Best practice within email marketing avoids the wording ‘click here’ as click-through text within email marketing campaigns.
Many subscribers won’t click if you do this, as it is unclear where the link goes.
It also leaves out important information that disabled users require and suggests clicking a mouse, whilst many subscribers view emails using a touchscreen on their smartphone, tablet, laptop or desktop.
Ensure that your link text is descriptive. It is better to have compelling and long click-through text, rather than uninformative, boring and brief text.
Point the click-through URL to the most relevant information currently available. Tell the reader that this is what you are doing.
For example, if you are referencing a product or service, send the link directly to the most up-to-date web page or resource. Write something like:
Click here to see the latest version of product XYZ
Include multiple links to the same content within a single campaign.
This is relevant for MailChimp campaigns with a single call to action (other email marketing platforms are available).
Place CTA (Call To Action) buttons within several campaign content areas.
For example, towards the top and the bottom of the campaign.
Try wording the text links differently.
Treat the click-through text as you would a headline.
Experiment with questions, use trigger words and make it so interesting that the reader feels that they must take a look at the end of the rainbow.
Then look at the MailChimp campaign report to see which version of the click-through text were the most effective.
Don’t worry about having multiple links to the same content: this will help to increase your click-through rate.
MailChimp now thinks in terms of ‘Audiences’, not ‘Lists’.
If you have several lists, they are now referred to as ‘Audiences.’ To find your lists, under the ‘Audience’ navigation bar item, you will see a new page that shows information about the list with the most contacts. You can find all of your other lists (now audiences) in the dropdown.
If you would like to see all the audiences in your account, select ‘View audiences’ in the (same) dropdown menu (it is at the end).
Campaigns and Reports are now viewed within the context of an audience at a time:
If you have more than one audience in Mailchimp, your Campaigns and Reports pages will show information based on the audience you’ve selected. This means that you will see an overview of your email marketing to those contacts. If you need to view campaigns across all audiences at once, just choose “All audiences” from the dropdown.
If possible, keep all of your subscribers in one audience (list).
This item first appeared in my newsletter, which you can subscribe to here.
How many cloud-based marketing apps and services do you use? How many of them connect to each other? Has it all grown organically, or was it planned? The last few years has seen a dramatic rise in the number of marketing related services that are available in the cloud. Some of them are free, others are cheap as chips and some are relatively expensive.
Many enterprises now capture (in a GDPR compliant fashion) customer contact information which triggers a series of events. For example, an automated Welcome email; a record being created within a CRM system; and a task for a salesperson to contact the customer. If you are already doing this, that’s great – however most businesses are not doing so (or anything close to it).
It is important to see the whole thing from the customer’s perspective. Is the software helping them? Is it easy for them to use? Does it actually work? What do the metrics tell you about customer behaviour? How can you improve performance and results?
To what extent does the software give you a competitive advantage? What is the strategic thinking behind the deployment of these services? Have you implemented back-up and recovery processes?
I suggest that you list all of the apps / services that you use and think about how they are currently connected. See the whole thing as one big picture.
I have always loved postcards, as a promotional technique. Here is a list of postcard marketing benefits:
* They are inexpensive to produce
* There is no envelope, which means that your postcards will be read
* You can print in full colour on the front
* Postcards allow you to be creative
* Postcards can be used for customer education, i.e a series of tips and ideas can be sent using postcards
* You can send postcards (with permission) directly to the customer; therefore it is a more targeted form of marketing than traditional advertising
* Postcards are versatile: you can experiment with different sizes, images, headlines and sequences
* Postcards can be fun and engaging
* They are quick to produce
* They can be personalised
They can be used to:
* Produce sales leads
* Launch new products / services
* Announce special offers
* …and many other things
Think of your postcard as an advertisement. On this basis, you would have a headline, image and bodycopy. The headline will determine whether the customer reads the bodycopy (text).
Personally, I have always liked DL sized postcards (1/3rd A4).
Print your postcards on a reasonably thick stock, so that they are not flimsy.
If you are starting out with this promotional technique (of which there are several hundred), I suggest that you start with low quantities and run some tests.
If you would like to use this idea within your marketing, I can help with strategy, ideas, headlines, copywriting and artwork.
I hope that you have enjoyed reading about postcard marketing benefits, you can ask questions about this topic within The Marketing Compass website.
From an email marketing perspective, arguably, you live or die via your opt-in subscription form. Here are some MailChimp signup forms tips and ideas, based on my work as a MailChimp trainer.
* Each MailChimp list allows you to create one signup form; if you require more forms, form integrations are available such as Wufoo or Gravity Forms.
* Click on Lists in the main navigation bar; to the right of the list name is a dropdown: choose ‘Signup forms’.
* Create your form within ‘General Forms’.
* There are three options: Build it, Design it and Translate it. Within ‘Build it’, scroll down to see your form; you can add fields, change field names and mark fields as visible or hidden over on the right hand side (you may have to scroll up to see this).
* Bear in mind that Groups will appear within your signup form (but you can make them hidden, if you wish).
* Click on ‘Design it’ to style your form. For example, you can edit the background, header and outer wrapper of your form.
* Hover over the list name and ‘Edit’ will appear. Click to see a modal where you can, amongst other things, insert your logo. (You can insert a Privacy Policy link here).
* The less information you ask for within the form, the more signups you will receive. Interestingly, the fashion industry typically only asks for an email address. They tend to receive a lot of signups.
With GDPR on the horizon, it is more important than ever to have an opt in process for your email list. Here is a diagram showing an effective process for getting your target market to subscribe to your email list:
Customers have problems / challenges that they have to resolve sooner or later. Try to see it from their perspective. How does it feel to have this challenge? How would you define the problem? What alternative solutions are available?
Having decide on the problem that you are going to focus on, the next step is to write a detailed guide to solving the problem. For example, I have written a 10,000 word marketing strategy e-book (more of which in a moment).
You can promote your guide in a variety of way including Google AdWords, Facebook advertisements, Instagram ads, Twitter ads, LinkedIn adverts and social media posts. You can also promote it via your website and by sending 1-2-1 emails to people that you know. In fact, you can promote the guide by using most of the 250+ promotional techniques that I have researched and used.
All of this activity should aim at a landing page which does not contain your website navigation bar or any other distractions. Here is one that I prepared earlier (any Blue Peter fans out there?) which offers a free copy of the 10,000 word marketing strategy e-book:
If you join my list, via the above page, notice that you are taken to a confirmation page telling you what is going to happen next and that MailChimp provides a clear opt-in process.
Having launched my new landing page a few days ago, I have 55 people on the list so far. A couple of people rang me to ask questions about the guide and I have emailed a few other people which has led to sales conversations.
One of my clients calls everyone who signs up to their list, using this process. They are selling to other businesses and they request a phone number on the opt-in form. Their business is increasing in size by 50% annually.
What is stopping you from doing all of this? I suspect that you are busy: so time is the first challenge. Then you have to consider the different options for the guide and of course you have to write it and produce a professional looking PDF. You then have to create the landing page either using a sub domain or special software that overrides your website’s standard layout. Finally you have to set up the email marketing automation sequence. Phew!
If you would like some help with this, you are welcome to email me, call me on 01628 773128 or join The Marketing Compass and ask there.
Imagine being able to use the world’s leading CRM and email marketing system together. This is how it is done.
Salesforce can be integrated with MailChimp via the Salesforce AppExchange. When I did this, I found it to be a straightforward exercise.
STEP 1 Getting Salesforce and MailChimp to talk to each other
According to MailChimp: “If you need to import Salesforce leads, or sync list information regularly, install the MailChimp for Salesforce app through the Salesforce AppExchange.” In other words, the integration happens within Salesforce.
STEP 2 MailChimp for Salesforce Query Builder
The Salesforce Query Builder allows you to copy Salesforce contacts and leads into a specific MailChimp list. You can run a query right away, or schedule it to run at a specific time of day. I found this to be an easy to use process and a test list within MailChimp was populated immediately. Within MailChimp, there is a (data) source field which is clearly labelled as ‘MailChimp for Salesforce’, which is useful for future reference.
MailChimp for Salesforce features the ability to:
* Update MailChimp subscriber information based on the contact / lead fields in Salesforce
* Create new leads from MailChimp subscribers
* View MailChimp campaign activity and reports within your Salesforce account
Within Salesforce, using the MailChimp view
ALLOW MAILCHIMP TO CREATE LEADS IN SALESFORCE
This feature allows MailChimp to create new leads within Salesforce for email addresses that don’t match existing leads or contacts.
TURN ON/OFF DATA SYNC
Enabling the data sync feature schedules a series of batch tasks. The data sync updates your MailChimp subscriber fields with the corresponding contact/lead field data hourly. It also updates the Salesforce contacts/leads with the MailChimp subscriber campaign activity each night.
REFRESH ALL LISTS
The ‘Refresh All Lists’ button updates all of the list field data. This button updates Salesforce with the MailChimp lists, list fields and groups. This may not happen instantly. Refresh the page after one minute.
MAP FIELDS
The ‘Map Fields’ link takes you to the field mapping page for each list. You can edit the field mapping for existing list fields or create new MailChimp list fields. The field mapping settings are used to match MailChimp list fields with their corresponding contact/lead fields.
The permissions for the leads, contacts and accounts should be set to ‘Public Read/Write’ in order for the MailChimp for Salesforce app to work properly.
SYNC LIST
The ‘Sync List’ link updates Salesforce with the MailChimp list settings, fields, segments, and groups. If the sync settings for the list allow subscriber activity, then this link will update the contacts/leads with the MailChimp campaign activity.
NEW QUERY
The ‘New Query’ button takes you to the Query builder. Queries function to subscribe contacts/leads to the MailChimp list and to update existing MailChimp list subscribers based on the corresponding contacts/leads within Salesforce. When updating existing subscribers, the Salesforce data will overwrite the MailChimp list field data. Using the filters on step two of the query builder, it’s possible to query all of the contacts/leads or to query specific contacts/leads based on their Salesforce field data.
REFRESH MC CAMPAIGNS
The ‘Refresh MC Campaigns’ button allows you to update the campaign activity data manually for all campaigns.
UPDATE STATS
The ‘Update Stats’ link enables you to manually update campaign activity data for a particular campaign.
This is a comprehensive integration which enables businesses to build a better email list and to communicate with customers in creative ways.
1. Is your subscriber base growing continually?
2. How many methods do you use to increase the size of your list?
3. Are you happy with your campaign templates?
4. When was the last time that your templates were updated?
5. How often do you send campaigns? Almost certainly, the answer is ‘not enough’.
6. Do you always look at the mobile phone campaign preview?
7. What are the key metrics that you look at within reports?
8. How many abuse reports are you receiving?
9. What is the average open rate for your list?
10. What is the split between desktop and mobile?
11. What is your click through rate?
12. What are your most popular landing pages?
13. Why are they so popular?
14. Who are your most engaged subscribers?
15. Are you using videos within your campaigns?
16. Can you link sales to campaigns?
The key metrics should be heading in the right direction, although they do tend to move up and down as subscribers come and go and campaign content changes.
Within MailChimp, there is a campaign Click-map overlay (heat map). This is an interesting feature which can be easily overlooked. When you click on ‘View Report’ for a campaign, you will see four boxes (Opened, Clicked, Bounced, Unsubscribed).
Click on the number within the 2nd box (Clicked) and you will see a ‘Click map’ option. This visual report enables you to see which types of link are proving to be the most popular and also whether your subscribers prefer text links or image links. You will see the information presented as a percentage (click in order to see who has clicked).
Imagine being able to use the world’s leading CRM and email marketing system together. This is how it is done.