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How to Win More Loyal Customers with Email and Mailbot

Tag: marketing

How-to-Win-More-Loyal-Customers-with-Email-and-Mailbot

Email marketing is widely used by the businesses to increase their market reach. This method is considered to be highly efficient and effective as per prospect cost is amongst the lowest of all the methods available. However, the impact of email marketing campaign is dependent on the way it is carried out. Many businesses may lack the technical knowledge or the resources required for running an effectual email marketing blitz, but here are some of the tips which may help you in overcoming these shortcomings.

Engage Customers: email campaigns may be used for engaging customers in a meaningful manner. For this purpose, you should design upbeat introductory emails so as to create positive impression of your business. The tone of this email should be inviting in nature in order to induce the receiver to visit your website and browse its content. Before you start paying attention to the email body, you should ensure that even subject line is personalized. Such personalization should then be carried out through the entire email. You can also add a list of recommended products in your email. This step will make customers feel more invited to engage with you. However, you should note that such emails do not become too narrowly focused. While it is important to personalize the content, still an effort should be made so that the customer gets to know the entire range of your offerings.

Address Cart Abandonment: while you may be successful at bringing clients to your website, you still may face other issues such as idle browsers and cart abandonment. Idle browsing occurs when a visitor comes to your website but leaves without purchasing any goods. Cart abandonment is the next stage of this issue, where person visiting the website browse the goods, adds a few to their cart but eventually do not purchase them. You can use emails for addressing this issue. For bringing them back and to make them actually complete the purchase process, your email should contain the images and description of the goods they searched for on your website. This step will remind them of the goods they might be interested in but may have forgotten. This way you can not only increase your website traffic but also conversion rate.

Respect Privacy: an effective email campaign is designed to engage customers and for this purpose it may use the data related to such clients. One of the most prominent example in this regard is the incorporation of shopping history in emails. While such incorporation helps in reigniting the customer’s interest in your products, it may also seem like invasion of privacy, if it is not done in the right manner. You should ensure that your email campaign uses only that type of data which is largely non-sensitive in nature. You should avoid using personal details of the client in your emails.

Use MailBots: email campaigns are not one off in nature and need to be carried out in a planned and consistent manner. However, the task may become tedious if you have to implement the entire process manually. In these cases, you can take help of automation processes such as employing mailbots. Such programs generally come with built in email structures, which may then be customized to meet your business’s requirements. You can use such bots for sending all kind of emails, ranging from re-engagement campaigns to introduction mails. These bots are also useful for analytics as you can program them to collect data regarding consumer behavior, inventory level and ordering pattern. You can also create rules for mailbots so that they send out specific emails at specific times, without requiring any further intervention from your side.

Above pointers can help you design an email campaign which yields optimal results. The use of bots for this purpose is highly recommended as it can help you save time, money and other resources. These bots can also help you segregate your entire market using different criterions, helping you create more personalized campaigns for each of these segments. These email campaigns should be able to pique the curiosity and interest of the recipients, ultimately adding to your top line and bottom line.

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Affiliate-Marketing-How-it-Transforms-Your-Ecommerce-Business

Affiliate marketing has proven its worth in promoting businesses. This concept is now being applied to online endeavors as well. Affiliate marketing involves using the brute force of individuals or companies to sell the products endorsed by them. Influencers may use various media such as videos, mobiles, social media and blog for promoting the products and services. These affiliates earn commissions as and when a person buys the products promoted by them. Here are some of the ways you can use this trend for promoting your e-commerce business. 

  1. Create a Niche Market: Affiliate marketing can be effectively used for creating a niche market for your business. This is done by increasing customer stickiness and loyalty. If you are using a social media celebrity as your endorser then they are likely to bring their fan following. Such followers generally are easily convertible into loyal patrons for the promoted products. It also helps you in creating a particularly targeted image of your product and business. This feature is especially helpful if you are introducing a novel product in the market.  
  2. Indirect Sales Promotion: Affiliate marketing can help you build your own sales promotion team without incurring hefty expenditures. With this indirect sales team, you can reap the benefits of an actual sales team and then some more. Affiliate marketing has proven to be highly successful in boosting the traffic to targeted websites. This in turn is helpful in expanding the scope of your marketing and adding to the revenue. Apart from generating higher traffic, affiliate marketing is helpful in improving the quality of traffic as well. This type of targeted promotion improves the conversion, offering you better bang for your advertising buck. Further, it is also more convenient to customize and alter affiliate marketing tools to suit the ever changing requirements of online businesses.  
  3. Economical: One of the most appealing features of affiliate marketing is its economy. Affiliate marketing does not require hefty outlay of funds as it does not require funding massive ad campaigns. It is also relatively simple to start and operate. Such marketing technique is highly concentrated thus ensures that you are able to tap your target market without spending an exorbitant amount of money. Affiliate marketing requires payment only when the sale is generated. This ensures that such projects have high return on investment in comparison to the investment made in traditional marketing channels. You can also design your commission tier system in such a way so as to ensure that each penny works the hardest for your brand. 
  4. Harness User Generated Content:  Employing user generated content for promotional purpose is amongst one of the hottest trends in the e-commerce segment. Affiliate marketing offers you ample opportunities to integrate user generated content to your sales promotion material. The scope of user generated content is ever increasing as more and more people rely upon social media for getting information about the products. These online information portals also provide reviews of the products which are then used by potential customers for making their purchase decisions. User generated content is important as it is a highly economical way of spreading awareness about your products and offerings.  However, you should be proactive to maintain appropriate quality of user generated content. 
  5. Choose Wisely and Track: While affiliate marketing can serve all types of businesses, it is important that you pay careful attention while choosing such channels. There is a wide range of such programs available, each of which caters to specific types of ventures. For this purpose, it is important to be clear about your end objective. You should also be clear about your target niche market, so that you can choose appropriate affiliate marketing channel. Some of the most prominent affiliate marketing channels currently available are Rakuten, Amazon Associates and Jex Ads among others. Once the selection and implementation is done, it is equally important to have proper tracking systems installed.  

Affiliate marketing has come a long way and offers a wide range of options. For optimal performance, affiliate marketing may be integrated with traditional marketing tools. However, affiliate marketing has high potential as a standalone technique as well due to its high versatility.

11 Easy Marketing Tips to Promote Your Small Business

11 Easy Marketing Tips to Promote Your Small Business

Small businesses have shown remarkable growth in their popularity. This has become possible due to changing customer preferences and technological advancements. However, small businesses generally suffer from lack of resources including funds to spend on business promotion and marketing. Here are some of the tips which may help you in marketing your products and services with minimal budget.

Establish Brand Identity: creating a clear identity allows you to properly communicate about your firm and the products. Some of the tools which may be used for creating a brand identity are brand name, logo and use of specific colors and images. You can do this work on your own with the help of several technological tools available. However, it is advisable to hire a professional to create logos and word art. To create a loyal band of customers, you should put your brand and logo everywhere possible, including on merchandise, business cars and email signatures.

Know Your Market: one of the worst mistakes a small business can make is to assume that any generic marketing strategy can work for their products. In reality, it is important to design a customized marketing proposition for each product and service. The process involves intensive study of the market and its various constituents. The marketing strategy is thus created keeping view the distinct requirements and features of the segment. Such customized marketing policy is more likely to resonate with the clients and produce better results. You should also be clear about the kind of message you are trying to deliver with your marketing plan.

Build a Better Website: in order to have proper online presence, it is essential to create a dedicated website. The portal should not only be attractive but also easy to use. Having an intuitive interface makes a website easier to navigate. The proper process of building a website starts with proper planning. At this stage, you should determine your target population and their requirements. The next steps involve designing and then creating the prototype. These prototypes are used for testing purpose where their usability quotient is determined. The final step involves review of the design and the implementation.

Select the Social Media Platform: with a large number of social platforms available, it is imperative to focus on a few in order to derive efficiency. There are several factors which contribute towards the choice of right platform mix. The demographic mix and the type of products to be marketed are amongst the most important factors. Some of the most prominent platforms available are Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram. Out of these platforms, the former is more popular among mature adults while the latter two are favored by younger population. Accordingly, the allocation of marketing material across these platforms may be carried out. Further, the choice of platforms may be done as per the business goals as well. Social media may also be used for promoting your website.

Use the Right Tools: it is important to use the right type of tools for disseminating information about your business. Some of the most important tools in this regard are infographics, videos and pictures. Infographics are particularly useful in this regard as these are easy to understand and are visually appealing. Such infographics are also easy to make as there are several computer programs available to aid their creation. You may also jazz up your data with the use of graphs and other visual representations.

Leverage Your Network: it is as important to think locally as it is to do on wider scale. While you may use social media and other mass media, it is equally essential to harness your close network. You can start by participating in local events. Alternatively, you may choose to sponsor some local drives and relevant public events. You should also look for synergistic participation with other non-competing businesses. Such collaborations may help in cross promotions through the use of reciprocal website links, fliers and bundled promotions. While such networking and collaborations may take some time to fructify but they are worth the effort.

With the above tips you can promote your business and goods in an optimal manner. These methods do not require substantial outlay of resources and thus are suitable for small businesses.

Time for Holiday Retail Marketing Strategies

Time for Holiday Retail Marketing Strategies

The busiest time of the year is back for businesses. Holiday season is expected to retain its past momentum and will likely record bumper sales level again. But, are you and your business prepared to use their opportunity in the best possible manner. While it is advisable to hash out your holiday retail marketing strategies well in advance, but it is not too late. Here are some of the pointers which can help you fine tune your holiday retail marketing strategy.

  • Get a Head Start: you can get an advantage over your competition by starting early. Holiday season entails big crowd so you need to be prepared to handle them. If you are running an online business, you need to ensure that your servers are all set to accommodate incoming traffic. If you do not plan early, your website may break down under the pressure of traffic volume. Apart from this, you also need to plan for proper inventory. This is important for both online as well as offline businesses. While it is not advisable to tie up funds in excessive inventory, but running out of good while there is demand for them can cause even bigger loss to your business.
  • Remain on Your Toes: you may plan early and go for perfect execution, but there will always be circumstances which will require you to go back to drawing board. So, it is important that you keep your strategy simple and flexible as you may be required to change it on a moment’s notice. For online businesses, server outage may be a big issue. You should be prepared to handle any such malfunctioning as and when it arises. Further, there may be unexpectedly higher demand for some products. In such cases, your business should be ready to handle such high volume.
  • Know your Market: in order to design effective marketing strategy, it is important to know all the nuances of your market. Even within your target market, you should be aware of different sub-segments and tailor fit your marketing strategies as per their requirements. For example, while designing your holiday marketing strategy, you may want to ensure that you retain your repeat customers while also making sure that you are able to attract the new ones. Overall, your marketing strategy should account for each sub-segment of your target population.
  • Make it Festive: while it is a serious business, the holiday season is about festivity as well. Be sure that you generate that holiday buzz and give celebratory makeover to your business strategy. For this purpose, you can start with marketing material such as pamphlets and emails. It is imperative that your marketing items are able to create that festivity buzz. You can also tease out the customers by providing them a sneak preview of the goods offered and discounts provided. Design your campaign in such a manner that it highlights a timeline leading up to the holidays in a creative and intriguing manner.
  • Go Mobile: as more and more people are now accessing the web through phones or tablets, it is important to ensure that your marketing strategy is customized for mobile experience. Start with your marketing material to ensure that your promotional emails and advertisements are displayed properly on smaller screens of mobile devices. Optimize your website to load faster on even slower mobile connections. Better still, you can simply go for designing a dedicated app for your mobile clients. Whatever you plan to do, but make sure that you pay due attention to people using mobile phones and devices.
  • Pre Test: it is highly important to go for a pre test run, so as to figure out potential glitches. You can try out different approaches to find the best one and then deploy the selected ones to ensure the best results. You can also tweak your other strategies in response to the results of pre test run. It will also give you a chance to test your discount codes to avoid any last minute issues.

Holiday season may prove to be the best marketing season for your business, provide you carry out proactive strategy and prepare yourself beforehand.

5 Marketing Mistakes That Can Impact Your Cash Flow

5 Marketing Mistakes That Can Impact Your Cash Flow

For any business, cash is the lifeline and therefore, it is important to ensure that the business is fed with a consistent supply of funds and the chances of liquidity crunch are minimized. Cash flow management is essential for the long term survival of a business, as lack of fund at the required time may force an organization to go out of business. Here are some of the common marketing mistakes which can cause a business to struggle with its cash flows. The possible remedies for them are also stated below.

  • Failure to Identify Unique Selling Point: A unique selling point or USP not only allows a business to stand apart from the crowd but also forces them to fully comprehend the utility and the benefits of their products and services. This exercise may also allow them to position their product in the market in a better manner. However, failure to identify the USP can jeopardize your products and even your business’s future. If you are using a generic selling point, you are losing out on attracting a loyal customer base and thus hurting your cash flows.

You can fortify your cash flows by undertaking thorough analysis of your product and identifying the unique features associated with it. These unique points may in the form of features, functions or even location of the product.

  • Failure to Manage Costs: While the effective marketing of products may require substantial outlay of funds, unwarranted spending is no guarantee of marketing success. It is important that expenses incurred for marketing the products and services are carefully monitored to ensure that overall cash outflow remains on the conservative side. Further, the expenditure on any marketing activity should be justified by the revenue generated by it.

In order to maintain proper cash flow, a business should periodically evaluate its marketing strategies to identify the practices which are not yielding desired returns. Businesses should also note that increase in the number of customers does not automatically translate to higher cash flows as costs associated with such increase may be higher than the marginal revenue generated.

  • Failure to Collect Dues: You may employ strong marketing tactics to ramp up your revenue, but all your efforts are in vain if your business is not able to collect these revenues in a timely manner. If your marketing strategies are generating additional sales but the proceeds are not collected, then essentially your resources are tied up in unproductive avenues, soaking away the liquidity from your business. Such hold up of funds points to inefficient cash management practices.

Hence, businesses or firms should strive to collect unpaid dues on a regular basis. However, it should be noted that a proper balance between retaining clients and collection of funds is essential.

  • Failure to Vet Clients: Good marketing practices may bring you new customers, but it is essential that you properly vet these clients to ensure that they are of good credit standing. If you are more concerned about quantity than quality, then your marketing strategy might backfire as your business may not be able to extract funds lying with the clients.

In order to ensure that your business remains liquid and viable, you should carefully analyze your potential clients to ensure that your sales actually translate into liquid funds for your business.

  • Failure to Provide for Surprises: You may devise the most efficient marketing strategies, but if you do not account for unexpected changes in your internal and external environment, then you run the risk of compromising your cash flows. You should not only account for any possible changes in circumstances within your organization but also for potential changes in factors which are beyond your control. While you may not be in a position to exercise any control over such factors, you can certainly provide the safeguards against their impact on your business.

It is important to be future oriented while designing marketing strategies so that the impact of changes on cash flows can be adequately anticipated.

Profitability and smooth cash flows are the keys to a successful and sustainable business. By paying attention to the above pointers for charting out the future marketing course of action, you can ensure that your business does not suffer from cash crunch and remains well funded.