Tag Archive for: content optimization

How to Tailor an Email Marketing Campaign to Existing Customers

Email marketing is a great way to reach new customers. And while landing new customers is an outstanding reason to use email marketing, it isn’t the only one.

Customer loyalty is another reason to employ email marketing. After all, customer loyalty is essential to the success of any business. Further, it is much more expensive to obtain a new customer than it is to retain a current one. And according to a recent study, email marketing did more to promote customer loyalty than social media.

Of course, using email to attract new customers and using it to retain current ones require slightly different tactics. Therefore, it’s important to know how to implement an email campaign that specifically targets your existing customers. What follows are some tips that will help make sure that you are engaging current customers with your email efforts.

  1. Get personal. A person’s name in the subject line is proven to increase open rates and increase spending! One study showed that transaction rates were more than 20 percent higher when an email was personalized in this manner.
  2. Remember that content is still king. Content that connects, educates and inspires is particularly important when targeting existing customers. If an individual is your customer, chances are that you have earned their trust. Continuing to provide them with quality content will take it a step further. They will come to see you as a thought leader in your industry and will be more likely to make purchases based on your recommendations.
  3. Segment your lists. Just as your target audience of prospects is segmented, your target audience of current customers should be, as well. A good way to make sure that your emails are being read is to tailor those emails to a particular demographic. Research shows that segmented email campaigns have an almost 15 percent greater open rate and get almost 60 percent more clicks than those that are not segmented. The best part is that since these are your customers, you have the data necessary to segment your list. Choose demographics such as age, gender, income, locale, purchase history and more.
  4. Don’t forget the call-to-action. Of course, there is one important thing that all emails-whether they target existing customers or prospects-must contain. A well-written, easy to see call-to-action is critical to getting customers and prospects to take the next step.

Email marketing is a tremendous way to attract and retain customers. The key is to tailor each campaign for the individuals you are targeting.

Six Ways to Tailor Content to a B2B Audience

Business-to-business marketing differs in many ways to business-to-consumer marketing. While in both cases you are selling a product or service to another person, that is where the similarities end.
Despite this fact, many B2B marketers write their content in much the same way they would write B2C content. If you are looking to improve the ROI of your B2B marketing strategy, it is important that you take a hard look at your content and make the necessary adjustments so it is more B2B-friendly.
Here are some ways you can tailor your content in such a way that it speaks to specifically to a B2B audience.

  1. Ditch the hard sell. B2C copy can afford to take more of a hard sell approach but businesses don’t want someone to tell them that they know their business better than they do. Instead, outline how your product or service will help to solve a problem.
  2. Remember that less is more. While you should explain the benefits of what you are offering, don’t go into excruciating detail about every aspect of what you are selling. Remember, you want to entice them to contact you to learn more.
  3. Keep it professional. Keep in mind that anything you write could land in the hands of CEOs and the tone of your content represents your business. Get too casual and you might come off as unprofessional. While it is fine to be conversational, make sure you don’t sound glib.
  4. Mind your headline. Headlines for B2C articles and blog posts can get away with being dramatic. B2B readers are not as impressed by over-the-top headlines. Instead opt for a more straightforward approach that highlights a current topic in the industry or that addresses a specific need.
  5. Use the correct terminology. Don’t write about topics you haven’t thoroughly researched. Nothing will damage the credibility of your brand more than writing on topics that you aren’t familiar with.
  6. Include an effective call-to-action. Don’t assume your readers will know what to do once they’ve read your content. Do you want them to subscribe to your newsletter? Visit your website for more information? Download an eBook? Make sure you tell them. And don’t bury your call-to-action either. Make sure it is big and bold and can’t be missed.

Writing B2B copy and writing B2C copy involves different tactics. Make sure you are aware of those tactics so your content will do all it can for your brand.

Five Signs Your Content Marketing Strategy Needs a Make over

Content is king. But that doesn’t mean that every piece of content is worth its weight in gold.

While you should never publish a piece of content you are not satisfied is well written and connects, educates and inspires your target audience-that doesn’t mean you aren’t going to miss the mark once in a while. However, if your content strategy seems to be consistently falling flat, you need to take a hard look at what is going wrong and find ways to fix it.

Here are some telltale signs you need to overhaul your content marketing strategy:

  1. Lack of traction. Relationship building is an essential part of content marketing and that takes time. However, if your website never gets views and no one is sharing your content, it’s time to make some changes.
  2. Hidden website. While being at the top of search engine result pages is the ultimate goal of every business, slowly climbing up those pages is what tells you that you are moving in the right direction. If you continue to always languish in the same (low) spot, you need to figure out why.
  3. Stagnant social. Are people liking you on Facebook? Retweeting your Tweets? If there isn’t a lot of activity on your social media sites then your posts clearly aren’t doing their job.
  4. Failure to engage. Valuable content means that visitors will stay on your site for longer periods of time. You also will see a lower bounce rate.
  5. Nothing stands out. Again, not every piece of content is going to be a homerun (although it shouldn’t strike out, either) but periodically you should have a piece of content that hits it out of the park. When a piece of content really creates a buzz around your website you are on the right track. If there is never any buzz, it is time to mix things up so that you can create some.

In some cases, a lackluster content marketing strategy will require a major overhaul. In other cases there are simple fixes that will drastically improve things. These include figuring out how to differentiate yourself from the competition or merely doing a better job of promoting your content.

Five Ways to Provide a Personalized Customer Experience

More and more consumers are asking for personalized experiences. After all, in today’s online marketplace, people are asked to give up more personal information. Therefore, it only seems fair that they should expect this information to be used for their benefit.

Unfortunately, many businesses – especially small businesses – are at a loss when it comes to knowing how to provide these types of experiences. Further, the time, money and resources that are required to develop these types of experiences also can seem overwhelming.

The truth is, however, that creating these types of experiences don’t have to be as complicated as you might think. In fact, you may already be doing many of the things that allow you to customize the overall customer experience.

Below are some the easiest and most practical ways to offer your customers and prospects the personalized experiences they are looking for – without expending a great deal of extra time, money and manpower.

  • Targeted searches. When your customer is searching for something, quality always trumps quantity when it comes to search results. Focus less on volume and more on targeted offers.
  • Specific content. Again, more doesn’t mean better. Nothing is more impersonal than content that is merely sales copy or copy solely designed to drive a reader to a particular website. Instead, make sure your content connects, educates and inspires. Solving a problem for a customer or prospect is the ultimate personalized experience.
  • Do your research. If you aren’t conducting market research it is impossible to know what your market wants. And if you don’t know what your target audience wants you can’t give them a personalized experience. Try to hone in on specific segments of your target audience and market to these particular segments separately instead of using one broad marketing message.
  • Get interactive. Calculators, quizzes and other tools that help you engage with your target audience are more popular than ever. Further, when these tools help an individual determine a product they could use, for example, the personalization factor increases dramatically.
  • Don’t forget to be human. In many cases, the most effective personalized experiences are just that: person – to – person. Don’t get so caught up in trying to give your target audience the latest in digital technology that you fail to really get to know them on a personal level. After all, the most personalized experiences occur when your customers and prospects feel that you really want to get to know them.