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Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.

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A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating an Autoresponder That Subscribers Can’t Wait to Open

Email autoresponders are the holy grail of marketing.

You set up a sequence of emails once, and you’re done.

Thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands, of people will get exactly the same emails from you, in the same order.

This allows you to create an unbelievably consistent level of service.

Perhaps the most underrated benefit of autoresponders is that they exist within email marketing, the most profitable channel of marketing.

Capterra found that every one dollar spent on email marketing resulted in $44.25 of revenue. So, not only can autoresponders save you a lot of time, but they can also be extremely effective in driving profit for your business.

Of course, there are two sides to everything, and autoresponders are no exception: they have some limitations.

If you don’t understand these limitations and take appropriate action, you will end up with autoresponders that suck.

Remember that an autoresponder is just a tool. It’s how you use it that counts.

One marketer can achieve amazing long-term success with an autoresponder, while another will never make a sale.

I want you to be in that first group.

And if you follow the five steps in this post, you’ll be well on your way to efficient and effective communication with your email subscribers. 

How does an autoresponder fit into your business

As you might know, there are two main types of emails you can send with any email marketing platform:

• broadcasts
• autoresponders

Broadcast emails are written to your list and sent once at a particular time.

Autoresponders, on the other hand, are all automated. You create a sequence of emails to send to your subscribers after they sign up for a list.

The downside of using broadcasts to email your list is obvious: it takes time—time to create emails on a regular basis.

Sometimes you should use broadcasts—typically for one-time, time-sensitive events and news.

However, a few situations are perfect for autoresponders, and that’s what I’m going to focus on in this post.

Situation #1 – Introduce new subscribers to your content: In a distant past, any new subscriber you got already knew your content and loved it. They had to; otherwise, they would have never filled out a plain opt-in form.

But now, with the use of tactics like content upgrades, blog owners can double, triple, or even quadruple their opt-in rates.

You offer an attractive free bonus in exchange for a reader’s email address. As a result, you get way more opt-ins.

This is great!

However, there’s a downside to this.

A large portion of your subscribers have only read one or two pieces of content on your site.

So while they might like you, they mainly signed up because of the free bonus. In other words, you don’t really have much of a relationship with them.

To fix this, you want to show them your absolute best content that you’ve written over the years.

Blow them away so that they recognize the value you have to offer and let you start building a relationship.

Obviously, you don’t want to have to send each new subscriber an email of your best posts manually.

And since you want to deliver it soon after they sign up, an autoresponder is perfect.

A great example of it is this email you receive from James Clear after you join his email list.

He sends an email early on dedicated to his best articles:

Not only does he show his subscribers his best content, but he also organizes it by category so that the subscriber has the best chance of finding content they are most interested in.

Situation #2 – Create an automated sales funnel: Selling a product through an email sales funnel is a delicate process.

You need to consider the types of emails you send as well as their timing.

With some launches, you have no choice but to send emails manually. If you open and close a course at specific times, you have to stick to broadcasts.

However, if you’re selling a product or service continuously, you can build it right into your autoresponder (which is what I do at NeilPatel.com).

Situation #3 – Use it as a lead magnet course: In general, the more valuable the free bonus you offer to your new subscribers, the more likely they are to opt in.

The most valuable thing that most bloggers could offer would be coaching or consulting help. But giving that away just isn’t viable. Not only would it take a ton of time, you’d sacrifice a lot of profit as well.

However, with an autoresponder, you can provide a fairly good level of coaching or training and automate it.

Email courses are highly valued in many different niches.

Assuming your course is actually good, you get one more benefit: you’ll “train” your subscribers to anticipate and open your emails.

Step 1: Understand the 4 factors that affect open rate over time

Before even thinking about making any sales through email marketing and using autoresponders, you need to get your emails opened.

There are many reasons why subscribers might want to open your emails:

Your name is an obvious one, but it is often messed up, even today.

If you write all the content on your site under your name, your subscribers expect (and want) to get emails from you.

They don’t want to get emails from “support,” “customer service,” or someone else they don’t know even if that person works with you.

People mainly open emails because of relationships, so always send them your emails using a name they know.

Beyond that, four other factors influence long-term open rates (which is what you should be aiming for).

Factor #1 – Enticing subject lines: In a typical email box, a user will see the subject line of an email, followed by the sender.

In certain emails, they will also see the first line of the message, but it’s not as prominent.

Obviously, the subject line matters a lot.

Somewhere around 35% of email users will open emails based on the subject line alone.

So, how do you create a good email subject line?

First, make is short.

Subject lines with 6 to 10 words get the highest open rate.

This is mostly because most email inboxes only show about 10 words at the max before cutting off the rest of the subject line.

The second important part of a good subject line is that it induces some curiosity—it’s interesting.

Here’s where many email marketers mess up.

They see that they can use certain tricks to get great open rates.

For example, if you send an email with “(No subject)” as the subject line, it will get opened by nearly everyone.

But that’s the wrong kind of curiosity.

With tricks like these, the reader opens your emails just to see what they are.

Unless you have the most interesting, compelling content inside, the reader will feel tricked. Tricked readers are not happy ones and won’t be opening your emails much in the future.

If you’re going to use tricks like these, use them very sparingly.

The alternative, and better, option is to send your readers valuable content they are interested in.

If you’re on any of my email lists, you know that I don’t get cute with subject lines. I simply put the name of the post or topic I’m writing about in the email:

Why?

For two main reasons. First, I know you’re already interested in the topics I’m writing about if you’re on my email list. As long as it’s clear that I’m writing about a relevant topic, emails will get opened.

Secondly, I’ve already spent a good amount of time crafting a powerful headline. Because of that, I know that the message will be clear, and there will be some sort of a curiosity gap built-in.

Getting emails opened is not about tricks.

Factor #2 – Your topic matters: Although you may want to send all your most popular posts at once, you can also spread them out over time.

As we’ve discussed, sending information on interesting topics is the best way to build a relationship with your readers and get your emails opened now and in the future.

The best place to get the best email ideas is from your most popular posts.

Go to Google Analytics, and navigate to “Behavior > Site Content > All Pages.”

You’ll see a list of all your posts sorted by pageviews. Make sure that you set the time period to at least the last year.

Use these top posts as your email content, or just give these links to your subscribers. You can be reasonably confident that they will enjoy them just as much as your past visitors did.

Factor #3 – Deliver on your promise: I’ve mentioned that you need to be building a relationship with your subscribers over time.

You need to prove that you can be trusted on an ongoing basis.

As soon as you betray that trust by tricking your subscribers or not living up to your word, you destroy that trust and the relationship.

So yes, sending emails about interesting topics is important. But so is what happens after that.

If I wanted a great open rate for an email, all I would have to do is make a crazy promise in the subject line.

If I delivered, readers would, of course, love it. But if my content didn’t live up to that promise, I would lose a lot of trust immediately.

An email by CoSchedule promised 21 ways to increase an email list by 552%.

That’s a big promise:

Did they deliver?

You bet. You can see so in the comments of the article they linked to in that email:

The next time CoSchedule sends an email, those happy readers will be excited to open it. That’s how you build a relationship.

Factor #4 – Give much more than you take: At the end of the day, email marketing needs to produce sales.

And it can.

But you need to be careful about how often you’re promoting products.

In general, subscribers don’t like pitches, but they don’t mind them as long as the value of your overall communication heavily outweighs the pitches you are sending.

If you look at the emails that someone like Bernadette Jiwa sends, you’ll see they are almost all value, no pitch:

Over time, your subscribers will see that you’re not just trying to make a sale from them, but that you actually care about improving their lives.

Once that barrier of skepticism gets knocked down, your subscribers will start opening your emails without worrying that you’re just trying to profit from them.

Future pitches will be much more welcome because subscribers understand that you want to help them, not take advantage of them.

Step 2: The often misunderstood purpose of emails

The first lesson of all modern copywriting is that you should write to your readers in a conversational tone.

Your blog posts as well as your emails should sound like something you’d send to a friend.

It’s not bad advice, but you need to remember that you can have many different levels of friends.

You wouldn’t talk to someone you’ve just met (even if you liked that person very much) like you would talk to a close friend you’ve known for years.

But, of course, some marketers take this advice way too literally.

They’ll send their new subscribers something like:

Hi (name),

What’s up? Just heading out for the weekend to the cottage! :p

If you’re in San Diego next weekend, let’s grab dinner.

-N

That might be okay if you were writing to a really close friend with whom you talk often.

For a new relationship, this is not even close to being okay. New subscribers would think, “Ummm..okay? What the heck was that?” and be creeped out by it. Unsubscribes would follow.

Bottom line: Be friendly, write in a conversational tone, but remember that there are many stages to a friendship. Your typical email subscriber is a good acquaintance at the most.

Your style reflects you: For some reason, many marketers have a hard time writing good emails.

They write great blog posts, but when it comes to composing an email, they panic and end up producing emails that sound as if a robot wrote them.

Email may be a different from a blog channel, but you should write emails just like you write any of your other content.

Your subscribers opted in because they like how you write.

Why would you change that?

Your emails should both sound and look like you (the way you write on your blog).

Let’s look at an example…

Brian Dean writes in a unique style on Backlinko. He uses extremely short sentences and paragraphs as well as very casual phrases like “I’m pumped”:

You’ll even notice in the above picture that he capitalizes words to add emphasis.

Guess how he writes his emails?

You guessed right—exactly the same way:

He uses short sentences, casual language, and a similar font and even capitalizes “PUMPED!” to add emphasis.

An email doesn’t have to be an announcement: There’s one part of writing a great blog post that is always difficult to overcome.

Blog posts are typically one-sided: the writer writes, and the reader reads.

This can make it difficult to get your readers to engage with your content. Additionally, you can’t build a relationship without having some communication from both sides.

That’s why email is an amazing medium.

It’s designed so that people can respond to your communication—they expect a two-way conversation.

But if all you do is write your content and link to your posts in your autoresponder, you’ll get some replies, but not many.

To fix this, you need to encourage responses and actually reply back to any emails you get. Although this will take time because you can’t automate it, these interactions will help you build strong customer loyalty.

You can encourage a reply by asking your subscriber to either answer a question you pose in your email or let you know something.

For example, in one of the first emails Derek Halpern sends his new subscribers, he asks if there is anything they are struggling with:

He specifically asks his subscribers to reply to him to begin a dialog.

Step 3: You don’t need to sell in your emails

Email is amazing for driving sales, which you probably already know.

The mistake, though, that most marketers make is selling directly in an email.

People don’t really buy in emails.

They discuss ideas, they learn new things, but they don’t buy.

People are wary of email scams these days and don’t want to purchase anything through links placed directly in emails.

So, how do you make money from email marketing if you can’t sell in an email?

You send subscribers to pages, where they can buy safely and confidently.

Essentially, you want to use your emails as a pre-sell to warm up your subscribers before they get sent to a landing page.

That way, they don’t just get a buy button slapped in their face without expecting it.

You can pre-sell in emails in a few main ways.

Option #1 – Link to reviews: If you’re promoting an affiliate product, you can either link directly to a landing page for it, or you can create a review of a certain product and include affiliate links throughout it.

A few weeks ago, Jon Morrow created a new list for subscribers who care about WordPress site speed.

In all his emails about this topic, he linked to a thorough review:

In the article he linked to, there are several affiliate links pointing to the hosting company he is promoting. He gets paid whenever someone signs up through those links:

Option #2 – Link directly to a landing page: Alternatively, you can warm up your subscribers and send them to one of your landing pages.

Talk about the benefits of your product or service, and tell your subscribers that if they want to learn more or to purchase, they can check your landing page.

Instead of feeling tricked or pressured, the subscribers will feel in control. Since you’ve hopefully built a relationship before pitching something, they will typically give your offer a fair shot.

Here’s an example: Peep Laja is a conversion rate expert. When promoting his coaching program, he sent an email with the most important details and benefits of his coaching.

Then, at the bottom of the email, he made it clear that anyone who clicks the link would be going to a landing page about his program.

No one gets tricked, and you still drive a lot of targeted traffic to your landing page.

Step 4: Don’t be the “boring” friend

We talked about the fact that you need to write emails as if you’re writing to a friend.

There’s one part of it that we haven’t looked at:

Don’t you like getting emails from certain friends more than others?

Maybe you wouldn’t tell them that to their face, but I bet you occasionally ignore emails or other types of messages from certain friends (or at least delay your response).

Conversely, you probably get excited when other friends send you a message.

Obviously, you want your autoresponder emails to fall into this second group of emails.

To do so, you need to avoid all the things that your “boring” friends do.

Emails are reserved for value: I realize that everyone is different, but for the most part, email isn’t used for much “chit chat.”

If you want to ask someone about their day, you text them or use some other messaging app.

Over time, you get conditioned to pay attention to those emails that you know will give you some value.

This also means that when you read an email that just wastes your time, you are less likely to open another one from the same sender (your “boring” friend).

Here’s what you shouldn’t do:

• Email frequently about nothing in particular
• Send any email without a point
• Send emails about everyday topics (not of high interest)

My subscribers want to learn about SEO, marketing, and a few other related topics.

Every single one of my emails needs to be about one of those topics.

It’s fine to include some personal details to try to build more of a connection with your subscribers, but you need to always tie those back in with your main topics.

Do you only contact “friends” when you need something? Everyone knows that one person from school or work who only ever talked to their peers when he needed help with something.

The first few times, you’d give that person the benefit of the doubt and just assume they are having an unusually difficult time with something.

However, as time goes on and behavior doesn’t change, you realize that if this person gives you a call, comes up to you, or sends you an email, she wants something.

Don’t be this person.

Everyone gets sick of them at some point and stops giving them any attention.

Instead, be the person who gives others value and offers assistance more often than asks for help.

Fifteen out of the 17 emails in the picture above are asking the subscriber to do something.

If you do that, most subscribers will either unsubscribe soon after they realize what’s going on or just mark your messages as spam.

Step 5: Don’t let your emails lose their impact

There’s one last main problem we need to address.

Have you ever been excited to sign up for a list in the past, only to slowly lose interest?

I know you have because we all have.

As the email sender, you’ll find it’s one of the hardest things to prevent, but it is possible.

Length should match value: When it comes to the length of your communication, you need to consider two aspects.

First is the length of your emails.

Second is the length of your autoresponders.

Despite what some will claim, there’s no perfect length for an email.

The length of your emails should depend on a few key factors:

• How interesting your topic is - the more interesting it is, the more willing people are to read more about it
• What they expect – if you always write short emails, subscribers will expect short emails. Don’t expect long ones to get as much attention as your regular email would.
• What needs to be said - If you’re simply linking to another page that you want your subscribers to visit, less is more. Only include what is necessary to prepare your readers and build up curiosity for that page.

The last point is perhaps the most important.

If you send an email with a lot of fluff in it, you might not realize the problem at first.

Your readers will still read it if the topic is interesting enough.

However, they will lose interest in your emails over time. It will become a chore for them to sort through the junk in order to find the gold.

If you see your open rates decline significantly over time, that means you are driving off your subscribers for one reason or another.

What about the length of your autoresponders?

If you’re offering a course or introduction to your content, your autoresponder has to cover that specific topic.

If it’s a complex topic, it might take 30 emails to cover it.

If it’s a simple product, it might only be a 5- or 7-email series.

Match the complexity of the product and the interest your subscribers have in it with the length of your autoresponder.

If you create an autoresponder course about “how to format a blog post,” don’t send 50 emails.

By the time you get to your third or fourth email on a simple topic, most subscribers will lose interest.

All autoresponders must come to an end: All autoresponders should be about one or two specific topics.

They should be used only for those cases when visitors to your website want to learn about a specific topic and signing up for those targeted emails will give them those answers. 

We just discussed what happens if you send too many emails about a topic.

In addition, if you start talking about different topics, most readers will stop reading your emails.

They’ve learned what you have to offer about topic “A,” and that’s what they wanted. They didn’t ask to learn about topic “B,” which is why they are no longer interested.

Whenever you create an autoresponder, determine the scope of what you’re covering, and divide the material into however many emails you think is necessary.

Then, write those emails. Don’t add more emails to the autoresponder in the hope of automating 100% of your email marketing.

What happens at the end of an autoresponder? You’re probably wondering what happens to these subscribers once they hit the end of an autoresponder.

That’s a great question.

There are two main options that you can use either individually or together.

The simplest option is to move your new subscribers to your main subscriber list. Then, you can continue sending them emails when you publish a new post or want to send out another broadcast email.

If you’re on my main broadcast list on Quick Sprout, for example, you get three emails per week letting you know there’s a new post published.

The second option is to give your autoresponder subscribers the chance to join a new autoresponder.

Instead of assuming that they would also be interested in topic “B,” you can send them an email saying something like:

This is the end of your course, and I hope you got a lot out of it.

I also have a few other free email courses you might be interested in. If you are, just click the link below, and sign up for the one(s) you’re interested in:

1. Email course about topic “B”

2. Email course about topic “C”

3. Email course about topic “D”

I mentioned Jon Morrow in this post. He did something very similar.

He knew that a large portion of his broadcast list is interested in WordPress hosting. So he sent a broadcast email that offered a free email course about this specific topic.

So, although all autoresponders must end, that doesn’t mean that a subscriber couldn’t keep signing up for other autoresponders you’ve created.

They’re an easy way to continue to provide value and generate sales without any repeated effort.

Conclusion

Autoresponders are a fantastic tool for businesses to use in their email marketing.

However, it’s still just a tool.

If you want to get great results, you need to know how to use it properly.

If you follow the principles and concepts that I’ve broken down in the five steps in this article, you’ll be able to create an autoresponder that subscribers enjoy and that actually produces revenue for your business.

Creating a solid autoresponder isn’t easy, so if you have a question about any part of the process, leave it below in a comment, and I’ll try to answer it.

5 Trends from New Blogger Survey That Probably Won't Surprise You

Orbit Media Services conducted a survey of over 1,000 bloggers for the second year in a row to see how this core content marketing tactic is changing. The survey included some of the most common questions asked by marketers beginning new blogs, like how often to blog and how long posts need to be. This is great data to benchmark your progress as you get started. There are a few more questions on the original post, as well as expert analysis on each one of the questions.

How Frequently are Bloggers Publishing?

There are more bloggers that are blogging 2-6 times per week, although that number is down slightly from last year. Both daily and weekly bloggers have increased since last year, and those are good targets to hit. If you are currently blogging a couple of times a month, try to get to weekly and if you are publishing a few days a week, see what it would take to get to daily. Ignore the 15% of bloggers that are blogging irregularly, because from a business perspective, you will see greater results by blogging regularly and more often. This doesn't mean publish just for the sake of publishing, but a regular cadence of solid posts will be more likely to catch on with your readers.

How Long is a Typical Blog Post?

Nearly 60% of blog posts are between 500 and 1000 words. The same was true last year, but the trend is telling a different story. This category is shrinking, as is the under 500 word category, while posts over 1000 words are increasing. Bloggers have seen longer, in-depth posts gaining traction in the past year, so they are creating long form content. This also follows the quality over quantity trend of content marketing.

What Media are Bloggers including in their Content?

If you are not including images in your posts, you are behind the times. Even though the number is down slightly, it is most likely because bloggers are using more that one image in their content more often. We are in the visual age of content and one or more images are needed to draw people in to your post, especially if you share the post on social networks. The uptick in audio is likely due to the explosion of podcasts in the past year. The downward trend of video in blog posts is interesting, as video is soaring as a content medium on other social channels. It is also currently buoyed by the revived livesteaming craze. And finally, the other category includes calls-to-action, so bloggers are getting serious about converting readers into prospects.

How Long Does It Take to Write a Typical Post?

While more bloggers are spending 1-2 hours on their blog posts, this follows the trends of blog length above, and bloggers are spending more time on their posts. In some cases, they're spending a lot more time creating in-depth posts that resonate with their readers. Providing that kind of value is paying off, as the educational nature of those posts are what build the relationship with prospects. If you are not tracking production metrics, you should consider it, as this is becoming a more common success metric across content teams.

How Are Bloggers Driving Traffic to their Posts?

Almost all bloggers use social media to drive traffic to their posts. This is not a surprise, especially for B2B companies, where the blog is the hub of their content strategy and social media is the means of distribution. Even though it is down slightly, every other tactics, from SEO, email, influencer outreach and paid services, are up as bloggers are looking to replace the ongoing declining organic reach of social networks. Follow their lead and expand your activities that drive traffic back to your blog home base.

Read more about how all of the above blogging tactics feed into a content marketing strategy and download the Modern Marketing Essentials Guide to Content Marketing.

How One Agency Drove 200% More Sales with Their Facebook Ads [PODCAST]

Image source.

For many, Facebook advertising is an untamable beast.

Not only is it super competitive and constantly evolving, but it can also be flat our intimidating. With all those switches and levers, it can be hard to laser in on the tactics you need to optimize your advertising campaigns.

But in this episode of the Call to Action podcast, we’ll deconstruct a proven strategy that Matchnode, a Chicago agency, used to dramatically increase the ROI of their client’s marketing campaign.

You will learn:

• How using dedicated landing pages for their client’s Facebook ads allowed them to optimize for conversions instead of clicks – and why that ultimately lead to greater ROI.
• The magic word that boosted conversions on their landing page by 16% in an A/B test.
• A bird’s-eye view of what running a campaign looks like for Matchnode, from idea to execution to client approval.

Listen to the podcast

Listen on iTunes.
Prefer Stitcher? We got your back.

Mentioned in the podcast

• How New Balance Drove 200% More Sales at Half the Cost by Dan Levy via Unbounce.
• Theme music brought to you by the great folks at Wistia.

Read the transcript

In this episode: Dan Levy, Unbounce’s Content Strategist, interviews Brian Davidson, Co-founder of Matchnode.

Stephanie Saretsky: Hey everyone, it’s Stephanie Saretsky here from Unbounce and you’re listening to Call to Action, the podcast about creating better marketing experiences. For many, Facebook advertising is an untamable beast. Not only is it super competitive and constantly evolving, but it’s not great for lead gen and it can be hard to track conversions, especially if you’re a retail brand trying to get people to make a purchase in an actual real-world store. With all those switches and levers, it can be hard to laser in on the tactics you need to optimize your advertising campaigns.

Unbounce’s Content Strategist, Dan Levy, asked Brian Davidson, Co-founder of Chicago agency Matchnode, to deconstruct a proven strategy that they used to dramatically increase the ROI of a New Balance PPC campaign.

Dan Levy: So New Balance is an international brand, and you guys are a local marketing agency. Can you take me back to when you started working with New Balance Chicago as a client? How did you connect and what were the challenges that they came to you with?

Brian Davidson: The biggest challenge that we had when we first connected with New Balance especially in Chicago is their marketing tactics weren’t really brought into the digital age as of yet. They did a lot of things like radio broadcast advertising and they were focused on reach, a lot about coupons stuff coming in the mail. Digital really wasn’t on their plate. And the primary reason for that is that the New Balance Chicago shop didn’t actually have an ecommerce portal. Their primary marketing mission was to drive people to in-store visits, so as a result digital marketing didn’t really seem very obvious to them. But at the same time they’re pretty tech savvy people, and they knew that was the next wave coming down the pipe, and they had to jump onboard, but they weren’t totally sure of how they should get back onboard. So as a result there’s a little bit of apprehension in making that leap.

Dan Levy: So the first campaign that you ran with them was very Chicago. It involved using Facebook to offer discount clothes to people when the weather dropped below a certain temperature, right?

Brian Davidson: Below zero and below freezing and we had plenty of below zero days.

Dan Levy: Right. We’re based in Canada so I can definitely sympathize.

Brian Davidson: We can relate.

Dan Levy: How did you go about targeting those initial Facebook offers and what were the results of that first campaign?

Brian Davidson: Sure. Some of our initial targeting techniques were looking at the city of Chicago and targeting the city of Chicago plus ten miles and then crossing that with people that like the New Balance brand. We took a look at things like the customer list that they built up over time and looked at the exact zip codes of all their different customers. And there’s a surprising amount of zip codes of different buyers from all over the Chicago area that had been loyal customers throughout years. So targeting those specific zip codes within Facebook and also interested in New Balance. Then we started to look at things like competitive brands, people that were interested in different activities like running, different sort of exercise, cross-training.

And then we also started to look at different things within Facebook like uploading emails and creating similar audiences, looking at their web traffic and creating similar audiences to tell Facebook to go find more people like their existing buyers. And the initial results were that revenue numbers more than doubled the ad spend within the first month.

Dan Levy: Those are really solid results. But I know that you ran into some limitations with those Facebook campaigns, right?

Brian Davidson: Definitely limitations in some ways, but more from using the Facebook platform, and what could we expand from just using the Facebook platform. So initially what we did is we used Facebook offers, which are really great ad units offered by Facebook. But it doesn’t necessarily give all of the control to the marketer. When you claim an offer on Facebook – so I want ten percent from J. Crew or 20 percent off from New Balance, or from whatever brand I’m finding a Facebook offer for – when I claim that offer, the actual brand never receives my email as a customer. So as a result there’s a disconnect between being able to track who actually claimed offers and who actually then eventually redeemed them for in-store purposes.

Dan Levy: So Facebook keeps those email address to themselves in other words.

Brian Davidson: Exactly.

Dan Levy: Right.

Brian Davidson: Which obviously that brand and that store would definitely love to have those email addresses, and as a result, we weren’t really able to see a long tail to the campaign. Obviously New Balance, like a lot of brands, is gonna collect your email address, and they’re gonna point you to different drip campaigns. But there’s no difference – they weren’t able to do that with these types of campaigns even though we’d see hundreds and hundreds of people claiming the offers. Obviously only a portion of them are gonna eventually end up in-store, but it would be very, very helpful for them to have the emails of those that didn’t redeem the offer. So that was a big limitation.

Dan Levy: You said sending that ad traffic to mobile responsive landing pages was the game changer for you guys. How so?

Brian Davidson: The biggest thing we’re able to do now is instead of just using an offer, we’re able to send them to a landing page. And the majority of Facebook traffic right now — especially cheap traffic — is within that mobile news feed. The majority of users are mobile as opposed to desktops. So as a result it’s much, much easier to reach them. However, the best way to make a very effective Facebook ad is to optimize that ad for website conversion (using a pixel) rather than a website click. And once you’re sending someone to an actual web page, you’re able to then pop-up a thank you page and fire that pixel. And that allowed us to optimize the ads for conversion rather than just a click, which was a huge game changer for us. And then at the same time we were able to grab that email address, and there’s definitely a tangible value to that email address in long-term.

Dan Levy: Right. And just to be clear, we usually make the distinction between normal web pages and landing pages, but when Facebook says a website conversion that can mean a landing page conversion as well, right? It just means a conversion on a page that’s not native to Facebook itself.

Brian Davidson: Correct – it’s just a way to fire that pixel, but you’re not able to do so obviously within a Facebook offer.

New Balance is a nationally if not near nationally-known brand, so it was very, very important for us to take advantage of that, and the brand equity that they’ve built up over years. Their national branch has obviously spent thousands upon thousands upon probably millions to their overall websites and optimized those throughout the years. So it was very important for us to keep that look and feel of that brand. The New Balance brand here in Chicago has been here for over 20 years, so it was very important to continue that brand that has been penetrating these markets for years and not seeing a very different page from what their existing customers were used to seeing.

So what we did is we took the overall branding from New Balance’s national site that obviously had a lot of brand equity built up within both the area as well as internationally. And we took that shell as far as its header, its colors, its feel, its look, and then we replaced its main banner image with different campaign-specific imagery. For instance, one of the really cool things that New Balance in Chicago does that we didn’t know is that full-time they always have a military and servicemen discount at any of their stores. So we’re able to leverage both that discount as well as the New Balance “made in America” angle to brand the specific landing pages in the basic overall shell of New Balance’s national brand within an American and military branding and imagery within the actual landing page. And we advertised it specifically to Veterans on Facebook, and when they entered their email they received a discount code specifically to go to a store and redeem that code for their discount.

Dan Levy: You mentioned that there was a value put on that email itself. Can you talk about this campaign and what it meant from a lead gen perspective?

Brian Davidson: Sure. From a lead gen perspective, we were able to generate leads about three or four times from what we were doing previously, as well as their actual email newsletter — just a Constant Contact email newsletter — going out to all their buyers, driving thousands of dollars of in-store purchases every single month. So we saw about a three to one ROI in real-time collecting in email versus just sending them to a Facebook offer. But just to unpack the Facebook ad advertising platform and how it works and how we were able to sync it with Unbounce — there’s a couple of main levers that you’re pulling within the Facebook ad manager/network. And you need an objective, whether it be offer claims, website clicks, page likes, video views, conversion, etc.

And then aligning that properly with an audience, and then proper creative and a budget, and when you’re able to align these four different levers as well with a landing page, you’re getting very, very effective advertising and very, very cheap clicks as far as your bidding for actual conversions. Your audience is very clearly defined within a zip code that their creative on your Facebook ad is very, very well-aligned with your creative on your landing page, and you’re again firing that conversion on that landing page, and it’s tying the whole thing together. And when you get that mix just right — and again, I can’t stress enough how important it is for that mix to work right on mobile or it’s just gonna be too expensive to run on desktop — you really set yourself up for success and the results really can start to snowball.

And then the second big piece to that is we took a look at all of their links to various ecommerce channels that the majority of people are probably looking for online. And we replaced those with offline conversion type of imagery, so maps to stores, phone numbers, customers talking about in-store visits, talking about the advantages of going in-store (as far as free fittings and different things that the New Balance brand offers in-store), the staff, the location, the history in Chicago. So a great mix of that national brand imagery and the look and feel of the website but all the conversions based on brick and mortar, local walk-in, talk to your friendly New Balance retailer.

Unbounce makes it incredibly easy to — essentially what we tell our designer is we want to clone this – and then I’m not a designer. I jump in and I start moving buttons and start saying bullet point here, rewriting headlines, and then we enter it right back to her and she tells us, “Oh this looks pretty and it looks great.” And we do it overnight and we send it over to the client, they say, “This perfectly fits our brand nationally, fits all of our brand guidelines. You’re good to go.”

Dan Levy: You actually do it overnight?

Brian Davidson: We turn around our home landing pages shockingly fast. We do turn around a lot of pages overnight. As a team, we put them up on our Chromecast and start hacking at them ourselves, and then a lot of our designers that we work with are overseas. So we send them a messy version and we come back to the office in the morning and it is ready to go.

Dan Levy: Oh cool, so you actually when you say you put on your Chromecast you’ll have like the page on the big screen and they’ll all be working on it together.

Brian Davidson: We all huddle around it and we’re pointing at different parts of the page and “What about this over here?” and “My eye is drawn to this corner of the page. What if we tried changing this color here?” And then of course we’ll disagree at times. So we just quickly clone that and launch a B version.

Dan Levy: Very cool. So you guys have been able to replicate the success of that original veterans campaign by tweaking your landing page for other New Balance promotions like — I know one was for health awareness month and different products like kids’ apparel and clothing. Can you talk about how you’ve optimized the formula along the way using both Facebook’s algorithm and some optimization on the landing page site?

Brian Davidson: So constant tweaks on both sides — changing our audience within Facebook. The more emails we collect, the better our lookalike audiences are gonna look within Facebook. Obviously then we’re able to retarget those people as well with their actual email addresses and send them to future campaigns. It’s very, very easy to reach those people, so our audiences continue to get better and better. And the other thing we’re doing within Unbounce is our landing pages are becoming more and more specific. For instance, we recently just launched new landing pages for each store, so we’re looking at Facebook and looking at specific zip codes around each store using their new interface to quickly just highlight miles radius around the actual store and dropping pins to target specific zip codes.

And then we’re directing them directly to a landing page for that specific store. For instance, Hyde Park is their newest store, so we launched a campaign specifically for Hyde Park residents — specifically with a Hyde Park landing page. And as a result the cost of conversion, the cost of grabbing that email has gone down 25 percent.

Dan Levy: Okay, wow. One cool A/B test that you guys ran in Unbounce that caught my eye involved boosting conversions by I think it was around 16 percent by testing that ever powerful word free. Can you talk about that test and why you think it was so successful?

Brian Davidson: Sure. As I mentioned a little bit earlier, one of the advantages you have going in-store for New Balance is New Balance is one of the few stores and few brands left that carry actually athletic shoes in different widths. And they’ll actually measure your width in-store. They’ll take a look how you walk in-store, and they offer basically a free fitting. It’s not very well known nationally. It’s definitely not as well known locally as we’d like it to be, but they do offer that. So we created a landing page talking about “Come in for your fitting!” and immediately we started to get feedback both in-store as well as people commenting on our Facebook threads and on our Facebook ads with, “How much does this cost?” So that led us immediately to change that they offer prominently that this is free, and immediately we started to see a huge boost in conversion — as you mentioned, 16 percent.

Dan Levy: It’s funny, we see that on our end as well when it comes to promoting ebooks and stuff. We think it’s obvious that this is a free ebook but it’s not necessarily, and just by emphasizing that in your landing page copy you could really boost conversions by quite a bit.

Brian Davidson: Sure. And it’s obviously really important to pay attention to that offline feedback in some ways.

Dan Levy: I’m always interested in what the process of landing page optimization looks like between marketers like you and designers and of course the clients you’re serving. We’ve already talked about the design aspect a little bit, but can you take me through what running a campaign like these looks like from the idea to the execution to the clients getting onboard and approving it?

Brian Davidson: Well, as I mentioned a little bit earlier, these guys are very tech savvy, so they really have a good idea of tactics they’d like to try, so they’re always coming to us with new ideas — and they have a lot of legacy campaigns that have performed very well for them over time. The trick has always been adapting these legacy ideas as well as possibly new ideas in thinking, “What’s the hook to get this to work on Facebook, and how does this align with an audience on Facebook, how does this align with Facebook’s targeting?” And once we have a pretty good idea of how to reach a specific target with a specific message, it’s really easy to design a landing page at that point because you have such a good idea of the audience and what you want them to see when they hit that landing page. So as I mentioned earlier, it’s very collaborative for our agency in getting literally around an Unbounce page and pointing out how we want things to look on page.

Dan Levy: Yeah, I mean a lot of boutique agencies out there I think would love to include landing page creation and optimization as part of their services but might have trouble selling the idea to their clients who might be maybe a little bit less tech savvy, not know the difference between a landing page and a website, which they might have already paid you to build as an agency.

Brian Davidson: Sure.

Dan Levy: How would you go about communicating the value of landing pages to a skeptical client?

Brian Davidson: Well, I think the first challenge you have to explain to a client is what a landing page is. I’ve been in meetings where I’m talking about landing pages and I see eyes gloss over because they don’t know what it is. But they don’t want to interrupt a meeting and ask you that. So it’s really important I found to actually show them an example of a landing page. So when we were getting started with New Balance, we actually mocked up a landing page. It wasn’t the prettiest thing in the world, but we pointed out the advantages of taking away ecommerce links and put a map in that place and they started understanding.

And we also just had them Google any product out there. Google people’s services and you’re gonna come to a landing page, and when you click on that paid ad, and they immediately start to understand that in their personal lives they’re always clicking on different ads from the search campaigns, and they’re always ending up on landing pages. And they start to connect the dots — of course, every brand does it this way because we want them to convert and we want that path to conversion to be so simple. And then it really starts to click once they understand what a landing page is. They start to say, “I want a landing page,” and you say, “Hey we’ve got a great tool — it’s easy to create them for you.”

Dan Levy: Very cool. This is the Call to Action podcast, so we like to give our guest a chance to include a bit of a CTA of their own. What advice would you give to agencies and the end brands out there when it comes to running great social campaigns using landing pages?

Brian Davidson: Like I mentioned a little bit earlier, alignment is so important — aligning the campaign objective with a great audience with great creative with a landing page that is mobile responsive and can be tweaked on a constant basis – is really the most important thing. Your campaign doesn’t need to be huge. It doesn’t need to be thousands of dollars in ad spend. You’re able to reach a lot of people very cheaply, and creating a landing page isn’t some magic trick or very, very dev-intensive project. In fact, I built literally our first website for our business using Unbounce because it was so simple that we needed to get our homepage up basically at that point for our company. And again I’m not a designer, but I jumped in there, and I was able to hack it Unbounce and get something live. So there’s really no reason why any company should be running ads to their homepage of their website when there are tools out there that are available to create your own landing pages cheaply and very quickly.

Dan Levy: You said it better than I ever can. Thank you so much, Brian, for taking the time to chat and for running us through this strategy that I think a lot of other marketers can learn from.

Brian Davidson: I had a great time and anyone listening to this has any questions feel free to give me a call. We’re happy to chat.

Stephanie Saretsky: That was Brian Davidson, co-founder of Matchnode.

Thanks for listening!

Transcript by GMR Transcription.

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Over 140 B2B Content Marketing Statistics for 2016 Strategy Planning

The best content marketing strategies are informed by data and one of the most consistent B2B marketing research reports chock full of data comes from Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs.

Today the 6th edition of the B2B Content Marketing – 2016 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends – North America report was published revealing a canyon of difference between successful content marketers and those that seem to be lost in the wilderness. This report is also a reality check for content marketers that drink too much of their own kool-aid, offering a mix of slightly downward trend data right along with numerous reasons for future content marketing optimism.

What do I mean by reality check? Fewer marketers have a documented content marketing strategy than last year 32% vs 35% and less marketers see their content marketing as effective 30% vs 38%.

What are the content marketing disconnects? Here’s one example: 57% of B2B marketers are still using Print or Other Offline Promotions, even though only 31% consider that paid tactic as effective. Also, 55% are still using traditional banner ads, even though only 29% consider banners effective.

B2B Marketers are still missing on tactics. The most popular content marketing tactics are things like shiny object social media (93%) and blogs (81%) while the most effective B2B content marketing tactics are In-Person Events (75%) and Webinars / Webcasts (66%). Only case studies get near-top treatment when it comes to both popularity (82%) and effectiveness (65%).

Marketers are still challenged to produce engaging content (60%) on a consistent basis (57%). That said, their priorities are in the right place, putting the task of creating engaging content (72%) at the top of the list for future focus.

Here’s the good news: 88% of B2B marketers are using content marketing, up from 86% in 2015 and 76% of marketers will produce more content in 2016 – they just want to know what content is effective and what isn’t (65%). They also want to know more about repurposing (57%) creating more visual content (51%) and telling better stories (41%).

The most successful B2B content marketers do these four things including documenting both their strategy (48%) and editorial mission statements (49%) as well as meeting with their content teams frequently (41%) and having organizational clarity on what content marketing success actually looks like (55%). There’s a consistent message in this: marketers who are goals focused, strategic in planning and action are more effective.

B2B marketers who are goals focused, strategic in planning and action are more effective. 

Ways to use this data: Marketing research data, statistics and charts are useful in different ways when it comes to informing a B2B content marketing program. Whether it’s citing a key stat when building a business case, advocating a particular course of action in a report or reinforcing recommendations in a presentation, the kind of information in this report can be effectively persuasive.

That’s why I’ve had the individual statistics broken out by category so you can easily copy and paste into whatever content, presentation or social share you’re creating. Just be sure to cite @CMIContent / @MarketingProfs as the source.

Hopefully this compendium will help those with clarity about content marketing confirm being on the right track and at the same time help those that are a little lost get pointed in the right direction.

B2B Content Marketing Use and Effectiveness

88% of B2B marketers use content marketing (86% in 2015)
12% of B2B marketers do not use content marketing

8% of of B2B marketers rate their content marketing maturity as sophisticated
24% of of B2B marketers rate their content marketing maturity as mature
29% of of B2B marketers rate their content marketing maturity as adolescent
27% of of B2B marketers rate their content marketing maturity as young
11% of of B2B marketers rate their content marketing maturity as first steps

CMI’s Content Marketing Maturity Definitions

• Sophisticated: Providing accurate measurement to the business, scaling across the organization
• Mature: Finding success, yet challenged with integration across the organization
• Adolescent: Have developed a business case, seeing early success, becoming more sophisticated with measurement and scaling
• Young: Growing pains, challenged with creating a cohesive strategy and a measurement plan
• First Steps: Doing some aspects of content but have not yet begun to make content marketing a process

64% of sophisticated/mature marketers say they are effective at content marketing
6% of young/first steps marketers are effective at content marketing

5% of B2B marketers say their content marketing is very effective
24% of B2B marketers say their content marketing is effective
44% of B2B marketers say their content marketing is neutral
22% of B2B marketers say their content marketing is minimally effective
1% of B2B marketers say their content marketing is not at all effective

What do the most successful content marketers do to be more effective?

48% of B2B marketers with a documented content marketing strategy are effective
49% of B2B marketers with a documented editorial mission statement are effective
55% of B2B marketers with organizational clarity on what content marketing success looks like are effective
41% of B2B marketers that meet daily or weekly are effective

44% of B2B marketers are clear about what a successful content marketing program looks like
34% of B2B marketers are NOT clear about what a successful content marketing program looks like
21% of B2B marketers are unsure what a successful content marketing program looks like

Strategy and Organization

32% of B2B marketers have a documented content marketing strategy
48% of B2B marketers have an undocumented content marketing strategy
16% of B2B marketers do not have a documented content marketing strategy
4% of B2B marketers are unsure if they have a documented content marketing strategy

54% of B2B marketers say team meetings are valuable to content marketing effectiveness

Content Creation and Distribution

76% of B2B marketers will produce more content than 2015
19% of B2B marketers will produce the same amount of content as 2015
2% of B2B marketers will produce less content than 2015

The top content marketing tactics:
(the average number of tactics used: 13)

93% Social Media Content
82% Case Studies
81% Blogs
81% eNewsletters
81% In-Person Events
79% Articles on Your Website
79% Videos
76% Illustrations / Photos
71% White Papers
67% Infographics
66% Webinars / Webcasts
65% Online Presentations
49% Research Reports
47% Microsites / Separate Website Hubs
42% Brand Content Tools
39% eBooks
36% Print Magazines
30% Books
29% Digital Magazines
28% Mobile Apps
25% Virtual Conferences
23% Podcasts
22% Print Newsletters
12% Games / Gamification

The most effective B2B content marketing tactics:

75% In-Person Events
66% Webinars / Webcasts
65% Case Studies
63% White Papers
62% Videos
61% Research Reports
60% eNewsletters
59% Blogs
58% Infographics
58% Online Presentations

Top social media platforms for B2B content marketers:
(Average social platforms used: 6)

94% LinkedIn
87% Twitter
84% Facebook
74% YouTube
62% Google+
37% SlideShare
29% Instagram
25% Pinterest
21% Vimeo
10% iTunes
9% Tumblr
7% Vine
6% Medium
6% Periscope
5% SnapChat

Most effective social media platforms for content marketers:

Congratulations yet again, to our client LinkedIn for being the top, most effective social media platform for B2B content marketers!

Paid advertising tactics used most by content marketers:

66% Search Engine Marketing
57% Print or Other Offline Promotions
55% Traditional Online Banner ads
52% Promoted Posts
51% Social Ads
29% Native Ads
14% Content Discovery Tools

Most effective paid advertising tactics used by content marketers:

55% Search Engine Marketing
48% Promoted Posts
45% Content Discovery Tools
45% Social Ads
40% Native Ads
31% Print or Other Offline Promotions
29% Traditional Banner Ads

Goals and Metrics

The most important goals for B2B content marketing:

85% Lead Generation
84% Sales
78% Lead Nurturing
77% Brand Awareness
76% Engagement
74% Customer Retention / Loyalty
61% Customer Advocacy
58% Upsell / Cross-Sell

Most important metrics for B2B content marketing:

87% Sales Lead Quality
84% Sales
82% Higher Conversion Rates
71% Sales Lead Quantity
71% Website Traffic
69% Brand Lift
67% SEO Ranking
66% Customer Renewal Rates
64% Purchase Intent
62% Subscriber Growth

Budgets and Spending

28% on average is the percentage of total marketing budgets spent on content marketing
51% of B2B marketers will increase content marketing spending in 2016

Challenges and Priorities

Top challenges for B2B content marketers:

60% Producing Engaging Content
57% Measuring Content Effectiveness
57% Producing Content Consistently
52% Measuring the ROI of Content Marketing Programs
35% Lack of Budget
35% Producing a Variety of Content
25% Gaps in Knowledge and Skills of Internal Teams
24% Understanding / Choosing Technology
23% Lack of Integration across marketing
21% Finding or Training Skilled Content Marketing / Content Creation Professionals
19% Lack of buy-in / vision from higher-ups
18% Implementing the technology that we already have

Top priorities for B2B content marketers:

72% Create More Engaging Content
65% Better Understanding of What Content is Effective and What Isn’t
57% Finding More and Better Ways to Repurpose Content
51% Creating Visual Content
41% Becoming Better Storytellers
41% Better Understanding of Audience
38% Content Optimization
22% Content Curation
20% Content Personalization
19% Becoming Stronger Writers

To see the full B2B Content Marketing – 2016 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends – North America report, check it out below:

What do you think? Were there any statistics in this year’s report that surprised you?

If you’re looking at investing in your B2B content marketing skills, I would highly recommend MarketingProfs B2B Marketing Forum conference coming up in just 3 weeks. Boston is a great place to visit in the fall and who knows what smarts and new network connections you’ll pick up when you’re there. TopRank Marketing staff will be attending and speaking at the event so we hope to see you there.

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The post Over 140 B2B Content Marketing Statistics for 2016 Strategy Planning appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

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Why Marketing Technology and Advertising Technology Need to Sing the Same Tune

"That’s why combining data-driven advertising and marketing is a big deal. It’s also why ad technology and marketing technology departments shouldn’t be singing a different tune—but working closer together in harmony."

This is from a piece out today on AdWeek entitled Why Now Is the Time for Advertising and Marketing Technologies to Converge. Written by Kevin Akeroyd, GM & SVP at Oracle Marketing Cloud, the article lays out some of the benefits of ad tech and mar tech love connection, as it were including the all-important unifying marketing and advertising data to deliver personalized content and ads across all digital channels.

But as Akeroyd points out, the most important long-term benefit is fixing the fragmented experience that consumers experience every day.

As to how to go about aligning ad tech and mar tech, Akeroyd lays out three methods.

1. Connect Online and Offline Interactions to One Customer. Connect interactions to individual consumers across all devices and channels and achieve a higher level of personalization.
2. Bridge Anonymous and Known Marketing. Connect all proprietary and third-party data to increase relevance and target more efficiently with a laser focus.
3. Adapt with Behavior-Based Orchestration. Empower the consumer to dictate their own path rather than force them in the rigid paths of your personas.

Across All Digital Channels

The importance of delivering personalized content across all digital channels cannot be overstated. That's why we created the Modern Marketing Essentials Guide to Cross-Channel Marketing. Download it today to start creating the most cohesive, valuable, and frictionless customer experience possible.