4 Foolproof Steps for Cold Email Outreach That Actually Work

When you’re just starting out with no contacts or support group to back you up, cold email outreach is one of the most reliable ways to build your customer base.

Take Nathan Barry, for example. As the founder of ConvertKit, an email marketing platform, he was able to grow his company to $900,000 monthly recurring revenue by sending cold emails to professional bloggers (and he is still doing that -- that’s how powerful this strategy has proven to be for him).

But people typically see a very low open and response rate from cold emails. I would say that the typical reply rate is 1-2%. That is, out of 100 cold email recipients, only 1or 2 would reply and even then, those responses don’t necessarily lead to conversions. This is why many people typically avoid cold email strategies.

Here’s where this guide can help you.

If you want to do a successful cold email outreach campaign (just like any other kind of campaign), you need to have a strategy in place.

There are certain steps to cold email that have proven to be the most effective.

Follow along and you’ll find a step-by-step strategy that has worked for many A-list cold emailing experts.

1. Find the decision-maker

The first mistake you could make when doing a cold email outreach campaign is sending your email to the wrong person. Sending a pitch for a company-wide health insurance package to an IT manager is probably not going to have your desired impact.

Now depending on what you’re offering in your emails, the person you should target is different.

If you know who exactly to target, like the editor or owner of a blog, you’re all set, but if you’re selling to a large company and you don’t know the ideal person, you need to look for a specific role that’s responsible for acquiring your product or service.

Target the right role

Look for the roles related to your product. For example, if you’re selling a sales-related product -- like a sales management platform -- you should contact a sales manager or director. If you’re reaching out to offer your copywriting services, it’s a good idea to contact the content manager, rather than the CEO.

If you’re targeting a small company or startup, the right decision maker is likely the CEO. So, unless you find a different director or manager responsible for a section -- like a content marketing manager or social media manager -- you can confidently reach out to the CEO.

As a rule of thumb, you can guess the decision maker based on the company’s size:

• 0-10 employees: The decision maker is usually the CEO unless the company has co-founders in the vertical you’re selling into (e.g., CTO for Product, CMO for Marketing) or has experienced VPs.
• 10-50 employees: VPs generally have buying power here.
• 50-500 employees: At this size, look for specialized roles, such as Sales Manager, Business Development Manager, etc..
• 500+ employees: Find regional, specialized roles, such as East Coast Rep, North America Rep, New York City Rep, etc.

After you’ve identified the role you want to contact, you can check out their company’s website to find the page that introduces their team.

If you didn’t have any luck there, try searching their company in LinkedIn or Crunchbase to find the suitable role. You will probably find the specific role using these methods.

After you found the right person to contact, it’s time to find their email address.

How to find email addresses for cold email outreach

1.Search for the company’s website. In many cases, each role’s email address is included there.

2. Use NinjaOutreach’s email finder. Enter the person’s name and company domain to find the corporate email. Or, you can enter a domain and see all emails associated with that domain.

3. Alternatively, check if they posted their email address on the “Contact and Personal Info” section on LinkedIn.

4. Test various email formats in MailTester to find the one that fits. Typically, company email addresses are formatted in one of these ways:

• first@company.com
• first.last@company.com
• firstlast@company.com
• firstinitiallastname@company.com
• firstlastinitial@company.com

5. Once you find a valid combination, use a Chrome extension called Sales Navigator by LinkedIn to find out if an email address is associated with that LinkedIn account.

2. Craft cold email subject lines that work

At this point, it’s time to figure out a cold email subject line that will get their attention. To do that, you need to keep these some things in mind.

How to craft cold email subject lines

1. Be relevant: Cite an article they’ve written, a person you both know, any new projects their company is working on, or a problem they’re facing (and how to solve it). This will make your cold email subject line more relevant.

For example, use cold email subject lines like:

• “We both know [a person]”
• “A word on your [name of the project]”
• “Could your sales team produce more leads? Here’s how”
• “How I lost your Sperry's ... and why you should meet with me”

2. Use your industry’s hottest news: If a personality, product, number, or practice is trending in your industry, use it in your cold email subject line. It will pique the receiver's interest and get a click.

Some examples:

• “Facebook dropped the ball—we picked it up”
• “The new Amazon feature rocks but there’s a catch”
• “AI helping you get more leads?”

If you’re not sure about how to position your product while entertaining the receiver, consider talking to an expert consultant.

Don’t use clickbait in your cold email subject lines

There is an insidious trend in email marketing that has been creeping up lately, and it’s a reputation-ruining mistake that a lot of people (even established marketers) make: clickbait cold email subject lines.

In other words, email marketers trick their recipients into opening their cold emails with gimmicky subject lines that only end up frustrating the receiver.

If you’re wondering what makes a clickbait title, here are some examples:

What is a cold email subject line?

• Deceptive about who the email is from: “Did I leave my jacket at your place?” seems to be from a friend, but it’s not.
• Deceptive about previous email exchanges: the blatant “Re:” type
• Deceptive about the urgency of a message: “Urgent -- Update your information.” You click on it just to find it’s a promotional email.
• Deceptive about an action taken by the subscriber: “Your Reservation Confirmation,” “About your order,” “Thanks for your order!”

3. Write a killer cold email copy

The killer cold email copy has three characteristics:

1. It connects at a personal level
2. It offers a single core benefit (not more)
3. It elicits a simple response (not an awkward, complicated one that could have been better off avoided)

How do you personalize your cold email copy?

Know your recipient and the company he’s working for well. That is:

• Research your recipient well by visiting his social media feed and his website. Read his content, and check if they’ve been mentioned in the news or achieved something amazing. Research their (current and past) position in the company, find out who they’ve worked with and the challenges they’ve faced.
• Research the company. Find out the big challenges they’re facing and their recent achievements. Read their press releases or any articles they’ve published on reputable blogs, etc.

NinjaOutreach’s Chrome Extension helps to do this kind of research more efficiently.

As you browse the web and stumble upon potential contacts or some important information about them, you can use the NinjaOutreach extension to view their SEO and social data.

The extension also automatically crawls for emails and other contact info.

As you evaluate leads on the go, you can add them to a specific list and update their data in your database, or click the contact tab and go straight to outreach.

After you’ve done your homework on your target lead, be sure to connect your pitch with this information to make it personal.

For example, you can start by praising your lead for his/her recent achievements, then talk about the specific issues you’ve found (from your research) that he/she might be facing and offer your solution.

Offer a single core benefit in your cold outreach email

When offering your solution (or benefit), don’t overwhelm them. Many cold emails go unanswered because they leave the receiver in decision paralysis.

To avoid this, identify a single problem and offer your solution.

Keep these points in mind:

1. An effective core benefit transforms the receiver's current self into a desired self. As Consulting.com explains, people are extremely driven by the desire to be transformed from their current self to an ideal self.
2. Research your receiver’s pain points and potential needs and position your product as a solution to their problem.
3. Prove yourself credible by citing relevant experience and clients that you’ve helped.

What questions should you ask in your cold email?

Remember, your goal is to remove barriers as much as you can to get a response from your recipients, so always end your cold email with questions that need a simple answer, such as:

• “Would this be a problem for you?” Assuming you’ve explained a possible problem they’re facing—such as having too many cold leads—in your sales pitch, ask this question to ensure you’re on the same page.
• “Interested in a free demo of how our platform can [cite the benefit]?” You’ve identified their problem and offered your platform as a solution. This is the most risk-free, benefit-loaded question you can ask. Once you receive a “Yes,” discuss if they prefer the demo to be delivered in person or online.
• “I think the best way to discuss what we can do for you is over the phone. Would you be interested in that?” Most busy business people aren’t a fan of this question, but if you’ve personalized your email, identified their problem correctly, and positioned yourself the right way, they should be interested in a phone chat with you.

4. Don’t forget to follow up

Sometimes, it’s not your fault that your emails have gone unnoticed. According to the most recent Email Statistics Report by Radicati Group, an average business person receives 97 business emails and sends 43 of them per day.

A lot of inbox activity right?

The best way to deal with this issue is by sending follow-up emails.

You might want to send a follow-up email a week after you didn’t hear from your recipient, then send another one two weeks later, then send one after a month, and maybe some months later.

This way, you can ensure that your emails will get noticed.

Schedule your follow-up emails

With the email marketing tool NinjaOutreach,, for example, you can automatically launch email outreach campaigns and even set logic rules to automate when a follow-up email should be sent.

As you’ll see in the image below, you can set a follow-up to go out on a certain date, time, or after X number of days.

In Conclusion

Cold email outreach should not necessarily be difficult or frustrating. I’ve already given you a simple, 4-part formula to start your next cold email outreach campaign with.

To recap:

1. Find and target the right decision maker
2. Write an attention-grabbing personalized subject line
3. Write a killer email body
4. Send timely follow-up emails

These tips have stood the test of time in my years of practicing cold email outreach, so I recommend that you try it out, and see for yourself.

The post 4 Foolproof Steps for Cold Email Outreach That Actually Work appeared first on NinjaOutreach.

source https://ninjaoutreach.com/cold-email-outreach-tips/

Instagram Influencer Case Study Engagement Analysis of Followers & Locations

In the last Instagram case study we analyzed the characteristics of a few metrics that can be used to gauge the quality of an Instagram profile, the most important of which are the engagement rate and the followers to following ratio.

At the end of the post we mentioned that we were about to add 6.5 million profiles to our database, a 130% increase from the 5 million profiles we had. However, in the meantime we also applied numerous improvements to our social engines and in particular we radically changed the way we discover new profiles. The result is that now we don't only have 13.5 million profiles, but 24 million profiles.

In this post we will investigate the geographical data associated to the profiles, the relations between some important hashtags, and audience metrics.

Locations

The geographical location of a profile is estimated by taking into account a variety of factors, like the biography of the profile, the posts and the location tags on each post. The profiles in our database are distributed according to the following choropleth map:

As can be seen in the image, the countries with the highest number of Instagram profiles are the United States, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom and Indonesia. Right behind are Russia, India, the principal European countries and South American countries like Argentina, Venezuela and Colombia.

Location data can also be used to infer the language spoken by Instagram users (only official languages are considered):

English and Spanish are the most common by a wide margin. French is in third place thanks to Canada and all the African countries where it is an official language, and Portuguese follows with similar numbers, being Brazil's official language. Arabic, Russian and Indonesian also have a strong presence in the top ten.

These results are in line with the data provided by Statista, suggesting that our software collects profiles in a uniform manner:

In particular, we can focus on the profiles from the United States:

California leads the rankings with almost one-third of all the Instagram profiles from the US. Texas, New York and Florida follow at close distance. Once again we are satisfied with these results, since they mirror the population density across US states: if the population is concentrated in a handful of states, clearly the influencers will be as well. This is also the reason why there are so few influencers from the Midwest states.

Hashtags

Our software collects hashtags from all the posts it analyzes. So far we have collected more than 20 million unique hashtags. While a lot of those are obscure and fairly meaningless, the most frequent ones in our database are also the most frequent ones on Instagram: #love, #instagood, #photography, #summer and #repost are the first five.

In this analysis we focus our attention to the tags that signal sponsored or promoted content. The most used ones are #ad, #ambassador, #collab, #collaboration, #paid, #partner, #partnership, #sp, #spon, #sponsor, #sponsored. The next chart shows the number of profiles that have used these hashtags in their posts (note: the bars indicate the number ofprofiles, and not of posts containing a particular hashtag, which can be easily looked up on Instagram if desired).

We wondered how these hashtags were related to each other, and it turns out that the connections are extremely complicated. In the image below, which has been severely simplified in an attempt to maintain readability, one can observe which topics are most frequent with the most common promotional hashtags.

The blue circles represent the most frequent hashtags used in combination with the one that indicate sponsored content, but there is not enough space to label them all, so we just summarized the most common topics.

The #ad hashtag is used in pretty much all contexts, and the same is true, to a lesser degree, for the #collaborationhashtag. On the other hand, some less frequently used hashtags for sponsored content appear in very specific circumstances. In the beauty and cosmetics sector we see a predominance of the #collab and #collaboration hashtags. The #ambassadorhashtag seems to be used almost exclusively for fitness, sports and summertime topics. The #partner hashtag appears for the most part in posts related to photography, nature and fitness again.

The obscure #sp hashtag is a separate story. It is a shorthand for "sponsored" and it is used by some influencers to disclose promoted content (these practices have been deemed deceitful by the FCC in the US). However, we discovered unusually strong connections with Brazil, and it turns out that it is also used by Brazilian influencers to tag posts mentioning São Paulo, further adding to the confusion (similarly, #rj is used for Rio de Janeiro).

Posting frequency

We include a quick analysis of the posting frequency, since this update also included this new metric for all the profiles. We start with an overview of the distribution of the number of posts per week across all the profiles:

The great majority of the profiles post a few times a week on average. One may wonder if major influencers post more than regular profiles. That is indeed the case: the biggest influencers post 4.2 times per week on average, while smaller profiles have an average of 3.2 posts per week.

Lastly, we investigated whether posting frequency had a visible relation with engagement rate. Short answer: it does. In the scatter plot below, one can see that the engagement tends to get lower as the posting frequency increases:

The two charts suggest that for major influencers this diminishing effect is not as strong, but the inverse relation is still visible. As to why a higher posting frequency correlates with a lower engagement rate there could be several factors at play, like:

• more posting corresponds to lower quality overall;
• too much posting is penalized by Instagram's feed algorithms.

Bonus: audience metrics

This update also includes the long-awaited audience metrics. From this moment our scrapers will be able to estimate the demographics of the audience of an Instagram influencers.

The technology behind this is proprietary, so this post cannot contain too many details. However, we can present a very general overview of the way it works. The computing unit in charge of estimating audience metrics is essentially a machine-learning pipeline composed by three different convolutional neural networks that work together to estimate age and gender from a profile picture. Of course, this is only possible if the profile picture is a selfie. This is where the first neural network comes into play: we use the other two models for prediction only if we detect a face in the picture.

This process is repeated for the users belonging to a particular influencer's audience, and then the results are aggregated. The final metrics can be summarized in a chart like the following one:

These metrics are extremely powerful and can provide deep insights into the interests of an influencer's audience. Audience metrics will be rolled out in batches and at first only for the biggest profiles, since these metrics cannot be estimated reliably when the audience size is too small.

Conclusions

In this blog post we presented the results from analyses that we performed on very recently collected Instagram data. In particular, we observed that the Instagram profiles are distributed across locations as one would expect from third-party data, and then we explored the differences between the most common hashtags used to signal promoted content.

Our engineering team continues to improve the infrastructure for the data collection and analysis. We will provide new updates and analyses as our database grows further. Hashtags and their relationships seem to particularly interesting, so in the future we may post a blog post that goes into detail about that.

The post Instagram Influencer Case Study Engagement Analysis of Followers & Locations appeared first on NinjaOutreach.

source https://ninjaoutreach.com/instagram-influencer-case-study-engagement-analysis-followers-locations/

How to Sell on Pinterest: A Step-by-Step Guide for Social Brands

How To Find SEO Clients: 6 Quickstart Tips

Struggling with how to find SEO clients? This shouldn’t be the case since there are plenty of them out there.

Plenty of businesses, as well as individuals, have moved at least one part of their operations online. Even though ecommerce makes up for only 9% of the sales in the US, it has been growing steadily and will continue to do so.

This means that there should be plenty of potential clients that will need SEO services.

Of course, the tricky part is reaching them.

There are no magic shortcuts when it comes to finding SEO clients.

So, let’s analyze all the different ways which can help you find SEO clients because you will often need to rely on several at the same time in order to maximize your efforts. Keep on reading.

1. Use NinjaOutReach to Find SEO Clients

Although NinjaOutreach was primarily designed as a tool for reaching out to bloggers and influencers, it is equally brilliant at helping you find leads and prospects, which you can potentially turn into your clients.

You’ll get access to a database of over 25 million websites, which means you will never come up short trying to find SEO clients, bloggers, influencers in your niche or country, or places for guest posting.

What’s more, you can schedule mass outreach campaigns. That means you can find as many email addresses of potential SEO clients and schedule automated emails follow-ups to all those leads, without having to do it manually, one by one.

Sound good?

So, here’s how to use NinjaOutreach to start finding SEO clients and sending your pitches:

1. Log in and click on Prospecting.
2. Click on the Find Leads tab, as shown in the image below:

3. Enter your keyword or the topic you want to search for.

In this case, we will look for SEO, since we are trying to find SEO clients.

You can also select whether to search for your keywords among bloggers, companies, influencers, executives, journalists, niche or articles.

4. After you have entered all of your parameters, click on Search. You can also search by using the Advanced Filters option.

Once you’ve added your SEO leads into your list, you can set up your mass email autosending campaign like so:

NinjaOutreach also comes pre-loaded with plenty of outreach messages and emails which you can use and customize, depending on whether you are trying to target a business or an individual, or if you are just looking for influencers.

And to make sure that your outreach is not just a shot in the dark, NinjaOutreach also has built-in analytics which keeps track of the open, click-through, and reply rates of your emails.

That way, you’ll know how many of your SEO leads have replied or clicked to view your portfolio!

2. Become An Active Contributor on Forums

The following are examples of good Q&A forums you should actively contribute to:

• Quora
• Reddit
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• Google Product Forums
• Yahoo Answers
• StackExchange
• Any Other Active Forum

These days, there is plenty of information out there on just about anything. The problem is that, in order to find something which you can use, such as applicable tips, instructions, or guides, you need to dig really deep, since most of the content out there is pretty general and vague.

For example, if you want to learn a thing or two about SEO, you will find plenty of articles online which talk about it, but very few of them will have actual step-by-step guides on how to get started.

The exception is when you check out Q&A forums like Quora or Reddit, which do offer some actual answers. For example, take a look at the screenshots below:

 

The topic (and question) was posted by an actual, human user looking for useful answers. And while not all answers turn out to be brilliant, you will come across a few which were given by people that are experts in the industry.

Basically, what you need to do is take part in the discussions and provide answers which have value, in order to establish yourself as an authority, to which potential clients will turn to for services.

You can pretty much do the same on Reddit and Yahoo Answers in order to find SEO clients.

Quora and similar websites are also useful if you are looking for optimal keywords in your niche because people have already created them through topic titles and replies.

This goes double for long tail keywords. According to Aires Loutsaris, one of UK’s leading SEO consultants, over 90% of his client base comes from Yahoo Answers and Google Product Forums, which is pretty impressive.

Surprisingly enough, Facebook is also a great place to further your SEO career, learn new things and find new clients. It is a true goldmine of different job groups.

Here’s a quick list of all the other active groups you should participate in to find SEO clients:

• Marketing Solved Facebook Group

The Marketing Solved group is an invaluable resource for anyone who is looking to start their own online business without a firm grasp of complex marketing technologies and concepts.

Here, they can find detailed advice and instructions provided by experts in the field. Become an active contributor and demonstrate your authority on the subject. That way, you will be at the top of their list once they decide that they need premium SEO services.

• SEO Facebook Group Recommendations from SEO Software Ahrefs

Also, according to Ahrefs, these are the 15 Facebook groups every SEO (including you) needs to be a part of.

You will you also need to become a part of most SEO groups on LinkedIn.

• Search Engine Land LinkedIn Group

Your first stop should be Search Engline Land’s group, which has you covered when it comes to news and trends in the industry, networking, as well as contributing and building your brand.

• The Warrior Forum

Finally, places like the Warrior Forum, which is the largest forum for internet marketing in the world, is full of experts providing advice, and clients looking for tips and help.

The easiest way to start would be to just type “SEO” into their search engine, and contribute to one of the topics where potential clients hang out.

3. Publish Guest Posts to To Show Your Expertise

Guest blogging is still one of the best ways to gain exposure as an expert, build your brand or business, and drive more traffic to your website or blog.

The most obvious way to find SEO clients would be to secure a guest post on a reputable blog or website in your niche.

However, there are other things you can do. For instance, you can focus your efforts on your city, area, or country.

By making things more localized, you can find SEO clients among local businesses. But, you are not going to find them on niche SEO websites. Instead, find out where they get their information online.

The same goes if you are trying to score corporate clients. It’s as simple as finding where your potential clients get their information from and then publishing a guest post there.

According to this case study on SEMrush, you can increase your ROI by as much as 23% through guest blogging.

Now, granted, the blog in question was doing pretty good already, but an increase of $200,000 in revenue coming from increased traffic is nothing to sneeze at.

4. Make Use of Commenting to Get Noticed

Blog commenting, done right, can still be an effective lead generator.

For example, a case study posted on Flaunt My Design and run by Tomas Fransson shows how the writer turned 26 comments on other people’s blogs into 2,208 visits to his own blog.

In order to use this to your advantage and find SEO clients, you will need ti find the right SEO blogs to leave your comments on.

1. First, find an authoritative blog. Their content needs to be high-quality, and their authors should be thought leaders in your niche.
2. Second, the blogs themselves need to have a lot of traffic, and an active comments section. Otherwise, there is no point.
3. Once you have discovered those blogs, it’s time to start commenting.

Tips on Blog Commenting:

• Avoid posting spammy links, links to promotional content, or anything remotely salesy. People are tired of being pitched to, and they don’t come to the comment section for that. Instead, you should paste links to valuable and useful content which is posted on your blog or website.
• Your comments should feature insightful and data-driven so that you establish yourself as a valuable contributor and an expert.
• Set up alerts to let you know when your blogs of choice have posted new content. That way, you can leave a comment early and gain more exposure, before all the spam.
• Track your referral traffic in Google Analytics to determine which comments have been the most successful.

5. Create Awesome Content to Impress Potential Clients

Finally, to find SEO clients, you should always produce outstanding content.

Here’s why you always need to create awesome content:

• It will help your website or blog to rank higher inside the search engine queries.
• When doing outreach for guest posts, you will be able to demonstrate that you’re an expert on the topic.
• Consistently creating awesome content will drive more traffic your way.
• If you are brand new to the game, you won’t have much of a portfolio, but your prospects will be more inclined to choose you if they see that you know what you are talking about.

Let’s consider the case study involving InsideOut, which is a company that provides corporate training.

By focusing more on content marketing instead of just outbound sales tactics, they were able to generate a whopping 388% increase in the number of leads!

The content also featured visual elements, such as videos and slides, and it was mostly shared via email and social media, as well as their official website.

5. Try Paid Ads to Find SEO Clients

It’s a bit easier to find SEO clients if you have been in the game for a while and you have managed to get your business to rank high on Google. With a strong and easy-to-find portfolio, it’s easier to attract potential leads.

But if you are a new player with no considerable ranking to speak of, things are less optimistic.

There is always the option of paid advertising, which can be costly, and most SEO businesses which are just starting out don’t have a lot of cash to burn on ads.

But if you can afford it, you should use it as a strategy to help you get some much-needed exposure and traffic, and maybe a few first clients.

If you are a beginner, you will need to make the most of your marketing budget. In that, you should try a PPC (Pay-Per-Click) campaign.

Why? Well, you would be able to run your paid ads using Google Adwords, which are easy to use. Another upside is that you can choose a fixed PPC plan, which saves you from blowing your budget.

What about the downsides? Your ad space is pretty limited - only 25 characters for the headline. Plus, once your budget is spent, Google will stop displaying the ad. However, you can make it work, as shown by Upwork:

They are the world’s largest online workplace, so they don’t need that much advertising, but they have still managed to come up with a call to action that inspires trust and describes the expertise of their workforce.

Conclusion

As you can see, it is fairly simple to find SEO clients. Free options are good, though it takes a bit of time and effort, but it also produces long-term results; as opposed to paid advertising - which certainly has its place if you are looking for quick, short-term rewards.

Start applying these tips today, and soon enough, you will have more clients that you will be able to handle.

Good luck!

The post How To Find SEO Clients: 6 Quickstart Tips appeared first on NinjaOutreach.

source https://ninjaoutreach.com/find-seo-clients/

Instagram Marketing: The 10 Things Every Brand Needs

#SproutChat Calendar: Upcoming Topics for August 2018

Summer might be coming to an end, but that doesn’t mean the fun has to stop. This August we’re tackling deep topics that social media managers everywhere come across regularly, from developing true connections and optimizing content to self care and marketing conferences!

See a topic that interests you? Use the “add to calendar” button for a calendar reminder.

Wednesday, August 1: Sprout Social Trivia!

Wednesday, August 8: Optimizing Content Experiences for Your Audience on Social Media With UberFlip.

Join us and Uberflip for a #SproutChat that will dive deep into what it really means to take your hub of content and turn it all into a context experience. Great content is a good place to start, but there are ways that social media can take that a step further and really hone in on how a user experiences it. We’ll discuss how social plays into these experiences through amplification, distribution, and even analysis.

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Wednesday, 8/15: Creating Connection: Brands & People

This chat will focus on all the ways social media is used to create real, open, and empathetic connections between brands and people. We’ll cover everything from what true connection between brands and people actually means to you, to how to spur and maintain them. Bring your best examples of how you’ve seen brands make meaningful connections with their audiences!

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Wednesday, 8/22: How to Get the Most out of Marketing Conferences

When you work in social media, staying up to date on the latest trends is sometimes a struggle. Attending in-person conferences to stay informed can be expensive, especially if you work on a small team or on your own. Join us as we chat with our in-house events specialist, Becky Gomez, about how to get the most out of a digital conference. We’ll talk about a range of topics from networking to ways to put learning into action.

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Wednesday, 8/29: Marketers & Self Care

It’s common for social media managers to feel as though they can never fully switch “off” during non-working hours. But it’s important to know when to step back. Taking time for yourself, recharging, creating necessary boundaries at work—it all helps you avoid burnout in the short term. Join us as we chat about what self-care means to marketers, share tips for unplugging and finding inspiration in their work.

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This post #SproutChat Calendar: Upcoming Topics for August 2018 originally appeared on Sprout Social.

source https://sproutsocial.com/insights/sproutchat-calendar-august-2018/

Here's What Subscribers Really Expect From Your Marketing Emails

A marketer’s expectations can sometimes clash with a subscriber’s perception of a marketing email. That is, while a marketer is focused on getting better conversion rates and revenue, a subscriber wants personalized answers to their pain points. And that’s exactly why you need to sort out exactly how to position your email messages to ensure that your email campaigns give you the results you want.

An infographic by Email Monks shows these stark differences in what a subscriber really thinks about email marketing content, versus what an email marketer thinks they want.

But first, some quick pointers:

1. Write concise, non-misleading headers on your marketing email

Your subject line needs to be crisp. According to a study, open rates go down 50% with subject lines that have 5 words. The more words you add, the lower open rate goes.

Source: Yesware Research

Apart from being short and to the point, you need to make sure the subject line is not misleading. It should highlight what the email is about—no setting wrong expectations. Your subscribers expect you to be true to your word. Otherwise, they’d just ignore your marketing email, chuck it to their trash bin, or worse—mark it as spam.

2. Establish a reliable, permission-based email frequency

Yes, you want to be in the minds of your subscribers, but that doesn’t mean you bombard them with your marketing emails.

Your subscriber is your most valuable asset; make sure you don’t make them unsubscribe to your marketing emails for sending too many. Give your subscribers the option to set an email frequency of their choice and if possible, even the time of day to receive your marketing emails.

Permission-based marketing helps you create long-term relations with the right kind of subscribers.

3. Add CTAs linked to a dedicated landing page

The focus of every email campaign you create is to get the subscriber to click on the CTA/s in your email.

Imagine your subscriber clicks on it to view a certain product/ service/ offer and is redirected to your website home page, where they feel completely lost. This is certainly not what they were expecting from you!

Hence, every CTA must be connected to a dedicated landing page where you collect the subscriber’s information to add them to your sales funnel and take the relationship ahead.

Understanding what the subscriber really wants can help you make your marketing emails better.

So, check out more best practices in this tastefully designed infographic:

Source: Perception of Email

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