COVID-19 Archives - Post and Courier Advertising

Important Email Marketing Stats You Should Know

Posted on July 14, 2020 | by Stephanie Smith

What is the current state of Email Marketing?

Let's start unpacking this question. Before the Covid-19 pandemic began, many marketers suspected that email marketing would be “dead” within a matter of a few years. However, recent trends suggest just the opposite. HubSpot research shows that 78% of marketers have seen an increase in email engagement over the last 12 months. In fact, the latest research from Litmus found that for every $1 spent on email marketing, the ROI is $42.

So, what helpful statistics can help your business navigate email marketing practices to increase your email performance, and thus your company’s ROI?

Since April 1, 2020, marketing email open rates have been climbing.

Additionally, companies are utilizing email marketing at a higher rate than before. These two metrics have increased in tandem. Here are some useful insights related to open rates:

Campaign Monitor reports that email sends were up 19% from February 2020 to March 2020.
35% of marketers send their customers 3-5 emails per week (Not Another State of Marketing, 2020)
Mobile opens accounted for 46% of all email opens (Litmus.com)

Additional best practices to increase your open rates involve your subject line.

Before your customer can even read the beautiful and helpful email you’ve created, they need to feel inclined to open. Your subject line needs to grab the attention of your audience within just a few words.

The best part about subject lines is that they can be A/B tested. It never hurts to switch up your language, be mindful of your audience, and test different methods to see what your audience reacts to.

Keep it short. Recipients are often mobile users. Keep your subject no more than 9 words / 60 characters. (Mailchimp.com)
Personalization is key. Use tags to personalize your subject lines with each recipient’s name, company name, or location. Personalization is known to increase open rates for most users. (Mailchimp.com)
Try using emojis. 56% of brands using an emoji in their email had a higher open rate than those that did not (HubSpot.com). Try to limit your emoji use to one, and use them to supplement words rather than replace them to make sure your message is clear. (mailchimp.com)

Implement email segmentation.

Marketers who use segmented campaigns note as much as a 760% increase in revenue. (HubSpot.com).

What is segmentation? According to Campaign Monitor, segmentation is the division of an email list into smaller segments based on set criteria. Segmentation is a tactic used to ensure relevancy to your audience based on location, interests, purchase history, client activity, and more.

Additionally, measure & analyze your list performance.

Continually monitor email performance metrics like bounce rate & unsubscribe rate.

Your bounce rate is a direct measure of your contact database and how enriched your data is. A high bounce rate would suggest that your contacts are recently active, or perhaps just aren’t updated.

A high unsubscribe rate speaks to your list and the relevancy of your email to your customer. If you’re just beginning an email campaign strategy and your clients aren’t used to receiving emails from you, make your purpose and value of the email clear to your audience. Continue to segment your lists based on the list performance results and nurture the clients who want to be included in the information you have to share.

Create honest, helpful content. This includes educational or resourceful content.

This is more important during this “new normal” as we’ve adapted to the Covid-19 pandemic. If you are a part of an industry that has been slow to adapt to digital marketing, this presents a large window of opportunity.

Conductor.com reports that according to their new research, consumers are 131% more likely to buy from a brand immediately after they read a piece of educational content.

HubSpot Marketing Manager Henni Roini echoes this sentiment, “Only the companies and brands that create human connection are going to succeed. This is extremely true with email. You might get short term benefits from very promotional content, but honest, human, and personalized content creates a following for the long term.”

In our previous blog discussing client Relationship Management, we elaborate on how to use empathy as a tool. Your goal is to design a communication strategy that leads with empathy from an honest place.

Stay consistent and measure your success.

If you don’t have one already, implement a review process to check for broken links, grammar mistakes, etc. Make sure that you have an approval process that works efficiently. Stay consistent with send dates and times to build trust with your audience.

Analyze email performance across all marketing channels.

Did your team write a blog that resonated well with your audience? Perhaps you decide to extend the reach of this article by supporting it with a social media paid campaign. Assess your click through rates - perhaps the topic isn’t as relevant to your customers as you originally thought, or the segmentation wasn’t in the right direction.

The beauty of marketing is the ability to create, test, and analyze to improve your results going forward. Measure results and evolve your strategies.

Ensuring Customers Choose You During a Crisis

Posted on June 16, 2020 | by Stephanie Smith

Crisis preparedness comes in many shapes and sizes. Smart decisions + planning can help prevent “business casualties.” Marketing a business during a time of crisis has to first begin with a crisis management plan. Let’s examine ways in which you can develop a crisis marketing strategy to ensure that when crisis strikes, the customer chooses YOU.

We’ve discussed in previous blogs the importance of the “pull not push” method as it pertains to marketing during a time of crisis. This begins with compassion when communicating with your customers. “Trends suggest that how a business communicates with clients during a time of crisis will directly impact the brand’s reputation for the foreseeable future. The goal is to design a communication strategy that leads with empathy from an honest place.”

Naturally, a crisis will push you into a fight or flight mindset. Now is your opportunity to adapt and be willing to try something new when it comes to your marketing strategy. We know that empathetic messaging is important. However, some trends now suggest that this messaging is becoming mundane thus losing its honesty. So, how do you begin that message to your customers?

Step one: Construct a crisis communication plan.

This will serve as an outline for how & when you intend to communicate with your clients, and the message you want to convey.

Focus on keeping your existing and potential customers updated and informed.

If your company has employees that interact frequently with clients, consult with them. They are a key piece to the puzzle because of their relationships & conversations with customers. Lean on them for insight into your customer experience - what questions do they have that you can provide answers directly?

Here are 5 suggestions to help you construct a crisis communication plan:

Update your Google business listing so that when a client searches for your company they receive the most updated information. Include any special offers or messages related to the crisis at hand.
Update your hours + other helpful info on your business voicemail.
Create a newsletter or a monthly email that highlights useful + positive information, and positions your company as a helpful resource.
Update your company website with a banner on the homepage that leads to a landing page or aggregate FAQ’s page that is concise and easy to read. Include a way for them to contact you directly online with a form + capture the client information.
When creating content for these newsletters, think about what questions your customers want answered. Provide these answers in an easily accessible location. (For example, how can customers purchase from you? What is the best way to get in touch with you? Upcoming events and/or cancellations?)

Next, data shows that people increase digital consumption during a crisis.

Take the time to update testimonials from clients you’ve helped in a crisis before to create trust with a potential customer. Capitalize on this trend by preparing a solid SEM strategy & finessing your SEO for effective customer acquisition.

What is SEM? According to HubSpot, “SEM, or search engine marketing, is using paid advertising to ensure that your business's products or services are visible in search engine results pages (SERPs). When a user types in a certain keyword, SEM enables your business to appear as a result for that search query.” SEM strategies include methods like keyword research and analysis (Indexability of your website, popular keywords searched as it relates to your industry and business, and integrating these words into your site), as well as PPC (pay per click) advertising strategies through platforms such as Google Ads. PPC is a form of digital marketing where advertisers “pay per click” on their strategically placed ad. This is a method of paying for website visitors and potential customers versus relying solely on organic website traffic. Learn more about our Search Engine Marketing services.

Lastly, get creative.

Now is the time to bundle and put together packages that add value and incentivize a purchase. Be innovative in your crisis preparedness - focus on a positive mindset and problem solving. In what ways can your company adapt to the current situation to achieve success?

Relationship Management: How to Keep Leads Warm Without Selling

Posted on May 15, 2020 | by Stephanie Smith

As businesses begin to re-open, it is more important than ever to prioritize relationship management and be mindful of how each business approaches potential buyers. Your business’s ability to adapt to an empathetic marketing strategy will have an impact on customer conversions.

Trends suggest that how a business communicates with clients during a time of crisis will directly impact the brand’s reputation for the foreseeable future. The goal is to design a communication strategy that leads with empathy from an honest place.

Using empathy as a tool and not a recovery plan

Understanding your client’s perspective is essential to your success. By listening to your customers needs, you can better provide them with whatever services or products could help them. You want to be their problem solver for the immediate, and need to present longer-term the value in your proposal.

By now, you should have your post-pandemic marketing strategy in place. However, there’s a high possibility that clients may still be uncomfortable with spending. Although sales are down for a majority of businesses, web traffic has increased significantly since March. Marketing Gong's Head of Content, Devin Reed believes customers aren’t making purchases, but they’re gathering information about who/how they want to spend when the time comes.

Positive and creative communication

HubSpot Marketing trends reveal email open rates are increasing and holding steady, but sales are down. Now what? Nurture these leads with a kind voice & helping hand so that when they reach financial recovery (individuals or businesses), they choose to purchase with you. Listen to your clients’ needs and only beneficial information. Deliver value first.

Remove words from your messaging that carry a negative connotation. However, don’t ignore the elephant in the room. Try new + creative email campaigns geared towards providing your clients with helpful resources. Response rates are 25-50% lower and sales open rates have tanked. The idea is to pull, NOT push your clients to you. Lead with relatable and positive messaging and don’t be afraid to add a little (tasteful) humor.

Utilize some of our Post and Courier Marketing Blogs and incorporate them as selling tools. We’ve written dozens of articles in an effort to help small businesses with tons of useful information pertaining to crisis marketing + other free tools we’ve created to help local businesses at this time.

How to capture customer email leads during coronavirus

Posted on May 11, 2020 | by Michael Strong

Gathering new customer leads is one of the many challenges businesses are facing throughout the COVID-19 quarantine. Traditional foot traffic in stores or business offices has slowed or even been paused entirely. So let’s take a look at some ways you can keep gathering leads during a time like this.

Get Leads Through Social Media Ads

Running social media ads for your business is one of the first things you should consider. This tactic can tie in multiple channels for customers to learn about you, and also let you learn about them.

The ability to drive these leads to any web page you choose is highly beneficial for lead capture. Through a simple button on your ad, you can directly link people to a page where they can enter their email info in exchange for a number of things (which we’ll go into greater detail on throughout this blog).

The targeting tools at your disposal make this one of the most effective methods. The people you decide to reach will be predisposed to spend money on your business. And during a time in which social media usage is at an all time high, targeting tools only become more effective. The dollars you spend on driving clicks have become more effective, and the cost per lead has dropped significantly.

If you followed the link above to read those social media stats, the site you found yourself on should have popped up a window asking for email info. These pop ups are called lightboxes, and any page your social ad links to should absolutely be utilizing these.

Lightboxes are a powerful attention-grabber. The website behind this window darkens and the viewer feels compelled to read and hopefully fill out any info boxes presented to them. This lightbox doesn’t have to lock out the viewer from accessing your page, so don’t feel like you’re forcing customers to fill it out.

But should you decide to lock any of your pages behind this, you’ll find that you’ll gather more customer emails than ever before. You’re not asking for money yet, and if your business’ offerings are desirable enough, the customer should want to give you their email. Offering discount notices and newsletters are a great way to make people want to give you their email here.

Hold Contests to Capture Info

Contests and giveaways make great use of the inability to walk into actual stores or businesses right now. People are realizing that they’re saving money by not going out for what might be considered “frivolous” spending. So what better way is there to keep them interested in your product, than by giving it away? But the real goal here is to gather emails that can be re-marketed to.

Local Charleston retailer Kassis Brother’s Shoes found success in a contest we helped them run. Through giving away a pair of shoes, the business received 280 opt-in emails.

These potential customers aren’t just valuable because the business knows they’re shopping for shoes. The contest also captured valuable audience insight including why the leads might be looking for a new pair of shoes.

Kassis Brother’s Shoes is able to hold onto and build marketing campaigns from that customer info for when their doors open again.

Building off of the last section on Social Media Ads, contests are a great thing to promote and link to from outside your website. You can even make this the content of a lightbox when a customer clicks onto your website from an ad.

Imagine seeing a Facebook ad for a perfect pair of shoes, clicking on the link to check their price, and being presented with the chance to win that pair for free. The simple ask of an email address would be undeniable to almost anyone.

Offer Compelling Content to Customers

Email marketing is a powerful beast of its own. But what kind of content should emails include to help you gather new customer leads? As long as its valuable content, it should be placed behind a form-fill.

Show that your company is valuable for more than just its products right now. Build customer confidence by showing that you’re a source of useful tips and advice related to your industry. This can come in the form of blog posts or downloadable pdf guides.

A downloadable report or e-book is the perfect way to collect info by offering something of value. But what you offer needs to stay short and address a pain point your customer might have.

For example, if you’re in the business of selling plants, you can be offering a plant care guide to customers. Of course, this is info that also can be shared for free on social media or through video content. And if you’re doing that already, you can simply repackage that content into a single guide that gathers all of your advice into one place. Customers will value the convenience of this. For them, this is more than worth the cost of entering in their email address.

Don’t stop any of this when you reopen

While there is no better time to focus on lead generation than during a quarantine, the truth is that all of these methods should be utilized year-round. Getting started on contests, social ads, lightboxes and more right now just sets you up for continued success later.

In the end, the one thing all of these points have in common is making sure there’s something in it for the customer, when you ask for their email. A contest is the purest form of this, and people love entering contests. But every other tactic you can use to gather info can be built off of that same premise.

The end goal with gathering emails is remarketing new products or services to customers. You want those customers to open your future emails and see value. Don’t be just another number in a red circle adorning your customer’s email phone app.

Driving customer conversions during coronavirus

Posted on April 29, 2020 | by Michael Strong

Stay at home orders mean more eyes on your advertising and a drastic increase in impressions. So how can you turn those impressions into increased conversions, and retain those spenders?

You’ll have to focus on improving your Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO). This means, addressing all of the ways people are observing your brand and optimizing those channels around the increased eye traffic.

Drive Social Media Conversions

People staying at home and working at home are undeniably engaging more with social media. In a time of separation and distancing, we’re more desperate than ever to see what our peers are up to.

Hopefully, you’ve gotten ahead of this and already started increasing your organic and paid social media presence. Any impression is a good one, but targeted social advertising will give you the most valuable impressions. These leads will take the least amount of work to convert into spenders, since the social platform’s tools have already narrowed down your audience to your desired one.

Keep wording simple

One of the ways you can make your posts and social ads even more digestible is to simplify your wording. Don’t complicate your verbiage with words like “utilize” instead of just “use.” No matter how much you want to appear professional, social media isn’t the place to worry about that.

A valuable tool to help you simplify your messaging is the Hemingway Editor. This website and app reads your wording, grades its readability, and suggests simpler words and improved phrasing. This can be particularly handy if you need to stay under a character limit.

Don’t forget the CTA

Because the goal is to turn a viewer into a spender, you need to always have a fitting and powerful call to action. The person needs to understand what they’re getting into when they move from ad to website or form. The clickthrough needs to align with the content they stopped scrolling to read, after all. Deception is never the answer.

For advice on developing strong CTA’s, such as ones with urgency, check out this post.

Prepare your website for the traffic

Once people take action and click through or search up your website, the experience needs to be good. Between beefing up your site’s stability and designing it for usability, now is the time to give your website some love.

Speed up your pages

The masses are flooding the collective internet with clicks and scrolls right now. Even if your website isn’t being greatly impacted by increased traffic, it’s still a good time to focus on optimization. The last thing you want a new potential customer to see when they visit your website is a lack of graphics, or even worse… an error code.

Your website, and all others, are hosted by a web hosting company that surely hosts hundreds, thousands, or even millions of other websites. Your website’s stability is dependent on that host’s ability to deliver your site to users. So as all websites within the world wide web get bogged down together, your site needs to be ready for potential slowdowns.

Start by auditing your site’s speed. You can do this yourself by visiting your pages, but a full professional audit will allow you to identify the speed pain points slowing you down. This can include things such as image files that are unnecessarily large and plugins that would work just as well as an embed.

Be mobile friendly

As an interactive medium, most of your web traffic is going to come from social click throughs. This leads us to the important fact that almost all social media usage is done on a mobile device. Data shows that people use their mobile device 80 percent of the time for social media.

This means that as people quarantine, your mobile traffic is likely going to outweigh desktop traffic. Which makes a mobile friendly web experience more important than ever. As an added bonus, mobile friendly websites rank higher in google search results.

Whatever website builder or hosting platform you use for your website already likely takes mobile design into account. But this is an automated process. And the best mobile websites were built with mobile in mind first, then desktop.

Similar to load speed, give your site a mobile friendliness audit. This can even be done on a desktop by shrinking your browser’s window size down to look like a phone. As a tip, the aspect ratio size for most recent phones is 18:9. Older phones (pre iPhone X, for example) are 16:9, which still works on newer sizes. 16:9 phones are also the same size as standard monitors and television sets, just oriented vertically.

Give your web pages a look at this vertical sizing and see how your assets adjust and resize. Are your buttons and links large enough for a finger to tap on comfortably? Do your logos and images resize in a way they are still readable?

The truth is, internet-goers are becoming subconsciously used to pages that were built first for mobile, but viewed on a desktop. This is why most articles you read compress content into the middle, leaving a ton of whitespace around the sides. You likely have been finding websites to look cleaner over the last few years, without even giving thought to why. It all comes back to mobile.

Analyze your conversions

In the end, the most important thing you can be doing is looking at your data. Where are people coming from when they visit you online or in person?

Where did they discover you? How long are they spending on your feed or content? You have to track your customers’ journey. Google has shown that the top 10% of well-tracked accounts on google ads have a conversion rate of over 20%.

Your conversions should be easily trackable if you’re utilizing the right tools to drive clicks and other forms of direct engagement from prospective customers. So build up your online presence for both your website and social channels, and keep an eye on your conversions. This is an investment, and the current world circumstances might be setting you up for long term success.

Email Marketing Stats You Should Know

Covid marketing trends that are here to stay