Monthly Archives: February 2014

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Take 7 Steps to Start Building Relationships at the Moment an Email Subscriber Gives You their Email Address

Building Relationships that leads to successfull Email Marketing Source: http://www.infogroup.com/resources/blog/inbox-success-3-things-to-keep-in-mind-for-your-next-email-campaignFor Digital Marketing Managers, building your email subscription list is one of several email marketing goals within your overall digital marketing objectives, but keeping a high percentage of your email subscribers engaged with you is another subject. To increase your email subscribers engagement with you and prevent an unsubscribes, you need to start building relationships at the moment an email subscriber gives you their email address.

From the beginning of an email subscribers relationship with your brand, take these 7 steps to start building relationships:

  1. Answer “What’s in it for Me?”
  2. Tell Subscribers what Type of Content you will Send
  3. Let Subscribers know the Frequency of your Emails
  4. Reinforce their Privacy
  5. Inform them about their Welcome Email
  6. Send the Welcome Email
  7. Give Subscribers Choices at a Subscription Center

1. Answer “What’s in it for Me” – Tell them right up front how you will meet their needs if they give you their email address.  Make sure your potential email subscribers can answer the “What’s it for me?” before they give you their email address.  This will decrease the number of unsubscribes on the welcome email because they know you can fulfill their needs.

2. Tell Subscribers what Type of Content you will Send – Inform your subscribers what type of information will appear in their emails.  Will you send product updates, general information, coupons, etc? You may even want to show a thumbnail email example. If they know what to expect, you can increase your chances of them opening your emails.

3. Let Subscribers know the Frequency of your Emails – Indicate how many emails they should receive from you in a week or in a month.

4. Reinforce their Privacy – Let your subscribers become comfortable and build trust in you.  Reinforce that their information is safe with you, and you will not share their data with anyone.

5. Inform them about their Welcome Email – When subscribers first give Welcome Email Example Source:http://sendsmarter.co/13-examples-of-beautiful-welcome-emails/
you their email address tell them that they should receive a Welcome Email. This is a good time to monitor delivery of your Welcome emails.

6. Welcome Email – You should include the following:

  • Thank You
  • Remind them about what they should expect from you and when to expect it
  • Ask them to whitelist your email address
  • Link to the Subscription Center where they control their subscription

7. Give Subscribers Choices at a Subscription Center – When Example of an Email Subscriptions Center Source: http://www.campaignmonitor.com/blog/post/1804/new-feature-let-your-subscribe/subscribers are logged into your website, give them access to a Subscription Center where they can edit their information, control what emails you send them, and control how frequently they receive emails from you.

By telling email subscribers what they should expect from you, they will start to build trust with you.  By allowing them to tell you what messages you send them and how often they receive your email messages, you give them control over your interaction with them.  Through these steps, you are starting a relationship at the very beginning. By creating a relationship, you create trust and can start conversations, and then, your email subscribers can start engaging with the emails you send and engage with your brands.

Experian Marketing Services just released it’s 2013 Email Marketing Study. Of the marketers included in the study, For Customer preferences, 60% of the companies do not give their customers an option in the types of emails they receive. If you start asking your customers what type of email they want to receive from you, you can separate yourself from everyone else and be unique.

Responses to the “Can your customers select the types of emails they want to receive?” from Experian Marketing Services 2013 Email Marketing Study.

Answers to Can your customers select the types of emails they want to receive? from Experians's 2013 email marketing study Source: http://marketingland.com/study-70-brands-personalizing-emails-missing-higher-transaction-rates-revenue-73241?goback=%2Egde_41352_member_5838131257690595331

If you establish a relationship in the beginning, you can increase your chances of engagement with your email subscribers and decrease the chance of unsubscribes.

Source:

Marketo‘s The Definitive Guide to Engaging Email Marketing

Experian Marketing Services 2013 Email Marketing Study

Additional Email Marketing Information

Learn More about Digital Marketing Manager, Cindy Plough

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SEO Monday: Earning Links with High Quality Content to Increase Search Rankings instead of Relying on Link Building Strategies

Don't Build Links Earn Them! Source:http://www.seo.com/blog/earning-links-vs-building-links/In reaction to Matt Cutts, Head of Google’s Webspam Team, announcement about guest blogging not being a good link building strategy, I felt there was a need to discuss link building, and how to deploy positive SEO tactics.  Also, recently, Google has made several announcements about poor link building strategies that will begin to affect your rankings, and Digital Marketing Managers and SEO Managers are struggling to find replacement SEO tactics to assist them in ranking high on search engine result pages.

Before we continue, the heart of the matter is that you need awesome content with an authoritative voice in order for any SEO tactic to generate results.

You need to become a thought leader as well as create awesome content that does one of the following:

Content is King Source:http://techtwisted.com/good-quality-content-can-beat-google-updates/

  • Offers a solution to your target audience’s problem
  • Answers a question
  • Teaches the audience
  • Consistently provides valuable information when needed
  • Content is shared and liked on social media networks
  • Consumed by your audience

Once you become a thought leader with your target audience and create content that meets one or more of the above criteria, you can start deploying SEO tactics to increase your rank on search engine result pages.

One of those SEO tactics will be Earning Links. Per Marcela De Vivo, we need to change the terminology. Instead to referring to Link Building Strategies, we should start using the term Earning Link Strategies.

Now, let’s take a look at different ways to Earn Links and get working on your SEO tactics for 2014:

  • Build an Engaged Target Audience on Relevant Social Media Networks – Create a community that possess the characteristics of your target audience, and then, amplify your posts to expand your reach to increase your followers.
  • Share your Content on Social Media Networks – Post your content on the Social Media Networks where your brand and target audience are located.  Any of your social media followers that Like, Retweet, +1, or shares your content on their pages, will signal Google to give you credit, and these signals will be taken into account in your site’s ranking in search.
  • Guest Blogging in Places with your Target Audience – If you find relevant and useful websites whose audience match your target audience, guest blogging/posting is appropriate, and Google will not reprimand you. Google’s new guidelines just restricts guest blogging on websites that aren’t relevant. Therefore, find websites with the same target audience as you, and do some guest blogging/posting with links back to your brand to help increase your exposure, branding, and reach. This will help your audience see you as a thought leader.
  • Create Offline Relationships with Industry Influencers, Journalists, and Bloggers – you can host an event or mail a four color post card to introduce them to your brand and content. The event and post card will start conversations about them linking to you and creating partnerships.  Also, you can urge industry journalists and bloggers to quote you in their articles to demonstrate your authoritative voice.
  • Lastly, if you have awesome content, you will earn links naturally, so it pays to produce great content.

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Additional Resource: I came a across a really great Infographic to help you and your organizations SEO strategies for 2014.  Given all of Google’s changes last year, SEO has changed, and this Infographic will help you reorganize your SEO strategies. For each old SEO tactic, the Infographic tells you the new SEO tactic.  I highly encourage you to look at this Infographic to help put your SEO worries aside and start deploying on tactics to increase your search ranking. SEO Evolution 2014: Quick Tips on How to Optimize Website in 2014

Learn More about Digital Marketing Manager, Cindy Plough