5 Reasons Email Marketing Adds Value to Your Brand

One of the most valuable content marketing tools that can showcase a business’ brand to their customers regularly and share relevant information is email marketing. Email marketing is a cost-effective solution that gives businesses the power to reach customers in a place most people visit every day – their inbox.

According to a study by MarketingSherpa, 91 percent of adults in North America like to receive promotional emails from companies they do business with. As a business owner, I believe that building successful email marketing campaigns has never been more important than it is now.

In a recent conversation with a client, I was surprised to hear how he defined email marketing. His email strategy was simply sending notices out to clients, and that was very different than what I, as the owner of a marketing agency, perceive email marketing to be. It then occurred to me that everyone’s definition of email marketing is different, as I believe that email marketing is a constant communication and relationship-builder between you and a client.

No matter what your definition is, email marketing is without a doubt a value-add to your brand. Here are a few ways email marketing can strengthen your brand and create strong, lasting relationships with your customers:

1. Building credibility
   • To build strong customer relationships, it’s important to have an effective tool to communicate with the people who matter most to your business. Email gives you the ability to stay top-of-mind and keep people engaged.
2. Generating Leads
   • Email gives you the opportunity to capture new visitors’ attention and nurture relationships with helpful and informative content. You can also share your updates on your own social networks to bring new people to your business.
3. Learning what works
   • Email marketing gives you the metrics you need to see how your emails are performing. These insights help you market smarter and give you the advantage of better understanding the needs and interests of your customer base.
4. Reaching your customers on any device
   • With nearly two-thirds of all emails read on a mobile device, email marketing is one of the best tools that can help a business take advantage of the growing popularity of mobile technology.
5. Looking professional
   • Email templates aren’t just easy to use; they are also designed to make sure you look professional and consistent when you reach your audience’s inbox.

If your business doesn’t have an email marketing strategy, and you don’t feel you have the time or skill-set to write them, consider hiring a marketing agency. An agency can create the content as well as an email schedule for you that are integrated with your brand and business direction. 

Do you use email in your business? If so, what is the value to your business?

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Kick Start Your Automated Marketing – Not With Technology

Marketing automation (MA) can seem quite a complicated, misunderstood, multi-faceted beast to some organizations because it is more than a centralized platform to handle all online communication – with its many moving parts and strategic decisions, it’s hard for many to get started.

The media would have us believe that MA is all about choosing the right technology and voila, you have MA! Well, sorry to break it to you, but buying the technology is a small part of the story; it’s really all about creating a framework and a strategy.

Knowing your MA strategy will require you to do all of the thinking upfront BEFORE you invest in the software, I have outlined a few key aspects you should consider to kick-start your MA program:

• Conduct some research up front, including outlining what you want to get out of this program, and making sure to put your audience at the centre of your MA
• Build an MA team comprised of key stakeholders from customer service, marketing, sales, and product development. You may want to include an agency representative or MA consultant at this point.
• Conduct a situation analysis outlining where you are now, what systems are in place, what content, and what data do you have today and what is planned for the full rollout of the program
• Set business objectives to be clear as to why you are doing this, including ROI, reducing overhead, KPIs, communicating better with a target audience, or improving the customer experience
• Develop strategies for scoring, nurturing, website, and content marketing framework
• Set tactics with a 12-month view but look at a 3-month window with tactics and clear goals
• Set responsibilities to be clear who is going to do what when, and if a controller is needed (externally or internally) to help measure success, and create and measure the program to a project plan
• Review the various MA platforms available to decide which is the right one for your business e.g. Hubspot, Infusionsoft, Pardoc, Marketto are a few leaders
• Begin implementing by adding a tracking code on your website, landing pages, etc.
  • Assess your reach including how much traffic, social media engagement, email contacts
  • Document audience personas and then create segments to better understand who these personas are (company size, level of person in company, etc.)
    • Processing leads from initial engagement to opportunity enables you to build and nurture workflows in line with the objectives laid out in your tailored strategy.
  • Align segments with your CRM campaigns (e.g. SalesForce opportunities)
  • Building content framework is key to this type of program so keep building on it depending on your objectives. The content could be awareness content like whitepapers and webinars, or inbound-focused with downloads.
  • Leads will not be created by this software, but rather will be created by your ability to provide or repurpose amazing content which the software then serves up
    • You will target, segment and personalize on relevancy, which turns sales into customer service. Nurturing your customers from cold to warm enables you to give them what they are looking for.
  • Analytics will score each visitor interaction on the basis of profile and behaviour, resulting in a prioritized marketing database.

MA allows us to imagine a world where machines and not your staff perform the majority of your marketing activities including reviewing analytics, creating performance reports and data visualizations, writing and scheduling social media updates, determining blog post topics, copywriting, curating content, building strategy, and allocating resources. The result of implementing a solid MA program is that the marketer’s primary role will be to collect and enhance algorithm-based recommendations and content, rather than to devise them.

Are you armed with the knowledge to launch your automated marketing strategy or do you need some help? What help would you need to get started? I look forward to an active discussion!

Tradeshow Strategy – Tips on How to Make Your Next Tradeshow a Success

You have 4 seconds to engage someone that’s walking by, and distractions are everywhere – what do you do to grab their attention first?

Tradeshow Tips

Write a Strategy

Before reserving a booth at an industry tradeshow, ask yourself and your team, “What are we trying to accomplish by going to this tradeshow?” Tradeshows can be rewarding and can demonstrate true ROI if you do it right and are clear about what you want out of it.

Attempting to attract an audience to your booth can prove to be challenging and we all know tradeshows can be extremely expensive, so set tangible objectives, that can measured as outcomes. Without objectives, how else will you know if the tradeshow was successful? Whether your desired outcome is to generate buzz, increase brand awareness, build customer relationships, share industry knowledge, network, or gain leads, relying on random traffic in the room is not the wisest strategy (especially when most tradeshow attendees already have an idea of which booths they plan to visit before they get to the show). If you don’t set out measureable objectives, you wont have a clear understanding of how your booth performed.

It’s important to be intentional and create a booth that attracts the right people, so you can more easily reach your tradeshow goals. I recommend you try some, or all, of the following:

Preshow Outreach

Contact your regular customers, local contacts and existing prospects, and, if you can get access to the list of registered show attendees, contact them too! Make appointments by reaching out through direct mail, email, or the phone.

Stand Up

Most exhibitor staff sit behind tables. Don’t do that! Get up, and engage with people – that’s what you’re there for. Either push the table against a wall or leave chairs out of your booth set up.

Stand Out

Tradeshows are an investment of money and time. If you’re making the investment, try to grab a good location (the better locations will be more expensive), and brand your booth. Your actual booth itself is a silent salesperson – it speaks for you and your brand when you’re not able to, so it pays to have a pretty booth in a great location. TV screens, or interactive touch screens are a great way to grab attention and share your key messages!

Signage

Something else to consider is having a benefit-oriented sign that can be seen from down an aisle on the showroom floor. It should have verbiage that gives prospective clients a reason to stop and showcases a solution to a customer problem. Your signage should also answer the question all potential customers will be asking themselves – “What’s in it for me?” Don’t be afraid to be specific – it will weed out anyone who isn’t your target.

Offer Incentive

In order to attract the right people, you have to know your attendees. Make sure your incentive speaks to your target market and offers them something they want so they have a reason to come to your booth. Promotional items will impact how show attendees perceive you. Investing in promotional items that are as unique and high quality as your offering will pay off. Whether its swag, a game, a discount, or free services, special gifts say “thank you for coming by.”

Social Media Live Feeds

Tradeshows are an “in-person” event, but social media should still play a part. Let your clients and prospective clients know where your booth is and what you’re up to over social media. Being active on social media during the show will help you connect with attendees and those who couldn’t make it to the event.

It’s common for events to have their own Twitter hashtag, so participants can communicate with one another from the showroom floor.

Promote the Tradeshow Like It’s Your Own Event

Every year tradeshows drive thousands of people to different events. Exhibitors can pay for passes to give to great customers, prospective customers, or media, to join you. The show organizers will be promoting the event themselves (which in turn promotes you by association), so give back to your partner by promoting them.

Follow Up AFTER the Show

You need to respond to leads really quickly! Key in business cards right at the show, and follow up either later that day, or early the next morning.

If a lead calls you first, do NOT wait – call them back immediately!

Do you create a strategy for your tradeshows? Do you have the same strategy every year? How do you measure the success of your tradeshows? Do you have any tips you would like to share? Please feel free to leave questions or comments in the comment section – I’d love to hear your stories!

Impressions vs. Leads: Where Does The Real Value Lie?

As the owner of a strategic marketing agency, clients often ask me how many leads were generated from a campaign. My answer is often the same; what was the objective of the campaign? Was the campaign launched to generate leads or impressions?

But wait; can you have a lead without ever having made an impression?

If you are a smaller, unknown brand then generating leads can be challenging, but which comes first, the chicken (lead) or the egg (impression)? Although your marketing strategy should determine the objectives of a campaign, if you don’t have one, consider that there is a huge value in an impression.

In the spirit of “any PR is good PR”, impressions measure the number of times your ad was seen, which we consider to be brand building (a part of any solid marketing strategy). If someone sees your ad and, although they may not be your target market, they mention your ad to someone else they know who is in your desired target market, then voila, you have a lead! Now you must ask yourself how many viable leads resulted from that single impression.

Of course at the end of the day, marketing must measure engagement in hard metrics (like clicks, and conversion rates), but it is equally important to remember quality is more important than quantity and the path to that lead is often not as direct as you might think!

The engagement cycle takes many forms, starting with an impression that may result in a lead. In your online campaigns, which do you feel came first – the chicken or the egg? Share your thoughts in our comment section below.

Turning Leads Into Clients

Last week’s blog focused on the disparity between implementing a marketing strategy and expecting immediate leads without the solid integration of your sales force.

Once your integrated marketing and sales strategy is generating leads (always easier said than done, of course) how do you convert these leads into clients? The following infographic shows the attention placed on following-up with a strong lead.

After many years of taking on new clients for my company, I’ve found that individuals often make their decision to give their business to companies that show the most care and genuine interest in helping their business achieve the next level of success. Set yourself apart with concerted lead follow-up that demonstrates the level of commitment you will provide them when they agree to sign on with you.

How have you turned a lead into a client? Has thorough follow-up with phone calls, emails and even face-to-face conversations helped you land a client? I look forward to your insights!