Viewing posts categorised under: Content Marketing
We have a soft spot for B2B marketers because we're one too! Which is why when it comes to email marketing, you can't get enough insights into using marketing automation for the development of intentional, sequenced messaging series and email-driven customer journeys. In fact, if you attended the awesome
MarketingProfs B2B Forum just last month, you saw
Karen's presentation See more
There is a reason over 85% of all marketers worldwide are using content marketing to generate more sales. On average, consumers engage with 11.4 pieces of content before making a purchase. Moreover, up to 80% of all users only focus on organic results and ignore all paid ads. Digital advertising has only 11% of the average business marketing budget today, while content marketing has 13% and is expected to only increase in the coming years.
Furthermore, email marketing is an ideal channel for promoting, distributing, and multi-purposing your content. Email and content marketing are natural complements - they go together as deliciously as
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This month I thought I'd share a webinar I recently presented for BrightTALK: 4 Content Marketing Approaches Every Email Program Can Profit From.
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As a marketing channel, email is coming off a banner year! 2013 boasts some of the most significant investment and acquisition activity in the industry’s 20-year history (Salesforce.com acquired ExactTarget for almost $3 billion, Oracle offered $1.58 billion for Responsys). Despite the occasional sensational headline to the contrary, email marketing’s use and popularity continues to grow and technical innovations abound.
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Unless you overhear a conversation about porn spam, the words “email” and “sexy” don’t get used in the same sentence very often. Email, the loyal silent workhorse of social media, steadfast driver of e-commerce, overshadowed stepsister of search, is more often likened to Martha Stewart – reliable, conservative and past her prime – than Angelina Jolie – slinky, seductive, and unpredictable – although both have built sizable empires of wealth and influence.
That is, until now. Oh yeah, we’re finally bringing sexy back to email marketing.
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photo credit: aechempati
One of my email seminar students recently asked: “
I feel like the only emails my company ever sends are sales messages: like we’re always asking people to buy, buy, buy. Should we supplement these with other types of email and if so, what?”
Don’t feel bad, lack of variety in email marketing is a common dilemma for many marketers.
Businesses newer to email or with fewer resources tend to gravitate first and only to promotional messaging, but there is plenty more you can and should communicate to your list. Here are just a few of the many greetings and message types you should include in your email program:
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Creative Commons License photo credit: Torley
You might read that title and wonder what in the world emotional connections have to do with online marketing or
any marketing for that matter.
Isn’t marketing simply about telling people what you have to offer and letting them know how to buy or work with you? Certainly it’s that, but much more. Whether you realize it or not, most decisions in life are fueled at least in part by emotion, and that goes for buying decisions large and small.
Our brains are equipped with both reasoning and emotional centers, and both factor into decision making. More often than not, people buy from emotion and justify with reason, so it’s important to know how to emotionally connect with them.
In online marketing, making emotional connections is especially important because the digital world can be fast, furious, and impersonal. There is a built-in immediacy in digital communication channels that often undermines or bypasses the opportunity to slow down the sale and deepen the consideration process that older, offline channels delivered. Plus, there’s a huge lack of trust (and fraud) in the digital world so allowing people to get to know you online goes a long way toward creating the confidence consumers and business people alike need before they're willing to buy.
So, is it easy to create emotional connections online? The good news is “YES!” thanks largely to social media and content publishing platforms that are faster, simpler and more accessible than ever before.
So, how do you do it? See more
photo credit: lukxde
One of my recent posts made
the case for opt-in over opt-out marketing. I realize that’s all well and good until it becomes time to convince people to say yes, right? So this month I want to share
four insights into what psychologically motivates people to say yes when given the opportunity to take action:
Invitation
It’s universally human that we would rather be asked than tricked or forced. Free will is one of the very cornerstones of human nature. When it’s all said and done, we’d rather be given the chance to make a conscious decision than cornered into unconscious choices we end up inevitably regretting.
So when it comes to asking someone to join your email or social media sphere, don't fall back on deception and coercion. You don’t need to sneak them in under the wire. Simply
invite them and trust that they can decide for themselves what is in their own best interests.
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photo credit: Evelyn Proimos
Most marketers used to think blogs were strictly for writers, authors, and the opinionated. With the birth of the blog, millions who needed an outlet to vent, pontificate or simply self-publish finally had a platform to do so. Soon enough, it seemed like everyone and their brother had a blog.
At last count (according to Blog Pulse and this site) there are around 130 million blogs on the Internet. There are only about a million more websites (around 235 million total) than blogs online. So if it feels like you’re the only one without a blog, you’re not imagining things – blogs are breeding like rabbits.
But why blogs for business? And if you're an entrepreneur or marketer, why should you care?
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photo credit: thelittleone417
I preach a lot about getting email out of the silo it’s often relegated to within companies or marketing departments, and these days I think most marketers realize how important good email integration with other marketing (especially digital) channels and sales systems is to success. But once you’ve created a regular email communications program, or developed your smart auto-responders, are you remembering to strategically use email to strengthen and encourage relationships with your list members in other channels?
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