Wednesday 28 February 2018

4 Effective Tips to Create Customers for Life with the Perfect Onboard Messaging Sequence

The very beginning of any relationship is awkward.

Do you think your customers feel that way about the beginning of their relationship with you?

Because if they do, that’s bad. It’s a severe threat to your business!

It’s kind of like being on time for a party. Everyone’s feeling things out, sizing up the room, and trying to find a cozy place to gel while the party gets going. At least, that’s if things go smoothly.

Other times it’s more like those middle school dance parties where there are too many chaperones, and no one knows what to do.

So you stand around awkwardly until your mom picks you up.

As the saying goes, the “seeds of churn are planted early.“ Your customer onboarding experience will determine the overall quality and longevity of your business relationship.

But how do you create the perfect onboarding experience?

And better yet, how do you make it seem like you’re not overly market-ey?

Because a relationship should feel natural. It should be guidance and friendship instead of skywriting that says BUY NOW.

I know you get what I’m saying because you’ve probably been on both sides of that coin.

So I want to knuckle down in this post and show you how to avoid the early missteps and build bridges that will last a lifetime.

Your brand will flourish, your business will grow, and you might even feel a little more fulfillment in the connections you make.

I’m going to show you how to build the perfect onboard messaging sequence.

But first, let’s talk about why you should even pay attention to your onboarding in the first place.

Why you should care about your onboarding experience

Onboarding is a broad term.

It’s not a single instance you can point to and say “this is onboarding,” because it’s describing an entire process.

It’s the journey a customer takes from the first click to their first success.

GrooveHQ conveys it well with a simple graph:

They’ve turned “first click” into “acquisition,” but the point is the same.

We’re specifically focusing on the beginning of the customer relationship, and we’re not just doing to call it a “sales thing.”

Anyone can do this and do it well.

One of the other terms you’ll hear thrown around when talking about onboarding is the concept of “churn.”

You’ve already heard me mention it, but I want to dig a little deeper before we progress.

Churn is synonymous with problems.

Let’s compare it to noticing one week into a new relationship that your girlfriend is hiding her phone.

The seeds of doubt – or of churn – are planted early.

This isn’t a new concept either.

The most significant problems usually start early in the process, and the same is true for customer relationships.

Where onboarding plays such a vital role is that the opposite of everything I just said is also true.

Seeds of churn can be planted early, but so are the seeds of success, as this anecdote from Kahuna Accounting conveys.

In just 12 months, they went from $0 to $480k annually.

How did they accomplish that?

They focused on their onboarding experience!

I’ll talk a little more about the specifics of what they did in a minute, but I want to wrap up our discussion about onboarding first.

According to Tallyfy, your onboarding experience should seek to answer two questions:

  1. Have you successfully introduced your new client to your business and addressed all their questions and concerns early on?
  2. Have you gathered information on your client so you have insight into what products and services would benefit them?

Let’s unwrap these two thoughts by looking at what AppCues did with their client Canva’s onboarding sequence.

How do they go about introducing themselves and addressing concerns?

For starters, they looked for growth opportunities and provided the organization with a way to gather data.

As you’ll see in the image below, there’s a link to a quick two-minute survey that they send in the welcome email.

I want to repeat that: they put it in the welcome email.

Why? Because they wanted to know if they were doing everything they could to satisfy their new customers.

Once their data confirmed that Canva knew their user base and provided for their needs, they decided to start forming hypotheses and experimenting.

They revamped their onboarding sequence so that customers would see this upon arrival:

What were the results? They had a 10% increase in activation for this particular project type.

So you see that finding the right approach to take your client from acquisition to success is the onboarding sequence.

You’ll address their concerns and find new ways to benefit them.

I want to make one final point about customer onboarding, in case there’s any doubt in your mind about its importance.

Way back in 2000, Harvard Business School published a fascinating study that revealed one very telling fact:

In the long term, it’s more profitable to retain old customers than win new ones.

This is old-school knowledge, but it’s relevant nonetheless.

Retention has been proven time and again to be a cheaper and more profitable route than acquiring new customers.

And if the future of your relationships starts at its’ inception, then I hope you’re paying attention to what comes next.

1. Interview the Right People

To send the right message, you have to know what your audience wants to hear.

And you need to be able to do it across any industry, no matter the pain points.

I want to go back to our example from Kahuna Accounting for a moment, because what they did stands out as an excellent example of this approach.

Sixteen Ventures shared their story in a podcast, but here’s the gist of it:

They started with the assumption that their customers knew more than they did.

So to test that assumption, they interviewed anyone and everyone who was in their targeted niche.

They interviewed the ideal clients.

They questioned the clients you wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole.

They even found thought leaders and bloggers to talk to who would share their experiences.

By going incredibly narrow and capitalizing on their niche, they found that the world seemed to get smaller.

However, the interviews gave them direction. All of their marketing was poured into their findings.

They learned to speak their language and built a customer landing page to push their campaign.

They even wrote a whitepaper based on the information from the interviews.

Strategic ads, guest blogs, and collaborations abounded.

One year later, they’d gone from $0 to $480k. All because of some interviews.

You don’t always have the opportunity to ask questions in person though, and it’s not always about setting up interviews anyways.

Some services, like Shopify, re-engage with their target audience by reminding them of their pocketbook:

You may have set up a store with them, but they know the reason you’re using their platform is that you want to make money.

You can’t make money if your card isn’t connected.

So they use messaging like this to draw you back in.

They build a trust-oriented relationship that is beneficial for you and them, but they don’t lead with that.

They simply remind you that you can make more money. Cool idea, right?

Here’s another example from fashion designer Paul Smith’s brand:

This is a really simple approach, but it falls in line with getting to know your customer better.

By asking newcomers or recent purchasers to set up a profile, they’re not only learning more about who they sell to, but they’re also deepening the impact of their brand.

Interview or no interview, these processes fall under the umbrella of a process called Customer Development.

Customer Development is a method of finding and qualifying the right market for your business. That’s essentially what Kahuna Accounting did.

The idea is to build a product around elements that solve your customers’ needs, then find the right ways to convert customers.

All of this is ideally accomplished while organizing your methods so that your business is scalable, too.

And this is a critical issue too because it’s a process by which you can answer the question “Is what I’m doing truly needed?” before you invest your time and money into an endeavor that will ultimately fail.

But that’s ultimately why interviews are so important, even when we get interview anxiety or feel awkward about it.

It’s a make-or-break situation, not an optional convenience.

I absolutely love CustomerDevLab’s advice for interviews:

  1. Crawl
  2. Walk
  3. Run

It’s a little tongue-in-cheek, but it’s also spot on.

The process of escalating your interviews from partners to family and friends and then finally on to customers makes sense.

It provides a gradual and honest understanding of the environment around your businesses.

I highly recommend it.

If you want more guides and resources for Customer Development, I highly recommend you check out this compilation of 26 resources we put together.

2. Find out where your funnel is leaking

After you’ve done your interviews, it’s time to take a look inside your boat. Metaphorically speaking, that is.

What I mean is that you need to take a long, hard look at your sales funnel and find where people are falling out.

It doesn’t matter if it’s shortly after acquisition or just before the sale, knowing where and why your leads are dropping out will give you the knowledge to fix it.

Do you see the drop off between the first and second stages in the image above?

That shouldn’t happen!

It’s quite apparent that this part of the funnel has the most significant pain points, which means it deserves the most attention.

And before you get carried away and think that a massive drop like that is a failure, it’s not.

That’s an opportunity.

So how can you cash in on an opportunity like this?

It could be a number of things, but I’ll start with the issue we’ve been addressing all along: relationships.

It’s entirely plausible that a drop like this could mean you’re either asking for something too soon or not building enough trust.

Instapage gave some great advice on how you can also focus on relationships to increase conversion rates in your funnel. They recommend:

  • Show people they have a problem.
  • Define success on their terms.
  • Give leads more access to your product.
  • Show your leads more attention and treat them like people
  • Keep your cool through mistakes and churn.

If you’re human, that probably sounds a bit scary.

I know the first time I heard it I was a bit concerned.

You want me to tell people they have a problem but let them decide what success looks like?

I get that reaction! You’re putting so much power into your customer’s hands, but it pays to remember the Trust Equation here:

You’re attempting to build credibility, reliability, and intimacy to gain the unwavering trust of your customer.

Trust is what leads to relationships, and relationships lead to sales and retention. It’s all one big cycle that you have to trust.

Ironic, I know.

So focus on relationships first. And keep in mind that it’s also possible your problems have nothing to do with relationships.

Now, wait.

I just told you that you’re losing leads because of relationships, but then backed off and said you might not be losing leads because of relationships?

I know, it’s confusing. But I’m allowing for the possibility that you’re doing a great job and still have a leaky funnel. That’s entirely possible!

For example, you could be losing up to 53% of your landing page’s visitors just because of long load times.

Instapage recently shared that even a seven-second difference doubles the likelihood that a visitor won’t even stay around long enough to view your offer.

That means your onboarding is dead before it starts!

So the point here is though that ultimately you’ll only know where the holes in your funnel are if you’re paying attention.

And the even bigger truth is that you’ll only ever fix them if you are in tune with your customer relationships.

3. Check in regularly

Once you’ve patched up your funnel, you need to look a little deeper into the regularity of your messaging.

It’s the perfect opportunity to use all those tips on email onboarding you’ve been reading.

You’ll see a lot of elements from SparkPage’s Anatomy of a Perfect Email Onboarding Flow here.

Communication with proper timing and perfect messaging will help push customers through your onboarding experience to their first success.

But that communication is a delicate balancing act that asks one all-important question:

How do you strike the perfect chord of helpful contact without providing too much or too little?

You don’t want to go ghost go on your new client while they’re trying to figure out your service.

You also don’t want to be spammy.

It’s the problem of copywriters and email marketers everywhere.

To help you get an idea of what timely and helpful content looks like, I want to take a leaf out of Grammarly’s book.

If you’re not familiar with Grammarly, it’s an online editorial tool used by millions of writers to help double check for errors before they get called out by Reddit.

I recently started a free trial with them. I then upgraded because I was impressed with the product and the onboarding experience.

Shortly after signing up, I got this friendly and helpful welcome:

They just wanted to let me know what I could immediately expect from their service. I poked around and enjoyed the interface, and even plugged in an article I’d written to test it out.

After a few days of trying their product religiously (I admit I was in love), Grammarly then provided some subtle nudging about the perks of their paid product.

I could get added features that would improve my writing even more?

Uh, yes.

The next day, the conversation continued with them telling me about some of the improvements they had made since they began their editorial journey.

As a member of their target market, they had me. I was enthralled.

Better yet, I was excited when seven days after starting I received a gamified report card of my weekly writing.

I was more productive than 97% of Grammarly writers?

You’ve no idea how proud that made me, even though I didn’t have any inclination about the size of their user base.

They showed me my first success, and it felt great.

So I kept using the free service, and Grammarly kept hitting me up.

They checked in from time to time to make sure I was doing okay.

Of course with a subtle push toward the heightened capabilities of their paid product.

They even sent me an email asking for a review:

Pretty soon I couldn’t help it.

The service was excellent, and I wanted more capabilities to help me improve my writing style, so I pulled out my credit card.

As soon as I signed up for their service, I was ushered to their service team to make sure there were zero issues with my transition.

It was a dream come true.

By staying in touch, anticipating my needs, and following through on the fulfillment, Grammarly created an onboarding experience that I just couldn’t resist.

I still use their services and have even recommended it to some of my other writer friends.

But just think of all the elements that kept me engaged in their brand.
The weekly progress reports kept me excited to write.
Asking for feedback kept them honest.

And immediately hooking me up with support made sure that my movement to a more powerful service went perfectly.

The power of knowing your audience and appropriately timing your messages can take any user from acquisition to success.

If your onboarding sequence isn’t regular and exciting enough to cause a stir around your brand, it’s time to go back to the drawing board.

4. Utilize Chat and Messaging

I want to stay on the topic of communication for one more moment because it doesn’t have to just be via email or in person.

You have the option to engage in real time communication with your leads and customers that can boost retention and keep people happy with your services.

According to Sonar, you can make a strong first impression by utilizing SMS onboarding as a creative way to connect with new clients.

Look at how a service like DrinkEasy does it:

You see how they take the opportunity to get to know their customer and explain their service.

They ask what drinks the client likes, lay out the process, and even ask for a way to personalize the process.

If the customer has any questions or requests, they’re invited to ask.

Once they start to push their product, the conversation continues on the same text chain.

Everything works in context, and it’s a beautiful sight to behold.

They use SMS to share their product findings and a few interesting facts.

You then have the option to buy, pass, or request something else. All via text. No email, no phone calls, and no in-person awkwardness.

Another option that will let you streamline your communication and decrease the number of man hours involved is a Chatbot.

Early versions, like Cleverbot, made people doubt the validity of using tools like this at first.

I didn’t screencap this on Christmas.

But Chatbots aren’t quite the same. Cleverbot actually “learns” from people.

A good Chatbot can provide resources and quick answers in an onboarding process that don’t end up like the example above.

Take Facebook’s bots. They can do some amazing work on their platform.

For example, you can now have a bot crawl for relevant content and actually post it to a Group or Page:

Those same bots can also recommend pieces to your audience by directly tagging them in a comment below the post.

It’s exactly like when you want to share content with a friend, but automated.

And you can also set up pre-scripted bot-to-user messaging like this:

The possibilities are endless, and you can always make updates as you innovate and implement new ideas.

How you would use a tool like SMS or Chatbots in your business is up to you.

The ultimate application is that finding innovative ways to communicate with your customer can yield positive results.

You just have to do the innovating yourself.

Conclusion

So whether you’re in middle school dance mode or are already into the beat, finding ways to sidle into a relationship and optimize your customer onboarding is just a good idea.

Remember that the seeds of churn or success are planted early. Whichever one grows is up to you.

Finding methods to create the perfect onboarding sequence varies greatly by industry and even client to client.

Just because it works for your buddy in Silicon Valley doesn’t mean it will work in your NYC startup.

Speak to knowledgeable people in your industry and bite the customer development bullet.

Search for flexible ways to adapt your onboarding experience.

It’s the best way to keep it productive and stop your funnel from leaking. Plus, it will keep your sales team busy.

Lastly, optimize the way you communicate.

Make your new customer feel valued but not overwhelmed.

You can even consider a new approach like SMS or live chat to create a new spin on your product or service.

Whatever you do, just make sure you get your onboarding right.

How do you create the perfect client onboarding experience?

About the Author: Neil Patel is the cofounder of Neil Patel Digital.



from The Kissmetrics Marketing Blog https://blog.kissmetrics.com/perfect-onboard-messaging-sequence/

You Can Apply for Jobs on Facebook Now

Today Facebook announced a new feature that will allow business Pages to post jobs and manage applications on its platform. 

In over 40 countries, administrators will be able to create job listings directly from their Pages, where they'll appear throughout Facebook like any other post or ad would: the Page itself, followers' News Feeds, and Marketplace, as well as Facebook's new Jobs dashboard.

Benefits to Businesses and Users

Facebook has positioned the Jobs feature as a benefit to both employers and job seekers. On top of being able to track hiring the way they might analyze any other promoted post campaign, Page administrators can also manage and communicate with applicants via Messenger.

That's a plus for applicants themselves, who can look for listings on the new Jobs dashboard according to criteria like location, full- or part-time status, and industry. 

The application process works similarly to one like LinkedIn, allowing users to automatically populate job history according to what's publicly available on his or her Facebook profile.

And for those who shudder at the thought of an employer seeing such a profile, fear not -- Facebook has emphasized that "businesses will only be able to see information you provide them directly, and what’s available publicly on your Facebook profile."

Once an application is submitted, a Messenger conversation between the applicant and the employer's Page is created to maintain contact, confirm that the application was received, and send reminders for or schedule things like interviews.

Built With Users (and LinkedIn) In Mind?

The launch comes at an interesting time when Facebook has been making a series of moves to promote more content from a user's own personal network -- more than that from Pages.

The development also comes on the heels of recent predictions that Facebook will lose 5.8% of users between 18 and 24 in 2018. At the same time, HubSpot's own research has indicated plans to increase the use of LinkedIn among a similar demographic -- ages 18 to 34.

Screen Shot 2018-02-28 at 3.49.27 PM

But Facebook didn't necessarily build the Jobs features with one subset of users in mind -- even if LinkedIn shows signs of growing popularity among a population that coincides with the same one where Facebook is predicted to see a loss.

Instead, says HubSpot Social Media Campaign Associate Henry Franco, this move is the latest in a series from Facebook to address the loss or disinterest of any users -- "a sign," he says, "that Facebook lost site of users and had been way too focused on advertisers" and is continuing efforts to both address and remedy that issue.

And while the new Jobs feature does carry benefits for Page owners, it does introduce a new way for users who are seeking work that isn't traditionally listed on business-heavy networks like LinkedIn.

"While candidate information might not be as rich as it is on LinkedIn, Facebook definitely has a more active user base and serves a much easier way for businesses to get jobs in front of potential applicants," says Franco. "I expect companies will find it much easier to hire entry-level or low-skill jobs on Facebook, whereas for higher-skilled jobs or ones that simply require more experience, LinkedIn will provide a deeper pool of candidates."

A Crowded Market

The new Jobs feature also signals a key change in the way people look for and apply for jobs. In 2017, "Google for Jobs" premiered, in which job seekers could type in search criteria like "jobs in Boston" or "marketing jobs" to see listings displayed right in the general search engine results page (SERP).

Both Facebook and Google have been making changes to shape the way people discover, consume, and engage with content -- and to prevent them from doing so in a way that navigates them away from either site. Facebook, for example, modified its algorithm at one point to favor native content, like Live video, that people could do without leaving the network.

Google has been moving in a similar direction, as indicated by a recent announcement that AMP features will be coming to Gmail in a way that allows users to complete email-related tasks -- managing subscriptions, RSVPing to non-Google-Calendar events, and scheduling appointments -- without leaving their inboxes. 

Searching for jobs, says Franco, is just the latest integration to that trend, which he predicts could significantly cut into traffic previously earned by existing job listing sites.

"It's interesting that the job posting market is becoming so crowded here," he says. "It builds out not only the business experience, but the candidate one, too."

Featured Image Credit: Facebook



from Marketing https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/you-can-apply-for-jobs-on-facebook-now

What You Missed This Month in Google

It's time for that March lion to roar onto the scene. Time for St. Patrick's Day, the first signs of spring, and the end of Q1.

February is coming to a close.

And being that it's a shorter month, February seems to have flown by. A lot happened in the world of tech, much of the news coming from Google.

We’ve put together another list of the major highlights from Google -- this time, for the month of February. Read on for the full recap.

1. Double Featured Snippets Are Coming

Google announced today that it will be rolling out a new element to its search engine results page (SERP): featured snippets.

The announcement comes somewhat on the heels of a recent post on Google's official blog took a deep dive into how its featured snippets work, where Danny Sullivan, public liaison for search, explained that while this piece of the SERP has been helpful to many, it isn't quite perfect.

One item to be addressed, Google Search Product Management Director Emily Moxley wrote today, is the concept of nuanced queries: the ones that could be seeking multiple answers on a given issue. Using the example of a query like "tooth pain after a filling," Moxley explains that user could be looking to find out if this type of pain is normal (the "why"), or learn about the duration of the pain (the "how" or "how long"). 

For that reason, Google will begin rolling out the display of more than one featured snippet in the SERP that could answer the user's question, depending on the words used in the search -- what Moxley calls "multi-intent queries."

multifacetedfeaturedsnippet.max-1000x1000

Source: The Keyword

As we wrote earlier this month, displaying more featured snippets in the SERP introduces a higher barrier to earning clicks, especially if the snippets answer the query sufficiently enough that the user doesn't need to look -- or click -- any further.

"Testing methods to maximize featured snippet exposure is going to become the norm in SEO," says Victor Pan, HubSpot's Manager of SEO. "But being able to turn that view to a click, an engagement with content, and trust with your website has, and will always be the tougher problem."

2. Better Ads Standards Take Effect

Last summer, Google announced that on its Chrome browser, it would be removing ads from sites that don't meet the Better Ads Standards. The initiative launched on February 15, and Google began blocking ads that did not meet the criteria.

The goal was not to do away with ads completely. Rather, it was to discourage webmasters from creating and placing digital ads that interrupt a user’s content consumption -- characteristics like automatically playing loudly, or not allowing users to navigate away from the ad until a certain amount of time has passed.

Coalition for Better Ads_Better Ads Standards Source: Coalition for Better Ads

However, Google also wanted to ensure that critical ad revenue wouldn't be lost as a result of these changes. In fact, better ads would actually boost those efforts, as intrusive ones motivated users to install browser plugins that block ads altogether -- which would remove any ad engagement and the resulting income from its display.

According to Chris Bentzel, Google's Engineering Manager, early tests of this feature showed that it was, for the most part, effective. The 42% of tested sites that failed the Better Ads Standards actively took the initiative to remove their intrusive ads and, three days before the launch, passed and met the criteria for a better user experience.

It sounds as though webmasters will be notified by Google if their sites contain non-compliant ad experiences. If, they have not addressed and modified the ads to meet the new standards within 30 days of notification, Chrome will actively block ads on that site.

Sites with such intrusive ads will display the following message:

Untitled-44 Source: Google Chromium Blog

3. AI Comes to AdSense

We've written a lot about the things that a bot can do (albeit, not always well): write a screenplay, compose a classical masterpiece, name paint colors. And now, it seems, AI can help you build an ad campaign.

Last month, Google AdSense introduced a new feature called "Auto ads," in which machine learning helps marketers place and monetize ads with smart automation.

With Auto ads, the AI behind the feature crawls your site to find the best pages and areas for potential ad placements, and displays them only when the probability of both a strong performance and user experience are high.

It does this, as the name suggests, automatically -- all the ad manager has to do is select the ad formats she wants to use in her AdSense settings, then copy and paste the generated code on the pages where ads can be displayed.

To emphasize, copying the code onto all pages doesn't mean ads will actually display there. That's where the machine learning comes in to determine if it's an optimal location for ad placement.

newblogpic Source: Inside AdSense

4. AMP'd Up Emails

The AMP initiative -- or Accelerated Mobile Pages -- was first introduced by Google to help webmasters create sites and ads that provide a rich experience, but also load quickly and maintain a high performance across different browsing platforms. That, as the name suggests, includes mobile.

Until recently, the open-source AMP initiative only applied to websites. But early this month, Google announced that it would be launching a preview of "AMP for Email" for Gmail developers, which is slated to bring those same fast, rich, and high-performing experiences to email.

One of the primary goals, according to the official announcement, is to allow users to complete more tasks without navigating away from their inboxes -- things like RSVPing to events for which they receive HTML email invites, completing a survey, or managing email subscriptions.

Source: The Keyword

Email marketers and developers can sign up for a preview here.

5. Other Google News You May Have Missed

Clips Is Now Available for Purchase

Google Clips, the wireless smart camera announced at the company's October 2017 #MadeByGoogle event, was officially released for purchase last month -- only to receive less-than-stellar reviews.

Many were confused about the camera's purpose when it was first released, The Verge reporter Sean O'Kane describing it as a "deeply weird product." On Tuesday, his colleague Dan Seifert didn't have much better to say, reviewing Clips as something that "just doesn’t work that well."

Android Announcements From Mobile World Congress

At Mobile World Congress 2018 (MWC), Google announced it will be introducing two new Android programs to smartphones: The Go edition of Android Oreo, and Android One.

The former -- which will be built into select phones from Alcatel and Huawei, among others -- boasts a more optimized experience with higher speeds for devices with a memory capacity of less than 1 GB. The latter will introduce an entirely new suite of devices, primarily from Nokia.

Source: The Keyword

A Further Foray Into the Internet of Things

Google is no stranger to the internet of things (IoT), with the ability to control Smart Home lighting and more with Google Assistant-enabled devices. And with its recent acquisition of Xively, it appears that the company has grander plans for that sector.

Xively, previously a division of LogMeIn, is largely known for its device management capabilities. But rather than contributing toward future buildout of consumer IoT products, this "addition of Xively’s robust, enterprise-ready IoT platform," wrote Google's IoT Product Manager Antony Passemard in a statement, "can accelerate our customers’ timeline from IoT vision to product, as they look to build their connected business," making it a logical fit for Google's Cloud IoT Core team.

Until Next Month

As always, we’re watching all things Google. We’ll continue to pick out top news items, algorithm updates, and trends that can aid your marketing.

Until the month goes out like a lamb, have a great March.



from Marketing https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/this-month-in-google-news

4 Reasons Your Content Isn’t Working (And What To Do About It)

As marketers, we spend vast amounts of time, effort, and sometimes money producing content and campaigns that speak to our prospects and customers to convince them to move to the next step of the customer journey. But there are ways in which our content and campaigns fall short for our audiences.

In this blog, I’ll show you the four reasons your content isn’t working and what you can do to improve.

1. Your Content is Not Relevant

Every one of your prospects and customers is different. They have their own wants and needs. They are at various stages of interacting with you as a brand, they are looking for different things, they will be convinced and put off by different things. It is impossible to create one message and make it relevant to your whole audience.

How do marketers solve this? Personalize content based on customer desires using a combination of explicit (form filled data) and implicit (calculated data). This should be across every channel not just email.

2. Your Content is Not Timely


The world is moving faster than ever, and there are so many demands on our time that often when we are looking into products and services, we are doing so in a small 15-minute chunk of our day.


We do it on our terms when it suits us. No matter what I’m looking for, I need to get the content to answer my questions when I need it. I do not want to have to wait for a week to get a callback, I do not want to wait until the right email is sent to me as part of your newsletter program.

How do marketers solve this? As far as possible, use inbound channels to personalize the experience for your visitors. Whether you are using web personalization to serve up relevant products, FAQs, or contact information, or if it is serving push notifications through your app, make the experience relevant for the user when they are engaged. Aim to trigger your results immediately so that your users do not have to wait.

3. Your Content is Not on the Right Channel 

Think about your mobile phone. You’ve got email, text messages, instant messaging, phone calls, apps. You probably use each of these for different things. At the same time, if you were to ask an older relative, they would use them differently than you do. Ask a younger relative, and they are likely to use them differently still. And all of this is context based. I personally wouldn’t want my bank to start a Facebook Messenger conversation with me, and I wouldn’t want my friends to send me emails when they have a trivial question. Everyone uses different communication channels differently. Yet as marketers, we tend to think simply of cost.

How do marketers solve this? Stop guessing and start asking. Ask people which channels they want to receive information through and adapt accordingly. You can do either as part of the email sign up process or later down the line. 

4. Your Content is Not Consistent


If I’m a customer visiting your website or calling you for support, my content should be just as personalized as that which winds up in my inbox.


As a loyal customer, if I have to go all the way back to square one when I know you have information about me, I’m going to get frustrated quickly. We’ve all had the experience of being handed around at a call center. We’ve also likely had a similar experience where we’ve called in, and they know exactly who you are, your history with the company, and are able to assist you immediately. Having a one-off campaign that is relevant to the individual isn’t enough, it needs to be consistent across every campaign on every channel.

How do marketers solve this? Rather than creating ad hoc campaigns in a manual “spray and pray” process, use software which allows you to collect data on who your audience is, what they are interested in, what they want to receive, on which channel, how often, and allow it to do the heavy lifting for you. It simply is not possible to do all of this and stay consistent to all of your audiences through manual work.

Which of the above is the biggest challenge for you? Are there any other reasons you think content doesn’t work? Tell me about your struggles or solutions in the comments.

The post 4 Reasons Your Content Isn’t Working (And What To Do About It) appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.



from Marketo Marketing Blog https://blog.marketo.com/2018/02/4-reasons-content-isnt-working.html

Here’s What Your Subscribers Really Think About These Email Strategies

Sometimes, email marketing can feel like a guessing game: will they open this, will they read that?

If you’re an email marketer, you care about open and click-through rates, unsubscribe rates, and conversions.

But your subscribers don’t share these incentives when receiving marketing emails. They don’t open your emails because they know you’ll appreciate the CTR, and they don’t subscribe because they want to help you out.

So why do subscribers open marketing emails? Why do they subscribe to one channel over another, or click on one CTR but avoid another? And, beyond subscribing and opening, what magical email elements are needed to convert subscribers into customers?

Marketers often misunderstand how subscribers perceive emails, which is why the folks at Email Monks created this helpful infographic to highlight discrepancies between what marketers think when they send an email, and how subscribers feel when they receive it.

This can help you eliminate destructive elements in your email marketing campaigns, and increase the satisfaction of your subscribers.

 

email-perception-1.jpg email-perception-2.jpg email-perception-4.jpg email-perception-6.jpg email-perception-9.jpg email-perception-10.jpg



from Marketing https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/email-marketing-perceptions-vs-reality

How to Write Facebook Messenger Copy That Converts

Facebook Messenger marketing is more straightforward than you might think. I’ve built countless bots and ran marketing campaigns at scale that drove great results. Along the way, I learned a big ugly truth that most companies don’t realize until it’s too late:

Most users don’t know how to interact with bots on Messenger yet. But they will.

During the course of a conversation, there’s a good chance that they’re going to stray away from how you want them to interact with your bot. When that happens, you have a choice:

  1. Lose them as potential customer forever.
  2. Delight them and drive value to your business.

"Well duh, easy choice. But easier said than done -- right?"

Let's walk through my three-part formula for writing error messages that drive conversions. Along the way, I'll share free tools that I use every day to create incredible Messenger experiences. Here’s what you need to remember:

“Acknowledge + Rephrase + Prompt”

0. Map

Before you do anything -- step away from the keyboard! You need to figure out what might go wrong before you decide how to make it better. Grab a whiteboard or pen and paper -- it’s mapping time. Write out every point where the user needs to take an action inside your bot. Ask yourself these three questions as you do it:

  • What am I asking the user to do?
  • Which ways might they get it wrong?
  • How can I be more clear?

That exercise will open your mind to getting them back on track. Alright, onto the formula itself.

1. Acknowledge

The first part of writing good error messages is to acknowledge the problem. Being more specific when something goes wrong gives users a better clue into what you want them to do. But if we just told someone what’s wrong without giving them a path to making it better, it wouldn’t be all that helpful. Take this example of an invalid email below:

Um, rude and unhelpful.

To make error messages work for Messenger bots, you need all three parts. It’s not just about telling them what’s wrong -- but show them how to make it right.

Tool tip: Dashbot is a free chatbot analytics platform to show where users get lost.

2. Rephrase

There's no foolproof way to know if an error was a miscommunication or a misclick. Unlike a web form, you can't show users if something is incorrect before they hit submit. But you can give them an example of a successful interaction after the fact so they have a better idea of what you need.

I see what I did wrong, but now what?

By adding this one sentence, we’ve already made it more likely that users will finish taking the action we want them to. There’s now a clear path back into the core experience. Remember that most people have never used a bot before. It’s not always intuitive what the next step should be. That’s where the third piece of the formula comes in.

If you want to go the extra mile, set up your bot with several variations of the same hint. This way, people who don't get it right after the second try aren't getting frustrated with a repetitive message.

Tool tip: Botsociety has heatmaps and screencasts so you can iron out confusing flows ahead of time.

3. Prompt

We're almost there, but listen close. This is the most overlooked piece of copywriting for Messenger marketing. At this point, your user knows what went wrong and how to make it better -- so ask them to do it! Prompt them in a direct and polite way. More often than not, they’ll make it right and keep engaging with your bot.

There we go. It all comes together.

Tool tip: ManyChat is a Messenger marketing platform that makes it easy to build tailored conversations with users.

The formula works best when all three pieces work together. Look at how we’ve handled a conversation that almost went off the rails:

  1. Acknowledged the exact problem.
  2. Rephrased it to make it clear how to move forward.
  3. Prompted the user to try again.

It’s the little things that add up when writing copy for bots. The way that we chat with businesses should match how we talk to our friends or order a coffee. By making every step -- even error messages -- delightful, your bot can have a big impact on the bottom line. Bots and Messenger work even better when you pair them with email marketing, too. Follow my three-part formula and you'll create delightful bots in 2018 and beyond.

Want to chat with me on Messenger about bots? Click here.



from Marketing https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/how-to-write-facebook-messenger-copy-that-converts