Email Marketing

7 Steps to Create and Upgrade Automated Email Marketing Workflows

August 29, 2017/in Email Marketing /by Gloria Kopp

If you have a good email contacts list, it’s time to create an automated process for every email campaign you create. It’s faster, saves you time, and will net you results every time. Here’s what you need to do to create your automation process.

Why email marketing automation is essential

It goes without saying that using an automated process is just easier than creating a marketing campaign from scratch, every time. However, it’s also been proven that automated campaigns have a much higher click through rate than regular campaigns. As well as this, campaigns can be tested thoroughly before sending, so you’ll encounter minimal issues as you work on your campaign. It’s worth knowing that machine learning can help create personalised automated email campaigns by understanding each user’s interests and preferences, too.

How to build an email marketing workflow

Now you know why you need to automate your email campaigns, here’s how you can do it:

Know your goals: Before you do anything, you’ll need to know what you’re hoping to achieve with this campaign. Are you hoping to increase your customer base, raise awareness about a product, build trust? It’s best to stick to one goal per campaign, or you’re going to be putting out a confused message. If you use a campaign creating tool such as Reach Mail or Target Hero, these can help you determine a goal.
Map out your path: Next, you need to decide the path that your email campaign will take. What will you use to guide your customers through the sales funnel? What kind of content will you use to achieve this? How will you send your emails out, and how will you tire them? Email automation services such as Mad Mimi and Academadvisor will help you plan this out. Plan for all eventualities, too. The best way to do this is with flow charts, so you can see what should happen in every situation.
Test out your product: Now, you need to test your product before you send it out. This is a step you can’t afford to miss. It’ll show you where changes need to be made, and help you catch any major issues before they reach the public. It’s especially important to see how your emails will work on different platforms, as if your email doesn’t work, readers just aren’t going to pay attention to it. There are tools online that can help you with this, such as Litmus or Eliteassignmenthelp which test your emails on a broad range of platforms.
Create your content: Now, you need content. What you create will depend on your audience and the product you’re promoting. If you need help getting that content created, use a writing tool such as UK Writings to make it for you. Also, get your content proofread by services like Essayroo, and edited by Boom Essays to get them looking perfect.
Expand and branch out: Once you have a small number of email campaigns successfully automated, you can start to expand on this with other campaigns. Work slowly and steadily, until you have a campaign that works perfectly in your system. It’s better to have one that works perfectly right away, rather than several that need a lot of tweaking to be perfect.
Make the necessary changes: Now you’ve tested your campaign, you’ll see what needs to be changed or removed. Remember that you’re looking to convince your customers to buy from you, so anything that doesn’t achieve this goal needs to be changed. Length is important too, as emails need to get to the point quickly. Use Academized or Paper Fellows to keep your emails on task.
Go with the flow: Once you have your automated systems in place, you’ll need to keep up with them. Even the best laid out systems go wrong sometimes; it’s all about how you manage them that counts. If you can catch issues before they become real problems, you’re doing well. Don’t worry about it when it happens, just get it fixed and move on.

These steps will help you create the perfect automated email marketing system. Pick the right tools, and it’ll be a snap to do. With those and these tips, you’re well on your way.

Gloria Kopp is a digital marketer and a business consultant from Manville city. Now she works as a content manager at Australian Help writing agency. Besides, she is a regular contributor to such websites as Engadget, Huffingtonpost, Bigassignments, etc. Gloria also enjoys writing Oxessays blog and share writing guides and advice with writers and educators.

A Complete Guide on Building Sales Funnels

A sales funnel has four stages: awareness, interest, decision, and action. So while building the sales funnel, you need to make sure you cover all these stages for the desired outcome.

The primary purpose of a sales funnel is to guide users through the different levels of their purchase journey. Companies create sales funnels to attract, interest, and convert prospects into customers. So if you own an online business, creating effective sales funnel is crucial for driving sales and earning revenue.

The gifographic below explains, in depth, the method of creating a sales funnel. But before that, let’s get a basic idea of the different steps of building a conversion funnel.

Step #1. Begin with Researching Your Target Audience

To identify your target audience, and understand them better you need to conduct research based on:

What interests them the most?
Where to find them on social media?
What do they like the least about online purchasing?
What are their pain points that you need to address?

Step #2. Incorporate Buyer Personas

Buyer personas represent your ideal customers. By creating different buyer personas, you will be able to personalise your approach towards the different segments of your audience who’s buying journey may vary. Base your buyer personas on:

Why will they purchase a product?
What motivates their buying decision?
How will they use the products they buy?

Step #3. Work on Your Lead Generation Strategy

There are several ways in which you can drive the audience to your website and generate leads. These include:

PPC Campaigns
Influencer Marketing
Social Media Advertising
Guest posting
Search Engine Optimization
Landing Page Optimization

Step #4. Develop Strategies to Engage Your Leads

It is time to educate your audience about your products or services. They need to know why they should buy your products and how they will benefit from buying them. Your audience engagements strategies can include:

Creating blog posts that offer value
Creating engaging and useful videos
Promoting your content on the social media platforms
Having relevant influencers to review your products and also offer tutorials on them
Sending out newsletters and updates on your latest blog posts through emails

Step #5. Take Steps for Lead Conversions

The buying journey of your audience ends when they convert from prospects to customers. Make sure all your previous efforts do not go in vain buy facilitating the checkout process. Provide for an easier purchase experience by:

Decreasing the form fields
Reducing the number of steps for completing a purchase
Providing for one-click sign-in and sign up options

Now that you have a brief idea about the different steps of building a sales funnel, you can learn more about it in detail in the following gifographic.

Image courtesy: Shane Barker

Shane Barker is a digital marketing consultant that specializes in influencer marketing, product launches, sales funnels, targeted traffic and website conversions. He has consulted with Fortune 500 companies, influencers with digital products, and a number of A-List celebrities.

19 Reasons You Should be Talking About On-Page SEO

January 16, 2017/in Blog, Email Marketing, Marketing, SEO /by Guy Siverson

Many people understand the power of off-page SEO where links or citations are built.

However, what about on-page SEO? This would relate to internal strategies to optimizing your work for Google and other search engines. Wasn’t there a recent crackdown so that targeting keyword density and other such methods is now taboo?

While this may be true, webmasters can still gain great value from implementing core components of on-page SEO strategies. Here’s how and why I recommend doing so.

Seeing Through the Eyes of Your Viewer

Strategies involved in today’s on-page SEO include content that is over 1000 words in length with more being better. Your focus is on the audience rather than Google. A core component of the entire process involves internal link building where you lead viewers from one page to another based on their links that they select within your content.

The whole process produces at least five baseline results for your audience:

Readability
Accessibility
Convenience
Likeability
Engagement

Providing high-quality educational value within a healthy amount of content (1000+ words) with the focus being on the viewer empowers readability and convenience. Along with this structure comes the concept of internal links that lead from one piece of content to another within your site. This structure allows the user to find key concepts related to your niche that they otherwise might have missed.

As they come to see you as the one stop shop for all their related questions, your corresponding likeability within the eye of the viewer will increase. As they come to spend more time on your site, the possibility that they will leave a blog comment reply or engage you in some other way is greatly enhanced.

HOT TIP:

Be sure to advise your reader on best ways to respond to your article. Many people save this for the end, but I know not why. Mix things up a bit by putting a surprise call to action (CTA) right in middle of the content.

Seeing Through the Algorithms of Google

Gone are the days when it was in a webmaster’s best interest to appeal to the search engines first within the confines of on-page SEO strategies. Today, if you are not focused first on the viewer, then the search engines will only not focus on you first within their rankings.

With the new way of defining on-page SEO that Google is driving, what is the result for Webmasters that take heed?

Usability
Spiders
Rankings
Synergy
Authority

First and foremost, you provide usability to the viewer which is what Google wants to see. Neglect this critical factor and Google will ignore you when it comes to rankings. Show Google that you are serious about making a difference and the corresponding fruit of your labors will be yours to reap.

While the way things are done may have changed from the early days, methods involve in identifying the various pieces of your existence on the web remain intact. They are called spiders. Those spiders can be aided in finding all your site by the on-page internal link structure that you have set in place for when they arrive.

As Google continues to see the synergy that you are bringing to the table by way of high-quality content and ease of usability your authority within the search engine rankings will escalate. This does take time. When your project is first starting out, I would suggest that whatever you are doing today will realize its beginning fruit 90 days from now. As you plan matures the timeline duration will shorten if you are building your project out correctly.

Seeing Through the Eyes of The Creator

Whatever your purpose for being on the web is you need to be seen. Otherwise, you’re not technically on the internet, or at least not a huge piece of it. If you intend to build your online presence as a major outlet for business, then not being found is simply not an option.

If you do on-page SEO right, you will find rewards in many areas including:

Branding
Navigation
Bounce Rate
Time on Site
ROI

As people come to spend more time on your site, it will become branded on their minds. Many times I look things up on the search engines, and before looking at any other ingredient, I scan for any URLs that I have defined to be an authority in the field.

Be the authority in your niche.

What do you do to build authority value in the eyes of your audience?

Please share your ideas in the comments below and let’s increase our knowledge together.

One way to do this is by navigation. Many people think of navigation as it pertains to that bar at the top which leads people places. And it is. However, providing more than one roadmap through your site is always helpful. This is where we once again return to the value of internal link building within your on-page content.

The easier it is for a viewer to use your site, the more they will. As they navigate through from one page to another, they positively affect bounce rate. Visitors that come view one page and leave are called bouncers. You want as little of this as possible.

The smaller your bounce rate, the greater the time on site of your visitor. As Google sees viewers spending more time on your site, they will correspondingly reward you in the form of higher rankings which is exactly what you need to increase ROI (return on investment).

Additional Reasons for Understanding On-Page Optimization

By now you have a solid framework for exactly why on-page optimization done the right way per Google’s requirements today is so important.

There are a few more points I would like to cover before closing, though not in detail.

Link Wheels
Top Tier Design
Like-Mindedness
Value

The above topics can easily take on entire pieces of content or more all by themselves. However, in brief, as you proceed with building your site content you can create link wheels.

Of course, you would want to link similar content together based on categories. As viewers find one page that they are interested in, it is quite likely that when they see references to other related content, they will be interested in checking that page out also.

Post 1 links to post 2
Post 2 links to post 3
Post 3 links to post 1

Externally, these should be avoided like the plague. Internally they are golden nuggets of value.

If you take all pages within a link wheel and point it as a critical page on your site, Google comes to understand the value of that page as it relates to the rest of your site and ranks it accordingly. This is known as tiers, and it is a critical component of the internal tiered link wheel process.

Closing Thoughts About On-Page SEO

I trust that by now you are more than convinced of the extreme necessity of correctly applying principals for on-page SEO. While many things have changed over the years, one thing remains the same. If you develop strategies to take key places on the front pages of the search engines, you will be found.

On that note, and before you go.

What strategies do you use within your marketing to be seen above the noise?

What has worked?

What hasn’t?

Please share your thoughts and opinions in the comments below. Feel free to ask a question or two if something is pressing on your mind and enjoy the internal growth of your projects.

Guy Siverson – Author, Blogger, and Online Marketer.

He has been a celebrated Online SEO Marketer since the early 90’s. Guy’s greatest joys are his family, friends and helping educate, inspire and motivate others by writing, coaching & speaking engagements targeting success in entrepreneurial careers of others. — Contact 702-439-4766

4 Lesons I’ve Learnt From Finding Anyone’s Email Address

January 13, 2017/in Email Marketing, Marketing /by Sergey Aliokhin

You can’t build your business without your potential clients – it is a fact; however, it is rather hard to accomplish your goal just discovering the results Google offers you. Why so? Because it is too time-consuming and, of course, you must clearly know what clients you need.

Apparently, you might ask yourself:

“How can I find clients I need to promote my product?”

“How to build an effective communication with my target audience?”

I already know the answers to these questions. Furthermore, I will share with you my own experience in finding any person’s private email address you need. Why is it so important? Because there is no better way in promoting your service or product than personal communication with your client.

This guide will reveal you the following lessons that I’ve learnt:

Need a help in finding relevant people – ask google.
Personal and impersonal emails – the difference is obvious and why the personal ones are far better to use.
Two ways of email search.
Manual search VS Special services’ help.

I am pretty sure – my own experience and lessons I’ve learnt in hunting for emails will help you increase your email outreach campaign for 90%.

1 Google + Ahrefs Site Explorer = Relevant Audience

As you already guessed, Google is your ‘first aid’ if you, of course, if you know what to ask it. This huge database will reveal you TOP 10 articles on its very first page according to your inquiry. Afterwards, your first step is done.

The next step is to make a research with the help of Ahrefs Site Explorer. You should put a competitor’s material into a searching box and explore backlinks to it.

Afterwards, you can use filters to narrow down the results Site Explorer provides you with to get the freshest backlinks you need. For instance, you can filter by date, language, link type etc.

The only disadvantage, in this case, is that you will have to check all backlinks manually. When your spreadsheet will be filled up with relevant people, you may start your hunt for their personal emails.

ADVICE: follow the ‘formula’ I suggested you.

“But why do you need only PRIVATE emails?”

This question is to the point and I’m going to answer it further.

2 Personal and Impersonal Emails

Let’s say you have already found a bunch of people you want to impress with your awesome service. Some of them have posted their personal emails right beneath the article; the others – have not. Why does it happen? Why people prefer to avoid sharing their personal contacts? We can only guess…Anyway, there is a way huge difference in sending the messages using a personal email and impersonal one.

You might ask me: “WHY? Does it really matter what email address to use?”

My response – YES! Let me explain why.

When you send a message using a private email, you will have at least 80-90% that the message will be read. But when you’re dealing with impersonal emails, you will have to build a communication with a third part.

My own practice proved to me that this way is tricky. Usually, a third party suggests you a person’s Twitter account (as like in my case) or ignore you at all. According to this fact, it is far better to make a prospecting for private emails.

ADVICE: set your sights to finding PERSONAL emails.

“How to do a hunt for private emails?”

3 The Ways of Searching Private Emails

Basically, there are only two ways of prospecting personal email addresses – manually by searching for data within social media platforms and by using specialized tools.

The first method is a way time-consuming and less profitable in the case of positive results. I’ve spent hours ‘scanning’ a huge amount of accounts within such services as Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+; nevertheless, the result was not as good as gold – only 15% of success rate. Let’s consider this taking me as an example:

Taking into consideration extra tools I must admit – you will increase the success rate of finding personal emails for 85%. Impressive, isn’t it? Furthermore, you will definitely save your time.

ADVICE: try to combine both methods, thus the percentage of success rate will be approximately 90%.

“What additional tools are better to use?”

Actually, this question needs to be highlighted a bit detailed. So, let’s see what I am going to suggest you.

4 Manual Search vs Additional Tools

As I’ve already advised you above, you should combine both methods in hunting for emails. If you prefer to work quickly and efficiently, thus you should take into consideration the following tools:

Findthat.email. Perhaps the best tool for ‘email hunt’! It helps you find any email address using person’s name and website this person related to. Moreover, it has an option of verifying email addresses + Chrome extension that helps you scan person’s LinkedIn profile in terms of searching email address.

Voilanorbert.com. Very powerful and resultative tool. If you know person’s full name and his website’s domain, Norbert will do the rest of work for you. Free version provides you with 50 credits; Afterwards, you will have to upgrade your account for 10$ (a standard plan).
Hunter.io. I like this one as well! The service provides you with all related emails according to the website’s domain you need to find. However, there are cases when it gives you a zero result (then I use findthat.email or Norbert)
Rocketreach.co. Believe me or not, however there are, even, cases when Norbert suggests nothing back in return. In this case I advise you to use rocketreach.co. This service offers you the whole data on a person you are looking for: social media accounts and, the most important, email addresses.

Website.informer.com. Actually, I almost never use this service – the average percentage of the positive results it gives is too low. Nevertheless, it provides with the full data on the website you are interested in. In the case when the person you need is the owner of the website, the tool suggests you his personal email as well.

I am pretty sure – opposing both methods is silly enough; only a smart combination of them will do your job.

ADVICE: use these tools only in the case if you can’t find emails manually.

5 Conclusion

The process of searching private emails is very complicated and it takes lots of time. You will spend days in prospecting data you need. My own experience is a good example of it; following my recommendations and keeping in mind my own lessons you will increase your outreach campaign for 90%.

If you have any other ideas on searching private emails then feel free to share your knowledge with me. And, please, don’t forget to ‘like’ and share my article as well 🙂

Sergey Aliokhin is an Outreach manager at Ahrefs. He spends most of the time discovering and learning SEO and Internet Marketing tendencies. His primal goal is to study and practice new aspects of an outreach strategy. In his spare time, he likes to spend his time with family, visit specialized sports club, study martial arts. If he has nothing to do at all, he prefers reading books on science-fiction and playing the bass guitar.

SIDENOTE: if you need more information about outreach & content promotion, you should check out this post.