12 Key Steps to Successful Marketing

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1 12 Key Steps to Successful Marketing

2 Contents Introduction 3 Set Objectives 4 Have a plan, but be flexible 4 Build a good database 5 Should I buy data? 5 Personalise 6 Nail your subject line 6 Use buttons, not inline links 7 Calls to action 7 Make it easy to read 8 Educate, don t sell 9 Ok, sell a bit 9 Test, Test, Test 10 Summary 11 Glossary 12 About Digital Glue Key Steps to Successful Marketing 2

3 Introduction We are all aware of marketing; it comes in all manner of shapes and sizes and depending on a whole range of factors, you may either love it or hate it. If you re a shopaholic, then getting the latest deals is fantastic and if you re passionate about specific subjects, you can register for all manner of business s. On the flip side, constantly receiving s from companies you don t want to hear from, not being able to unsubscribe, and even too many s from a company we do like can be immensely frustrating. So when we re doing it for our own business, what should we be thinking about, and how do we go about creating marketing which works for us and is good for our customers as well? 12 Key Steps to Successful Marketing 3

4 Set objectives 1 2 Have a plan, but be flexible The most common issue with marketing campaigns is a lack of knowledge of what s being achieved. Where this always starts is definition of what the goals are. People will often say they have an open rate of xx% and a Click through Rate of xx%, but they can t tell you how many sales they generate from it or how many leads it creates, or how much website traffic it brings in. It can be easy to be distracted by some numbers which are in fact meaningless. Your campaigns could have worse open rates than another business, but if you have a large list and those that do open it buy from you, you may not be worried. Knowing from the outset what the objectives of the campaign are, and importantly, exactly how they will be measured, means you can judge success accurately and with metrics that mean something to your business. Once you ve got your objectives in place, and you know the metrics you re going to judge success on, you can then create a plan. How often will you communicate? What will the subjects of your communication be? What segments of your audience will you communicate to? A clear and detailed plan of exactly what will be happening and when, will help to ensure you deliver regular communications and well. At the same time, accept the fact that things will change, opportunities will arise, and you want to be agile enough to adapt and change the plan. If you need to do something different, promote a different product or service, or do an extra then you should. Create a plan, but make sure you re willing to adjust if that s the best thing. 12 Key Steps to Successful Marketing 4

5 Build a good database 3 4 Should I buy data? To be honest, however good your is, however well your subject line is created, and however you personalise your s, if your data is poor, then you re going to struggle. Very often a business will have an existing database, and you ll have something to work with, but it s sensible to know what you d like your database to look like. If you create an ideal scenario for your data, this shapes your data collection strategy and helps you to improve your existing data. Beyond people s names and addresses, you should be thinking about which specific products and services they are likely to be interested in so you can target specific s to them. The quality of purchased data is almost always awful! There may be some exceptions to this, such as industry exhibitions where you can acquire data, however purchasing bulk data is usually a very low return game. If you want to build a good database, consider running competitions, business card draws, asking people to sign up directly, creating content which people may be interested enough in to give you their address for There are a myriad of strategies, but in short, you want genuinely interested subscribers on your list as this will ensure you have a chance of engaging with them. In addition, knowing date of birth, and other personal details can allow you to take personal s to another level. Sending a message saying happy birthday can just be a nice touch, but could also be a way to drive business through a birthday promotion. 12 Key Steps to Successful Marketing 5

6 5 Personalise 6 Nail your subject line Research from Aberdeen suggests that personalised messages improve clickthrough rates by an average of 14% and conversions by 10%. In short, adding people s first name to an improves engagement with your . It s a small thing, but can make a big difference, and the key thing is building your database to allow this. Data from our chosen marketing tool, Campaign Monitor, also suggest that s with personalised subject lines are 26% more likely to be opened. You can take personalisation further of course, by tracking customer behaviors and building automation campaigns based on how they are engaging with your brand. But if you do nothing else adding people s names to the and personalising subject lines can make a significant difference. Getting people to open your is obviously key. Marketers obsess about open rates and different marketing tools produce reports on all sorts of factors which influence open rates, based on sector, time of day, day of the week and many more factors. It s worth checking out a couple of those reports. I m not that interested in you clicking through to them though, so I ll just use inline links to the Mailchimp and Campaign Monitor websites which discuss this. The truth is, the only way you can nail your subject line is by testing, and we ll get to that. However, there are a few things you probably want to avoid: The last thing you want is for your to be blocked in the Spam folder. Once this happens your is history and your results will be poor. Including words like free or offer is probably a good way of finding yourself in the spam folder quickly, as of course are some more obvious examples such as sex or viagra. The other thing which is a big no-no, is having a subject line which is nothing to do with the content of the , just to get an open. You might well get the open, but you ll soon get deleted or unsubscribed by most users, and there is nothing more important than your database. 12 Key Steps to Successful Marketing 6

7 7 Use buttons not inline links This one is so simple, it s staring us in the face, literally. I can tell you that adding a button rather than an inline link, increased click through rates on our client s campaigns by anything from 15-30%. It was that dramatic. It s a simple step, and makes it straightforward for readers to know what to press. Inline links are mistrusted because they are used by Google on some websites to take people to irrelevant sites, and quite simply they are less obvious. There s also no real excuse for it. You don t need to design a button (although you can). All good marketing tools will have a choice of button style you can choose from. They will let you choose how to style the button, the wording in the button, and the link destination. 8 Calls to action While I m on the use of inline links, if you still want to use them, then please avoid the other massive linking sin, the use of click here. A link, wherever it s placed, on your website or in an , is a good SEO indicator. [Click here] means nothing, Download your guide to marketing is clear and a good SEO reference. Have some! Put simply, you need to make it obvious what action you want your readers to take, and you need to make it easy for them to do it. If you re reviewing an , and you can t see a clear call to action, then you need to refine it until there is. This might sound obvious, but the links in your need to go through to content which is relevant to your . Nothing will get unsubscribes quicker than linking through to irrelevant content. 12 Key Steps to Successful Marketing 7

8 9 Make it Easy to Read, with a Balance between image and text Get your template designed! It doesn t have to be a work of art, but it needs to be easy to read, and have a good balance between text and images. You need to consider that your readers will have different ways of engaging with content, whether that s images, copy, video or all the above, having a clean and simple way for these elements to be included in your is important, and having a designer lay it out is very valuable. It will cost a bit extra, but will make such a difference to the way your company is perceived and how well read your is, that it s bound to be worth that difference in cost and time. 12 Key Steps to Successful Marketing 8

9 10 Educate don t sell (!) 11 OK sell a bit If you re a pure ecommerce provider, then sending through your offers may well be exactly what people are looking for and as we ll come to, there s definitely a place for this. But if you re promoting to other businesses, then using your to educate your customers is vital. It s important to keep people engaged. If you can use your to give away valuable expertise, then your audience are more likely to engage with your s on a regular basis. Additionally, educating your audience is a great policy. The more your potential customers know, the more you can help them. You can approach giving this content away in a couple of ways; you can either build this into the main body of the itself, or alternatively you can lead with the content and then direct people to your site. It s our experience that a balance here is best. Don t overload your with content, but do give enough to keep people interested. As discussed, one part of receiving s for some customers is to get offers and deals. If that s your audience, then get selling. If you re operating in a B2B environment, then you might be giving advice or tips as described above, or you may be promoting an event, but don t forget to include something your database can act on. Remind them of what you do and how you help your customers. In short, don t send an without having tried to sell. 12 Key Steps to Successful Marketing 9

10 12 Test, Test, Test You need to test your marketing campaigns to judge their effectiveness. Open rate and subject line are crucial within this. People are often put off testing by thinking that it delays the process of marketing to your customers. There s no need for it to. Use testing as part of your marketing. To illustrate, if you have a database of 1,000 customers and you have two subject lines you think could work, 1. Take 100 of your database and send them subject line Then take 100 more and send them subject line 2. Those 200 customers have still received your marketing, but now you will have a steer on which subject line will get you a better result with the rest of your audience. 3. So, you can then send the most efficient subject line to the remaining 800. You can even build in subject line testing by splitting the 200 on the first day between two subject lines, and then sending the remaining 4 days with the optimal subject line. You can then test time of day, by 1. Splitting Tuesday s by AM and PM sends. 2. Once you ve got a steer on AM and PM, you could then split Wednesday s sends by 10am and 11am or 2pm and 3pm. 3. By Wednesday of your first campaign, with a structured testing procedure, you could have established a subject line style, and a time of day, and by the end of the week, you will have a preferred day of the week. I d advocate doing the same test again for the second and third campaigns, and then you ll have a validated set of data which is unique to your business and database. 90% of your audience have received the best subject line and you ve learnt for next time. In addition, you can test sending days. Why not send to 200 people per working day of your 1,000 strong database and see which gets the best open rate. 12 Key Steps to Successful Marketing 10

11 Summary A good marketing campaign is made up of a wide number of things, and what makes it successful or otherwise can be any number of these things. By working through these steps methodically you can ensure that you have your marketing campaign in the best shape possible. If you need help delivering marketing campaigns which work, get in touch with the Digital Glue team: hello@digitalglue.eu 12 Key Steps to Successful Marketing 11

12 Basic Marketing Glossary Open Rate This is the number of people who open your . This is usually expressed as a percentage. Definition of what a good open rate is will vary between list size, sector and even where the list has come from. It is important to understand that the open rate is not a 100% accurate measure. Recording an open can only happen if the reader s client can display HTML with images, and that option is turned on. Another issue is that your readers may have a preview pane in their client. That preview pane might be displaying your automatically (and therefore downloading the images) without the reader ever having to click on it or read it. Subject line This is the subject which will appear in your recipients client. Bounce Rate This is the number of s which couldn t be delivered. Again usually expressed as a percentage. These are often divided by soft bounces i.e. a recipient is on holiday, or a hard bounce where no recipient was found. Segmentation This is dividing your database into different segments or interests. This could be based on demographics such as age or location, or the kind of products or service they are interested in. So, you should never take your open rate as a hard and fast number, because you can never know the true figure. It is much better used as general guide, and as a way of measuring the trends on your campaigns. Unsubscribe This is when a user asks to no longer receive your marketing. When this starts to get a high number, you know you either have bad data or are doing something wrong. Click through Rate This is the number of people who have clicked a link on your . This is usually expressed as a percentage, based upon the number of people who have opened the vs. the number of clicks. 12 Key Steps to Successful Marketing 12

13 About Digital Glue Digital Glue is an independent marketing and design agency founded in We provide a range of marketing services including marketing, website design, social media, branding, print design, public relations, and much more. Digital Glue s clients cross a range of industries; from web & print design for small charities and public relations for large app developers, to marketing management for local restaurants and social media marketing for nationwide printers. Digital Glue are guided by our values so much so, we made them part of our office. About the Author Javan is the Founder and Managing Director of Digital Glue, having started the business in 2013 after almost 12 years of experience in marketing and PR roles. As an experienced marketing professional, Javan believes that the best form of marketing is the one that works for your business. Javan s philosophy to successful marketing starts with listening first, and seeking to understand the strengths, weaknesses, objectives, and goals of the businesses he works with. Javan has been delivering marketing for nearly ten years, starting by delivering marketing for an ecommerce business. This expertise has transfered to B2B and B2C environments and Javan now helps and advises clients on marketing best practice and campaigns. Get in touch hello@digitalglue.eu Pop in for a biscuit S2 The Arch, Floodgate Street Birmingham, B5 5SL 12 Key Steps to Successful Marketing 13