While it might seem like millennials are on their computers or smartphones 24/7, that doesn’t necessarily mean they are checking their email every second of the day. As a marketer, it’s important to know when to send an email, what to include in it and ultimately, how to get someone to click on it. And if you want your email to be opened, you’ve got to hit the email sweet spot with millennials.
Back to Basics with these 6 Tips for Foolproof Email Marketing
In a world dominated by social and mobile, email marketing isn’t shiny and new. Yet it remains one of the most effective channels a company has for reaching its audience.
The reason? US marketers report a median ROI of 122 percent from email communications — more than four times higher than that of social media, direct mail and paid search, according to a 2016 eMarketer report. That’s why the majority of marketers will be turning to email to engage with consumers this holiday shopping season.
14 Email Marketing Mistakes to Avoid
Despite the rise of social media and texting, email marketing is still an effective way to reach prospective and existing customers. But if you want your email to stand out in the inbox, and not wind up in the trash, avoid making these 14 email marketing mistakes.
Five Email Marketing Secrets that will Help Small Businesses Escape the Spam Folder
We all have a love-hate relationship with our emails. It’s great because it’s instant, easy to use, and costs next to nothing. At the same time, most of us get hundreds, if not thousands of emails a month—leaving a majority of them unread. As a business reaching out to customers through email, how can you keep your message from getting ignored or worse, moved to the spam folder?
How To Create A Weekly Newsletter In Less Than 17 Minutes A Week
We all know how important it is to keep in touch with clients on a regular basis to nurture and retain them to keep buying from you. put up your hand if you are guilty of starting a weekly newsletter, all with good intentions to keep writing and publishing only to struggle to get the first one out and have it fall by the wayside at issue two or three.
Let’s face it, who has 3 to 5 or more hours a month to sit down and dream up good content to write on a regular basis? Running the businesses and working with clients gets in the way and no one I know (let alone me) wants to spend a Sunday tapping out well written prose to send to clients to keep in touch, possibly with a touch of guilt at putting aside an activity which is so important.
This lead me to find an easier way to create a regular newsletter in less than 30 minutes a week. Don’t believe me? Then, try this and tell me I’m wrong.
Set Up The Tools And Process For The Weekly Newsletter
It is a prerequisite to have a WordPress website. You can probably hack these steps for other website and newsletter platforms, but WordPress has some inbuilt features and plugins that make the process so simple and effortless.
- Install and configure Newsletter Plugin
- Create an email capture form on website with the Newsletter Plugin
- Install and configure Quick Redirects Plugin
- From your dashboard go to “Tools”and drag the “Press This” link to your Bookmarks in your browser
- Set up content curation methods to receive content published from other sources that you can potentially use in your newsletter AND is high quality and of real value to your subscribers. NOTE: Do not use content from your direct competitors! After all you don’t want to be sending your hard won customers across town. The articles should be related to your industry and your customers interests.
- Set up a unique email address or inbox rules to receive this content. This prevents the articles and news getting lost in your day to day mail.
- Schedule a 30 minute time slot once a week (or 6 minutes a day) to skim through the articles and content you have received and using the process below, select the best ones for your newsletter.
Once you have set the system up on your WordPress Website you are ready to go.
Creating Your Weekly Newsletter
- Using “Press This” bookmark create posts from articles you and your clients may be interested in
- Add a “Featured Image”, ideally from the original article
- Check the excerpt text and format if required
- Add “Categories” and “Tags”
- Set the Quick Page/Post Redirect Link URL to the source URL of the article
- Tick “Make Redirect Active”
- Tick “Open in a new window” if you want the visitor to keep your website open
- Set “Type of Redirect” to “301 Permanent”
- Schedule the publish date in advance so that you publish an article each day before the newsletter is due
- Publish
Helpful Apps To Get Your Weekly Newsletter Content Automatically
- Feedly
- Google Alerts
- Social Media Posts (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn)
- Subscribe to Newsletters and RSS Feeds
Let us know how you go with your newsletter. If you have any improvements, comments or catches leave a comment below. This process is so simple to implement and you also can have a weekly newsletter with a very small amount of effort.
If you need a hand to set it up, sing out and we’ll be more than happy to assist.
WordCamp Auckland 2017 Presentation
9 Website Credibility Killers
If your site isn’t credible, you’re certainly scaring off a large amount of would-be buyers. But credibility is quite contextual, and sometimes attempts to add credibility indicators can backfire. How, then, can we create a web page that inspires trust, not skepticism? That aids a purchase instead of deters it? Credibility is “a measure of how believable and trustworthy your marketing is perceived to be.” Website credibility is derived from many factors, and these always depend on the context of your audience and your execution.
