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53 Untapped Ways to Improve Your Email Open Rates

Cornelia Cozmiuc — Wed, 22 Aug 2018 08:08:16 +0000

Email open rates represent the ultimate effectiveness of the emails you’re sending to your audience and your leads. And the better your emails are in composition and structure, the more you’re going to grow your business in a sustainable way. We’ve put together (probably) the largest list of hands-on tips that will help you nail email marketing and notably boost your email open rates.

With no further introduction, we present you a great list of 53 great methods on how to considerably boost your open rate.

I.BECOME A SUBJECT LINES MASTER

1. Choose a Subject Line That Triggers Curiosity

From our experience, one of the first things you’d like to avoid in the pursuit of a perfect subject line that stands out is being too smart about it. People don’t like it when you’re cocky and neither do they have time to understand the deep existential meanings behind your subject line. Of course, as everybody’s using email marketing and not everybody is so good at it, if you’re not unique you may get filtered out as spam before even hitting the inbox. We’re not here to advocate the lesser of two evils, we’re here to suggest moderation.

Ramona Sukhraj gave a great example of an email subject line form Canva. It has a bold attitude. It is stressing on an issue that you may have encountered, admitting that you may have problems from time to time, and it positions itself as a solution to them, all in one place. Pretty amazing style, impossible not to leave you curious on the matter. Even if you don’t usually read their newsletter and you’d like to skip this one, you’ll probably close your email app and re-open it just to satisfy that ardent curiosity.

THAT is what you’re aiming for, a subject line to say something meaningful and personal, or at least to arouse curiosity, without being too complex or too shady.

Easier said than done. Especially because, despite being one of the most advised things about email marketing, people are still doing it wrong. However, an easier way to keep relevance in your plan is to include numbers in the subject. There’s something about them that makes people think you’re precise and worthy of their time. Of course, this is just one example of the many ways of creating an effective subject line.

2. Address the Prospects by First Names

Once you’ve found the prospect’s email, there comes the imminence of the email soon to be sent. However, there isn’t any guarantee that there will exist not only a positive but any reaction at all.

There’s more than just one popular way of doing it. For instance, you can use ‘Fwd:’ or ‘Re:’, but only when it is necessary, manually added just to send the message of a personal approach from a friendly face. As it’s always good to have some news from a friend and this marketing strategy can work.

And some emails are just so awesome, that Tina Turner would sing about them.

As Carly Stec documented in her article, catching the user’s attention is a constant journey through the email, and addressing the sender name is one of the first steps.

There’s still a good chance that the recipients’ name you’ve got in the database aren’t actually their names, but there’s a good chance you won’t fail. It is, after all, a little more personal to have a first-name-base approach.

3. Use Open Loops that Sparks the Curiosity of the Reader

Using an open loop to attract your prospects into opening your emails daily is a functioning way of increasing your open rate. However, you should keep in mind that good content marketers’ task is not completed when the prospect clicked on the email subject line.

There’s no use in building anticipation in the subject just to disappoint in the content of the email. So delivering what you promised to when the prospect gave you the email address is a must in order to maintain your position. The example below brought up by Jeremy Reeves, is quite a pedagogical approach of this tip.

This is not just a copywriting trick. It’s a way of delivering information. It’s been proven that not only do we get curious, but we also get anxious when there is a gap between the information we have access to and the one we want to know. That explains the unhealthy amount of sitcoms in our lives – the urge to know what happens next.

Tipception: You can get as creative as you want with this technique, and the important tip behind this tip is to organize your information to leave people in front of cliffhangers, while actually delivering consistent information with every email. However tempted you may be to create a long ‘post’ and send it as a series of emails with a plot twist at the end, that’s not the way. The whole purpose of it is to create tension and anticipation with every email, but without damaging or affecting the content that you deliver. If Game of Thrones can do it, we’re sure that you can too!

4. Use Humor to Create a Personal Relationship with Your Prospects

Ideally, your contacts already know who you are and the communication process flows without any issues. Practically, that’s rarely the case and it only happens when you’ve got no more than 5 clients, which (well, of course, it depends on the industry) isn’t such a happy prospect for most.

Getting to a point where you’ve created personas to get more efficiently to your audience is something to be positive about. It means your business is constantly growing.

Unfortunately, something you might sound impersonal and boring. And there’s a fix to that. Transfer the humor from your day-to-day life to your prospect-to-prospect experiences. There are others that follow this practice and do it well, but we’d advise you to go on this path only if you’re a genuinely funny person.

For instance, my favorite example is throwing a subject line that says ‘So I’ll pick you up at 7?’. That yells personality, It’s so rich and impossible to ignore. But it also takes some strategy to not follow this line with an awkward email, but to keep a natural tone. Even DJ Waldow decided to talk about this strategy.

5. Make Use of Negative Subject Lines to Trigger Curiosity

The old carrots versus stick hypothesis. Truth be told, we do tend to react better to fear. From this point of view, loss aversion is a much more powerful stimulus than being offered a gain. This can be very well used in crafting a puissant subject line. Behind this fact, there’s a mechanism that speaks of basic human nature principles.

Being alerted about a potential danger/threat is more powerful than being told you can follow an opportunity. The reason is that, while we cannot always visualize how far an opportunity could take us, we can easily imagine loss; it’s more palpable, more real and we’re more willing to fight loss than finding a lucky chance.

Lindsay Kolowich wrote a post about various subject lines that work. Among them, there’s clearly one using loss aversion, with a great open rate, which means it worked. Of course, it would have been more accurate if we had access to the average email open rates of the blogger, but an absolute percentage of 17.13 is not bad.

Defense mechanisms are built around the things that we care most about particularly because they’re meaningful and we have worked a lot to get here, which is why they’re infinitely more relatable.

6. Use the Power of Quizzes. Announce Them in the Subject Line

Whenever we hear about a quiz we tend to zone out from everything else and just take it. Adding quizzes and educating your audience to expect them makes the people engage more with your content and, therefore, remember you better. Maybe tell them that you’ve sent them a quiz, from the subject line.

This can happen even if you’re a huge actor on the market or a newly entered one, as it helps you stick to people’s minds. Creativity has always been a powerful means when it comes to a brand’s memorability. Not to mention it increases click through rate. Take the example below, from Grammarly.

7. Add a Video. Announce It in the Subject Line to Raise Interest

There are countless reasons why embedded videos in email marketing campaigns work wonders. While this is an extended practice and everyone seems to have been doing it for years, it’s crucial to keep in mind the reasons why you’re doing it, both concerning your needs and your readers’, and to stick to your digital marketing plan.

Also, if the users aren’t used to this type of content or don’t know to expect it, you can announce it in the subject line.

From our point of view, adding a video to an email means creating a context for your readers to allocate more time to your emails than they usually would, as integrating more than one sense in message transmission is proven to be more effective. Then, of course, there’s the possibility of your brand going viral.

This great example of video embedding from Emily Konouchi brings to our attention the importance of getting the audience used to receiving videos. And it’s more of a process than a state, meaning that you’ve got to teach your readers what to expect from you and in that you’ve got the biggest flexibility. So did Mario Batali in his culinary newsletter.

From your reader’s point of view, a video is a summarized version of an article, one that’s more pleasant to follow, and it’s also more impactful, personal and significant. It’s also best if you include single tap to play it since many users open the emails from their phones. Additionally, autoplay is never a good thing to do, as it’s intrusive and it violates trust.

8. Be Playful. Use Emojis in the Subject Line When It’s Appropriate

It’s thrilling to work in an industry that’s finally mature, it has its niches, its specialists and its overly excited, ever-so-powerful fanbase. But this, like any other awesome thing in life, comes with responsibilities. One of them is taking your job seriously every second of the day. And while it may seem a little odd, this doesn’t mean that you should be formal and pretentious with your readers. On the contrary, it’s high time you spiced some of these strategies up with a little humor, a personal note, maybe a slightly inappropriate joke. Use a more personal subject line.

Short, colorful, and attention grabbing, just like the example below.

This is how a correct use of the emoji should be in the subject line of an email. It’s especially useful when you’re not overusing it and look spammy. Just like Jackie Nees mentioned on her blog, there’s a fine line and you’re risking a lot if you don’t know where to stop. However, there are bad examples as well.

And maybe you should use emojis every once in a blue moon, when it’s appropriate and the context allows it. What two years ago would have been a big no-no is only the logical thing to do today – people like interacting on an emotional level with their connections, and networking is more than exchanging likes and retweets. It only makes sense to adapt your email subject line to these trends.

And as always, with the risk of sounding like the mother of a teenage girl, don’t do anything that you’re not comfortable with and that doesn’t align with your personality. You don’t want to pose into something you’re not, you just want to communicate personally from the first character of your subject line; and if you’re doing it through other means and you’ve never used emojis in your personal life while exchanging text messages with your wife and kids, maybe you shouldn’t do it. Otherwise, don’t hesitate!

9. Have at Least 5 Headlines Written Before Actually Sending One

You don’t need experience in journalism to figure out that there’s an almost weird similarity between a headline and the subject line of an email. They both have the role to intrigue, to raise questions and to spark curiosity. Most of the times, the subject line is what opening an email or not depends on. And as this is the very most important decision when it comes to open rates, it should be given its much-needed attention.

The business world is responsible for most of the email traffic, with over 100 billion sent/received emails per day. By the end of 2017, were 269 billion sent emails. This figure is expected to grow to over 333 billion daily emails in 2022.

You just cannot win at this game without a kickass headline. Which is why you should have where to choose from. I would recommend writing 5 headlines before pressing send. It’s massively important to reach the level of conciseness and relevance, while also making the reader curious about your content. It’s never easy to do it, no matter how much experience you’ve got, and it takes practice. Most of the times,you should follow some clear-cut rules too, if we’ve decided to treat it like a headline. Some people take it very seriously and some even do A/B testing.

The ideal length of a subject line depends on context as much as some external factors (such as the closeness of your audience with your brand). Its tone should be intriguing more than just a cry for attention. In order to pull all of these off, you need to take time and to find the perfect angle to your story. Just like you do in journalism.

10. Leverage Relevant News to Build Urgency from the Subject Line

It seems like every other tip is about creating better subject lines when it comes to email marketing. And while that’s great advice, it cannot work miracles alone. You need to set up a lifecycle email marketing strategy. In other words, it’s essential for your prospects to know why you’re sending those emails, what category of emails they are (are they promotional? Are they newsletters the prospect subscribed for? Are they a regular 20-days follow up?). We all know how important are click rates because they measure your subscribers’ engagement with your subject lines.

It’s of tremendous importance that the prospects don’t ask themselves ‘What do these guys want now?’ whenever a new emails lands in their inbox. And because everyone’s schedule is always a little too full to cope with, maybe it’s ok if your prospect doesn’t open a follow-up email, but does read the newsletter regularly.

Proving the relevance of an email often constitutes a prioritization in the mind of the reader. And this is essentially a great mechanism of the human mind because instead of getting to ad nauseam before opening an email, they will filter the information and only open what’s important to them. And this is what business should be like, right? Delivering information so that the prospect will have easier access to something they vividly want to hear.

This is where relevant news come into the equation. If your readers know what kind of email they’re receiving and why it’s a lot easier to spark their interest with different tricks. News incorporate the present into your messages, giving them temporal relevance and a sense of urgency. All of this happens using context. Topical events are a good source for anyone out there looking for a fresh perspective on their content strategies, as long as they’re not artificial and exaggerated. Try to find the events that blend in with your products and digital marketing goals.

Such as Chris Hexton stresses in his article, relevant news can drive conversions if they’re used properly and towards an interested audience. Don’t always sell them with a topical subject line because most probably everybody does. Leave the connection for the people who open the email.

You will, then, be able to improve your conversion rate optimization and have a higher open rate for email marketing campaigns.

11. Use Email Series to Increase Curiosity and Loyalty

It’s difficult to create a loyal audience because every other source of information that delivers similar content to yours can be thought of as a good replacement. Everything seems to be more dependable than ever before. That’s why you have to use creative hooks to keep your audience engaged, and drip email campaigns are one of those hooks. Aside from the content strategies that can help you shape the way your message is best formulated, the idea behind this content makes for a sustainable strategy as long as you’re thinking long term.

12. A/B Test Alternatives of Different Subject Lines

One of the most relevant ways of delivering something that your audience would appreciate is testing the audience regarding your subject line. Before actually sending out an email to a massive list, it’s best to have some hands-on feedback from your readers and track click rates, open rates to compare the results.

Wishpond’s blog post about A/B testing also treated subject lines, and it turns out running tests is for the better.

And more than just one variable serves well for better positioning.

Sometimes two different copy approaches of the same content can have very distinct response rates, despite being about the same information. You wouldn’t want to cut your open rates in half because you haven’t been cautious and humble enough as to test what works better.

II. KEEP YOUR READERS ENGAGED

13. Create a Second Lead to Keep Your Audience Hooked

I’m not the first one to advocate for this strategy; it worked for many other influencers out there. A constant and active fan base that always accesses your email and constantly reads your content on the blog is something we’re all striving for. However, it doesn’t hurt to give extra motivation to people whenever you have a chance. Any course, webinar or other kinds of second lead can dramatically improve your open rates; the more hands-on the topic you’re delivering, the better your chances are to have a burst in the open rates. Use social networks to create buzz.

When you’re targeting busy people, make sure you’re solving one of their problems. Once you are useful, they’ll keep you close. Carly Stec’s article is nothing but living proof that it can work if you’re doing it right.

The secret is to keep people interested and not go softie with the informational quality when you notice an increase. People will only come back for as long as you fill their needs, and it’s enough to break the good pattern you’ve been working on for months once to lose a significant part of your audience.

14. Use Information Gap to Create a Craving for More Content

There has to be that piece of information, that exists in every niche, that everybody seems to be using but no one really knows how it’s done or what it’s about. So maybe it’s time to clarify it.

That’s when you come in. Under the pretense of delivering a more in-depth approach to something everybody knows, you can solve the issue of the elephant in the room. If it’s too much to cover in one email, you can easily create a series and satisfy an informational hole that has kept your prospects from growing in business intelligence. It’s not easy to serve the social greater good, and it clearly takes a lot of precious time, but it’s efficient most of the times if you take it seriously.

An example of such, you can see below:

15. Use Educational Emails to Re-engage Prospects That Slipped Away

It’s not uncommon for prospects to lose interest in your content, even though they may be directly interested or even involved in the niche that you are active on. This can happen as a result to various reasons. Either because they got so used to the style of your content and it doesn’t spark their interest anymore, or because you have changed something they liked a lot, or sometimes because you have become too aggressively promotional. So make it up to them.

However, there is always one category of emails that will be opened, even if your regular newsletter or mailing style is a little too aggressive and that is the educational email. The chances are that most of the people who are actively passionate about staying in touch with the latest news in your niche will maintain long-term interest in educational emails that are meant to fill in background informational needs.

16. Focus Your Copy on the Customer’s Interests, Not on Your Product

While we’re in the mindset of providing the best for your customers’ interests, it’s not only through educational emails that you can satisfy the prospects’ expectations. A powerful strategy of advocating your brand is assuming a more objective voice, one that doesn’t have the brand in the close-up, but the very reason why your audience needs your products or services.

Mary Fernandez gave the next example of an honest copy that completely makes you fall in love.

This means that if your product is a carpet cleaner, it’s not cleaning carpets that you’re selling. It’s hardly even clean carpets. What you’re selling actually is a good impression of your mother-in-law who comes to visit during some weekends, unannounced.

So stop talking about your brand for just a second and shift the focus to the brand promise, and even further to the achievements that can be completed with your brand. Because those are the true points that spark your prospect’s attention.

17. Ask Why When Someone Unsubscribes

People unsubscribe from mailing lists for the weirdest of reasons, varying from my wife just had a baby and I don’t have time for this anymore so I’m wealthy enough not to value information.
However, this is only a minority of them. Most of the unsubscribes happen for a legitimate reason that you should know about. So send them an email asking to fill in your this-is-only-taking-a-nanosecond survey.

Most of the prospects who click the unsubscribe button are unhappy about something and chances are it’s something you did or didn’t do. Therefore, it falls under your responsibility to try to fix the misunderstanding. People subscribe to mailing lists for a reason– there’s something they liked about you. But it’s not going to always be a honeymoon phase, and you have to treat this relationship personally and responsibly.

18. Make the Same Message Revolve Around More Than One CTA Button

Just as it applies when it comes to website pages, having one call to action doesn’t mean you should also have only one call to action button. On the contrary, the more opportunities you give to the reader to click on your links, the better your chances to convert.

However, you do have to pay attention to the message behind those buttons or text links. This Whirlpool case study showed that there was a 42% increase in clickthrough rates. How?

That’s because there were too many messages, when – in fact- the email ideally has to build your readers’ trust and allow them to decide when they’re convinced. The example shows that no matter how good an idea is, if it’s not well executed it can do more damage than good. So make sure that the CTA buttons and links intensify the same message.

We’re all interested in a good story, as readers. We like to see the person from the other end trying to build a relationship with us. If you’re just giving me a button/link to click on the minute I open the email, you’re only going to take me by surprise. In reality, it’s best to let the readers decide when they feel ready and convinced to click on your CTA. This abundance doesn’t mean, however, that we should hyperlink the entire email. But 2 CTA opportunities, for instance, could send the message that you respect the reader and are willing to give them time to trust you, very much like it happens in real life.

19. Brand Your “From” Name. Set a Personal Name and Stick to It

A huge part of personal branding is memorability. And the reason why it’s so difficult to pull it off is that there are so many associations already going on in our heads as well as our users. But the other half of personal branding is being personal. My conviction is that, if you’re consistently personal in both the way you write the emails and the subject line title, there’s a good chance you’ll win on the long run.

Justine Jordan explains the importance of the “from name” personalization and the drastic impact it can have on the audience’s judgment.

In almost all cases, the from name and address is the first thing that subscribers see. Is your from name recognizable and trustworthy to external audiences?
	JUSTINE JORDAN
	VP Marketing at Litmus

An example behind a poor naming decision comes from Banana Republic, when the brand decided to send emails with an acronym of its name, BR. The problem is that, if your personal name or your acronym are not popular enough, you should stick to the brand name as to be easily recognized. However, a personalized “from name” does spin the wheel of brand recognition.

There’s nothing wrong with a common name, either, as long as your email doesn’t come from a shady business address, but from your personal name. It’s vital for the reader to see that the email comes from you, and the most accurate sign of this is your name populating the ‘from’ category instead of your work email address. This way, you’re on the point of establishing a personal liaison with your reader. And maybe, if you’re new in business or they’re new on your list, this won’t happen for the first emails, but it’s most likely going to be a long time success.

20. Review Emails Internally Before Sending Them to the Public

This one’s not going to shock you if you ever sent an email to a thousand prospects and then realized what an awful typo you had; the type of thing that would never happen to you, especially since you’re so much of a grammar Nazi and always in touch with your use of language. And yet it did. It happened. All you can hope is that your public will not start associating you with that horrible person who doesn’t spell ‘your’ correctly.

To avoid these sorts of issues, use internal reviews as often as possible. And by that, I don’t mean you re-reading your email (out loud) after you’ve written it. It can help, but your full of biases mind will very likely skip one of two mistakes that either sound wrong or are spelled badly. This is what your colleagues are for! Send the email to them, ask them kindly to carefully read your email as if it were a will from an uncle who decided to leave them a castle in Scotland. Accept nothing less. The way every sentence’s significance can bend and twist can be either your success or your failure. With that in mind, always review emails internally!

Of course, sometimes you can get lucky enough as to repair the mistakes in a very cute way, just like in the example below. But that rarely happens.

21. Proofread for Grammar, Not Just for Marketing Relevance!

As credibility is what grants either your success or your failure, it’s essential to present the materials to your prospects flawlessly. It doesn’t pay off to spend one entire week documenting a case study just to present it poorly, with spelling errors. Otherwise you, will have to make up to your readers again.

And you may not get off as cheap as Reebok.

Just like editing, spell check shouldn’t be made by you solely. At least one set of fresh eyes is required to read the material before sending it to the public – after all, there’s little we appreciate more than a well written, well documented and highly relevant piece.

22. Finish the Email in a Question to Increase Engagement

It’s never easy to paint the portrait of a happy audience. However, the easiest way to someone’s heart in email marketing (and life in general) is showing how much you care, and the fundamental cores of this relationship are not about you, but about them. This technique helps you a great deal with the long-term open rates.

Asking a question once in a while is an invitation for your readers to interact with you and your brand, therefore improving their overall experience with your products or services. So did Kissmetrics in their client’s emails, thinking that their audience would engage better. Which happened.

The relevance of personal communication strategies is not to be underestimated, and encouraging interaction is your way of showing how much you are willing to take your prospects’ opinions into consideration.

III. BE CAREFUL AT THE TIMING & FREQUENCY OF YOUR EMAILS

23. Use the Same Delivery Time for All Your Emails (Especially for Newsletters)

Consistency is the founding of all habits. The more you’re going to keep the schedule fixed, the more people are going to make a habit out of reading your newsletters. It usually takes us 21 days to form a new habit, after which things will be naturally integrated into our program. Aside from being easier for your business to organize the issues of the newsletter internally as to be constant, this form of time consistency represents a key issue in attributing credibility; being able to stick to a schedule involves planning and efficient resources distribution.

Dave Chaffey wanted to find out the best times to send emails depending on the industry and wrote an article about it. Below you can see the results:

Imagine how easy would be to grow a fanbase this way, by using email send time optimization.

24. Avoid List Fatigue. Avoid Sending Too Many Emails

It isn’t an easy challenge, but being the one to bring a new perspective or to test out a new theory can interfere dramatically with the idea of email fatigue. And get to the point where you can build a Hitchcock’s suspense in an email series and people cannot get enough of what you’re writing.

If it’s not the case, then probably a moderate attitude is the best solution to your problems. Maybe some of the content you present is outdated, or simply not outstanding compared to what your audience has already read. And maybe you’re sending out mails way too often. Even if some of these aren’t necessarily content, but brand focused, they do count and your prospects may get enough of your name in their inbox. Yes, it’s possible and it’s better avoided!

Or do something out of the ordinary. Take another approach, like Jet Blue did. They created an email to humorously reengage customers offering information in a 3 points format.

Stick to a calendar and only send out branded content if it’s necessary: new release coming up, huge news in the niche etc.

25. Get the Length of the Message Right – Add a TL;DR in the Subject Line When Necessary

Depending on the message of your email, the content should be delivered in its best form. Usually, this is the information-redundancy ratio. You wouldn’t want to make people close your emails, because this would diminish drastically your open rates in the future, and you wouldn’t want to miss any of the important information for the big picture either.

If we take the example below, what is your first impression aobut it?

Source: twentyoverten.com

You don’t like i, right? There’s a lot of content and it looks overwhelming. A huge amount of content will most likely go unnoticed.

A visually appealing copy helps the users through the content and assures them diversity.

The solution to this problem is being honest and try to talk to your prospects as you would with your friends: don’t skip the juicy stuff but don’t bore them either.

26. Resend Unopened Emails

It’s so frustrating to work an entire week on a piece that doesn’t get opened by your subscribers. There are plenty of situations when you can resend unopened emails to your prospects. The most notable perhaps is the small open rate. Whenever you get a smaller open rate than expected, either because it is small compared to your general open rate, or because it’s better than most of your open rates, but so is your email, there’s no point to leaving it at that.

Of course, the opposite situation works: your article/newsletter is great, and people should read it. In fact, most of your prospects did, you never expected such a huge open rate, but here it is. And the results are astonishing: a lot of marketing engagement and response with a positive sentiment in all the comments and on social media networks, as well. You wouldn’t like to waste that either. In fact, in the second email, you can mention that.

Specialists have come to solutions to the issue of small open rates, and segmentation based on non-opens is the first step in solving this issue.

The key to this is to find a better hook. Ask yourself what it was that people found uninteresting, especially if they usually open your emails. Once you’ve done that, change the subject line into something that would convert better – maybe test the alternatives within a small group. This way, you can segment the targets into more specific and similar groups for a better open rate.

27. Try Automated Behavioral Triggered Emails to Exploit User Behavior

Each user behaves a certain way, and there’s no need for a psychology class to understand this fully. Consequently, the decision-making process may suffer alteration from one user to another. To you, this means that it may not be effective to send users emails only triggered by the time of the day or the day of the week, but also by their behavior on your website.

For e-commerce platforms, this could be an easy choice. It’s never wise to leave un-emailed a user who abandons a chart with items in it. However, there are more nuanced emails that you could send as well, on different other occasions, like Abigail Waterer advises in this article.

If you’re still wondering why automated behavioral triggered emails is a good strategy, even though the email is automated and it may lose a little from the personal voice (although I think it doesn’t have to), let me explain. It’s because you’re sending it at the moment of utmost relevance to your prospect. Formulated properly, this strategy can increase email open rates with 71% and the CTR with over 100%. And there are lots of marketing statistics out there, that can prove this strategy.

28. Ask Your Contacts to Decide How Often They Want to See Mails from You

Yes, it’s still relevant to do it. Our needs aren’t something absolute anymore. We’re past the time when we either needed that or we didn’t. Today, you might need a service or a tool in different degrees, to different extents and clearly for distinct purposes. Depending on these variables, there’s always the possibility that you have the right solution for your prospects’ needs, but you either deliver it in a nagging manner: way too often, way too heavily or worse – too scarcely.

A survey by TechnologyAdvice shows how could businesses improve their email efforts.

Of course, you can run tests. It’s preferable that you do. But users appreciate honesty. Put yourself out there and ask them to what degree they need to hear from you. If it’s once a month, don’t worry. If you’re awesome enough you’ll increase the degree to which they need you.

However, if it’s daily, don’t think you’ve got the user wrapped around your fingers. Leads don’t work like this, you have to work constantly for them. The more a user needs to hear from you, the more they’re exposed to your content and may notice mistakes. There never is an easy way, but honesty is the first step to building meaningful relationships with your target.

29. Create Anticipation towards the Following Email from a Series

We’ve already talked about the fear of missing out (FOMO), which often comes in the way of loss aversion. That’s why, besides having an open loop, it’s often very efficient to create a sense of urgency for your readers to understand that they might be missing on some valuable marketing tips of an email saga.

According to many sources, anticipation doesn’t have to mean rewriting “The Young and the Restless”, as it’s enough to just send one automated pre-launch email sometimes.

There’s nothing wrong with applying some social pressure on your readers, as long as you don’t exaggerate with the drama.

As long as you’re consistent in delivering quality information, this can be a very effective way of creating a powerful fanbase. When the readers are under the impression that they might be missing on some amazing tip, their willingness to read will be significantly higher.

30. Let the Contact Know Your Email Is Fresh

A constant feeling that we all have is that time passes by and we don’t get enough of the important information because of all the biased feed algorithms on social media, and because of even-more-biased interests. That’s why, besides being relevant, information has to be fresh to be of importance. There’s nothing that screams ‘open me’ more than a well-written, fresh newsletter that will drive traffic.

When you decide to include time coordinates in your emails, you will have the guarantee that people are going to know how urgent it is to read it. If it’s Monday morning and you’re sending a fresh update, chances are it won’t get open, as everything is new on Mondays on everyone’s schedules. But if you do have something important to say on a Saturday afternoon, maybe it’s worth taking a look at.

IV. AVOID SPAM FILTERS

31. Beware of the Word ‘Free’. It Can Trigger Spam Filters

And not just this word. There are plenty of overused spam words that can trigger filters out there. The more you’re avoiding them, the more you have a chance to get to your leads’ inbox. Whenever you’re feeling undecided about the spam appropriateness of your emails (especially when it comes to the subject lines), consult one of the lists out there and avoid the words that could contribute to your small open rates at all costs.

Andrei Rebrov gave lots of negative examples.

32. Use Lower Case Letters in the Subject Line

We don’t live in a webiverse where you have to shout anymore. Every niche that develops its work in the digital marketing area has reached enough maturity to mimic a conversation appropriately. Shiny fonts have stopped working as well as any other bling-bling that would have granted your success in the 2000’s.

There’s a more explicative way of putting this as well. Your readers don’t find themselves on your page because they’re looking for wondrous solutions to never-ending problems. If you’re looking to develop a sustainable business, you’ve got to stop trying to deliver magic. Instead, a clarifying explanation, a step-by-step guide or any other explanatory process does the trick. The more honest you are, the more credible you are. And this means leaving out the tabloid view of your articles.

Sometimes you don’t have to be spammy to sound spammy to filter algorithms. Check the example below:

As for the subject line, it’s not just the search engines that have developed spam filters, or the email providers. It’s the users as well. Whenever your readers will see something that’s exaggerated and artificially pumped, they’ll choose to ignore it thinking it is spam.

When friends email you, they don’t use upper case letters, unless they’re mocking the idea behind them. If we are to build a strategic relationship with our readers, we’ll have to treat them in a personal way, and this comes with assuming a balanced role in delivering information.

33. Only Use the Emails of Your Contacts for What They Expect from You

If your last years’ efforts have been all about building an audience that can find you reliable, it wouldn’t be fair to your audience and neither would it be a good strategic step to sell your contacts for other businesses, especially if they’re not connected to your area of expertise, therefore to their areas of interests.

Take iPad’s example.

They sold the database to one of their competitors.

34. Make the List Double Opt-In

If you don’t want to end up in the spam folders create double opt-in lists for your prospects. Having thousands of thousands of subscribers is amazing. But not when it comes with a 0.01% open rate and 0% conversion rate. Then it’s awful and you’re doing something wrong.

The double opt-in has such a powerful fan base because it works. There’s nothing wrong with having less leads, as long as they’re more interested and their reading/purchasing intent is dramatically higher. To be relevant means to be specific, and it cannot be achieved if you’re running for leads aimlessly.

Good copy will always be appealing, but you have to make sure that your interests and your future readers’ correspond.

As much as you want to know that your emails are sent to a number of people as big as the population of Japan, ask yourself to how many of them it is relevant. Because people talk. Your leads, to whom you’re sending useless emails, may have friends who would really consider you as a viable option before hearing them complain about how aggressive you are.

35. Ask Contacts to Add You to the Address Book

It is true that spam filters are to be considered even when you’re delivering great content that anyone should be honored to receive. Being in someone’s address book, however, does more than protect you from spam filters and improve deliverability rates. It makes a statement about the personal level of your relationship, not necessarily in terms of closeness or intimacy, but concerning the extent to which you’re satisfying a need they have. Or add a link to make it obvious, just like it is presented in the next example.

36. Avoid Attachments, Whenever Possible

First of all, because they’re rarely opened. From a marketer’s perspective, it should be more than clear that attachments are a no-no. If there’s something truly relevant in your email, the user will get it. If your click-through rate is too low, maybe there’s room for improvement. However, being pushy about it is not a solution.

Using attachments makes spam filters instantly think you’re onto scams.

Instead, try making the content irresistible. Create cravings for your readers and you’ll get yourself a better open rate. It’s enough to mess things up once with an attachment or a poorly written email, and you’ll hardly ever get to be read again by that lead.

37. Optimize Your HTML to Increase Deliverability

Over 70% of the readers use mobile devices to open their emails. A badly optimized HTML not only will diminish your chances of landing to their inbox, but the users will avoid opening your emails in the future if the HTML isn’t responsive. A bad user experience is what you should be very afraid of. You don’t want to be that guy. So try your best and test your newsletter to see if it’s responsive to please all mobile users.

Take Inc Newsletter, for example.

While the design isn’t at all sophisticated, it’s always informative and easy to skim. Aside from this, it’s also practical.

38. Use Well Optimized Videos to Get the Message in Your Prospect’s Inbox

Same goes for your videos. While it’s encouraged to appeal to more than the reading function of your audience’s cognition, it’s also strongly advised to make sure that the strategies you’re using to improve email open rates work properly, otherwise the entire extra effort is in vain.

Video email marketing is a thing, but only as long as you get the technical part straight.

The rest of the story is similar to an un-optimized HTML code – it’s enough to have a bad experience once to unsubscribe or never react to your emails again. Not to mention the off chance of not getting to your prospects’ inbox because of technical errors that may come along with your videos.

39. Optimize Images to Be Responsive on Mobile Devices

Besides improving the template of your email design, images will have to be responsive too. A lot of our understanding comes from a concise image when we start skimming through content. Not because images are better than a thousand words, but because your prospect will know from your image if they’re interested in going through all your content. If this leverage they’re judging content based on doesn’t work, your email risks to never be opened again.

Andrew King gives the example of Domino’s, who listened to the voice of users’ needs and started to take into consideration the device where they check their emails.

40. Use Email Authentication to Prevent Fake Accounts from Sending Emails in Your Name

This is a milestone for business owners, and doesn’t only apply for the email campaigns, but for your personal branding strategy as well. It’s essential to have authentication in order to minimize the chances of a dirty competitor’s fake account sending emails in your name. It is true that, in the business world, one mistake can cost you everything you’ve been working for.

Plus, this is another great way to improve the rate of emails actually landing in your users’ inbox. The authentication can also be required to users in order to read the emails you’re sending, which is another security leverage that you can use to improve open rates and the overall success of your email marketing campaigns.

It’s harder to maximize the open rates on the long run without proper authentication security.

41. Connect Your Current Location to the Email Account to Spot Unusual Activity Easier

This one’s a complementary step that adds up to the entire effort you’re putting into being relevant and reliable. Your current location is one of the means of being kept from any account counterfeiting attempts. Plus, in case you’re active on Twitter, your prospects will better keep in touch with your day-to-day activity, the conferences you go to and the ways they can reach you better.

Or use it to pitch your next business growth idea.

V.BE AWARE OF THE LIST SEGMENTATION IMPORTANCE

42. Micro-Segment Your Mailing List

When it comes to segmentation, it’s essential to approach the right target audience and, in order to do this, you have to know what the personas’ informational needs are. Open rates are closely related to how relevant the content of an email is to the contact.

Micro-segmenting is crucial, as it helps you maintain pertinence to the content and deliver germaneness depending on your contact’s personas and the needs you’re striving to satisfy.

Behavioral data aims more specifically than demographic data. The psychology behind why people buy your products, whether the users are using a paid or a free subscription, how often they open the emails, whether they use desktop or mobile more and the click-through rate are often more relevant than just the gender and job title of the user. However, these two go hand in hand whenever you’re trying to build a comprehensive buyer persona.

For instance, Douglas Burdett wrote about the benefits of list segmentation after a survey taken by Lyris.inc, and the results were not too shabby.

A minimum information about a client should be divided into:

background – the psycho-graphic characteristics;
demographic information: job title, gender, professional interests;
interests: what kind of information the clients consume regularly and what they are interested in satisfying;
engagement data: tailoring the message and its delivery to the consumer’s habits of engaging with this type of contact, in order to increase the open rate.

43. Address Prospects from Your Niche

Once you’ve established what the prospected personas look like to the finest detail, it’s time you carved your message in order to respond to a series of questions before they even get to ask.

People in your niche are not predictable, it’s not what we’re going to argue. Instead, we strongly believe that the odds of you delivering relevant content are higher within your niche of expertise. If we’ve all agreed that generic messages are a key issues in e-commerce email marketing, then addressing specific prospects that are active in your niche is the logical step to follow next.

The more specific your area of expertise, the more selective you should be in addressing prospects and avoiding mistakes such as the one below, with a very broad topic and an overly hyped subject line.

For the people who are part of your industry, the message should be somewhat broader and more contextualized compared to the emails sent to people who already are highly knowledgeable. The way you address prospects and you position your company against their interest has a huge impact on their attitude towards your services. It takes addressing people as specific inside the niche as possible and different content approaches to have long-term positive impact on your open rates.

According to Yaro Starak’s blog post, you have to start small and humble, by addressing people who are most interested in hearing from you.Whenever your prospect will believe that your message is too generic or, on the contrary, too specific for their understanding and/or interests, you will lose any privilege of being read.

44. Constantly Upgrade & Update Your Contact List

There are all kinds of creative ways of managing inactive subscribers. There’s always a reason behind their lack of activity. However, depending on whether they used to be engaged or not, the approaches can be different.

A user who’s been opening emails for years without hesitation and who all of a sudden doesn’t seem interested in what you have to offer will most likely have one reason of ignoring your emails in spite of all efforts. Additionally, someone who has never opened even one email is so uninterested in your company that hasn’t even bothered to unsubscribe. Following on this idea, be grateful to people who have remained loyal in time. You should try to sholve the issues when you’re seeing a soft bounce, not to mention a hard bounce.

As this blog post from Benchmark Email puts it, a hard bounce is the number of emails that never get opened or delivered, for that matter, because of the invalid email addresses. This variable can damage your overall performance in case you don’t go through a regular contact list detox, and your email marketing efforts may just seem pointless after a point, even if you’re doing everything right.

There are different ways of dealing with the above-mentioned types of uninterested subscribers. The first can be asked what happened and friendly required to give feedback. After all, they’ve been so close to your business for all this time, that their input should be valuable. As for the other category, they most likely need to be sent an email and asked whether they would like to be subscribed to your emails or not. Honesty is something even unattached people appreciate.

45. Address the Message Having Just One Persona in Mind

When you’ve identified the persona you’re writing to, the first question to be asked is if it can’t be classified into two more specific personas. The more definite your idea of the prospect is, the more clear-cut and tailored will be the message – which is ultimately what it takes to increase open rates.

Dropbox makes a great example of a personal approach that speaks to the human behind the businessman.

They seem to be always a little more creative, while keeping the same line of thought.

Understanding the audience’s core problems and interests is the very core from which both the subject line and the message content should be crafted. The fact that it’s easier to write more generic emails doesn’t justify the effort of building a solid contact list, as most of the people will think the content is spam. Writing like a friend, from an honest first-person point of view can save the day, especially if you’re positioning yourself as being a reliable source.

46. Avoid Sending Unsolicited Emails to Recipients

If the prospects didn’t subscribe to receive emails from your part regularly, it’s more than appreciated if you can keep up to the promise and deliver consistent, friendly content on a weekly or daily basis. However, subscribing to your newsletters doesn’t imply the prospects are automatically interested in all the promotions and offers that you’re about to suffocate them with – so take a step back.

People hate being the subject of spam. And it’s only fair, as you risk losing fractions of your target audience that would have otherwise continued reading your content.

Avoiding such mistakes is one of the best steps you could make as to maintain relevance. We’ve become so used to avoiding promotional messages, that we’re prone to avoid a source altogether than expose ourselves to a sales department.

From massively using AdBlock to changing the TV channel whenever there are commercial running, there’s nothing we wouldn’t do to protect ourselves from the flow of adverts. This being the case, it’s not far fetched to state that you have a better chance to convert a prospect by being honest and delivering exactly what you promised to.

VI. KEEP A STRONG CONNECTION WITH YOUR AUDIENCE

47. Add Social Media Links to Be Closer to Your Audience

It’s true. Your signature doesn’t have to be long and boring, but a little extra relevant information never hurt anyone. Especially since including social media buttons in your signature connects your brand with a human face, the one of a person who’s willing to reply to Twitter tags and Facebook comments.

Always make yourself available to your audience. It’s the honest way to win their hearts. Yes, it takes time, but assuming someone just finished reading your email and has a quick question, maybe they’ll feel better to ask it on Twitter than pressing reply to your email. Be flexible. Wisestamp’s business model is focused on delivering signatures for professionals who use their emails to engage with their clients and leads.

48. Send a Warm, Personal Welcome Email When Someone Subscribes

It’s great to use email automation sometimes. However, this behavioral trigger starts from the premise that you’re trying, form the first minutes, to build a personal relationship. This is why you put so much effort into sending a welcome mail. Consequently, it will have to be personal. The styles, however, can differ. Or you can throw in a design template. Just like in the example below:

You’ll sign it with your name, you’ll mention why it’s so important to you that the person joined and thank them. Of course, you’ll also emphasize some of the reasons why you’re not dependable, without looking arrogant. Don’t make it about you, it’s their special day!

49. Send Relevant Product Update Emails

Another automated email that works in the best interest of your prospects is the product update one. Let me walk you through it. It’s an important day for you, as you released an update you’ve been working at for months, if not years. You’re happy to finally see it happen. You have to tell your audience, but only if you make it outstanding!

But be careful. This is not about you either. Your prospects will not be interested in hearing you yapping about how great you are. Remember you’re satisfying a need here. Remind them why this should be an important day for them as well, focus on the changes you’re making and how your contribution to their lives is now more significant than ever.

50. Use Your Credibility Smartly. Avoid Promotional Content

Of course, you should. There’s no point in trying to be a perfect solution for a striving need if you forget – even for a minute – the main reason why people read your content and buy your products. It’s because they need something. It’s always about this. So that’s your biggest leverage, the way their lives are changing. Your presence should be subtle and humble, not all over the place and vocal, it turns people off.

Distract your audience from you and your brand, and help them focus on the benefits exclusively. This attitude can get you far. Unlike a cheap attitude. After all the work you’ve put into gathering a contact list, it would be detrimental to ruin it all with a single email, such as this one.

51. Include an Unsubscribe Button

It doesn’t have to be in their face, it’s enough to include it in the footer of your emails. People who cannot see this will most likely mark you as spam, which is the worse thing that a marketer should ever think of.

Plus, it builds to your credibility. If you’re open to the readers, transparent and correct, they’re more likely to trust you and not think that you’re tricking them in any way. Not to mention the possibility to pay fines if the country you’re in makes it illegal not to have an unsubscribe button.

52. Personalize Your Signature with a Short Description

Underlining short. You don’t have to reenact Anna Karenina in your signature bio, but some compass of what you’ve done and who you are to your readers should work just fine.

It’s important to show your readers who you should be to them and how they should position you in their lives. Are you the guy who developed the product? Or are you also fun and do bungee jumping in your free time? Maybe it’s time for your prospects to see you as more human, and relate to who you are personally!

Newoldstamp is a great tool you could use to personalize your email signature. It is so easy to create an interactive signature in a few minutes and generate more traffic and sales. You get brand-consistent email signatures across the entire company by using the same template and manage all email signatures from one single dashboard.

53. Encourage Sharing he Content of Your Email with Close Friends

Extending a deal towards an engaged prospect’s network is sometimes even CTA worthy, however much of an overly optimistic madness this may sound like. The psychological explanation is basic. When you’re dealing with people engaged towards the brand, it’s not unheard of to recommend them to share content among close friends or professional acquaintances. This is a highly targeted move, and it its chances of success aren’t farfetched.

There are lots of marketing specialists advocating for replacing the CTA with a ‘share with a friend’ message, and more and more professionals are applying this tip.

Once the prospect has engaged with your content, it means they agree with the main premise of your discourse – that your value is newsworthy or read-worthy. The only thing you’re left to convince them about is that you’re also share-with-someone-in-the-niche worthy. Without following any stereotypes from known idioms such as birds of a feather, the real chances of any prospect of yours to know at least one or two people also potentially interested in what you’ve got to offer are quite high.

From exclusive information that was part of the newsletter to offer coupons for tool discounts, everything that is valuable is worth sharing with your close friends.

Conclusion

Spot a trend in the email marketing ecosystem. Follow all the marketing tips and strategies we’ve talked about to improve your open rates. See what a template looks like or what makes you wonder if you’re getting a template or a personal email. Do the exact opposite of that. It usually helps to stir things up a little with a personal detail that an automated tool would never be able to catch. It’s always about giving a little bit more than what the prospect is expecting to see.

The post 53 Untapped Ways to Improve Your Email Open Rates appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.

29 Powerful Cold Email Tips Backed by Renowned Digital Marketing Experts

Razvan Gavrilas — Tue, 27 Jun 2017 08:32:36 +0000

Email outreach is clearly more than just sending an email to the right guy. Converting your marketing prospects into marketing opportunities is not something that everybody does right from the first shot.

For once, because it works like a riddle – it’s never the thing that first pops into your mind. That very first thing you’re thinking of including in your outreach pitch was probably used by other hundreds of people hoping to stand out. People receive heaps of emails every day. Lots of them get lost in the pile.

So is there anything you can do to get your email read by your potential clients? There sure is! Check out the following cold email tips backed by awesome digital marketing experts and boost your email open rates like never before.

Since influencers don’t have a lot of free time, you shouldn’t expect indulgence or mercy every time you’ve done something wrong. Most of the times, you don’t get more than a shot, and the better you perform, the more this will work like a snowball.

So let’s take a look at a comprehensive list of wise pieces of advice for cold email outreach from successful people in digital marketing.

29 Cold Email Tips for a Successful Campaign

Outreach Gone Wrong! Learn How to Deal with Negative Responses
Video Embedded in Email – Perfect Outreach Prospect
Focus on What Brings an Advantage to The Influencer
Be as Natural as Possible in Writing Your Outreach Proposal
Pitch as a Writer, Not as a Link Builder
Formulate a Natural Request Without Harassing the Receiver!
When Doing Outreach Write Less, but Document Your Emails More
Smart Outreach – Associate Yourself with High-Quality Professionals & Create the Ben Franklin Effect
Outreach Tip – Even After Sending 1000 Cold Emails – Be Humble!
Use the 3 Ps that Make the Outreach Go Round: Personalized, Positioned Properly and Persuasive
Be Unconventional in Writing Your Emails
Earn Trust by Finding a Common Ground Between You and the Influencer
Don’t Advertise Your Product too Soon in the Outreach Process!
Get Higher Response Rates by Pitching Your Ideas Honestly
Don’t be cheap! Be More Effective Using Dedicated Outreach Tools
Diversify the Approach Depending on the Outreach Purposes
Write Memorable Emails!
When Doing Email Outreach Use Short & Relevant Subject Lines
Make the Details of Your Email Impressive!
Don’t Be Superficial and Pushy in Your Outreach Endeavor!
Respect Three Elements for Outreach Success: Timing, Interest and Personalization!
Use Creative Incentives that Don’t Sound Selfish for Your Outreach Prospect!
Mistakes Are Unprofessional. Avoid Them with Every Email!
Learn How to Find Room In A Busy Influencers’ Schedule
The 9 Formulas to Increase Outreach Success Rate!
Be Personal and You May Experience a 333% Increase in Cold Email Response Rates
Cold Email Principles to Make Your Email Stand Out
Avoid Requests When First Contacting an Influencer!
Ask Questions to Empower Your Email and Attract the Recipients

1. Outreach Gone Wrong! Learn How to Deal with Negative Responses

There’s no way you can improve your chance of being promoted by influencers unless you decide to actively deal with rejection like a pro. We often forget that networking’s all about creating relationships, not just links on famous, high authority pages. Piotr Zaniewicz explains, in one of his articles, the entire set of possibilities when all you’ve got is negative answers and threats. If you’re the person in charge, you should listen to what Piotr says to help you close more deals.

“Now, you can’t defend yourself if you organised outreach based on, for example, a ready-made, untargeted and unsegmented prospect list. What you did was spamming and all you can say is “sorry” and hope for the best. It’s your job to first make sure you’re writing to the right person before you send the email.”
	Piotr Zaniewicz
	CEO & Founder @Righthellocom

He also offers a great list with some outreach examples that didn’t work out as intended every time. Yet, a lesson about sending cold emails or cold emailing templates was learnt each and every time.

Being Threatened by Influencers May Get You Somewhere

Infuriating People Can Sometimes Point Out Where You’re Wrong

Sometimes You’ll Need to Be Patient

Brutal Honesty Can Be A Valuable Lesson

And Nice “NO”s Will Make Your Day Better

Remember Patience? The Long Road to Success

This is an example of successful cold email example. Patience and ability to adapt to each response to guide the receiver through a positive experience is a desired situation.

2. Video Embedded in Email – Perfect Outreach Prospect

Sales prospecting is difficult. Madelaine Milani, talks about the sales process (and cold sales) more than networking and promotion outreach. The core idea is actually innovative and useful. In case you’re a charismatic writer with innovative ideas, you can record yourself and get the attention of the influencers you’re reaching out to.

The body should lead the recipient to watch the video, driving more watches and getting your message both seen and heard.
	Madelaine Milani
	Digital marketing at GoMercatus

Starting from the idea that there are 3 key things to include in your effective cold video emails: the introduction, trigger event and call to action, Madeline comes up with some great examples of sending cold emails with a twist:

3. Focus on What Brings an Advantage to The Influencer

Iris Shoor comes with some great insights on the art of cold email outreach. Every email has to come with a powerful story. And as long as you can outline the essential without getting into boring details, a little context didn’t kill anybody.

“One of the most basic tips when it comes to blogger outreach is to personalize your email. Not only is there a better chance you’ll hit what they’re looking for but you’re also communicating that you’re interested in their blog and not sending the same email to 50 different bloggers.”
	Iris Shoor
	CEO GetOribi

In this article Iris shows examples of success stories of her own and starts with the basic things – such as the fact that bloggers are most interested in getting more readers and quality content.

4. Be as Natural as Possible in Writing Your Outreach Proposal

Take your approach seriously and imagine you’ve already got a connection with the influencer, even when you don’t. This will give you a better focus and sense of propriety. And maybe people will even respond to your cold email campaigns.

The researching and content writing part are as important and challenging as is promoting your content efficiently. You need to have something to say, to be not only relevant but also interesting and to provide a competitive advantage.

While all these things are oddly familiar, Lena Shaw documents examples of positive and negative value to make a very valid point.

“There’s no shortage of email tips and tricks. Lists abound all over the internet. Even the narrowly-defined activity of initial email outreach has long lists of advice.”
	Lena Shaw
	Dir. of Mktg & Growth LeadGenius

In her article, Lena offers some great cold email examples and cold email tips altogether. An important thing that she outlines is that you have to work for outreach just as much as for every piece of content you write.

5. Pitch as a Writer, Not as a Link Builder

Before even thinking of composing the perfect email, maybe you should, at least, socialize on a basic level – maybe a Tweet, although it would be preferable to shake hands.

However, as we can agree on the fact that Twitter works pretty much like a social binder, it’s a decent start. Monitor targets’ social media activity and learn something – maybe find an idea of how to pitch your blog.

And when it comes to this, Adam Grunwerg gives some great tips and examples, just as you can see bellow.

“Retweet [the influencers’] articles or compliment their work before tweeting them from your personal (not brand!) account. Provide a teaser for your content, and ask them permission to send them an email. They will appreciate the courtesy.”
	Adam Grunwerg
	@AffFYI

6. Formulate a Natural Request Without Harassing the Receiver!

Stephen Altrogge has done a great job with his outreach technique – some of the most popular influencers answered to him, most in less than 20 minutes. Instead of spending time looking for influencers’ emails, he shot for ‘the stars’ by documenting a personal approach, and the result was impressive.

“The Internet is full of endless, boring drivel. Of stupid memes and Buzzfeed quizzes. When something has personality and zest, it majorly stands out from the crowd.”
	Stephen Altrogge
	Writer

His article and examples tell the story of honest success and a natural approach.

7. When Doing Outreach Write Less, but Document Your Emails More

As Alicia Glenn talks about tripling the response rate for the business she works for, there are a few elements that never miss from an email: feature, benefit, human factor and value. These are the secret ingredients she advises us all to use while also giving some practical examples to guide us through.

“I started writing more customized emails, and surprisingly business owners would respond. Whether it was positive or negative, I didn’t care. All I wanted was a response. My main goal when crafting emails was to convey that I’m human and waiting for them to get back to me. Showing that you’re a real person also builds a sense of urgency.”
	Alicia Glenn
	@IamAliciaGlenn

Here are also some examples she provides in order to back up her story.

8. Smart Outreach – Associate Yourself with High-Quality Professionals & Create the Ben Franklin Effect

The Ben Franklin Effect is a mindset that can help you achieve bigger results after positive answers for small ones. It does sound like there’s a psychological glitch in there, right?

As Tim Soulo underlines, the perfectionists in our niche are professionals we’d like to associate with. And after we’ve done this, research shows people are more likely to accept a bigger favor after they’ve said ‘yes’ to a smaller one. After this, wait until you’re asked to formulate your requests – it’s not all about yourself.

“And there’s no way to maintain a relationship with someone if you’re only willing to use him for your benefit and never actually care about him. That’s why I pick my outreach targets very carefully. I only reach out to a person who I would still hang out with, even knowing that he will never tweet my articles.”
	Tim Soulo
	Head of Marketing ahrefs

In his article, Tim comes with some outreach examples and hacks to make influential people notice you. Below you can read some of these awesome examples.

9. Even After Sending 1000 Cold Emails, Be Humble!

You’d think that eventually experience catches up – only eventually is far too many ‘no’s’ from now. Luckily, people like Shane Snow share their experiences.

“Notably, the one thing we didn’t (couldn’t) do with a study this size is research each recipient and personalize the message to them. In our personal experience, reply rates for mentor advice outreach are higher than a typical sales email—and certainly higher than the 1.7% a generic ask generates.”
	Shane Snow
	@shanesnow

His article shares this challenge as an experiment at the end of which lessons were learned.

10. Use the 3 Ps that Make the Outreach Go Round: Personalized, Positioned Properly and Persuasive

Matt Gratt talks about outreach emails that aren’t personalized, positioned properly and persuasive. Lacking any of these characteristics will make your outreach challenge futile – and you’ll only serve as a bad example for a case study.

“Good outreach emails are personalized. And I don’t just mean ‘successfully got the name and website right’ – those are table stakes to get taken seriously. When I say pitches should be personalized, I mean they should be read by the recipient, and the words ‘form letter’ should never cross their mind.”
	Matt Gratt
	Growth wikibuy

And talking about not-so-good outreach examples, you can see an example below and more of these in Matt’s article.

11. Be Unconventional in Writing Your Emails

We’re in this carousel of accomplishing as much success as possible very fast – it seems like nobody has the time, or the patience for that matter, to build a business properly. We’re always in the urge of automating every process we’re using to save more time to automate even more processes. It makes no sense, and the lack of results show its pointlessness.

So Brian Zeng advises us to look at what people are doing wrong in this process.

“Personalization doesn’t mean addressing bloggers by their name or getting their website right. This just sets the stage for a personalized email.”
	Brian Zeng
	Digital marketer @brianzengdotme

In his article you can find some good template examples that can help you out.

12. Earn Trust by Finding a Common Ground Between You and the Influencer

There’s nothing more impersonal than trying to start a relationship from nothing – even online. Networking is about the things we have in common and, the less common they are, the stronger our liaison, as Elise Musumano points out.

“The quickest way to win someone over is to show how much you have in common.”
	Elise Musumano
	Content Marketer Yesware

In her article, Elise gives some great examples to back up exactly that: the importance of common ground.

13. Don’t Advertise Your Product too Soon in the Outreach Process!

The most important in 7 ways of engaging cold prospects is this – be careful what you’re pitching.

While nothing in business is a simple 3-step recipe, some pillars of online communication should be observed with religiosity. Including humor. And Michael Simone says things as they are:

“Assuming that you’ve spent some time building rapport with your prospect, send them something based on their interests outside of work. Everyone loves a break from the day-to-day grind!”
	Michael Simone
	Sr. Account Exec Uberflip

While Michael Simone doesn’t stop here, his article revolves around this basic principle, enriched with cold email examples that might make you change your perspective on cold sales, cold calling or social media.

14. Get Higher Response Rates by Pitching Your Ideas Honestly

Craig Rosenberg gives us four examples of genuinely transparent outreach approaches. He makes it clear that regardless of the purpose, it’s the human touch that spins the wheel of business networking.

“Combine touches within seconds of each other – Leaving a voicemail within seconds of your email will increase the likelihood of your prospect opening and responding to your email.”
	Craig Rosenberg
	Sales&marketer @funnelholic

Although he talks about sales in his article, the principles he’s enunciating make perfect sense when it comes to a promotional approach.

15. Don’t be cheap! Be More Effective Using Dedicated Outreach Tools

Dave Schneider suggests, in his post, that business isn’t quite the light atmosphere with people who have enough spare time to compose outreach emails all day long – this is why he’s proposing an app to help you keep in touch easily with your prospects. Sounds fun, right?

Inbox mode is an in-app inbox specifically for conversations with your prospects. It is not a place to do outreach at scale from, but a view in which you can more efficiently handle active conversations, new messages, and replies.
	Dave Schneider
	Co-Founder @ninjaoutreach (Update – Dave no longer runs this website, but can be found at lesschurn.io and daveschneider.me)

And here is some example of such an inbox:

16. Diversify the Approach Depending on the Outreach Purposes

In another article, Dave Schneider presents a more extensive list with cold email templates examples he found worth sharing. With no further introduction, here there are:

Honest Pitching

Asking For Opinions

Follow-Up

Personalized Approaches

17. Write Memorable Emails!

Sasha Galkin shares 10 practices that every person doing outreach should check off the list before pressing ‘send’. No influencer is going to bother answering to your networking attempt unless you make a good impression.

“Dish out a whopper incentive. Give them a reason to pay attention to the rest of your email.”
	Sasha Galkin
	iAcquire’s very own copywriter @galkinator

This works pretty much like real life – make a good impression, don’t be creepy, show similar interests and qualifications, make it clear that you’re meant to collaborate without sounding like a horoscope. You’ve probably received tons of emails like the one below, right?

18. When Doing Email Outreach Use Short & Relevant Subject Lines

The article written by John Corcoran is, in fact, a real-life story he’s decided to share publicly. It’s as simple as I suggested in the title – he created a personal bond with an influencer, started giving valuable inputs and got his reward.

“Noah is busy running AppSumo, training new entrepreneurs and riding bikes around Austin sampling tacos. Until recently, he had no idea who I was. And yet here I was, opening my mail to find a box of chocolate chip cookies, with a thank you note from Noah Kagan.”
	John Corcoran
	Attorney @JohnCorcoran

And here is the cool email he was so kind sharing with us:

19. Make the Details of Your Email Impressive!

When in comes to email outreach there’s no middle way, as we’re going to find it underlined in Portent’s article. From being brief and personal to having a decent signature and a bold, but a relevant subject line, every detail matters.

“There is a lot of discussion about which link prospecting strategies work, but the outreach email is where the link is won or lost. Even with all the research and personalization in the world, you’ll never convert if you don’t get the communication right.”
	Portent Blog Team
	portent.com

20. Don’t Be Superficial and Pushy in Your Outreach Endeavor!

It’s not professional to write a thousand superficial emails, poorly documented and not at all convincing. Try to do your homework – and don’t think that just because you get to someone’s inbox you’re automatically going to be read and answered to.

There are influencers out there who don’t even get to read newsletters that captivate them because there’s no time to waste. You’ve got serious competition here, too. Mike Essex has a nice point of view on this matter:

“Sticking together two keywords in the hope of some traffic and a quick link just isn’t worth it anymore. It’s no longer an excuse to say you wrote something just for SEO, especially as blog owners have to put their name alongside the content you provide. Rubbish content may fly on generic article sites, but it’s not what blog owners want.”
	Mike Essex
	Marketing Manager blagman.co.uk

Mike gives us a few rushed, unfortunate examples in his post, explaining why it’s not worth messing with influencers’ patience.

21. Respect Three Elements for Outreach Success: Timing, Interest and Personalization!

It’s not success in general, it would be futile. It’s not easy to come with a recipe and we’ve always underlined this. However, when it comes to professional common sense – timing, interest and personalization – we couldn’t agree more. Researching the outreach process before trying to contact influencers on your own is crucial if what you’re looking for is a good response rate.

Put simply, what you’ll think of writing if you don’t have any experience in the area is simply what will cross everybody’s minds. Venchito Tampon gives us a nice insight on this one:

“Though there are other variables that would affect your response rate, scheduling your emails at the peak hours of your recipients would help increase your outreach’s conversion rate.”
	Venchito Tampon
	CEO/Co-Founder of sharprocketph

To make his statement clearer, Venchito gives us an example of his own.

22. Use Creative Incentives that Don’t Sound Selfish for Your Outreach Prospect!

You wouldn’t like to live the impression that you’re going to pay for someone’s effort to respond to your outreach attempt. However, it’s only fair that you propose them some bargain that seem so genuinely altruist and professional, they won’t refuse.

Once you get a response from a blogger, your acceptance rate sky rockets; making it an important part of your outreach.”
	Peter Attia
	Head of Marketing at MeetEdgar

Petter Attia puts together a great list of ideas on how to do this better, starting from his personal experience.

Pitching Personally

Adapting Your Speech To Your Audience

Being Concise

Looking Professional and Genuinely Interested in the Matter

23. Mistakes Are Unprofessional. Avoid Them with Every Email!

Charlotte Varela said it right. It was high time someone made a lis t of the things people should, by all means, avoid when doing outreach.

It’s impossible to deal with clients as a digital marketer and not get annoyed at some point at their mistakes that seem to be the same over and over. Not knowing how to do outreach isn’t fun for anybody: for the influencer it’s time-consuming and inefficient, for you it’s frustrating because you don’t get the results you expected and as a digital marketer it’s like violating some sacred terms.

24. Learn How to Find Room In A Busy Influencers’ Schedule

Thinking you’re worth being answered to is a mindset that may cause you outreach failures according to this article by Gregory Ciotti.

Twitter has become less and less personal and it’s not always appropriate to call an influencer, especially if you don’t already have a personal relationship with them. So email is where you can leverage your best qualities into a promotion pitch.

“Email is where keystrokes go to die. If you want to get in touch with busy people , you must know how to avoid wasting their time.”
	Gregory Ciotti
	@gregoryciotti

Here are some of Gregory’s examples:

25. The 9 Formulas to Increase Outreach Success Rate!

Bernie Reeder made a list of 9 formulas for email outreach that have always brought her good results in the outreach endeavors. The bottom line of is that there are indisputable facts of persuasion and content marketing, and while recipes aren’t 100% sure, it’s always worth to take science into consideration.

“Each line of a cold email must persuade the reader to read the next one.”
	Bernie Reeder
	Marketing Yesware

Depending on different factors such as the type of person she wrote to, the type of purpose she had, or simply the structure of the email, here go 9 ideas.:

26. Be Personal and You May Experience a 333% Increase in Cold Email Response Rates

Getting into a prospect flow isn’t an easy job, especially because you have to operate different mindsets, according to Eric Siu in this article. Among the number of issues that may contribute to an outreach campaign’s failure, poor templates and no enough follow-up make the top. Learn from Eric how to write an effective cold email.

“Separate your prospectors from your sales closer. Don’t combine the two. I did that and failed massively. Here’s an example of how you might structure your team using the Predictable Revenue model.”
	Eric Siu
	CEO singlegrain

The example below is living proof of how you can miraculously recover.

27. Cold Email Principles to Make Your Email Stand Out

Whenever you’ve thought of a template as a universal formula that works regardless of the influencer you’re contacting, you were wrong. A template refers more to the persona of your prospect combined with the intention of the outreach, as we’ve read from this article by Sujan Patel, a well-known name in the lead generation area.

“You can have multiple paragraphs, but if people see a big block of text, they’re going to be scared off, and possibly miss important details. So keep your message as short and controlled as possible.”
	Sujan Patel
	growing companies Mailshakeapp Linktexting Pick_Hq

For instance, being naturally personal, using email signature and remembering value-add are some principles to live by when you start an outreach campaign.

Another article by the same author underlines the secret power of content marketing through networking in the niche with influencers.

Matthew Murray recommends that we should stick to the basics and keep our message short and concrete:

Keeping your messaging short and focused is the best way to encourage action. The first sentence tells them why they should pay attention. And the second sentence tells them what to do about their interest (ie reply or visit a resource).
	Matthew Murray
	Managing Director at Sales Higher

28. Avoid Requests When First Contacting an Influencer!

And when I say anatomy, it’s almost religiously precise. And according to Pawel Grabowski in this article, nothing shows better what you’ve been doing wrong than a bad example.

“Outreach emails are rarely written to guarantee a reply. Sure, they are long. They contain a plethora of information, a lot of which isn’t necessary but that’s another thing. Yet they don’t inspire the recipient to reply.”
	Pawel Grabowski
	Founder and Chief Content Strategist – usermagnet.io

And here are some great examples from Pawel:

29. Ask Questions to Empower Your Email and Attract the Recipient

Just as, Scott McQuin, founder of Roojet says it, you need to make an effective research for an outreach email, especially if it for sales. And the subject email is significant in an emailing strategy. 47% of email recipients open an email based on the subject line alone.

The prospect first looks at the subject line before deciding whether to open the email or not.

If you convince the prospect here that they will gain valuable insights, resources, or market intelligence, they are almost guaranteed to open your email.
	Scott McQuin
	Founder at Roojet/ @AbacusMetrics

Using questions in your subject line is a valuable trigger to entice curiosity. Everyone enjoys a little bit of mystery from time to time, isn’t that right? Ask questions and afterward offer help and solutions as an answer.

Here are are some examples of great sales email subject lines that you can use:

Source: roojet.com

Questions enter an instant dialogue with users, making them more likely to be opened. Litmus says that people respond well when you ask them to do something. It is important to use this tip in your CTA, also. Sephora asks an emotionally-engaging question (really? you care?) with just two words, creating a truly great subject line.

Make sure you don’t make your subject line look spammy, the recipient will definitely delete your email. Be specific and consistent, don’t use words such as discounts, offer, specials, donation or free.

Conclusion

Sometimes it may seem as if you’re only sending an email and it’s not a big deal. On the contrary, in digital marketing every detail matters. The more you behave like a professional the more you’ll be taken seriously. Writing the best cold email template isn’t an easy job for anybody, and clearly documenting is a crucial step -that may change your mind on what works and what doesn’t in your niche.

As, Justin McGill mentioned on one of his articles, cold email outreach isn’t spam. If made wisely, we might add.

We know, is not easy to create the sales emails that will increase your chances of getting responses back just by following a pro tip. But we do believe that the tips tackled above will help you craft an effective cold email campaign. There is no 100% reply rate guide to cold email. And if there are such business books, you might want to read something else as well.

There are a lot of complete guides with cold email marketing tips or even companies (like Criminally Prolific for instance) that try to deliver the best cold email templates. Whatever key elements or automation tool you might be using to boost our response rate, do not forget the “human touch” in everything you do.

Yes, cold email subject lines are important, as well as social proof or the demand to introduce yourself or your company name. But whenever you conduct cold email outreach don’t forget that there are real humans you are sending your cold mailing, not robots.

Prospects that can boost your image on the web (and, why not, in social media) are usually attacked by hundreds. The bad news is that you can’t just not be annoying, but you’ll have to stand out. Good luck!

Are there any special practices you’ve used that are worth sharing?

The post 29 Powerful Cold Email Tips Backed by Renowned Digital Marketing Experts appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.

Poor Marketing Data Costs Online Businesses $611 Billion Per Year

Cornelia Cozmiuc — Wed, 15 Feb 2017 11:13:36 +0000

The data quality subject is often neglected, and poor quality business data constitutes a significant cost factor for many online companies. And, although there is much content that claims that the costs of poor data quality are significant, only very few articles are written on how to identify, categorize and measure such costs. In the following article we are going to present how poor quality data can affect your business, why is this happening and how can you prevent wasting time and money due to poor data.

It’s going to be an in-depth geeky research and we advise you to keep your pen and notebook nearby and load yourself with plenty of coffee.

With no further introduction, allow us to present you the main subject we are going to tackle in the following lines:

Is Poor Data Really Affecting Your Online Business?
Drowning in Dirty Data? It’s Time to Sink or Swim
Poor Understanding of the Digital Marketing Environment
Faulty Methodology Being Used to Collect Digital Marketing Data
- Loaded Questions
- Loaded Choices
Data That Cannot Be Translated Into Conversion
Conclusion

Is Poor Data Really Affecting Your Business?

The development of information technology during the last decades has enabled organizations to collect and store enormous amounts of data. However, as the data volumes increase, so does the complexity of managing them. Since larger and more complex information resources are being collected and managed in organizations today, this means that the risk of poor data quality increases, as the studies show. Data management, data governance, data profiling and data warehouse could be the salvation for any business and not just snake oil.

Poor quality data can imply a multitude of negative consequences in a company.

Below you can read just some of them:

negative economic and social impacts on an organization
less customer satisfaction
increased running costs associated
inefficient decision-making processes
lower performance (of the business overall but also lowered employee job satisfaction)
increased operational costs
difficulties in building trust in the company data
+ many others

In the image below you can easily see that there are not only direct costs we are talking about but hidden costs as well. Therefore, when creating your digital marketing strategy, have in mind the chart below before overlooking the data quality you are working on.

Source: jiem.org

Drowning in Dirty Data? It’s Time to Sink or Swim

95% of new products introduced each year fail.

And yes, this statistic has much to do with the data accuracy; or with the poor marketing data quality. A McKinsey & Company study from a couple of years ago revealed that research is a crucial part of a company’s survival.

80% of top performers did their research, while only 40% of the bottom performers did.

Still, that’s a lot of research done by the bottom performers. Of course, just because they do research doesn’t automatically mean they do good research.

Trying to do research is not enough if you’re not going to be thorough about it.

If you are still not convinced of the importance of having good accurate data, before running any sort of campaign, be it email marketing, SEO or mail automation, take a look at these researched stats below:

$ 611 bn per year is lost in the US by poorly targeted digital marketing campaigns

Bad data is the number one cause of CRM system failure

Organisations typically overestimate the quality of their data and underestimate the cost of errors

Less than 50% of companies claim to be very confident in the quality of their data

33% of projects often fail due to poor data

There are many ways in which research can lead to poor marketing data quality, but let’s look and go in-depth with just 3 particular instances. Taking a close look and understanding them will help us identify how to prevent losing resources (time, money, people). Each of the three instances will be exhaustively detailed below.

Poor Understanding of The Digital Marketing Environment

Faulty Methodology Being Used to Collect Digital Marketing Data

Data That Cannot Be Translated Into Action

1. Poor Understanding of the Digital Marketing Environment

Google Trends is a pocket of gold and you might already know this. Yet, even having this instrument at your disposal, the secret stands in how you use it. Yes, you’ll find a lot of data to help you see what’s trending to stay on top of your competitors. It’s a real-time search data to gauge consumer search behaviors over time. But what happens when you don’t use it properly or when you don’t “read” the the data correctly? Let’s say we are interested in the image search for the digital marketing techniques vs tactics. As we take a look at the screenshot below, we might be inclined to say that the “digital marketing techniques” are of higher interest.

Yet, as mentioned before, I was going for the image search; and even if the techniques seems to be of more interest on the general search, when it comes to image search, I should probably go with tactics. Conducting research is not enough but properly understanding the environment is the key.

On the following line we are going to offer you some nice case studies of poor understanding of the environment and customer needs, based on three dimensions: depth, context and match.

A) No Depth

Companies have certainly come a long way from assuming they know what’s best for the consumer to trying to find out what the consumer actually wants. But even when they feign interest, things can go wrong if it’s not genuine or thorough enough.

Some instances are downright hilarious, like McDonald’s 2005 campaign, where it tried to emulate the youth hip lingo only for it to backfire horribly. Knowing that a certain group (young people) like something (their own jargon) doesn’t mean that the group will like any version of it, especially if it doesn’t fit or sounds like your dad trying to be “cool” and “with it.”

When McDonalds’ ad reads “Double Cheesburger? I’d hit it – I’m a dollar menu guy,” it becomes obviously painful they have no idea what they’re saying and they just try to sound knowledgeable (here you can find the “urban” definition of I’d hit it). And if there’s something worse than not fitting in, it has to be trying to fit in and failing. If you’re not with the cool kids, but you’re ok with that, you might still have a chance to earn respect.

If you’re not with the cool kids, but you’re desperate to get in, that’s when you’re doomed. Superficiality is definitely a mark of poor research.

Some similar misunderstanding of how youth works plagued McDonalds several years later. They tried to make something happen and “go viral” when they started sharing success stories using the “McDStories” hashtag. This turned out to be another failure – not only in consumer understanding, but also in technology understanding. The “McDStories” hashtag was soon reappropriated by random dissatisfied customers who decided to share their own stories. Only their recollections weren’t nearly as nice and flattering as the company’s. This particular example is extremely prescient to SEO, because it highlights the dangers of trying to manufacture goodwill. Something in the level of awareness of consumers and the technology tools they have at hand makes rebellion and irony very likely reactions to trend setting from the outside.

B) No Context

Market research matters. And poor data leads to poor business decisions. But you probably know that already.

Even when you do research thoroughly, you can still wrong your customers by not asking the right questions.

The classic example here is that of New Coke.

It wasn’t that their research was poor in itself: they had evidence that strongly suggested the taste was the leading cause of their market decline. They also had 200,000 blind product taste tests where more than half of respondents preferred the taste of the New Coke over both the “classic” Coke and Pepsi. So all the science was rightfully pointing them towards introducing the New Coke. Which they eventually did, with disastrous results. There was public outcry and the company ended up giving up the new formula and reverting to the classic one.

So what went wrong? Was it the consequences of poor data? The same thing, really: they didn’t fully understand their customers (although in a slightly different way than McDonalds). Coke’s mistake was to treat their customers as living in a vaccum, as consumers of soda, as opposed to consumers of Coke, specifically.

Blind tests are a very good instrument to use in general – except when you don’t want your respondets to be blind to their options.

So try to think about things not just in terms of functionality, but also brand recognition and emotional attachment.

It might very well be that your website’s design is outdated or boring. And the research reveals that youngsters are usually attracted to shiny, slick things. But maybe your particular type of outdated and boring is what works for your users. Data governance and information management are highly important; yet, so is data profiling.

Try to keep a certain perspective on things and make sure you ask the right questions about your consumers.

C) No Match

Other times, it could be more of a mismatch problem between companies and customers. Inadequate market research is a major reason why business strategies fail and the source of poor data. If you want to develop your brand, one of the most important things that you should establish is a reliable marketing research system. Customers will buy or not a product for a certain reason. And it is essential for the future of your company to understand what this reason is.

What drives your customers? What sends them away? What makes them continue with your services?

And the answer to all of these is just under your nose. Your sales and support team. They are a goldmine. Just think about it; what better way to find exactly what your users want if not from them directly, with no intermediates, no fancy feedbacks, just straightforward accurate data you can make use of. It depends, of course, on how you “master” data and how you make use of it. If, for instance, someone is asking you for a new feature you don’t have; yes, it’s frustrating as you might get dozens of similar mails. Yet, make use of them, exploit them and win customers (and therefore money). Take a look at the screenshot below and notice all the missed opportunities.

Source: helpscout.net

Through all its efforts, a company/business/website is trying to find a way to best reach its audience. Some efforts are sort of an “indirect” contact with the public through online content but there are also some others which are in direct contact. A discussion with the sales and support team might be a great opportunity for you to better understand your audience’s needs or challenges and adapt your strategy accordingly.

If you’ve never thought of your support team as a research tool, then you might be missing a lot.

Yet, let me present you what a mismatch between companies and customers can lead to through an interesting case study from the brand association area. Only by looking at the screenshot below you can forsee the association issues between Tesco products and a fine wine production line.

Yalumba, an Australian wine company was selling well into the UK through Tesco and relying heavily on their association with that supermarket chain, confident of their success because of the successful association. However, they began to be squeezed on margins, so had a close look at what was happening with Tesco, and were astounded at what they found.

They discovered that their brand was being marketed by Tesco as a commodity – offered on promotion and regarded by consumers as a good wine, but nothing special because it was generally offered at a special price. Their market research discovered that their brand was not considered good enough for special occasions because it was a Tesco promotional wine. Great they did a market research after all yet, a bit too late.

It was not the consumers’ wine of choice, and there was little connection between the consumer and the brand. This is a classic commodity trap, causing margin pressure, and not sustainable on the longer term. The company had created this problem of a commodity trap caused by poor research and a link between brand loyalty and promotions that led to an expectation of lower price and hence, ultimately, unsustainable low margins for Yalumba.

2. Faulty Methodology Being Used to Collect Digital Marketing Data

On this chapter we are going to tackle the loaded choices and questions issues but until then we are going to talk a bit about how a faulty methodology can lead you to a wrong track. And it doesn’t have to be on a large scale but even on a minimal research that you are doing. Let’s say that we are interested in the “restaurants” niche in Brasil. And we want to see everything that is out there on the web written on “restaurants” in the South American country. I use Brand Mentions for that and as you can see in the image below.

That’s indeed an impressive number of mentions. Yet, the initial search was done using the word I was targeting in english, “restaurants”. Will the search of the same word but in Portugese would make a difference? It sure does. A lot of difference. Therefore, even when doing a simple search you should always keep in mind the methodology if you want accurate data.

Below you will find some very interesting case studies based on some common faulty methodology.

A) Loaded Questions

How you phrase the questions and how much (or how little) information you decide to provide your respondents can make all the difference.

For instance, in the image below, which line is longer? If you bear with us until the end of the chapter you will find out the answer if you don’t know it already.

Giving them too little information can obviously skew their ability to give a useful answer. But it turns out that giving too much information can have the same effect. In his post on market research failures, Philip Graves provides two excellent examples of this phenomenon at work:

1. One is of a bank-related survey, where people are first asked if they have changed their bank lately and second if they are happy with their bank. While this line of questioning doesn’t necessarily provide unwanted information, it does create it implicitly in the mind of the respondent.

Just imagine: if you’ve answered “No” to the question about changing banks, once you get the second question, your brain is tempted to give an answer that is coherent with the answer to the first question. You can’t answer “No” to the second question, or else your answer to the first question would seem weird in retrospect. Have you changed your bank lately? No! Are you happy with your bank? The “Yes” comes automatically almost. Why would you not change your bank if you’re unhappy?

But of course, that’s not something you can do on the spot. What you can do on the spot, however, is find an answer that is consistent with the previous one, which, in this case, is “Yes.” You haven’t changed your bank because your are happy with it. There doesn’t need to be a causal link between the two, but the two answers are easier to accept if there is. We like order, symmetry and harmony.

When conducting a research, make sure the questions are consistent, logical and easy to understand.

2. The other example in Graves’ article is more glaring. In a survey that asked “As the world’s highest paid cabin staff, should BA cabin crew go on strike?” 97% of respondents said “No.” To nobody’s surprise, we should add. This a classic example of a loaded question. The way it is worded makes it very unlikely that someone might say “Yes,” since we’re talking about the world’s highest paid cabin staff. In fact, the mechanism at work here is very similar to the previous one – it’s just more explicit. Our brains find it hard to hold two opposing views, so we try to adjust one of them to fit the other.

It’s like asking: being the best tool in the digital marketing with 80% success rate, do you think that the pros should choose us?

In this case, the two implicit views at work are “people who are well-paid should be happy with their work” and “people who are happy with their work shouldn’t go on strikes.” Or, to further reduce them to equation-like mantras, “money = satisfaction” and “satisfaction ⇏ manifesting dissatisfaction.”

This kind of thinking – of which we are often not aware – is something that Nobel laureate Daniel Kaheman talks about at length in his “Thinking, Fast and Slow” book. It’s easier and faster to think in terms of simple equations and binary relationships between things, so we usually do. We are also prone to take the path of least resistance, so depending on how the question is phrased, we are more likely to give the answer that requires the least mental effort.

Just like in the case of the lines from the image above; even if you know, at a cognitive level that the lines are equal, you still have the tendency to consider the first one as being longer.

Phrasing questions in a survey is such hard work.

B) Loaded Choices

Loaded questions are just one example of asking the right questions in the wrong way.

An inherent bias in the language you use can also have a significant effect on the answers you get.

For instance, there is a huge difference between asking people “How satisfied are you?” and “How dissatisfied are you?” even when the answer options are exactly the same (for instance: “Very safisfied,” “Satisfied,” “Rather satisfied,” “Rather dissatisfied,” “Dissatisfied,” “Very dissatisfied”). Priming can have a very strong effect even if people don’t realize they are susceptible to it and even when they downright deny it.

But getting the question right isn’t enough – you have to also get the choices right. Have open-ended questions and you might get answers that aren’t comparable and end up not being useful.

Have closed-ended questions and you might end up not including some very relevant answers, which in turn will force respondents to provide answers that do not represent them.

Even if you go for a mixed approach, you can still mess up by not making the choices comparable or symmetrical at both ends.

Let’s say that you are asked about your assessment of a mailing automation service and the options were: “Excellent,” “Very good,” “Good,” Very poor,” “Disastrous.” If you were just mildly dissatisfied with the service you received, you’re not likely to signal that because unless you’re up in arms about it, there’s no answer that fits your level of dissatisfaction. And even if you were seriously dissatisfied, you’d more likely go for “Very poor” than for anything else, because “disastrous” is generally a very rare occurrence. Moreover, the fact that there are 3 positive options and only 2 negative ones makes the least positive option (which is still quite positive) appear as more of a middle-ground than it should. So, if you’re just slightly dissatisfied, you are more likely to keep it to yourself and choose “Good” rather than choose “Very poor.” This is, obviously, an exaggerated example, but there are plenty, more subtle – but equally problematic – research design flaws out there.

3. Data That Cannot Be Translated Into Conversion

Here we are talking about useless data actually. Not quality issues, inaccurate data, business process, data managements, cost associated or process quality issues like we’ve discussed so far. We’ve concluded by now that the quality of online data is a major concern—not only for the market research industry but also for business leaders who rely on accurate data to make decisions.

Sometimes companies are so focused on the mousetrap they tend to lose touch with the emotions and needs of the people they actually work for: consumers.

Let’s say for instance that you are planning on boosting your website through SEO. And one day you realize that you have around 3 million links. That’s amazing, right? A few more and you are catching Microsoft’s link profile. Yet, is there anything you can do with this info alone? The 3 million links? Not really. You need to correlate it with the number of referring domains (which in our case is incredibly low reported to the high amount of links), the link influence, their naturalness, etc. Otherwise, there is no much use in having just the number of links. You cannot set up a strategy based on it nor take a digital marketing decision.

Yet, these things happen to the big guys as well. Let’s take Google Glasses for instance. Not even 2 years have passed from the great launch and the producers announced that they are discontinuing the product. Didn’t Google have the means to conduct a proper research? Of course they did. Then what happened?

What did they overlook? Everything, some would say. Well, not quite everything but it’s clear that they made use of the data they had but not in an efficient way (we can say that these are still consequences of poor data). After researches, the producer came up with one conclusion: if high tech can be shrunk to fit in the hand, as with smartphones and tablets, and have such a great success, then why not shrunk technology to be close to a part of the human body? And their market research sample seemed thrilled about the idea. This was the info they’ve provided to the company. The product is created, it gets launch and no glory at all. Even more, it unceremoniously fails within months. So what happened? Was it the consequences of poor data? The producers made their potential customers’ dreams come true; why did they not sell?

Privacy and price concerns alienated much of the public—and the fact Google released early copies only to rich geeks in the west coast, thereby branding the product as elitist instead of the “affordable luxury” philosophy. Even if they had a lot of data, it was quite useless. According to CNN, before launch, Google didn’t anticipate that few would want to pay (or could afford) $1,500 to parade in public with a device slung around their eyes that others might perceive as either a threat to others’ privacy or a pretentious geeky gadget.

“Google’s fast retreat exposes the most fundamental sin that companies make with the “build it and they will come” approach. It’s a process that tech companies rely on, referred to as public beta testing.”

There are blind spots in marketing research that are costly and variables that no market research studies can predict.

Conclusion

Bad data can lead to bad analysis, which can lead to bad business decisions, some really bad revenue and not only. The first step is made. If you are aware of poor data quality impact today, it will not affect your business tomorrow. One should always be aware that bad data has long time consequences not only on your overall data management but also on all your future business decisions.

The post Poor Marketing Data Costs Online Businesses $611 Billion Per Year appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.

23 Rarely Used Copywriting Techniques to Create Fascinating Content

Razvan Gavrilas — Wed, 21 Dec 2016 10:01:52 +0000

Writing is an art and discovering the secrets of boosting your readers’ engagement can transform you into a master of copywriting. Setting the right tone, answering to questions, drawing attention, adding personality and bringing your content alive with visuals or interactive data are just a few techniques that can get you where you want.

You know that warm feeling you get when you speak with one of your friends? You talk, he listens, he asks questions and so on. You understand each other. A similar feeling can be established with your readers as well. How, you may ask? It’s not a bulletproof formula but for sure it will be extremely helpful to follow the next 23 rarely used copywriting techniques to help you boost your engagement.

Use the Serial Position Effect
Make Your Visitors Feel Important by Offering Exclusive Content
Use the “Bizarreness Effect” to Draw Attention
Use “Powerful” Keywords like “New”, “Free”, “Now”
Use Copywriting Formulas to Create Captivating Content
Be a Unicorn in a Field of Horses
Take Advantage of the FOMO Technique
Include Emotions, Promise, and Main Keyword to Make Your Headlines Viral
Create a Persona Based Content Strategy
Be the First to Jump on Trends
Ask Your Target Audience to Contribute
Pack More Personality into Your Content
Perfect Your Writing Tone to Your Readers
Craft Good Stories That Sell
Give Your Content a Quick Credibility Boost
Leverage Emotional Triggers in Your Content Marketing
Build Social Media Friendly Content
Use Statistical Data to Enhance Your Content Marketing
Transform Your Q&A into an Article to Help Your Audience
Use Social Proof to Back up Your Content
Make Your Content More Visually Interactive
Define the Purpose Behind Everything You Write
Make Your Content Familiar to Resonate with Your Audience

1. Use the Serial Position Effect

The serial position effect refers to the situation when a person recalls the words from the beginning and the end of a list rather than the ones from the middle. According to a study made by Indiana University, the participants were able to remember the first and last words from a list of 20.

Following this technique, you should write the key points of your sales pitch or any other important information at the beginning and end of your blog post.

Source: https://copyhackers.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/serial-position-effect.png

2. Make Your Visitors Feel Important by Offering Exclusive Content

Another technique you can use to boost your engagement is to offer content your readers couldn’t find elsewhere. Make them feel important; they will start to appreciate you more. Don’t you love it when someone is sharing with you a piece of information that has never been said to anyone else?

Exclusive content comes in different forms: a webinar with a script for those who sign up, training opportunities, e-books for subscribers, news from conferences and events in the industry turned into blog posts.

3. Use the “Bizarreness Effect” to Draw Attention

Using ridiculous material to be better remembered instead of common material translates into the bizarreness effect. This technique is borrowed from Psychology. Studies have shown that people were able to recall nouns presented in bizarre sentences such as “The dog rode the bicycle down the street” rather the nouns from the common counterpart “The dog chased the bicycle down the street”. On the other hand, some specialists say the bizarreness isn’t the thing that enhances the memory, but rather the distinctiveness of the meaning.

You can use the bizarreness effect to be spontaneous and say something indubitably wild.

4. Use “Powerful” Keywords like “New”, “Free”, “Now”

Another valuable copywriting technique is taking advantage of powerful keywords in your content. Persuading words can have a stronger impact compared to other types. When talking face to face, it is easier to make a point due to the use of intonations and body language. In writing, it is a bit harder. The best call will be to use strong keywords to point out key notes in your content.

You can take advantage of powerful words in order to convey emotions. For example, you could use:

ridiculous instead of stupid;
entertaining instead of funny;
delightful instead of nice;
magnificent instead of beautiful.

Beside using vivid adjectives, you might try having verbs that are more expressive. It is recommended to use first person pronouns such as “I” and “you” to give the impression of having a dialogue with your reader. Also, try to use causal prepositions such as “because” or “due” to give arguments and demonstrate your affirmations. It was proved in a study where people have shown more will to heed to a request after the word “because” was used.

Words like “new”, “now” and “free” can also have a strong impact on the audience if they are used at the right moment.

5. Use Copywriting Formulas to Create Captivating Content

Whether we want to tell a captivating story, write a killer content or have inspiring headlines, you can use these formulas to boost the engagement. Until now, I’ve mentioned the 4 U’s Formula: Urgent, Unique, Useful, and Ultra-specific. A similar formula is the 4 C’s: Clear, Concise, Compelling, Credible.

If you want to offer benefits through a blog post, you could use the Before – After – Bridge formula. “Before” is the situation where you imagine a problem that doesn’t exist. “After” is the situation where you resolve the problem. The “bridge” is the way to get there.

A formula that has been used for a long time is AIDA, where you have to grab the reader’s attention, offer interesting information, develop desire and create the action.

You could also try the Picture – Promise – Prove – Push (PPPP) formula. Using it, you can paint a picture to grab the reader’s attention, then make a promise, provide support for your promise and determine your reader to take action.

A good way to catch the reader on the “hook” is by using the Open Loop tactic. It is used more often in books to create suspense through a cliffhanger. At that moment you hold back information to grab your reader’s attention and make him read the whole post.

The “3 reasons why” is another formula to help you write engaging content. You have to answer three questions, as the name says it:

Why are you the best?
Why should I believe you?
Why should I buy right now?

On the web, you’ll find lots of other formulas that can help you discover what works best for you.

6. Be a Unicorn in a Field of Horses

Be smart and seek guidance from tools such as BrandMentions to spy on your competitors who write about topics you’re interested in. Search and read what they’ve written to find ways to have vivid content, and different approaches to the topic to “steal” their audience. If you have something new to write about, make a research to see if your competitors wrote something similar and how they handled the topic.

After you’ve done your homework, tie it all together with a value proposition. A well-known quote says “Be a unicorn in a field of horses”. For that you can apply the 4 U’s formula: be urgent, unique, useful, and ultra-specific.

If you follow some of the lesser-known copywriting techniques we’ve talked about so far you can create your own formula to differentiate yourself from the competition.

7. Take Advantage of the FOMO Technique

FOMO is the acronym for fear of missing out, and some of you may know this feeling. Taking advantage of this technique involves using information such as limited offers, discounts, and other exclusive events, to lead your readers towards an action.

An example of a limited offer from Starbucks can be seen in the next photo:

This technique works very well for millennials. From a study made by Eventbrite of 2,100 adults (507 of whom were millennials aged 18 to 34) it resulted that 69% of millennials fear missing out social events.

Due to FOMO, it is a blooming era for live events. It works very well for “selling” experiences through blog posts out of a product such as meeting your favorite influencers at a conference, having a personalized balloon ride in your holiday, exceeding your dreams by doing the sport you like, listening live your favorite singers at a festival and so on.

8. Include Emotions, Promise, and Main Keyword to Make Your Headlines Viral

Headlines have a significant impact on whether your content gets opened or not. You have a headline for a blog post, for a SlideShare presentation, for a video, for an infographic, for a news article, for an ad, for a webinar, for a guide, for an e-book, for almost everything you write online.

Around 80% of readers never make it past the headline, leaving almost 20% of them who will read. But before that you need to past the test of showing awesome in the search engines. And these statistics say a lot about how important the headlines are. You should have clickbait headlines to increase the open rate.

We live in the fastest phase of human history, and we can’t afford to make the reader lose interest in our site/blog after reading the headlines. We must create desire and interest from the beginning. Say no to low CTR!

Below you can see an example of a compelling headline for a webinar. Isn’t it true that it makes you sign-up?

It gives you the guarantee you’ll find out hints to recover your site if it got hit by the Penguin penalty.

While searching online, you’ll find lots of useful resources that can offer you guidance on how to create top headlines. Learn how to write killer headlines and to increase your readers’ engagement by following Jeff Goins’ formula. There are five elements. If you combined them, you would be able to trigger the desired actions.

Number – 3, 10 are best used in the headlines. Using a number in the headline is highly convertible. 36% of headlines use now a number.
Adjective – use unique adjectives to create a powerful emotion. For example: brilliant, atrocious, stunning, smart, bizarre, dazzling.
Rational – the way you offer added value such as reasons, tips, secrets, hacks, tricks. Please, don’t ever use things.
Keyword – a short phrase that tells us what the content is about.
Promise – what’s in it for me? For example, our headline promises “copywriting techniques that will boost your engagement”.

This is the formula designed for success: Number + Adjective + Rational + Keywords + Promise

Using Jeff Goins’ formula, you can transform lifeless headlines into sparkly ones. For example, “Best Travel Destinations in Europe” can turn into “5 Brilliant Travel Destinations in Europe That Will Spark Your Wanderlust” having “travel destinations in Europe” as a keyword.

Below you can see an example of an inspiring headline for a webinar following the formula written above:

Source: http://image.slidesharecdn.com/buzzsumo-webinar-march-20161-160323161442/95/10-ridiculous-hacks-to-5x-clickthrough-rates-1-638.jpg?cb=1458838636

Also, you can try using BrandMentions to help you to find inspiration for your headlines by looking at your competitors.

It’s important that your content covers all the elements you wrote in the headline.

9.Create a Persona-Based Content Strategy

It is mandatory to know your audience before you even start writing. Start studying what your reader likes, dislikes, what his habits are, what type of content he consumes, in what part of the day he prefers to read, where he comes from, where he is from and other similar demographic and interest characteristics.

After you’ve collected data about your audience, use it to create your content marketing persona. Track your analytics and set metrics to help you deploy trends.

10. Be the First to Jump on Trends

Every copywriter should follow trends in his industry to bring fresh content. A smart way to engage your audience and attract new readers to your site is having worthy content. You can do that by keeping up the news to bring valuable information to your visitors.

A good way to start would be to subscribe to news sites, specialists in the field, watch Google Trends, read publications in your industry, create a Twitter list of influencers you know they deliver hot news as they happen, follow trending hashtags about your main interest. These are just a few ways to keep your eyes open to trending stories. After you’ve gathered all the information, you need to start writing about a trending topic to make your blog post newsworthy.

11. Ask Your Target Audience to Contribute

Smart copywriters know that asking their readers to contribute is an influential copy writing technique. People are anxious to see their work promoted by a brand.

One of the most used ways to ask your audience to contribute is to share photos on social media. Sending emails to contacts to answer a survey, asking questions on blogs or using real reviews to write a blog post are other ways to contribute. Be bold, and try other unique ways to do that.

Kenneth Cole came with an excellent way to make people contribute. The company organized a selfie contest. The brand offered fans the possibility to take a selfie and enter a contest to win free shoes every month for a year.

If you know you visitors take selfies, you should try something similar. Selfies are widespread, and it’s simple to engage with the audience. They are personal and can easily lead to an action. The owner will receive likes, comments, and new followers. You can write an article about the pictures you receive and start a story.

Another example is the Christmas Story by the travel agency Rolandia Travel. Last December, the company wanted to offer its readers a soft presentation of how the Holidays are celebrated in Romania.

Travelers could send a short story about how they spent their Christmas in Romania along with a few pictures as a gift of sharing for those who were far from home, but not only. The best stories were published on the blog every week.

12. Pack More Personality into Your Content

Personality is that something that makes you unique. Personality is that something that can differentiate you from the mass, is that something that defines your personal style. Just like a person has it, a brand should have it also. Brands have been developing through the time; they began to have anthropogenic qualities and be more humanized. The personality of a brand can be translated into a unique selling point, a motto or other forms of expression in order for people to know that is about the brand and nothing else.

For example, the personality of Coca-Cola might be connected with happiness, fun, friends, family, being together due to the images and messages communicated consistently in numerous Coke campaigns. Below, you can see how a Coca-cola ad looked like in the 1940:

Source: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/coke-ads

Now, in the 20s this is how an ad from Coca-Cola looks like:

Source: http://www.realites.com.tn/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/coca-cola.jpg

You can see that the message and the way of showing smiling people remain. Both images express happiness, friends, fun.

For a content, personality can be expressed through a unique voice, a style, maybe a personalized closing or a type of personalized covers for articles and so on. Besides that, the content should always reveal the personality of the brand.

13. Perfect Your Writing Tone to Your Readers

For a copywriter having the right copy tone is like having the perfect light for a photographer to shoot the subject. For a painter it can be the right muse.

Your writing tone can either create interest or kill it. The wrong tone can wreck a good piece of information.

When you talk with someone and use a certain tone, you can determine how your interlocutor will respond. A similar situation can be when you use a specific tone of voice in your writings. If the piece of information is entertaining, then the reader will feel cheerful, if it expresses anger he will get angry, if it’s painful he will feel the pain, if it’s boring he won’t have the patience to read it entirely and will leave your site.

There are multiple ways to express your opinions. Take a look at this questions, for example:

Would you mind if I borrowed your pen, please?
Can I have your pen?
Pass me that pen.

Make a difference between formal and informal writing. If you started writing in a casual mood, then stick to it. Don’t make sudden changes, inject unexpected signs of cuteness to become casual or start using a technical language to become more formal than usual. If you have multiple collaborators that write on your blog, make sure they follow the same language. Avoid being inconsistent.

Here are a few marketing tips to help you shape your tone:

don’t be too casual or too stiff;
don’t use dialectic or slang language;
don’t use offensive language (swear or use racism);
be clear by ordering your words properly in a sentence;
use singular pronouns (me, you);
have a personal way of expressing your opinions and wisdom within a topic.

Now, ask yourself: “Do I sound like my visitors expect me to?”

14. Craft Good Stories That Sell

There is no doubt that a good story can captivate us really bad. Let’s be honest. Hasn’t it happened to you to stay up at night reading a good story to find out how it ends? If you succeed sketching a story in the right manner you could transport the reader down the funnel in order to determine him to take an action.

A good story has the gift to help the reader get into a state of well-being.

But how could you do that, you might be asking? I’ve picked up a few tips to help you with that:

paint a picture: use imagery and lots of details to be more expressive.
appeal beyond those 5 senses: remember that there are different types of people. Some of them are more visual, others more auditory or olfactory and so on. Make sure to take advantage of sensory words.
suspense: you can capture their attention by adding a tint of tension and get them to finish the whole article. Try giving your audience something exciting to read.
killer opening paragraph: a good story can be used as an opening paragraph to allure the audience into getting to the main part of your topic.
have a model: To make your arguments stronger, you can use a model to show the changes it suffered. You can take examples from your experience or the ones you’ve heard of. Your audience can relate with the people who went through a similar situation.

15. Give Your Content a Quick Credibility Boost

It is ok to write your opinion and give advice, but are you credible? Are people trusting you?

Credibility can be a point sale. People can decide to buy your product depending on whether they trust you or not. Your affirmations should be based on data.

You can build trust if you follow a few guidelines:

cite sources: well-known field specialists usually offer credibility due to their background. Search for credible sources and specialists to back up your claim.
take advantage of your years in business and your experience.
name innovations and awards: if the context asks for such kind of references, use them. These are evidence of your success.
offer independent survey results: if you’ve run a small research, use the data to back up your arguments.
have media coverage: a great impact on your readers’ credibility would be to have presence in the news and business publications. If your brand is newsworthy, then you will also get authority in the field.

16. Leverage Emotional Triggers in Your Content Marketing

On the web, you can find lots of bloggers that offer great advice, write captivating content and give informative tips, but don’t know how to connect with their viewers on an emotional level.

The content can have emotional or rational triggers if we follow the classification regarding consumer behavior from psychology. Leveraging emotional triggers is a technique used in psychology to persuade. It can also be used as a copywriting tip, for the same purpose.

In order to stimulate emotions, you have to write content that helps the reader and make him experience a sensation while reading. You can be informative, but try not to exaggerate using a cold voice. If you do so you risk losing your readers because they won’t recall a thing and might never return to your site. We must remember that we write for people, to create a connection with them and to be on the same wavelength. This means you could talk from your experience in a friendly manner, share personal examples, be authentic, ask your audience questions and try to answer to them, share experiences together.

“Emotions are complex and move in various directions. Modeling emotional feelings and considering their behavioral implications are useful in preventing emotions from having a negative effect on the workplace.” – Boundless

Psychologist Robert Plutchik created a wheel of emotions. The most comprehensive way to illustrate the emotions experienced by a human being.

Source: http://www.efoza.com/postpic/2014/03/plutchik-s-emotion-wheel_309528.png

Studies have shown that the positive emotions toward a brand have a higher influence on the loyalty of the consumer rather than its trust. Also, they can help you to communicate more effectively.

Negative, as well as positive emotions, have an influence on a person. When someone experiences something like that they want to do something to avoid the bad feelings. If you talk to your readers and provoke them negative emotions, they will follow you more carefully to reduce their discomfort.

When people are involved with the message, they listen attentively and process using the central route. Emotional appeals create involvement.

One of the most important characteristics of the emotional triggers used as a copywriting technique is they can lead to actions.

Before you take a step forward, it is crucial you know your business and your audience very well. Although connecting with your readers on an emotional level is important, make sure you resonate with them. Be careful to make your audience feel the emotions you wanted it to experience.

17. Build Social Media Friendly Content

After you wrote your post, you should promote it. To make your life easier and not work twice as much, try and make your visual data expressive and relevant to your content. Always make a cover for your content to boost your reach. It is proven that tweets with images receive 18% more clicks and 150% more retweets.

The cover can be used as social media content. Also, I recommend you to make a short description about your topic that you can write as an intro or meta description, as well as a tweet on Twitter or as a post on Facebook and so on.

If you follow these simple guidelines, your readers could easily share your content, too. The visibility of your content will be improved, and other Social Media metrics could experience growth. There are lots of tools that can help you manage social media channels, such as Kontentino.

18. Use Statistical Data to Enhance Your Content Marketing

Cartograms, scatter plots, time series, diagrams, charts, histograms, matrix, dendrogram, area maps are just some ways of portraying statistical data in your content to make it more animated. To have traffic-driving content type you can create visual content out of statistics.

You can try and create interactive charts or use gifs to maintain your audience focused on your content and increase the user experience. This is just an example:

Source: https://d13yacurqjgara.cloudfront.net/users/57127/screenshots/1917495/attachments/329078/productpage2-2.gif

You can use Visme for animated charts and Canva or Piktochart for static charts or some other graphic design websites. Below, you can see how a chart in Piktochart looks like.

If you use charts, it is easier to understand and to visualize the information, rather than reading chunks of text and numbers.

19. Transform Your Q&A into an Article to Help Your Audience

You can find value in your Q&A. More than that, you could find value in the questions you receive from your readers. First, you should make a list with all the questions you have, then categorize them. Make them sound actionable and sell the idea behind. After you’ve done the final list, you can start writing your blog post, give examples.

Another great source of this kind is Quora. You can search for the best answers in your industry in Quora and transform them into a new blog post. There is a good chance you will get some helpful information and good feedback from your readers.

20. Use Social Proof to Back up Your Content

“Social proof” is a phenomenon where people think that how others are acting in a given situation is the right way to respond in a similar event.

Imagine you want to go to a restaurant and have dinner. You have the possibility to choose from a crowded restaurant with a waiting list and an empty restaurant. You probably think the second one has crappy food. The waiting list is proof that the first restaurant has good food, right? You’d chose the crowded one, wouldn’t you?

Psychologists name this behavior “social proof”. If there is a crowd, that means it is good. The more the people, the more it means something better must happen there, you’d think. Following the crowd is in our nature. It is a simpler decision.

You can attract your audience with the “social proof” technique if you make a blog post out of reviews for your product, have endorsement for your brand, use testimonials in an e-book, write a best practice post from your clients’ experience, write case studies from the data you extrapolated about your customers.

21. Make Your Content More Visually Interactive

Visual content includes infographics, videos, gifs, pictures, presentations. Images are a great asset because they are stored in our long-term memory. It’s not a secret that infographics are highly shareable.

70% of all your sensory receptors are in your eyes. Sources say it takes us less than 1/10 of a second to understand a visual scene.

The article’s cover comes first on the content. You should be very careful how it looks since it’s the first image the reader sees. Having puppies wearing boots might be captivating, but they are not always relevant.

Source: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/9a/57/db/9a57dbd3367259a2db12a34a71cbcd0c.jpg

Along with a strong headline, the cover is a core element for boosting engagement, so make sure you chose wisely.

Get creative and combine the visuals to be interactive, to surprise the visitor and engage him and make him stay more on your site. For example, you could create an interactive how-to guide, or you can simply display unique information. Check the next screenshot to see an example:

Source: http://blog.thinglink.com/marketing/interactive-infographic-arsenal

If you hover over the plus sign (+) you can see a pop-up box with additional information.

Biz Brain created an interesting way of displaying information about “where does coffee came from”. It shows a journey from bean to cup through a fun and attractive infographic.

It gives the right amount of information without overwhelming the reader. You can scroll down the page to see the whole process.

It is one of the most detailed infographics I’ve seen. More than that, it offers an experience. The fact that is interactive gives you the feeling you take part in the whole process. In the end, you “receive” a cup of coffee. You engage in the act of planting the seed, harvesting, processing the beans, milling, exporting, inspecting, roasting, grinding and brewing.

It is an excellent way to captivate the reader and share useful information in a way he can remember. You can work with an agency or a freelancer if you want something more complicated or search for tools to help you create the desired visual impact.

More tips to create interactive content:

make an interactive calendar to follow past and future events;
have a virtual assistant for an online product or service right on your site;
create an infographic from a how-to video;
turn presentations into gifs;

compile interviews into an e-book;
upload customer’s videos about your product on your website;

22. Define the Purpose Behind Everything You Write

While the content is blooming and lots of marketers start to write for the sake of having news content on site, the internet becomes crowded. Don’t get me wrong, it is fine to have a big library of content as long as the information is useful, it has a purpose and answers pertinent questions. Don’t get lost in the pile of dull blogs and boring content.

Make a list of topics, research and see which one will bring more traffic, correlate with the trends and what your audience wants. After you’ve done the analysis you can make a plan/structure for your topic to cover it all. Then implement it. Start writing and always remember what you’ve promised in the headline. Your purpose is to bring arguments and examples, show case studies or other types of information that will confirm your affirmations.

23. Make Your Content Familiar to Resonate with Your Audience

Your content should provide value to the readers. What better way than make it personal? But what does personal mean?

Personal content can be written from your own experience. You can collect data and present it through case studies on the blog, convert your presentations into new articles. Below, you have an example of a SlideShare presentation turned into a blog post.

Another way to have personal content is by sharing information from a conference you’ve been to or follow up from a webinar you’ve organized. Beside that, you should use informal writing such as “don’t” instead of “do not” or use the first person pronoun: “We have the possibility to look at our analyzed site and make a conclusion”.

Conclusion

Writing has never been an easy job. Especially now when the internet is constantly changing and the readers are harder to attract on the site.

Think about the fact that you need to be convincing and express more in words to draw attention. People can be easily distracted if you don’t captivate them and keep them engaged. If you are using words that have more sway than others, you might have a positive change in their engagement. Following the “seductive” techniques we’ve talked until now, you’ll have a good change to get the results you’re expecting. Make sure they follow your brand guidelines.

Design your plan and try to implement it correctly. After that, always follow the results and your metrics to increase conversion rates.

The post 23 Rarely Used Copywriting Techniques to Create Fascinating Content appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.

Boost Your Online Awareness Using the Mention Outreach Technique

Cornelia Cozmiuc — Wed, 08 Jun 2016 09:07:27 +0000

Bad marketing is, most of the time, simply bad strategy. For instance, it might be tempting to think that all you need to succeed today is a strong social media presence and fan base. However, that would be a huge mistake on your part, strategically. Sure, social media might be a good place to promote a product or service, but there isn’t really any return on investment on that promotion, as Facebook users simply don’t engage with brands. What you really need is an interaction environment where users actually participate in an exchange with your content, much more likely to result in action on their part.

The most recent tactics and technologies might not necessarily be the most effective, as evidenced by the recent door-to-door sales revival. Of course, we’re not suggesting you drop everything and start traveling to the door of every customer you’re interested in. But going back to basics in some areas is likely to be a winning strategy. For instance, tools like BrandMentions might be the right solution for that.

Rather than send out messages in all directions through a variety of platforms, focus on building a network and convincing people of the value of your product or service.

This is where outreach techniques comes into play. Outreach can be roughly defined as contacting people (whether it’s by email, social media or face-to-face) in order to persuade them to share, promote or simply read your post. Of course, some posts are easier to market than others. An interview or a list, for instance, are more likely to be attractive based on content alone. But your strategy should include outreach for a variety of posts, not just the ones that already have mass appeal.

So let’s look at 3 types of outreach techniques with a new spin: how monitoring your mention can help you in case you decide to go with a specific approach or not? And as a bonus: will the technique work if you’re an up-and-coming start-up?

1. Skyscraper Technique (Classic Approach)

One such strategy is called the skyscraper technique and consists of a few easy to follow steps.

First, you need to build yourself a list of influencers: blogs and websites which are relevant for your niche and which attract not only a large number of visitors but also a great amount of interaction from those visitors. Get as many details as possible, not only about the site title, URL and corresponding accounts on social media platforms, but also about the numbers of comments and shares their posts usually get.

Let’s say, for instance that we’ve just started a business in the vegan restaurants area and we want to find as much as possible on this topic. BrandMentions is the simple fix for that. With a simple search we can get an overall idea of this niche, based on the number of mentions, the type of articles written in this area, the influencers, the blogs that post articles on this subject and so on. For instance, we’ve found out that in the last week alone there were 278 mentions for “vegan restaurants”; this should be good news as the area we are interested in seems to rise interest of many others. We can learn a bit more about our competitors but most important we can learn to whom and where we should concentrate our outreach efforts: the influencers.

Screenshot taken from brandmentions.com

Next, you should try to map out the types of posts which get shared by these influencers. Try to figure out the characteristics of a content piece that they might be interested in. Write down specific examples. Once you’ve done this, the actual work part comes in: build better content about the same topic. Bulk up the original content with more breadth or depth. Once you’ve created it, approach the influencers and let them know about your post. Just make sure to keep these emails as short as possible and give the influencer a good reason to share your post.

Kissmetrics has a very detailed tutorial on how to do this, with an account of the results:

Screenshot taken from https://blog.kissmetrics.com/influencers-who-want-your-content/

And if you follow this example closely, you’ll understand why it’s called the skyscraper technique. You start off with a very powerful foundation – the list of influencers (21 in this case) –, go up to building a fairly strong middle (7 positive replies) and end up with a very thin top (2 shares).

If you think about it in relative terms, 2 out of 21 doesn’t seem like a great success rate (barely 10%), but in absolute terms, it’s 2 more shares than you would’ve had without this technique.

And even though quantitatively it might seem low, it can definitely compensate qualitatively if it brings you quality users.

How can mentions monitoring help you? A web monitoring tool can go a long way in helping you. It can be useful in finding the influencers, finding the topics to write about and even finding content which will help you improve on those topics. It won’t send the e-mails for you, but you also don’t want that (that’s the personal part).

Screenshot taken from https://ahrefs.com/blog/outreach/

Is it a good technique for a start-up? It might be the best approach in the beginning. It relies on heavy work and it can be productive even if nobody knows you. The one thing you need to make sure of, however, is that you make communication personal and don’t just settle for an automated mail listing.

2.Building a Relationship (The Interpersonal Approach)

You’re not just building a skyscraper for a one time party, to sim abandon it afterwards. Once you’ve gotten a positive response from a blogger, try to stay in contact. This means following-up on questions, saying “thank you” for a mention or even a positive appreciation and responding in kind. This means you need to stay on alert about any new mentions you receive and get in touch with people who mention you as soon as it happens.

Venchito Tampon offers examples of such conversations which, while ultimately interested exchanges for both parties, also prove to be more than that: a genuine interaction between professionals:

Screenshot taken from http://digitalphilippines.net/blogger-outreach-strategy/

Building and maintaining a relationship also means that you learn more. You don’t really know why someone hasn’t linked to your article although you feel like they should have. Maybe it was a simple oversight, or maybe they had a specific reason for which they chose not to link to you. Either way, you have something to gain if you reach out to them.

Make sure you are as natural as possible. Even if you do mailing automation, make sure that all the set up is correct and you’re not mixing up names, companies, etc. Don’t write emails that start with “Dear company owner” or “Dear sir/madam”. Make sure your mail and signature are clear and grammar proof. If you use electronic signatures, take good care and make sure everything is sending correctly. Here’s a guide on electronic signatures you can get inspired from.

You wouldn’t want to go to a job interview not knowing a thing about the company you are interested in. Same thing applies when it comes to outreaching. The outreach process can sometimes be seen like a pitching one; this is why, knowing as much info as possible about the other person’s field of interest, recent events attendances and so on might be highly important for you. For instance, if we wanted to find out Aleyda Solis latest interests, we can easily check it out and use that info to our own advantage.

Screenshot taken from brandmentions.com

How can mentions monitoring help you? To be able to maintain a good professional relationship, you need to always know what’s important to the other person. That’s where BrandMentions can be of use, by allowing you to always check who’s been recently mentioned and who’s been mentioning whom.

Is it a good technique for a start-up? It’s probably the best strategy for a startup, because it means you try to take advantage of every door that opens to you. Though it could look like this requires more effort, it actually saves time in the long run. Once you start a back-and-forth conversation with someone, they might actually contact you first on certain occasions so you won’t have to always spend effort on contacting new people and explaining your goals all over again.

3.Going Social (The Dynamic Approach)

Okay, so remember how we said in the beginning that social media isn’t all that? We didn’t mean it’s entirely useless for outreach though. It’s because they haven’t really been used well so far that there’s a lot of potential with platforms like Facebook, Linkedin or Twitter.

You have to find a way to make things personal.

For instance, Will Blunt, the founder of Blogger Sidekick, made public one of his outreach endeavors, raising awareness about the importance of being dynamic. He gave Twitter a chance, but in the process managed to approach everybody individually. Maybe that’s why many influencers replied.

Screenshot taken from http://www.bloggersidekick.com/get-backlinks/

Yet, even among influencers can be made all sort of rankings, not only with the purpose of identifying their online performances but also in order to help you prioritize your outreach. As we’ve previously mentioned, outreach might take a lot of of your resources. As a start up, being at the beginning of the road, you might need to split those resources for so many tasks. Here is where mention monitoring comes to make some “light” in this area. Let’s say that we are interested in the top influencers from the digital marketing area. A simple mention search and comparison between the main actors on this niche made with BrandMentions can bring us some idea of whom we should start our outreach with.

How can a mention tool help you? By deciding who’s really an influencer. With mention monitoring you can cover social media as well as regular websites and blog posts. It can, thus, tell you, with a bit of research, who might be the best people to contact in terms of attracting attention and visitors.

Is it a good technique for a start-up? This was definitely a bold move, one guaranteed to attract attention, but the reason it may have worked so well is partly because Will already knew those people, or at the very least they knew about him. This is a move that works best when you already have some social capital and want to stand out from the crowd. But in order to do that, you need to be in the crowd to begin with. So it’s probably a move best reserved for when you’ve already moved up in the world a bit.

Conclusion

In your outreach endeavor you need to remember that there no such thing as a “success recipe” . What you need to take into consideration if you are a start up that there are techniques that might work better for you than others. There are a lot of great outreach examples out there you can get inspired from, however, the important thing is to see what works best for you and how you can use all the resources you have in the most efficient way.

The post Boost Your Online Awareness Using the Mention Outreach Technique appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.

102 Most Used Chrome Extensions for Digital Marketers

Livia Rusu — Wed, 18 May 2016 10:31:42 +0000

It’s impossible not to be synced anymore. Everything is on cloud and the amount of information we come across every day is unprecedented. The difficulty of any digital marketer’s mission is not letting themselves be distracted by the connectivity and hyperlinking on the web. While we have never been more exposed to information, it’s now harder than ever to keep focused and prioritize our online activity.

Because we know how crucial it is to stay informed and relevant when it’s almost impossible not to miss something (however small), we’ve put together a compilation of extensions that should make every digital marketer’s life a little easier.

We are moving from an era of brand dominance, to one where agility is rewarded. – Will Critchlow, Founder & CEO, Distilled

A digital marketer’s work can be massively improved with the right browser extensions. We usually install them as we cannot afford the time to either search for some data manually, or to wait for the dozens of tabs to load. This is why our compilation will include the most useful extensions in this field, to guide you through a better productivity rate.

Installing an extension only takes a few seconds and they will run on the back of the system while you operate the browser and your account, which makes them a useful alternative to the current situation, as they are all meant to solve some of the essential every day problems.

Copywriting & Content Marketing

Google TranslateDownloads: 6,323,515
GrammarlyDownloads: 4,198,579
FeedlyDownloads: 1,375,846
Print FriendlyDownloads: 365,861
Diigo Web CollectorDownloads: 241,545
YeswareDownloads: 231,600
Wise StampDownloads: 215,911
Project NapthaDownloads: 208,893
Similar PagesDownloads: 162,542
InstapaperDownloads: 156,722
TL;DRDownloads: 120,409
GiphyDownloads: 61,283
DraftDownloads: 4,542
Drum UpDownloads: 1,649

SEO and Marketing Metrics

GhosteryDownloads: 2,441,992
Alexa Traffic RankDownloads: 447,614
MozBarDownloads: 339,703
Hide My AssDownloads: 187,807
VidIQDownloads: 142,223
Check My LinksDownloads: 120,697
Majestic Backlink AnalyzerDownloads: 51,199
Google Analytics URL BuilderDownloads: 30,886
SEO SerpDownloads: 23,130
Fat RankDownloads: 8,952
Mobile Friendly CheckerDownloads: 4,188
Share MetricDownloads: 3,485

Social Media Engagement

Hootsuite HootletDownloads: 508,737
RapportiveDownloads: 441,335
BufferDownloads: 429,992
Bit.lyDownloads: 337,163
KloutDownloads: 69,639
Email HunterDownloads: 58,846
DoShareDownloads: 25,490
Rite TagDownloads: 21,127
DiscoverlyDownloads: 16,500
RiffleDownloads: 13,753
Find That LeadDownloads: 11,179
FollowrDownloads: 1,507

Productivity

Ad BlockDownloads: 10,000,000+
Last PassDownloads: 4,219,260
Pocket Downloads: 2,729,383
MomentumDownloads: 1,589,696
PushBullet Downloads: 1,340,354
BoomerangDownloads: 1,109,443
1PasswordDownloads: 1,023,937
One TabDownloads: 1,015,460
The Great SuspenderDownloads: 882,787
SignalsDownloads: 704,188
Stay FocusdDownloads: 674,406
Speed Dial 2Downloads: 643,890
TodoistDownloads: 379,388
Smooth ScrollDownloads: 154,844
KeeperDownloads: 97,589
Time StatsDownloads: 84,367
MediumDownloads: 34,068
Followup.ccDownloads: 12,002
PopchromDownloads: 10,138
List GoalDownloads: 4,265
StacheDownloads: 3,250
Price SnoopDownloads: 2,332
SwitchmarkDownloads: 2,242
GoodbitsDownloads: 1,592
Ananke TimerDownloads: 238

Website Optimization

User Agent SwitcherDownloads: 1,194,463
Web DeveloperDownloads: 1,091,172
Firebug LiteDownloads: 686,834
Tag AssistantDownloads: 539,849
Window ResizerDownloads: 530,290
Clear CacheDownloads: 333,669
WappalyzerDownloads: 331,018
YSlowDownloads: 317,276
IE Tab MultiDownloads: 185,129
StylebotDownloads: 166,341
Quick Javascript SwitcherDownloads: 144,227
PenduleDownloads: 103,065
CSS ViewerDownloads: 101,612
Web BoostDownloads: 72,615
Redirect PathDownloads: 64,933
Page RefreshDownloads: 55,600
WASPDownloads: 24,426
HTML ValidatorDownloads: 22,830
SightDownloads: 17,936
Built WithDownloads: 16,726
Quick Source ViewerDownloads: 13,898
Stylesheet ReloaderDownloads: 572

Design Tools

ColorZillaDownloads: 902,922
WhatFontDownloads: 545,995
Page RulerDownloads: 434,053
EyedropperDownloads: 373,647
Nimbus ScreenshotDownloads: 398,052
Pic MonkeyDownloads: 180,284
Resolution TestDownloads: 145,920
MeasureltDownloads: 108,281
Fontface NinjaDownloads: 101,708
Palette CreatorDownloads: 62,124
DimensionsDownloads: 48,225
Yet Another Lorem Ipsum GeneratorDownloads: 26,874
Google Font PreviewerDownloads: 25,546
StencilDownloads: 15,379
Type SampleDownloads: 12,012
Microstock Photo Power SearchDownloads: 1,870
Font EditorDownloads: 1,733

Copywriting & Content Marketing

1. Google Translate

(19933)Downloads: 6,323,515

Social Media – SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies

53 Untapped Ways to Improve Your Email Open Rates

I. BECOME A SUBJECT LINES MASTER

II.KEEP YOUR READERS ENGAGED

III. BE CAREFUL AT THE TIMING & FREQUENCY OF YOUR EMAILS

IV. AVOID SPAM FILTERS

V. BE AWARE OF THE LIST SEGMENTATION IMPORTANCE

VI. KEEP A STRONG CONNECTION WITH YOUR AUDIENCE

I.BECOME A SUBJECT LINES MASTER

1. Choose a Subject Line That Triggers Curiosity

2. Address the Prospects by First Names

3. Use Open Loops that Sparks the Curiosity of the Reader

4. Use Humor to Create a Personal Relationship with Your Prospects

5. Make Use of Negative Subject Lines to Trigger Curiosity

6. Use the Power of Quizzes. Announce Them in the Subject Line

7. Add a Video. Announce It in the Subject Line to Raise Interest

8. Be Playful. Use Emojis in the Subject Line When It’s Appropriate

9. Have at Least 5 Headlines Written Before Actually Sending One

10. Leverage Relevant News to Build Urgency from the Subject Line

11. Use Email Series to Increase Curiosity and Loyalty

12. A/B Test Alternatives of Different Subject Lines

II. KEEP YOUR READERS ENGAGED

13. Create a Second Lead to Keep Your Audience Hooked

14. Use Information Gap to Create a Craving for More Content

15. Use Educational Emails to Re-engage Prospects That Slipped Away

16. Focus Your Copy on the Customer’s Interests, Not on Your Product

17. Ask Why When Someone Unsubscribes

18. Make the Same Message Revolve Around More Than One CTA Button

19. Brand Your “From” Name. Set a Personal Name and Stick to It

20. Review Emails Internally Before Sending Them to the Public

21. Proofread for Grammar, Not Just for Marketing Relevance!

22. Finish the Email in a Question to Increase Engagement

III. BE CAREFUL AT THE TIMING & FREQUENCY OF YOUR EMAILS

23. Use the Same Delivery Time for All Your Emails (Especially for Newsletters)

24. Avoid List Fatigue. Avoid Sending Too Many Emails

25. Get the Length of the Message Right – Add a TL;DR in the Subject Line When Necessary

26. Resend Unopened Emails

27. Try Automated Behavioral Triggered Emails to Exploit User Behavior

28. Ask Your Contacts to Decide How Often They Want to See Mails from You

29. Create Anticipation towards the Following Email from a Series

30. Let the Contact Know Your Email Is Fresh

IV. AVOID SPAM FILTERS

31. Beware of the Word ‘Free’. It Can Trigger Spam Filters

32. Use Lower Case Letters in the Subject Line

33. Only Use the Emails of Your Contacts for What They Expect from You

34. Make the List Double Opt-In

35. Ask Contacts to Add You to the Address Book

36. Avoid Attachments, Whenever Possible

37. Optimize Your HTML to Increase Deliverability

38. Use Well Optimized Videos to Get the Message in Your Prospect’s Inbox

39. Optimize Images to Be Responsive on Mobile Devices

40. Use Email Authentication to Prevent Fake Accounts from Sending Emails in Your Name

41. Connect Your Current Location to the Email Account to Spot Unusual Activity Easier

V.BE AWARE OF THE LIST SEGMENTATION IMPORTANCE

42. Micro-Segment Your Mailing List

43. Address Prospects from Your Niche

44. Constantly Upgrade & Update Your Contact List

45. Address the Message Having Just One Persona in Mind

46. Avoid Sending Unsolicited Emails to Recipients

VI. KEEP A STRONG CONNECTION WITH YOUR AUDIENCE

47. Add Social Media Links to Be Closer to Your Audience

48. Send a Warm, Personal Welcome Email When Someone Subscribes

49. Send Relevant Product Update Emails

50. Use Your Credibility Smartly. Avoid Promotional Content

51. Include an Unsubscribe Button

52. Personalize Your Signature with a Short Description

53. Encourage Sharing he Content of Your Email with Close Friends

Conclusion

29 Powerful Cold Email Tips Backed by Renowned Digital Marketing Experts

29 Cold Email Tips for a Successful Campaign

1. Outreach Gone Wrong! Learn How to Deal with Negative Responses

Being Threatened by Influencers May Get You Somewhere

Infuriating People Can Sometimes Point Out Where You’re Wrong

Sometimes You’ll Need to Be Patient

Brutal Honesty Can Be A Valuable Lesson

And Nice “NO”s Will Make Your Day Better

Remember Patience? The Long Road to Success

2. Video Embedded in Email – Perfect Outreach Prospect

3. Focus on What Brings an Advantage to The Influencer

4. Be as Natural as Possible in Writing Your Outreach Proposal