Tag Archives: digital marketing manager

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Spelling, Grammer, Proofreading Oh My! from Digital Marketing Manager’s Weekly SEO Update

Keep calm and SEO on Source:http://seogadget.com/beware-of-the-google-over-optimization-update/Everything on your website affects SEO, and as a Digital Marketing Manger, you want to do to as much as you can to help your SEO. As the different search engines make refinements to their algorithms and updates in order to deliver better search experiences for their visitors and try to increase their market share, you need to keep up with your SEO to drive traffic to your website from search engines, and you need to be aware of search engine updates and tweaks to see if it will affect the amount of traffic from search engines to your website.

This weeks SEO update from Digital Marketing Manager includes news on search engines:

Matt Cutts Explains How Comments With Bad Spelling and Grammar Affect A Page’s Ability to Rank– While providing the opportunity for your website visitors to comment on the content on your website helps SEO, comments often have spelling and grammar errors, but these errors will not affect your SEO. However, if your content contains spelling and grammar errors, your SEO could be affected.

Make sure to PROOFREAD.

Example, let’s say your website talks about different species of bears, and you type the word “bare” in multiple locations of on your website.  Since “bear” and “bare” mean different things, search engines may get confused. Search engines are not people, and search engines can’t tell the difference between “bear” and “bare.”  Therefore, you need to proofread your content and make sure that when you want the would “bear” to appear, the word “bear” appears.

My example may be a little silly, but it was the first thing that came to mind. However, it does illustrate my point to proofread and reinforces the idea that websites without spelling and grammer errors is important.

In other news SEO news,

Also, in SEO news:

Yahoo Improving Local Search through Partnership with Yelp – In order to improve the search experience on Yahoo, now you can see local listings, reviews, and photos when looking for local establishments.

Struggling with getting your SEO back on track with all of Google’s major updates from last fall? Check out this Infographic to help you wrap your head around how to implement your SEO strategies for 2014. This infographic brought to you by Just Go Web helps translate your old SEO strategies to the new SEO strategies after the search evolution from last fall.

Want people to link to your content? Check out these 7 Ways to Attract Higher Quality Links With Better On-Page Content. These tips not only will help you attract links to your website, but these tips will help you produce great content to create superior experiences for your target audiences.

Contact or Learn More about Digital Marketing Manager, Cindy Plough

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What is Content Marketing? See the Top Content Marketing Influencers Answers

How would you answer “What is Content Marketing?”

What is Content Marketing thought bubble Source:http://www.docstoc.com/article/163249665/What-Is-Content-Marketing
After reading this post, please share your thoughts in a comment.

As I scour the internet for information on how to improve digital marketing skills including content marketing, I try to provide information to help Digital Marketing Managers meet their objectives efficiently and effectively as well as provide information on how to create superior experiences for their target audiences.

Before my search, I already knew CONTENT IS KING!

BUT

What is Content Marketing?

Before this post, I had a basic understanding, but the goal in this post is to create a definition of Content Marketing for all marketing professionals to use.

The Top 25 Content Marketing Influencers Thanks for our friends at Onalytica, they did some research and collected many responses to develop a list of the Top 25 Content Marketing Influences located at Slideshare.

Who better to answer “What is Content Marketing?” then the top influencers of content marketing?

Here are the Top Content Marketers Thoughts on “What is Content Marketing?”

Juo Pulizzi Image Source:http://contently.com/strategist/2012/02/06/joe-pulizzi-content-marketer-of-the-year/ According to Joe Pulizzi at the Content Marketing Institute, content marketing is owning, as opposed to renting, media. It’s a marketing process to attract and retain customers by consistently creating and curating content in order to change or enhance consumer behavior.

Jeff Bullas Image Source:https://twitter.com/jeffbullas In his The One Best Thing Some of the Best Content Marketers Forgot, Jeff Bullas refers to content marketing as the result of the successful intersection of search engines, social media, email, content and blogging. Done well it is a multidisciplinary approach to the challenge of making your content as visible to as many people as possible in the shortest amount of time. It doesn’t matter whether you are a blogger, corporate marketer or a small business.

Michael Brenner Image Source:http://www.b2bmarketinginsider.com/about From Michael Brenner’s 9 Questions On Content Marketing Q&A, he states that the most effective content is that which best meets the needs of the audience. List posts and “How to” articles go a long way to building this kind of credibility but they aren’t enough. This kind of content needs to be balanced with deeper thought leadership that also inspires our customers to think differently about the challenges they face. He goes on to say the golden rule of content marketing is that it has to put the needs of the customers first and then the business results will be earned through trust and value already provided.

Doug Kessler Image Source:http://info.tracepoint.co.uk/blog/bid/188163/How-to-get-started-with-inbound-marketing-from-the-coalface-IMUK13-speakers During an interview, Doug Kessler of Velocity Partners explains what makes up great content. A brand creates great content from a variety of media that contains a point of view on it’s market. The content takes on issues that it’s audience cares about and puts a new spin on it, the brand puts some effort into producing special content. Great content is ambitious and confidant.  As a content producer you need to find your sweet spot which is the overlap between what a content producer is an expert at and what the audience cares most about.

Ann Handley Image Source:http://www.annhandley.com/about/ Ann Handley is “waging a war on writing mediocrity in 2014.” In her New Year, New You: 3 Things Every Marketer Should Be Doing in 2014 article, Ann stats ” I’m not talking about adhering to the rules of grammar; I’m talking about upping the importance you place on what you say, and how you say it. As a cornerstone of good writing (along with other things!), voice and tone are hugely undervalued in content and social media. Together, they constitute the secret sauce of great content, and I expect that more companies will pay attention to both in 2014.

Brian Clark Image Source:http://www.copyblogger.com/its-all-my-fault/According to Brian Clark’s Copyblogger, content marketing means creating and sharing valuable free content to attract and convert prospects into customers, and customers into repeat buyers. The type of content you share is closely related to what you sell; in other words, you are educating people, so that they know, like, and trust you enough to do business with you.

Conclusion

After looking at what the top influencers think about Content Marketing, the common elements are producing authoritative pieces that educates their target audience and meets their needs.

SO

When you prepare a piece of content marketing, ask yourself the following questions:

  1. Does it show that I am an authority or expert on the subject?
  2. Is it creative?
  3. Does it inspire OR is it motivational?
  4. Does it answer my target audiences questions OR does it fulfill my target audiences need?

If you answer YES to all of these questions, you have a piece of great content marketing.

Please leave comments with your answers to “What is Content Marketing?”

Learn More about Digital Marketing Manager, Cindy Plough

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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

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Follow 8 Golden Rules of Social Media to Avoid the Pitfalls of Social Media in This Week’s Social Media Update

To implement your social marketing strategy seamlessly, Digital Marketing Managers need to follow the golden rules of social media to make your social marketing successful and help you reach your overall digital marketing goals.

Golden Rules of Social Media

Golden Rules of Social Media Source: http://rebekahradice.com/golden-rules-successful-social-media-marketing/

  1. Create specific social media objectives – Give your organization a clear understanding of where you are going with your social marketing.
  2. Inbound is not enough – Social Media will not fulfill your overall digital marketing objectives on their own. Digital Marketing Managers need a well-rounded mix of inbound and outbound strategies to fulfill your overall digital marketing goals.
  3. Good content – make sure you create engaging relevant content.
  4. Strong call to action – your social media content needs to clearly express what you want your followers to do after they consume your content; otherwise, you are wasting your time and your followers time.
  5. Always add value – make sure your content adds value to your brand.
  6. Never forget that social is a two-way street – Once you make a post, followers will make comments, and you should take comments seriously and respond to them timely and sincerely.
  7. Peer-to-peer sharing is the best way to get your message heard – Social media creates an open dialogue with your followers, and it gives brands and Digital Marketing Managers the capability to create engaging experiences and relationships with followers.
  8. Most important! Don’t take yourself too seriously – participating in social media gives Digital Marketing Managers the chance to give their brands a personality and be likable. However, don’t go off the deep end, you need to have some decorum.

If you follow the above golden rules of social media, you can avoid the following pitfalls of social media:

Pitfalls of Social Media Source: http://www.socialsamosa.com/2012/04/social-media-pitfalls-to-avoid/

  • Don’t brag – yes, you want your content to add value to your brand, but you don’t want to sound conceited.
  • Don’t be afraid to try social marketing – just because social marketing is different doesn’t mean you should avoid it. By creating objectives and a plan, social media can appear less daunting.
  • Don’t be afraid of social media because measurement is difficult – there are ways to measure the impact of your social media. Plus, social marketing extends your brands reach that will impact your bottom line indirectly.
  • Don’t use social media sites as advertising opportunities – Social media is a chance for you to give your brand a personality and truly connect with current, past, and future customers. Traditional advertising methods will not allow you to connect with your followers.
  • Don’t assume every social media site is good for your brand – Not ALL social media channels will work for ALL brands. For example, if you are a B2C company, Facebook may be a better fit. On the flip side, if you are a B2B company, LinkedIn might make more sense. (Remember this is just an example and not proven to be true)
  • Don’t create social pages and think you are done – If you can’t create a relationship with a new person in one day, what makes you think you can create engaging ongoing relationships with your target audience in social media if you don’t update your pages or posts regularly? However, keep in mind, this doesn’t mean you should be on social media all day every day.

General Rule of Thumb: Use social media sites as one digital marketing tactic in your digital marketing toolbox to extend your reach with your target audience, and use it where it makes sense for your brands to build relationships and create engaging experience with your current, past and future customers.

Source: Marketo’s Definitive Guide to Social Marketing

Additional Articles for Social Media Networks:

Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Google+

Next Week’s Social Media Update: Creating a Social Media Army to Help Reach your Target Audience

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Email Marketing Tuesay: 9 Tips on How to Segment your Email Marketing List

As mentioned in last week’s Email Marketing Tuesday, today’s blog post
Segment target audience into smaller groups that are things in common is all about tips on how to segment your email list to create engaging email marketing and help maximize your email marketing results.

As a Digital Marketing Manager, your email marketing efforts may be one of the top revenue generators. Therefore, you want to try and maximize your email marketing results, and one way to do this is segmentation.

First, let’s define what is segmenting. It means dividing your target market into smaller groups where each group have similarities.

Segmenting is near and dear to my heart, and segmenting a target market is one of my favorite things to do. In segmenting, you learn more about your past, current, and potential customers, which I’ll refer to as your target audience. The more you know about your target audience the easier it is to develop relevant content and create engaging experiences for your target audience.

Not sold on the segmenting idea, consider the following:

  • Personally, when I have segmented my email lists, the email marketing efforts received a 25% lift in response rate.
  • According to Monetate’s 2013 Intelligent Email Marketing that Drives Conversions, “Segmented email campaigns produce 30% more opens than undifferentiated messages.”
  • According to DMA’s 2013 National Client Email Report, “Email marketer estimate 30% of email revenue derives from targeting to specific segments.”

Now, I’m happy to share with you 9 tips on how to segment your email marketing list to make your email marketing efforts more relevant to your email subscribers.

Two Types of Segmenting

  • Who they are – segmenting by demographics
  • What they’ve done – segmenting by behaviors or transactions

Segmenting by Who They Are aka Demographics:

  1. Gender
  2. Age
  3. Job Title
  4. Industry
  5. Interests
  6. Company Size
  7. Geography

Segmenting by What They’ve Done:

  1. Collecting Behavior Data – track browsing and searches on your website that lead to purchases
  2. Past Transaction History – past transactions can predict what they might purchase in the future

Next, you are probably wondering where do you get all the information you need to segment your lists. You can collect the information you need to segment by:

  • Asking for information when you collect an email address on your website
  • Ask for additional information during repeat web visits
  • When you have an email address, invite them to answer some questions about them
  • Data Append Services – you can hire companies to provide demographic information or information about IP addresses
  • Keep track of click paths and transactions

Conclusion

Consumers are starting to expect marketers to know about them, so you should consider segmenting and creating personalized marketing messages to engage your target audience and create superior experiences with your brand.

Source: Marketo’s The Definitive Guide to Engaging Email Marketing

Additional Resources

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Email Marketing Tuesday: 5 Attributes to Achieve Engaging Email Marketing

Welcome back to Email Marketing Tuesdays, I have been on a quest to discover best practices for email marketing, and I want to share my findings with you.

What is engaging email? One of the many things I have read includes Marketo’s Definitive Guide to Engaging Email Marketing, and the guide covers 5 attributes that makes email marketing engaging, and the 5 attributes include:

  1. Trusted
  2. Always Relevant
  3. Conversational
  4. Coordinated Across Channels
  5. Strategic

However, before going into details about the 5 attributes that makes email marketing engaging, let’s define engagement.  According to Brian Solis author of  What’s the Future of Business? Changing the Way Businesses Create Experiences, “engagement is defined as the interactions between a brand and a consumer, but it is in how it’s measured that counts.”

Now, as you read the details about the different attributes involved in engaging email marketing, think about the actions your brands and your consumers need to take, and then, think about how these actions can be measured.

1. Trusted – To create trust with your target audience, you need to develop and maintain the quality of your list; maintain your reputation to increase deliverability with ISP’s; be consistent in the timing, frequency, marketing messages, who emails are from, and subject lines; and finally, abide by CAN-SPAM regulations.

2. Always Relevant – Say the The crossover between what you what to say in your email message and what your audience wants your email message to say is relevancy
right thing to the right people at the right time.  To accomplish this, you need to segment your target audience and determine what is the most relevant content for each segment within your target audience.  The next Email Marketing Tuesday will talk more about how you can segment your list, so stay tuned!

Two-way communication3. Conversational – the content of your email marketing efforts should spark a two-way conversation between you and your target audience.  You can do this by listening to your audience, adapt to their changing needs, and tell engaging stories.  Segmenting your lists and using dynamic content will help you achieve this attribute.

4. Coordinated Across Channels – According to a recent study by Mckinsey & Company, “E-mail remains a significantly more effective way to acquire customers than Social Media — nearly 40 times that of Facebook and Twitter combined.” However, social media extends your reach beyond your email marketing efforts. Therefore, Digital Marketing Managers need to include both email marketing and social media marking efforts in their digital marketing programs.  Tomorrow’s blog post, Social Media Wednesday, will talk more about social media efforts that you can coordinate with your email marketing efforts.

5. Strategic – First, make strategic marketing decisions that comply with your company’s goals.  Second, with the metrics that you are given, formulate a process to determine your Return on Investment (ROI) for your email marketing program.

Some of the above mentioned attributes are not surprising, but some the details and examples out-lined in Marketo’s guide are helpful.  In my opinion, Marketo put together an excellent guide that contains a majority of what you need to plan and deploy a top notch engaging email marketing program.

Remember: Tomorrow, check out the Digital Marketing Manager blog post, Social Media Wednesday, to find out more about the Coordinated Across Channels attribute mentioned above.

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Email Marketing Tuesday: Easy Way to Get Email Subject Lines Plus Tips in Writing Email Subject Lines

Email subject lines are the key deciding factor people take in opening emails that a digital marketing manager should take seriously -Source: http://digitalmarketer.com/infographic-subject-lines-that-command-reader-attention/

Image Source: Digital Marketer

The email subject line plays a large part if your email gets opened, so taking the time and effort to create intriguing subject lines is worth your time. The first thing your audience sees when you send them an email is the subject line, so discover what makes your audience open your email.

For me, writing the email subject line is the hardest part of the email marketing process, and crafting the email subject line is usually the last thing I do before deploying an email marketing effort. After writing the copy, a email subject line comes to mind. According to Mequoda, you can just steal someone else’s email subject line. As a Digital Marketing Manager, I receive many professional and promotional emails every day, and I may consider Mequoda’s suggestion one day.

Currently, when I receive a cleaver email, I file it away in my “Good Copy” folder as a reminder for something that I may want to test. Now, I will create a new folder called “Good Email Subject Lines” to file away emails with subject lines that might be worth testing. In the meantime, let’s talk about some tips to help you and me write compelling email subject lines that increase email open rates.

Tips to Help You Write Email Subject Lines:

  1. Offer a quick and easy way to do something
  2. Talk about the reader’s self-interest – something that is a benefit
  3. Give the reader some good news
  4. Arouse curiosity, preferably related to tips 1, ,2, or all of the above

Since email subject lines play a large factor in your email marketing messages getting opened, you, a Digital Marketing Manager, should take the necessary time to craft the appropriate email subject line that your audience will open. You may get inspiration for your email subject lines from your inbox, or use the tips above to craft a clever email subject line that will make your audience open your email. Whatever you decide, always test your subject lines to maximize your open rates.

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SEO Mondays: Improve your Google Rank by Implementing 7 Link Building Strategies

7 Link Building StrategiesKeyword strategies get the most attention for SEO, but link building is another SEO strategy that Digital Marketing Managers can utilize to increase website rankings on search engine results pages. Today’s SEO Monday blog post talks about 7 link building strategies.

7 Link Building Strategies:

  1. Manual Link Building
  2. Competitive Link Building
  3. Links via Embedded Content
  4. Linkbait & Viral Campaigns
  5. Content, Technology & API Licensing
  6. Partnerships, Exchanges & Trades
  7. Link Reclamation

Whatever link building strategy you decide to employ, just keep in mind that you should create relevant links for your content to increase the trust with your customers and search engines. The more relevant your links, the higher the quality of your links, the more value search engines will place on your content, and ultimately, the higher you will rank on search engine result pages.

Before starting your link building strategies, create a profile of websites and social media sites where your target audience spends time. Then, think about how you can build links from those sites to you site.

7 Link Building Strategies Details

1. Manual Link Building
Create a list of relevant non-competitive sites and pages, and then, make a request for a link with the website. Try to find an actual person who manages the site to make a request for displaying your link. This form of link-building is the most time consuming, but it produces high quality links.

2. Competitive Link Building
Complete a search of places where your competitor has links and see if you can post links on those same pages. Examples of where you and your competitor might both have links include industry directories or associations. This process doesn’t produce links with the highest quality, but it isn’t time-consuming like the Manual Link Building Strategy.

3. Links via Embedded Content
By offering widgets and embeddable forms of content, you can earn links back to the page of your choice when other websites include your work in blog posts, articles, or webpages. For example, you can use scribd.com to upload one of your PowerPoint presentations and embed a mini graphic of the PowerPoint on your website. When someone clicks on the graphic, scribd.com earns a link. This link building activity is not time consuming and produces high quality links.

4. Linkbait & Viral Campaigns
Find industry bloggers or content hobbyists that offer relevant content to your website where you both have similar audiences. Contact these individuals and ask them to post your content on their site with a link back to your site. It may take time to develop relationships with industry bloggers and hobbyists, but if both of you share each others content, you can build high quality links.

5. Content, Technology & API Licensing
With this strategy, you syndicate your content or create licenses with other websites to post your content.  Then, who ever distributes your content produces a link back to your site. Producing these types of links my take time, but once the relationship is formed the opportunities for building high quality links is limitless.

6. Partnerships, Exchanges & Trades
These types of links include reciprocal links, discounts, or invitations to events.  To maintain the quality of these links, don’t sell links. Building these types of links can be simple as long as both parties are happy, but the quality isn’t as high.

7. Link Reclamation
Find all potential broken links, out-of-date resources, and 404 pages, and then, redirect them back to your homepage. While this takes time, this strategy produces high quality links. Plus, this strategy is just good practice and can help build a relationship with customers.

Good luck utilizing one or many of the above link building strategies. Just remember to build relevant links for your content. For every link you build, ask yourself if the link feels natural or not.  If the link doesn’t feel natural rethink the link.

Visual of alternative Link Building Strategies

Additional Link Building Strategies listed from hard to easy to implement

Strategies in the above graphic are list from hardest to easiest to implement. However, think about implementing a combination of these strategies to reap all the benefits for your websites SEO. The source of the graphic is from Brands Exposed.

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Email Marketing Tuesday: Taking Full Advantage of your Transactional Emails

Welcome to Email Marketing Tuesday: Taking full advantage of your transactional emails by communicating with your prospects and customers. Transactional emails are an opportunity to communicate with your audience via email messages triggered by an action they took or an action they need to take.

Since you only have a short period of time to attract and maintain your audience’s attention, inserting multiple messages in your transactional emails could be an opportunity get emails opened and call to actions taken.

What are Transactional Emails?

According to Mailchimp, transactional emails include messages with content tailored to a single recipient and only to them through a transaction that they made online. Others consider transactional emails as triggered, automated, real-time, or personalized emails.

Types of Transactional Email:

  • Welcome
  • Thank You
  • Bill
  • Renewal
  • Invoice
  • Receipt
  • Order Confirmation
  • Order Status
  • Post Purchase Review
  • Email Address Confirmations
  • Activation
  • Upsell/Cross Promotional
  • Re-activation
  • Website Behavior
  • Event Countdown
  • Shopping Cart Abandonment
  • Forget Username or Password
  • Notice for an update

According to MarketingSherpa, only 40% of  marketers use transactional emails. So, there may be an opportunity for digital marketing managers to benefit from transactional emails. However, I suggest you use transactional emails that make sense for your audience.

Thinking about the different types of transactional emails mentioned, transactional emails contain short messages to keep your audience aware of their relationship with your website. Some contain a call to action like renewal and invoice emails, and others are informational emails.

Even if you are currently using transactional email, your next step in taking full advantage of your transactional emails is including an additional call to action. Below are different examples you can do:

  • For Welcome emails, include a call to action for them to go to your website to check out some tailored content. If you manage a history website and someone registers on the website mentioning an interest in the American Civil Way, send them a welcome email with a link to an article on your website about the American Civil War.
  • For Order Confirmation and Order Update transactional emails, you can insert a “people that bought your item also bought these items” section.
  • For a Reactivation emails, the email message should contain new or updated content that is similar to the last piece of content they saw.

The key to your transactional email is to make the message about your audience and offering them something that is triggered by their action, personalized, and offering them something tailored/relevant to them  in real-time.

Keep in mind transactional emails don’t have an 100% open rate, so don’t expect transactional emails to be the only solution to increasing website traffic or engaging your audience. Transactional emails are just another tactic to keep in your digital marketing toolbox that have the potential to increasing traffic. Also, just like any other digital marketing and email marketing tactic, you should complete A/B testing to maximize the results of your transactional emails.

Resources:

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Blog your Way to Giving your Brand a Voice with some Personality and Enhance the Customer’s Experience with Teachable Moments

In the digital world that we live in today, it is a Digital Marketing Manager’s responsibility to make a brand stand out. By blogging, a Digital Marketing Manager can help their brand stand out and give their brand a voice with a personality. A blog not only educates the brand’s consumers, blogs make your brand credible and enhances the customer’s experience with your brand.

Another compelling reason to start a blog is that search engines love blogs. With Google’s Hummingbird, many Digital Marketing Managers are concerned about how to optimize their content to land on page one of a Google search results page.  Well, let your blog be your savior.

Hummingbird concentrates on the long-tail keyword searches, and blog content lends itself to including long-tail key word phrases naturally.  Therefore, if Digital Marketing Managers consistently post relevant content about your brand on a regular basis, Digital Marketing Managers can help their SEO as well.

8 components to include in your blog posts

  • A SEO optimized title
  • A long-tail search keyword phrase
  • Conversational tone
  • Format should include lists and whitespace
  • Length of post should be 500 words or less
  • Create a call to action
  • Don’t make a sales pitch
  • Lastly and most important, a Digital Marketing Manager must make sure the audience learns something from each post

As a school girl, my father asked me everyday what I learned in school, and I usually said nothing.  Then, one day, I asked my dad why he always asked me what I learned in school.  He told me that every day where I did not learn something was a day wasted. Therefore, every post where your audience does not learn something is a wasted post and a chance to alienate your audience which could cause a Digital Marketing Manager to have nightmares.

If you aren’t yet convinced to start a blog, consider the following statistics about blogs from Hubspot:

  •  B2B marketers who use blogs generate 67% more leads per month than those who do not.
  • B2C companies that blog generate 88% more leads per month than those who do not.
  • 92% of companies who blog multiple times per day have acquired a customer from their blog.
  • 57% of companies with a blog have acquired a customer from their blog.

Additional Blogging Resources

  1. The Definitive Guide to Corporate Blogging for Marketers
  2. How to Blog for Business Success with Google’s Hummingbird
  3. Blogging 101
  4. “The Make Sure Every Story is Compelling and Share-worthy” section at the end of the Coca-Cola’s Storytelling: Three Lessons on Content Marketing and Creativity article

What and when is next Digital Marketing Manager post?

SEO Monday

Until Monday, have a great weekend and think about how you can make each blog post a teachable moment for your audience!

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