It's the grand old way of getting your website noticed online, but despite its long-in-the-tooth reputation, the effectiveness of email outreach is showing no signs of slowing down – despite what some experts might have us believe. An old-fashioned email campaign can seem like the loneliest method of promotion available in the 21st Century. It's not unusual to write thousands of outreach emails knowing full well that well over half of your messages will never even be read. Neil Patel believes that a reasonable expectation from an outreach campaign is to get around five links for every 100 emails sent, amounting to a success rate of 5%. Meaning that 95% of the time you spend composing messages and hitting that 'send' button will be a fruitless endeavor. So why do we bother? In a world where cold emailing is heavily frowned upon, and a third of all emails are opened based solely on whether the recipient likes the subject line or not, you could be forgiven for thinking that it might all be just a waste of time and resources. However, this isn't the case. Email outreach is an extremely powerful tool when correctly utilized, but effective email etiquette is a minefield – and many people struggle to run engaging campaigns. So it's for this reason that I've decided to offer a list of the seven biggest trials and tribulations that face email marketers today. 1. Making Sure your Campaign isn't too SpammyIt's the first and perhaps the biggest point to make. Absolutely nobody wants to be on the receiving end of a cold email. They're annoying, irritating, frustrating and every other synonym of awful. Think about cold calls – where you pick up the phone and listen to somebody with no idea of whom you are speaking from a script with the intent of getting you to give their business money. It's soulless and often insulting. The cold email is just that in written form. Like with many websites that aim to expand their network, we try to avoid the risks that come with cold emailing by adding a personal touch to our campaigns. It's a tricky business because personalization takes time, but if you treat your target audience with respect, it can pay dividends. In a bid to reach out to people personally, while keeping our quantity of outreach emails high, we've constructed a template to customize based on the individual we're contacting. This enables us to utilize a personal touch that impersonal general marketing emails are devoid of. Here is the one we're using:
As you can see above, we're using a few personal touches.
2. Nailing the Subject LineThe importance of the subject line can't be emphasized enough. This is your big hook to get the recipients to read on – and there are plenty of theories behind the recipe for an irresistible heading. Convince and Convert state that 69% of recipients report emails as spam based solely on the subject line, while 35% open emails because of the allure of the heading. These are substantial figures that underline the importance of the few words that pop up first in your recipients' inboxes – so nailing your subject line is imperative. So what's the secret formula behind the perfect email subject? Throwing their two cents into the ring is Adestra, which believes that the use of words like 'Alert', 'Daily' and 'Free Delivery' bring marketers the best responses. However, our outreach campaigns try to show honesty without the use of superfluous superlatives – our subject line is simple: 'Typical outreach email' shows that we have no interest in click-baiting our intended audience. It also indicates that we have enough faith in our service that we don't need to rely on tricks of the trade to lure prospective customers in. That being said, email subjects will vary on a case-by-case basis. Hence, we'd suggest to A/B test different subject lines to see which one performs better. In our tests, 'Typical outreach email' performed much better, improving an open rate by roughly 20-30%. 3. Optimizing your Open RateYou could be marketing the best product or service on the web, but if your open rate is lacking then it means that your recipients aren't interested enough to even look beyond the subject line of your emails. According to research conducted by MailChimp, the average open rate varies between 20 – 25% – depending on the industry you're in. This is unsurprising and disappointing in equal measure, but it's also a great benchmark to incorporate a bit of trial and error into your campaign. All sorts of factors can influence your open rate, from the aforementioned subject line, to the relevance of your target audience, to the time of day that you send your emails out (no, really – RingLead have compiled stats that suggest the sweet spot for posting outreach mail is between 2 pm and 5 pm on a Tuesday afternoon). Premium services like reply.io, buzzstream and outreach.io not only offer the opportunity to personalize automatic outreach emails, but also provide very useful stats on open rates and click-through rates, allowing you to monitor what aspects of your campaign is working better than others and giving you the chance to fine-tune your messages. For instance, here are some open rate stats for our latest outreach campaign: In all honestly, 71% open rate is pretty decent (even our regular email subscribers aren't that active). 4. Sussing out Whom to TargetFiguring out whom to target is risky business – if you pick the wrong recipients, then you're in danger of wasting valuable time. There are many great services that can scout out relevant email addresses to aid your campaign, and hunter.io is a good example that offers a free email search engine (albeit with limited usage for non-premium members). A good alternative to hunter.io is Voila Norbert. To find an email address, simply enter the name of the person and a domain name of the company they work at. Although the information isn't 100% accurate all the time, this way of finding the right email address can save a lot of time, especially if that particular domain has hundreds of registered emails. 5. Finding the actual recipientsIt pays to be attentive in finding which website staff to email – if you believe your blog has a resource that you feel should be added to a website's list, you could contact the author of an existing article in which you believe your site would make a good reference point. However, a generic ask for a link would not bring the numbers, as it's likely to be regarded as spam. Answer the following questions before asking for an inclusion of your link:
If only 2-3 of these questions fall under the category of 'No' or 'Negative' then it's not worth the effort outreaching – simply because your email will appear spammy. You need to be observant – if you're targeting an author of an article that you feel your work would benefit as a reference, be sure to check whether the author is a guest poster or a member of staff for the business. If it's the former, you'd be better off contacting the editor – though getting in touch with the original content producer may lead to your work being linked in future publications. Many websites now shy away from publishing emails of editors and content producers in favor of using website contact forms, but if you're looking to get your posts or resources noticed, the best way of having your message read by those who matter is to find the details of the content producers themselves. 6. Keeping on Top of Your Follow-UpsIt can be easy to neglect a follow up to your outreach email. If the recipient didn't want to reply the first time, why would they bother a second time? While chasing a less responsive target may seem counter-intuitive, it works as a great simple call to action and indicates to them that you're serious about showing off your work. Our follow up template is a simplified reminder of our original email – our intention is to drop a subtle reminder that we have a great product that would benefit the user and their readership:
We use the reply function on our initial email for ease of reference for the recipient, while including a transparent subject line informing our target that we're simply following up to an original email. It's important to refrain from trigger-happy follow-ups. Becoming a nuisance outreacher risks alienating your audience and even damaging your reputation. Therefore, we wouldn't suggest going for more than 2 follow-ups after the initial outreach email. 7. Managing the Scale of OutreachThe business of outreach is a long-winded one that carries no guarantee of success. You could invest days of hard work into emailing 1000s of recipients and receive no interest in return. Luckily you can maximize your chances of success and minimize the time spent chasing poor leads by doing a little bit of market research. Try to understand who your target would be and whether they would have any affiliates or backlinks that would also benefit from utilizing your work or service. It's better to have 100 quality recipients than 1,000 poorly researched ones – this is how we got 20-25% success rate of our latest email outreach campaign. We like to run tidy outreach campaigns, so take the preemptive measure of identifying leads to investigate to assess whether associated websites would benefit from using our work. If we feel that they would, we add their information to our spreadsheet and invite them to take a look at a relevant piece that would make a good reference point. ConclusionSo there you have it – with some good prep and honest marketing, the age-old slog of email outreach doesn't have to be such a pain. As long as you're outreaching to a relevant personal with a resource that can potentially bring value to that website's audience while keeping your emails reasonably personal (without being too creepy), you should see a positive return for the time spent. Now it's time to get out there and put your website on the map!
About KissmetricsKissmetrics combines behavioral analytics with email automation. Our software tracks actions of your users across multiple devices allowing you to analyze, segment and engage your customers with automatic, behavior-based emails in one place. We call it Customer Engagement Automation. Get, keep and grow more customers with Kissmetrics.
About the Author: Dmytro is a Head Wizard at Solvid, a creative inbound marketing & software development agency in London, UK. His work has been featured and mentioned in a wide range of publication, including The Next Web, Business2Community, Huff Post, Crazy Egg, Sitepoint, SEMRush, and more.
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I've always said that every website should have a blog. Think about how long you're currently spending to write a blog post. I'm willing to bet it takes you at least a few hours to create each. Sometimes longer posts take up to six or even eight hours. Where do you find the time to focus on other aspects of your business? I struggled with this concept as well when I first started blogging. It seemed like there weren't enough hours in the day to get everything done. Then I realized that your content doesn't always need to be created from scratch. Think about it. Chances are, your content isn't some new or revolutionary breakthrough in the industry. You're writing about something that's been discussed before. Sure, you'll put your unique spin, voice, and personal experiences in there, but ultimately there are plenty of similar topics on the web. Spending your entire day writing blogs is not an efficient use of your time. Instead, I'll teach you some content curation skills that will help you write content faster. David Kadavy from The Medium was able to learn different tricks to improve his productivity. Look at the impact this had on his published word count between 2015 and 2016. If you follow my advice, your productivity will skyrocket as well. Here's how you can use content curation to effectively manage your content strategy. Make sure you're utilizing visualsIf you've been reading my blogs for a while, you know I'm a firm believer in using lots of pictures, screenshots, and other infographics to illustrate my points. That's no secret. But there's a reason behind this strategy. Adding pictures to your blog posts makes it easier for people to read. It breaks up the content and grabs the reader's attention. There are also plenty of great image resources on the Internet. While creating a unique visual or infographic is great, it's not necessary. Instead, use someone else's image, making sure to give credit to the original source. This will save you a lot of time because you won't have to create these images yourself. Don't be shy when you're adding visuals to your content. Images make it easier for readers to process your point. See what I mean?I Fittingly, I'm using an image about the importance of visuals to prove my point. But seriously, think about how easy it was for you to process and retain what you just saw. Visuals also make it easier for you to put words on the page. Here's what I mean. Once you insert an image in your post, it gives you something to talk about. Explain the image to your readers. It will guide you in the right direction instead of just coming up with content out of thin air. You're much less likely to suffer from writer's block if you always have something to talk about. Here are some additional tips about using images within your content:
All of these pointers will help you create content faster and more efficiently. Start with an outline, and stick to your planNever start creating content from a blank page. Psychologically, it's intimidating. But more importantly, it's not an efficient use of your time. Sure, as you start writing, you'll need to do some research along the way. But it helps significantly if you get some of that out of the way before you get started. Here's what you need to do. For example, let's say you are writing a post about the best ways to find a new job. Start with a Google search. Now you can create a list of the 28 best ways to do this. Keep in mind, there will likely be some overlap among the pages. You're not the only one using curation strategies to build content. But when it's all said and done, you should still be able to come up with at least 10, 15, or maybe even 20 different ways on your list. The key is planning this out ahead of time. Open all these pages in a new tab. Each time you see something you want to include in your article, add it to the outline. Quickly add a few notes to develop further when you get to that point of your writing process. For example, you may talk about a specific job board site on your list. So a note could be “insert statistic about the job placement success rates of this site.” Then you can do that research when you get there. This strategy also makes it really easy if you're aiming for a certain word count per post. Let's say you want all of your posts to be roughly 2,500 words. If you determine you'll have 15 different sections based on your list, now you can aim for each section to be about 165 words. It keeps you on track for your goal. That way you're not frantically trying to come up with a 500 word conclusion or end up reaching your desired word count after your second subheading. Repurpose content on different channelsFor the most part, I've been discussing these curation strategies as they relate to blogging, but let me clear the air. Your content doesn't stop with blogs and articles. One of my favorite ways to repurpose content is through YouTube videos. I'll give you an example based on my own blog and YouTube channel. Here's a post I wrote that was a big hit. It's got 137 comments (and counting) at the moment. What did I do? I repurposed some of the main points and made it into a YouTube tutorial. Here's the link to my YouTube video. You don't always have to use content from other people for your curation strategy. Instead, take your existing content. You can also use this technique on social media platforms. Think about Twitter. You have only so many characters to use. Rather than racking your brain to come up with the most clever tweet on the planet, refer to your posts that already have thousands of words. Take lines directly from that content, and post them on social media. It will save you a ton of time, and you'll be able to focus on other aspects of social media management, like responding to customer comments. That's a much more efficient use of your time. You don't need to be the first person to break a storyHow many times have you seen a breaking news story, only to discover that it's inaccurate? I see it all the time, so I'm sure you have as well. That's because all these news outlets want to be first. But first isn't always best. You don't want to develop a reputation for being an unreliable source. Furthermore, the first person to break a story may not have a chance to include lots of relevant information. Let's use a hypothetical example of a local car accident. The first person to break the story may just say, “car accident on X street at Y time.” But they don't have any other details to report. So if you wait a little bit, you can newsjack the story. Wait for other sources to report new information. Now you can write about other factors like the:
You can see where I'm going with this. Being the first one to release new information doesn't get you a gold star or sticker. Instead, it limits your resources and the amount of information you can talk about. Curate content from the comments section of your blogYou should always be checking the comments on your page. Respond to these users. It's a great way to help with your search engine optimization, but it also keeps your readers actively engaged. You may find some valuable information here as well. People who comment on your page may be doing so to promote their own websites or blogs, but their points may be viable. Take a look at what people have to say. It might just be included in your next post. Send a newsletter with a roundup of your weekly contentAgain, you don't always need to use someone else's thoughts or ideas to generate new content. Sometimes the best curation source is your own writing. If you've got a weekly or monthly newsletter, it's a great opportunity for you to promote content you've already published. Moz does this with their monthly top 10 newsletters. Instead of coming up with something new or unique for their monthly newsletter, they just repurpose the hard work they've already done. You can use this strategy as well. Write a weekly roundup post that summarizes the content you've already covered during the week. Work smarter, not harder. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying to just copy and paste your existing content into a new article. That's a quick way to lose readers. But you can just take something old and put a new spin on it. Update new statistics. Add personal stories or a learning experience you've come across since the content was originally posted. This will make your life a lot easier, and you'll spend less time trying to come up with new ideas. ConclusionYour time is valuable. Instead of spending endless hours each day trying to come up with new content to write about, you can use curation strategies to be more efficient. Remember, content curation doesn't just apply to your blog. You can also use these methods to help produce content on social media. Research showed that finding and posting content on social media was the most time consuming aspect of this process. It doesn't have to be. Use lots of visuals in your content. Rather than creating original infographics, use ones you find on the Internet. Make sure you give credit to the source. Images make it easier for readers to process and retain information as well. Don't start writing from scratch. Build an outline using ideas you find from a Google search. This will make things easier for you to write naturally and stick to a plan. All of the curation doesn't need to come from someone else's pages or ideas. Repurpose your existing content. Take a top performing blog post and turn it into a YouTube tutorial. Use phrases from articles on your site as social media posts. Think twice before you try to be the first person to break a news story. Instead, wait until all the information gets released. You'll have more reliable sources and information to use. Refer to the comments section of your blog if you're looking for new ideas. Use recent posts to come up with a weekly newsletter or round up blog. If you follow these strategies, you'll spend less time creating content and more time focusing on other areas of your business. What kind of content curation strategies have helped you spend less time writing blogs each day? 9-to-5 jobs are never truly 9-5. There's always something that comes up that needs to get done. ASAP. No questions asked. Thank your boss for that one. Actually, don't. That's probably not a good idea. But running a business is a whole new level of busy. Being a business owner in today's world is damn near impossible. Want to have a normal work-life balance? Good joke. Need to take a vacation to refresh your brain? Sure. If you're okay with a business-level apocalypse. Family asking you to go apple picking this weekend? It isn't happening. As a small business owner, you've got to run every single department, constantly making sure everything's running smoothly. That means creating new content, generating big ideas, speaking with clients, landing sales, checking emails, and running marketing reports. The list goes on. You simply don't have enough time in the day to complete all of these tasks. You can't scale your business to new heights if you ignore any of them though. They need to get done. Your business and livelihood literally depend on it. So what do you do? You need to automate. Put boring, tedious, time-consuming tasks on autopilot to save yourself hours every week. Marketing automation isn't easy, but it's necessary if you want to scale your business without dying from sleep deprivation. Here are the reasons why you need marketing automation and three tips for small business owners to automate and scale. How marketing automation can be your saving graceMarketing automation is just what it sounds like: automating marketing-based tasks. If you're not too familiar with marketing automation, here's a simple definition from Google: The goal is to save you time and increase your ROI. Automation does this by cutting out time spent on tedious processes. Meaning you're using less labor. And less labor means less overhead. But here's the biggest benefit of all: Less time spent working means more time looking at pugs. Yes, it's a real addiction that affects thousands every year (source: N/A). The more you can automate, the better. According to the latest data, the vast majority of marketers using marketing automation strategies are successful in achieving their objectives: Another study discovered that 50% of marketers using automation tools found either some increases or massive increases in leads: But effectively gaining leads isn't all that comes with marketing automation. It shouldn't even be the main focus. Sure, it's great that marketing automation can increase leads; don't get me wrong. That's amazing. But the goal here is to reduce time spent working without reducing profit. If you don't see a massive spike in leads, but you're cutting out 10 hours of marketing work each week with automation, you're effectively increasing profit by reducing labor. See what I mean? Even if the process doesn't generate 10x the amount of leads, you're spending less on labor. Less labor = less overhead = more profit. This is where people tend to go wrong. When you only focus on lead increases, you lose sight of profit and business growth. There are dozens of ways to achieve profit and growth that don't include landing more clients. And according to Aberdeen, companies using marketing automation can reduce their marketing-to-close time by 49%. That potentially means completing your work in half the time. If you're strapped for time and haven't slept in weeks, it's time to implement marketing automation. It will not only cut down on your working hours, but it'll also reduce your labor costs and help you generate more leads. Here are three great ways you can automate your growth today. 1. Automate your Content PromotionContent promotion is critical to business growth. When it comes to driving new organic traffic and leads, nothing competes with top-notch content. But having good content alone won't always drive traffic. So most marketers turn to promotion on social channels like Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. All of these platforms are an easy way to generate more leads. But it takes time. And lot's of it. In fact, Statista found that the majority of marketers are spending anywhere from one to 10 hours per week on social media. By scheduling content and loading it into your Buffer queue, you can quickly waste a few hours every week. Coming up with tweets and trying to squeeze your content into 140 characters sucks. Especially when you're re-sharing that post five different ways. Content sharing is a necessary process that's tedious and often time-consuming. On top of that, it doesn't always equate to a perfect return on investment. So it's sometimes thrown on the backburner. But that's not an option in today's world that's obsessed with social media. Thanks to marketing automation, it doesn't have to be. You can automatically share content from your blog to social media without lifting a finger. Here's how. Start by creating an account with Zapier. It's a popular automation tool that connects thousands of different SaaS tools that you use daily. Once you make an account, click on the explore tab and head to the “Marketers” section: Next, you should be able to locate the following “Zap,” or automation process: This is legitimately a lifesaver. If social media is the bane of your existence, you will save hours every week from trying to post and come up with new ideas. Click “Use This Zap” to start a new automation workflow. Next, you'll have to link your public blog RSS feed. If you're not sure what that is, you can set up an RSS feed in just a few minutes with this Google tutorial. After plugging in your feed URL, you can head to the “Action” step, which is where your social post will happen: All you have to do here is link your account, and you're good to go. So next time you publish a blog post on your site, Zapier will trigger this automation process and craft a tweet for you instantly. You can use this automation technique for all of your social channels. If you don't want to use an RSS feed, Zapier allows you to connect WordPress too: Ditch the hours spent crafting tweets and social posts. Automate it instead. 2. Only Focus on the Important EmailsIf you're like me, you spend too much time checking your email. It's obviously not because you want to, but simply because your inbox is jammed with emails. HubSpot's latest research shows us that marketers spend an average of nearly four hours just sending emails every week. That doesn't include checking your email. That's just typing and sending emails. Brutal. Email sucks. It's boring and often filled with junk. Yet, your iPhone is blowing up every two minutes from new emails, distracting you from the task at hand and killing your productivity. So, how do you only get notifications for the important stuff? How do you cut out those nearly 4 hours of sending emails each week? By automating your email process. In Zapier, you can set up an automation workflow that allows you to get notified only when specific people email you: Do you have important clients that email you frequently? Or even employees that ask time-sensitive questions? Then you need this. It's extremely easy to set up, too. Click “Use This Zap” to get started. Be sure to connect your Gmail account to Zapier and select your work email as the inbox. Next, you need to type in the search string that will trigger this process. For example, you can enter a few different search strings: Try using direct email addresses from clients, employees, or even another boss (like your significant other). You can also set up simple subject lines like “from:client name.” Once you save this automation workflow, you'll get pinged on Slack whenever an important email comes in. Meaning you can respond instantly and only spend time on the most important emails. So silence your email notifications, get some work done, and respond to the big-ticket clients. Stop spending four hours weekly on email with this automation tip. 3. Automate your lead flowCollecting leads is awesome. You just drove some quality traffic to your site and converted a few of them. Great. Now what? Do you download the data and upload it into a CRM? Or into your favorite email campaign platform? Lead flow processes can quickly become tedious and time-consuming. From downloading, formatting, and uploading lists, you could be spending hours on it weekly. Plus, if you don't follow up with a lead fast, you risk losing them. Automation is critical when it comes to perfecting a lead flow. From automatically sending nurturing emails to uploading lists without doing the work, you can quickly cut down your hours. One of my favorite Zapier integrations is adding new sales leads directly to a CRM or email platform without doing the actual work. You have much more important things to do besides uploading lists and creating new campaigns. With Zapier, you can actually automatically upload new leads from your site or social media ads directly into a CRM or email campaign. Zapier is great for this simply because of the integrations they offer. You can connect it with the top services like MailChimp, HubSpot, and more. If you use it, they most likely have it. This is one of my favorite Zaps: If you don't use Constant Contact or Gravity Forms, don't fret. You can connect nearly anything with Zapier. This is just an example of two integrations that are amazing. If you set up this Zap, you are automating the process of lead gen to nurturing without ever having to worry about it. With your favorite email platform, you can usually turn on settings to send newly-added leads a welcome email, too. Meaning you are virtually skipping these steps: Checking your leads, downloading the lead list, formatting it for your platform, uploading it, creating and sending a new campaign. That's potentially hours of work every week. If you're a lazy business owner like me, you can get tons of value from automating lead flows. ConclusionRunning a small business is one of the toughest ventures you can embark on. Besides kids. Don't get me started. From sleepless nights (or weeks) to chasing the ever elusive “work-life balance,” you're always strapped for time. Your plate is constantly full to the point where nothing gets done. Your workload exceeds human capabilities. And unless you've got the hookup on some new age brain transplant technology, you've only got one option: Automation. If you notice that tasks are piling up and taking up your time, you need to automate. Do you want your business to have any shot at scaling and achieving new growth? If so, you've gotta cut out the junk that, though necessary, doesn't directly contribute to growth. But you can't ignore it full scale. You just need to automate it, filter it out, or delete it entirely. Freeing up time doesn't just save you time. It can also help make you a lot more money in the long run. About KissmetricsKissmetrics combines behavioral analytics with email automation. Our software tracks actions of your users across multiple devices allowing you to analyze, segment and engage your customers with automatic, behavior-based emails in one place. We call it Customer Engagement Automation. Get, keep and grow more customers with Kissmetrics.
About the Author: Brad Smith is the founder of Codeless, a B2B content creation company. Frequent contributor to Kissmetrics, Unbounce, WordStream, AdEspresso, Search Engine Journal, Autopilot, and more. Typically, when companies look to improve their conversion rates, they focus on their CTA buttons or value propositions. Businesses also like to A/B test certain elements of their pages to see which versions convert the best. Don't get me wrong: these are all valid ways to improve conversions. But something that's sometimes overlooked is the simplicity of the website. Far too often I see websites try to jam too much information into a very small space. The navigation is confusing, and it's overwhelming for anyone viewing the site. If this is starting to sound like the layout of your website, it could be the reason why your conversion rates are unsatisfactory. Even if you don't think your design is too cluttered, there's always room for improvement. A slight rise in conversions could mean a significant increase in your annual revenue. Below, I outline some reasons why simplicity can optimize your conversion rates. You'll learn some proven strategies that focus website visitors on your CTA and any other element of your site you want to emphasize. It's time to clean up the clutter and simplify the layout of your pages. Here's why modest designs have the highest performing conversions. They have faster loading timesIf you have too much going on all over your website, it will take longer to load. Don't think it's a big deal? Think again. When a web page takes longer than 4 seconds to load, the bounce rate increases by 100%. Once your site hits the 8 second mark for loading time, the bounce rate jumps to 150%. If you can speed up the load time, your bounce rate will improve as well. Think about how much potential you're missing out on over a couple of seconds. Getting your page to load in less than 4 seconds should be your goal. To accomplish this, you have to get rid of unnecessary elements on each page. This is especially true for ecommerce websites. Why? Take a look at how speed effects shopping cart abandonment: According to survey respondents, four of the top reasons for shopping cart abandonment were related to the speed of the website. What elements can you remove to get your page to load faster?
Those are just a few places to start. Visuals are definitely an important feature to have on your website. Just don't go overboard with them. Simplify the photos so the images are smaller and can load faster. The CTA is clear and obviousWhen your pages have simple layouts, you have more control over what visitors see. If the site is too cluttered, your CTA button may be obscured. You don't want people to be confused about whatever action you want them to take. Some examples of CTAs:
Basically, whatever your CTA is, it needs to be the clearest item on the page. Here's a great example from Unbounce: Notice how open and free of clutter the page is. There are no complicated images or visuals to distract the user. The text is minimal, and it explains exactly what their company does. Now the user can focus on the CTA because the options are so limited. The site visitor can:
Sure, there is a menu that visitors can navigate through as well. But based on the design, it's clearly not made to be the primary focus. Their menu at the top of the screen has the smallest text on the page. If Unbounce tried to jam a detailed description of each section of their menu, the page would be too overwhelming. So they did the right thing here by keeping it simple. I use this same strategy on my own website as well. When someone visits my page, their eyes are immediately drawn to my different CTA buttons. There's nothing else to distract them. If you're looking for help to find out what users see when they're looking at your page, try using a service such as Crazy Egg. You can analyze a heat map that shows what visitors' eyes get drawn to when they're viewing your website. This is really helpful in terms of CTA placement when you're simplifying your design. It's easier for visitors to skim through your pagePeople aren't going to read all the content on your page. It can be disappointing because I know what it's like to put much hard work, time, and effort into every word on a website. But that's the reality. Break up the content on your page to make it easier for visitors to scan it. If you're writing in long paragraphs without any breaks, it's going to be difficult to get your message across to the audience. Here are some tips to break up content and make it easier for visitors to scan through your page:
Take a look at how visuals are used to accomplish this goal: The most common types of visuals to break up content are:
Take this into consideration when you're deciding what to include on your page. Stick to the suggestions at the top of this list. When you get down to GIFs, complex images like that can slow down your loading time. Keep it simple with some relevant infographics and photos. Navigation is simpleSimple navigation piggybacks on my last point. Let's go through an example to illustrate what I mean. Here's the homepage for Square: It's super clean and easy to read. If a visitor wants to get started, they can simply select the size and type of their business. There's nothing confusing about this navigation because the options are narrow. The CTA is clear: “Sign Up With Square.” When someone visiting the website wants to learn more, their options are limited, so they are forced to scroll. As you continue to navigate down the homepage, you learn more information about the product. Look at how the screenshot above reflects the points I talked about earlier.
From here, the user has no other option but to continue scrolling. Now they have even more information about the product, and there's a CTA button in this section as well. There's no messy sidebar or confusing menu. It's so easy for the visitor to navigate that it's impossible for them to get lost. This also impacts the page loading time. Each time a user has to click on a new page to find more information, you risk having an issue with loading, which, as we saw earlier, will negatively impact your bounce rate. But Square eliminates that problem but putting all the information on the homepage. Once you get to the bottom of the screen, you'll see a much larger menu on the footer. Can you imagine if this was the first thing you saw at the very top of the page? You'd be so overwhelmed that you'd have no idea where to get started. There are nearly 40 options to choose from. It's fine at the footer because at this point the user already has an idea of what they're looking for. But I know you've been to websites that have menus like this at the top of their pages. Bad idea. If your website looks like this right now, you need to simplify it right away if you want to improve your conversion rates. You'll have fewer problems designing the website and fixing bugsIf you've been running a website for any length of time now, you know that bugs and minor issues are bound to happen. It's inevitable. The key is being able to identify those problems and get them fixed right away. Here are some of the most common types of problems with a website: All of these can negatively impact your conversion rates. If your site is too cluttered, it's hard to keep the page code organized. Anytime you need to make an update, it becomes a complicated process. There's just too much room for error. Having a simple design will make it easier for you to code, build, update, and edit the site. It's less expensive for your web hosting servicesHow much does it cost you to host your website? If your site is complex, you'll need extra storage space. Prices vary from platform to platform, but here's an example from SiteGround's web hosting plans: There's a 300% price increase between 10 GB of web space and 30 GB of storage space. I realize the price points also come with other upgrade features, but from a storage standpoint, it's going to be cheaper for you if the page design is simple. You can put the money you're saving towards another aspect of your business. That money can help you from a marketing perspective to generate new leads and eventually increase conversions. Visitors will think your site is more trustworthyHave you ever been on a website and thought it didn't seem legitimate? I have. It's a weird feeling getting instantly worried about cyber security. You don't want your website visitors to get this feeling when they're navigating your site. Having too much clutter can make it seem like you're trying to hide something, even if that's not the case. Having images and advertisements everywhere feels too salesy. Even if you're selling something, you don't want to come off like you're trying to force it down the user's throat. Earlier we discussed some reasons for shopping cart abandonment as it relates to the speed of your site. This graph explains that trust also impacts conversions on your page: For an ecommerce store, this could be a deadly mistake. The customer wants your product or services, but they are hesitant to complete the purchase because they don't think their credit card information is secure. They'll just go to another website where they feel safe and make the purchase from your competition instead. ConclusionIf you're looking to improve the conversion rates on your website, take a look at the design of your pages. Those of you who have too much clutter overwhelm your visitors. Go back to the drawing board. Simplicity needs to be your goal. Simple designs help your pages load faster, reducing your bounce rates. Without distractions on the page, your CTA button will be clear and obvious. Users won't have to search for it to take the action you want them to take. Modest designs also make it easier for people to skim through your content. This is beneficial for you because you'll have complete control over what their eyes see on the screen. Limit their options, and make your points stand out. A simple website design is also less expensive for you to host. You can put that extra money towards another marketing campaign that improves conversions. Simple websites also help you establish more trust with the visitors. If your design is too complex or sketchy, you'll have trouble getting conversions. What elements of your website do you plan on eliminating to cut down the clutter? In order to run a successful business, you'll need to do more than just acquire customers. One of the best ways to have a successful customer retention strategy is by creating customer engagement. That goes for all companies across every industry. Whether you have a brick and mortar location in a small town or have a global ecommerce distribution network, the customer is the lifeline of your business. While it may not seem like an issue or concern right now, failing to keep your customers engaged could be detrimental to your business. Fortunately, it appears as though you've recognized the importance of customer engagement and that's what brought you here. You've come to the right place. I'll show you my proven strategies to help you improve your customer engagement strategy. Following these techniques will show the customer how much you care about them. When customers don't think you care, they'll stop using your services and find another company to treat them better. Part of successful engagement and retention involves going above and beyond to connect with your customers. Big retail companies are even spending upward of $1 million on artificial intelligence technology to improve their customer engagement strategy. It's the top expected benefit from such a big investment. I'm not expecting you to do this, but I wanted to show you how much stress big brands are putting towards improving their company. My strategies are much more cost efficient and will yield a high return on your investment. They don't require too much time or effort either. You can implement these tactics to your marketing plan right away too. Here's what you can do to get started. Create interactive emailsHow much time have you spent in the last few months making sure that your email marketing strategy is performing at a high level? I see this mistake far too often when I'm consulting with various businesses. They send the same boring weekly newsletters and promotions. While your customers definitely want to hear from you, the constant repetition won't keep them engaged. That's a problem. You can spice up your email campaigns by incorporating interactive emails to your messages. One way you can accomplish this is by getting your email to mimic the look and design of your website. Include different menus that give the subscriber a reason to actively click to find out more information. Accordion menus work well too. It allows you to pack more information into a small space. When a customer sees something that they like, they can click to expand the accordion. This also improves the chances that your subscribers will see more of your content because it eliminates the need for scrolling. Adding GIFs and videos to your messages can help increase engagement as well. It's much more exciting than just reading a plain email. If you have a retail or ecommerce business, you should include live shopping carts in your messages too. This is a great strategy to improve your shopping cart abandonment rates. When a customer doesn't finish the checkout process, send a follow-up email with the shopping cart embedded in the message. That way the consumer can complete the transaction without having to go back to your website. It's quick and efficient for everyone, which will help generate more revenue for your company. Use Facebook Live on a regular basisFacebook Live is one of my favorite trends of the year. It's the perfect resource for businesses to engage with their customers. More than half of marketing experts agree that video content yields the highest return on investment. Why? First of all, it's so easy. Second, if you're using Facebook Live to promote video content, it won't cost you anything except for your time. Treat your live stream as if it were a television show. Don't just come on randomly whenever you feel like it. Set a scheduled time once or twice each week to go live. This will help you build a loyal audience, which will impact your conversions and revenue. One of the best parts of going live on Facebook is the ability to interact with the viewers in real time. As you broadcast, users have the option to comment on your stream. These comments could be directed towards you or even other people who are watching the stream. Make sure that you respond those comments. Acknowledge those users. “That's a good point, John Smith. I'll keep that in mind.” It's simple. That recognition will help make the viewers feel special. It encourages them to keep watching each week and it inspires others to comment as well, knowing that they could also get mentioned. Facebook live videos are native, which means they are embedded on a page or feed as opposed to an external link. Native formats increase the share rate of your content compared to other channels. Don't do a quick stream. Longer live videos increase your chances of getting a larger audience. Facebook allows you to go live for up to four consecutive hours. You don't have to stream for the full four hours, but I'd recommend doing at least two or three hours. Not sure what to talk about during this time? Don't worry about it. Just be yourself. Obviously, you want to keep things professional, but this stream will give your customers a chance to see the human side of you. Recognizing that there's a real person behind the brand name will help them establish a closer connection with you. This can ultimately increase customer loyalty. Here's something else you'll want to keep in mind. 85% of videos on Facebook get viewed with the sound turned off. So use lots of visuals in your stream. You can also add captions to your video so the viewers can read what you're saying. Take a look at some of the top Facebook video statistics from 2016. All of these numbers reiterate what I've been saying. So add this strategy to your marketing campaign to improve the relationship between you and your customers. Run a contest or sweepstakesPromotions are a great way to get the attention of your customer base. Everyone wants something for free, so give the people what they want. First, you've got to understand the difference between a contest and a sweepstakes. A contest means that the customers need to put forth some sort of effort to win. There's a judgment involved in selecting the winner based on skill. A sweepstakes means that the winner is completely random. Personally, I recommend running a contest as opposed to a sweepstakes because it gets the customer more involved and genuinely interested in your brand. If they enter a sweepstakes, all they do is enter and forget about it. I would recommend running your contest through social media platforms. When analyzing the top benefits of social media marketing, we can see that the list applies directly to our discussion about customer engagement. Developing loyal fans will help increase your revenue. Running your contests on social media will also increase exposure for your brand. One suggestion could be a photo contest on Instagram. I like this technique because it's so easy. Plus, it encourages user-generated content. Tell your customers to post a photo that relates to your business. The user who has the most likes on their picture will win the contest. Now your brand is all over social media exposed to people who may not have known about you before. So in addition to improving engagement with your existing customers, you have the opportunity to acquire new customers at no cost. It's two birds with one stone. Here's an example of a contest that Infiniti ran on social media. Using a hashtag to enter the contest can also help increase the chances of your promotion going viral. Contestants know that their photo will be compared to other customers, so they'll have a chance to check out all of the other entries as well. Here are some tips to keep in mind when you're running a contest.
Since contests are so easy and inexpensive to run, I recommend doing this frequently. Just because the contest is over, it doesn't mean you can't start another one up right away. In fact, running these promotions often will give your customers a reason to keep entering and keep them actively engaged with your brand. Post on your Instagram storyTake advantage of everything that Instagram has to offer. Don't just post to your profile. Add photos and videos to your story as well. Similar to Snapchat, anything on your Instagram story lasts for 24 hours. So be active and add to it every day. These are my top suggestions for what you should put on your story.
All of these will keep your followers engaged with your profile. If you want to run an enhanced version of Instagram story, you can go live on this platform as well. We already discussed the importance of this strategy when we talked about Facebook Live. I recommend using Instagram live story for something different than your Facebook strategy. With Facebook, you should host a weekly stream. But with Instagram, you should go live when you're at an event or doing something cool. This will create an authentic interaction with your viewers. As a result, they will stay engaged with your profile and brand. Write a double opt-in landing pageHere's a strategy that's often overlooked. To increase customer engagement, you need to acquire customers who want to be engaged in the first place. Here's what I mean. If your customers can create a profile or join your subscription list with just one click, you may get some people who aren't genuinely interested. Making customers take an extra step to join a list will increase engagement. The best way to do this is with a double opt-in landing. So when a customer subscribes to your email list from your website, make them confirm their subscription with a welcome email. It will help you filter out people who don't want to be engaged. Double opt-in emails will also improve your open rates. While you may end up with fewer subscribers if you implement this strategy, you'll get more active subscribers. This will make it much easier for you to apply the other engagement tactics that we discussed. ConclusionImproving your customer engagement strategy will positively impact your revenue. Not sure where to start? Follow the tips that we outlined. Start by developing interactive emails. It's easy. Just continue to email your current subscriber list but include videos, GIFs, live shopping carts, and menus to increase engagement with each campaign. Schedule a time each week to go live on Facebook. Interact with the viewers who comment on the stream. This is a perfect opportunity for you to connect with your customers in real time. Run a contest or sweepstakes that encourages UGC. Contests will give the customers a reason to interact and engage with your brand. Take advantage of the Instagram story feature as well. Another way to make it easier to engage with your customers is by filtering the most viable candidates to your subscription list. Create a double opt-in landing to ensure that your customers are interested and actually want you to keep engaging with them. What type of content will you include on your Instagram story to increase engagement with your current customer base? While most people may not realize it, marketing and psychology are closely related. The most successful marketing campaigns apply customer psychology. On the surface, it's a simple concept. If you understand how the customer's mind works, you can use certain triggers to help you generate a profit. One of the most important psychological factors you need to consider is color. Keep it in mind when you're:
The list goes on and on. Basically, anything visual your company produces needs to have appropriate color schemes. The right colors can lead to a conversion, while the wrong colors can leave a customer with a negative impression of your company (which you obviously want to avoid). Let's take a look at something as simple as gender as it relates to favorite colors: Blue is for men and pink is for women, right? Think again. According to a recent study (image above), both men and women said blue was their favorite color. Clearly, just because newborn babies are typically put in either blue or pink doesn't mean grown adults feel the same way. Here's more from that same study that shows the least popular colors based on gender: Both men and women dislike brown and orange. But why? I'll explain the psychology behind different colors so you can adjust your marketing tactics accordingly. Changing a website's colors can help you increase sales for your business. BlueLet's start off by discussing the color blue since we already established it's the favorite color for both men and women. It represents security, trust, and dependability. Blues also signify spirituality and calmness. With so many different shades of blue out there, which one should you choose for your website? Light blue shades work best for friendly websites that have a social and calm concept. Use dark blue hues for corporations and businesses. Here's a visual representation of the top 10 most valuable brands in the world: Do you notice a pattern here? Half of these businesses have a shade of blue in their logos. Based on everything we just discussed, this shouldn't be a surprise. Depending on your company, blue may be a top choice for your website. GreenWe associate green with the word “go”. It represents life, nature, wealth, and harmony. Green colors also symbolize freshness, the environment, and something new. With that said, these associations are not universal across the globe. Keep that in mind when you're designing a website. Here's how people in different geographic locations perceive the color green: Look at some of the polar opposite representations here. In Japan, green represents life. But in South America, it signifies death. Make sure you understand your primary target audience and what colors mean to their culture. Here's a great example of how Animal Planet incorporates greens into their website design: Why? Like I said before, in our culture, green symbolizes nature and the environment, so it works well with the overall theme of their brand. PinkEven though pink wasn't every woman's favorite color, it still represents femininity. For those of you running a business primarily geared toward men, I'd recommend staying away from pink tones. Pink stands for love, sexuality, nurture, sweetness, and warmth. Look at how a gender specific brand like Victoria's Secret uses pink on their website: The company sells strictly women's apparel, so they don't need to worry about turning away men from their brand. When a woman shops at Victoria's Secret, the pink tones make her feel welcome. RedStop at a stop sign. Stop at a red light. These are some of the things we think of when we see the color red. It's muscle memory and instinct. But red represents more than that. From a marketing perspective, red creates a sense of urgency. That's why you'll often see red sales tags on discounted items. Red tones appeal to impulse shoppers because the color can increase their heart rates. Restaurants use this color to fuel a customer's appetite. McDonald's has been using this strategy for years to lure hungry people into their restaurants. From an emotional and personality viewpoint, red roses are a symbol of love. Red evokes passion as well as intensity. You can strategically use this color based on your industry. If you want to increase conversion rates and deliver an urgent message, use red to draw the viewer's attention to that area. YellowIf you're using yellow on your website, it's important to use it subtly and sparingly. Don't use it for text because it's hard on the eyes and tough for people to read. Yellow represents happiness, joy, and cheer. It's a warm and happy color with an energizing effect. There's a difference between different shades of yellow and the way they represent age. Bright yellow is used to represent children and their youth, while darker yellow designs signify a more mature age. Here's how yellow affects personality and emotion: Overall, using yellow on your website will create a positive and appealing vibe. However, it can also stand for caution or act as a warning sign. Make sure your message is clear whenever you're using yellow. It works well to complement logos but doesn't stand well on its own. OrangeOrange isn't a commonly used color. Earlier we saw that 33% of women and 22% of men said this was their least favorite color. However, because companies use it so sparingly, it typically stands out when you see it. That means it's a great color for your CTA buttons. Orange is a comforting color. It's got some of the same qualities as both yellow and red. It's sociable, energetic, and sunny. Similar to red, it can often stimulate appetite. Orange can also stand for affordability, which may be the reason why The Home Depot uses it in their logo: Orange is friendly and energetic, but it's not as overwhelming and hard on the eyes as yellow. PurplePurple ranked high in terms of women's favorite color. It's a beautiful shade that stands for royalty: It's a noble and romantic color as well. Purple is luxurious and gives people the feeling of nostalgia, power, and glamour. This color is also used to stimulate curiosity because it represents a mystery. If you're running some sort of surprise promotion in which a website user or email subscriber needs to click to reveal an offer, consider using a purple CTA button. Purple tones are often associated with a ceremony as well. They represent creativity and exclusivity. If you're trying to target a group of people who see themselves as high-class, you may want to consider incorporating purple somewhere on your website. WhitePeople often overlook white, but yes, it's still an important color to consider in your website design. Although it may appear plain, white represents simplicity and purity. It's a clean design allowing a brand to signal perfection. White logos are often used in health care industries. It's also associated with luxury brands and designs. That's why Apple uses a white logo in their website color scheme. If you're using white on your website, you can also use grey tones to compliment it, just like Apple does with the light grey background and dark grey text. White is used to show high-tech products. When associated with cuisine, white represents foods that have low fat. To add sophistication or strength to your website, consider using a simple white and grey design. Don't use white for any buttons. Instead, you can use a darker colored button with white font if you want to go that route. BlackBlack establishes authority. Similarly to white, it can represent sophistication, luxury, and elegance. Products and brands that are black can be viewed as expensive-the opposite of orange. So if your website is supposed to be for people who want a bargain, I'd recommend staying away from black. Black is serious and can also be considered very somber. I wouldn't recommend using black if your company represents new life or rejuvenation because black is often associated with death. BrownBrown is commonly used in the following industries:
It's an earthy tone that represents durability and simplicity. Brown is a natural color that stands for dependability. If you want to add a dark color to your website but don't want to use black, consider using brown as a warmer alternative. When a company uses brown in their logo, it shows customers that they are reliable: That's why the slogan for UPS is “What can brown do for you?” It's a nice customer service color. What color should I use for my website?If you're torn between a couple of different color choices, you can run an A/B test to determine which one gives you a higher conversion rate. Keep everything on your website the same, but change the background color, an accent color, or a CTA button color. Experiment. But don't change the content or layout. Here's an example of a test for the CTA button color choice: Everything on the website remains the same. The only thing that changed was a green CTA button vs. a red CTA button. Based on what we talked about earlier, green means go and red means stop. So a hypothesis would be that the green button would outperform the red button. However, the results of this test told a different story. The red button saw a 21% higher conversion rate than green. It's surprising, but it's good to know. Just because you think you understand how people perceive certain colors doesn't mean you shouldn't run any tests. The difference of 21% is so significant that it can drastically impact how much money your website makes. Look, I'm not telling you this so you automatically choose red over green each time. It depends on your brand, industry, and customer base. I used this example to show why you should never assume anything and always run an A/B test to make sure you're making the right decision. Where to find the best color scheme for your websiteLike I said before, it's important to use different tones. Don't just pick blue and make your entire website the same shade of blue. Using a blue color palette is much more appealing. I like to use Coolers.co to find color schemes that work well with each other. If you wanted to use purple tones on your website, this service helps generate a palette of purple colors. You'll get all different shades of purple from light to dark. Pick and choose which ones you want to use for different parts of your website. Consider using a lighter shade as the background and darker tones for text. ConclusionThe color choices on your website appeal to the psychology of your customer. Don't pick a color at random. Make sure the colors you choose reflect your brand and company message. It can impact your sales. Think back to the example we used for A/B testing a CTA button. A simple color change boosted conversions by over 20%. Don't miss out on an opportunity like that by not taking the time to carefully select the right colors for your website. Look at your target audience. If you're trying to appeal to a certain gender, use colors like blue or pink. For those of you who want to create a sense of urgency or an alert, red would work well. Black and white colors symbolize authority, simplicity, and cleanliness. Purple is a color of royalty, social status, and curiosity. Follow the tips I outlined above to come up with a killer color scheme for your website to boost sales. What feeling are you trying to evoke from your customers with your website colors? Have you ever noticed that it seems like every single company seems to send their email newsletter at the same time? Usually they're sent very late at night or extra early in the morning. Which is, funny enough, when most of their audience is sleeping, so we wake up with an overstuffed inbox each morning. I am guessing that you have also run into this somewhat minor annoyance. But it literally is one of my biggest pet peeves. If you are like me, the deleting of most of these newsletters has become part of your morning ritual. It is pretty refreshing to send them all to your trash folder and get back to inbox zero. I mean I love reading about data driven marketing tips but not at 7 in the morning. We are constantly plugged into our email accounts with those supercomputers we call phones. The days when you would check your email once in the morning and once at night is over. But, alas, some companies still seem to be sticking to that email schedule. This strategy is as outdated as that jewel colored iMac or Gateway computer sitting in your basement. And all the effort you put into great content will be wasted if you pick the wrong time to send. So I set out to find when the best time to send an email newsletter is, in the most scientific way ever, by signing up for 100 different newsletters and recording all of their send times. 1. Send it from 11-12PM, 1-2PM, or 2-3PMIf you were looking for the best time to send an email I would recommend selecting a time where there is little competition. Like a time when almost no emails are being sent. I mean why would you want your newsletter competing for your audience's attention with a bunch of other emails? That is just a recipe for low open rates and a drop in subscribers. So to avoid that I would shoot for a period when no other emails are sent. In fact, from 11-12PM, 1-2PM and 2-3PM not a single email was sent in our study. Like not a single one: Now you may be asking what is the best chunk of time out of those three periods? And I would have to say that 2-3PM has the most potential. From 11-12PM and 1-2PM are too close to the lunch hour and could get lost in the shuffle. Unless your newsletter deals with a fun topic that they would want to read about on that break, I would avoid those two. Instead try from 2-3PM. Your audience will most likely be back from lunch by then and feeling a bit recharged. They have already cleared their emails from the morning and are maybe looking for a little procrastination opportunity. And boom, your email newsletter is there to help them out. 2. Or from 10-11AMNow if you don't want to be the only one sending an email during a certain time period, I have a perfect time for you. This is another period where almost zero email newsletters were sent out in our study. In fact there were only one email sent out in that whole time period. And I think that your email can handle a little competition. This period happens to be from 10-11AM. As you can see in the graph above there were a few other periods when only a few emails were sent. But I do not think that they will be as fruitful as from 10-11AM. For example, from 9-10AM is when a lot of people's workday starts and 4-5PM is when it usually ends. That means you are going to be fighting a lot more for their attention than just a few emails. So to avoid these outside distractions I would choose from 10-11AM. By then your readers will be settled into their desk, the coffee has kicked in and they are probably at inbox zero. It is almost a perfect time for an interesting newsletter to pop up in their mailbox. Additionally, I do find it a little odd that from 10-11AM has been pushed by experts and thought leaders. But exactly one email was sent. It really does not make sense, but it does present a new opportunity for your email newsletter to shine. 3. Never between 6-7PMAfter carefully counting on both of my hands I was able to determine the worst time to send an email. This time period was so crowded that more than 10% of all the emails in the study were sent during this hour chunk each day. That is almost triple what an average hour should have received. If you have read the graphs above you saw that 6-7 PM got the most emails of any period. As you can see in the graph above if you decide to send your newsletter in this time period you are going to have some competition. So I would avoid sending your newsletters during this period based on the jump in competition. When you compare it to the times we already highlighted above there are 50x more emails during this period. Even some of the times that got 5x more emails are looking pretty good to me right now. Unless you want your open rates to plummet from that increased competition I would avoid sending from 6-7PM. It does kind of make sense why brands would decide to send their weekly email at this time. Their audience has made it home from their jobs and starting to relax. They should be pretty open to receiving a newsletter about their hobby, interest or activity. But again, you are brawling in their inbox with a ton of other well-crafted emails for their attention. Or it will be ignored and rolled into the next morning's inbox clearing. 4. And avoid after 9PM or before 7AMOne of the easiest ways to fall into that morning deleting spree is to send your email late at night. Like when your audience is sleeping, so they will see it in the morning. I never really got the idea behind this practice. Other than that brands think we want to read about the newest social media marketing tip at 6am. I know that is the last thing on my mind at that time. Now if it was an email about coffee being delivered to my bed that would be a different story. But alas, I saw a ton of companies using this somewhat outdated topic. We can access our emails at literally any time, the novelty of waking up to news or a newsletter no longer exists. Or it is so far down the list in their inbox, they will never even see it. Between 9PM and 7PM more than 60% of all emails in the study were sent. With nearly 40% of them were sent between 9PM and 2AM. Or about double of what should have been sent if all things were equal. That is a lot of emails your newsletter is going to be fighting. Plus your audience is most likely not even awake, and the people who are up at that time probably don't want to read your newsletter at that moment. That means, you guessed it, that it will be put off until the next morning. From there it goes right into the morning delete spree or simply forgotten about. And all your hard work on the newsletter goes ignored. Do not let your content be wasted because you chose the wrong time to send a great email. 5. Wednesdays & Saturdays Have PotentialJust like in the previous sections you are going to want to pick a day that has the least competition. By sending your email on a day like this it is going to stand out like a beacon of good content. The best day to send your email is Wednesday, with Saturday coming in at a close second. As you can see they were some of the days to receive the least emails overall. In our own tests we have seen Wednesday perform well, with some newsletters getting double the open rate of previous days. I think that Wednesday is the perfect day to send your email newsletter. Especially if your newsletter is related to their job or work. They will feel a lot less guilty about losing themselves in your content for a few minutes. Plus if it is really amazing they will want to share it with their coworkers! And that means that if your topic deals with a fun hobby or interest I would send it on a Saturday. Your audience will a lot more receptive to reading about something they could do later that day. Or they will have a lot more time to absorb all of your fantastic content. Either way both of these days are a great point to start testing to find what your own best day! Before we go on I think it is important to highlight why I did not select Sunday as the best day. I really think that it is too much of a wildcard day and the email could be lost in the shuffle of that day. Then it gets pushed into the Monday morning mass inbox cleaning. And although you may have loved to read the content you just don't have time to. This has happened to me too many times to count and I am guessing many people can relate. 6. Thursdays are the Worst Day to SendFinding the best day to send an email was a little difficult and not very straightforward. Thankfully the worst day was a lot easier to find. And that day was Thursday. It received more than double the amount of emails when compared to Wednesday and Saturday. Exactly 25% of all the emails were sent on a Thursday, with no other days really coming close. That put it well above the 70 or so emails I received per day on average. Some experts proclaiming that Tuesday and Thursday are the best days to send a newsletter probably cause this. I am guessing that people have been blindly following this advice for the past few years. And now we are in a situation where the best day to send an email has actually become the worst day. ConclusionSo there you have it, the best and worst times for you to send an email newsletter! I now need to go click unsubscribe on about 100 different emails. Or I may just cut my losses with that email address from now on. But that sacrifice of an email address was definitely worth it because I was able to get some interesting findings. Those findings will hopefully keep you from sending an email newsletter at the wrong time or day. Just remember:
And finally, it is important to remember to test all of these findings with your audience first. These tips should always be used a testing points for your new emails, not set in stone facts. About KissmetricsKissmetrics combines behavioral analytics with email automation. Our software tracks actions of your users across multiple devices allowing you to analyze, segment and engage your customers with automatic, behavior-based emails in one place. We call it Customer Engagement Automation. Get, keep and grow more customers with Kissmetrics.
About the Author: Ryan McCready went to the University of Arkansas and graduated with a degree in economics and international business. Now instead of studying the economy he writes about everything and enjoys stirring the pot. Have you ever noticed that it seems like every single company seems to send their email newsletter at the same time? Usually they're sent very late at night or extra early in the morning. Which is, funny enough, when most of their audience is sleeping, so we wake up with an overstuffed inbox each morning. I am guessing that you have also run into this somewhat minor annoyance. But it literally is one of my biggest pet peeves. If you are like me, the deleting of most of these newsletters has become part of your morning ritual. It is pretty refreshing to send them all to your trash folder and get back to inbox zero. I mean I love reading about data driven marketing tips but not at 7 in the morning. We are constantly plugged into our email accounts with those supercomputers we call phones. The days when you would check your email once in the morning and once at night is over. But, alas, some companies still seem to be sticking to that email schedule. This strategy is as outdated as that jewel colored iMac or Gateway computer sitting in your basement. And all the effort you put into great content will be wasted if you pick the wrong time to send. So I set out to find when the best time to send an email newsletter is, in the most scientific way ever, by signing up for 100 different newsletters and recording all of their send times. 1. Send it from 11-12PM, 1-2PM, or 2-3PMIf you were looking for the best time to send an email I would recommend selecting a time where there is little competition. Like a time when almost no emails are being sent. I mean why would you want your newsletter competing for your audience's attention with a bunch of other emails? That is just a recipe for low open rates and a drop in subscribers. So to avoid that I would shoot for a period when no other emails are sent. In fact, from 11-12PM, 1-2PM and 2-3PM not a single email was sent in our study. Like not a single one: Now you may be asking what is the best chunk of time out of those three periods? And I would have to say that 2-3PM has the most potential. From 11-12PM and 1-2PM are too close to the lunch hour and could get lost in the shuffle. Unless your newsletter deals with a fun topic that they would want to read about on that break, I would avoid those two. Instead try from 2-3PM. Your audience will most likely be back from lunch by then and feeling a bit recharged. They have already cleared their emails from the morning and are maybe looking for a little procrastination opportunity. And boom, your email newsletter is there to help them out. 2. Or from 10-11AMNow if you don't want to be the only one sending an email during a certain time period, I have a perfect time for you. This is another period where almost zero email newsletters were sent out in our study. In fact there were only one email sent out in that whole time period. And I think that your email can handle a little competition. This period happens to be from 10-11AM. As you can see in the graph above there were a few other periods when only a few emails were sent. But I do not think that they will be as fruitful as from 10-11AM. For example, from 9-10AM is when a lot of people's workday starts and 4-5PM is when it usually ends. That means you are going to be fighting a lot more for their attention than just a few emails. So to avoid these outside distractions I would choose from 10-11AM. By then your readers will be settled into their desk, the coffee has kicked in and they are probably at inbox zero. It is almost a perfect time for an interesting newsletter to pop up in their mailbox. Additionally, I do find it a little odd that from 10-11AM has been pushed by experts and thought leaders. But exactly one email was sent. It really does not make sense, but it does present a new opportunity for your email newsletter to shine. 3. Never between 6-7PMAfter carefully counting on both of my hands I was able to determine the worst time to send an email. This time period was so crowded that more than 10% of all the emails in the study were sent during this hour chunk each day. That is almost triple what an average hour should have received. If you have read the graphs above you saw that 6-7 PM got the most emails of any period. As you can see in the graph above if you decide to send your newsletter in this time period you are going to have some competition. So I would avoid sending your newsletters during this period based on the jump in competition. When you compare it to the times we already highlighted above there are 50x more emails during this period. Even some of the times that got 5x more emails are looking pretty good to me right now. Unless you want your open rates to plummet from that increased competition I would avoid sending from 6-7PM. It does kind of make sense why brands would decide to send their weekly email at this time. Their audience has made it home from their jobs and starting to relax. They should be pretty open to receiving a newsletter about their hobby, interest or activity. But again, you are brawling in their inbox with a ton of other well-crafted emails for their attention. Or it will be ignored and rolled into the next morning's inbox clearing. 4. And avoid after 9PM or before 7AMOne of the easiest ways to fall into that morning deleting spree is to send your email late at night. Like when your audience is sleeping, so they will see it in the morning. I never really got the idea behind this practice. Other than that brands think we want to read about the newest social media marketing tip at 6am. I know that is the last thing on my mind at that time. Now if it was an email about coffee being delivered to my bed that would be a different story. But alas, I saw a ton of companies using this somewhat outdated topic. We can access our emails at literally any time, the novelty of waking up to news or a newsletter no longer exists. Or it is so far down the list in their inbox, they will never even see it. Between 9PM and 7PM more than 60% of all emails in the study were sent. With nearly 40% of them were sent between 9PM and 2AM. Or about double of what should have been sent if all things were equal. That is a lot of emails your newsletter is going to be fighting. Plus your audience is most likely not even awake, and the people who are up at that time probably don't want to read your newsletter at that moment. That means, you guessed it, that it will be put off until the next morning. From there it goes right into the morning delete spree or simply forgotten about. And all your hard work on the newsletter goes ignored. Do not let your content be wasted because you chose the wrong time to send a great email. 5. Wednesdays & Saturdays Have PotentialJust like in the previous sections you are going to want to pick a day that has the least competition. By sending your email on a day like this it is going to stand out like a beacon of good content. The best day to send your email is Wednesday, with Saturday coming in at a close second. As you can see they were some of the days to receive the least emails overall. In our own tests we have seen Wednesday perform well, with some newsletters getting double the open rate of previous days. I think that Wednesday is the perfect day to send your email newsletter. Especially if your newsletter is related to their job or work. They will feel a lot less guilty about losing themselves in your content for a few minutes. Plus if it is really amazing they will want to share it with their coworkers! And that means that if your topic deals with a fun hobby or interest I would send it on a Saturday. Your audience will a lot more receptive to reading about something they could do later that day. Or they will have a lot more time to absorb all of your fantastic content. Either way both of these days are a great point to start testing to find what your own best day! Before we go on I think it is important to highlight why I did not select Sunday as the best day. I really think that it is too much of a wildcard day and the email could be lost in the shuffle of that day. Then it gets pushed into the Monday morning mass inbox cleaning. And although you may have loved to read the content you just don't have time to. This has happened to me too many times to count and I am guessing many people can relate. 6. Thursdays are the Worst Day to SendFinding the best day to send an email was a little difficult and not very straightforward. Thankfully the worst day was a lot easier to find. And that day was Thursday. It received more than double the amount of emails when compared to Wednesday and Saturday. Exactly 25% of all the emails were sent on a Thursday, with no other days really coming close. That put it well above the 70 or so emails I received per day on average. Some experts proclaiming that Tuesday and Thursday are the best days to send a newsletter probably cause this. I am guessing that people have been blindly following this advice for the past few years. And now we are in a situation where the best day to send an email has actually become the worst day. ConclusionSo there you have it, the best and worst times for you to send an email newsletter! I now need to go click unsubscribe on about 100 different emails. Or I may just cut my losses with that email address from now on. But that sacrifice of an email address was definitely worth it because I was able to get some interesting findings. Those findings will hopefully keep you from sending an email newsletter at the wrong time or day. Just remember:
And finally, it is important to remember to test all of these findings with your audience first. These tips should always be used a testing points for your new emails, not set in stone facts. About KissmetricsKissmetrics combines behavioral analytics with email automation. Our software tracks actions of your users across multiple devices allowing you to analyze, segment and engage your customers with automatic, behavior-based emails in one place. We call it Customer Engagement Automation. Get, keep and grow more customers with Kissmetrics.
About the Author: Ryan McCready went to the University of Arkansas and graduated with a degree in economics and international business. Now instead of studying the economy he writes about everything and enjoys stirring the pot. That latest post took days to develop. It's instructive and inspiring and educational and entertaining. Easily, one of your best yet. But you come to check your traffic data only to find that you're ranking 70th in the SERPs. In other words, you ain't gettin no traffic anytime soon. Zip. Zilch. Nada. Unless some crazy person is actually clicking seven pages deep on Google. Which they aren't. All of that hard work, research, and effort got you almost nothing in return. Meanwhile, your competitors are ranking in the top ten results, even though their content isn't as long or thorough. Why? Because of Google. But really, the most likely answer is time and links. Your post is new, so it's going to take some time. Knowing this, that doesn't mean you can sit around and expect it to be on the first page without doing work. Thinking that your new post will gain thousands of links on its own is foolish. Outperforming your competitors on search engines isn't an easy, one-off task. But that doesn't mean it's impossible. In fact, if you implement a few of these tactics, it's likely that (in time) you will. Why? Because your competitors are comfortable. They think the rankings won't ever change. You, on the other hand, are grinding to get ahead. Here's how you can outperform sites ranking above you on search engines. The Top Two Ranking Factors, Straight From GoogleWhen Google RankBrain was announced in 2015 on Bloomberg, it was made known that RankBrain was the third most important ranking factor. But that was all they said. What about the first and second ranking factors? We got almost nothing for an entire year. In 2016, we got some clear information (for once) from Google. In a Q&A with Andrey Lipattsev, a Search Quality Senior Strategist at Google, we found out the two most important ranking factors: Links and content. In no particular order of importance. But that's pretty much all we got. It is something, though. It's a start. And it was straight from the mouth of a high-level strategist. It also makes sense when you look at recent studies and data sets. For example, Backlinko recently analyzed one million search engine results pages and found that the top-ranking content had a significantly larger number of links: The disparity between the #1 position and the #10 position is massive. Meaning if you're looking to take over the SERPs, you need links. You simply can't rank high without them. And according to Google, it's one of the top two ranking factors. So ignoring it is not an option. Don't believe the data? I don't blame you. Healthy skepticism makes the world go round. I didn't at first either. But do a simple Google search for a desired keyword, and you'll instantly see that it's very true. Searching for “SEO Guide” on Google will return this as the first result: The next few results are from Kissmetrics and Search Engine Land: So, let's put this to the test. Open up Moz's Open Site Explorer and toss the links in. Start with the first post by Moz. Here's what the backlink profile looks like: Yes, that's real. This post has over 23 freaking thousand links pointing to it. That's more than most people will get on their entire site in their entire career. By far. Now plug in the second result from Kissmetrics and here's what you see: The results are pretty clear. Both sites have incredibly high domain authorities and page authorities. They've both been around for years and years. The content is pretty similar. It's in-depth, informative, and optimized for the user experience. But one is outranking the other, and the most likely reason (according to Google) is simply that it has more links. 23,000 more. Meaning Google is being told over 23,000 more times how relevant and informative that content is. So, what about content? It's the same thing. It's about the numbers. Word count matters: The longer the content, the higher chance it has to rank. But not in the way that you think. You know, the college essays where you inserted block quotes to add 500 words (yes, admit it, you did it too). Yeah, that doesn't work. Word count for the sake of word count isn't going to get you higher rankings. That tactic died with keyword stuffing and will never return. Long-form content wins on search engines because it's designed to solve the entire user problem in one go. Meaning that the content is designed to answer all questions, provide solutions, and then show the user how to fix it. If your content accomplishes this, people won't bounce back to Google to click on the next result. To sum it up, links and content quality are the top two ranking factors. If you want to outperform sites above you, focus on these two factors over anything else. It's just like a workout plan. Want to lose weight? Don't waste time doing isolation bicep curls. Take the most effective route and target the top ways to accomplish your goal. Here's how to get more links and write better content to outrank your competitors. Campaign For Better LinksNow that you know how important links are for rankings, you need more of them. But not just any backlinks. Directory links won't do it. Paying for low-level, spammy links from the dude who cold emailed you is a recipe for disaster. Most people get caught up in the total quantity and forget to focus on quality too. Quantity isn't enough. Let me explain: When a website (like a directory) links over and over to thousands of sites, Google starts to notice that these links are easy to acquire. So Google puts less importance on them. Why? They're easy to get! So stop buying links. Stop spamming forums and Pinterest (what even is Pinterest??). Backlinko data agrees with this notion, too: The graph above essentially says that the top-ranking content has links from diverse websites. Meaning you need many websites to link to you, not just one spamming your link over and over. But that's not all. You need links from high DA sites: So the real recipe is: Total amount of links + large amount of diverse sites + all high DA = rankings boost. Take that, Gordon Ramsay! Now that you know, how do you do it? There are a few proven ways to get more high-quality links on your site. One of the best is by creating round-up style content. This is content that mentions multiple popular influencers in your niche. For example, check out this post from Bill Widmer that took the opinions of 30+ experts on their favorite marketing channels: (That cool dude is me, by the way, in case you were wondering.) But the point is, these types of posts get links. I'll prove it to you. Here's the backlink profile for this exact blog post: Nearly 70 links to a single post that was recently uploaded. Pretty impressive. And not just any links. Notice the top linking sites? They were all mentioned influencers in his post. Getting the input of trusted influencers and showcasing them in your post is one of the best ways to get great links. People are more likely to share it when you mention and show them in an informative light. Write Better Content More OftenGetting the highest-quality links isn't enough. Remember that another top ranking factor is content. Quality and frequency play a huge role in content that drives rankings. According to HubSpot, companies that post more blog posts more often get more traffic: And that's not all. The more you blog, the more inbound leads you get: Why? Because you're effectively giving yourself more chances to rank higher on Google. And when you rank higher on Google, you get more traffic. If sites are ranking above you on search engines and you don't have enough links to overtake them, post more often. It's one of the easiest ways to generate more traffic to compensate for a lower ranking. The more often you post, the more indexed pages you have. The more indexed pages, the more traffic. Once you develop content, you can campaign for links to boost that content. You can outperform sites with multiple approaches. It doesn't always have to be outranking them for a single post. Would you rather outrank them for one post or write five new ones that get more total traffic? The answer is clear: more traffic. Create Content for the User ExperienceGoogle has one goal in mind when it comes to their search engine (besides profit): Creating the fastest, best user experience possible. This is evident by conducting any Google search and seeing how quickly they deliver results: They even tell you about it. It's a subtle brag. But it tells us some instant data on how much they care about delivering content fast and effectively. It's their top priority because if they don't, people will jump ship to Bing or Yahoo, or Ask Jeeves (wait, does that still exist?). This has larger implications than just result delivery speed though. When Google delivers results, they still want users to be satisfied. If someone searches for “seo” and doesn't click, but instead modifies their search for “seo guide,” Google takes note. They understand that “seo” search results weren't what they were looking for. Similarly, if someone finds your post on Google but bounces fast and clicks on the next, Google notices. They notice that your content isn't solving user problems. And if it's not, you can kiss those rankings goodbye. So, what does this mean for SEOs and optimizing content? It means you've gotta stop worrying about how search engines view your content and start caring about the user experience. That means putting real emotion into your writing to trigger a response. Or telling a story that people can't resist reading. Keywords are great, but stuffing “seo guide best 2017 content” into your title makes you look stupid. Trust me – I've been there. A searcher and reader are going to take one look at that title and never come back. A great way to optimize your content for a real user is by taking advantage of Google's free data mining. It's easy. What's the next blog post you want to write about? For example, let's say it's about content marketing. Conduct a simple Google search for that basic term and scroll to the bottom of the page: You've got instant, real keywords that people are searching. You could easily compile several of these into a single long-form piece of content that is a one-stop-shop when it comes to solving a problem. For example, write a content marketing strategy guide and include examples and types of content marketing. Now you've effectively hit three real searches with a single post. That's relevancy. If you want to outrank the sites above you, you've gotta improve your content. It has to be tailored to fit the user, not the search engine. Search engines are getting smarter and more realistic. Rankings will follow if you focus on real people. ConclusionWhen you've written a new blog post, you can't risk it slipping into the oblivion of the SERPs. Anything beyond the first page isn't going to get you any noticeable traffic. And you can't just expect a post to generate traffic and links on its own. You've gotta put in the work to get real results. If you want to outrank your competition, you need better links, real keywords, and better content. Plain and simple: You need to produce better content for the end user than the person above you. Once you've done that, campaign for links. The more high-quality links you land, the better shot you've got at ranking higher. Outperforming sites ranking above you in the SERPs will drive more traffic to your site fast. About KissmetricsKissmetrics combines behavioral analytics with email automation. Our software tracks actions of your users across multiple devices allowing you to analyze, segment and engage your customers with automatic, behavior-based emails in one place. We call it Customer Engagement Automation. Get, keep and grow more customers with Kissmetrics.
About the Author: Brad Smith is the founder of Codeless, a B2B content creation company. Frequent contributor to Kissmetrics, Unbounce, WordStream, AdEspresso, Search Engine Journal, Autopilot, and more. Even former Google search executive Matt Cutts calls this new Google search behavior 'super annoying.' This story was updated to say this was a bug and Google is fixing it.
The post Updated: Google home page search box now shows you recent searches by default appeared first on Search Engine Land. Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article. |
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