I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. It doesn’t matter how great your email marketing is if nobody can see it. And getting hundreds of thousands of eyes on your amazing email marketing campaigns begins with email deliverability.

There’s actually quite a lot to take into account to ensure your emails actually get delivered to a recipient’s inbox. Your list has to be healthy (if you’re curious what makes up a healthy email list, take this 5-question test we developed); you need to develop and maintain a high Sender Score; you need to segment your email list like a pro; and the list goes on.

Furthermore, data from ReturnPath’s Global Email Deliverability Benchmark Report has confirmed the problem email marketers are facing. Only 76.5% of commercial emails sent reached recipients’ inboxes in 2011, and email blocked and flagged as SPAM increased 24%. So what are email marketers to do? Brush up on their SPAM and email deliverability 101, that’s what. So we’ve compiled 7 informative infographics that give a rundown of what SPAM is, why it matters, and how you can ensure your email isn’t viewed as SPAM so it gets into inboxes. Be sure to bookmark your favorite ones to help you in your next email marketing campaign!

7 Infographics About Email Deliverability

1) SPAM vs. Whitelist by EmailExpert

2) How to Improve Email Deliverability by Pure360

3) SPAM: More Than an Annoyance? by WebpageFX

4) History of the SPAM Invasion by Rackspace

5) What if Facebook Looked Like Your Email SPAM Folder? by Neolane

6) 10 Steps to Seamless Inbox Delivery by Marketing Technology Blog

 7) Email Campaign Delivery Checklist by Pure360

Have you come across an awesome infographic about email deliverability? Share it with us!

Image credit: Ecstatic Mark

 

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If there’s one thing that makes our toes tingle (other than inbound marketing, of course), it’s seeing examples of marketing done right. Great marketing makes us excited to be working in a trailblazing industry where other marketers are doing seriously innovative things to make marketing people actually like.

But to get so excited about awesome marketing means there’s another end of the spectrum. A dark side where email spammers, poor segmenters, and keyword stuffers live trying to pass off their activities as marketing. Those guys give legitimate marketers a bad name, and the worst part of it is, sometimes they don’t even know what they’re doing is an indication of seriously stinky marketing. Enter this blog post.

We know what in marketing annoys us, but we were curious what our audience — made up of business owners, marketers, content creators, and consumers — had to say about the matter. “What annoys you about marketing?” we tweeted, and the answers poured in, straight from the horses’ mouths (our target customers!). We sorted out the top 20 that really grind our gears, too, and have compiled them below for your reading pleasure. And while you’re reading, ask yourself whether you’re guilty of any of these warning signs of a cringeworthy marketing presence.

20 Hints That Your Marketing Stinks

1) The ‘Party Planner’ Stereotype: Real marketers know that marketing isn’t about planning parties and sending out press releases; they see event marketing and PR as two parts of a larger inbound marketing strategy. Without a comprehensive, integrated approach to your marketing, your business will never reach its full potential, so if you’re a marketer operating under the assumption that ‘marketing’ is just an excuse to plan parties, you’ve been sorely mislead, and your marketing results will suffer from it.

 

@HubSpot Pet Peeve: People who stereotype marketers as people who plan parties and send out press releases.

— Lori Philo-Cook (@PhiloCook) May 14, 2012

 

2) Mystery Links: Joy’s hashtag really captures it all with this indication of subpar marketing — if you’re sharing links in social media without any context, your engagement will plummet. A link does not engaging content make; put a little #effort into the content you’re sharing if you want people to follow you, RT you, and talk to you!

 

@HubSpot Marketing Pet Peeve;when a link is tweeted with no description, esp. when the link is sent from an auto service!#effort

— Joy(@JoyonCapeCod) May 14, 2012

 

3) Mucked Up Mail Merges: While we applaud attempts at email personalization, it only works if you can execute correctly. If you’re importing lists with bad lead information, you can’t expect to deliver relevant, personal email content.

 

@jeannehopkins Biggest pet peeve – bad mail merges!i.e. “Dear Mrs. Polmateer”.I’m a dude.Instant delete! cc:// @Hubspot

— Garry Polmateer, CAE (@DarthGarry) May 14, 2012

 

4) Twitter Customer Service Fail: Marketing and customer service should work together … or at the very least, they should get an office romance going. But when you’re implementing a social customer service program, make sure those running the accounts know the ins and outs of the social media network being used so you can actually help your customers!

 

@hubspot Pet peeve: When companies tell you to DM them & have no clue they must follow you first. More cust serv than mkg but irksome.

— Cari Sultanik (@CariSultanik) May 14, 2012

 

5) Slimy Social Automation: Okay, I know many people who would dispute the effectiveness of the auto DM. Some say it’s impersonal, while others agree but still see increased follower rates. Whichever side you fall on, Dan is right that directing someone to a product page after following you on Twitter is akin to proposing on the first date. If you insist on using an auto DM, keep it congenial, not sales-oriented!

 

@HubSpot Auto DM replies. Especially ones directing me to a Facebook or product page. Like proposing on a first date.

— Dan Moyle (@danmoyle) May 14, 2012

 

6) Spammy Auto-Follows: Speaking of social media automation, don’t be the company that incessantly follows and unfollows. It’s an indication of spammy behavior that will get you blacklisted from Twitter’s search results, and really annoy your followers. I’m not sure which is worse.

 

@HubSpot following, unfollowing, following, unfollowing

— roberto rivera (@robertoerivera) May 14, 2012

 

7) Gut Decision-Making: This is my own contribution. A marketer should never insist their marketing is effective or ineffective without backing it up with data! Be sure to always measure your marketing campaigns, and analyze the data so you can make improvements.

 

@HubSpot When marketers say “this works” and “that doesn’t” based on feelings instead of data.

— Corey Eridon (@Corey_bos) May 15, 2012

 

CAN-SPAM Non-Compliance: And while I didn’t contribute this particular tweet, it’s as if Jonna read my mind (and probably that of anyone who has been on the receiving end of email SPAM). Not only is it illegal not to include the option to unsubscribe in your emails, it’s illegal not to honor the request. If there’s one area of your marketing about which you are vigilant, please, let it be this. Your Sender Score will thank you.

 

@HubSpot If I “unsubscribe” do not email the very next morning! Makes my blood boil.

— Jonna Robertson (@mktgoddess) May 14, 2012

 

9) Tricksy Email Subject Lines: Your email subject line is the gatekeeper of your email. You’d think, then, that email marketers would be more conscious of the copy they choose for their subject lines. Oh right, people who use “Re:” in their subject lines aren’t email marketers. They’re spammers.

 

@HubSpot Broadcast emails starting with “Re:”. Tricksy

— John Mackenzie (@johnmac71) May 14, 2012

 

10) Pushing, Not Pulling: What Mike points out in this tweet is the basis of inbound marketing. Stop shouting at people. Give them interesting content, and let them come to you.

 

@HubSpot 2 things: 1. Being shouted at. 2. Misleading info. Everything else can be chalked up to agency “creativity”.

— Mike Beauchamp (@myz06vette) May 14, 2012

 

11) Viral Goals: Virality is a product of amazing content, your reach, and how well you can optimize that video to spread organically. You know what it isn’t? Magic.

 

@HubSpot Pet peeve: Ad agencies that set out to create a “viral” video. The term “viral” implies no control over the organic spread of video

— Japheth Campbell (@yefeth) May 14, 2012

 

12) Nonsensical QR Codes: There’s a time and a place for everything. QR codes, for example, are excellent for connecting offline and online marketing. When someone visits your profile on Twitter, however, they are already online. If you’re going to use QR codes — or any marketing tactic, for that matter — use them where they can get the most leverage!

 

@HubSpot Using QR Code as Twitter profile icon. It just makes no sense.

— ideavist (@ideavist) May 14, 2012

 

13) The Purchased List: It doesn’t matter how fantastic your email content is if it never lands in an inbox. To ensure you have excellent email deliverability, we developed a 5-question sniff test for you to take. Hint: if you buy your email lists, you’re not going to pass the test.

 

@HubSpot Companies using purchased mail/email lists. #SPAM is spam whether electronic or printed. There should be an easy #OptOut for both.

— Sarah J. Hough (@sjhough) May 14, 2012

 

14) Interruptive Advertising: There’s a place for advertising in inbound marketing, but the key to doing it successfully is relevancy. So while the age of interruptive marketing is over, it’s not interruptive if your audience finds it relevant!

 

@HubSpot “You may view the page/video you are seeking after we play you a short ad about something of which you have no interest in.”

— Alex Brinsmead (@alexbrinsmead) May 14, 2012

 

15) Incomparable Comparisons: Sean is spot on to say that TV and internet advertising are two different beasts. Not only do they require different measurement mechanisms, but they work best when they are integrated. Don’t miss easy opportunities to incorporate, say, your social media marketing into an advertising spot.

 

@HubSpot when people compare TV to internet advertising.They should be used to complement not compete with each other to do the same job.

— Sean Singleton (@paulpingles) May 14, 2012

 

16) Customer Feedback Ignorance: If your marketing doesn’t have an end-to-end view, what we like to call closed-loop reporting, how do you know that your campaigns and messaging actually work? Use closed-loop analytics to get data on which campaigns and channels perform best, and combine that with feedback from leads and customers to improve your marketing.

 

@HubSpot A mega peeve: when marketing neglects to check in w prospects/current customers to validate effectiveness of programs, messaging.

— Julie Rogier (@JRogier) May 15, 2012

 

17) No Sense of Boundaries: Marketers must be respectful of a prospect’s preferred method of communication. If they sign up for an email newsletter, communicate via email, and don’t send them anything that’s NOT an email newsletter. If they follow you on Twitter, speak to them on Twitter. If you’d like to speak to them through another medium, get their permission to do so first!

 

@hubspot Huge pet peeve: signing up for a niche e-newsletter only to be bombarded by non-targeted print catalogs.. to my employer’s address

— Autumn McReynolds (@AutumnMcRey) May 14, 2012

 

18) Self-Proclaimed, Unwarranted ‘Experts’: If you’re hiring an agency or new employee to do your social media for you, beware of ninjas and gurus who claim to know these so called “secrets.” Like this tweet states, the “secrets” to social media are posting engaging content, having conversations, monitoring your accounts, and analyzing the ROI you get from each channel.

 

@HubSpot people who claim to know ‘secrets’ of success, such as in social media. There are no secrets, it’s just communication

— Creative Huddle (@Creative_Huddle) May 14, 2012

 

19) Intrusive Tactics: I think we’re all familiar with the commercial that’s louder than the TV show, but this problem symbolizes a larger problem with marketing people view as bad — being intrusive. If you’re providing valuable content, people will invite you into their lives; you don’t have to shove your way in.

 

@HubSpot another #marketing pet peeve. The noisier your TV ad is the less likely I am to watch it.

— Samantha Brackley (@SamBrackley) May 14, 2012

 

20) The Ungrateful Taker: Marketing is getting more and more social, which means maintaining good relationships with your network is critical. Thank those who write about you, share your content, and give you feedback. And to ensure we’re not guilty of this marketing faux pas Amber suggests, thank you all for reading, and for your submissions to this post!

 

Marketing pet peeve: Not acknowledging/thanking someone who promotes you! @HubSpot

— Amber Schiavi (@amsch03) May 14, 2012

 

What do you think is an indication that a brand’s marketing is no good? Share your pet peeves and warning signs in the comments!

Image credit: Robert S. Donovan

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At TopRank Online Marketing, we are fortunate to provide consulting to quite a few innovative B2B companies that serve other marketers. A great example of that is PRWeb and parent company, Vocus, both long standing clients.

In late 2011 Vocus welcomed Jason Jue as Chief Marketing Officer. As Vocus & PRWeb’s Account Manager at TopRank, I was keenly interested in getting to know Jason better and learning his plans for the future – and what better way than through an interview for all readers of Online Marketing Blog to see?

In this interview Jason talks about the undeniable convergence of PR and marketing, what social media metric is most undervalued by many PR and marketing professionals, where marketers should invest for 2013 and his vision for Vocus.

Tell us a little bit about your background and what excites you most about joining Vocus?

Prior to Vocus, I was Vice President of Marketing at Rackspace and had several executive positions at Dell in the US and Asia, marketing to businesses. Vocus offers cloud marketing and PR software to businesses in every market sector and size that want to reach and influence buyers.

I’m excited about sharing with businesses how easily our products work wonders for our current customers. Some of the leading marketing consultants such as Sirius Decisions and MarketingSherpa use our products to maximize their online publicity.

For some people, Vocus is synonymous with Public Relations software. Can you speak to how and when Vocus first expanded to offering marketing solutions?

We have always believed PR to be a core part of “promoting a product or service” or marketing. Many customers who buy our PR software have a marketing title, and we’ve recently seen faster growth in this group. These customers use our social media and PRWeb news release features of our PR software. For them, we created a cloud marketing suite which integrates search, publicity, and social media marketing. Our cloud marketing suite was the most successful product launch in Vocus history, and will be even better when it includes email later this year.

Do you see PR and marketing professionals as two separate audiences? Or are they converging disciplines?

In marketing teams that have PR and marketing professionals, we continue to see them as two audiences with different product needs, although their roles are converging, especially around social media. PR professionals are using social media for brand positioning. Marketing professionals use social media for lead gen. Meanwhile, for the millions of businesses who have few, if any marketers at all, the marketing functions blend together.

Use your crystal ball and give us a glimpse into the future. How will the Vocus offering change over the next 2 years? Where do you see the most opportunity for growth?

The future of marketing is simple and powerful integrated campaigns. Every marketing team realizes that when working together on unified and integrated campaigns, lead generation and brand perception results are much better than working alone.

I know that sounds like a pipe dream as marketing complexity has increased to address the everywhere all the time customer. Today’s customers are constantly switching back and forth from website, news, social, search, email, and mobile. To add confusion, each specialty has their marketing tools resulting in silos and disjointed communication.

In the near future, marketers will be able to buy cloud marketing software to easily manage integrated campaigns. It will incorporate the trendy with the tried-and-true tactics of marketing The essential elements will work together for better results in lead generation and brand perception. And, it will recommend how and when to engage with prospects and customers.

Seem unbelievable? I think it’s unbelievable that it hasn’t already happened. In the past 15 years, every corporate function, from marketing to sales to HR, has seen a proliferation of technology tools. Marketing is the only function without a major product suite. IBM is doing it for large enterprise marketing. We are integrating all the important marketing tools into a cloud marketing suite so every business, large and small, can easily achieve big results .

Staying on social for a moment, what is one social metric that you think may be most overlooked by PR and marketing professionals alike? On the flip side, any stat that you view as overvalued?

The most important social media metric is how many people actively recommend your product or service. I think the most overvalued metrics are fans, followers, and likes.

As 2012 is well underway, what is one investment you think marketers must make in order to succeed the rest of the year and into 2013? (i.e. invest in mobile marketing)

Focus on marketing fundamentals that will dramatically accelerate growth. Who is your target customer? What product or service should you develop for them? How should you promote to them? Why should they buy from you?

Then, find the best product for you that simplifies all the marketing tactics and trends. This product will then let you focus on the marketing fundamentals.

Thanks, Jason!

 

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2012. |
Interview: The Future of Cloud Marketing Software with Vocus CMO Jason Jue | http://www.toprankblog.com

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Looks like Twitter is putting its January acquisition of social news startup Summify to good use! Yesterday, the official Twitter blog announced that it will start sending users a weekly email digest featuring relevant tweets and stories shared by the people they’re connected with on Twitter. This just several days after news of Twitter’s “acqui-hire” of personalized email marketing service RestEngine.

Similar to the updated design of the Twitter Discover tab we covered earlier this month, the summary highlights which of the users you’re connected to on Twitter shared the featured stories and allows you to click through to see their tweets. It also enables you to click the headlines to read the stories themselves, and gives you the opportunity to tweet your thoughts on individual stories via the links in the email.

In addition, the digest features the most engaging tweets of the week that were seen by the people you follow, regardless of whether you follow the users who posted the tweets. Featured tweets are also accompanied by a list of users from your network who retweeted or favorited those tweets, and you can click the “View details” link in order to retweet, favorite, reply, or see the conversation about them.

 

 

Twitter indicates it will be rolling out the digest to all users over the next few weeks, and you’ll know the email when you see it. Of course, you can always opt out of receiving these emails via your Twitter Notification Settings.

Twitter’s Digest Email: A Marketer’s Take

As Twitter mentioned in its announcement of the updated Discover tab, the microblogging site is making an ongoing effort to bring users closer to the content and tweets they care about, making content discovery on Twitter even easier. And the new email digest is obviously a part of this effort.

From a marketer’s perspective, this is yet another win in marketers’ attempts to surface their best content to Twitter users. In a Twitterverse where the half-life of a link is less than 3 hours, marketers know how easy it is for their tweets to get buried under the frequently updated Twitter streams of their followers. But with discovery engines like this, marketers’ content has more opportunities to get in front of users, which means a greater chance of visibility for brands with a Twitter presence. This also makes it even more important for marketers to maintain an active Twitter presence and share their best content. In addition, marketers should make it as easy for their audience to share their content themselves by adding social media sharing links and buttons to every piece of content they publish, whether it’s a blog article, a landing page, an email message, etc.

As for the email digest itself, we think Twitter has some email optimization and conversion work to do, as well as probably some algorithm tweaking. Consider the personalized email digest my fellow HubSpot blogger, Corey Eridon shared from her inbox. See the first story in her digest?

 

 

Yup — Corey wrote that. And she subsequently tweeted this:

The algorithm behind Twitter’s digest emails needs some tweaking…the first recommended tweet was of a blog I wrote. Not SUPER helpful

— Corey Eridon (@Corey_bos) May 15, 2012

Probably not necessary for Twitter to recommend a story that Corey wrote to Corey, right? Although she was probably flattered that her article was popular enough among the users she’s connected to on Twitter to be featured in her digest. Still — flattery isn’t really the whole point here, is it? Content discovery is.

Furthermore, Twitter might want to think about better optimizing its email digests for click-throughs. Those tiny little “Tweet this story” links could be a little bit bigger, bolder, and more attractive, and did you even realize the headlines of the stories the digest features were even clickable? If it weren’t for Twitter mentioning that fact in their blog article explaining these weekly digest emails, I never would’ve picked up on that. Moreover, were you given any indication that, if you click on the thumbnails of the people pictured, you’d see their tweet about the story? I sure wasn’t, but if I clicked on them, that’s what I’d get.

Let’s hope that with Twitter’s recent acqui-hire of RestEngine, its email digest gets optimized and improved over time.

What do you think of Twitter’s new weekly digest email? How much do you think it will help users discover the marketing content you promote on Twitter?

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As the Boston Globe highlighted eloquently on our behalf to announce today’s launch of HubSpot’s new email tools, email marketing is not dead! But over the years, some less than savory email marketing behaviors by brands — whether they knew better or not — have soured many recipients to the email messages filling up their inboxes.

On the other hand, it has also made consumers jump for joy when they actually do get an email that is helpful, interesting, or innovative. And that’s the kind of email marketing we like to celebrate! We’ve written about fantastic ecommerce retargeting campaigns, how to craft an email newsletter recipients actually read, and even how to use your email signature to support your other marketing efforts. But we realized we’ve never compiled a list of just plain awesome examples of email marketing that could inspire us and our readers.

So, I set out to my inbox (and that of a few friends and coworkers), and looked for the email marketing that doesn’t make me hit ‘delete.’ I hope some of these real-life examples inspire changes, additions, or innovation in the way you approach your own email marketing campaigns!

10 Examples of Awesome Email Marketing

1) ModCloth Communicates Changes to Its Email Policy … Via Email

I bookmarked this email from ModCloth several weeks ago, because I was so impressed that a brand actually cared enough to tell me it was changing certain components of its email marketing program. Take a look at the copy called out in orange below to see what I mean.

 

 

Great companies are always changing and evolving, and your customers expect it. What they don’t expect (because too many companies haven’t lived up to this end of the bargain) is to be told about those changes. What a refreshing change of pace! If you’re going to change the way you communicate with a lead or customer, give them clear, fair warning so, if they aren’t on board, they can make the necessary adjustments to keep their inbox clean.

2) UncommonGoods Creates a Sense of Urgency Without Being Pushy

You’ve heard it a million times (a few thousand of those times may have been from us) — you should create a sense of urgency with your calls-to-action! That’s what makes a lead take action, right? Sure, if it’s done right. But often, the call-to-action is positioned in a way that morphs urgency into pushiness. This email from UncommonGoods, however, succeeds in creating a sense of urgency because it focuses on the value of acting now.

 

 

Instead of saying, “Order your Mother’s Day gift NOW before Preferred Shipping ends!”, this email asks, “Don’t you think mom would’ve liked a faster delivery?” Why yes, she would. Thank you for reminding me before it’s too late, and I’m in the dog house because my gift arrived after Mother’s Day.

3) Yapta Gives the Compliment Sandwich

Look, I know what this email is really trying to say: Corey, you could be using our tool way better than you are now. But they say it so nicely! Take a look at that first sentence … they thank me and call me smart. Awesome! I’ll keep reading.

The second paragraph is when they give me some constructive feedback on better ways to use Yapta. If I follow this advice, I’ll be a better user of their service, and as such, be more likely to complete a purchase with them.

Finally, it ends with another heartwarmer — they ask for my feedback! There’s nothing better than asking for (and receiving) feedback from your users, even if they aren’t a power user. In fact, those are often the ones who can make your product or service even better, as they’ve identified roadblocks to success that many other leads and customers may be facing.

 

 

You may also notice that this email doesn’t have a lot of bells and whistles. Great email marketing doesn’t need to be highly designed! This email message is effective because it gives me helpful information in a brief, clear, positive way.

4) AmazonLocal Wants to Deliver More Personalized Offers

This email from AmazonLocal is short and sweet, with just one call-to-action: click through this email to tell them what I like and dislike. That way, the deals they send me going forward can be more in line with what I’m likely to actually want. What’s wonderful about this experience is not just that they asked, but also how consistent the experience is from email to landing page. Take a look at the email below, and the landing page that follows.

 

 

Notice how the language in the email above, “like” and “dislike,” mirrors the language in the buttons below? This is a simple way to get feedback from your email recipients to provide more personalized offers in their inbox, thus increasing the chance of a high click-through and offer redemption rate.

 

5) ModCloth Makes Personalization Fun

AmazonLocal’s method of personalizing email content is effective, but props should be given to this oft-highlighted e-retailer ModCloth with its Style Whiz Quiz email. The end results are the same — ModCloth and AmazonLocal both know what their email recipients like, and as a result, they can better segment their email lists to provide more relevant content. But this email lets recipients take a fun survey to get the answers! If this type of interactivity appeals to your audience, it’s a great way to get the information you need to segment your email list and solidify yourself as an entertaining brand!

 

 

6) Focus Pointe Global Gets to the Point

Focus Pointe Global provides focus groups so businesses like you can get some meaty market research. This is an email I received from them to participate in one of their online surveys. I’m on a lot of mailing lists for this type of research — and this is by far the simplest email I’ve received! All of the information I need to know to determine whether I want to participate is called out in bold, with extremely short explanatory copy following it. What is the survey about? What do I get for taking it? How long will it take? Where can I begin? All emails should provide such clear instruction!

 

 

7) Zipcar Brings Back an Abandoned User

This example comes courtesy of my coworker who started signing up for Zipcar, got busy, and had to abandon the form. Take a quick browse of the copy!

 

 

The email calls her back to the website with some lighthearted copy that nudges her in the right direction, and also reminds her of the value of using Zipcar — being economical and helping the planet. If your site visitors are abandoning shopping carts or landing pages, use your email marketing in this way to remind them they have some unfinished business on your website!

ModCloth Promotes Its Referral Program

Do you have a referral program? Cool! Do your customers know about it? I didn’t know ModCloth had one … until I saw this email. Good thing, eh? This email is great because it recognizes that even engaged customers — you know, the ones that are likely to refer customers — might not know you offer referral benefits. Email marketing is ideal for ongoing communication with engaged leads and prospects; never forget about keeping them in the know!

 

 

9) UncommonGoods Lets Customers Sell for Them

Another repeat offender (in the nicest way!) on this list, UncommonGoods leverages the power of social proof to beef up its Mother’s Day email marketing campaign. Not only does this email provide recommendations for those struggling to come up with a gift, but it also highlights what other customers have to say about them. And in case you forgot, user-generated content is wicked important — so important, in fact, that 8 in 10 people’s purchasing decisions are influenced by user-generated content of complete strangers.

 

 

10) Zizinya Web Solutions Reminds You Who They Are

HubSpot customer Zizinya Web Solutions uses this email in one of its lead nurturing email series, and it’s one of my favorite examples of a principle so many email marketers forget. Your inbox recipients don’t always remember who you are! Take a look at the callout in orange — the first paragraph of this email tells the reader why they are being contacted. With the amount of inbox overload we all suffer, reminders of this nature are critical to preventing deletions and unsubscribes. Once your relationship with readers has been re-established, you’re more likely to enjoy high click-through rates on your email’s call-to-action.

 

There are hundreds of other examples of excellent email marketing. Share some of your favorite campaigns in the comments!

Image credit: moonlightbulb

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Following the recent Google Penguin update that has been rolled out across their search engine just a couple of weeks ago, there has been a huge amount of concern within the SEO industry as evidence of ‘negative SEO’ seems to have come to light with people looking to investigate their search engine manipulation theories on [...]

Protecting Your Site and Brand From Negative SEO is a post from: Dave Naylor’s SEO Blog.

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By now, most marketers understand the importance of email to their overall marketing strategy and recognize that it’s not dying in the wake of other emerging marketing tactics like social media. But while most marketers realize that email is here to stay, unfortunately, that doesn’t exactly mean certain email marketing best practices have caught on. Segmentation is one such best practices. Segmenting your communications can improve your email marketing campaigns by leaps and bounds (read on — we have the data to prove it!).

Luckily, marketers are at least starting to realize the importance of segmentation in their email communications. In fact, according to the MarketingSherpa 2012 Email Marketing Benchmark Report, 32% of marketers say segmenting their email database is one of their organization’s top objectives in the next 12 months. Furthermore, 52% of marketers say they have a great need to improve email database segmentation.

So if you aren’t slicing and dicing your email database into various segments and tailoring the content in your emails to those individual groups of contacts, we think you could use some convincing. Read on to find out why all marketers should be segmenting their email communications.

Your Buyers Aren’t All the Same

Here’s the reality: most businesses, whether B2B or B2C, don’t cater to just one type of customer, even if they do only sell one product or service. There is no one-size-fits-all customer, and there are usually several ideal customers for any given business. If you own a plumbing company, for example, you might cater to the landlord of a big apartment building as well as the owner of a single family home. These are two very different types of customers who have very different problems and needs, meaning they should be treated quite differently, right? So if you were doing some email marketing to these two target customers, blanketing them with the same, broad message wouldn’t be as effective as sending each a targeted email that spoke to their specific problems and needs.

Think about it. If you were that owner of a single family home (hey — maybe you actually are!), which of the following two emails would you be more interested in opening? One that promised to provide you with 10 general tips for unclogging drains, or one that is offering 10 tips for unclogging household drains, specifically written to address the problems a homeowner would have? It may sound trivial, but that second email, when sent to a targeted list of homeowners, would perform much better than a broad, general message to an entire list of email contacts.

If you haven’t already, determine who your various segments of target customers are. These are also known as buyer personas, and here is a great guide to help you identify them. Once you figure out which types of individuals make up your customer base as a whole, segmenting becomes much more understandable — and easier. And the beauty of segmentation is that the possibilities are endless. You can identify three or four general personas, or get more granular with each of those, splitting them into even more targeted groups and making your segmentation even more effective.

Your Contacts Are at Different Points in the Sales Cycle

Here’s another reality: Your email database is made up of contacts who are at varied stages of interaction with your business. This means your contacts are at different points in the sales cycle, and they require different types of information and communication depending on which point they’re at. Let’s revert back to our plumbing example for a second so I can prove a point.

See that guy on your list, Type ‘A’ Tom? Type ‘A’ Tom is on your list because he opted in to your email database after reading, say, a general article on your blog about plumbing best practices. He just bought a new house with his bride, and ever since, he’s been scouring the web, reading up on various preventative measures he can take to properly maintain his new abode. None of his drains are clogged (yet), and he’s not in the market for a plumber at this time. Now let’s take a look at your email list again.

See Frantic Fred? He just redeemed three separate offers on your website about how to unclog a stubborn drain, bought three different kinds of liquid plumber at the local hardware store based on the recommendations in your ebook, and his drain still isn’t budging. His wife told him that if she can’t take a shower by the time she gets back from her business trip, he’s in the dog house. Seems like Fred might be much closer to making a purchasing decision than Tom, huh? Don’t you think your email to Fred should provide targeted content that caters to someone who is in that stage of the sales cycle, rather than an email written with general content in an attempt to also include Tom?

In other words, failing to use email to take advantage of prospects’ differing wants and needs depending on their stage in the sales cycle is a huge missed opportunity.

Your Email Reputation Will Improve 

This may have already become obvious as you read the two sections above, but when you send targeted, segmented email to your audience, your emails are naturally more engaging to that audience. For example, if you sat down to write an email to people on your list like Frantic Fred, and you have a much better understanding of who they are and what they’re looking for at that moment, you’ll be able to craft compelling copy that truly speaks just to all those Freds.

And if you stick to this practice, over time, those Freds and Toms of the world will start to realize that every time they get an email from you, they know the content will be interesting to them – because it always has been. In other words, you’ll reap the benefits of a great sender reputation among your audience. If you think about all the emails you receive as a buyer, aren’t the ones you open time and time again the ones whose content always seems to appeal to you? Those vendors are likely doing some great segmentation and targeting!

You’ll Achieve Better Results

I saved the best for last. Sure, I can sing the praises of segmentation all day, but you’re probably thinking, “Show me the proof!” Well, it’s true: research shows that segmented email does outperform general, untargeted sends. Just take a look at the following data from the Lyris Annual Email Optimizer Report. When asked to indicate their top three results, 39% of marketers who segmented their email lists experienced higher open rates, 28% experienced lower unsubscribe rates, and 24% experienced better deliverability and greater revenue. And as you can see, the list goes on.

And that’s not all! Through HubSpot’s own research, we’ve found that targeted and segmented lead nurturing emails generate an 8% click-through rate compared to general email sends, which generate just a 3% click-through rate. In other words, targeted sends result in more clicks, which means recipients engage with the content within segmented email and perform the actions you want them to take. Furthermore, Jupiter Research reveals that relevant emails drive 18 times more revenue than broadcast emails.

As you can see, all the signs indicate that segmented email is the much better way to go.

So, Why Aren’t More Marketers Leveraging Segmentation?

This all isn’t to say segmentation doesn’t come without its challenges. Remember how we mentioned that 52% of marketers say they have a great need to improve email database segmentation? Well, that’s probably because it’s not easy.

Nailing down your business’ buyer personas and the various stages in your sales cycle is just the beginning. When it comes to the number of different ways you can slice and dice an email list, the possibilities are endless. And without sophisticated marketing software like HubSpot to help you actually do this segmentation (did you hear we just launched an awesome new set of email marketing tools?), segmentation is too often something a marketer only dreams of.

Furthermore, in order to craft compelling email messages for each of your targeted segments, you also need the content to back it up. This means you need to spend the time to tailor your content and offers to suit each of your segments, and we all know how time-consuming content creation can be.

But who ever said effective marketing was easy? Segmentation is becoming more and more of a must-have in the world of email marketing, and the marketers who take advantage of it and do it well are reaping higher click-through rates, better deliverability, and generating more revenue from their email sends than their non-segmenting counterparts.

Think it might be time to start experimenting with email segmentation?

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You’re in business because you provide solutions. You’ve got answers. You’re the (wo)man with the plan. Let’s take a look at some of our customers, for example. AmeriFirst Home Mortgage helps home buyers find the right mortgage for them. In The News helps businesses memorialize their accomplishments with custom lamination and engraving. HubSpot helps marketers get an end-to-end view of their marketing activities to determine which channels provide the most ROI.

Notice how none of those explanations of what each company provides focused on the specific product or service? That’s because the product or service isn’t what makes a lead want to be your customer — it’s a solution to their problem that people care about. Your business is successful because it provides some solution, but if your campaigns seem to be flailing a bit, it may be because you haven’t applied that problem-solving principle to your marketing.

Not yet, anyway. This post will give you plenty of ideas to implement that will make your marketing more solution-oriented. That way, your prospects see you as a helpful problem solver they actually like and trust … not just a peddler of your product or service!

How to Inject Problem Solving Into Your Marketing

1) Create how-to blog content. As most inbound marketers know, success starts with content; so begin by writing blog posts that solve peoples’ problems! If you’ll allow me to get meta for a minute, this very blog post about how to be a problem solver is, well, solving a problem. People reading this presumably want to know how to inject more problem solving into their marketing, and this post is providing solutions to that problem. When writing your how-to blog content, focus on providing actionable advice. There’s already a ton of content out there that says a lot without really saying anything at all. But you want your content to give you credibility and authority; you can do that by making sure your reader walks away from the blog post with at least one thing he or she can do to be better.

2) Create lead gen offers that make people’s lives easier. Helpful content doesn’t end with blog posts, nor does successful marketing. You need to convert that blog traffic into leads, and if you’ve written some amazing content, your readers will probably want to learn more from you. Create lead gen content that will help your readers be more successful — at work, at home, whatever it is your customers need. For example, HubSpot has released tons of ebooks that show marketers how to do something, like set up their Facebook page timeline, for instance. Or perhaps you’d like to create some templates for your audience, like we did with our downloadable leads waterfall graph that we encourage all marketers to use. If you’re looking for some inspiration, we’ve written an entire guide to creating lead gen offers quickly.

3) Source problems to feed your content. I’m asking you to create all this content, but where will the topics come from? You should be speaking with the people on the front lines of your business on a daily basis — employees working in Services, Support, and Sales hear questions from prospects and customers during every conversation. Ask all employees to document these questions and problems and send them your way to feed your solution-oriented content. And if any of them fancy themselves a writer, they can document their answers, too, for a guest spot on your blog! (Tip: As you write this content, be sure to keep other departments in the know. Sales, Services, and Support should be equipped with an arsenal of content they can send to their prospects and customers that answers their questions. This will not only establish trust and authority between employees and your prospects and customers, but for Sales, it could shorten the buying cycle, too.)

4) Leverage the brainpower of your community. Part of being a helpful, solution-oriented marketer is connecting people with content that solves their problems … regardless of the source. Look, nobody knows everything. You’re surrounded by people that have data, research, insights, and experiences from which your audience would benefit. Tap into that brainpower, and be the one to share it with the rest of your community! We’re doing this now, in fact, with our push for our social media community to contribute ideas for our next blog post.

Want your Twitter username FT’d on the greatest list of marketing pet peeves? Respond with what annoys YOU! Follow us to hear the best ones.

— HubSpot (@HubSpot) May 14, 2012

Not only is this an excellent way to build strong relationships with others in your industry, but it also shows that you’re committed to providing answers for people regardless of the source.

5) Monitor and respond to social media inquiries. Speaking of social media, your active presence on social sites can contribute to your reputation as a thought leader, problem solver, and all around awesome business. This means more than just monitoring your Twitter stream for questions you can answer, though. Think outside of the box a bit! Visit places like LinkedIn Answers, Quora, and industry forums to see what problems people are having. Take a look at how HubSpotter Meghan Keaney Anderson improved both HubSpot’s clout, and her own, by answering Scott’s question on Quora. Take special note of how she linked back to a blog post HubSpot wrote that answers his question, too!

 

 

6) Optimize for long-tail search. Long-tail search is a critical component of any well-rounded SEO and content strategy, and it provides tremendous opportunity for marketers that are looking to be more solution-oriented with their content. That’s because many long-tail keywords are centered around interrogative queries, like “what makes a good blog post,” or “where should I host my blog,” or “how to start a blog.” Not only does centering content and SEO around long-tail keywords of this nature give you another avenue to assert yourself as a helpful marketer instead of a pushy salesperson, but it also helps you achieve higher search rankings quicker, and with a more niche market than short-tail and head terms allow. And if the keywords provide solutions to evergreen problems — in other words, problems that your audience will always face — your website will also enjoy ongoing organic traffic as a result of your high ranking for these long-tail queries!

7) Nurture leads with emails based on their problems. Now that you have all of this fantastic, solution-oriented content, you should use it to nurture your leads! After all, you can’t have a successful lead nurturing program without a full arsenal of content. Consider segmenting your lists and creating lead nurturing tracks that address specific buyer problems. You can identify the problems right in your landing page forms. Take a look at the optional field we at HubSpot include on almost all of our landing pages to allow us to do this type of nurturing.

 

 

By asking leads to identify their biggest marketing challenge, we get a better idea of what problems our audience face so we can create content to address it, and simultaneously target prospects in our email sends according to the problems they need an answer to.

Create apps and tools that help solve a problem. Tools and apps — especially free ones — are mutually beneficial for businesses and their audience. Let’s take one of HubSpot’s free tools, Marketing Grader, as an example. Marketing Grader helps solve a problem many marketers face … they don’t know how good their marketing is. When you enter your website into the free tool, you get a comprehensive report that tells you not just an arbitrary grade, but also actionable advice on exactly what areas of your marketing need improvement, and how you can do it. It even provides links to content that helps solve your problems. So ask yourself: “Self, is there a tool or mobile app I could develop to help my leads and customers?” If there’s a problem people in your industry face, make your business the one that solves it!

How do you inject problem solving into your marketing to gain the trust and loyalty of your prospects?

Image credit: Tomasz Stasiuk

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TopRank receives a lot of value from having me speak at conferences but you don’t have to be a speaker to realize a positive return from events. Small, large online or offline, there are numerous ways to optimize and maximize your return on conference involvment both in the short and long term.

If your company is considering whether to send you to events because of uncertain return or benefits, show them the following list.

In fact, if I were running a conference, I’d make sure these tips are shared with attendees, sponsors and speakers alike.

The first step in getting more value out of event attendance is to understand the “why”. What benefit that brings value to the business can you get from attending conferences, workshops, webinars and educational meet/tweetups? I like to say that I can “make money” at any conference. The reason why is that I am specifically aware of multiple ways to create value with events – beyond simply prospecting for new business. Here are 5 key benefits you can create from event participation and goals you can set for each:

1. Grow Your Network

There is no substitute for a quality network. It takes time to grow a personal network and if you’re advocating for your company, then community development is also ongoing. Attending events online and off are essential for productive networking that can result in a variety of valuable outcomes including:

• Recruiting
• Collecting competitive intelligence
• Vendor and consultant sourcing
• Partner sourcing
• Prospecting for new customers.

When you attend events, set goals for the kinds of contacts you want to make. Go so far as to make a list of people you want to meet if they’re particularly important to your goals. Initiate new connections with qualified prospects, marketing partners, vendors to outsource to and job candidates. At the same time, reinforce existing connections with contacts in your social networking pipeline. Each day, tally them up and plan how you will follow up. Follow on Twitter, connected on LinkedIn. Share useful tips, links and info that are relevant to your interactions with them. Give to get, but have a purpose and a goal for the connection.

Make sure you have goals and a purpose to your online and event networking. If you leave it to chance, you’re leaving a LOT of value on the table – for your competition.

2. Get Smarter. Repeat.

There are numerous benefits to attending conference sessions. The obvious is to hear smart speakers give presentations on important topics with useful tips. Sometimes speakers deliver on that promise and sometimes they don’t.

Don’t let bad conference content get in the way of getting smarter.

Pay attention to how the speaker gives their presentation and observe how the audience responds. You might think the information isn’t useful to you, but if the attendees are leaning forward, writing notes and holding up their phones and ipads to take pictures of the presentation slides, then the speaker is connecting.

You can benefit from understanding how the information is presented as much as from the actual tips. The format, sequence, design and presentation of information that connects is a model you can leverage for your own purposes: whether it’s speaking at a conference or event yourself or communicating and persuading people internally.

Planning your conference session attendance is essential. Think of how many sessions will you attend and how will you capture the information presented. Will you take notes on an iPad, laptop or (gasp) on paper? Will you take photos or video (where allowed)? Do you know where to get a copy of the speakers’ presentations? Introduce yourself to speakers and ask them a key question on video so you can review later and share with your team.

When meeting new people, discuss the sessions with them. Compare notes – it’s a great way to network and to get other opinions. Before the conference, make a grid or a plan for which specific sessions you’ll be attending. Often times, there is not much time between sessions and the difference between getting a good seat and standing room only can be a matter of minutes and you might miss out on the session entirely because rooms can fill up.

3. Curate and Create Content

Content Marketing is hotter than ever but sourcing content is probably one of the biggest challenges for companies getting into the content publishing realm. The good news is that events from Twitter chats to webinars to keynote presentations and breakout sessions all provide opportunities to capture, curate and even create content. Some examples include:

• Liveblogging – Transcribe what the speakers say word for word. Listen for key quotes or pieces of information and make a “list post” around a specific topic. Pre-write an article about the session topic and fill in stats and quotes from the speakers.
• Interviews – Reach out to speakers in advance and collect tips from their presentations as a way to help boost attendance to their session. Shoot video interviews of speakers or other smarties at the conference. Record podcast interviews with the same people. Capture single tips on video from a large number of people and compile into one video. Go to exhibitor booths and ask them for a 30 second pitch on video and compile them. Survey attendees on what they like best, tips they’ve heard, etc into a compilation video. With video, you might want to get sign-offs. Also, non-speakers may be reluctant.
• Journal – Keep notes and write a summary of key points from the day and publish like a journal entry. Link to other bloggers that are publishing liveblog posts at the same event.
• Curate – Use a tool like storify to curate the buzz of the conference. You don’t even need to be at the event to do this if a conference hashtag is used consistently.
• Track Your Own Buzz – If you are speaking, make sure someone from your team is tracking mentions of you, your company and topic on social streams like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+. Monitor any liveblogging of your presentations as well. Give people an incentive to liveblog your sessions too. If anyone liveblogs one of my presentations, I will send them a copy of Optimize (for example). Curate those mentions into a roundup post on your company newsroom.

Think about how you can leverage your conference experience to create new content for your company blog, articles, or process documentation. Set goals for how many content objects (blog posts, articles, videos, tweets, images) you’ll create each day. Organize what you will capture, with who and with what devices. Plan where you’ll publishing this content and when as well.  For curation, compile presentations posted to Slideshare, interviews others have posted to YouTube and liveblog posts covering interesting sessions – then add your own commentary as the icing on the cake.

The content you capture and create can supply a company blog with numerous posts and show clients, staff and prospective clients that you are on top of what’s happening in the industry.

4. Share the Smarts: Knowledge Transfer With Your Team

The explicit purpose of attending conferences is to hear industry experts share advice and insights into topics that your business can benefit from. Collecting actionable tips, statistics and other useful information form conferences to share with your team, clients and other groups in your organization can multiply the value of one person attending an event. If multiple people attend, the value can be even greater.

To make knowledge transfer from conference content work, it’s important to create a process for information capture, synthesis and distribution.

• Capture: Target specific speakers and sessions. Write questions you want answered and if the presentations do not contain those answers then pursue subject matter expert speakers to ask them directly. Capture information in text, audio, video and image. No one ever comes back from an event thinking they took too many photos. Maybe the wrong photos, but not to many. Also, be aware of conference policies on video and image capture.
• Synthesis: When you formulate questions, have specific applications for your business in mind. When you get the answers, filter the information in a way that will be practical and useful when it is shared – vs. all theoretical. Discuss the information and tips collected with fellow attendees to filter out what’s most useful.
• Distribution: Have a plan for how you will present the useful tactics, insights, statistics and case studies with your co-workers, clients and other interested parties.  You could write a report, you could create a presentation to give live or via webinar, you could compile video clips and images to narration. Individual tips could be saved on an internal knowledge base blog according to category. You could have a post-conference brown bag lunch discussion or a more formal presentation. There are many different options, but have them in mind before the conference to increase the likelihood they will actually happen and in an effective way.

Knowing you will be required to present the information you are gaining at a conference with the team back at the office can helps you focus on takeaways and practical interpretations of what’s being presented, instead of what you don’t like or the lacking presentation skills of the presenter.

5. Optimize the Marketing Value of Events

For nearly all events, I like to break things up into pre-event, during and after.  You could actually further distinguish near-after and long-after as well as a recurring component if the event is held at regular intervals, like many are on an annual basis.  Many conference speakers rely on the event to do the marketing. That’s a big fail.

Here are a few tips before, during and after the event to gain more attendees, more media coverage and post-event value:

Before the event:

• Write headlines, descriptions, tags and make trackable short URLs
• Pre-write tweets, updates and decide on a hashtag
• Submit your session to event listing sites, create events on Facebook and LinkedIn
• Create a contest or buzz around your presentation to inspire others to tell their networks
• Issue an optimized press release
• Schedule interviews with media attending the event and/or local media
• Connect with other speakers in advance
• Create a teaser for your presentation
• Announce your event attendance through email and your social channels
• When you meet people before your presentation, don’t be shy about sharing when you are speaking
• Create a check-in notice on Foursquare inviting people to attend your session

During the event:

• Create content the audience can participate with. I like to take photos of the audience and post to our Facebook page so they can tag themselves.
• Use tweetable, shareable content in your presentation
• Give something away to motivate desired behaviors like asking questions
• Always include a report or fulfillment piece in your thank you page
• Have someone on your team monitoring tweets and buzz during your presentation. Interact as appropriate

After the event:

• Curate buzz about the presentation into a blog post and/or newsroom post
• Follow up on questions asked and fulfillment deliverables
• Connect with new contacts through appropriate social channels
• Thank the conference for having you
• If you were on a panel, thank the panelists and moderator
• Thank any livebloggers that covered your session
• Use media coverage from the event in your newsroom, corporate email and other communications
• Follow up!!!!!

This should probably have been turned into an ebook on the topic, so congratulations on making it to the end of the post!  Heck, maybe we will make it into an ebook and add a few forms, checklists and examples.  In the meantime, share this list of tips with those in your organization that hold the purse strings for your event attendance. Try one or two of these tips for your next conference and share what you’ve done to get more value out of event attendance.

As always, if you like these tips, be sure to get your copy of Optimize for a deep dive into an integrated approach to optimizing your online marketing.

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This is a guest post written by Gini Dietrich, founder and CEO of Chicago-based integrated marketing communication firm Arment Dietrich, and Geoff Livingston, an author and marketing strategist who serves as VP, strategic partnerships for Razoo. Gini and Geoff are authors of the new multichannel marketing book, Marketing in the Round.

Online, we often talk about listening to our customers on social channels to help make content decisions in marketing. Moving to a fully integrated marketing picture for enterprise, using social media to compliment traditional market and product development research only makes sense. Read the rest of this entry »