Showing posts tagged with: engagement
In Part 1 of this series you learned about transparency and authenticity. Part 2 explained why creating resonance and cultivating magnetism are essential to generating emotional connections that are real and enduring.
Now in the last of this three-part series, let’s look at the final two ingredients that strengthen the emotional bond your market has with you AND each other: community and consistency.
In online marketing, making emotional connections is especially important because the digital world is immediate, urgent and can seem impersonal. It doesn’t give us the time or intimacy to know and trust people like face-to-face interactions do.
But there’s good news – the online world also offers an expanded ability to connect with others and develop communities beyond the boundaries of our physical worlds. That’s why community is one of the final essential ingredients to creating emotional connections in your online marketing.
See more
Creative Commons License photo credit: mscaprikell
In
Part 1 of this series, I explained that marketing is not simply about hawking your wares. Certainly it’s about communicating what you have to offer, but
how you do that is what makes the difference between feast and famine.
Whether we know it and like 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 each factors 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 is immediate, urgent and can seem highly impersonal. It doesn’t give us the time or intimacy to know and trust people like face-to-face interactions do. That contributes to a lack of trust (and unfortunately, fraud) online, so allowing people to get to know you digitally goes a long way toward creating the confidence consumers and business people alike need to buy from you in any channel.
See more
photo credit: katerha
This question was recently posed in a private online marketing group I belong to called
Only Influencers:
"If I can tweet five times a day, why can't I email five times a day?"
Keep in mind
Only Influencers is an invitation-only group of highly experienced and savvy digital marketers (most of the industry's "big names" in email already belong) from established and well-known brands, so they were not flippantly, but seriously, pondering the messaging norms we've come to think of as "acceptable" in different online marketing channels. The question and the depth of discussion around it made me think,
Why can't we? And if we can't or don't or won't, why not?
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.
See more
photo credit: kirstyhall
With so many ways to integrate email and social media we have almost unlimited options for leveraging connection between these two powerful conversation marketing channels. Still, for those at the beginning of the process it pays to know where to start.
I’m often asked what
the number one way to connect email and social media marketing is, so whether your presence on social media is brand new or you’re an experienced marketer wanting to make sure you don’t overlook the obvious, here’s my answer:
Use email marketing to invite connections on social media
See more
photo credit: Berto Garcia
. Perhaps stemming from our pioneering roots we equate bigger with better, have a preference for more vs. less (even if it’s far more than we need), and value limitless expanse. Whether it is due to this mentality or other reasons, a similarly pervasive way of thinking has been the mindset in direct marketing for decades.
Yet in an age of awareness about how unfettered human expansion has negatively impacted the environment, times are changing. Sustainability and austerity are in, conspicuous consumption is out. There’s a clear quality over quantity movement underfoot and already visible in social media. I for one say it’s high time this shift made its way fully into email marketing.
See more
photo credit: mmatins
, at some point you've learned it is polite to say "Thank You". Not only is it proper etiquette, it's just downright considerate and gracious. Yet for marketers, saying thank you is about much more than just being polite. If you're in the business of building lasting, loyal customer relationships (and if you're not, please question why you're bothering to be in business at all) it's an essential practice that pays both monetary and good will dividends. Without it, you're both at greater risk of customer flight and a sitting duck for the competition.
See more
photo credit: D.H. Parks
A little over a year ago, I theorized that 2010 would be the
Year of Conscious Marketing. And while I do think it has taken us more than a year to become conscious of how to use the increasingly fragmented and multiplying online marketing avenues available to us, 2010 certainly was a year in which the “what-how-which” and “why” finally began to gel for many business owners and marketing professionals.
If 2009 was a watershed year – a year in which a lot of activity and change moved through at once – 2010 was what I called a
waterfall year – all that change and activity began to come together in a cohesive flow. Now, in 2011, it’s time to intentionally direct that flow to achieve our goals and desires.
See more
Creative Commons License photo credit: FindYourSearch
If you’re just tuning into this series,
Part 1 explored the difference between broadcast and triggered-email, explained the role of trigger-based email, and defined the fundamental characteristics that make it so powerful.
Part 2 took a deep dive into the first two of four must-have triggered-email campaigns no email marketing program should be without:
welcome and
re-marketing campaigns. Here in Part 3, we’ll wrap things up with a look at the last two of four essential triggered-email campaigns:
up-sell/cross-sell and
reactivation campaigns.
The Up-Sell/Cross-Sell: Are You Leaving Money on the Table?
Too many marketers think about email campaigns as singular blasts rather than as a
progression of offers and information interwoven into a conversation – a conversation designed to maximize customer lifetime value. There are plenty of
great tips for building ongoing engagement and loyalty with your list members here. Still, if you’re thinking in terms of “one and done” campaigns, it’s time to develop an up-sell/cross-sell trigger program.
Here are three types of up-sell/cross-sell triggered email campaigns to implement during or after the conversion process.
See more
photo credit: Pranavian
Thankfully, the days of silo-ed email marketing run by two techies hunched in a shared cubicle wedged into a forgotten corner far from the marketing department are largely over at most companies. However, marketing email can still suffer from "forgotten stepchild syndrome" when it comes to design.
It's a fair enough question:
"Should my email creative match the design/look/feel of my company's website?"
Ideally
yes, provided your website was created or at least had a face lift in the last few years. (If it hasn't been touched since 2002, that's a different story.) But in general, yes, from a creative standpoint your email marketing messages need to be included in your digital family.
See more
