Marketing Archives – Page 3 of 7

3 Ways to Use Marketing Automation to Enhance your User Experience

October 14, 2014/0 Comments/in Best Practices, Marketing, Marketing Automation, Revenue Generation Blog/by Lead Liaison

The art of converting prospects into customers begins with their first interaction and experience with your brand, whether that’s through a landing page, social media ad, or (fingers crossed) word of mouth. If this experience is frustrating and not user friendly, what incentive do they have to return? Here are a few points to consider when shaping your user experience and ways to use marketing automation to your advantage:

Customize

Landing pages: How did a visitor find your website? Be sure what they’re looking for is the first thing they see. Create a few different landing pages for various scenarios, especially if you have a vast range of products.
Emails: Make sure you are providing pertinent information that will warrant them to open the email, not unsubscribe. This may include special deals/offers, but nothing too spammy.
Verbal contact: Utilize marketing automation software to synchronize platforms to be sure sales reps and customer service are on the same page when speaking to a customer or a prospect.

Interact

Survey your customers: Ask questions about what they believe is your most useful and convenient feature. Survey prospects, ask what they’re looking for in a product and see how closely you can meet their needs.
Reward: Host contests on social media to engage your followers, and provide a coupon code or free service to those who interact with your brand.
Customer support: There’s nothing more frustrating for your customers than to pay for a monthly subscription service and not receive the support they need to use your service to their greatest benefit.

Personify

Don’t be the bot: When automating your marketing process, it’s important to keep in mind your customers are real people that are intelligent and think for themselves. Canned messages just won’t cut it for most. Steer clear of creating bulk messages to send out on social media platforms, as that only invites ridicule. Engage with customers through carefully planned social media campaigns.
Get the details: Often a step of the implementation or customer support process, getting details from your customer in how exactly they plan to implement your service or product can truly help start a beneficial relationship. By understanding their needs, you’re able to gather insight for further improvement while also providing them with the most efficient way to implement your service.
Create a two-way conversation: This one is pretty self-explanatory. The basic take-away point is to create an environment in which your customers and prospects alike feel comfortable to interact. Check out these simple steps that encourage your customers to engage in a positive way.

Five Ways of Using Visitor Tracking to Increase Visitor Engagement

September 25, 2014/0 Comments/in Best Practices, Marketing, Revenue Generation Blog/by Lead Liaison

Have you ever thought of using visitor tracking to increase visitor engagement? You can have numerous visitors to your site, but unless you’re doing the right visitor tracking you may be missing some terrific data. It’s best to tempt visitors to dive deeper into the website. Tracking visitor engagement starts with a hit on your website while the engagement process begins once visitors start to use your site. Following are five ways you can engage visitors for a better web experience all around.

Provide Links to Internal Content and Pages

Prominently displaying links to other related products and pages retain visitor engagement, take them “down the rabbit hole of your site” so to speak and will urge them to search and keep coming back for more content.

Minimize Site and Page Load Durations

Most internet users tend to leave if a site or page fails to load in three seconds. Since most outstanding search engines such as Google understand this, you may find yourself falling further behind in search rankings for pages that load sluggishly. It is good to have a high-load speed for your site so you don’t lose visitors or SEO ranking in general.

Make the Website Simple

For business sites, the more difficulties a client faces, the less likely they are to purchase your products and services. Your site should have a simple menu design and language. All unnecessary form fields should be detached to simplify the lead collection experience from start to finish.

Have Features that Promote Direct Interaction

Features such as product analyses and blog comments allow the customers to ask questions and leave something others can read about the site or products. Ensure that the features are used well and all queries get a reply.

Analyze the Visitor Flow

Search engines have features that help monitor visitor actions. Monitoring includes information such as the first page visited, whether further pages are looked at, buttons clicked or actions taken on the site, etc. If your preferred visitor flow is not followed, you should review the page layout and content and create clearer calls to action.

Visitor tracking through engagements is vital to any site. Engagement helps keep visitors onsite for extended period of time so they can learn more about your content. Long durations on a site influence a visitor’s return rate. A higher return rate keeps customers engaged with your products and services and may eventually result in a sale.

For more information on how visitor tracking can directly benefit you, talk to us! At Lead Liaison.com, we’re here to bring more quality web traffic to your site and to help you use visitor tracking to increase leads and sales.

Is Geotargeting Right for National Brands?

September 18, 2014/0 Comments/in Best Practices, Marketing, Revenue Generation Blog/by Lead Liaison

This Marketing Profs article discusses the marketing issue many national brands face: geotargeting to smaller areas is often impossible, leaving local businesses to fill in the gaps in the market. The result is local market representation failing to become part of a company’s overall strategy – therefore, lost revenue.

Local marketing strategy and geotargeting are only one piece of a larger marketing automation puzzle. For businesses, the implementation of the right marketing automation strategy is only the beginning of the plan – not intended to be the plan itself. It’s important that large national brands that are thinking about geotargeting consider if they have the staff and resources to address the geotargeting data that emerges from marketing automation implementation.

Understanding Geotargeting

The first step in considering geotargeting for large national brands is to get an idea of what goals the brands are hoping to accomplish. Ultimately an increase in sales and revenue is always the goal, but so is identifying whether or not the associated costs will be worth the investment.

For instance, if every geotargeted customer costs $100 in marketing dollars to obtain while the typical revenue per customer is $70, there’s a problem. Marketing automation is a good way to understand these ROI disparities and determine whether or not geotargeting is worth it for a larger business.

Marketing Locally

Marketing automation is also great for building localized lists. Having a standard set of users to continuously target will show you if your geotargeted marketing campaigns are as effective as possible. The sum of the geotargeted parts is your end user base in any given area, so it’s important to understand that marketing to a cluster of users in a singular location is essentially what you’re going for. Your end users are your bread and butter, so carefully monitoring how they use your marketing automation campaigns will make all the difference.

It’s important to work with a marketing automation firm that really has it together and can implement geotargeting effectively. After everything is set up, the available data stream is up for the company’s interpretation and use. Marketing automation set up is only the beginning – from there, companies need to be able to rely on their company’s support to help interpret data and figure out how to run their geotargeting efforts on a consistent basis.

Lead Liaison has some of the best customer support and follow-up in the business. We work with large and small brands alike and would love to chat with you about geotargeting your business! Contact us today for a free consult.

Is Mobile Marketing in Your Wheelhouse

July 3, 2014/0 Comments/in Best Practices, Marketing/by Lead Liaison

Mobile marketing isn’t just about running ads in popular apps. It’s about tailoring your ads across the board to a mobile user experience. The way people use their mobile phones to access data has changed drastically over the last few years. If you’re not on board with those changes and tracking your mobile user data thoroughly, you could be missing important marketing opportunities for your brand.

Mobile Marketing in Facebook Ads

One great example of the way users are engaging with mobile marketing is Facebook ads. In case you haven’t noticed, Facebook ads are now available in the main news feed section of a user’s Facebook stream.

If you’re selling an app or have a mobile-friendly web store, users can simply click a “download now” or “shop now” button right in the ad that will allow them to go to your next conversion step – or convert right then and there.

Mobile Marketing via text

With Lead Liaison’s incorporation of Twilio’s back end text marketing systems, engaging your audience with text messaging has never been easier. Sparse, correctly targeting mobile marketing via text can work if users have opted in to receive your promotions.

Mobile marketing also works well to interface with your business or advertising teams about meetings, upcoming events or weather delays. Mobile marketing isn’t just about reaching out to the customer – it’s about creating connections, even within your own business structure.

Mobile Marketing on the Back End

The power of mobile marketing increases when you’re able to read and interpret the resulting data from your marketing campaigns across the board. Working to compare what percentage of users access your site on mobile can give you some important insight on how to best engage your mobile users. Is your mobile browser bounce rate higher? What types of smart phones are people using to access your site? Is mobile information presented so that users can engage with dynamic content easily?

Google Analytics provides tracking and acquisition options for people who are interested in mobile marketing, but sometimes Google data just isn’t enough. If you want the opportunity to dig down deep into your backend analytics, identifying core users from IP address and frequent visits, then linking your data to corresponding marketing campaigns, Lead Liaison could be a great solution for you. Marketing automation helps you collect and utilize mobile marketing data in the fastest, most reliable way possible. To find out more let us come up with a customized proposal for your business needs today!

The Value of Multi-Channel Marketing

May 30, 2014/5 Comments/in Best Practices, Marketing, Revenue Generation Blog/by Lead Liaison

In today’s marketplace, it’s essential to reach as many customers and prospects as possible. The best way to communicate with your target audience is with multi-channel marketing. Using just one marketing method – such as email – is no longer enough to remain competitive. The various marketing channels all offer unique advantages for promoting your company. By creating an integrated marketing plan, you ensure your company’s survival and profitability. Forrester Research reports that 86% of marketers understand that multi-channel marketing is essential for long-term growth. It’s important to understand the value of multi-channel marketing.

Email Campaigns

Marketing with email is still a viable and inexpensive option. With email you can send out useful information to targeted customers on your lists. You can also easily split test your emails to find the one that offers the highest return on investment. Express Pigeon reports that email marketing brings in a 4,300 percent ROI.

Print Media

Although many companies market online, it’s still a good idea to promote your business offline as well. Sending out print brochures, postcards, flyers, and other printed materials are a good way to generate new leads and bring potential customers to your website.

Promotional Items

Branding is another important method for selling your products or services. With a company name and logo on promotional items such as pens, calendars, note pads, and magnets, you can spread the word about your business by giving something useful away for free.

Direct Mail

For many, sending out direct mail pieces to a targeted audience is still an effective method of lead generation. Although it is more expensive than other methods, your letter is more likely to be opened and read, especially with fewer companies utilizing direct mail today.

Text Messaging

Mobile marketing is on the rise with around 98% of text messages read within a few minutes, reports EZTexting.com. By using text messages, you can communicate and interact with potential customers while increasing brand awareness. It’s no longer enough just to use email. To compete in the business world today, a company has to utilize a host of marketing strategies. The strategies should all work together, and compliment each other, to send out a unified message. By creating an integrated marketing approach via multiple channels, you boost your company’s success in a global marketplace.

How to Send SMS Messages with Marketing Automation

April 7, 2014/0 Comments/in Marketing, Multichannel Marketing, Revenue Generation Blog/by Lead Liaison

Lead Liaison is genuinely enthused about our ability to offer our customers automated, personalized and measurable multi-channel marketing capabilities. Like you, we were asking ourselves how to send SMS messages with marketing automation. Well, since our Revenue Generation Software™ helps customers deliver marketing automation strategies it’s a no brainer to plug-in the ability to send text messages directly into our platform. In addition to SMS messages, Lead Liaison’s platform can also deliver direct mail, email and voice calls as part of a comprehensive suite of actions.

Adding SMS marketing was fun and easy. We used a few components to pull the integration together, Twilio, Webhooks and our automated processes. Here are the steps we took:

Opened our Twilio account, created a SMS phone number and funded the account with $20.00 (10 minutes)
Created a Webhook call in Lead Liaison (3 minutes)
Setup an automation to send text messages through our marketing automation, triggered off certain criteria/events (10 minutes)

In 23 minutes we beefed up our multi-channel marketing! The nice thing about this setup is that we configured things once and we were done. We were able to use Lead Liaison’s tokens (merge fields) to insert First Name and Mobile Phone Number into the body of the text message, keeping the content dynamic. We modularized the text message and packaged it up into a Webhook. Then we simply dragged/dropped the SMS call to Twilio into our automated workflow. Bam! No more wondering how to send sms messages with marketing automation, it’s here! See the image attached to this post to see our SMS message delivered by Twilio.

Direct Mail with Marketing Automation

March 31, 2014/4 Comments/in Best Practices, Lead Generation, Marketing, Multichannel Marketing, Revenue Generation Blog/by Lead Liaison

We recently added the ability to send direct mail with marketing automation using Lead Liaison. We’re genuinely excited about this new marketing channel that our customer base can take advantage of. Designing our first direct mail campaign was easy. In this post we’ll talk about how simple it was to put together a direct mail campaign using Lead Liaison’s marketing automation software.

Background on Direct Mail

B2B marketing typically requires 5 to 7 touches before a prospect buys from a provider. Why? They want to build trust, build the relationship and know you’re not a fly-by-night vendor blasting out communications hoping you’ll respond to the first thing they see. Using all of those 5 to 7 touches on phone calls or emails could get old, really fast. Enter direct mail.

According to the Direct Marketing Association, typical response rates are 4.4% for direct mail (overall)

While response rates are high, so are conversions for new customers.

The CMO Council reports direct mail has the highest rate of success in new customer acquisition at 34% compared with other marketing channels.

It’s time we start thinking about integrating direct mail with marketing automation.

How We Did It

Adding direct mail to our marketing automation campaign was easy. Here are the steps we took to launch our campaign.

Created a template in Photoshop. This took us about an hour to do. Alternatively, you could use pre-made templates from our partner, Direct Mail Manager. They’ve got 100s of pre-made cards to choose from.
We put a QR code on the back of the postcard that linked to a landing page we built in Lead Liaison. When the recipient gets the card they scan it with their smart phone which loads the landing page along with an attractive offer.
We deposited $1.04 into our account at Direct Mail Manager. Yes, only about a buck! Each card cost $.52 and we sent one to our Product Manager and one to an Account Manager. You can deposit as little as $.52 into your Direct Mail Manager Account.
We created a Webhook in Lead Liaison.
We added the Webhook as an action in our marketing campaign workflow.
Boom! Within three (3) days the postcard showed up in the mail.

Let us help you get your direct mail campaign off the ground!

Start Direct Mail Today!

The Importance of A/B Marketing Strategies on the Web

January 22, 2014/0 Comments/in Marketing, Revenue Generation Blog/by Lead Liaison

Did you know that a website’s design matters? The way your website was designed has an impact on your client’s reaction! Websites are normally designed with a certain aim, which is a call to action. The achievement of this call to action goal highly depends on the user’s response to the website content. With regard to this, many companies are incorporating the A/B marketing strategies into their testing.

In today’s digital world, A/B marketing strategies have proven to be a vital tool that businesses should possess, so as to enable them establish the most suitable features that work best for their websites. This tool is responsible for providing you with information regarding how users react to the content on your website. The reactions in question refer to the layout, use of words and pictures, the colour scheme, navigation among other elements. These factors are tested by comparing at least two different designs of a website’s landing page (hence the term A and B). When the comparisons are made, the version with the highest number of sales is considered to be the best.

So why is A/B testing important for your business?

Yes, it is a good thing to have this tool. However, it is more of a vital aspect that should be part of your marketing strategy. The good thing about A/B testing is that you will be in a position to constantly know which one of your website designs performs best. Here are some reasons why you should use A/B testing:

Help in market research: With A/B testing you will not waste any time or money on focus group discussions to find out what kind of websites consumers like best. As you well know, the outlook of your website is highly determined by customers depending on their preferences. This is a marketing tool that will help you in establishing that.
Problems are solved easily: If you have a specific feature on your website that is getting a negative response from users, A/B testing can assist you in determining why that particular feature is failing to work. Sometimes it could be as a result of the wrong choice of words, colours or even the certain placement of a button.
You are able to determine your objective: The major objective of any website is to have a high performance rate especially when it comes to call to action. Whatever you aim at achieving with your website, A/B testing will provide you with the knowledge to establish priorities make necessary adjustments and constantly carry out experiments on various designs so as to attract more traffic to your website.

There are some marketing professionals out there who carry around the assumption that A/B testing is a complex tool to use along with their marketing strategies. What they don’t know is that the best thing about this tool is that it is very cost-effective and, most of all, it helps you understand detailed facts regarding human psychology and how different designs have an impact on users.

Digital Tools That Marketers Need To Dominate the Digital Era

July 15, 2013/1 Comment/in Best Practices, Guest Blogs, Marketing, Revenue Generation Blog/by Lead Liaison

This guest blog has been provided by Jasmine Sandler.

Why You Need Digital Tools

The Internet provides myriad opportunities for marketers to sell their products and services. But successful digital marketing requires sophisticated tools that work in tandem, creating ongoing efficiencies and insights.

Digital tools are pieces of software that do two things: They automate and manage a marketing process, and they measure the effectiveness of the initiative. For example, they can manage your CRM by taking information submitted by a prospect via a web form, segmenting the lead and relaying it so that a salesperson can easily use the information to nurture the sales process.

Types of Digital Tools

There are three levels of digital marketing tools:

1. Simple Tools

Examples include Google Alerts, Social Mention and Alexa. Each provides simple information. The first two track the mentions your product gets online; the latter shows the traffic ranking of your website and that of your competition.

2. Advanced Tools That Let You Take Action

Google Adwords drives leads. Lead Liaison automates the sales process. Hootsuite and Viral Heat help to manage social media programs.

3. Developer Tools

These tools help your web developer to create applications that enable you to deliver your brand across multiple platforms. Mobile apps, for example, can drive productivity for both salespeople and customers and help speed order processing. Google Webmaster is a tool that can help your SEO

How to Manage & Measure a Digital Marketing Program

All of these tools, or others like them, are needed to manage a digital marketing program. If you need an audit on your digital marketing strategy, an audit of your social media program or social media training for your team, I’m here to help. Contact me at Jasmine Sandler.com.

Can Automation Help Marketing & Advertising Agencies?

April 19, 2013/0 Comments/in Best Practices, Marketing, Revenue Generation Blog/by Lead Liaison

Digital agencies have a new tool to gain a competitive edge: marketing automation. And while there are those that wish to focus on simply designing creatives and making social posts, progressive agencies are looking to manage their clients’ marketing lead pipelines. Marketing automation (we prefer the term “revenue generation”) provides a multi-layered way to show clients how well your messaging develops client/prospect relationships. Marketing automation can help marketing & advertising agencies grow their business.

Agencies can leverage their expertise in message development with the ability to provide managed marketing services. Our Lead Management Automation™ platform allows agencies to identify marketing/advertising leads, move leads through advanced messaging, integrate agency campaigns with inbound channels, and provide metrics to their clients. Rather than taking a shotgun approach, agencies can segment markets for specific messaging. And results are better defined as demographic and behavioral data provide ad managers information to help refine future messaging.

Today’s advertising is delivered through social media, content marketing, mobile, and other digital channels. Marketing automation monitors these channels, allowing agencies to manage audience, delivery, format, and other parameters.

Through marketing automation, digital agencies can provide:

Lead prospecting
Lead tracking
Lead qualification
Lead nurturing

Once a lead has passed advanced from marketing-qualified (targeted for nurturing activities) to sales-qualified (ready for contact by the client’s sales department) an agency can seamlessly transition the lead generated from their activities to their clients’ customer relationship management (CRM) platforms. This can be a powerful benefit for agencies looking to create a deeper relationship with their clients.

Advertising and marketing efforts are geared towards creating attention, generating interest, motivating decisions, and inspiring action. Marketing automation provides a management tool throughout the entire process. By offering clients lead management services in addition to campaign development, digital agencies reduce their clients’ need to continually monitor and analyze results and allows agencies to modify messaging and campaign execution in order to maximize results.