Your relationship with your clients is vital to the success of your business. Before you can offer them a solution, however, you’ll need to learn how to actively listen to them and truly hear what they’re saying. Also, it helps to establish a sincere relationship with them to foster better understanding. With a positive and genuine attitude, you can nurture a relationship with your client that develops trust.

The following are four tips on how to foster and build stronger client relationships.

1. Don’t Let Distance Keep You From Engaging With Customers

It takes time and real communication to build trust. Resultantly, you must go beyond communicating with your clients through email. Ideally, you want to meet with the client in person. In today’s world, however, your clients may have a home-base that’s across town or across the world. When you’re unable to maintain an ongoing face-to-face presence, a professional video conferencing platform such as 8×8 can help you build rapport in a way that isn’t possible with emails.

2. Maintain a Two-Way Conversation

It takes time to build strong rapport with your client. Furthermore, most marketers think of email campaigns and automated chatbots when it comes to a two-way conversation. However, a more intimate approach, such as videoconferencing, will enable you to gain a deeper understanding of your client’s needs and sentiments. Annual or semiannual video conferences can help you maintain strong rapport with your client and extend the customer life cycle.

3. Collaborate to Create Win-Win Scenarios

In a B2B partnership, your clients should have more than one human point of contact with your organization. Ideally, you can build relationships across your organization and your client’s so that stakeholders from both groups work together as a team to promote your aligned goals.

For example, an excellent way to develop cross-enterprise camaraderie is to build a case study together. Throughout the process, team members from both organizations will get to know each other, and the collaboration will result in a phenomenal deliverable for your client.

4. Go the Extra Mile

If your client requests something that is outside of your purview, don’t leave them in the lurch. Avoid offering the standard “I’m sorry we don’t do that” response. If possible, refer them to someone who can give them what they need – or find out who can. By putting a reasonable amount of effort into resolving your client’s pain points, they will think of you as someone who they can trust to solve their problems.

It takes more work to build a sincere professional relationship with clients, but it pays off in genuine and mutually beneficial professional relationships.  Nothing makes your brand look better than proving to clients that you’re different – and more dedicated – than your competition.

Going above and beyond a client’s expectations shows them that you’re about more than profit and that you want to provide them with real value. By making an extra effort to meet your client’s needs, you’ll show them that your promise of exceptional service is more than lip service.

The post 4 Tips for Building Stronger Client Relationships appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

Master These Sales Skills

Salespeople and Agency sales teams have to be on top of their game these days if they want to be successful. They need to master these five skills:

1. Know Your Product

When a potential customer asks about your product or service, you need to know it inside and out. That may seem like common sense, but one of the most cited complaints buyers have is that sales reps can’t answer even basic questions about the products they’re selling.

B2B buyers especially are doing more research than ever online before connecting with a salesperson or agency sales team. If you’re not well-informed, they may know more than you do.

2. Know Your Customer

There’s also no excuse for not knowing your target customer and understanding their business. It’s easy to do online research into companies, industries, and individual buyers.

3. Ask Lots Of Questions

There’s a direct correlation between the number of questions salespeople ask and their closing rates.  An analysis of more than half a million sales calls demonstrated that the sales reps that did less talking, asked more questions, and listened to what prospects said were more successful.

During your discovery calls, try to ask enough questions to uncover 3-4 business problems or concerns. This helps you focus your attention on the most pressing issues and frame your proposal to ease their pain. Don’t ask them all at once in a shotgun style. Space them evenly throughout your call.

4. Be Resilient

A career in sales is not for the timid. It takes the ability to hear no as many times as it takes to get to yes. Unfortunately, most salespeople give up too quickly. It can take as many as 18 calls to connect with an economic decision-maker. Most salespeople give up after 4 attempts.

5. Stay Top Of Mind

It’s too easy to get lost in the sea of salespeople that approach businesses these days. Creating regular reasons to remain top of mind with customers is crucial.  Consider automation to manage your marketing, email, and SMS messaging systems.

Closing Tough Customers

Even when you’ve done your homework, ask the right questions, and stick to it, you’re still going to run into tough customers and difficult situations.

6. Don’t Let Them See You Sweat

Don’t let tough buyers deter you from presenting your case. If they see fear or nervousness, many will push you around. Some will send you packing just to see if you’ll come back again. Stick to your script and make your pitch.

7. Rise To The Challenge

If they get frustrated or challenge you, stay calm. If you get flustered, it may be perceived as a lack of confidence in the product or service you’re selling. Stand your ground and put emotions aside. Continue to move the customer through the buying cycle as you practiced.

8. Help Them Focus On Their Key Problems

Business owners are busy. They’re trying to compete in an increasingly difficult economic environment, and they feel squeezed from all sides. The last thing they want to do is spend time with sales teams. Respect their time by focusing your presentation by demonstrating how you have the solution to their problem.

9. Isolate Objections

You won’t be successful as a salesperson if you can’t overcome buyers’ objections. Throughout your presentation, you should be using trial closes to get buy-in. Get them to say yes to little things before asking them for the close. When objections arise, isolate them and take them one at a time.

10. Deal With The Price Objection

The most common objection you’ll hear is price, but experienced salespeople know price is rarely the real objection. After all, if the customer believed your product or service would solve their problem and provide a positive ROI, the price wouldn’t be an objection. What they’re more likely saying is they don’t believe your product will do what it says. If that’s the case, you’ve got work to do.

For more on developing effective B2B brand strategy click here 

The post Top 10 Tips for Agency Sales Team to Close More Deals appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

There are many moving parts when planning and developing a successful web app. Here are the top 7 things to consider:

1. Define the Objective

Start with a highly specific objective, which will help you determine the features, functionalities, and user experience of the app.

First, clarify the major outcome you want to achieve (e.g., a marketing goal or the actions you want users to take) then you can work backward to define the steps required in the development process.

2. Understand the Users

Validate your idea to make sure that there’s a demand for the app and the market isn’t overly competitive or saturated.

Use survey, focus groups, or paper prototypes to discover the target audience’s challenges, desired outcomes, and preferences or habits (e.g., devices) before proceeding into the development phase.

3. Research Your Competitors

Find out what other apps are on the market, how they work, what users like about them, and what the common complaints are.

You can then define your unique positioning by developing features to fill a gap in the market or improve upon existing products so the app can stand out from the competition.

4. Involve UX and IT Early

After you have identified the requirements for the app, involve UX and IT teams as soon as possible to ensure that the user interface can be supported by available technologies.

For example, you should consider the technology infrastructure for a multi-channel solution, how to architect data delivery, how to manage API, and compliance with security protocols.

5. Finalize the Technology Stack

Last but not least, define the set of languages, frameworks, and database management system for building the application (e.g., HTML, Laravel, Ruby on Rails, MySQL, Apache.)

The choice of the technology stack can impact the usability and functionality of the web app, so make sure that the selection can support your MVP as well as the roadmap for future releases. For example, PHP is a hugely popular coding language with a multitude of developers who are experts. PHP frameworks like Laravel have even been created to better service this ecosystem. Choosing developers who are experts in Laravel and PHP is a great direction for most web app projects. 

6. Launch an MVP (Minimally Viable Product)

Instead of developing all the functions from the get-go, build a minimally viable solution with the key features to use as a foundation.

An MVP is a fully functional app with the core features. It allows you to enter the market quickly, gain access to actual users, and gather feedback so you can refine the functionalities and develop new features that meet the needs of the market.

7. Design a Roadmap For Multiple Releases

The release of the initial version is just the beginning. As you gain traction and incorporate user feedback, plan to release updates and new features at regular intervals.This will not only help your app stay relevant but also re-engage users with new functionalities over time. A new release every 2 to 3 months is typically frequent enough to keep users engaged without bombarding them with too much information.

The post Top 7 Things to Plan for When Developing a Web App appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

That’s the estimated number of smartphone users in 2018 according to research conducted by Newzoo. And that number is only set to increase.

According to another report by Variety, consumers spent $101 billion on mobile apps in 2018. A sure testament that the mobile app market is here to stay.

With such a large number of users, it is becoming easier to find users for your mobile app. However, keeping those same users is a whole different ball game.

It takes more than a good idea to create a successful app.

3 Things Every Successful App Must Have

In order for your app to crush the newest Candy Crush game, you will have to play your cards right. Here are a few things you just must have in your strategy.

1. Research

Before even dreaming of writing the code for your app, you first have to do your homework. This means research what people are looking for in a mobile app.

There are 2.8 billion apps on the Google Play Store and 2.2 billion on Apple’s App Store according to Statista. That means there’s basically an app for everything. That, however, shouldn’t stop you from creating your own. All you have to do is research what similar apps to yours are missing or how you can improve on them.

Explore what needs still exist in the app space, or understand which apps are currently not doing a great job filling a need. Take inspiration from apps that already exists but have a clear way to improve it. There is always an opportunity if you can clearly articulate why your app is different from others.

2. Use Kick-Ass Designers

The experience of an app is just as important as its functionality.

When it comes to mobile apps, many good ideas have flopped because of using sub-par designers. Design goes beyond just the font choice and color pallet and can influence the UI the user experience. The best designers create an awesome experience for the users that lead to more purchases, longer in-app time and overall happier users.

Finding the right designer for your needs may be difficult, but there are a few key tips to hire UX designers.

3. Extensive Testing

Taking an app to market before extensively testing it out first is a sure recipe for disaster. Testing allows you to see, not only what’s working and what’s not, but also where you can improve on to give your customers the best experience.

Testing can also be done at the prototype level. Ask friends and family members if they would use your app, or if it fits one of their need. Getting input early in the development can help steer you the right way.

Before releasing the app to the world, you must do extensive testing.  Remember, there are 2.8 billion apps on the Google Play Store alone. If a user is not satisfied with your app’s performance, they will quickly dump it for another. And once you lose them the first time around, it’s next to impossible to entice them back.

The worst part of losing a user due to bugs and glitches is that they will warn others to stay away from your app by way of a negative review.

Mobile App Success – It’s All in the Planning

Creating a successful mobile app is more a function of strategic planning than it is of coming up with a good idea. Doing your research beforehand will set you up for later success. Assembling the right team, including a strong designer, will help all elements of the app work better for the customer. Finally, extensive testing during prototyping through final release will ensure your app is useable and fits a need. From conception to launch all the way up to marketing, you will have to ensure that you do it right.

The post Creating a Successful Mobile App – 3 Things You Definitely Must Have appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

In 2005, 1.5 million people worked remotely, a number which increased to 3.9 million by 2017. This trend is accelerating as Flexjob predicts one-third of workers will work remotely in the next 10 years. Plus, remote work used to be the domain of part-timers, but even now, over 55% of telecommuters work full time.

Given this, being able to manage a remote team is a necessity. So, what are the key differences between remote and face-to-face teams? How should you approach managing them? Below, we’ll go over key tips and strategies below to increase your – and their! – productivity.

Pros & Cons of Remote Teams

Companies using remote teams can enjoy well-documented, substantial benefits:

• Reduced overhead
• Easy access to a larger, more diverse talent pool
• Increased productivity

At the same time, there are definite concerns to keep in mind:

• Weakened communication
• Decreased collaboration
• Lack of accountability

For example, it was due to worries about a lack of face-to-face collaboration opportunities which led to then-Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer ending the company’s telecommuting option in 2013. Only one week later, Best Buy ended its lauded Results Only Work Environment (ROWE) telecommuting program.

How to Manage a Team in the Field

Being able to effectively use remote workers and manage a team in the field is a necessary skill set. By employing the strategies below, you can have the benefits noted above while anticipating any issues which may also arise.

1. Recruit & Hire the Right People

A unique skillset and temperament is required to work remotely. GrooveHQ founder and CEO Alex Turnbull notes, “Most people don’t have the organization, focus, and motivation to be productive working remotely.”

In addition to these traits, there are other qualities to prioritize. Remote workers need to be:

• Results-oriented
• Able to prioritize
• Adaptable
• Collaborative

While the abilities above are desirable in all employees, their presence is necessary to an even greater degree in remote workers. Otherwise, you’ll be severely hampered from the outset when managing teams in the field.

2. Create an Online Knowledge Base

Advantages to having employees in the office include easy access to training materials and related business process documentation. In addition, these workers are exposed to the interpersonal dynamics of their team members, coworkers, and supervisors on a day-to-day basis. There is also the ongoing immersion in the company culture, vision, and values.

These benefits can be reduced or lost entirely when working remotely. That’s why research shows that creating a knowledge base is critical.

In the case of remote teams, this means that they will have training info, company procedures, product and service facts, and other human organizational information available with the click of a mouse or by accessing a smartphone app.

3. Communicate Effectively

Without the benefit of daily face-to-face interactions, effective communication strategies become even more important with remote teams. In particular, building rapport is critical both with and among team members. Until a team trusts and supports each other, you’ll only have a group of individuals working separately.

There is no one “right” way to do this. Instead, you must regularly employ a variety of communication strategies:

• Utilize both synchronous communication (such as Skype) and asynchronous communication (email).
• Make sure every message has a purpose.
• Respond quickly to messages.
• Have a live chat window open during the day.
• Create an online “watercooler” for off-topic conversations.

Finally, schedule a face-to-face meeting at least once a year. No matter how successfully people work together remotely, there’s nothing like being in the same room to build relationships, strategize, and collaborate on complex problems.

4. Evaluate & Analyze

Due to the isolation which can arise from working remotely, employees want and need more frequent evaluations to know exactly where their job performance stands. Of course, this also means that goals – both personal and company-wide – must be clearly articulated and agreed upon.

Direct communication and clarity is key: Nothing demoralizes an employee faster than a moving target for performance expectations.

In addition, when you have a new remote hire, immediately give them a small project to complete. Because you won’t have formal or informal interactions in the office, this trial project will generate answers to the following questions for an initial assessment:

• How well do they work unsupervised?
• What was the level of communication?
• How well were company systems and processes employed?
• What was the overall quality of work completed?

No employee – especially a new hire – should feel this information is being used punitively. Instead, helpfully identify those performance areas needing mitigation early on so they don’t become more serious issues later.

The Dispatch Software Solution

Businesses with well-developed field service operations have an established history of using remote teams. According to Salesforce.com, however, over 50% of these teams are still managed using manual processes. A robust dispatch software, like ServiceTitan, will allow these companies to leverage their existing strengths while also benefiting from the strategies above.

A dedicated short message system (SMS) will improve communications and promote collaboration. Enhanced analytics – such as the time to complete jobs by different technicians combined with resulting customer satisfaction scores – will best match employees to service calls.

These performance metrics will also increase the effectiveness of employee evaluations and help identify critical training needs.

Taking the First Step

Developing the skills and processes to manage a team in the field are not simple tasks. Even so, it’s a necessity as the use of remote workers and teams is steadily increasing.

Be proactive in addressing the evolving workplace, it will benefit your company and employees, and you’ll have the opportunity to stay ahead of the curve.

The post 4 Tips to Manage a Team Working Remotely appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

Emails are easy to create and provide a tremendous bang for your buck – its ROI is roughly double that of other digital marketing channels.

But with so many companies using email, it can sometimes be difficult for small or mid-sized businesses to compete with the big names on the block.

Tools to Help Your Emails Shine

Even if you don’t have the budget for a major CRMs like Hubspot, Marketo, or Pardot, there are plenty of other email tools available to you to create professional and impactful emails.

From complete email packages to other tools focusing on specific features, here are four that will help upgrade your email game:

1. MailChimp

MailChimp is one of the most popular email tools on the market today for email newsletters.

If you have less than 2,000 subscribers and send less than 12,000 emails each month, you can take advantage of the free plan, which gives you the ability to create email campaigns, landing pages, forms, and ads – among other things. Plus, you can set up email automation and run tests to optimize your templates.

In addition, the platform integrates with many other tools like WooCommerce, Excel spreadsheets and Square, helping to streamline your marketing efforts. If you’ve ever thought that excel was beyond you, this handy guide on how to remove blank or empty rows in excel should help.

2. SendHippo

SendHippo is another tool designed for your marketing campaigns. But unlike MailChimp, SendHippo gives you more control of your email design with an easy drag-and-drop functionality to build your template. This tool also offers the campaign management, automation, and tracking found in most email resources.

SendHippo has a free plan with gives you unlimited contacts and up to 300 emails a day.

3. Mixmax

Have you ever wondered if that client ever opened that personal email you sent?

Mixmax integrates directly into your Gmail and provides real-time updates when a recipient opens an email that you sent. Even if you send to a group, you can see which members read your message and when.

Mixmax is also a great time-saving tool for your team. Features like embedded surveys, pre-designed templates, task management, and the ability to dial your prospects directly from Gmail allow your team to do more in less time.

Mixmax starts at just $9 per month for each user and integrates with several services like Salesforce, Google Calendar, Dropbox and many others.

4. Email on Acid

Every email service provider will display your emails in different ways. For instance, an important photo or graphic might not show up in the inbox of your biggest client.

Email on Acid allows you to preview how your email will appear in more than 70 email clients and devices. When you see issues, the tool lets you make quick and easy adjustments to code to solve those problems – no HTML experience required!

Email on Acid starts at around $45 a month.

Bonus:

Omnisend

Omnisend is different from basic email automation tools. Omnisend uses an omnichannel approach – you can communicate with your customers via email, Facebook messenger, Web push notifications and even SMS. This tool offers smart segmentation across all channels, which allows you to create precisely targeted campaigns that send the right message to the right person at the right time, every time. And unlike Mailchimp, Omnisend provides 24/7 support with the possibility of a dedicated account manager. 

Connecting your ecommerce store with Omnisend is simple: you just need to install the plugin, and there’s no need for custom development.

Prices start from $10 per month.

Step Up Your Email Game

You don’t need deep pockets or even a wealth of design or development experience to improve your emails. Consider trying one of these four tools in 2019 and see how much more effective your emails can be.

The post Top 4 Tools to Upgrade Your Email Game in 2019 appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

If you’re unaware of how to balance multiple ad networks, there are ways to configure your ad stack to have the best impact on your revenue.

The way you should organize your stack is based on you – the publisher.

While some strategies may work for a ComScore 1000 publisher, a blogger with a smaller audience may require a different approach.

Organizing Your Ad Stack to Boost Your Revenue

Let’s take a look at four strategies to organize your ad stack to optimize your revenue no matter how big or small of a publisher you may be:

1.  Build Up Your Bid Density

Bid density is the number of partners bidding on an ad placement you have available. The goal is to get your bid density as high as possible to increase the demand for your advertisement inventory.

Partnering with multiple ad networks will make your inventory available to more buyers. When you have more buyers in the pool, the competition for your inventory increases.

As a result, buyers place higher bids to beat out their competition, which will in turn increase your CPM.

If you are currently working with AdSense alone, taking on more ad partners will help you create the competition you’re hoping to stir up and increase your bid density for optimal revenue.

2. Sort Ad Networks by CPM

When organizing your ad stack, take a look at the CPMs from each ad network and place your highest CPMs first. While most higher CPMs carry lower fill rates, arrange your ad stack with your highest CPMs first to take advantage of the higher payback.

Monetizing all of your page views may be your top priority, but your revenue will suffer in the long-run. Organizing your ad stack with your CPMs in mind will allow you to optimize your revenue, and you won’t have to sacrifice any page views in the process.

While adding new ad networks to your roster, you should maintain a Google Adsense account. Adsense is a great resource to find $1 CPMs with a 100% fill rate, and using these options to fill in the gaps will provide the guarantee you need to monetize your remaining page views.

Let’s say you have a $3 CPM at a 30% fill rate, a $2 CPM at a 40% fill rate, and a $1 CPM at a 100% fill rate. If you place your higher CPMs first, your $1 CPM will act as your insurance policy and monetize the remaining page views you left unfulfilled.

3. Arrange Multiple Fill Rates

Multiple ad networks increase your bid density and CPMs, but they also bring in a higher revenue based on the way you set up your fill rates.

A great way to optimize your ad revenue is by filling up your page views with differing fill rates (and differing CPMs). While these offers may have lower rates, sorting them together will bring in more capital.

Including multiple ad networks with varying fill rates and CPMs will exceed the amount of revenue you would bring in with online one ad partner filling 100% of the inventory. This is because they aren’t competing with another ad partner for the inventory. Set these different ad partners up in a waterfall scenario where each partner has a minimum CPM rate they can bid. If they don’t buy the inventory at or above that rate then the next ad partner is shown the inventory to purchase at or above a lower CPM rate. You usually will use a partner like AdSense or Media.net as the bottom ad partner since they will fill 100% of the inventory.

Rather than fulfilling your fill rate with one CPM, strategically fitting multiple ad networks together increases your revenue no matter how low your fill rates may be.

4. Offer Different Types of Impressions

When it comes to purchasing advertising inventory, some networks value certain types of impressions over others. In this case, using that to your advantage when organizing your ad stack will bring in more capital than you would expect.

Some ad partners may be after a video ad, while others are looking for mobile placements. It’s up to you to partner with multiple ad networks to avoid all of your buyers going after the same inventory, and provide several advertisement options to a wide variety of buyers.

How Do You Choose the Right Ad Partner?

The tips we provided to help you organize your ad stack for optimal revenue all include multiple ad partners and networks, but how do you know if you’re choosing the right ad partner?

Here’s a list of things you should consider before choosing which networks to work with:

• Do they have a solid list of advertisers?

While you’re trying to increase your revenue, it is important to always keep your audience as a top priority. When choosing ad partners/networks, be sure they have an impressive list of advertisers to buy your inventory.

It’s also imperative to choose advertisements that match your audience’s needs. Be sure to avoid placing invaluable or worthless information in front of them. That could lead them to find your site untrustworthy.

• Do they offer high CPMs?

When trying to increase your ad revenue, taking on higher CPMs will be the first step in the right direction. But there are some things to consider when looking into prospective ad networks.

We’ve discussed how using higher CPMs first in your ad stack organization will benefit your income. However, when you are looking for the right ad partner, the highest CPMs won’t always be the North Star to follow.

There will be times when the quality of the ad surpasses the CPM the buyer has to offer. It is up to you to decide if the quality is worth the risk. The amount of impressions quality ad content brings in can increase your revenue even if the ad comes with a lower CPM.

• Do they pay on time?

Choosing an ad partner that pays on time will save you tons of headaches – but since 2008’s economic crash, publishers have been dealing with a lot of late payments from advertisers.

When you’re trying to increase ad revenue, it is imperative to partner with an ad network that makes on-time payments. It would be beneficial for you to find out if your new ad networks are still managing their payments manually or if they’ve taken on new technology to handle their publisher payments.

Ad Stack Balancing Act

How you organize your ad stack is unique to who you are as a publisher. Whether you’re a small or large publisher, experimenting and playing around with different techniques will help you find out which strategies will best suit your advertising needs.

Using these tips that we’ve provided can get you started – and once you find where you fit, you’ll be able to organize your ad stack accordingly and watch your revenue come flying in.

The post 4 Ways to Organize Your Ad Stack for Optimal Revenue appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

It’s targeted and personal.

When it comes to a personal touch, there’s no easier method of consumer outreach than email. Modern software programs allow for corporations to tailor email campaigns to multiple groups, while still remaining on-brand. When recipients receive personalized email content, they feel as though they are appreciated.

This dynamic increases customer engagement, as well as the likelihood a customer will become a repeat shopper. With regard to consumer targeting, list segmentation takes it one step further. With list segmentation, clients can tailor every single aspect of a campaign and direct it towards multiple consumer-groups at the same time. Whether clients choose to target consumers based on demographics, age or even business size, list segmentation creates a symbiotic relationship between prospective customers and your business.

It’s cost-effective.

Instead of costly television commercials and internet ads – which rarely achieve tangible results – why not try a different approach by directly targeting your consumers with content delivered right to their inbox? Email-based marketing is not only the most effective, but also the fastest method of consumer outreach on the market. For every dollar spent on email marketing strategies, there is an astounding forty-dollar return on investment – talk about an intelligent business decision. While social media marketing comes with its own set of advantages, it relies on in-the-moment customer interaction. Customers will only find value in a post if they are sitting in front of their computer or smartphone at the precise moment you post. Email, on the other hand, has a much higher success-rate of customer engagement because it is delivered straight to their inbox to read at their convenience.

It has sheer audience volume.

Per recent studies, 3.9 billion individual email accounts exist worldwide. This number is expected to increase by an additional one billion accounts in the next year alone. With this number on the rise, doesn’t it stand to reason that vendors should factor email into their marketing strategies? Even if, for example, corporations reach only one percent of the total amount of viable email accounts, that’s still a whopping 39 million potential customers – the increased revenue potential alone is astounding. To take it one step further, combined active daily social media users, like Facebook or Twitter users, across the board amount to a mere fraction of the users who utilize email daily.

It promotes sales growth.

When it comes to the success of a business, the bottom line is that a business desires growth and increased sales year to year. That’s not a secret. How can email marketing campaigns drive new sales and foster trust with consumers? It’s simple: communication. Recent studies have shown that two-thirds of all repeat customers were convinced to return to a company because they felt valued and appreciated by the brand. This can be achieved in many ways, but the easiest solution is customer outreach through email. By using techniques like sending welcome messages, providing appointment reminders and offering exclusive content to new and repeat VIP subscribers, corporations are more successfully able to foster consumer relationships – while, hopefully turning a profit at the same time.

Email is an incredibly powerful tool – one that is more cost-effective than every marketing strategy on the market combined. It can grow your customer base, drive sales and, most importantly, improve cash flow for your business. Don’t make a costly mistake by leaving email out of your next marketing strategy.

The post 5 Reasons Not to Ignore Email in Your Marketing Strategy appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

By keeping up to date with shifting trends and focusing on enterprise-wide engagement methods from the start, you can better foster customer interaction.  This is a constant issue for marketing teams who are working to keep up with customer expectations when interacting with a brand online. Here are 5 ways marketing teams can improve engagement with visitors:

Humanize your Brand

Your website should include interactions via video, animation, and podcasts. Customers are increasingly attracted to video, and this is the perfect medium for storytelling.  But marketers are finding an even better response from branding constructed around a person or character. Customer engagement will bloom when you make your website more interactive, informative, and personal.

Customer Service

Consumers expect a seamless experience each and every time they interact with a business and are much more likely to engage in an online chat than call customer service on the phone. You can improve your existing customer service by adding a live customer service chat feature on your website.  This feature could make or break your customer’s buying experience.

Simply having live chat on your website isn’t enough to turn a visitor into a customer or a customer into a happy customer. Their live chat experience should be personalized and give them the answers they need in order to convert. This can be extremely challenging for teams since all live chat agents may not know the answers or have them readily available.

This is where automated workflows and support ticketing software solutions come into play. Platforms like Wrike integrate with support software like Zendesk to automate who receives which support tasks along with how they are resolved, as they move through internal processes like verification, QA, and ultimately deploying fixes.

Big Data

According to Forbes, companies utilizing data-driven marketing are six times more likely to report increased profitability, and five times more likely to improve customer retention. It is now easier than ever to purchase software that easily analyzes customer behaviors and trends.  Collecting this data is useful for strategizing and development, but it is also effective as content that can be presented to customers, perhaps in the form of an infographic.

Adaptive Delivery

Adaptive design can optimize user experience by simultaneously rendering pages based on device capability and established information of particular users.  A personalized approach to design can positively impact the functionality by determining the intent of your customer.  This option may be more advantageous for building engagement than a responsive design.

Chatbots and Social Support

Customer service needs to be instantaneous.  If your customers have to wait for a response, you may have already lost them.  Businesses have been turning towards social media for quick support, otherwise known as social support.  One step further is the use of chatbots.  Companies are increasingly finding this as an effective tool for creating personalized content and information delivered directly to consumer.

Your website is your connection to your consumer. Focus on creating a visually-appealing and relevant site that engages your customers, and creates an experience that leaves them satisfied and wanting more.

The post 5 Ways Marketing Teams Can Engage Website Visitors appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

Using the right tools is the secret to driving conversions that lead to sales. Use them well and you are bound to increase your social media ROI up to ten folds!

In this post, we will show how you can leverage email marketing tools like GetResponse and MailChimp to lift your social media to greater heights.

Add social icons and sharing buttons

A holistic digital marketing strategy requires you to reach your audience in every channel where they consume content. Just because a person subscribes to your email list doesn’t necessarily mean they follow your social channels.

To avoid this mistake, use your emails as a mechanism to attract subscribers to your social media channels. The first step is to place social media icons in prominent places in every email. Email marketing platforms like MailChimp and GetResponse make this easy using email template builders with pre integrated social media icons.

MailChimp has a click and drop Social Share Content Block that you can style in many different ways.

Similarly, GetResponse has drag and drop social sharing buttons that are highly customizable. Plus, you can also keep track of your Social Share Analytics from the dashboard.

Once you have social media sharing icons implemented in your email templates it’s time to attract subscribers to become followers. Offering subscribers exclusive content and deals only available to social media followers is a great way to convert them.

Create better Facebook Ads

Advertising budgets tend to be a point of contention among brands. How much should you spend? Who or what should you spend them on?

The answer to these questions is to target people who subscribed to your blog. And what better way to reach out to them than via Facebook Ads using Facebook Pixel?

GetResponse lets you integrate Facebook Pixel to your landing pages. Plus, its landing page builder is easy enough to use for you to create dazzling pages that will wow your visitors. So, tracking who your visitors are through Pixel on compelling pages are a potent mix to boost the performance of your Facebook Ads.

Meanwhile, MailChimp lets you sync your email list with your Facebook account so you can automatically show ads to your new subscribers without any hassle.

Promote a contest through automation

Both GetResponse and MailChimp have a slick autoresponder that lets you send a series of automated messages based on specific time intervals or a subscriber’s action responses.

Once you’ve created a contest on your social media pages, you can then go ahead and add it on all of your automatic “welcome” and “thank you” emails, or whenever you’re sending out discount coupons.

The main difference between the two tools is that GetResponse boasts a beautiful automation workflow where you can see all connected events and edit them quickly through its drag and drop functionality.

Always keep your social media followers updated

Always remember to push your email campaigns to your social media feeds.

Every time you publish a newsletter, GetResponse can instantly tweet and post on Facebook too. You can also edit the text that comes along with your link to make it even more personal.

MailChimp also lets you auto-post email campaigns on Facebook in one click.

Doing this lets nonsubscribers who follow you on social media have access to your newsletter and even helps convert followers into email subscribers.

Host and promote a webinar

Hosting webinars is a great way to generate business leads on all digital marketing channels.

MailChimp utilizes Zapier to connect your attendees using another tool called GoToWebinar easily.

On the other hand, GetResponse provides a complete webinar marketing solution. Aside from its advance integrations, it lets you host your webinar straight from your account, which you can then instantly share to major social platforms with just one click.

Choosing between the two tools depends on your business’s need and sophistication. MailChimp is a better fit for very small teams or individual bloggers due to its stripped-down, simple toolset. GetResponse is also very easy to use but comes with a much more robust suite of tools like email automation, social media analytics, webinars, landing pages and more. Whichever tool is right for your business, make sure you’re combining social media and email marketing strategies to vastly increase your ROI!

The post These Top Email Marketing Tools Can Boost Your Social Media ROI appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

Tap Data

Successful email campaign messaging is becoming increasingly data-driven. To reach a customer, a brand must know basic demographics about the buyer, like age and geographic location, but a brand must also know where that customer actually is in the buying journey. This comes from tapping and analyzing data about consumers like how often they visit your website, how much money they’ve already spent, how often they purchase items, what items they’ve looked at but perhaps not purchased yet, and more. Where are these customers when it comes to buying and how can you reach out with relevant messaging?

Email marketing platforms that integrate with other apps that can deliver this data are ideal for understanding customers on an individual level. With the right data, brands can deliver relevant content that results in higher sales.

Automate Campaigns

Email automation is the ultimate way to save time while growing your brand. Today, automation services are affordable and accessible to everyone. Many automation companies provide basic-level services for free. Some even allow you to preview paid options for a limited time.

Automation services do the heavy lifting for you – design, segmentation, personalization, and targeted mailings. This leaves you more time to spend on creating relevant content for your customers. Automated emails are more time-optimized, giving you control over not only who is receiving your messages, but also when they are receiving them. Timely, relevant messages lead to a higher level of engagement. Automation platforms also do the work of providing analytics to help you measure the effectiveness of your campaigns.

Personalize

Marketers who use personalization in their email campaigns have a 2.5 times higher click-through rate and generate 6 times as many sales from their campaigns. Personalization doesn’t have to be complicated though. Campaign Monitor reports that subscribers are 26 percent more likely to open an email with a personalized subject line than a generic message. Adding a touch of personalization can make all the difference in how successful an email is in sales conversion to use this tool wisely.

Implement Video

Consumers love video and with the improvement of streaming internet speeds in the developed world, its estimated that video content will account for 75 percent of all online traffic by 2020. It’s not enough to create a YouTube channel or vlog for your brand though; you must make the best use of those videos by incorporating them in your email marketing. Give consumers a chance to watch your brand in action – modeling or demonstrating a new product, saying “thank you,” or attending an industry trade show. Give consumers the opportunity to watch your brand, not just read about it. Be sure to connect your calls to action, too, between your video platforms and your email marketing.

Integrate Easy Payment Options

It’s still in the horizon when it comes to email marketing tech, but soon brands may be able to have consumers buy and pay for items inside their emails (without being redirected to a different site). Email providers like Google and Yahoo are already experimenting with this technology that will essentially reduce the steps to making a sale. For now, though, make sure people have a one-click option to pay for goods and services through an email marketing campaign.

Connect Social Media

Email can be even more powerful when used in conjunction with social media, so be sure to use the two in tandem. Within your email messages, be sure to remind subscribers about your active social media community. Explain the benefits of following your company, perhaps enticing readers with contests or exclusive discounts. Include social media share buttons in the body of your email message so readers can share with their own spheres of influence by just clicking a button. You can also use your social media platforms to encourage consumers to join your email list. Remind your followers of the special content or exclusive offers they receive as a subscriber. This two-tier approach can help keep your customers even more connected.

Though it’s decades old, email continues to be a powerful tool for marketers with a high return on investment. Organizing, automating, and personalizing your email marketing efforts can help your company make sure you are sending the right content to the right person at the right time.

The post The Most Overlooked Email Marketing Strategies of 2018 appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

Here are some ways that marketers can use different automation tools together to increase productivity.

1. Eliminating Time Spent Nurturing Unqualified Leads

Only a small portion of a marketing team’s time and resources are spent acquiring leads. Most of their resources are spent nurturing the leads they have earned. If those leads are poorly qualified, then the team will waste a lot of effort engaging with them.

Using different marketing automation tools enables you to segment your leads appropriately and make sure they are highly qualified. You can use one marketing automation software to handle the first stage of your marketing funnel to segment your targeting.

This makes it easier to split-test the performance of different categories of users. You can see that some users may convert very well, which means that you should invest more resources in your inbound strategy to reach them. According to Mark Thomson, an inbound marketing professional I spoke with, this can cut the time you spend on leads that don’t convert by 400% or more.

“Unqualified leads are one of the biggest time sinks any marketer needs to deal with,” Thomson said. “I have found that a combination of better understanding my target customers, employing better marketing automation tools, and training my marketing team to nurture leads dramatically improves the process.”

2. Improving Customer Retention

Depending on your industry, the cost of acquiring new customers is 7-20 times higher than the cost of retaining existing customers. Also, existing customers spend nearly 70% more than new customers. Marketing automation boosts your ROI by helping you improve customer retention.

How does marketing automation help? It allows you to track the behavior of your customers and segment them accordingly. You can change your social media marketing strategy on Hootsuite based on the responses your followers have had to the content you have shared. You can segment email subscribers based on their interactions with your content. You can even use dynamic content to personalize your messages for every follower.

By improving the experience of every follower, you will have an easier time converting them into paying customers. You will also squeeze more value out of every individual customer, which minimizes the time and resources spent on your lead generation strategy.

3. Managing Multiple Clients

Most marketing automation tools make it easier to manage multiple clients. You can segregate clients into separate groups in your dashboard. Beyond that, you can serve multiple clients at once based on similarities you’ve tracked across your different groups. Group management becomes extremely easy and flexible, all you would need to do is switch between different client panels in your dashboard.

4. Automate the Entire Funnel

When used in isolation, any marketing automation tool can improve productivity. HubSpot can help brands optimize their email marketing funnels, while Hootsuite or Buffer can streamline social media content management. Workforce management tools such as Outlook can expedite communication between members of the marketing team.

However, I have yet to find a marketing automation tool that can automate the entire funnel. If you want to create a fully automated process, you need to integrate at least two or three marketing automation tools into each funnel. You may need to use different marketing automation tools for different traffic sources.

Automation offers clear benefits. It can streamline processes, ensure your time is well-spent and not wasted on tedious tasks, and make you a more efficient, more effective marketer.

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