you have only 10 email addresses, you need to start somewhere. Add them into your email database and begin to build. Once you start a list, make sure that you launch a marketing journey to keep in touch and in front of your contacts without overwhelming their inbox. Send between one and three emails per month, maximum. It’s not about the quantity, it is about quality of emails. To help you better manage your email journey, set up what are called auto-send or auto-respond emails. Go into your email program and set up at least six emails that will automatically release on the dates and times you choose to send out to your list. Keep them short, simple, and to-the-point, and do not make them sales bitchy. Use them to educate and build relationships, and the rest will follow. Make sure that each email has several links for more information, because this is how you can gauge their interest and determine how to keep marketing to them.

Remember that your email messages are about the reader. What can you do for them, how can you help them? When you identify this core email message, the next step is to keep it brief and make sure that your email is not 14 pages long. One or two short paragraphs in an email with a catchy subject line can attract the reader’s attention from the opening click. If you have something really important that you want them to read or see, including a link with more information that takes them to your blog is an excellent way to get them to check out your site every now and then. Make sure that you mix up your email links with partner blog links here and there as well. If you feel that one of your blogging friends has something of value to add or share with your contacts, go ahead and share their info or blog post; both you and your friend will benefit.

Behavioral email marketing

Part of a 2.0 email marketing approach is to build triggers in the email process that can help you track your prospects’ behaviors and interests. Here’s an example of a trigger: Sue Client clicks on a link in one of the emails you sent her about your product or service. It automatically sends (or triggers) a message for you to send her information on another product or service based on the links topic (in technical jargon, “triggers” are used to send clients into a new sales cycle based on that link’s topic). Think Amazon books and “Today’s Recommendations for You.” Not only has email technology and software evolved, but the way that we use it to communicate is now shifting how entrepreneurs market and grow their businesses. You can start by adding triggers into your emails that take interested contacts through an “emotion sales” process. For example, if you are selling flowers and your first email educates them on what flowers are in season with the interest of getting the visitor to send flowers to a loved one, you would want to add in several links into your email that will monitor what is called their “click behavior.”

Monitoring communication campaign results

You need to have at least one time per month where you and your team look at reports to see which of your emails are more effective and have a higher rate of opening, as well as click through. Use those email examples to build your next campaign. It is important to know how your list is responding to the emails that you send. If you aren’t getting a good click-through response, it is either your message or the topic. Test a few emails with your top clients or customers to see what they respond to and what they don’t. Offer them a discount on services for their time. Again, less is more when it comes to the emails that you send. So what is a low opening rate? Well, that depends on the industry as well as the list you have built. Aim for at least a 50 percent opening rate. If you see that it starts to fall below that, get busy trying new language, messaging, and focuses for the emails that you send out.

Adding a personal touch to every email is important as well. If you are sending the same email out to a massive amount of people, try to use language and messaging that would make the reader feel as though you are only talking to them, by using words such as “you,” or directing a question that is geared toward an individual response. For example, “What do you think about . . . ?” Remember that readers will be able to gauge your sincerity as well as whether you are being authentic. If you try to be someone you are not or your brand personality is not incorporated in everything that you send out, you will notice that your opening and click-through rate will be much lower, which means the amount of people opening your email and clicking on links or content that are in the email and actually reading it.

WIPEOUT

I send my clients and customers a newsletter once a month, but I really don’t see any sales from it, and it takes a lot of my time to put together. Are these still effective?

WAVE TIP

No. People are too busy nowadays to read about your “news.” Do not make something that you send out about you; it needs to be about them and for them. Change it to a customer appreciation or highlight letter. “Why Our Customers

Are the Best” or “A Sneak Peak at Our Customer of the Month” will get customers or clients jumping at the chance to be in your “customer letter” every month.

Plus, you can get them to provide an overview to you, and this way you do not have to write all of the content. You might have to do some editing though.