Discover the Perk of Using Content Marketing for Business [2018]

What is Content Marketing?

To start, what exactly is content marketing?

Content marketing is a strategic marketing and business process that focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience and ultimately to drive profitable customer action.

Even though content marketing has grown in popularity in the past ten years with the rise if web 2.0, content marketing is not a new concept.

In fact, one of the first signs of content marketing can be dated back to 4200 B.C, with a cave wall publishing on how to stay protected from wild boars.

The Evolution of Content Marketing for Business

Nowadays, the foundation for content marketing is pretty much the same.

icon marketing content marketing

It is all about your audience, what they value, and how you can help to educate them.

When done correctly, this helps to create a relationship with your audience, which leads to trust.

And if your audience trusts you, then they are willing to do business with you when they are ready to make a purchasing decision.

In order to communicate with your audience, you need to produce content.

Content is the message your content marketing strategy delivers.

It is what you are trying to deliver to your visitors, leads, customers and promoters.

There are a lot of different ways you can deliver a message- blogs, emails, website pages, social media, and print collateral.

But without content, you did have nothing to deliver.

The Importance of Content Marketing for Small Business

Content has the very important job of pulling people from one stage of the inbound methodology to another.

It plays an integral part in the Attract, Close, Convert and Delight stage.

icon marketing inbound

Your content should attract the right people to your site, convert those people into leads, and nurture and help close them into customers.

But it does not stop there, as your content should always delight your customers, turning them into promoters of your brand.

In a nutshell, content marketing is really just the art of communicating with your prospects and customers without having to sell to them.

As opposed to marketing or advertising your products and services, you are creating helpful, entertaining content that your prospects and customers could enjoy and learn from.

If it sounds like inbound marketing and content marketing are similar, that is because they are.

They both focus on empowering potential customers, building a lasting relationship with your audience, and creating valuable content that both entertains and educates them.

But what is the difference between them, and why do you need both?

You should think in terms of “and” not “or” when it comes to the content marketing, inbound marketing relationship.

Success relies on both.

Content may help fuel your inbound engine, but there are similarly valuable inbound projects-like technical SEO, product or service trials, marketing automation, and interactive tools that may exist outside of the scope of a content marketer.

This is where inbound marketing comes in as a valuable counterpart.

If you aren’t opening yourself up to the wide range of inbound practices, then you are limiting the potential of growth and impact you can have as a marketer or marketing leader.

In other words, your inbound plan should be a superset-inclusive of your content assets but not limited to them.

There are implications for organizational structure, roles and responsibilities as well as skills procurement.

Why Do You Need to Develop a Content Marketing Business Model?

If you are just like most marketers, you always begin your content marketing efforts with the best intentions.

You should have some great ideas for content in order to resonate and connected well with the reader.

icon marketing business model

In order to do that, you should have some thoughts about places to promote that content.

You also need to find the resource as well as the time that you will require to develop an effective content marketing plan.

But the problem is that you don’t.

To fully realize the potential content marketing offers, it is crucial for you to have a plan.

It may sound cliché or simple, yet is a step that many content marketers disregarded or overlooked.

For your information, there is 70 per cent of marketers are lacking the consistent or integrated content strategy.

While only 29 per cent of leading marketers systematically reuse and repurpose the content.

The reason is easy – to create such a plan is not easy and daunting.

It requires the skills of content marketers to analyse where their marketing efforts have been and what is the objective to achieve in the future time.

The Value of a Content Marketing Plan

Indeed, the content marketing plan is more than just content.

Why is it so hard for content marketers to create such a strategic plan for their content?

This is because they do not take the strategic approach to the content plan to ensure the message cuts through the clutter and reaches your target audience with the right information at the right time.

The Importance of Having an Effective Content Marketing Business Plan

That goes without saying that having an effective content marketing plan is crucial for the next step that you will take.

Basically, the content marketing plan is your roadmap to a successful content marketing effort.

icon marketing success

To get a good start, an effective strategic plan will clearly define the key elements of your effort,

It will clearly specify and outline clearly on who you will be talking to, what you will say and how you are going to say it, where the content will be promoted, and what is the chance of you will be the success.

By having this type of plan, it keeps everyone who involved in creating and sharing your content on the same page.

This helps to ensure you have sufficient resources to manage all aspect of a successful content campaign.

From writing and posting to sharing and tracking, each of your team members should understand and knows what needs to happen and when should happen.

Furthermore, you have the guide or roadmap that you could share with the others.

Inevitably, this helps to ensure that your content marketing goals are in alignment with and are fully supported for the goals of your organization.

Besides, by sharing the plan also gets other in your organization to buy into the role that content plays in making the organization to the successful path.

This does not just act a support for your efforts, but it also gives you a team of employees who are engaged and willing to share the company’s content.

Thus, by having a clear understanding of the value of your content marketing plan and strategy will provide a good head start for you!

To know more tips of marketing please always visit us, Icon Marketing Strategy

How to Run Effective Email Marketing in Australia

Email Marketing in Australia – What is it?

Email marketing is a term you may have heard recently, but exactly what is email marketing?

icon marketing strategy email australia

At its most basic level, email marketing is the use of email to promote your business.

It is commonly used to nurture the relationship with the potential customers, keep the current customers informed and updated on your brand, offer the coupons to encourage customer loyalty, just to name a few.

In shorts, email marketing has become an essential tool for business ever since the introduction of the internet to the world.

Nevertheless, some campaigns that make it through to your inboxes are absolute rubbish if you do not take any notice on it.

This is why every company should fully utilise the benefit of email marketing and learn on how they should go about doing so.

Why Email Marketing is Important for Business?

Email marketing is a direct form of marketing, that similarly to marketing through snail mail.

Email marketing can be used to build trust with the customers over the time and convert them into repeat customers.

As mentioned before, having email marketing in your business is an effective way to keep your customers informed about the promotions or new sales that you are running.

For your information, 28% of Australia online shoppers report subscribing to store or product emails in order to stay informed on the brand they care about.

This showed that people want to stay informed about your brand.

Thus, email marketing is the best platform to stay engaged with the audience.

Why Your Business Need Email Marketing Software in Australia?

There are tons of software and automation tools out there that make email marketing a breeze.

icon marketing australia

For instance, popular software in Australia, Constant Contact and MailChimp can be used to send out emails and monitor how your subscribers interact with your emails.

You could use these email marketing software to track analytic like bounce rates, click-through rates, open rates and conversions.

How to Select the Best Email Marketing Software Australia for Business?

Email marketing, as the name suggests, is the marketing strategy that uses the medium of email to reach out to customers.

In case you wish to do the marketing yourself, you definitely need reliable marketing software that could perform the task instantly and help to fetch your business.

1. Evaluate the Need

There is hundreds of email marketing software that is available and each of them has its own specialization.

Some of the software has the ability and function to get the email address, manage emails and also analyse the responses after a stipulated time period.

It is also up to you to decide whether you need the software that could perform multi-task or a single one.

Thus, you need to cautiously research the features each of the software, and narrow it down.

2. Features

Indeed, the email marketing software is created to give end-to-end marketing solutions to its user.

From the import of contact lists to sending the email, all the tasks should be performed by the software.

The software should be able to detect repeated addresses.

In addition, there is much software that could allow you to tag the address depending on the geographic area.

So, that you could send the emails based on the specific demographic that setting in the software.

Thus, it is advisable for you to carefully evaluate your feature related- needs before zeroing-in on any software.

3. Cost

Although all the other factors matter, it eventually boils down to the cost.

When you just started up your business, the fund allocation for the marketing campaign will be limited.

As a result, it is necessary to reconsider the cost-effectiveness of the software before purchasing it.

4. Ease of Use

When it comes to software, you need to choose that will be used by many employees of your organization.

Let’s say the software used required the expert needs, it is the likelihood of being used will reduce as well.

Hence, the ease of using the software plays a crucial role in choosing the software.it has to be user-friendly.

It should have a simpler user interface while providing an easy troubleshooting or help option.

5. Integrating with social media

Obviously, social media is the latest hangout place, and often potential customers are discovered through this platform.

So, it would be wise to tap this sector for marketing purposes.

There is a plethora of software available in the market which can integrate the emails with social media like Facebook, Google+, and Twitter.

icon marketing email social media

This integration will enable you to fetch and outreach more customers due to the large user base of social media website.

What Do You Need To Know About Email Marketing Law Australia?

Australian Spam Act 2003

According to the Australian Spam Act 2003, it is illegal to send unsolicited emails in Australia.

Everyone knows that spam us a nuisance because it is pointless.

This is why many countries including Australia had implemented the legislation in the last decade to crack down on unsolicited marketing emails.

Well, the good news is that there are numbers of unsolicited messages have dropped considerably.

But, the bad news is that your marketing might be breaking the law without even realising it.

If you are using a service like MailChimp, and receiver a lot of subscribers and spam notices, they have the permission to shut down your account.

How Email Marketing Companies in Australia Comply With The Law?

To help you stay on top of the law, which you might have forgotten about, these are the 3 main requirements that you must adhere to:

  1. The recipient of your message must give consent to receive emails from you.
  2. You must provide identification of your business contact details.
  3. You must provide a working unsubscribe link.

1. Get Permission Before You Send

Spam, by definition, is the unsolicited message.

Thus, your first step is to overcome the word “unsolicited”.

In a simple term, you ought to get the consent from your recipients.

icon marketing approve

Under the Spam Act, there are certain organisations are allowed to send messages without the consent from the recipient.

So, unless you are from the government body, a political party or registered charity, you have to let your prospect to agree to receive the advertising from you.

2. Make Yourself Known

Next, your marketing emails should clearly state or show who you are, and how your recipient can contact you.

The recipient has the power to lodge complaints if they can’t work out who has sent them the message.

When identifying yourself in your marketing emails, consider whether the recipient sees these details:

  • In the email’s “From” field.
  • In the subject line.
  • In the body of the email.

Any of one of these options is considered sufficient, but a good marketing practice suggests that if you are transacting legitimately, you should not be hiding your identity in the first place.

3. Provide a Way Out

When it comes to business, no one ever wants to lose the prospects.

However, in the world of email, it is mandatory that every email you send should include details of how to opt-out.

It does not matter whether the unsubscribe process is done manually or automatically, as long as it exists and clearly defined in every commercial email.

The options are included:

  • One-click unsubscribe link.
  • A link to form allowing users to change their email preferences.
  • A manual instruction such as “reply to this email with unsubscribe” in the subject line.

Whichever method you use, the Australian Spam Act will give you 5 days to action the request.

Want to know more email marketing act at others country? Visit here to read more.

To know more information about marketing tips please always visit us, Icon Marketing Strategy

Ultimate Guide: Understanding the Canada Email Marketing Laws

That goes without saying that email is one of the most effective marketing channels that available today.

What the best things about email marketing are it is incredibly quick and easy to get started.

The today’s email marketing tools even make it simpler and much enjoyable for the marketer of all level to create a campaign, upload a list and sending it out.

Before you started to jump into and sending campaigns, it is a worth of getting a basic understanding of the law about email marketing.

icon marketing law

This is just a precaution step that you need to be taken to ensure your campaigns aren’t breaking any of the laws and regulations.

In this guide, you will understand the email marketing law and outline the things that you need to do to ensure your email marketing initiatives remain on the right side.

What Are the Laws Around Canada Email Marketing?

There are a number of different laws that guide the usage of email marketing for commercial purposes.

In Canada, it is called CASL laws which stand for Canadian Anti-Spam Law (CASL).

All of these laws are intended to dictate a number of conditions that email marketer need to follow to avoid any significant fines if violated.

It may have sounded a little bit scary. You don’t have to worry if you already complying with the rules.

But as long as you are a legitimate business that using proper email marketing tools to send legitimate email campaigns, then everything will be fine.

This is because the law is largely targeted at the spammers.

It is designed to prevent them from illegally acquiring other people’s email addresses and spamming them with unsolicited emails.

icon marketing spam

That’s being said, there might be a few little nuances in the laws that even marketers with the best intentions can accidentally violate.

So, it is worthy understand and reading on how you can be compliant to the Canada Email Marketing laws.

Canadian Email Marketing Software – MailChimp

MailChimp, one of the popular software used in Canada, which is a marketing automation platform and email marketing service.

MailChimp will help you to manage your email database and marketing in a single platform.

Wants to know more info about email marketing software? You can always visit our website to know more.

icon marketing mail

MailChimp Term of Use

In many cases, the term of use of Mailchimp seems to be stricter than what outlined in CASL.

This is particularly true regarding the third-parties and implied consent.

As a rule of thumb, you need to have a written permission from every subscriber.

You are not only required to stick with the Mailchimp policies, but you also need to improve your campaign deliverability and subscriber engagement.

Here are some of the Mailchimp’s terms that differ from CASL.

  • Customers are required to make a purchase within the last 12 months. Inquires without a purchase does not count as permission.
  • Family members and friends still need to provide the written permission.
  • Any non-profit organizations, political groups or courts still need to secure written permission from the recipient.
  • Referrals and published email addresses are considered as a third-party. Therefore, it is not allowed.
  • Oral agreement to receive messages does not qualify as permission.

Additional Requirements:

In addition to understanding what qualifies as CASL – regulated message, and what type of consent is needed, there are a few other details to keep in mind.

  • You must retain a record of consent confirmation. Checkboxes cannot be pre-filled to suggest consent when requesting consent.
  • Each subscriber must check the box themselves for consent to be valid.
  • All messages sent must include being included in your name, the person on whose behalf you are sending (if any), your physical mailing address and your telephone number, email address or website URL.
  • All messages sent after consent must also include an unsubscribe mechanism, and unsubscribes must be processed within 10 days.

How to Comply The Canada Email Marketing Laws?

Rather than go into the full details of each country’s laws, we reviewed them all and compiled a simple list.

Thus, marketers like you can do to ensure your campaigns are compliant with all the laws across the globe.

  1. Ensure you have the permission to the people permission

Most of the country’s email marketing laws stipulate that people need to give your permission to email them in order for you to send them the campaigns.

The definition of permission in a little loose and varies between each country’s laws, but generally, there are two types of permission – implied permission and express permission.

Implied permission covers anybody who you have an existing business relationship with.

This could your current customer, donate to your charity, or are an active member of your website, community or club.

If you don’t have implied permission to email a person, then you will need to express permission.

Express permission is granted when someone specifically granted you permission to send them email campaigns.

Let’s take for an example. When people visit your blog, you should include pop-up notification to encourage them to subscribe to their email list in order to get instant access to the information on the sites.

By entering their email address in the box, people are giving an express permission to email them.

  1. Don’t use the misleading header of information

Header information is referred to the extra information sent along with your email campaigns, such as name, subject line and reply-to-address.

According to the email marketing laws of Canada, you must not include inappropriate and misleading information in these fields that intend to try to fraud people into opening your email campaigns.

icon marketing download

The main key here is just avoided having any fraud intention that purposely to deceive your recipients.

However, arousing curiosity or getting creative with your subject line is perfectly fine!

As long as you don’t purposely try to deceive or trick your recipients, then you are safe!

  1. Include your address

Most country’s email marketing laws stipulate that you must clearly include a valid postal address for your business in your email campaigns.

This could be your current street address, a post-box address or an address with a registered commercial mail-receiving company.

What You Need to Know More about Email Marketing Service Canada

By following the tips mentioned before, the majority of marketers can rest assured of their emails which compliant with the global anti-spam laws.

You are responsible even if you are not sending campaigns yourself!

Based on Canada email marketing law, even if you are outsourcing your email marketing efforts to a third-party, you still hold the responsibility for that.

So, if you do outsource the creation and sending of your campaigns, remember to make sure to review them before sending and check the above tips.

Canada email marketing laws are looser for transactional emails

Most of the anti-spam laws around the world are created to guide the sending of commercial email marketing messages.

This also applies to any sort of newsletters, marketing announcements or promotional campaigns your business might be sending.

However, there is an exemption when it comes to transactional emails.

These specific emails are exempted from the anti-spam rules which you are required to provide the information about an existing purchase or membership.

To know more information about marketing please always visit us, Icon Marketing Strategy .

Email Marketing: Amazing Tools for Email Marketing UK [2018 update]

What You Need to Know About Email Marketing Services in UK

Email marketing might seem like an old hat compared to another raft of shiny, new social media marketing tools.

But the personal touch of gliding into someone’s inbox makes email marketing an enduring and useful tool in the arsenal of any enterprise.

Email marketing also plays an integral and significant part of your wider marketing campaigns.

icon marketing email uk

By having the right tools to carry out the jobs to create tailored communication for your customers or prospects is essential for any kind of business.

Some of the email marketing software could simply allow you to send out the campaigns to pre-determined or imported lists.

While others integrating a full customer –relationship management (CRM) platforms, this will allow you to track back the entire relationship and sales funnel.

Which of these you can decide to use depends on your business needs and budget.

It is a relatively inexpensive tool that could bring a weighty return.

Based on 2018 survey, the report found that the email receives a 30 to 1 return on investment averagely.

It is no doubt that a plethora of the organisation’s surveys rated email marketing as “important” or “necessary” tool to their organisation.

With the sophisticated spam filters on the most mailboxes these days, the days of popping up in someone’s inbox uninvited seem to be over.

Therefore, it is crucial to up to your game when it comes to the email.

To know more what is the definition of email marketing in UK please visit us!

The biggest lies in email marketing platforms in the UK

You will often hear about people saying thoughtlessly about email marketing which:

1.    The day of email marketing is over

2.    Your email marketing software does not matter

icon marketing lie

First and foremost, email marketing is not dead, yet.

No matter what is the people said about email marketing, email marketing still is thriving and it is integral in making money online.

Secondly, your email marketing software – the platform you use to email from, it really does matter!

The term “just simply pick one and run with” does not work anymore.

This is why you need to find and know what works the best for you, according to the business needs.

One that does the things that you really need, the one that could give you a great comfort and control over your email marketing list.

This is because without having all of that, you are just setting yourself up to fail.

You will just be wasting your precious time and effort emailing people in a way that you should not have.

Why it is necessary to have appropriate email marketing software UK?

As mentioned before, there will be a lot of untrue grapevine on the internet that said email marketing is dead.

icon marketing email marketing dead

In fact, email marketing is as alive and well as ever. In addition, it is still an essential tool and software for you to earn money online.

Benefits of email marketing software UK

1. Have unlimited access

This is definitely one of the best benefits you could get from email marketing software – better engagement.

You could get in touch with your customers at any time of the day, from anywhere in the world, in just a few clicks.

2. Building relationships

Whether you are a solo blogger or a big-time business, you can humanise yourself by sending personalised, valuable emails to your audience.

3. More traffic

Having an email list means more people know about and come to your site.

This is because when you email them to let them know; they will come flocking in big numbers.

What to consider in choosing the best email marketing software in UK?

As with choosing any new marketing software, there are plenty of things to consider before taking the plunge.

Whether or not you choose to use email marketing as a major part of your business strategy is based on your objectives.

Are you trying to gain sign-ups for an event? Are you seeking to gain traction with a new product? Or you are just looking to improve your audience?

icon marketing consider

Then, email marketing should be a great solution that you have been looking for your business.

Apparently, email marketing offers businesses numerous advantages, the most noticeable benefits are providing better customer engagement and user data.

Email marketing also enables businesses to provide personalised content, give a real-time message response and segment user and customer database information.

This enables you to hit them with the right offer of email at the right time.

This is particularly important in retail as email campaigns can be linked with automated responses following a sign-up or purchase.

When it comes to business, you should think about what to email out.

Some of the business might opt for newsletter, invitation emails and surveys.

Some marketer who doing business-to-business, prefer platforms with advanced transactional email capabilities.

A good email marketing platform should provide automation, social media integration, content management and detailed analytics.

To understand more how email marketing software helps small business.

The best email marketing providers UK

1. MailChimp

MailChimp, while aimed at small-medium business, is one of the very popular mailing service providers in the United Kingdom.

It offers a “free-forever” package that allows its users to send email up to 2000 subscribers and up to 12000 emails per month, as well as packages for the larger organization.

icon marketing mail chimp

MailChimp users will able to receive the data insight reports, customisable built “sign-up” forms.

It also has a large number for template gallery with a drag and drops email editor attached.

Key Features:

  • Drag and drop designer
  • E-commerce integrations
  • Marketing automation
  • Full reporting
  • Social media integration

2. Active Campaign

While offering a platform especially for small business, Active Campaign also provides enterprise-level email marketing software.

This platform offers a customer campaign designer, automation design consultation with a dedicated account rep.

icon marketing active campaign

Active Campaign definitely is user-friendly that is really easy to use, an auto-responder, scheduled email campaigns, automated workflows and one-time emails.

Key Features:

  • Unlimited apps and integrations
  • Unlimited email testing
  • Unlimited users with custom permissions
  • Social data for individual contacts

3. Drip

Drip is an email marketing platform optimised for bloggers, e-commerce sites and marketers.

Drip has a range of tools that are available including integration add-ons with WooCommerce and WordPress.

Thus, you can easily embed “sign-up” boxes on different web pages.

It also offers sophisticated marketing automation tools namely email segmentation that lets you refine your audience.

You could get started with Drip for free, on a package that includes up to 100 subscribers.

Key Features:

  • Easy marketing tool integration
  • Visual email builder
  • E-commerce data tracking
  • Apply custom tags, fields, and event

If you want to know more marketing tips, please visit us Icon Marketing Strategy to know more!

The Definitive Guide: Timing Is Everything in Email Marketing UK

Why Sending The Right Email is Important in Email Marketing UK

Sending the right email to the right person at the right time is discussed frequently in email marketing.

It is a major theme because why would not we want to send the right email to the right person at the right time?

When you send the right email, you have a better chance of converting your leads into the customer.

icon marketing email marketing uk

This is because you are sending the most contextual message which allows you to deliver that message to the right person at the right time that will provide the most value to them.

In turn, this will help you to develop your relationship with them, build trust and continually delight them.

At its core, sending great email is about being human and helpful.

But it is not always easy to send the right email every time you press send because not all your leads and customers are the same.

Some leads are ready to buy, and others are still looking around.

And the same goes for your customers: you might have active customers and dormant ones, old customers and new customers.

With all of these contacts at different stages of the buyer’s journey and in different conversations with you, it is not always easy to send the right email every single time you hit send.

To send the right email, you need to understand the two things

First, why is sending that email or your goal.

And second, the value you are delivering to the person on the other end of the send.

With these two as your foundation, you are setting the right expectations with those receiving your email by setting an appropriate and contextual goal.

Then you just need to pair that with information that will provide the most value.

The Inbound of Email Marketing Services UK

Take a second to think about the core values of inbound marketing.

Inbound marketing is focused on attracting customers through relevant and helpful content and adding value at every stage in your customer’s buying journey.

Furthermore, the buyer’s journey that maps out the three stages in which a contact goes through awareness, consideration and decision.

icon marketing buyer journey

Each stage helping them moves toward a purchase or goal.

Now let’s focus in on: “adding value at every stage of your customer’s buying journey.”

This is the piece where your email marketing can have the most impact and where sending the right email is so important.

Think about this morning when you just opened your mail inbox.

Consider the messages that were waiting for replies.

I will guess there were emails in there you didn’t read and sent right over to your trash. And that’s ok!

But when we think about our own emails getting sent to the trash, it can be upsetting.

To grow your email marketing efforts as well as your business, you need to get into the inbox and engage with your contacts.

To avoid the trash bin, you want to send emails that provide real value to your leads and customers.

By doing so, you are being helpful and human with your email sends as well as creating great conversations with your leads and customers.

This is the importance of sending the right email to the right person at the right time every single time.

How Email Marketing Companies UK Can Be More Effective

When you are trying to send the right email to the right person at the right time, there can seem to be a lot of moving pieces to consider.

So, let’s break down how you can grow your business by sending the right email.

To send the right email, you need to focus on three key components: first, the right email, which is the content you are providing in that email.

Second, the right person, which comes down to how you segment your contacts,

And third, the right time and thus the timeliness in which you are reaching out to those contacts.

Each of these components works off another.

icon marketing effective

Using these components you can feel confident that your email is going to be providing valuable content, to the right person who is using that content and delivered at the time that it will be most impactful.

Let’s examine each of these components and how they can support you and your business in sending human and helpful emails.

First, is creating the right email.

This is an important piece of the framework because it comes down to the content that you are sending.

Inbound is all about the happy marriage between context and content.

You need to treat your contacts as the humans they are, humans with needs desires and goals, and you do this through bringing context together with the content that you send them.

Take a moment and think about an email you received where the content didn’t align with the subject or the context in which you thought you were receiving it?

It is a pretty jarring experience that can leave you with a lack of trust for the person who sent it to you.

On the other side, think about the last time you were sent an email that served the right content that only was exciting but also contextual.

Take for example, when you take a specific action on a website around a certain topic and an email is triggered to you that follow up with additional educational content around that topic.

The content relates to what you are looking for with the right context.

Sending the right email is about delivering the right contextual message to those who are reading it.

This is how you will develop trust as well as an effective email marketing strategy.

This brings us to the second part of the framework: sending to the right person.

The way that you can send to the right person is through segmentation.

To review, segmentation is to act of dividing your contacts into smaller groups based on similarities.

Segmenting you contacts helps you to tailor the message to be more relevant and engaging to the people receiving the email.

For example, a few segments of most businesses will have been around lifecycle stages.

Specifically segments for your subscribers, leads and customers. These segments are going to be extremely important.

They are valuable because you are not just sending your emails to your leads but to your leads but to your existing customers.

Content, just like in the stages of the buyer’s journey, will change based on the contact’s lifecycle stage.

Your segments are the building blocks for all of your email sends.

They provide the information you need to send relevant and timely content.

If you are using a contact database that stores all of the information on your contacts and allows you to track their activity, you can easily pair the right segments with the right content to send out at the right time.

Last is timing. It is an important step to send the right email at the right time.

Most of our lives, we have been told that “timing is everything”. And when it comes to email, it is true!

icon marketing timing

Timing is what will power your emails.

It will power your emails because you can send the right email to the right person but if it is not delivered at the right time, it will not be as impactful.

When you look at the timing if your emails, you can see the connection between the content and timing.

To send a perfectly timed email, you will need to take into consideration where your contacts are in the buyer’s journey and pair the right content with that stage.

Different content will appeal to different buyers at different stages of the buying process.

For example, someone in the awareness stage of the buying process will be looking for more educational content versus someone in the decision stage is looking for more information on making a purchase or speaking with sales.

By connecting the content with the different stages of the buyer’s journey means focusing on relevancy.

You need to be able to answer the questions:

When will this contact see value from this email?

Will they able to do something with it right now?

Is this information relevant to their needs or goals?

Let’s think about it this way.

You know your contacts are at different stages of the buyer’s journey and you need to pair relevant content based on the timing of the different stages.

In addition, you will need to be able to look at the tight time during a day, week, or month to deliver relevant content to your contacts.

So how do these pair together?

With the information you have regarding the buyers’ journey stages of your contacts you also want to consider their user activity.

Their activity will help you determine when the content should be delivered.

Through send time personalization you can deliver the relevant content also at the right time.

Send time personalization uses the data you have on each of your contacts.

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Such as when they open, click, and convert, and schedules your emails to send when your contacts are most likely to engage with your email.

Relevant content plus an ideal time period equals sending at the right time.

Using the buyer’s journey, you can map out the relevant content to deliver and using send time personalization, you could send at the right time.

The Right Timing is Everything in Email Marketing UK

Another important aspect of sending the right email is understood when not to send the email.

An inbound professional, you know that email is an important piece of your inbound strategy, but a great email marketer recognizes when not to send an email.

You don’t want to be sending customers offers that are relevant only to your leads and you need to be able to suppress those contacts from your email sends.

At a minimum, the content won’t be relevant to them, and at worst you might lose trust or make your company seem out of touch with their needs.

Your customers don’t have any need for emails promoting free trials or product demos, so you need to make sure you are not sending those emails to them.

It might seem obvious that to communicate effectively with your customers you need to mark them as customers in your system, but it really is an important piece to sending great emails.

To send the right email to the right person at the right time you will need to find the right content and the relevant time to send.

And when you do this, you are going to be able to send a great email that nurtures your contacts into happy customers and helps you grow your business.

Icon Marketing Strategy can always provide the most useful and relevant tips of marketing! Please always visit us if you need more marketing tips.

Top 6 Email Marketing Software for Small Business (2019)

Are you looking for the best email marketing platform for small business? Is email marketing a priority for your business in 2018 or in the future time?

In this era of globalization, you should have realised the importance and impact of digital solution for the small business.

Indeed, selecting the best email marketing service for small business can bring a significant impact on the success of your marketing campaign.

The limited budget should be an excuse for stopping you from exploring email marketing products as many companies offer their service for free.

In this article, let’s review the 6 best email marketing software for small business.

Why Should Choose Best Email Marketing Services For Small Business?

For your information, email marketing could offer the digital solution that you have been looking for reaching more of your prospects and boosting your business.

Here are the stats:

  • There will be more than 3.7 billion email users around the world by the end of 2017.
  • According to the study, 60 per cent of consumers reveals email marketing did influencing their purchasing decision.

As a small business, it is crucial to maximizing email marketing in reaching out your target audience and nurturing the relationship with the current and the potential customers.

Email marketing is one of the most cost-effective marketing tools. Besides, it is easy to manage, give you full control and allow you to establish direct contact with customers or targeted audience.

Good marketing software enables you to create highly engaging emails. This including allows you to manage the contact, segmentation of user, and provide performance tracking for your email campaigns.

Most importantly, good email marketing software will ensure that your emails do not end up in the spam box.

Having said that, let’s take a look at some of the best email marketing software that could help your small business to grow even more.

Here is The Best Email Marketing Software for Small Business!

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1. MailChimp

MailChimp is one of the most popular email marketing tools and ideal for small business.

They offer user-friendly features which easy to interface that offer great tools with awesome support.

It is a campaign builder that allows you to easily craft the emails that suit your message – whether it is for news announcement or product launch.

Some of its features also include email templates, in-suite apps, integration to e-commerce platforms and targeted analytics.

MailChimp also comes with easy email creator, autoresponders, segmenting contacts into groups, merge tags and some simple tracking and analytics.

Thus, you could set up delivery times based on the user’s time zones and setup segmenting based on geolocation.

You can target your customers based on the previous sales, preferences and behaviour as well.

In addition, MailChimp also offers a forever free plan which allows you to send up to 12,000 emails for 2000 subscribers. Their paid plans only start as cheap as $10 per month.

Thus, the free plan offered by MailChimp makes it one of the best email marketing software for non-profits.

2. Constant Contact

Currently, Constant Contact is one of the largest and fastest growing email marketing services in the world.

It also offers great user-friendly features that would make it easy to use. You can easily manage your email list, email templates, contract and just to name a few.

Each of the accounts gives you an access to tracking and reporting, built-in social media sharing tools, the image library and a storage of 1GB to store your files.

Constant Contact offers unmatched support with the live chat, email, community support and also provides a vast library of resources.

It is also offering online training as well as live seminars. This is a golden opportunity for small business to quickly learn the basics of email marketing and able to fully utilize on their business practice.

Besides, Constant Contact has a 60-day free trial and there is no credit card required. After that their pricing start as low as $20 per month.

3. AWeber

AWeber is one of the popular email marketing services which offer a wide range of tool for small-medium business to manage their email marketing.

It is easy to get started with AWeber. It also connects seamlessly to most of the platforms like WordPress.

You could get an access in using email templates, email support, live webinars and a vast library of how-to and tutorials.

AWeber offers a 30 day of free trial and the pricing will start from $19 per month afterwards.

4. Drip

Drip is one of the powerful email marketing platforms for any e-commerce, bloggers and marketers.

They too offer numerous tools with their smart email marketing platform. It is also one of the most beginner friendly email marketing tools.

They have integration add-on available for all popular website builders including WordPress and WooCommerce.

These fantastic features will allow you to easily add sign up forms to your website and capture more leads.

What set the Drip different from the other competitors are their intelligent marketing automation tools, list groups, a smarter email segmenting and tons of cool features that allow you to reach specific audiences in your email list.

Drip also offers support options namely Webinars, live chat support, automation training, detailed course, free guides and excellent documentation.

They offer a free trial account for up to 100 subscribers. After that, the plan will start at $41 per month.

5. ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign combines your email marketing, automation, with sales and CRM. It comes with all the tools that are necessary for creating a smarter email marketing campaigns.

ActiveCampaign comes with an attractive email template editor and mobile friendly signup forms as well.

It allows you to segment contacts based on the location, social data, action and behaviour.

It also could fetch additional data about your contacts by using only their email address.

It integrates beautifully with much third-party software including WordPress. You also could send SMS messages to your contacts for follow up on campaigns.

ActiveCampaign’s plans start at $9 per month. You also could request a demo but with limited features for a test run.

The pricing on ActiveCampaign may get a little bit high, but it is totally worth the money if marketing automation is what you have been looking for!

6. GetResponse

GetResponse is a hugely popular email marketing solution. It is extremely easy to use and simplifies email marketing for small businesses and absolutely suitable for the beginner.

GetResponse comes with some amazing marketing automation tools which allow you to create a smart automated campaign.

With a drag and drop builder, you could create campaigns, segment the contacts as well as sending content designed for specific groups.

These tools are definitely are a big help for small business to create effective campaigns to boost your profits.

GetResponse also comes with some beautiful responsive forms, tracking, landing pages and autoresponders.

It also integrates with the third party lead generation software like OptinMonster, Google Docs, SlaesForce, ZenDesk and many others.

The type of supports that provided by GetResponse included by phone, live chat and email.

Besides, the helps section of GetResponse also offers free learning material including guides, videos, webinars, etc.

The plan offered by GetResponse is 30 days of free trial. The pricing will start to from $15 per month after that.

Let’s Apply Email Marketing Platform For Small Business Now!

After reviewing this articles, hope it could provide a better insight of the best email marketing services for small business and to improve your business.

Icon Marketing Strategy can always provide the most useful and relevant tips of marketing!

Why Email Marketing is Essential for Small Business

Icon Marketing Strategy can always provide the most useful and relevant tips of marketing!

Being a small or medium sized business owner does not indicate that you have to spend a large fortune when it comes to advertisement and marketing your business.

Sometimes, in an attempt to target new customers, small businesses tend to ignore existing as well as their potential clients.

Although it might take a fair bit of convincing, most small business eventually create an email marketing campaign which intending to leverage their customer base.

Email Marketing is one of the digital marketing tools that help you to connect and engage with the targeted and improve the returns on investment for your business.

Hence, it is crucial for the small business to have email marketing to take the business into another new level. The only thing that you need to spend here is your time and effort so that you could obtain the best-desired results that you have been searching for!

How does Email Marketing help Small Business?

No matter which size of business we are discussing, how the marketing dollars are allocated is a very crucial consideration. This is especially true especially for small businesses that have a limited budget and unique needs.

Small business owners often face numerous challenges when it comes to promoting and marketing their goods and services.

However, with the prudence and awareness of the latest digital trends that are fit for them, those businesses can cost-effectively market their products and services.

Remember, when it comes to businesses, you must have certain goals that you desire to attain and with the help of the email marketing.

The reason is easy! Email marketing is the best platform for small business to meet their business goals and challenges with success.

All you got to do is simple; you just have to create emails for your business. Make sure to select the right content that you want to share with your targeted audience.

In other words, this indirectly helps you to promote your business to your targeted audience and to buy your goods and services.

Thus, this is why email marketing is a solution for small business that gives those who have limited power to promote their business to reach their customers in place most people will visit daily – their email inbox.

6 Benefits of Email Marketing for Small Business

Email marketing is suitable especially for small business for a number of reasons. In fact, email marketing is a boon to small business owners.

As a matter of facts:

  • 91 per cent of the adult is preferred to receive promotional emails from companies they do business with.
  • Email is almost 40 times more effective than Facebook and Twitter combined in helping business to acquire new customers.

This is why if you are thinking of applying to your company; let’s get it to start by today. Right here, right now!

The following are how small business embracing the major benefits of email marketing:

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1. Generate Better Leads

You might not know that actually that you can generate better leads too with the marketing campaigns.

Perhaps one of the biggest advantages of email marketing is that allowing you to hit your target audience right in their homes.

It is actual fact that not everyone who joins your email list will be ready to make a purchase or sign up for the service.

This is the prime reason why you should send them emails for promoting your goods and services of your company as these leads are looking for your goods and services.

Thus, email marketing gives you the golden opportunity to capture the new visitors’ attention and nurture the relationship with relevant and informative content.

In this way, you can create your email marketing list that helps you to make a promotion about your products and services to your targeted audience.

You also can request your web visitors to share these emails in their network of family, colleagues or towards their friends.

 2. Improved Conversion Rates

When you take up email marketing for your small business, you definitely will find that your conversion rate had improved. In other words, the higher conversion rate will lead to a higher potential profit earned.

However, you must ensure that the content should well-written as the subject line has to be catchy and able to grab the eye of the reader to open their email and check on it.

This is also an important step for you to encourage your visitors to your business website to sign up for their emails.

Therefore, as a business owner, you should focus on what type of content you will need at every marketing stage of your business.

3. Enhance Sales

When you start to embrace email marketing campaigns properly, you will find an increase in sales to your business. This is because email marketing helps you to target and reach more to your potential customer.

Let’s say if everyone in your email marketing list become your customer, it would be really good for you. This is how you convert visitors to one of your prospects!

However, this is not an easy proposition even for well-established business to achieve. This is why it is a crucial moment for you to create email marketing campaigns and send them to the right people.

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This is why the right message should go to the right people at the right time.

4. Reduced Cost

Email marketing also is one of the most affordable ways via which you can promote yourself.

Most of the small businesses usually create special offers, promotions and reminders for their customers, in the form of printed material.

If you are converting this material into email format it is not only quick and simple but also results in saving on print and postage expenditure.

The sending of emails does not cost anything and it is providing economic value to the business as well, especially when compared to the cost of printing and posting of materials.

In addition, emails marketing also allow small businesses to manage their campaigns successfully without hiring new employees or increasing the workload of existing staff.

This is also one of the ways that email marketing help small business to save time and money.

The email marketing tools even could help you to promote your business to the targeted audience externally.

Some of the tools even are free and able to help you to reach out to your targeted audience and get the sales you deserve.

5. Get Better Response

In email marketing, you are able to integrate with other forms of digital media to promote a better response for your goods and services.

You could fully make use of social media platforms to share the content in your email and increasing your brand awareness.

This will help you to get a better user response that able to boost the sales and marketing of your business successfully.

That’s What Makes Email Marketing the Best for Small Business!

In shorts, email marketing indeed is a boon and the best for your small business. Make sure to use it optimally.

Besides, you also need to ensure the content you create and share via emails is compelling.

With email marketing, you able to promote your business, sell any products while spreading awareness of new launches via emails.

Embracing email marketing is an efficient way which is not only cost effective but you too could spread the positivity through the business message and gain a presence in the competitive online market as well!

Every facet of a marketing strategy

Marketing has evolved constantly and dramatically in recent years. In order to adapt to the requirements of today’s market, other variables than the 6 “P” mentioned in the article “Have you thought about your marketing plan” are to be considered, especially for services . The share of service activities is increasing in the global economy and it is increasingly rare to find a tangible product that is not accompanied by a service. This combination is intended to ensure the satisfaction of a demanding clientele operating in a competitive market.

The parameters of a marketing strategy as it is practiced today must be supplemented by the following elements:

People
This includes all those who have a role in the delivery of the service and an impact on its quality during the exchange, namely:

Staff in touch with customers: he plays a very important role in service activities, particularly through his listening skills and willingness to do his job well to satisfy the clientele.

Partners: In order for the customer experience to be satisfactory, the service company must choose its partners. The client evaluates his / her final experience and does not distinguish the part provided by the company from the one offered by its partners. For example, a company outsourcing its call center to an outside company should be aware that the quality of this service will be an integral part of the customer experience. The company will therefore also be evaluated on this basis.

Other participants: it is also about taking into account those who accompany the user of the product during his consumption without representing the target audience of the company. For example, parents accompanying their children to a movie show.

Process
The customer assesses all of his experience, from his first contact with the company to the last contact, including how it deals with claims. Therefore, the company must study all stages of the relationship with customers, both quantitatively and qualitatively, to ensure its satisfaction, including waiting time and hospitality.

Physical presentation
This element includes all the tangible aspects present at the point of contact or exchange, which create the atmosphere and the atmosphere, including everything that can influence the impression of the potential customer and his evaluation of the service, including the appearance Staff.

Planet
Customers are becoming increasingly sensitive to sustainable development, including its social and environmental aspects. Any company concerned about its image among its customers will choose to integrate sustainable development into its marketing strategy, not only with regard to its products and their origin, but also its employees. For example, today’s diversity of staff is increasingly seen as contributing to the innovation and thus the profitability of the company. Innovative companies seek to build heterogeneous teams.

Performance
A marketing plan that does not include a budget is not very useful. To achieve financial goals, one must first achieve marketing objectives that are geared to the satisfaction of all stakeholders, including customers. Marketing objectives are based on predefined marketing indicators. In the long run a financial performance results from a marketing performance. Marketing expenses must therefore be considered as a long-term investment aimed at achieving the company’s performance objectives.

The company must determine both its financial (economic) performance and its performance on social and environmental aspects through predefined indicators and in order to be part of a sustainable development philosophy.

Advantages and Disadvantages of a Marketing strategy

All companies, big and small, should have a marketing plan. It is important to plan where you want to go and HOW to get there. The marketing plan is considered as the channel that connects the company to its market. You need to identify the goals you want to achieve and then determine how you will get there. There is no perfect course, but the marketing plan can predict and avoid several mistakes.

It defines the organization’s vision to enable the company to look forward with a dynamic, market and customer-driven process. The marketing plan is a kind of instruction manual that provides step-by-step instructions for achieving your goals. It can also serve as a motivator for employees who enjoy working for a company that has plans for the future and has a plan to achieve them.

Other benefits of the marketing plan

Find a clear direction to acquire and keep customers
Achieving the goals set
Contribute to the positioning of the brand
Make better strategic use of the brand
Sell ​​your products and services more easily
Identify the problems and uncertainties associated with the actions to be taken
Take advantage of opportunities
Coordinate communication between departments

Marketing decisions have a long-term effect on a company’s efficiency and profitability within its market. For these reasons, marketing planning requires thought, creativity and foresight. It is essential to the success of your business.

objectives of a marketing strategy

To properly implement a webmarketing strategy and even marketing in general, it is important to follow this cycle containing 5 steps in order to boost the performance of a company by multiplying the loyal customers:

1. Seduce the customer:
The first step is to offer an offer that brings value to the customer. It can solve a problem, respond to a request or even as Apple does very well: create demand. The point is to really bring something that is of interest to the customer. The goal is to attract the customer by seduction with an attractive offer.

2. Federate the customer:
The goal here is to create a community around your product, your brand or your company to establish communication, solidarity and interactivity between you and your customers and between your customers themselves. Each company can develop its own community network and federate its customers around a dynamic that will serve both its communication objectives, but also and above all the progression and development of its products and services.

3. Involve:
The customer likes to feel himself an actor of his consumption, he likes even that the offer is tailor-made to meet his expectations. That’s why it’s important to put the customer as a central pillar in the company’s strategic decisions. For example, in the computer field, let the customer compose the computer as he wishes, or as the possibility at Ray Ban to test glasses online with his webcam. The conversion rate of your sales will be increased. By involving the customer in his act of purchase, his buying motivation is multiplied by 2. We like to have the freedom to choose, that’s what any customer expects.

4. Build loyalty:
Selling is good, but if the customer comes back it’s even better. In order to retain customers, it is important to offer an after-sales service that is up to the task, to listen to the customer, to offer discount cards after a certain number of purchases, to offer rewards for the best customers … L goal is to get customers back as often as possible. Show the customer that you are interested in him. A loyal customer is a customer who not only returns to buy, but also pushes others to buy from you, we often underestimate the power of word of mouth.

5. Analyze:
Build your customer database, analyze your sales over time, observe behaviors, trends, follow requests and suggestions … The analysis improves the points mentioned above and boost your marketing strategy. Draw conclusions from your analyzes to improve each point of your strategy.

If there were only 3 steps to get an effective marketing strategy, it would be this:

Attract (seduction: attractive offer)
Motivate (federation and implication: customer at the heart of the act of purchase)
Retain (reward, added value for returning customers)
And you ? What are the goals of your marketing strategies?