email

Prospecting with Email Marketing

Leave a Comment / Featured, Marketing, Sales, Uncategorized / By / / , , , , , , ,

Email is 40 times more effective at getting new customers than Facebook and Twitter combined. — McKinsey. We do a ton of email marketing for clients and Red Barn – some of it is thought leadership focused like my Thursday morning Tribe Mail. (sign up here), but much of it is done primarily for prospecting.

So how do we get consistent above average open rates and click through rates AND conversion with our email marketing?Consistency, Great Content, and yep – a lot of trial and error with subject lines.

Consistency. They don’t call them “Drip Email Campaigns” because you just do it once. Effective email campaigns do just that – drip like a leaky faucet until someone takes notice and takes action. AHA moment – you immediately thought annoying leaky faucet. But think deeper – most sales people give up after 1 or 2 connections yet people don’t take action until after 10-12 touch points.

For thought leadership emails, I’m a fan of weekly. Same time, same place. No visuals – just great content that spurs thinking. It’s all about building your personal brand and connecting it with your company brand. Having people see you in a different light – you know, showing off your secret sauce.

For Drip Campaigns, you need multiple touches weekly and they run over several MONTHS. Visuals happen when they take action – so going to a landing page or your website, otherwise I keep them text only. WHY? One word: mobile.

Content.  Once someone clicks on your email – you need to give your prospect something valuable to read!  Remember people buy from people they KNOW, LIKE and TRUST – in that order.  So, if you are prospecting to a cold list – don’t go in for the kill immediately.  Let them get to know you and like you first – this can happen all in one email or it can get built up over time.  Why should someone take the time to know you or even like you?

I’m a fan of giving something to get something.  Offer a free download, give them some “tool” for free or some free insight into what you offer.  Again – you need to build up to the Trust phase before they will buy.  Toss in some testimonials, send them back to read a blog you’ve written.  Give them something valuable.

Subject lines. Depending on what stats you look at – up to 50% of people will decide to open or not open an email based on the subject line. More daunting, subject lines can also toss you in a SPAM folder depending on what you write and to whom you are sending it to! In the end – it takes some A/B testing depending on your Target Client Profile. Here are some quick stats from our friends at Hubspot:

  • Emails that contain the word \”you\” in the subject line are opened 5% less often than those without.
  • Emails that contain the word \”tomorrow\” in the subject line are opened 10% more often than those without.
  • Emails with subject lines containing 30 or fewer characters have the best open rates.
  • Emails with personalized subject lines are more than 20% more likely to get opened.
  • Emails with the word “Meeting” in the subject line were opened 7% less than those without.
  • Emails with the word “Newsletter” in the subject line had a 18.7% lower open rate than those with out
  • Use the word “Alert” – and see 61.8% higher open rate
  • The top 5 subject lines in recent studies all included “Re:”

Of course, these are some general observations – you need to try and see what works for you!

Email marketing works.

Prospecting with Email Marketing Read More »

Is Blogging Dead?

Leave a Comment / Marketing, Must Read Blogs, Uncategorized / By / / , , , , , , ,

Um…NO! I’ve gotten a bunch of push back lately from people who are telling me that the days of weekly, daily, or monthly blog posts are over.

Why the questioning? Big reduction in comments on website blogs and the fact that we are inundated with content 24/7 and people just aren’t taking the time to read everything. All true.

So why continue writing weekly blog posts?

Blogs are still very important and people ARE still reading and commenting, but they are doing so via social media and email. Followers may NOT read every blog, but they are reading blogs that are relevant to them at that point in time. Blogs also help SEO on your website – in a huge way.

Here’s the process that I follow:

  • We create an editorial calendar for the year outlining what we are going to talk about based on our marketing/sales/business growth strategies
  • We create content in the form of blogs, whitepapers, articles and emails.
  • We share our blogs via our social channels, site in articles and white papers, and sometimes we share via email.
  • People tend to comment on social channels – especially LinkedIn and Twitter.
  • If we get high engagement – we may consider boosting posts to get further reach and engagement.
  • We watch the analytics to see what’s hot – and consider writing more content or expanding on those topics.

Frequency – why weekly? Because people ARE inundated with tons of content daily and if you miss them one week, you can catch them the next. If you are only pushing out new content every couple of months and you miss them – well, do the math.

Keep writing, keep posting! Trust us, blogs are alive and doing just fine if they are well written and relevant to your audience.

Do you write a blog now? Share it with us – we always love reading great stuff!

Happy writing

Is Blogging Dead? Read More »

Want to increase your commercial banking sales?

Leave a Comment / Marketing, Sales, Uncategorized / By / / , , , , , , , , ,

It’s easy to overlook the humble email. When you’re serving your commercial banking customers, that doesn’t leave much time. So, there it sits, one line in your inbox. In the flurry of new ways of marketing — Social media, viral content, video, interactive entertainment, the email seems like an “also ran.” That’s a shame, as we’re big fans of its simple beauty (and you should be, too).

Used well, email is an elegant way to market to large numbers of people. If you’re providing financial services, it’s also a fantastic method for building trust with your commercial banking customers. Here at RBC, we think the email is something to be celebrated and enjoyed, so let’s explore using it to market your commercial banking operation.

Why the email is more than just something to delete… So, why do we love the email so very, very much? Glad you asked.

It’s a low-impact way to get attention. The email is one of the more innocuous ways to grab attention, and it can be one of the most useful. You only need to craft a great email once (and hey, we can help with that). Then you can land this wondrous creation in people’s inboxes and enjoy the responses it brings. Email is less “in your face” than other types of promotion or advertising, so it’s perfectly suited to commercial banking, with its sensible and sober approach to managing money.

You can share really useful stuff that matters to people. Emails aren’t all about selling. In fact, if you make them too “salesy,” there’s a good chance they’ll get caught in a spam filter or simply deleted. No, the art of the great email is to build trust over time, and you do that by adding real value.

When you’re marketing to commercial banking customers, they need information and support. Give them insights into their industry, provide financial calculators and favorable terms. Share advice on good financial management and business admin. Providing tools and other useful services means they’ll think favorably of your bank. That really helps when it comes to trust and brand recognition.

Emails are great for embedding messages and links. A good email is never “just” an email. It likely contains engaging imagery and links to further useful information. You can make emails interactive and fun, provide access to your commercial banking products and services, share news and online information, and showcase everything your bank does.

They’re really (really) cheap to send. The cost of sending an email is, effectively, zero. This makes them one of the most cost-effective marketing channels. Yes, you’ll need to pay to develop really good email copy, but that’s likely to be much less than the cost of other types of marketing. And once that copy is created, it’s there for you, whenever you want to run your next commercial banking marketing campaign.

You can reach lots of people. When you’ve been building an email list over time (and you are building an email list, right?) you’ll have thousands of people you can contact. With clever mail merging and personalization, you can tailor your email to each individual business recipient, increasing the chance they’ll open and interact with it.

Now, we know the email isn’t perfect. People get far too many emails, so yours needs to stand out, and that means influencing your readers to open your messages. We can help with that — A combination of the right content, delivered at the perfect time, with a compelling subject line can significantly enhance your open rates and help you sell more commercial banking products.

Get in touch with us today, and let us start a quiet revolution in your bank. We’ll change how you think about and use email to spread the word.

Want to increase your commercial banking sales? Read More »

You Might Need a Digital Detox

Leave a Comment / Culture, Fun Stuff / By / / , , , , , ,

Would you rather clean your toilet than your email inbox? Do you find yourself checking your cellphone when it’s not ringing? Does a walk on the beach do little to relieve your work stress?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you might be in need of a digital detox. But don’t try to tame the technology beast alone.

Sign up for a weekend at Camp Grounded in Anderson Valley, California,“where grown-ups go to unplug, getaway and be kids again.”

The camp, which gained national attention last year, invites campers to trade in their technology——- that means cellphones, computers, tablets, clocks, and live off the grid for a weekend in the woods.

Activities offered at the camp include meditation, swimming, a talent show, and archery. Corporate teams are encouraged.[/x_custom_headline][cs_text]It sounds extreme, but some of us just can’t unplug.

Consider some of the statistics Camp Grounded complied in its digital Camp Grounded manifesto.

  • Sixty one percent admit to being addicted to the internet and their devices.
  • The average American dedicates 30 percent of leisure time on the web.
  • Fifty percent of people prefer to communicate digitally than in person.
  • Sixty seven percent of cellphone users check their device even when it’s not ringing or vibrating.
  • Heavy internet users are 2.5 time more likely to be depressed.
  • The average employee spends 2 hours a day recovering from distractions.

If sneaking out at night at Camp Grounded—- which is actually encouraged—- to gaze up at the stars is not your style, Conde Nast Traveler offers several more luxurious vacation options to un plug.

From a safari camp in Tanzania to a resort nestled in the Andes in Peru, the places are remote and technology is sketchy. Just don’t pack your phone.

PS – we didn’t get paid by Camp Grounded or Conde Nast Traveler – we just think the Red Barn Team needs to unplug once in a while. Company Retreat?? Maybe

You Might Need a Digital Detox Read More »