Professional Marketers

Is your email marketing campaign failing you? Are you finding yourself nearing the spam folder or being blocked by your customers? Here are a few tips to make you a more successful marketer with your content in one of your most important marketing channels, email.

First thing is first, in order to send the right content to your subscribers aka “customers” you want them to exist first right? Make sure you’re regularly doing an inventory of your email list. Choose the dual “opt in” option which not only has first time subscribers sign up but confirms they want to be receiving emails from you. This helps with weeding out the potential “fake” email address spammers might use to get block your emails from going to customers and ending up in their junk or spam folders, something you don’t want.

Now that your list is being monitored and cleared when necessary, what are you, first before we continue let me mention that content is key? The subject of your email is obviously the most important, being the first thing your subscribers see. Don’t fill it with to much clutter or lengthy paragraphs but instead, grab their attention. State exactly what it is that you want them to read about when they open it. Make it clear and concise, almost like a call to action. Lastly engage your shoppers. Offering something exciting and attention grabbing. When dealing with personas, imaging being in your shoppers shoes, what would grab your attention? Similar to what you’ll read about next, in instant offers with sign-up, grabbing your new, potential and don’t forget, existing customers with a free shipping or discount option. Of course always say what you mean. If you’re offering a discount or promotion, offer it and make sure the content in your email matches what the customer clicks and the landing page they’re then taken to.

An Online Retailer?

Are you trying to appeal to someone visiting your site for the first time? Try offering discount promotions to entice them to subscribe. An offering of 10 to 20% off their first purchase will increase buyers aptitude to potentially making a purchase vs customers that simply visited to browse your site.

Rather than aiming for high conversions, are you trying to Generate Leads?

Lead generating almost sounds redundant at first, well of course we want to generate leads so why is it important. It’s important because generating leads isn’t just about converting a sale immediately. It’s about building a long lasting, informative relationship with your customer so that one day when and if they’re reading to purchase what they desire, they think of you immediately. This includes tips and tidbits that continue to keep your customers engaged through the customer relationship cycle.

Search Engine 

Like lead generators, as a search engine  you’ll want to keep your customers engaged by sending them regular emails, again keeping you at the top of their minds when searching for products or services.

I’ve just only a few of content options available for email marketers. Others include B2B & online media. Once you’ve got your content figured out, timing & segmentation are key. According to this weeks text in chapter 8, segmenting your group of customers with the types of email content you provide is smart and a efficient way to send ongoing information to the right customer. You wouldn’t want to advertise to a customer that buys purses from you to, an ATV. Segmenting your email groups through software, past purchases or test are the way to go.

Lastly emails can be sent after a purchase is made. Aside from traditional type, broadcasting emails, transactional ones that thank the customer for their purchase, inform them of their tracking and deliver time frames and enticing them to purchase again with similar product emails, discount coupons for future purchase and emails that let them know they’ve left something in their carts, encouraging them to continue checkout are all methods to entice conversion and clicks through emails.

If anything can be learned, its a lot of information, but taking these few steps are a great way and start to increase the percentage of conversion rate you get from email advertisements.

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How Dangerous is the Current Model of Online Advertising for Society?

How the internet is shaping our biases and the dangers associated with the current online model of advertising has consumers concerned on what and how they’re shopping and what and how they buy.  With the continued advancement of technology its changing our direct buying behavior. Do you think this is a problem? Here’s why it might be.

On a scale of 1 to 5, 5 being the most dangerous, I’d rate the current online marketing model at a 3, only because we as consumers have a chance to protect ourselves from these online markets and swaying the way we think, in what we need to buy. What happened to offering our customers a product, convincing them why they should trust us when all it seems that happening is trickery.

I think a code of ethics to back a moral operating system, like mentioned in the Ted Talk given by Damon Horowitz, needs to be created for marketers to follow in order to protect themselves but to instill faith in their consumers when buying their products online, they outline the following:

1. Informative: Online marketers need to be transparent with people and communicate their messages effectively. Why do you really want me to click on your ad or buy your product?

2. Regulation: Companies should continually and consistently monitor the practices of their online marketers presence.

3. Social Media: Being one of the prime dividers and sources information, social media sites should be held accountable, like marketers, for what they post inaccurately, forcing people to believe false information.

4. People: We as consumers must stand up in the face of false marketing practices and voice our opinions.

5. Civil Law: State and federal laws should prohibit marketers from praying on isn’t consumers and force penalties upon those you don’t adhere to the guidelines. Similar to how the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) and like groups does.

6. Community: It takes a joint community effort among people to stand up for whats right in the face of marketers.

7. Consumer: Marketers should place themselves in their consumers shoes and ask themselves if their tactics would be OK for a friend or family member of theirs.

8. Companies: Companies need to and marketers alike need to keep each other honest, most importantly in the tactics they use against consumers and call each other out of propagated content.

Sources:

  • https://www.ted.com/talks/damon_horowitz#t-277812
  • https://www.ted.com/talks/zeynep_tufekci_we_re_building_a_dystopia_just_to_make_people_click_on_ads#t-35232
  • https://blog.ed.ted.com/2017/01/24/how-to-protect-your-online-privacy/
  • http://digitalmarketingmagazine.co.uk/digital-marketing-features/what-have-ethics-got-to-do-with-digital-marketing/4031
  • https://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images?p=danger+imaghe&fr=mcafee&imgurl=http%3A%2F%2Fmoziru.com%2Fimages%2Fdanger-clipart-warning-sign-3.png#id=-1&iurl=http%3A%2F%2Fmoziru.com%2Fimages%2Fdanger-clipart-warning-sign-3.png&action=click