Steep Hikes In Insurance Rates Force Alaskans To Make Tough Choices

Alaskans have the highest rates for health insurance in the country. Many get a subsidy to help defray the cost, but those who don't wonder, increasingly, whether it's time to go without insurance.

» EMail This

Friday Feedback: Tackling the Risks of Youth Football

(MedPage Today) -- The role of clinicians in the discussion of this hot-button issue

Snapchat’s First Sponsored Lens Features “Peanuts” & A Candy Corn Stream

Snapchatters will have the chance to add Snoopy, Charlie Brown and other Peanuts characters to their selfies in sponsored promotion by Fox Studios.

Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.

10 Common Myths About Content Curation

Why is there so much mystery surrounding content curation? And why are marketers still struggling to understand it--and put it into practice? Maybe in part because myths about it still abound. Read the full article at MarketingProfs

Is Anyone Actually Looking at Your Mobile Ads? And Other Mobile News

Welcome back to the The Friday Five. Every Friday we'll curate five relevant and recent articles on one specific topic and present them here for your viewing pleasure.

The topics will include but not be limited to:

- Mobile marketing
- Social media marketing
- Cross-channel marketing
- Content marketing
- Marketing automation
- Data

So be sure to check back in every Friday because the fact is that no matter how hard you try, you cannot possibly read or know about every article that's on the Internet. So sit back and allow us to do the curating for you.

This Week's Friday Five: Mobile

How Can Marketers Be Certain Their Mobile Ads Are Actually Getting Seen?

Having addressed marketers' concerns about desktop viewability (ads that are actually seen by consumers) in 2014, the Media Rating Council is now in the hot seat to provide guidance on mobile advertising. In May, the MRC made its first statement on mobile viewability, saying that smartphone-size ads need to be measured differently than desktop ads. Five months later, however, marketers are still waiting for an industry standard for chargeable impressions to buy ads against, even with the MRC's promise to address the issue by the end of the year.

Read the full article on AdWeek.

Mobile video ad spending triples in 2015, and that’s just the beginning

Mobile video has tons of momentum. It more than doubled from 2013 ($720 million) to 2014 ($1.5 billion) and is predicted to reach $6 billion by 2018, which would put it at about half of all online video spending. Those are huge figures, and what’s amazing is that they may be way too conservative. A new study by AppLovin and AppsFlyer, mobile marketing and mobile attribution companies, examines data from over one billion devices worldwide and found spending on mobile video ads has actually grown from 23 percent of mobile ad spending to a whopping 66 percent of total ad spend. That’s a 190 percent increase in just a few quarters.

Read the full article on Venture Beat.

Mobile Messaging For Marketers 101

If you’re a consumer-brand marketer, you’ve no doubt given thought to running a marketing campaign or having a presence on a mobile messaging app. After all, every consumer is increasingly using mobile messaging as their portal to mobile. It’s sticky and lends itself to repeat sessions, boasting the highest retention and engagement rates of other apps on average.

Read the full article on Tech Crunch.

Report: Mobile To Dominate Programmatic Advertising, Leave Desktop In The Dust

Digital ad forecaster eMarketer is asserting that the majority of US display advertising dollars will be bought through programmatic channels by 2017. Furthermore, most of that will be mobile. A new report from the company estimates that mobile programmatic advertising will be worth roughly $9.33 billion in 2015, capturing 61 percent of all programmatic display ad spending in the US. By 2017, eMarketer says, mobile programmatic will be worth $20.4 billion vs. $6.34 billion on the PC.

Read the full article on Marketing Land.

Mobile Augmented Reality Market for Marketing and Advertising in APAC to grow

Augmented reality is an emerging technology that permits the overlay of computer graphics on the real world. It includes scanning the physical, real-world environment and enhancing/augmenting it by adding virtual computer-generated information. End-users can make use of this technology through applications developed for mobile devices. It involves blending digital content with the physical world. Augmented reality is being extensively used for marketing and advertising by enterprises. Although the adoption of this technology is low in APAC, it is expected to increase during the forecast period.

Read full article on Market Watch.

To get your own mobile marketing jumpstarted, download the Modern Marketing Essentials Guide to Mobile Marketing.

Build a Data-Driven Content Strategy by Yourself, for Free, in 1 Day

You can have a solid content strategy up and running in a day. OR, you could trade it all for what’s in this box.

Content marketing isn’t the next big thing. It’s here, it’s happening now, and if you aren’t using content to grow your audience, you’re losing them to competitors who are.

But building a content strategy is a ton of work, particularly if you’re a small team – perhaps even a team of one. Right?

Dan McGaw doesn’t think so. In his recent Unwebinar, The Facts & Fairytales of Conversion-Driven Content, he outlines a detailed framework for building a content strategy in little more than half an hour.

And he has the results to prove that it works: it’s the same strategy that he and his agency Effin Amazing employed to increase ChupaMobile’s organic traffic by 19%, and revenue by 38%.

It can be done by a single person in just one day, all with free tools from Google and a bit of research.

It all starts with finding out what people are already looking for.

Use Google Keyword Planner to assess demand for content

One of the “fairy tales of content marketing” that Dan described is that producing content is an art that is informed primarily by gut instinct. But as Dan put it:

If no one is looking for your content, no one will read the content you write.

So how do you write the kinds of content that your target audience is looking for?

Google’s Keyword Planner is a powerful go-to tool for pay-per-click marketers, who use it to measure search volume for specific keywords and plan their campaigns. But it’s not only useful for PPC. Dan explained that it can be used to learn what kinds of content your prospective audience is demanding in just a few simple steps:

1. Enter keywords relating to your product and industry. This includes the names of competitors or types of services that might overlap with yours.
2. Create a list of the highest-volume keywords. Google will let you know the monthly average searches for every term you search. Depending on how niche your subject matter is, what constitutes an acceptable level of traffic will vary, but Dan sets the threshold for content that people care about at 10,000 monthly searches minimum.

   These high-volume keywords form the core of your content direction, since it’s the type of content that your audience is likely to search for.

3. Generate keyword ideas based on the highest-volume keywords. Take the list of high-volume keywords you created and enter them into the Keyword Planner under Search for new keywords using a phrase, website, or category. Google will use its omniscient cloudmind to discover related keywords and hand them back to you.

Working these keywords into your content will be critical for generating organic traffic. But the research doesn’t end here; the keywords are just the key.

Generate even more keywords with predictive search results

Now that you have your list of totally-targetable keywords, it’s time to check out the competitive landscape with some good old Googling. But make sure you’re using Incognito mode, or whatever your browser’s private browsing mode is called: Google personalizes search results based on your history, and you don’t want that interfering with your research.

You can then start performing searches of your keyword list, and you’ll realize something wonderful happens: Google will tell you exactly how people are phrasing their searches by displaying the most popular searches as recommendations.

This is the information that will inform you on what specific subjects people are interested in. After all, “analytics” is just a keyword, but “how to add google analytics to WordPress” is nearly a fully-formed post idea.

Plus, knowing exactly what people are searching for will also let you know exactly what they find.

Content audit your competitors

This is one of the most time-consuming aspects of crafting your content strategy, but it’s also one of the most important. If you don’t know what your competitors are doing, how can you out-do them?

Dan suggests performing searches using your list of keywords and the recommended search phrases, and take note of what pieces of content appear on the first page of results. Then:

• Read the three most recent articles on the first page. You’re likely to see articles that are anywhere from a few months to many years old. Focus on the most recent ones.
• Write down three things that suck about each of them. And that doesn’t mean poor formatting or ugly images (though those are important to get right). This is not about being self-congratulatory, but about finding opportunities to capitalize on. If there’s some crucial fact or brilliant revelation missing from your competitors’ content, you want it to be in yours.
• Then write down three ways your content piece could be better. This can be elaborating on a subject that your competitors glazed over, introducing a new bombshell piece of information, or experimenting with formatting in a way that makes content more engaging.

But you don’t have to stop here. By combining your keyword research with defined goals based on your audience’s needs, you can extrapolate your keyword research into even more content ideas.

Create new content ideas based on your keyword research

These are the tactics that Effin Amazing used when they took on client ChupaMobile, a marketplace for app templates that can be re-skinned and released as new apps. Ultimately, they formed four core blog topics addressing the wants and needs of their audience:

• Hiring a mobile developer
• How to launch a mobile app
• How to make money from apps
• Building apps with no code

And with the knowledge of both the highest volume keywords and the specific phrases used to search those keywords, they were able to create a series of blog post ideas addressing exactly the questions people were searching for.

And you can do the same.

Combining all of the previous research you’ve done, you’ll now have both a clear list of both which existing pieces of content you need to compete with and what types of new content to create to attract your target audience.

Converting through content, via landing pages

Once you’re growing traffic through smart content production, what do you do with it? Is there a clear pathway from your content to conversion?

Dan recommends an approach we also use here at Unbounce: designating a specific piece of gated content (like an ebook) per post, building a landing page for each, and directing to those landing pages with various calls to action in each post, like at the end of the post or with an exit intent overlay.

It’s not about exerting pressure, but about creating an opportunity. If you don’t ask, you cannot receive. Create great content, link to relevant “content upgrades” with dedicated landing pages, and nurture the leads you collect from said content. (You can learn more about the nurturing part in the full webinar.)

The white-hat school of growth hacking

Dan ended his webinar with this quote:

Growth hacking isn’t one tactic; it is how you string tactics together and automate them. That’s how you create growth!

“Growth hacking” is a term that has always made me bristle. The word “hack” implies a shortcut or workaround, an easy path to success.

But if the term is to stick around, I feel pretty happy with this interpretation of it. One that views growth not as just a series of quick wins, but of building a sustainable strategy based on data; a definition that benefits our businesses as much as it benefits our readers, prospects and customers.

A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating a High Converting Webinar

I know that you understand the power of blogging and building an email list.

But the next step is often harder to grasp.

How do you turn those readers and subscribers into customers?

I’ve seen many online business owners work hard for several years to build a solid audience and not know how to profit from it.

And without any profit, how will you be able to keep producing free valuable content for your audience?

You can’t.

So, how do you convert those audience members into customers?

You can employ many effective tactics.

But there is one tactic with which I’ve had an incredible amount of success, and I know that many other businesses have as well.

That tactic is using webinars.

Webinars are essentially one- or two-hour live video streams, usually like mini-courses.

Anyone viewing the webinar can type in questions and comments throughout the presentation.

Webinars can be incredibly effective, on average converting around 20% of viewers into customers buying products. And these aren’t just cheap products—they are premium products.

Although I won’t go into the technical details of creating a webinar here (e.g., creating a slideshow, using webinar software), I’ll teach you a step-by-step procedure you can use to create webinars that convert.

Some businesses use only webinars in order to sell their products, and they do very well…I am talking about webinars just like this one I created. 

Why webinars might be the best form of content for any business

At their core, webinars are just another type of content.

However, webinars are a type of content that is optimized for selling. Why?

First, viewers typically place a higher value on webinars than other forms of free content, which means that they pay closer attention to what you’re showing them.

In addition, since the webinar is done live, they are forced to pay attention so they don’t miss anything.

Put those two things together, and you will have a captive audience when you deliver webinars the right way.

With webinars, you get to deliver your full message to your audience, whereas with blog posts, you never know how much of the content your website visitors read.

Finally, webinars allow you to connect with audience members in a real way. Other than creating a conference and trying to convince your audience to attend it, webinars are the best way to talk to hundreds, even thousands, of people at once.

And unlike with a blog post, you can actually answer the questions your audience has in real time during a webinar.

The conversion rate of webinars is insane: Say, you create a fantastic email sequence for a product you’re selling.

If you did a great job, you’ll get a conversion rate that is somewhere between 1-5%, depending on the price and a few other factors.

I would say that 5% is the low end of even a mediocre webinar.

Back at KISSmetrics, we used webinars a lot and had great results.

Our first 77 webinars had a total of 155,386 people who signed up to attend a webinar. Of those, about half (74,381) actually attended, and a solid 16,394 turned into high quality leads.

That’s a conversion rate of 22% (of the people attending).

A few other businesses have published results of their webinars.

Adobe claims a solid 19% conversion rate, while Buzzsumo says that 20% of webinar attendees turn into paid customers.

Depending on what you sell, a single lead can be worth upwards of $50. It doesn’t take much math to figure out how incredibly lucrative webinars can be (even with small audiences).

But a difference in conversion rate of just a few percent can be the difference between thousands of dollars in profit.

If you’re going to incorporate webinars into your content strategy, you want to make sure that you’re at the upper end of conversion rate (20%) rather than the low end (5%).

If you want to make a high converting webinar, follow these six steps.

Step #1: Learn how to warm up the crowd

Despite being a great sales tool, a good webinar isn’t a sales pitch at all.

A good webinar is a lot like a blog post. It actually provides value to the audience without asking for anything in return.

And just like with a blog post, you shouldn’t start off by digging right into the meat of your topic.

Instead, you want to build a bit of anticipation and excitement as well as take advantage of the opportunity to engage with your audience members.

The point of engaging here is two-fold: first, you start to loosen up, which will make your presentation better, and second, you get your audience into an engagement mode.

Since you’re interacting with them now, they are more likely to interact throughout the webinar.

There are a few different options at your disposal, and I recommend trying different combinations of them.

Option #1 – Have a quick chat: You should always arrive 10-15 minutes early to make sure that you don’t have any technical difficulties, which do happen from time to time.

Assuming everything goes smoothly, you will likely have a few minutes before you can start the webinar.

There are always a few people that come to the webinar early.

This is a great time to start talking with them about anything in the chat box.

Simply getting to know them a bit and learning about why they’re at the webinar (and why they’re so eager to get started) will improve your conversion rate down the line.

At the same time, you might learn some interesting things about your audience.

Option #2 – Ask a few questions: It’s always good to ask questions during the webinar, but it’s especially good to do at the start.

Basically, when you get your viewers responding in the chat box, they get used to it. And that makes them more likely to respond to you and ask more questions in the future.

Ideally, you want to get them in this habit early.

That’s because once they realize they can actually talk to you, they are more likely to pay attention throughout the webinar so they can ask questions about something they didn’t understand.

Option #3 – Ask attendees to fill out poll or survey: Instead of asking questions and getting responses in the chat box, you can have your viewers fill out a poll or survey.

These have to be prepared in advance, so it’s best to use them for questions that reveal something useful about your audience.

Here are a few sample questions you could use:

• “How many webinars have you attended?” - So you know if you need to explain webinars at the beginning.
• “How familiar are you with [your brand]?” - The less your audience knows you, the more important personal details and an introduction become.
• “How important is [webinar topic] to you?” - Over time, you will see that your customers care more about certain topics than others. Do more webinars about those important topics.
• “How much experience do you have with [topic]? - If your audience is more advanced than you thought, you don’t want to spend too much time on the basics. The opposite is also true.

Just about every leading webinar software (e.g., GoToWebinar) comes with built-in survey and polling tools. You can see the results as people answer your questions.

Or start the webinar with an introduction: It’s a good practice to introduce yourself near the start of a webinar.

Yes, you’ll have some long-time readers in the audience, but you’ll also have some brand new readers watching. Introducing yourself will allow you to start building trust with your new viewers, which will lead to them becoming customers (if not today, in the future).

A good introduction should be fairly brief, but don’t be afraid to show some personality and put in a joke or two.

Step #2: Without intrigue, you will fail

Webinars can provide a ton of value for your visitors.

But you are also asking for a lot.

They basically have to agree to spend 45 minutes (minimum) focused only on your presentation.

That’s a lot of time for many people.

You also need to consider that if at any point a viewer doesn’t like how the webinar is going, they can just click the “exit” button.

This is why your number one priority should be to keep them interested in your material.

There are a few things that go into this.

Without an intriguing topic, no one will show up: Interest starts with your topic. If you have a seemingly boring topic, no one will want to attend the webinar, no matter how good your actual presentation is.

The most important part of drawing attention is the title of the webinar. It functions exactly like a blog post headline.

Most of the same rules of writing a powerful headline apply here too.

You want to include specific results that your reader is looking for while not giving away the answer.

Here’s a bad headline:

Social media marketing efficiency

It’s boring, vague, and not provoking curiosity.

But how about:

How to plan your weekly social media marketing schedule in 60 minutes or less

That takes care of a specific problem (wasting time on social media) that a visitor might have. But it also makes the reader want to watch the webinar to find out the answer.

On top of the headline, you can also write a few high-impact bullet points on the landing page.

Those bullet points should contain the most important benefits from your viewer’s perspective.

In addition to putting them on the landing page, it’s always a good idea to put them on one of your beginning slides:

It’s easy for viewers to forget the specific reason why they signed up for the webinar, and this can jog their memory and get them to stick around.

Here’s one important aspect of picking a topic: The most intriguing topics for a webinar are the ones that act as mini-courses.

They take one specific important problem and solve it in those 45-120 minutes.

If you look at past KISSmetrics webinars, you’ll see that most of them involve the word “How”. Many headlines are “How to…” headlines.

Not only are these topics the most intriguing, but they are also the easiest ones to create a great presentation around.

Your presentation becomes a walk-through of the solution.

How do you get people to stay on the webinar? After you get your audience to register and attend the webinar, you still need to keep them intrigued by your material.

While some attendees will be entranced by the presentation, you’ll always have a large chunk on the edge of leaving.

They’re either not sure if this topic is really important to them, or they already know a lot of the things you’re covering but just want to see what you say about a few key aspects.

There are two things you should do.

First, don’t reveal everything about your solution at the start of the webinar.

It’s fine to give some details, like “our solution is to use batching along with a social media calendar.” Just don’t give out too much, like how you’re going to accomplish it.

If you pick your topic right (a how-to topic), your valuable content will be automatically spread out through the steps you present, so you don’t need to worry about this much.

But if your webinar is something like “7 secrets of…”, start with a really good one, and then mention that your last one will be the best one.

Another option is to provide an incentive to viewers who watch the entire webinar.

The bonus might be:

• a recording of the webinar
• a related bonus e-book
• a transcript of the webinar (or a PDF of it)
• free coaching
• or a special offer

For example, when guest presenters help out on KISSmetric webinars, they often include a related bonus book that a huge percentage of viewers will stick around to get:

Step #3: Every part you teach needs to accomplish one thing

A webinar is all about giving value, but it’s about giving the right kind of value.

It should educate your audience about their problems as well as potential solutions to those problems. This is valuable to any viewer.

At the same time, one of the solutions you show them will likely be a product or service you sell.

Assuming it’s legitimately a great product that solves the problem or makes the solution as easy as possible, all you have to do is present the product honestly when the time comes.

Until that time, everything in your presentation should have two purposes.

Phase #1 – Make the pain worse or the benefit better: Viewers sign up for webinars for two main reasons.

Either they have a problem that is causing them or their business pain and they want to solve it, or you’ve made a great promise that they’d like to get.

Here’s some examples:

• Pain: “I’m not getting any organic search traffic.”
  • Webinar: “7 steps to ranking #1 for long tail search terms”
• Benefit: “I wouldn’t mind making more money even if I’m doing okay now”
  • Webinar: “6 ways you can make an extra $1,000 per month”

Whatever the reason, you need to mention it early on. Remind them why they are there and what they will get out of the webinar if they stay for the whole thing.

When you do this, your viewers will pay closer attention to your presentation, and that’s when you jump into phase #2…

Phase #2 – Educate viewers about a solution: Don’t just educate them in general—educate them about specific solutions.

This will be the meat of your presentation, where you break down solutions, step by step:

Most viewers don’t care about the technical stuff going on in the background. They just want solutions that they can apply.

Among the solutions, you can include your product.

Or you might pitch your services at the end, offering to solve this problem for them.

Step #4: A buying audience is an engaged one

I’ve mentioned a few times so far how important an engaged audience is.

Let me clarify what I mean by that. Engagement is a measure of how much focus your audience is giving your webinar.

If you have low engagement, it means that people aren’t paying attention, despite watching the webinar.

It could mean that they’re zoning out maybe because the presentation is boring, or it could mean they’re distracted by email or social media.

A small percentage will just keep the webinar on to see if you offer a free bonus at the end, but don’t worry about those viewers.

A highly engaged audience will watch everything, and a decent portion of those viewers will jump at the chance to interact with you.

The more involved viewers are with you, the more invested they will be in the solutions you’re presenting.

The people who are talking to you the most during the webinar are your best leads for sales.

It’s obvious that getting your audience engaged is a good thing.

Here are a few different ways you can encourage engagement.

Idea #1 – Launch a poll: Every once in awhile, it makes sense to see if viewers are actually understanding what you’re saying and getting value from it.

If you’d like to do it informally, just ask a question and get responses in the chat box.

But if you also want to know if you’re presenting effectively, a poll is a good idea because you’ll get concrete feedback.

It’s a good idea to launch a poll or quiz immediately following a particular section. Ask the viewers about the main takeaway, for example.

Not only will it give you good information, but it will also make your viewers solidify their learning.

Idea #2 – Don’t read from your slides: One way to bore your viewers quickly is to create slides with a ton of words on them and just read them out loud.

If you’re going to do that, why do they need you?

Instead, put a few words on a slide, which attract attention, but fill in the blanks yourself.

Idea #3 – Mention viewers by name: This tactic is great at making your viewers feel more involved.

Instead of just being a screen name typing into a chat box, your viewers can feel like they are part of the webinar if you address them by their names along with saying something positive:

That’s a really good question, Neil! …

If you, as a viewer, get a personal compliment from an expert teaching a large audience, you’ll feel good about it. And chances are, you’re going to look for more opportunities to contribute and stand out from the passive viewers.

Idea #4 – Small webinars can be better than large ones: The default tactic is to try to get as many people to register for your webinar as possible. It’s not a bad one.

However, if you have a particularly complex product, you’ll need to be able to explain whether your product works for all specific situations that your viewers might have.

This is impossible if you have hundreds of viewers on the webinar.

But if you only had 25-50, you could cover quite a few scenarios and make a few big sales.

First, you should make it clear on the landing page that only 50-100 seats are open for the webinar (about half to two-thirds will show up).

Then, note the audience size right away at the start of the webinar. Say something like this:

I’ve kept the webinar really small on purpose; there are only 50 people here. I did that so I could talk with more of you one-on-one to find a solution that works for you. In order to do that, I need you to type in any questions or comments you might have along the way in the chat box.

Step #5: It’s closing time

If you’ve done everything up until this point right, making your pitch is actually really easy.

You’ve given away most of the value you promised, so at this point, it’s just a matter of giving away your bonuses (if you have any) and tying in your product or service with the solutions you just provided.

First, transition into your offer smoothly: The only way to really mess up at this point is to say, “Well, that’s all I have for you today. Now I want to show you a product to buy.”

As soon as you say something like that, the viewers will feel like they are being sold to, and no one likes that.

With a webinar, there’s an understanding that at the end you might make an offer, but it should flow naturally from the topic of the webinar.

The offer should have two qualities: it should be unique and valuable.

For example, if the webinar is about conversion optimization, I could offer a discount on Crazy Egg software.

First, that’s unique because they wouldn’t be able to get that discount anywhere else.

Secondly, it’s valuable because people who are learning about conversion optimization will need heatmap software, and Crazy Egg is among the best options.

It’s crucial that you tie your offer into how it will benefit the viewer in the context of the webinar topic.

Hold a Q&A session after the pitch: Before you even mention your product, tell the viewers that you will answer any questions they have in just a minute.

Although a large percentage of viewers will drop off here, the ones that stay are the ones that are really interested in your solutions.

By doing the Q&A after the pitch, you are forcing your viewers to at least listen to the pitch if they don’t want to miss the Q&A session.

Plus, making the pitch before your Q&A will allow you to answer questions about both the webinar material and your offer.

Once you’re done with the questions, you can finish the webinar with one last mention of your offer.

Step #6: You’ll miss out on a large amount of sales if you don’t do this

If you’re selling a particularly expensive product, you can’t expect all your viewers to be ready to buy right away even if you give them a great offer that they are interested in.

Some people will want to think about it a bit more, while others will need to get an approval of a boss or their significant other.

That doesn’t mean that they won’t take you up on your offer; it just might not be the second you give it to them.

Additionally, depending on the time of your webinar, some attendees may just want to go to sleep or have to go somewhere.

Neither of these scenarios allow time to carefully consider a major purchase.

So, what should you do to maximize your conversion rate? Follow up with them within 24-48 hours.

Assuming you’re using software like GoToWebinar, you will have access to all of your registrants’ email addresses.

This is your chance to provide even more value (which will help get a high email open rate) while also getting your offer in front of viewers one last time.

Here’s what a good follow up might look like:

Subject: Recording of last night’s webinar on [topic]

Hi [name],

I know that we covered a lot in the webinar yesterday, and it’s easy to miss things. That’s why I’ve put up a recording of the webinar that you can stream or download. Here’s the URL:

[URL of the webinar]

If you still have any questions about what we covered, just reply to this email, and let me know what they are.

Additionally, you still have 48 hours to take advantage of the 20% discount.

This is a pretty special offer that doesn’t come around very often, and I feel you could really benefit from [product] in 3 ways:

• (benefit #1)

• (benefit #2)

• (benefit #3)

If you want to take advantage of the offer or want more information, click here:

[URL of the landing page]

Best regards,

[your name]

No hard sell—just the last chance to get your offer in front of your viewers. If they are ready to become customers, they will do so now.

If not, don’t worry about it. If they enjoyed this webinar, they’ll likely sign up for a future one and might buy from you later.

That’s the beauty of webinars. They’re still part of your content marketing plan, and even if they don’t directly lead to a sale, they will help build your brand in the eyes of your attendees.

Finally, make your past webinars publicly available. This is something that KISSmetrics does.

At this point, there are over 100 webinars that anyone can access if they provide some basic contact information.

In my time at KISSmetrics, the old webinars provided about 20% of our overall webinar leads, which is nothing to sneeze at.

Conclusion

Webinars might be the single best tactic to not only attract visitors but also convert those visitors into leads or customers.

They offer a unique opportunity to engage with your potential customers, which no other form of content can match.

They also have a high perceived value, which means that attendees typically focus on the webinar the entire time, assuming that it’s interesting.

When you’re creating your next webinar, whether it’s your first or hundredth, make sure that you follow all six steps of this post.

If you do, you will have a webinar that can convert viewers at about 20% as long as your offer is enticing.

If you have any questions about the six steps in this post, let me know below, and I’ll see if I can’t clear things up.

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This afternoon the Wall Street Journal reported that Google will be “folding” Chrome into Android. What this means as a technical matter may be complicated; what it means practically is simple: Android has won. From a developer point of view it makes sense to combine the two operating...

Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.

Email Marketing: What travel sites can teach you about creating successful campaigns

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Email marketers know that the subject line plays a vital role in the open and clickthrough rates of an email. Subject lines are the first micro-yes that a subscriber agrees to in order to continue up the sales funnel. For many, writing a powerful subject line with value-packed words and a sense of urgency will single-handedly increase open rates and lead to higher clickthrough.

However, with marketing emails rendering differently across different email clients — such as Gmail or Outlook — content and images often get corrupted from the marketer’s initial concept to the final result.

Without proper testing and copy editing, discontinuity can become a fast problem for marketers and, even worse, lead to confusion and mistrust with the customer.

In this post, we’ll look at two emails from different travel sites whose subject lines are promising quick deals and the challenges that they face with email marketing.

Throughout this post, I’ll be referencing different elements of the emails with respect to the Email Messaging Heuristic: 

 

Example #1: Friction caused by excessive calls-to-action

The first email comes from a budget airline — known for cheap fares but charging for “extras” such as carry-ons, drinks and oxygen (just kidding about that last one).

Email Subject Line: Fares from $39* are so low, you just have to go

When I received this email, I was pretty excited to see where I could go for just “$39*.”

The subject line is well-written. It presents an offer value (fares starting at $39) as well as reduces anxiety and friction by stating “you just have to go,” implying that it is a simple, easy process to get these fares.

When I opened the email, I immediately skimmed for the $39 deal. It wasn’t long before I read through the email a few times and noticed that the deal wasn’t on the email.

I was disappointed. 

It turned out that the message did not render correctly — probably Gmail trying to save me from the length and scope that the email was trying to cover. However, because the subject line promised the deal and I could not find it in the message that I received, it felt like the sender was not upholding their end of the deal.

I then clicked to open the email in a Web browser and once again, searched for the $39 deal. It was the 40^th call-to-action on the email. Specifically, It was number 40 out of 87 primary calls-to-action.

The friction was so overwhelming that it made this email a chore to skim.

One of the challenges that travel sites face, especially budget sites, is that they have many deals and destinations to share — especially if the subscriber has not selected a specific “alert” or deals to and from specific places.

However, without reinforcing the value and incentives throughout the email, the friction becomes overwhelming.

When composing an email, remember that the email is not the landing page, it’s the step before the landing page — where you demonstrate what you can offer, not showcase everything that you have to sell.

Example #2: Emails rendering differently across platforms

The next email comes from Kayak.com, a site that works as a search engine for cost-effective fares and hotels.

Subject Line: Your KAYAK Alert: JAX to KAYAK Top 25 from $97+ (no change)

In the email below, I’ve included an email as it appears in Gmail as well as Outlook. The subject line is very similar to the first example, with two unique differences.

First, notice the specificity of “Top 25” — this increases the relevance of the email and also decreases the anxiety by clearly showing how long the email is and what the reader can expect.

Secondly, although this subject line doesn’t have a phrase like “so low, you have to go,” to lower friction like in the first example, the way that it’s written with “Your KAYAK Alert” and that it indicates “(no change)” reduces anxiety in a way that the first email does not: by insinuating regular updates.

Looking into the body copy, this email immediately ties the promise made in the subject line to the content of the email. This not only reduces anxiety and increases orientation, but, if the email provider decides to cut off the email at a certain length (like we saw in the first example), the subject line still fulfills its promise.

In the Outlook version below, seeing the red “x” boxes and the warning of downloading content might cause anxiety in readers. However, potentially an even greater source of anxiety would stem from not seeing a recognizable logo, which acts as a credibility indicator. 

Testing emails and how they are rendered by different email clients should be an essential part of your email marketing strategy.

Whether you’re sending all-image or text-only emails, specific clients and providers have their own influence on whether or not the image will appear, what kinds of fonts are supported, and how logos and icons appear.

Each element of your email, from the subject line to the tiny gray text in your footer, has a decisive impact on how your customer decides to take action on your email. Whether that action is to delete the message before they even open it or to purchase, how you strategically leverage the elements of the email heuristic can impact your customer’s final decision.

Key Takeaways:

• Ensure the promise made in your subject line is fulfilled in an obvious place your emails
• If your email acts as an update to listings, provide a range of offerings relevant to your customer, not a comprehensive list of all of your products, within your email body copy
• Test your emails across platforms to ensure that credibility indicators and other important elements are not lost

You can follow Jessica Lorenz, Event Content Manager, MECLABS Institute, on Twitter @JessicaPLorenz.

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How to Use Data as a Competitive Advantage

Big Data, in short, has gone mainstream. But that raises an important question: If everyone is “data-driven” in both theory and action, how can businesses carve out meaningful competitive differentiation through their use of information? What room exists for real commercial advantage when everyone in the marketing ecosystem is advancing from the novice to expert stages of their respective data maturities?

The above is an excerpt from the foreword of the white paper Data as Competitive Advantage. Oracle Marketing Cloud worked with the Winterberry Group, the IAB, Dun & Bradstreet, Accordant Media and AddThis on research that highlights how a combination of businesses – agencies, brands and publishers alike – are using “data” in their marketing businesses as well as their perceptions of what’s working and what could be better. Most of the individuals who responded to this research have used a Data Management Platform (DMP) within the last three years or less, which represents rapid growth!

Given the rate of adoption and interest, we helped produce this research as a way to better understand how the marketplace is considering “data” and how we can better address the needs of the marketplace through our own technologies and services. That said, here are a few of the key takeaways from the Data As A Competitive Advantage white paper:

1. Use of audience data represents competitive advantage, but only for sophisticated marketers and publishers. In addition, basic business drivers that meet core revenue attainment goals are what are still prioritized, over audience data use that “may” have business value, but are not necessarily guaranteed. 90% said there was “some” business value and 74% of the executives who contributed to the paper said that accountability was “the” metric needed to grow topline revenue and that is what matters most.
2. Data practitioners understand the value of using 1st party data – the data most organizations already have access to, but it is still nascent with only 52% of these users having seen “value” in the use of 1st party data activation.
3. Advertisers continue to see value in open market RTB sources, but are concerned about “private data market” exchanges. This signals the rise of private data exchanges or “walled gardens” as we say and the question regarding how to optimize cross-channel capabilities with limited line of sight or access to the right data to inform customer experience (and business outcome) through these private exchanges.
4. Attribution is still the beacon that all marketers aim to ensure their programs have across channels. That said, the efforts to fully measure and have an end to end attribution program are still widely yielding “mediocre” results for most marketers.
5. Operational and organizational agility is now being recognized as something that has to be addressed for businesses to transform and embrace a data-driven philosophy.
6. Industries are still leaning on technology providers, like Oracle, to make tools that “pull it all together” so that it is easy to embrace and use the data systems that exist – in the multitude of locations and systems that they exist in.

Why is a Data Centric Business Model Adopted?

All of the above points suggest that while there is much greater appreciation and understanding for what becoming “data driven” can mean for a marketer, the practice is still largely nascent and the understanding for how to use specific technology to address specific use cases is still being assessed by most marketers with varying degrees of success – due to operational items, organizational and potentially even technology providers.

So, while some more sophisticated marketers have tried and succeeded with becoming more data driven, the success hasn’t been widely repeatable and the results have yet to be consistent.

We continue to provide guidance to our customers about “how” to consider “data” success in their own unique organizations and knowing what will work, who will champion, and what success looks like before any technology decision is made. Enabling data success in any organization requires so much more than technology alone.

Download Data as Competitive Advantage and see for yourself the role that data plays in driving competitive business advantage across a range of advertising, marketing and digital media use cases.

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How Marketers Can Avoid the Dark Side of Content Marketing This Halloween (and beyond)

I don't know what it is but every year on Halloween the entire mood and feel of the day completely changes when the sun goes down. There is an eeriness that sets in, right? Now I realize that eeriness doesn't quite feel so, well eery as we get older but, there is still something undeniably different that happens on Halloween when the darkness takes over.

Tell me I am not the only one who thinks and feels this. Anyone? Bueller?

Ok, I digress.

Just as there is a dark side to Halloween there is irrefutably a dark side to content marketing. It's a place where goblins, spooks and creepy creatures rule the content marketing land and if you find yourself in this dreadful domain, you are more than likely committing one, or God forbid - all of the 7 1/2 deadly sins of content marketing.

Yes, 7 and a 1/2, you read that right.

Ok so how do you know if you're indeed on the dark side of content marketing? Well you first need to know what those 7 /12 deadly sins are.

To help you get started, here's the first 3:

1. Making It All About You. The focus should be always on your customer. Quite simply they do not care about you, they care about what you and your product or service, etc. can do for them.

2. Not Adhering To The N.A.S. Doctrine. AKA the Not Always Selling Doctrine. In other words resist the temptation to try and sell something via every single marketing communication you have with your customer or prospect.

3. Wrong Church, Wrong Pew. Do you know your customers and prospects? I mean really know them? Or are you basically shooting blind, hoping for the best? Those of us in the real world know that far too many brands and businesses simply do not know who their customers are and therefore cannot target them in the first place with their content marketing strategies.

Be honest, are you committing any or all of these egregiously bad deadly sins of content marketing?

It's ok if you are for help is here in the form of The 7 1/2 Deadly Sins of Content Marketing (And How To Avoid Them).

Notice the parenthetical part of the title? Not only do we identify ALL of the 7 1/2 deadly sins of content marketing, we also tell you how to avoid them. Think of us a kind of Casper the Friendly Content Marketing Ghost.

So don't just sit there. The dark side is calling you as we speak. Download The 7 1/2 Deadly Sins of Content Marketing (And How To Avoid Them) right now before it's too late.