How Can Email Marketing Fuel Your Overall Inbound Strategy
How can email marketing fuel your overall inbound strategy? Studies show that 60% of marketers consider content an essential part of their comprehensive plan of action. It is a strategy that enhances customers’ experience by offering them a helpful range at every stage of their buying journey. It attracts them through the content that sheds more light on their problems, engages them with a solution, and provides a great user experience. Under the wide umbrella of the inbound strategy, there lies email marketing. So, how does email marketing improve the overall inbound strategy? A foolproof plan supporting email marketing is a must to give your clients a full-scale inbound marketing strategy.
Why is Email Marketing Important?
Estimates show that by 2019, there were around 3.9 billion email users. The number is increasing every day and has become a thriving element of marketing strategies everywhere. An interesting fact; the timing of the email is your friend here, that is Tuesday. Yes! Tuesday is the perfect day to lodge emails as this day has the highest opening rate. A well-tailored, strategically-thought-out email marketing strategy fuels the overall inbound strategy. It imparts a positive impact on the customer relationship.
Let all the talk aside, what does everyone want from his business?
Money!
Here is the answer to this unquestionable target, i.e., sufficiently inexpensive email marketing. It is easy and economical as compared to other marketing strategies.
A successful and highly rewarding email is:
- Beautifully drafted
- Fits the occasion
- Fulfills the desired goal
How Does It Work?
Inbound email marketing involves receiving customer queries about your services or products and answering them via their inboxes. It generates a dialogue with your audience, conveys helpful and timely content that interests them, and eventually makes them fall for your services or products.
Why is this practice so popular and on every company’s hit list? The answer is its high rewarding rate. Yes! That’s true. The average conversion rate in 2018 was a good 18.49%, which is a lot. One in every five customers shows interest in what you offer. What else do you want?
What Reinforces the Lead?
Email marketing imparts a tremendously positive impact on overall inbound strategy. Initially, it lends a communication medium between the company and the customer. Secondly, with this process, you can create different types of emails. This procedure gives a more customized experience to the customers.
Email marketing works closely with your CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and other data managing platforms. CRM is a system that manages a company’s relationship with existing and potential customers. It aims at improving relationships and assisting in business growth. This sort of marketing works in close relation to the curated customer base. It lets you distinguish your audience in different groups to send them content as per their interests.
What Does a Strong Inbound Strategy Looks Like?
In addition to crafting a beautiful draft for email marketing and sending it to your potential customers, it involves a bit more.
Here is what you should keep in mind while composing a strong inbound strategy:
- Recognize your target audience, desires, and goals if they choose your brand.
- Make a list of companies with the same interests, i.e., services and products.
- Find out which company is the customer favorite, e.g., which is more engaged with its people.
- Establish a lead nurturing program with helpful content for your potential customers when they face a related issue. They should be able to recall your brand in such a situation.
How to implement a sound inbound strategy?
Only creating an inbound strategy via email marketing is not enough. It has to be implemented in the best possible manner to get the desired results. The first thing in this regard is a foolproof email structure.
- Think of a message you want to deliver and the best effective manner possible to execute it. The idea here is not to provide a long boring notice or a short, confusing one. We have to settle for a perfect middle ground.
- Once you have drafted a message, the second step is to dictate an email sequence, i.e., which email is to be sent to whom.
- Subject line is the make it or break it factor here. Readers will not even bother to open it if it doesn’t attract their attention, i.e., too technical or boring. A catchy subject line is a determining element for a successful email. Please make sure the subject line is attractive enough to stop them from reading the mail.
- Above all, don’t forget to add a Call-To-Action (CTA) at the end of the emails. A CTA that revolves around either your service or product is advisable. If the email doesn’t contain a CTA, add something interesting to your site to reel in some dedicated audience.
- Whenever you write an Email, always put yourself in the receiver’s shoes. Think of a subject live that would captivate you the most. What are the topics you are more interested in about that company? A helpful and tempting content would fetch more customers to your site. In addition to this, they would want more emails to stay in touch with the company. That’s promising!
Turn The Leads into Customers
You are into email marketing with one goal, i.e., to turn the leads into customers. Be smart in how, when, and what to provide your potential customers and eventually convert them into buyers. Look at the buyer’s journey, divide them into different groups and send information accordingly.
- If the customer is at the first stage of the journey, sending them case studies or product comparison charts at this step would be an utter disaster.
- Start with some welcoming notes, and then gradually tell them more about your products and services. Maintaining a database to keep a track record of buyers’ journeys is crucial.
- If a customer shows interest in your services by providing his information, you should maintain a workflow towards him to engage that particular receiver through a series of automated emails.
Examples of email Marketing for B2C Businesses
Email marketing for B2C can reward you with conversion rates as high as 50%.
Some examples of B2C email marketing are as follow:
- Welcome email series
- Newsletters
- Product/service update emails
- Re-engagement emails
- Security check emails
- Order confirmation emails
- Feedback emails
- Birthday emails
- Reminder emails
- VIP emails
Conclusion
Email marketing is the most hassle-free and efficient way of capturing future customers. It works as the most effective way to give you desired leads and loyal customers. It sets the stage for open communication and offers several ways to present your services and products to the customers. Marketing is responsible for customers’ delight to help you get a larger slice of the pie, especially when you don’t have enough staff to perform this task effectively. Inbound marketing will continue to thrive as revolutionizing marketing bate.
7 Small Business Branding Efforts That Work in 2022
Most of us think about a logo whenever we hear the term small business branding. Of course, a logo is a part of the overall branding process—a vital one, but it is not the whole process itself. It is much more than designing fancy logos and adopting strategies that make your sales go up by a notch.
Branding includes all the efforts put by a business in making the business recognizable, trustworthy, and consistent over the years. It doesn’t only have to be the tangible aspects such as logos and color themes. The intangible aspects of a brand too come under the umbrella.
The trust customers put in a product comes through branding efforts. Moreover, the capability of a business to come into the buyer’s mind is also a part of the branding process. Even though we live in the digital marketing era, these factors are still consistent for a great branding process.
With this, the debate of small business branding opens. Not everyone supports the idea of spending dollars here. However, we see it as an absolute necessity and came up with some actionable tips for the small business branding process:
Stand Out With a Logo
Logos and brands have a strong connection.
Think about soft drinks.
Your mind will automatically come up with either Coke or Pepsi’s logo (Not necessary to have a favourite out of the two, though).
Why does your mind come up with these two soft drink brands? Because they have imprinted their logos in the consumer’s minds with consistent branding efforts.
However, being in a small business, you may not be able to throw in cash like these industry giants. Still, you can develop a logo that defines your brand identity and connects your customers with your brand.
You need to take care of the logotype, logo style, and the fonts you’re going to choose.
All these aspects need to be thoroughly unique to make a long-lasting impact in your customer’s mind.
Use an Email Signature
When in business, we cannot deny the effectiveness of email marketing in today’s digital world.
With over 64% of the small business owners using email marketing as a marketing channel, one cannot deny its relevance.
No matter if your business operates in a brick-and-mortar setting or an online setting, make sure to have an email signature. The most effective email signatures typically consist of:
- Contact details
- A clear picture
- Social media handles links
These essential parts of the email signature ensure quick access to your business.
Be the Expert of Your Field
When a business takes up the responsibility of educating its customers, it becomes invincible. For that to achieve, however, your business needs to work on the content part that deals with the customer’s pain points.
Your business can arrange branded seminars (or webinars), sponsored events where you educate the masses about your brand. That can include a roadshow as well where you use your promotional efforts wisely and make people see your brand through an educational session.
Work on the Business Slogan
When I say ‘Just Do it, ‘ your brain automatically shouts out ‘Nike.’ This is the power of a strong slogan. One may argue that we are talking too much about the big brands, but keep in mind that all these giant brands also had the first day. So why can your business not have its share?
When it comes to business slogans, you need to be extremely careful about your customers’ choices. Be vigilant over drafting a slogan that doesn’t disturb the customers emotionally. Keep in mind all the inclusivity principles your brand believes in. Lastly, be consistent with whatever slogan you come up with.
Promote the slogan in your marketing campaigns, and make it one of the points of your identity.
Use Social Media to Stay Connected With the Customers
Just like the email signature, social media presence is also an absolute necessity. With 4.48 billion social media users in the world, you cannot deny its importance. The platforms such as Facebook and Instagram are buzzing with potential for emerging small businesses.
With a consistent content strategy and a posting schedule, your social media branding efforts will reap unmatchable benefits.
With social media campaigns, you can use the platforms to convey your brand voice and activate positive chatter around your business.
Not only does social media work on the promotional part, but it also helps your business connect with the customers on a personal level.
Talk to Your Customers Through Video Marketing
While many businesses still do not recognize the importance of video marketing, they will in the upcoming years. Video marketing is one of the most effective branding ways for your small business, and it does not cost an arm and a leg.
All you need to do is use all the branding elements in your videos and make sharable video content. With video content, there are no boundaries. You can make educational videos that showcase your brand, you can go funny, or even you can become a solution provider through your video content.
When you use video as a part of your branding efforts, make sure to hire professional help for better results.
Build a Website
This may sound cliche to have a website for your business, but it should be the priority one should have in the business world. Just like the logo and slogan, a website is also a part of your identity.
A website works as the face in the digital world for businesses. They can break the news regarding their business, promote upcoming products, engage with the audience through community building, and have a blog to get more visibility.
In short, a website can give a one-stop platform to a business to cater to every need of the customers.
Take Away
These actionable small business branding efforts may take some time to garner results. However, none of them will go in vain if your business wants to make its mark through consistent efforts.
So don’t wait. Jump right in there!
Marketing Automation vs. Email Marketing: What Are the Key Differences?
Are you puzzled about understanding the difference between marketing automation and email marketing? It is not shocking because there is a lot of contradictory information available on the internet. Many people describe email marketing as a capability to send content and track the success of email campaigns. Some industry experts have devised email marketing automation as a kind of halfway house between these two terms. Apart from all this, numerous marketing tools control marketing automation, personalization, email automation, and analytical functionality. In some cases, they are also compatible with AI or machine learning features.
Email Marketing
When it comes to marketing automation vs. email marketing, there are stark differences. While these tools utilize email as the main network to engage with a potential audience, email marketing tracks the actions performed by recipients of your email.
Marketing Automation
Marketing automation software monitors all digital interactions that a lead has with your business. It observes all the data into an activity history that offers a 360 view of your leads. If you’re considering inbound and outbound marketing, and email marketing is just outbound. Whereas, a marketing automation platform will assist you to build and manage search-optimized landing pages, blog posts, social media marketing, and integrate them into your outbound program.
The Key Differences between Marketing Automation and Email Marketing
- Complexity
- Sales cycle
- Assets
- B2B vs. B2C
- Behavior Tracking
Complexity
If you’re running a small setup with a limited budget, you might not want to build compound marketing campaigns. When you understand your customer requirements, you prepare content to meet potential customers’ profiles and track your efforts to run effective email marketing campaigns.
Marketing automation campaigns are complex than email marketing because they involve different techniques. To achieve the desired results you’re required to manage all the parts at once. It helps driving improves results, but it is only worth it if you have skills, time, and money.
If you’re a beginner, you have a small marketing team. If they are incapable to track customer behavior and get insights from optimized campaigns, you should consider email marketing. It’s the right decision to build personalized campaigns that provide relevant information.
Sales Cycle
The method you follow to market apparel differs from the way you market electronic gadgets. Apparels are an impulse purchase, and you will buy many over a lifetime. Whereas, it takes time to buy electronic gadgets. The sales cycle is different for all products, and each requires a specific approach.
Marketing automation is best for a longer cycle where customers interact with your business over various touchpoints. Customers require more information and time to make a purchase. Whereas, email marketing is ideal for quick decisions and lower-value products. Customers can obtain all the information through email.
Assets
When you’re creating and handling email campaigns, all you need to worry about the content quality and structure. How to write an effective email marketing campaign, what should be the graphical considerations, and other elements are essential to lookup.
When it comes to marketing automation, you need to build and manage landing pages, social media posts, images, and ad campaigns. It also requires more time, super-savvy content, and technical skills. It helps your interactions with customers in different ways. You need to ensure that all assets which reflect your brand image should be seamless.
B2B vs. B2C Capabilities
Marketing automation is not only ideal for longer cycles, but you can implement it on B2B companies. It is effective for businesses that have dedicated sales teams. If you’re a marketer and working for a B2C company, you will be the one selling to customers. You manage all the emails and encourage customers to purchase by directing them to a website or store.
You might have some interactions with customers, and you won’t be directly involved in the sales procedure. Here comes email marketing as a quick way to get the information in front of potential clients to make a purchase. In this tech era, we are not limited to the newsletter and transactional emails. The advanced marketing system allows you to create different email marketing content such as customer feedback, flash sale messages, and loyalty offers.
B2B companies have expert sales teams who deal with different points of contact. The salespersons interact with prospects many times during the sales cycle. Therefore, a marketing automation system is necessary to keep track.
Behavior Tracking
Email marketing tracks how your email campaigns are working. It offers insight into what makes a campaign successful and how to improve the campaigns. You can personalize content as per the information, such as the type of email a recipient opens, but you may not know what other points of contact they have with your organization.
It’s imperative to keep in mind that a customer buying journey is not limited to one channel. Marketing automation systems enable you to track customer behavior across different channels. You can design target campaigns obtained from the insight of which channel customers prefer. It may include your website, social media platforms, iPad, and ads you’re running. It also triggers emails or marketing messages. For an instance, if a customer has just purchased an item, you can send a message with a customer survey.
Choose the Tool that Suits Your Business Needs
Marketing automation vs. email marketing, both come in all sizes and shapes. From a simple email tool to a full-service marketing automation system, it helps your business manage multimillion-dollar marketing campaigns. You can consider email marketing if you’re planning to create automated email campaigns. You can use it in conjunction with other available marketing software. You can also opt for an email customer relationship management solution that helps you to know your customers. On other hand, you can choose a system that performs it all.
When it comes to marketing automation vs. email marketing, first of all, you need to consider business needs. Here are some points to consider when choosing a solution:
- Budget
- The time you invest in building marketing campaigns
- Marketing objectives
- Length of the company sales cycle
- Marketing channels
After considering these factors, you can start your search for a solution. If your sales cycle is simple and your lead requires one or two touches, email marketing is an ideal tool. And, if you’re ready to start nurturing and qualifying leads, marketing automation can be helpful.
A Guide to How to Add Google Tag Manager to WordPress
Google Tag Manager (GTM) is a free, powerful tag management tool by Google. It helps to manage analytics and marketing tags on your website. To take advantage of this popular tool, it is essential to be installed on the website in the right way. It helps to update and add different tracking codes on a website efficiently.
Tracking services such as Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, Facebook Pixel, LinkedIn Insight, and other advertising tools require HTML or JavaScript code to your website to integrate their services. With Google Tag Manager, you can control and add these codes from a single interface without editing the website code.
When it comes to WordPress, most business owners are concerned about where and how to add google tag manager to WordPress. This tool has a great learning curve, and you have to spend time learning the need of this tool. If you’re planning to set up google tag manager to WordPress, this article has got you covered.
Setting Up Google Tag Manager to WordPress
To add google tag manager to WordPress, follow these simple steps to get started.
Step 1: Create a Google Tag Manager Account
Visit the Google Tag Manager Website to set up an account. Click the sign-up button if you don’t have an account. In the next step, you need to ‘sign in’ with your Google account. After that, you will see the Google Tag Manager’s create account page. Click on the ‘create account’ button to get started.
You can add a new account on the next screen. Enter your name and select a country in the Account Setup box. If you run a business website, you can use the company name as the account name.
Now, you have to set up your container. A container is a sum of multiple tags and triggers along with configurations installed on a website. The website name can also be a container name. Select ‘web’ under the container option, and then click on create button.
Accept the Google Tag Manager Terms and conditions to proceed further. Check the box ‘I accept the Data Processing Terms as required by GDPR’, and click the ‘Yes’ button on the top right corner. After that, a popup window will appear with code snippets to install GTM on the website.
Step 2: Add Google Tag Manager Code to WordPress
Login to the WordPress dashboard and install the ‘insert header and footers’ plugin. For activation, go to setting and then insert headers and footers page. There are boxes for adding header and footer code. Now, go back to your Google Tag Manager account to copy the code. Paste the code into the ‘Scripts in Header’ box. Likewise, copy the other code from Tag Manager Account and insert it into the ‘Scripts in Footer’ box. After that, don’t forget to save changes.
Step 3: Verifying GTM Installation
There are different ways to verify GTM installation on your website. The best method is to verify with Google Tag Assistant. It is a browser extension used for testing and debugging Google tracking codes. After installing this extension, open the website in a new tab. Now, click the tag assistant icon to enable it and reload the page.
Tag Assistant will show all the tracking codes added on site. When it shows your GTM tracking id, the installation is completed. A GTM tag will be displayed in yellow color, showing up an error. It isn’t an error and disappears automatically.
Step 4: Connecting GA with GTM
When you add Google Tag Manager code on the website, GTM is used to set up analytics. If you are using Google Analytics and moving to GTM, make sure to follow the GTM migration steps to secure your data.
Follow these steps to add a Google Analytics account to your website:
- Create a new Google Analytics account if you don’t have any
- After setting up an account, navigate to admin, and click property settings
- Copy the tracking ID
- Go to the tag manager account to create a new tag
- Enter the tag name ‘GA Page view – All Pages’
- Click tag configuration, and choose universal analytics
- Click the Google Analytics Settings and choose ‘new variable’
- Enter the variable name as ‘GA Tracking ID’ on the popup window, and paste the tracking ID you copied earlier
- Click the ‘triggering’ option and select the ‘All Pages’ default variable.
Once you have created a variable for GA tracking ID, you can use it for all GA tags in the future. There is no need to copy and paste the GA ID every time.
Eliminating WordPress Admins
Google Analytics helps to track the number of people who visit your website. Therefore, it is necessary to omit your website visits or internal traffic.
GTM Successfully Added
Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics have successfully added to your website. Now, it’s time to use GTM to track visitor actions, get analytics data to understand user behavior on your website, and drive more traffic to meet business goals.
GTM – An Essential Tool in Digital Marketing
Google Tag Manager allows you to easily combine and push marketing tools’ scripts securely with a friendly user interface. This tool helps to set a range of tags including Google Analytics and Google AdWords. Numerous reasons make Google Tag Manager an important tool in digital marketing. The major one is combining all scripts at a place without any hassle.
- If you’re a small business website owner, you may have sufficient resources to push tracking code to the WordPress website.
- If you’re working for an established business, pushing a simple script to production can affect your budget.
This step-by-step guide states how to add google tag manager to WordPress. You should be ready to start using Google Tag Manager to deploy your tags. It joins all your tracking scripts into a single script that’s easy to add and manage. Considering the fact that Google has offered an official plugin to make the integration easier than ever, the whole process can be done in a matter of minutes.