Presentations to Greater Victoria and Salt Spring Island Chambers of Commerce to celebrate Small Business Week 2013. The presentation illustrates the value of email marketing and social med. Highlights how understanding your audience and using multiple platforms to connect can grow your business.
This session is about how you can use email marketing and social media to grow your business or organization.
Ask who has current social media or email marketing accounts/campaignsAsk everyone to introduce themselves and what one thing they would like to leave today with
various platforms
Look at this stat, just out recently – there are about 6 billion people on the planet and 4.8 billion have a mobile device, A cell phone. [CLICK] only 4.2 billion have a toothbrush. Think about that for a second. Make sure you have a website that is responsive - [multi-platform friendlyMarketing is mobile-friendly. We know that approximately 38% of people read their email and social media interactions on mobile phonesYou don’t want those people to miss your message or to have difficulty “getting” the message. So watch for this icon throughout the presentation today as we’ll try to keep mobile top-of-mindAs we go through the strategies and tactics for getting more out of your marketing efforts.Mobile stat from: research from:email open by platform: https://litmus.com/blog/email-client-market-share-stats-infographic-june-2012
Marketing has changedThe numbers game (or spray and pray) Look at this model – it a typical sales funnel, using traditional marketing methods, things like print ads, radio, television, direct mail. This model is all about your reach – reaching out to FIND new customers. it’s bigger at the top, which is where you spend alot your time, your money and your energy in this model. And…it makes sense. You reach out to as many people as you can, convert a certain percentage into paying customers and keep even fewer of those people – mainly because so much of your time, money and energy went into the reach. It’s a standard, sales, numbers game and it makes sense. We are all familiar with this model – the problem with this traditional funnel is that it’s expensive – those ads cost a lot of money and it’s hard for a small company or organization to compete in this landscape. So let’s look at what new marketing tools have done to the funnel – when you begin to use new marketing tools,Like email marketing and facebook, linked in, twitter, events, surveys, etc… you reach to people you already know.On the left, the funnel, it’s all about reaching out to strangers. New marketing is about reaching out to peopleThat already know you… you reach out, on a regular basis, with information and offers that are relevant to yourContacts and it turns out that if you do it right – and after today’s session, you should have a pretty good idea about how to do this – you will actually begin to convert more people than you are reaching to, because of the forward button and social share links. this is called flipping the funnel. And it’s a fundamental change in the way small business owners think about their marketing – but it works. We see it working every day.
Let’s talk about referral business a minute. Word-of-mouth is all about engagement. It used to be, when we had a good or a bad experience with a company we might tell a friend, or a neighbor [click] maybe over the back fenceBut in our changing world, now, when you tell someone – you’re very often telling them on facebook or linkedinor twitterAnd many many more people are hearing about our experiences. And if it’s a good experience, they are clicking to learn more about the company that delivered. Or if a bad one, deleting the one being trashed.
You have an advantage because you can be the face of the company, the person people associate with that business or organization. You can be your authentic self. Best Buy cannot do that. Pepsi cannot do that. Today we’re going to talk about some of the ways you can leverage this advantage and also take some of the mystery out of online marketing strategies and how email and social media can help you grow your business.
Your new best friends are the forward button on your emails, the share and retweet buttons on social mediaand [click to build] the social share bar . If you were to scroll to the bottom of this email you’d also see [click to build]buttons inviting readers to follow the business on three different social media channels.Let’s look closer at this example. It looks good, nice layout, graphics, etc…Is marketing simply looking good? Having a pretty email?No, clearly there’s more to it…you want to look good, but colors and pictures and branding alone aren’t what make it “marketing.”[click to next slide]
I want to give you a simple definition, or a framework, for what marketing really is.You already know, generally, what it is – but when I say the word marketing, I mean something very very specific and it’s important that we are on the same page with real marketing.marketing has three simple parts –you define an audience, so a group of people that you want to target or connect with. You reach out to them with a message that is specific to that audience, something that they care about. And you elicit a physical and measurable response. A click, a reply, a call, a purchase, a referral – these are all actions that represent a decision made by a human to react to your message. So let’s put this in a framework that we can work with. Steps to follow to know that you are really marketing.
And, as it happens, this simple framework will also serve as our agenda for the rest of the session. We will go through these steps and you’ll put down some ideas for your own marketing initiatives that fit into this framework.
Marketing “GOALS” are something that we all have, and they are fairly standard across the board for all businesses or nonprofit organizations because you’re in business to do something, and at the highest level that’s what these are.Another way to think about these is that they are the “30,000 foot view” of marketing…very much part of your marketing strategy. But what we’re here to do today is come down a bit, and get more specific. [click to next slide]
What is really more helpful when you’re planning your marketing is to think in terms of OBJECTIVES,which will require you to get much more specific. Look at some examples of objectives you want to set for a specific marketing effort…Make them realistic and attainable – attach numbers and times – draw a picture of success
You may be able to juggle more than one of objectiveat a time, but for today’s session let’s focus and choose just one…for the exercises we may have time forWorking with a one objective at a time can make it easier to ensure that you’re getting the most out of the steps we’re going to be outlining later as we discuss campaigns and channels. It also makes it easier for the people you’re targeting to take action and help you realize the results you want. [click to next slide]
Here is an example of a BC based company with a set of clear objectivesOpen for since 1992 Island Natural MarketOver the last two decades, grown to become the largest health food store and supplier of organic food and products in Nanaimo, British ColumbiaNadia – she saw great results with the monthly newsletter and decided to leverage that with social media campaigns. The Facebook contest was a hit and she took it to the next level by turning fans into customers with a special coupon campaign.Her goal was to leverage social media to drive customers to her store. Then she specified with objectives – what she wanted to achieve and the tactical steps she took (contests and coupons) to do that
Alright…grab your workbook, and let’s put together another piece of the puzzle[click to build] first, write down at least one objective[click to build] Next, answer the three questions that help you make sure it’s a “good” objective…Will achieving this objective help my business grow?Is this objective attainable?How will I measure it or my progress towards it?Ask attendees to explain their objective – discuss and help focus
So we’ve gone over goals and objectives, you know what you are trying to achieve – so let’s talk about step number 2Run Campaigns on the channels that matter
First, let’s talk about “campaigns” - -what does that word really mean? You have a goal – objectives – your campaign is the plan to achieve those goals and succeedHow? By building Trust? How do you build trust? With useful content.Very simply there are two parts to a campaign…first, you [click to build] push out some sort of content (and we’ll talk more about “what content” in a bit) to your followers, supporters, etc.second, you hope to [click to build] have some sort of response from them – you want them to read, forward or share what you sent, show up, call, attend – you want them to take an action of some sortThink of your campaign as a conversation – which lends itself to that advantage we talked about that you have over big business. As a small company, you can engage in a conversation that feels like nurturing a relationship.Let’s look at some examples of campaign types to help you get a better idea…[click to next slide]
There are a lot of different types of campaigns you can run…here are just a few of the more common ones:[click to build] the “Welcome” campaign – this is actually very important…welcoming those people who are new to your list or organization…Don’t forget, you can also send “campaigns” that are as simple as a “Thank You for your business” or “Happy New Year.” Sometimes those will get you the greatest level of engagement.There aren’t really any surprises here, I know that you are aware of these types of campaigns, but it canBe helpful to have them listed in front of you while you are planning your own marketing for a freshApproach or maybe adding a piece to an already engaged marketing plan. So let’s go a little deeper intothe basics of “how” – you may have a campaign in mind but sitting in front of a blank page can be intimidatingor – a great excuse to procrastinate … [click to next slide]
CONTENT is King! Provide meaningful information, entertainment or insights80 /20 RULE 80 % should be informative content 20% can be directly related to your business
Don’t use too much textLess is more. Always.There is no rule that says your newsletter needs to have three articles, three pictures and three links. One thing is plenty. There is a Constant Contact customer whose newsletter is called One Thing – he did it to make it easy on himself and it works really well – people can absorb it and he’s not under the gun to come up with a bunch of content to fill it.[click] and don’t forget that almost 40% are reading it on a mobile device…who is going to scroll through fourteen articles?{additional talking points if you have time]Your emails and their social media activities are NOT for telling people everything that they do. That is part of the hole people dig for themselves when they start writing their emails, they try to say everything. That is not what your emails and social media posts are for. That’s what your website is for. Your emails and your social media is about offering one thing at a time and tracking whether or not it moved the needle. Plain and simple.
Pictures are becoming more and more relevant in social and email marketing – so many of us are walking around with a camera in our pockets – this doesn’t have to mean high end production anymore. Ask who is using Pinterest right now.If you have highly visual content or great photos of products or your events or whatever you are marketing, use channels geared more toward photos and video. Some of those include Instagram, pinterest, you tube – many consumers are beginning to shop and play on these channels so it may be worth a look to test whether or not what you are marketing would work well on these channels.Instagram is a great storytelling medium – people share pictures of themselves or a product in a context – not just a train, but their son having fun watching trains at the National Heritage Museum. One key here is - KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE – if you own a business that can show off product visually, you can do more with a headline and a photo than the most carefully crafted copy. And if you’re a consultant or service provider? Share your know how. Write a blog post about what you know how to do, pick an image that reinforces it, and pin it, post it, tweet it. Constant Contact did a test with Facebook promotions of webinars and found that when they used an image rather than just s text, they saw a 127% lift in engagement with those posts. It’s worth a try.AND BE SURE TO LINK BACK TO YOUR WEB PAGE OR FACEBOOK PAGE…WHEREVER YOU WANT THEM TO KEEP ENGAGING WITH YOU!!
Here are some interesting stats that help illustrate the value of a picture -- According to Facebook, a post that includes a video sees 100% more engagement than a post alone. A post with a picture sees 120% more engagement AND – if you include a whole photo album, you can expect 180% more engagement.Pay attention when Facebook mentions changes to their algorithm…and be aware of whether or not you can make adjustments to your approach to optimize the visibility and engagement of your posts.
Channels include email, social media sites like those represented here, if you want to go into a more traditional area, you might consider radio, tv or print ads, direct mail. If cost is an issue, you’ll get more return on your time, money and energy by going first through email and then social media like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. Each has its own typical audience and decision process. You want to start where you already are, and then begin to move to where your customers and contacts are so that you can leverage the existing network you have on those sites and begin to generate some social visibility along the way.To be clear, email IS part of social media.
When you combine email with social media, the combination will both increase the reach of your email campaigns that enjoy 97% deliverability (it’s actually a even higher with Constant Contact but on average that is a standard rate). And if you’re doing it right, keeping it short, making the action or response obvious and simple and providing access, information and real value then you will grow your business.
Let’s do another planning exercise. Think about the types of campaigns we talked about, and the offers and channels we went over. First, write down what kind of campaign you want to try. Write down what kind of offer you might make and then consider which channel make sense for that kind of campaign and offer.[give this about 3-5 minutes]If you have time, ask a few people to share their ideas and get feedback from the groupDo you all have at least a couple of ideas written down? Great! Now, let’s talk about…[click to next slide]
Now that you have a general idea of what you’re going to try, I want to give you some insight into what works, how to get more people to stop and consider your offer and how to get more physical, measurable response. Look at these three words. These three words rule your world as a marketer and as a consumer or business person. Every email or social media post that you get and every one that you send or post falls into one of these three categories. Now. Later. Or Never.Think about this morning when you checked your email. Whether you were aware of it or not, you were sorting your messages into these three categories automatically. Now, later, never.And I apologize now for bringing this to your attention and making it a conscious experience for you now. For the next two or three days, when you go through your email, you will find yourself saying it out loud, “now, later, later, never, never, never” and you’ll want to curse me for making something that was seamless now very obvious to you. It will go away. But it’s important that you know that – you need to know this both as a recipient and as a sender or poster. How do you make sure that you are a now? You don’t want to be never – obviously. And a later, let’s face it, is a well-intentioned never. Right? You flag it or tell yourself, “oh, I’ll come back to that” but 9 times out of 10…do you? (they will usually laugh and say no)There are three fundamental things that factor into whether someone notices and reacts to your campaigns:Who, subject and timing
So how do you win the battle of priorities and get more people to stop and open your email or to stop and read your facebook post or your tweet or to share your pin on pinterest? Turns out, who the message or offer is from is extremely important. Think about how you sort your email – or if you’re on facebook, think about the newsfeed. Typically when you open up your email – think about it this morning – you start at the top of the list and you go down, sorting by who it’s from.WHO the email or the social media post came from turns out to be the most important part of winning the battle of priorities. You do it based on WHO, so it’s important for you to [click to build] be recognizable…– and whether you’re recognized across the channels you’re using. If you send your emails using your name, but your Facebook page shows up in people’s newsfeeds as your business name, people might not make the connection. We do know that with email, and very often with other social media sites, more people will react to a person’s name than to a business name. Just be sure that you’re consistent with the name you use – and ensure that it’s the one that you’ll be recognized by, so that ultimately your readers and followers will stop and open your email, read your posts – because they know they’re going to get something of value and relevance from you. This is another place where your advantage as a small company kicks in – you can be the face or the name of the company. Now, there are some important considerations that shouldn’t be overlooked, and they relate to something called the [click to build] “CAN-SPAM” act…which is a law that sets the rules for commercial email, establishes requirements for commercial messages, gives recipients the right to have you stop emailing them, and spells out tough penalties for violations. The law makes no exception for business-to-business email. That means all email – for example, a message to former customers announcing a new product line – must comply with the law.One provision of CAN-SPAM is that the “from,” “to,” and “reply to,” names “must be accurate and identify the person or business who initiated the message.” Therefore if I signed up for an email from Joe Pizza the from address should be “Joe Pizza” and not “Joe Smith.”That said, using a combination of your name and your company name will solve this issue in many cases. Use your name in the from name on your emails, and include a comma with your company name there as well.
Simple way to assess your email or post.It’s called the 2-2-2 principle.1. You have 2 seconds typically to compel them to pay attention.2. Those first two words of your subject line or headline. That’s really all they read before making a decision.And not a decision about whether to read your message, but as to whether or not they will bother to read the rest of the subject line. 3. Why does this email or message matter today? Today – that’s the third two. If you can answer that question in your subject line or headline, as close to the first two words as possible, more people will stop and at least open your message.If you can – communicate the urgency – 6 seats left, 4 packages remaining…etcIt’s important to point out that you don’t need to go to the “urgency well” all the time, meaning you don’t always have to put a time stamp on it or Say things like “today only” or “by close of business” or like that. It’s more about making it very clear to people that your message is relevant and timely in order to win that now, later or never battle.
Now let’s take a few minutes to try the 222 principle. Use the space provided in your workbook to write down subject lines or headlines for your next campaign.Share headlines
The last piece in winning the battle of priorities is timing - When to send is another very common question. Both for how often to send and also when in terms of the time of day and the day of the week. For social media, we recommend a baseline frequency of at least 3-5 times a weekly. It’s what they used to tell us for exercise. There are tools and guidelines for what times have the highest traffic and most response but it really depends on your industry, your audience and what you are trying to get them to do.For email marketing frequency, monthly is the most common but it’s also a good idea to add unexpected messages every once in a while
To determine the best day of the week and time of day for you to send your emails, you can do an ABC test.It’s a simple method to narrow down when you get the best response and then you can adjust accordingly.First, take your list of contacts and divide it into three equal lists. So just take the whole list and break it into thirds.Next, choose three days of the week that you want to test. So – mon, wed, fri? or maybe tues, thurs, sat.(if you’re a B2B you’ll likely want to send during “regular” business hours, but know your audience in case that doesn’t hold true. For all others, it’s all up for testing)So you have three lists, and you want to test on three different days of the week.So you send your email – the same email – to each of your lists. The first group on Monday, the second group gets it Wednesday,And the 3rd group gets it on Friday. And then you measure your results. You can do this as long as you are Using an email marketing service. They tell you who opened, who clicked, what they clicked on, how many times and when.So you look at the stats and you will know which day was best of the three you tested. Now you’re ready for the second part of the process.
Use the same three groups of people and now you will choose three different times of day you want to test.So, a morning, midday and afternoon or evening. The next time you are ready to send out an email,Send it on your best performing day from the last test. Send the first group their email in the morning,The second group gets it midday and the third group gets it in the afternoon or evening. And look at your stats. You will know which time of day did the best. So now you will know the best day and the best time of that day to send your emails for the best response. Please make sure you are not romanced by a high open rate. Just measuring the open rate will notGive you a clear picture of success. You might have a lot of people open it but very few take theAction you want them to take. Measure the physical, measurable responses
So now you have the best day on which to send and the best time at which to send. Excellent!! But let me caution you… DO NOT BE ROMANCED BY A HIGHOPEN RATE – MEASURE ACTIONS!You can get a huge open rate but without actions, it’s not help to your business.
On to step 3 – we’ve set our goals and objectives, we’re ready to run campaigns on the channels that matter and now is the most important piece – get measurable results.
We finally come back to what got us started…this idea that marketing, at its core, is about eliciting a physical and measurable RESPONSE. You want someone to do something…call you, come to your store, donate, Like your Facebook page, etc. We discussed just discussed the different ACTIONS that you want your reader, follower, member to take.As you look back through what we’ve done today, you’ll see that we started by understanding this point first, and throughout the process of building out your plan we were never far away from the idea that the more specific you were with your thinking and the more focused you were on that end result the better able you’d be to evaluate the success of your efforts.
Just to be very clear – physical, measurable results look like this. They are human responses
Email is hard to beat for real marketing value. And it’s very much a part of social media. Email is how you can monetize your social media activities. And it still has the highest delivery and response, much higher than social media.In addition to the actual email, there are a number of tools you can use to expand the reach of your emails and help you build your lists for the future.
Local business exampleThe Wine Station is a wine shop that doesn’t sell anything online. That means that it’s important to bring customers into the store with email marketing, both for events and sales.Template: Restaurant Family-FriendlyResults: A single email drove 400 customers to the store for an event on a day that usually sees about 40 customers
Sharing tools expand your reach… this is an example of Constant Contact’s simple share toolMakes it easy to push your email campaigns, events, surveys and offers out on multiple channels with a few clicks.
Don’t forget to make it easy for people to join your list…there are three simple tools to help with that.First, in person you can invite people to join your list with a sign up card, a notice on receipts, you can just ask at the register – If you present or perform – add a line to your evaluation forms asking people to check if they want to be added
This does not have to be hard or time consuming. Automate where you can. These are three tools that I useTo manage my own social media – NutshellMail is a free tool from constant contact that allows you to monitor social media and sends you an email everyday, at the time of your choosing, that tells you everything anyone said to you, around you, about you, all in once place. My favorite part about it is that the email is actionable – meaning that if I see that someone invited me to an event or to be friends, I can click to respond or reply in that email and do it without having to log in to Facebook or linked in or whatever the message came from. It’s a time saver.Hootsuite is a scheduling tool – it’s free, unless you want to pay for some premium services, but I schedule out my week’s worth of social media posts and Hootsuitemanages the postings and also tracks what happened – so I can see what worked and what didn’t… and Google Alerts is a great tool, though I’ve heard a rumor that it might go away – but with a google alert – also free, you can set up alerts for anything – keywords, phrases, and get an email alert if that phrase shows up on a website that is listed on Google – so I have alerts for my name, my company name – my name misspelled – and if someone posts online about me – maybe that I’m speaking at their event, and they happen to misspell my name, google alerts shows me. [click to next slide]
I want to leave you with this final point – you can absolutely do this. It’s not a mystery – you have an advantage. Be exactly who you are. Here are some examples but three quick final tips on this Write in conversational copy, just means you write the way you speak, not the way you might write a brochure – let your personality come through.Use pictures of people/animals, we respond to other people and to animals – maybe it’s the eyes, but it’s measurable and this is the essence of engagement. Pull back the curtains now & then, tell your followers or friends something about you.Or your staff. Nothing overly personal – but maybe you’re going to run in a 5K for a charity thatMatters to you, tell us why it matters to you. Maybe you’re also a musician and are going to play a local festival, mention it – you’ll be surprised by how many of your customers are also musicians or are going to that festival – these are the human connections that matter. We can use the word interactive to talk about ATM machines, self-check in at the airport and video games but real interaction is me-to-you, you-to-me interaction. Between people. Practice being human, being authentic, being you in your online marketing and watch your business grow. And you might have some fun with it too.Write in conversational copy. That just means that you write the way that you speak,Not the way you would write a brochure or website articles.