TABLE

OF CONTENT

CONTENT MARKETING 1
Introduction 1.1
Definition of Content Marketing 1.2
Working Definition of Content Marketing 1.3
What goals can content marketing serve? 1.4
Content Marketing Strategy 1.5
Needs of Content Marketing Strategy 1.6
Content Marketing Steps 1.7
Content Marketing Management 1.8
Guide to Social Media Content Marketing 1.9
Tips and Suggestions 1.10
Corporate Blogging Guide 1.11
What is Blog 1.12
The business blogging reality 1.13
Business blogging success factors 1.14
Why blogs matter 1.15
Guide To Lead Generation 1.16

Email Marketing 2
Introduction 2.1
Email marketing software or marketing automation 2.2
software
Knowing when email marketing works 2.3
The challenges in email marketing 2.4
What goals can email marketing serve 2.5
Guide to building and growing your email list 2.6
Email Content 2.7
Email Content Tips 2.8
Email Designing 2.9
Promotional Emails and Announcements 2.10

Inbound Marketing 3
Inbound Methodology 3.1
Four Inbound Marketing Actions 3.2
Why is Inbound Marketing Hot Today? 3.3
Needs of Inbound Marketing 3.4
Types of Inbound Marketing 3.5
How to Initiate Your Inbound Marketing 3.6
What is Marketing Automation 1 3.7
What Is The Value And ROI Of Marketing Automation 3.8


What Marketing Automation Does 3.9

What is Lead Nurturing? 3.10
How to Score Leads for Nurturing 3.11
Nurturing Leads with Content Marketing 3.12
Content Marketing on Your Brand’s Website 3.13
How Marketing Automation Helps Nurture Leads 3.14
CONVERSION RATE OPTOMIZATION 3.15
Definition 3.16
Why Is It So Valuable 3.17
A/B Testing 3.18
How to conduct A/B Test 3.19

CONTENT MARKETING

INTRODUCTION

Content marketing denotes a broad term which covers a group of techniques, strategies and
tactics to meet business as well as customer objectives through use of most apt content. This
content is used to attract, convert, serve and retain customers.

The term Content marketing is used across customer life cycle and customer journey but it does
not begin or reach an end with customer. Content marketing is deployed to cater to numerous
business functions in a progressive, integrated and steady manner. It puts focus on the
customer from an allied perspective. It also covers content requirements of those engaging and
serving customers, both existing and prospective ones.
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One major aim of content marketing is optimizing customer and business value. This is achieved
through offering and enabling the apt content in right channels in connected, personalized,
optimized and most timely way across the customer life cycle and beyond it too.

Content marketing can be deemed as a marketing technique, spanning a wide range of

procedures and tactics where:

1. Content and information preferences of tactically defined target audiences are

thoroughly analyzed,
2. Content is generated to cater to such needs while staying in sync with predefined
marketing targets,
3. The created content is then made accessible, tweaked and used to cater to business and
customers objectives in all ways of PR, marketing, sales in an integrated and controlled
manner.

As it is, Content marketing isn’t entirely new and even before the term came to be used, the
process was in vogue. Research findings reveal a majority of entities resort to using content
marketing. They deploy content for possible and relevant marketing and customer oriented
needs, no matter what the content format, channel or medium is. The way content’s role is
analyzed as a more planned, strategic, intelligent and integrated method, is new.

Content marketing is built upon experiences and these include brand experiences, customer
experiences as well as user experiences. Content serves as the binding factor and a trigger of
interaction in a primarily customer-centric marketing view while relevance, uniformity and
connected value for brand and customer remains at the center. By giving focus to a pre defined
segment of people, content brings the customers to the forefront in sync with a company’s
business objectives, eventually leading to organizational gain.

The definition of content marketing

Content marketing can be defined in more than one way, as it is. However, it is logical to say
such definitions and the term itself do not hold a lot of meaning despite the fact they will be
used for several years to come. This will go on until it reaches a saturation point and after that
the term may evaporate. At that point, content marketing will become a mainstream thing.

Regardless of the various definitions of Content marketing, the principles and practices of
effective content marketing will exist. It is and will remain as a part of integrated, positive and
customer-centric marketing practices. At our 2014 Content Marketing Conference, Doug Kessler
explains in detail what content marketing denotes and the ways to strike gold with it. It is
contained in the interview at the right side.

Rather than “selling” the model of content marketing and getting into debates regarding its
definitions and contents, it makes sense to adopt a no-nonsense approach, analyzing broader
context of usage of relevant content in a continuous, captivating, systematic manner. Content
marketing, in customer and business context, stresses on offering value through exceptionally

well brand experiences and customer experiences. Such content helps in making a brand
statement and also leads the entity to achieve desired results through customer life cycle.

Defining content marketing: a matter of context

Content marketing can also be defined as per your background and viewpoint. For example, the
perception of the term to a B2B marketer is different from what it does to a brand marketer.
The former has eyes on generating new leads and nurturing existing ones. The latter focuses on
developing or changing brand perception in the target customers. A search engine optimization
specialist will look at it from a different perspective altogether. In any case, the basics and
norms of good content marketing and its core principles and strategies do not differ much.

For all its variations in different contexts, content marketing remains very much an integrated
as well as customer-centric approach, part of a wider marketing view. See more on that in our
‘Customer-centric content marketing manifesto‘.

No matter which way you look at content in marketing, the similarity is in focus on preferences,
requirements and queries of the customers, and target audiences.

Consistent usage of apt content is comparable to a thread running through all types of
marketing operations. There is no denying the importance of quality content and using it in
suitable way is where focus should be given on.

Below described are our working definition and a record of content marketing resources and
content marketing definitions obtained from various sources. These have been crowd sourced
and so you are free to make additions.

What is content marketing: how we define it?

Content marketing is a broad term which covers a number of tactics, techniques and strategies
to fulfill both customer and business goals through usage of content all through customer life
cycle and company activities in a continuous, integrated and consistent manner. Content
marketing should not be equated with just regular advertising campaigns. It would be a mistake
to assume content market is the same as deploying content in systematic manner for needs as
PR and search engine marketing.

Quality content always attracts, persuades, informs, engages and serves customers while
tapping the mind of target audiences. It serves these functions through entire lifecycle of the
customers and relationship with your venture. Such content can be used to respond to
customer queries and the queries of prospective customers both during and after their cycle.

Figure 1: The content marketing cycle – via Langley Center for New Media – source
Fusionspark media

Outside the perspective of buyer journey, content marketing engages target audience and
customers and leads to action- short to long term with focus on latter. So, it is logical for a
business to refrain from using just a campaign-only approach and focus on consistency.

Content marketing is also put into use from branding perspective and is also deployed with
offline as well as digital marketing goals. From the branding context, a number of new terms
are used nowadays, such as ‘brand journalism’ and ‘native advertising’.

What goals can be served by content marketing?

Since content plays a key role in literally all marketing tactics and techniques, there is no
business goal that cannot be achieved by leveraging quality and apt content.

Nevertheless, from the context of content marketing, we have seen marketers focusing on
goals like:

● Lead generation.
● Brand awareness.
● Sales.
● Engagement.
● Customer retention and loyalty.
● Customer evangelism.
● Lead nurturing.
● Up-selling and cross-selling.

Even though these can be called typical goals traced through content marketing research, we
welcome you to think innovatively and analyze the goals of the audience specific to your
company and industry.

As per the view of Doug Kessler, a noted content marketing expert, content marketing is all set
to go mainstream. It is necessary for you to take a stand. This will eventually have an impact on
your marketing goals as well. You have to look at it from broader parlance instead of imitating
other ‘run of the mill’ contenders.

Figure 2: Organizational goals for content marketing according to the 2015 B2B Content
Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends – North America by Content Marketing Institute
and MarketingProfs – more on SlideShare – do you think out of the organization goal box

Below listed are a number of actions/goals (blend of intermediary and others) that may be used
for content marketing, along with things described in this article:

Informing/educating customers, employees and partners- As it is, a lot of customer support

persons are unaware of company website content while they are working on it. It begins with
making vital information available to relevant persons. It further includes partner enablement,
channel enablement, employee enablement and covers essential content like brochures.

Thought leadership-This is thought to be one of the relevant yet vague intermediary goals. Still,
by making viewpoints, expertise and knowledge about audience preferences, it helps you
transform into a trusted advisor. Strictly speaking, proven expertise and practice leadership
eventually overshadows thought leadership.

Entertaining- While you are not exactly a publisher, it is possible to serve numerous marketing
goals by entertaining the audience and giving them the most valued content. It is quite close to
branding and engagement but entertaining target audience through the realm of enticing
content serves other goals too.

Proving and overriding objections- You might be unaware of what prospective customers are
seeking when they get the contact of your organization and access its content for the very first
time. Content comes in handy for usage through all steps of the buying cycle as well as sales.
Content that focuses on major points sought by customers can lead to sales. This can include a
wide range of content that people seek during the buying process journey and it serves as a
weapon to overcome hurdles in the way.

Initiatingdebates, interaction and developing community- The manner in which people

interact with content may eventually lead to major discussions and insights. This also paves the
way for fresh content and insights. Community enablement does not necessarily depend on
content or debate alone, but it gets a boost when these provide what is being sought by
people. Interaction and debate may be interpreted as an element and at times, as content as
well. Debate is useful for goals like community marketing.

Enhancing customer experience and fine tuning marketing efficiency- This, we feel remains
the most vital yet overlooked aspect. Plenty of marketing goals those are served with content
marketing are predicated on these factors. The good thing is that need for content usage for
lead nurturing is being felt increasingly by a majority of marketers nowadays. However, what
they often miss out on is the focus on things happening outside of these aspects. It is necessary
to tweak marketing efforts from the perspective of the customer. Customer experience
improvement can be achieved by using apt and relevant content. The loopholes in customer
oriented processes need to be fixed to gain long term benefits for businesses.

Partner, sales and stakeholder enablement- Yes we did mention this once before, but it
remains overlooked. Marketing has a role to empower all stakeholders involved in a venture;
including sales personnel, partners, and contact center employees so that they get the material
required for their work. In an age when the information handled by anyone is growing, access
to the right content and means to unlock it in apt ways through information management and
content management tools assumes significance. This is where Big Data is headed to – from raw
data to information and insights to obtaining knowledge, including content analytics.

Content Marketing Strategy

Content marketing is not merely limited to creating, sharing and distributing content for getting
audience engaged; it also used for generating leads, enhancing brand image and meeting allied
marketing goals.

It is necessary to adopt a strategic approach and that is where content marketing strategy
comes into picture. Content marketing can be placed under a wider and integrated marketing
strategy. It definitely needs a separate strategy. However, many other strategies related to
marketing techniques (social media or email marketing) need integration into a wider strategy.

A content marketing strategy should not be equated with content strategy. It analyzes the
numerous ways content marketing may be used throughout the buyer’s journey cycle,
customer life cycle as well as varying customer experiences. It actually goes beyond these goals.
In other words, content marketing strategy denotes how content marketing should be
deployed in a strategic manner with other sales, customer and marketing strategies.

A content marketing strategy provides answers to the questions like:

Who actually are the buyer personas and what their content preferences and needs are? -
These questions point at the type of information sought by different categories of buyers in the
course of their buying journey. The questions also measure customer touchpoints, desired
channels of communication and content formats. Buyer personas are not exactly restricted
solely to the term ‘content marketing.’ They are deployed for a comprehensive strategy. There
is no denying the fact that you look at a buyer persona in a more comprehensive way while
analyzing content marketing strategy.

Which marketing and allied organizational goals can be realized or enhanced by using content
marketing effectively?-The examples of such goals include conversion optimization, traffic
building, lead generation, email marketing, event marketing, marketing automation, social
media marketing etc. These can be improved by using content as well as content mark
effectively. This is what your company’s content marketing strategy should look at. Just asking
what organizational goals are served by content marketing is not a prudent approach. A lot of
people, including end buyers and marketing executives, are clueless about what the term
content marketing denotes. It is more prudent to ask what organizational goals can be
strengthened and supported rather than trying to segregate content marketing from the big
picture.

Which content marketing metrics as well as KPIs are required to gauge success, in connection
with other allied KPIs and marketing metrics?- There is no denying the reality that some typical
metrics are deployed in content marketing. However, it makes more sense to use a common
language in all marketing segments and business endeavors. Content marketing should not be
looked upon as an isolated island! To implement marketing ROI successfully organization wise,
it is important to locate common metrics and make use of common language in various
departments.

How can we shape up the internal organization – and excel?-So, the question emerges, can we
ensure that all processes and methods related to content marketing are organized properly, in
sync with other marketing processes or teams? Sometimes, content marketing evangelists think
that developing team exclusively for the purpose of content marketing is essential. However, in
reality, this does not happen always except in case of some large companies. In most cases,
teams focus on goals and tasks rather than playing exact roles.

For which other marketing objectives as well as business purposes, content marketing can be
used? –The answer is yes, it can be used for goals like supporting customer service team of a
company, empowering sales and optimizing web conversions etc. Before thinking much about
content strategy, production and inventorization, some crucial aspects should be analyzed. You

need to think of the stumbling blocks, organizational processes, management goals, competitor
data, external partners, customer insights and marketing priorities.

How the industry is going through changes? –It is a major question that you need to think of. It
is also important to think how the buyer’s journey relevant to buyer personas in your niche is
evolving with time. What is the role of content marketing here? Well, you need to look at the
developments taking place in the B2B industry for an answer. Content plays a major role
clearly. Looking further, Key Account Management is vital in that sector. Can that be served
through deployment of apt content marketing strategy? It is also necessary to have a look at
the influencer circle of buyers in the segment and varying buyer types.

What queries have to be answered and what steps need to be planned to set alive our content
marketing strategy and move to content strategy dealing with content-related aspects further?

What existing budgets can be tapped into to achieve the goals better using content (What are
those areas, after all!)-You may very well have a predefined budget for your company website.
However, it may be worthwhile to put your money in a more relevant content suiting buyer
persona rather than on an after site design makeover. It may be the case that your company is
focusing more on generating traffic and getting more leads, but conversion rates are yet to
shoot up. It may be necessary to rethink these strategies and invest more after lead nurturing
and conversion optimization, by deploying content.

What do you do when there is no existing budget to tap into and how do you forecast either? If
you find your entity is losing out vital opportunities, it may be necessary to make provisions for
additional budgets.

A number of questions have to be answered as far as content marketing strategy is concerned.

Why do you require a content marketing strategy?

You need a content marketing strategy primarily because content marketing cannot be treated
like an island.

Content marketing is usually interpreted as an umbrella term. So, it means that content
marketing can be deployed to serve numerous needs and may have different implications for
different people. It is not as tangible as the term ‘search engine marketing.’ That explains why
you need to think about content marketing’s strategic role in context of your entity and its
ecosystem. In the absence of a solid and well defined content marketing strategy, you may end
up focusing more on content and content strategy. This may deter you from keeping track of
your overall goals! This turns out to be a vital and fatal error in content marketing. Sadly, the
disconnected outlook on content marketing is a common thing and its outcomes are
disheartening.

Figure 3-D content – source Arketi Group and Pardot

In an age where everything is viewed as integrated both social media marketing and content
marketing are a huge umbrella term; opting for content-centricity can be a mistake.

Eventually, by observing the role played by content marketing in a strategic manner, which is
integrated with customer goal and overall marketing, it is not necessary to get buy-in or make a
case for it. At the most, you can be a smarter, effective marketer. In case of social media
marketing, executives often had to clear budgets that were not in sync. However, in content
marketing, that possibility is reduced since it is linked with several other marketing goals and
hence is not an additional factor. However, this is not to imply that additional budgets may not
be needed for a solid content marketing strategy. But, you eventually will need to sell more and
build a better brand perception not limited to content marketing strategy alone.

In the modern content marketing perspective, more focus is given on the role of content
behind engagement, reach, branding, SEO etc. From a branding, engagement and reach
perspective, organizations think less of buyer personas and focus more on audiences. However,
for such a view, taking content marketing strategy into account is also required. A pure
publishing concept sans a comprehensive strategy cuts no ice unless your entity thrives on
website traffic. It is prudent not to look at content marketing from social and search
perspectives alone.

Analyzing steps involved in strategic approach to content marketing

It is true that a content marketing strategy focuses on strategic position of content marketing in
comprehensive marketing scene. However, there is an organizational and planning dimension,
required for mapping the several steps concerning content planning, generation, mapping etc.
So, content strategy clearly has several components. Mostly, several such components revert
intuitively but a few common questions have to be answered.

Let us elaborate on content marketing strategy while listing the things to be done:

Analyzing content type required to meet various business objectives across a customer
journey or branding related stuffs (These can actually overlap at times)

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Creating inventory of the existing content along with other resources or information that may
be converted into content.

Opting for proper content planning, scheduling and collaboration processes.

Setting up narratives that cover brand’s promise as well as unique value proposition. Linking a
brand with customer intent and business goal through content is necessary. Establishing the
tone and style is also important.

Automating typical marketing processes, triggered using the apt content at the right place at
the right time.

Planning content strategy aimed at different channels. While channels may not be the center
of attention, there is no denying the fact that every channel has distinct characteristics, usage
patterns and technical aspects. Twitter cannot be equated with Google and LinkedIn is a
different platform altogether! You can’t compare email with a webinar either.

Ensuring the content is found by and is shared with both target audiences and buyer personas.

Defining the content-specific metrics as well as KPIs. These help you figure out if the overall
business and marketing goals as described under content marketing strategy are ideal for
marketing ROI.

Generating, aggregating, sourcing, optimizing content: Or simply getting it done by deploying

most workable tactics.

Defining a proper mix to fit the targets and customer journey, in terms of channels and
formats etc.

Offering the content in varying formats, each with distinct calls-to-action, based on the
individual stages. The idea is to offer a wide variety of content formats and types. This is owing
to the fact different personas and segments have varying requirements. Moreover, when you
evade message fatigue, having a number of touchpoints is also fine. It also helps develop brand
perspective. Using variety, repetition and multiple formats is necessary as long as relevance is
maintained.

Mapping content to buying cycle, queries and pain points. Elaborating on buyer personas using
the content strategy perspective is also necessary.

Planning campaigns in comprehensive marketing strategy where a range of content marketing

tactics may be blended.

Defining content flows, governance, storing data, ideas, managing content assets etc,

Training people who will be a part of planning, execution as well as follow up.

Closing the loop between sales and marketing, which includes content too.

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Including relatively less typical content requirements such as customer service.

Content marketing: organization and management

Based on the context, scope and your organization’s maturity in content marketing, you have to
organize the manner in which content marketing is done with a difference. As it is, there will be
some people, who play a role in generating content. People would be there who manage the
projects and some stakeholders will also be involved.

As your maturity level in content marketing grows, the opportunities will become clearer and
you will be able to better gauge results on pilot projects and early initiatives. So, organizing and
structuring would get more attention. In this article, we aim to develop the scene of managing
and planning content marketing from a collaborative, organizational and human perspective.
After that, we will get into actionable tips.

In an ideal situation, all these processes, teams and structures are in place before content
marketing process gets started and much of the strategic content marketing exercise has been
done across varying silos and involving several departments, target audiences and the
customers. However, in reality, companies hardly start from low maturity to attain a level of
matured content marketing. We will analyze those maturity levels (basically about basics of
solid good content marketing plan and underlying processes) in another article.

Note 1: There cannot be a single blueprint fitting every organization for sure. But there are
different common parameters to adopt a project-oriented approach along with maturity-
oriented roadmap.

Note 2: If you possess a portfolio and project management skills that counts.

Note 3: Content beyond doubt serves several goals and is required in all types of marketing.
Not every business, customers and goals are the same. You have to think of a legacy that is here
to stay. It is relevant in content marketing as well.

Which department has the responsibility to handle content marketing?

This is one question we often have to answer. Who is actually responsible for handling and
executing content marketing? It is not like asking as if content marketing is owned by whom in
the company. However, the second question is easier to answer. Content marketing is owned
by no one in particular since it touches nearly all business functions. So, no particular
department is capable of executing or handling content marketing in many ways single
handedly. Besides, ownership is not discussed in an optimization-driven and customer-centric
content organization. It is a shared exercise and begins with strategy, including having the
knowledge of the place of the content across the organizations in situational perspectives.

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The first question asked, “Who is responsible?”- is more relevant to roles than any
departments. As already mentioned, content marketing should not be perceived as an island. In
this digital era, it needs to be organized with the team ‘handling social media.’

So, which department is exactly responsible (from who will do what, where and when
viewpoint) for handling content marketing, and social media marketing along with newer forms
of digital marketing? Again, the focus falls on management and responsibility, not on
ownership.

The primary answer to the responsibility questions is:

1. It is not a matter of departments (Though some entities may have their content
marketing teams), and
2. It varies.

As expected, it does depend on numerous factors. It is not fair to draw an analogy between a
MNC B2B technology company following a complex marketing model and long sales cycle as
well as a regional online only FMCG company. So, we may have a look at responsibilities
involved in content marketing.

The most engrossing work on organization of content marketing was done by Altimeter
Group’s Rebecca Lieb, beyond question. Rebecca looked at the major organizational models
that were used de facto for content marketing and content strategy (they are different). For
more details, you may want to go through the report in details in Slideshare.

Why do we think it is the most important work? She did put in lots of effort into it and we saw it
fitting with stuffs we have actually done and seen in practice. (We work mainly for

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international, large entities). We have actually seen mix of numerous approaches as described
below and also explained in the report framed by Rebecca.

Note: Even though we are familiar with Content Center of Excellence approach, often Centers
of Excellence we worked with were within and not only for content, such as a digital Center of
Excellence. The CoE model is deployed mostly in transformational processes in which
collaboration across the silos and hybrid teams is a requirement. It has been used in BI, IT and
some other areas for long. We think it is an approach that works fine –as long as involved
stakeholders collaborate as they should. It involves other departments and the collaborative
approach does yield results.

Do we require chief content officers or content marketing directors?

Some organizations have designations for Chief Content Officers. They are seen more
prominently nowadays as compared to the past but only in specific circumstances. One such
prominent example is MarketingProfs’s CCO Ann Handley. MarketingProfs relies on a content-
intensive business model and content is at the core of their operations. It cannot be compared
with average companies. However, it is also true the CCO function is being found in companies
that adhere to complex business models, stress on knowledge and have a strong global
presence.

Do you actually need such a CCO or a person in the organization who handles things related
to content marketing? Essentially, the same thing can be said about social media manager or
social media director and such terms

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Figure 4: Ann Handley defines the Chief Content Officer in the first edition of Chief Content
Officer Magazine – Check out the European version (PDF) in which you find the full interview
and a report of our content marketing round table

As far as social aspects are concerned, the answer is not hard to comprehend. Social media gets
involved with each department in a company nowadays. It is even a part of sections like R&D,
HR and customer service. While on one hand you have roles like web care collaborators and
community managers, on the other hand, you get managers (in bigger corporations) with a
wider social media management role. Question is, what is it that you actually need?

The answer actually depends on a number of factors. However, if your entity deals with social
media professionally in numerous sections, it may benefit from having someone in the role of
social media director.

What about the designation of CCO? Nowadays, content as well as what it triggers has become
so important that no business can ignore it. Content eventually touches all channels like SEO,
email, social media and also affects functions like lead nurturing, customer service, sales and
R&D. Content also serves as a key factor behind emotional triggers, storytelling, engaging
people, and word-of-mouth and so on.

However, the question that emerges is, do you require a manager separately for overseeing
content marketing and planning activities? In day to day business practice, we think that this
can be quite necessary.

Figure 5: How companies organize for content marketing – source Altimeter Group report by
Rebecca Lieb on SlideShare

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Reason someone has to be responsible for content (marketing)

The managing role has the essence of an editor in this context. The role also merges editorial
functions and project management. The manager also reports to a number of people. However,
having a Chief Content Officer is something different. Given the significant role played by
content, you may actually introspect if it is possible in your organization. Ann Handley likes a C-
level title, as it is quite evident here. You can also go through the content marketing org chart
made by her below, which is actually simple in nature. The article she wrote about how to
recruit a CCO also deserves a reading.

A Simple Content Marketing Org Chart composed by Ann Handley

Sometimes, recruiting a CCO is a solution or excise for lack of collaborative approaches. A lot of
entities are actually stuck in silo-thinking, and they also suffer from fragmented divisions. They
also lack a coordinated approach across the organization. When holding our 2014 Content
Marketing Conference Europe, we did observe some people with the title ‘CCO.’

As it is, businesses have always produced content in a massive way and continue to do so. The
irony is they often do not think about it or end up using a minimal part of what they possess. It
is also necessary to have a person responsible for managing the nuances of content marketing
and handling in an organization. The roles include inventorizing available content, streamlining
processes, suggesting its holistic usage, filling in gaps and supervising multiple things.

The Content management personnel, whether director or manager, has to think about a
customer-centric and have a 360 degree approach. He also serves as human “glue” between
the company’s various divisions. He also manages customer needs in terms of life cycle and
business priorities like:

Giving the “internal” clients and what they need including service and sales; making sure that
every person dealing with prospects and customers have the required materials is important.
This includes basic collateral and interactive content as well as multimedia useful for the
detection of needs as well as customer interactions based on a life cycle.

Giving “external” clients relevant contextual content, better information and means to produce
content themselves. So, in a way, he assists in enhancing customer satisfaction, loyalty, up-
selling, conversion marketing, and cross-selling. He also has role in storytelling and word-of-
mouth.

Overseeing the processes of generating, offering, distributing engaging and shareworthy

content, integrating user-made content, blending inbound techniques and for the conversion
process optimization, using several context sensitive content (contexts being transactional
behavior, persona’s and peer recommendations).

Manage ideation processes and editorial processes, from event-based approach leading to
needs-based approach, which requires customer intelligence.

Guide to social content marketing

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Social content marketing can be described as the meeting ground of social media and content
marketing, from a business perspective. With consumer and social B2B buying getting
connected like never before, attention to social content marketing strategies and tactics is on
the rise. However, the term isn’t just related to optimizing content for various social channels
or social sharing. It also connects social business, newsroom principles, techniques and
collaboration to content marketing.

Figure 6: The traditional – connected – social content hub and spoke model via Dachis Group

In several models of social content marketing, blogs turn out to be the content hubs while
social channels and media become spokes that play a role in spreading content in the
connected audiences. However, there is no denying the fact that a solid content strategy tends
to be more complicated than this. It includes websites and offline activities too. It does not put
focus on mediums like blog but keeps audience or buying persona and customer at the center,
in alliance with marketing goals.

Anyhow, having a social content strategy is prudent (planning to execution) since social media
is a part of most content marketing plans. It is also prudent to look at various social content
sub-strategies, tailor made for specific channels. Businesses tend to use all social platforms
often in the same way – by sharing content in a rapid and non-optimized manner.

Social content optimization and strategy: Major components

Through usage of social content optimization, the effect of content shared through distinct
social channels and devices and based on usage context and each social channel’s inherent
features, based on target audiences. Segmentation, targeting and optimized social content
approach generally overrides a one-size-fits-all methodology that several businesses embrace

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for content sharing. Optimizing content as well as content strategy for channels like LinkedIn
can be fruitful by focusing on LinkedIn user behaviors and channel.

Overall, social content marketing binds infrastructure dimensions and social collaboration with
content workflows and the involvement of an entire ecosystem. It often spans using social
newsrooms as well as command centers which makes a loop between social interaction and
content creation.

In most instances, a social content strategy:

Takes into account the behavior and needs of target audiences as well as their audiences.

Analyzes the way target audiences use various social channels to obtain information during all
stages of their journey.

Looks at the way user-generated content can be mixed with social content (examples include
Twitter and Pinterest) to offer more value and context.

Has a kind of integrated social approach where diverse social channels strengthen each other
while evading message overkill and marketing fatigue.

Is integrated with comprehensive content marketing strategy.

Includes a calendar for each social channel and contact moment along with contact moment,
integrated in turn with an editorial calendar that maps target audiences, behavior, the content
and KPIs.

Blends with search which is being defined by social signals like never before.

Is linked with marketing automation platform as well as social media platforms so that
interesting contacts can be pursued as social media themselves, given that lead return is rare in
the B2B context.

Goes way beyond the basic sharing of content: Listening, understanding and monitoring needs
of target audiences or analyzing what they share since it leads to content production.

Looks at sharing triggers and behavior, and ideal format and form per channel, driven by
behavior of audiences and all personas.

Focuses on share worthiness of the content per channel as well as target audience.

Engages and initiates action through issue addressing, query resolving and also through
audiences.

Looks at contextual placement of sharing tools and buttons in various channels and media
where sharing is crucial for your needs.

Includes an approach for social interaction and comments.

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Feeds back key social signals for triggering the next set of actions and create more social
interaction.

Connects business principles and social collaboration with content strategy.

Connects the dots between social technologies, content, organization and social voice of target
customers, social media evolutions etc. It also binds social newsroom with social command
centers, if applicable.

More tips and suggestions:

Social content optimization, in which social channels are deemed media themselves, while
content-sharing is interpreted as content creation from a wider perspective. It requires little
effort but the impact is quite massive. You may look at a tweet as a contextual content piece
and also a social object.

Measurement and improvement through a blend of social media platforms, CRM, analytics
and marketing automation lets you test the efficacy of social content across cycle of your social
connections. Moreover, it is necessary to see as well as observe the manner in which your
social content moves and how social interactions of the target audiences impact and enhance
your content marketing strategy.

Figure 7: Social content optimization – source David Armano

Most widely used social tools and channels in social content context are:

• Earned media and Owned media including blogs.

• Social curation platforms.

• Usual suspects like LinkedIn, YouTube, Slideshare, Twitter etc.

• Social collaboration tools.

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• Pinterest and customer focused bookmarking tools.

• Social as well as collaboration enabled extranets, intranets, information

management solutions etc.

In fact, this list can be pretty extensive, but you should keep the focus on channels used by your
audience first, in alliance with the experiments on channels with a high potential ROI and low
risk.

Corporate blogging guide: tips and strategy

A number of organizations that get into social media marketing and content marketing and try
to provide content in a more personal and conversational manner begin their endeavor with
blogs. Even though business blogging is nothing new and many companies have their blogs,
there are several who don’t. It is not a mandatory requirement but then there is no big reason
for not having a blog either. This business blogging guide answers why you should get into
business blogging.

Figure 8: The role of the blog – source infographic why blogging matters via MyCustomercom

Remember, there can be several discussions on future, value and efficacy of business blogging
in an age where visual content and content overload is commonplace.

Try not to get distracted by them and instead focus on your customers, company, audience,
narrative etc. Think of your company’s brand image and how the customers perceive you.
However, you also need to start simple. Think of the questions that your prospective customers
and related people desire have answered even before engaging with you.

What are blogs actually?

Blogs, abbreviated for web logs, are popular online platforms to generate specific content,
share as well as interact with people regarding such content objects, which are referred as blog
posts. They have common factors like trackbacks, RSS and comment possibilities. However, it is
not always necessary for a blog owner to activate all these features. Business/corporate blogs
have focus on regularly updated and non-promotional posts.

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They generally aim to attract the attention of prospective buy and stakeholders, offer relevant
information to pre-defined buyer personas and target audiences and boost conversions. While
their content is not overtly promotional, there is no denying the fact that business blogs serve
indirect and direct business goals.

Blogs are therefore, important parts of social media programs and also function as content
marketing strategy hubs. In reality, we have seen this concept of content marketing reverting in
approaches used by several organizations. They use blog as the hub while different content
formats and channels function as spokes. However, there is no denying the fact that in any
content marketing strategy, the real hub is customer value which produces business value.

Corporate blogging caters to several potential marketing goals:

• Driving awareness
• Engage specific target audiences, like journalists, for example
• Offering the information – prospective customers require across their journey
• Branding
• Relationship building
• PR
• Community marketing
• Driving traffic, registrations and subscriptions
• Feedback and listening
• Influencer marketing
• Generating leads

You may also utilize blogs to focus on business goals that are not related to marketing or forms
of interaction and communication.

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Figure 9

The reality of business blogging: spokes and hubs

The content marketing and social media activities of several companies in reality are restricted
to driving conversions and interactions via blogs along with social platforms linked with them.
Such content marketing and social media programs often are restricted to listening, responding,
publishing and acting with a strong focus on content shared by blogs.

While content marketing and social media bring in much more possibilities over blogging, it is
natural to have the focus narrowed to blogs and content. A majority of website traffic and
online created leads comes from the search engines. As it is, search engines serve as a major
source for customers in several stages of their journey. Moreover, blogs are sought more since
people look for information when they want to buy anything and become more social-savvy.

Content is of course, a social object: It is what people seek, watch, read, share and interact to. It
definitely is a social need, solves questions and offers a human answer. It is people-centric in
nature and the same can be said about blogs.

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As already mentioned, blogs still serve as social content hubs and also work for content
marketing. The hub and spoke model is often presented in simple ways. However, it is prudent
to look at it from a realistic and more connected perspective. This is what the Dachis Group
model depicted on right tries to convey- which was actually covered by David Armano several
years ago in his blog.

What makes a Business blogging successful?

Below described are some vital elements that play a role behind the success in business
blogging. They comprise of a few steps. There is no reason for you feel intimidated! Blogging by
no means is a rocket science. It is just that we want to be exhaustive.

Outline the expected outcomes and marking KPIs and metrics in sync with related marketing
strategies.

Identify your target audiences, stakeholders and buyer personas in a customer-centric and
well-documented way.

Evaluate the (content) needs preferences, wants, and target groups over preferences and time.
Blogs focus on questions raised by the prospective buyers; they cover more than just business
needs. They also cover aspects related to entertainment and emotions. Business should evade
boredom and same is true about the blogs.

Align the needs, expected results and putting apt processes and flows in a calculated manner,
by attributing proper resources, foreseeing planning and collaboration tools like editorial
calendars.

Inventorize, repurposing and creating content for serving needs, answering queries, engaging
and driving to results, appealing through a blog format.

Interact with other bloggers and readers. Feeding the communities that make and keep
existing communities of customers, collaborators, prospects, engaged.

Follow up on key metrics for success and testing and improving regularly. Don’t be afraid to
alter course and keep collecting feedbacks. Perfection does not come overnight.

Apply some best practices in content formats, writing and technical topics.

Embed blog activities with social content strategy in a social context. Such a strategy focuses
on the target audience’s social media behavior and enables interaction as well as easy sharing
on vital platforms.

Integrate blogging activities in comprehensive content marketing, community marketing,

social media marketing, lead generation and loyalty marketing strategies. No matter what the
goals in individual context are, blog marketing and corporate blogging are included in a broader

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context. This also looks at integrations with several marketing tools including marketing
automation.

Provide a steady customer and ‘reader’ experience by deploying storytelling techniques in the
narrative, core story, style and language as well as preferences of your target audiences.

Leave the corporate jargons behind and let people share content in a less formal and personal
way, ultimately blogs are meant for reading by people!

Make it simpler for bloggers, empowering them, training them and looking at what they need
too. It’s not about money alone.

Plan, structure and put guidelines/processes in place which stress on empowerment of

collaborators. However, evade planning in excess and have some room for factors like
creativity, teamwork and employee collaboration.

Figure 10: Four broad categories of metrics for corporate blogging – source: The Ultimate
Guide to Corporate Blogging on slideshare

Why blogs are important – and do you need one?

Not all organizations use blogs. But do they need one? More importantly, do you need one?

The answer to this question is that it depends on a few factors. There are some authentic
reasons for having a corporate blog. Before deciding whether you would have one for your
organization or not, it is prudent to know why they matter.

You have to find facts and plenty of reasons regarding the importance of corporate blogs and
realize where and how they fit in the social landscape. As you can feel, blogs play major roles in
a digital content marketing strategy, as has been witnessed in many organizations.

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The Definitive Guide to Lead Generation

Lead generation has turned out to be a vital strategy adopted by modern marketers. This is
because they often try to generate demand and convey their messages across sophisticated
and multi-channel customers. The world is a complex place to live in and marketers need to
leverage lead generation for building lead generation, nurturing customers and prospects,
qualifying leads and generating measurable revenue.

In this exhaustive guide, we aim to cover topics from website SEO, content marketing to
content syndication and telesales- all through the perspective of lead generation. Loaded with
charts, checklists and thought leadership obtained from the masters of contemporary
marketing, ‘The Definitive Guide to Lead Generation’ will show you ways to gather information
from prospects in each channel and hence, deliver top notch leads to the sales team.

What you will learn:

● How to Identify a lead and understand the buying journey

● How to develop a solid lead generation strategy by means of marketing automation
• How to utilize SEO, your website, social media, content marketing and paid programs to
generate leads
• How to develop long term customer relationships using Middle-of-Funnel techniques
• How to test, measure and optimize the lead generation campaigns

Download it today, and master how lead generation can load your sales funnel with excellent
quality leads.

=======================END======================

EMAIL MARKETING

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Email marketing: from an integrated perspective

A couple of digital marketing “techniques” that have survived the test of time are search engine
marketing and email marketing. As it is, the marketers have to cope with a range of new
channels used by people to interact with companies. Even if the present generation customers
turn out to be channel-agnostic, email marketing remains a major component of digital
marketing strategy.

With time, new generation of marketers are hopping onto the bandwagon of digital marketing.
In this guide, you will find an email marketing overview in the contemporary perspective- how it
fits in a comprehensive marketing approach and what it can do. This is not only aimed at
newbie marketers, but also seasoned professionals.

This guide to email marketing will keep growing and is based on more than a decade of email
marketing approaches and several blogs and paper written by us on email marketing since the
late 1990s. We have also included the views of marketing software and marketing automation
vendors as well as industry veterans. It also comes with tips that we had published previously in
our email marketing blog.

The evolution of email marketing: The changes

Let us begin with a fast paced overview of macro-evolutions taking place in the realm of email
marketing. As it is, the core principles of effective email marketing have not altered much.

The major changes in email marketing include a change in “one size fits all” method, “batch and
blast” tactic, ad hoc campaign, behavior of consumers, algorithms and rules of major email
clients, email marketing service providers platforms and newer email access devices. The legal
perspectives have to be analyzed in some areas- subject to jurisdiction and geography.

Of course, the way email marketing is made a part of integrated marketing strategy has also
undergone a sea change. The old time batch and blast method in email marketing is no longer
valid and lifestyle related factors have emerged to the fore. A lot of marketers opt for
marketing automation software by default, but they mostly make use of existing email
marketing features present in those platforms.

We also have to mention the importance given to data-driven marketing, optimization efforts
to boost email marketing, ongoing optimization and personalization efforts, the role of mobile
and position of email marketing in the journey and lifecycle of connected customers.

The decade long buzz of email marketing being dead or obsolete notwithstanding, the ground
reality is email marketing is thriving and you just need to do a reality check. Look at your own
email inbox, for example!

There are so many examples of email marketing being alive! For example, Twitter sends you
updates on its features and followers who are already connected to you in some digital online
platform. The same is true about other popular and upcoming social media platforms/ social
networks. Moreover, there are those email alerts and newsletters sent by numerous online

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service providers, entities and blogs as well as RSS alerts regarding your favorite retailers and
brands. If you think that is enough, it is not! It is only a fragment of the email marketing
juggernaut. We have not even included triggered emails and confirmation emails yet.

Figure 11: According to the ExactTarget (a salesforce.com company) 2014 State of Marketing
Report most marketers still believe email marketing is essential – (click for report and full
image). Note: ExactTarget is in the business of marketing automation and email

Email marketing and customer-centricity: How these are relevant in data-driven marketing
context

Email marketing definitely matures with time and evolves in an age when several customer-
oriented systems and marketing software are integrated, channels are integrated and big data
emerges as the next big thing.

With time, various email service providers are bringing in more features to let marketers make
the best use of this ever increasing amount of data and this in turn, drives their email marketing
campaigns in a personalized manner. This is in context of customer behavior, needs, buying
history and real-time interactions between other channels etc.

Eventually, customer experience and customer-centricity are the major driving forces behind
the changes in email marketing as we have experienced during the last 15 years. As it is, some
email marketers have opted for a switchover to big data. The evolution helps optimize the
return and some tactical metrics used by them. They call it customer experience optimization,
but it is not really like embracing a more customer focused as well as integrated approach-what
most digital transformation efforts should be like in the marketing context.

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Simply said: Claiming to have data-driven and customer-oriented marketing approach is

something and finding the sweet spot of balance between business value and customer value is
something else altogether. There is is a risk in data-driven marketing and this obsession over
data. It also poses a risk in marketing automation, provided other aspects like customer
experience, lifecycle, intent and journey are not taken into account.

However, the keywords are personalization, automation, data-driven marketing, mobile, omni-
channel and overall customer journey, customer-centricity and lifecycles. Smart businesses may
also analyze customer and journey in an integrated manner beyond email as a part of general
digital transformation procedures in marketing. When we mention digital transformation in
purely customer-facing context, we actually talk of digital customer experiences, data, mobile
and integration etc.

Email marketing software vs marketing automation applications?

Marketing automation software entails some obvious advantages over the majority of email
marketing software, beyond any doubt. However, it also depends on your individual resources,
goals, context, capabilities and finally, customers.

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We have seen that in recent years that some cheap email marketing software makers are
coming up with basic automation features including triggered emails related stuffs. For
instance, MailChimp added many such non-traditional features in 2014, thereby indicating the
growing value of marketing automation.

On the other hand, marketing automation software makers with many useful features have
appeared on the horizon and their pricing makes things favorable for organizations that could
not afford such applications e. Besides, there is plenty of marketing software coming from
other genres that have embedded marketing automation and email marketing features. The
bottom-line is that the lines are getting blurred:

Figure 12: Workflows in MailChimp – the move towards marketing automation

However, the functions of goals are still features. As it is, several businesses at the starting level
can embrace email marketing software. Marketing automation software is not indispensable if
you have not utilized features in your software fully yet, along with other platforms. The
exception is when your approach outweighs the savings by a large margin and you are certain
of possessing the resources and skills.

In this context, one of the most easily overlooked resources is proper content (in the context of
content marketing and promotional context and customers needs). Shortage of relevant and
quality content often turns out to be the biggest pitfalls of failed marketing automation and
email marketing campaigns. It is not something that can be equated with pressing a button!
You also need to think of the people and processes (planning, testing, content, productions,
indirect and direct subscriber input in a systematically way).

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How to figure out when email marketing works: integrated challenges

So, how do you figure out if the email marketing program chosen by you works? Most
marketers look from the prism of a direct response metrics for this. They set their eyes on
aspects like click-through rates and open rates.

While these metrics do matter, they are not adequate when you adopt a more realistic and
integrated approach. Email marketing works in situations when it fits the requirements of
customers and that of the other recipients. That can be seen through direct metrics and also in
parameters that are not limited to the mail marketing program itself. It’s important that you
understand that email marketing always had and still has a branding impact. For example, when
you register to a retailer’s promotional newsletter, you may eventually purchase a promoted
product in any offline outlet of that retailer at the right time.

Viewed from the opposite side, metrics like downloads and click do not indicate the interest of
prospective buyers in your brand and its products. Even we are habituated to getting calls from
so many sales persons after downloading their papers online. If someone downloads a paper,
his or her interest primarily lies in that. You actually have to know how to assess their actual
interest. This is why many resort to using marketing automation as well as lead nurturing
techniques. The cross-channel, multi-channel, channel-agnostic and omni-channel reality makes
the hurdle of understanding when email marketing can work larger than what you think. So, it
is imperative to integrate and understand the customer overall and think of multiple
touchpoints. It can be done with email marketing software linked with human wisdom, CRM
and web analytics. However, other tools may be needed and moreover a more holistic view and
attribution model can do the needful.

Finally, you need to analyze the list activity and hygiene. In an email marketing approach based
on lifecycle, think of those metrics across lifecycle-triggered elements and all flows.

Email marketing for channel-agnostic consumer

Businesses that want to maximize the benefits of email marketing think that the traditional
approach is inadequate to draw the attention of channel-agnostic customer.

The result is that the companies resorting to conventional email marketing solutions and
procedures are being confronted with limitations of the reach of their existing solutions as well
as marketing IT stacks. The time for a paradigm shift from campaign and channel to customer
and preference has come of age. A shift with significant consequences is required for entities
that are keen on taking their interactions and email programs to the next level. The same can
be said on strategy, integration, measurement and solution level.

The hurdles in email marketing necessitate a different approach

The most vital changes affecting the position and efficiency of email marketing (Of course,
other marketing techniques are also involved) are listed below:

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• People have better control over the information and communication gathering
processes.
● New channels offer added interaction scope and boost the demand of users to engage
in personalized dialogues.
● There is an overwhelming hike in the number of marketing and advertising messages.
● People tend to rely less on company messages and opt more for their networks.
• Internet is present almost anywhere and there are newer means of
access, including mobile devices.

The results of all those changes include, a fall in the conversion of several email marketing
programs along with a growing battle for position in inbox-which is growing in importance.

Techniques like personalization and segmentation help companies deal with email overload.
Email subscribers cannot only be considered as just email addresses; they are real life people
seeking pertinent information and interaction, ultimately leading to increased need of relevant
and timely content.

Businesses also want to optimize email frequency and try to embed them with other channels.
All these activities are important, but they are not adequate. A fundamental review is what the
email process necessitates. A review is needed in which the interaction process with individual
customer using information and various media resources assumes more importance than the
channel and message.

What goals can be served by email marketing?

Email marketing and the numerous techniques encompassed by it may be used literally for all
marketing goals. Just the way you want to have an integrated marketing plan for other
marketing tactics, it is natural to have a plan for the email marketing programs.

Here also, what you seek to achieve and ways to achieve it – remain the two key questions to
be answered. The rest lies in smart thinking, staying close to your target audiences, improving
continuously, processes, tactics and finding the magical spot where the goals of your customers
are met. Also, you have to add the insights acquired by you and think outside of email
marketing.

Developing, engaging and growing and email lists: from a human approach

When you know things you want to attain with your email marketing plan and before sending
any email in reality, you will require an email (subscriber) list.

Several organizations still make use of a siloed email marketing list. There are others who are
yet to begin. Then there are some other companies that have a contact list and they use it for
email marketing and also for other needs.

Whatever the context is, it is clear that clean, ideally segmented and active lists are important.
You have to look at your lists and contacts as communities of people. Then you have to ensure

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what your contacts want and whether your goals are properly aligned. See below some
resources on email lists.

Guide to developing and growing email list

Well, every company has a “list”. As it is, they may have several such lists. But not all the lists
are suitable for use in context of email marketing. There are cases of different lists residing in
totally unlinked silos, away from ‘single customer view’ brands thought of achieving with
marketing automation and social CRM.

Figure 13

Developing an email list: Things you need to Keep in Mind

Having a list for use in email marketing is a necessity. You have to think of connecting lists,
focusing on engagement, hygiene and permission as far as the usable part of the list (for email
marketing) is concerned. Besides, as email marketing is getting drifted from the so called “batch
and blast” method to a customer-centric and integrated marketing strategy, email intervenes in
several touchpoints/ interactions with people across/on various (sub) lists.

No matter what your email marketing list or current situation is, the vital elements are:

● Ensuring that your emails have relevant content and/or promotions, in sync with the
promise made to the people at the back of addresses in your “list”.
● Treating your (would be) subscribers and anyone from any list as people with highly
individual behavior and preferences.

When analyzing email subscription strategy from a more conventional email list approach, it is
necessary that you think from viewpoint of people you want as subscribers. Try to understand
their needs and choices. It is also necessary to think of these preferred communication
channels of those people.

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Listening to them is very important and you also have to ask them and make a preference
centre where those subscribers have a choice. You may for example, resort to using social
media monitoring, face-to-face contacts and surveys to figure out needs of your target groups.
As it is, you will require an integrated approach for blending all data obtained in such ways and
you have to be aware of goals both you and your subscribers want to achieve.

The life cycle of email list and why it is important to seek quality over quantity

Every email marketer is aware of the reality that when he starts an email program the lists can
grow quickly. It grows as you launch actions and engage people. However, after the list gets
matured, you will experience sluggishness in list size growth.

Of course, it is important that you keep the list growing with time. However, it is hardly the
most vital challenge and task. At least, it is not so for management and our subscribers. Let us
show you why. Unless you are always putting in efforts expand the email list by offering new
value continuously, the email list expansion is bound to stabilize after a point. New subscribers
will pop up and some existing ones may unsubscribe. Of course, you may ask the later lot the
reason and then give them an alternative.

This is natural and it gets stronger as email list gets larger, stable and mature. Some subscribers
will not require the information anymore but others will be signing up first time. As it is,
slowdown in opt-in list growth may indicate that your brand’s email and content marketing
program may not have been adjusted to present scene and subscriber needs. This is not hard to
find out though.

However, the absolute size of list is not what matters the most. The interaction between your
brand, email and your subscribers are important here which denotes the quality. Open rates
are just one of the several indicators of this. The success of your email marketing strategy is
also indicated by number of new subscribers. As a serious email marketer, you have to keep the
email list active and put in efforts to expand it. However, that is not what relevance (things that
are interesting for management as well as the subscriber) and return (what is of importance for
management) is really about.

You have to keep in mind that interaction and engagement of your email subscribers is vital. It
is actually the deciding factor for email deliverability. Besides, you have to keep in mind that
your existing subscribers are needed to grow the email subscriber list after all! You should keep
the option to invite colleagues and friends in emails that are sent to the existing subscribers.
Now that social media is omnipotent, it makes sense to put in social sharing tools in emails too.

Some tips to help you develop and grow an email subscriber list

Offer a subscription form either on your blog or website- This is quite obvious but you may
actually plan to do it in a better way. You may, for example, integrate a subscription form
meant for website visitors so that they can subscribe to emailing list. As a thumb rule, try to
simplify the form and refrain from asking many details. In most cases, potential subscribers feel
uneasy when they have to answer many questions when subscribing online. You may also

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tweak profile of the new subscribers further for marketing. Marketers should stick to asking
some basic information, of course including a valid email id in the web form.

Don’t stay limited to a single form for enabling people subscribe to your company emails

You should use more forms on your brand website so that new subscribers get the scopes to
sign in at their preferred time, while keeping opt-in rules in mind. You may, for example, keep
the option to opt for email subscription on forms meant for registering for events, downloading
white papers, e-commerce and feedback and so on. However, think of including your blog and
Facebook page, as long as relevance is there. It may be a good idea to keep a mini form on each
page in your website. On such small forms, it is okay to put a link to example of emails as well
as privacy policy. This is where you should not ask for much information. As it is, registrations
from several paid, earned and owned sources are connected. When you seek a single view,
marketing automation platforms emerge on the horizon, even though some email service
providers may offer cross-property registration options.

Use email signatures- You may have observed a lot of marketers actually sign’ their individual
emails using a standardized message which includes contact details. The marketers use such
‘email signatures’ to convey corporate messages too. You may utilize email signatures for
inviting email recipients to subscribe to your brand newsletter. Some marketers even have a
unique corporate email signature policy and they deploy tools to ensure the email signatures
remain same across the company.

Build trust, choice, and transparency- People don’t give their email id without a purpose as it
is. You have to sell them your products or services. It is important to generate the apt
expectations through showing what type of content your emails have, offering several options,
placing links to your company archives and privacy policy.

Offer incentive for those who subscribe to your email list- An incentive works most of the
times, does not it! Incentives can be diverse including a white paper, relevant content and
offers. This holds true for existing subscribers along with new ones. This ensures the existing
subscribers feel they are being remembered and they will not unsubscribe.

Make the subscribing process to something positive –Just because you get permission from a
prospective user to send him or her email that is not all! You should send a professional
confirmation mail with a thank you page. This looks both professional and creates a positive
impression on the recipient.

Stop asking too many details at once- When a person subscribes to your emails, this denotes
the commencement of a professional relationship, beyond doubt. When you develop a
relationship, it is not fair to ask about everything at the same time. Begin with asking
elementary information including the user’s email id and later go for more details. In email
marketing, progressive profiling is a prerequisite.

Develop a viral recruitment campaign- In most cases, the purpose of online viral campaigns is
developing a database which in turn can be utilized for email activities, lead nurturing and

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follow-up interactions etc. Online marketing campaigns that are developed around ideas of
prize games often include components of viral marketing. In such campaigns, the participants
are asked to invite colleagues and friends within a time span. This is aimed to gather email
addresses at random. You may also keep the option of registering for your newsletters and
email marketing program. However, keep things clear to the target recipients.

Keep an additional field in other forms- You may do without viral recruitment campaign for
adding an optional field using which people can register for your email campaign. It can be
done anywhere as it is. However, you have to ensure it is relevant at that time and it does not
interrupt the main process. In an online transaction, for example, you want the buyers to
complete the purchase first and then offer them any subscription or anything related, is not it!

Learn lessons from those who unsubscribe- It cuts no ice when you attract new subscribers
whom you cannot retain for long. It is prudent to ask people who subscribe to your email and
then unsubscribe later. They may have numerous reasons for moving away, as it is. When you
get to learn the reasons, you may rectify your approach and do better in future.

Devise newer methods to incentivize your opt-in- The method for incentivized opt-ins include
content-based resource or a free report. However, that is only the beginning of this type of
marketing. Rather than limiting yourself with a report, you may offer something else. When you
are marketing business services online, your audience may like your expertise and they may
end up buying the products. There exist many other methods of incentivizing your opt-in.

Resort to offline interactions- To ensure your email marketing database keeps growing, it is
necessary to use any existing contact moment for inviting prospects and customers for
subscription. Such contact moments include offline vehicles (like your letterhead and brochure
to business cards), face-to-face contacts, interactions between the buyers and your company’s
various departments etc.

Find a blogger, community owner or partner in your niche- There are plenty of bloggers and
with efforts you may even locate business partners with long email lists. They often do not
make use of such lists. If you come across a website, community or blog belonging to your niche
it is prudent that you get in touch with the owner. It may eventually prove to be of use to your
business, the owner and those who shared their email ids too. If the list was not at all used, it
makes sense that you seek permission of the subscribers once more. However, it is also
necessary to tell them what they should expect so that you get subscribers who really are of
use to you and vice versa.

Developing your own email list is not hard. All you need to do is listening to people, offering
value, thinking from their point of view and making the entire subscription journey an
enjoyable one.

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EMAIL CONTENT

Major Content Tips for Making Email Content

As it is, the email sent by you is the content that you desire your readers should read. It may be
promotion and information- based. However, the way you present the content is what matters
in the end. Below listed are some key content tips to use in your emails:

Content Tips 1: Picking and Choosing Content

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Beyond doubt, the first question you ask yourself here is “what content should be there in my
email”? It is true there is nothing like a proven algorithm that can determine what will resonate
with the readers and recipients. You can, in fact, try using a wide range of email content and
over time you will be able to figure out what works the best for your needs. Eventually, this
habit may be helpful to realize what works for various types of users. In case, you are new to
this, here are some useful email content tips.

• It's NOT about What You Would Want- A commonplace content generation mistake
made by marketers is crafting email content with his or her mindset and viewpoint. It is
important to think what our target and potential readers would like to read. If you have
not resorted to email marketing before, your company may have data on content that
works the best with your target users. Now, this can be sales data pertaining to
discounts and certain items or even web analytics that indicate which pages and content
types perform the best. Irrespective of the sources used, remember that content has to
be used in email campaign that should seem enticing for recipients and only then they
will read it. This implies such email content and offers may not always align with your
liking and instincts.

● Ask Around!- it does not matter what is the size of your company. You will get quick and
user friendly web tools to take survey of your existing traffic. This helps you figure out
content or offers liked by them. If you already have social network program, utilize a
tweet-back campaign or Facebook Questions to achieve the same goal. As it is, you will
only need a week or so to find out what the readers want to see in emails. Keep in mind
that the users those respond to polls and questions are actually the most engaged and
active users. You may try to figure out the likings of less engaged and active users as
well. For that, you need to have a close look at your sales records and web analytics.

• Competitor Research- If you have rivals with successful newsletter or an email

marketing program or for example a well-developed web content section, you may try
emulating its methods for both promotional and content related needs. Particularly if
the rival entity has been running any email program for a span of time, they most likely
have tested and realized what type of email content and offers work the best. However,
if you pose as their dummy customer and sign up for email, you may not get what their
existing proffered customers get! Still, it is a good way for researching.
• Seasonal Content- To enhance open rates, Seasonal content is an ideal weapon.
However, you have to keep in mind that December remains the most ideal time for
active email marketing. It may so happen that despite having great email content you
may get less than ideal results. This occurs simply because the inboxes of most people
are laden with too many emails! In any case, using the holidays, special events and
seasonal fashion trends is always desirable for making the email content better suited to
your users and readers.
• Test! Test!- It boils down to email test, eventually. By reporting on email activity and
keeping great records, your knowledge on email content loved by your subscribers and
disliked by them, will develop. It would be wrong to assume you know what stuffs the

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subscribers will like to receive and read. Their behavior should be observed to get a
better understanding of what they want.

Content Tips 2: focus on correct grammar

Granted, a majority of the world now communicates through SMS abbreviations but studies
have indicated that using proper grammar in email content is a must. This helps enhance the
conversion rates. It makes sense to have a veteran copy writer or English major in your
organization. Such a person can edit and proofread email content. Some users are particular
about these issues.

Content Tips 3: Zeroing in on Length of Content

It is also important to figure out what the length of content used in your email would be. You
would think that using adequate content is required to convey your message to the recipient.
However, making it too lengthy is not prudent. The risks include:

Ø Ending up in the recipient’s spam or junk folder

Ø Users end up not reading the content owing to abundance of content
Ø Lengthy email contents may run into display issues, more so in specific mobile devices
and email clients , thus affecting legibility

As it is, the best emails are within 750 words and trust me, that is a lot of text! However, here
are some useful tips that may come in handy as you decide on length of email content.

• Using Short Text Blocks-The email is not the equivalent of a lengthy article with
elaborate and complex sentences written in a university exam! Use short blocks of texts
not exceeding 20 words in general within the email body. Within that short text block,
use call-to-action link that takes readers to your website. It will help boost the web
traffic.
• Formatting the Text- we will cover the ideal methods for formatting content soon but
ensure your email content looks visually interesting. Use apt font, colors and sizes too.
Enticing looking email text gets reader’s attention.
• Breaking Text Up using Images/headlines- You should break up big blocks of text with
images and headlines. Web users tend to get turned off by large text blocks and so it’s
necessary that you keep these mails visually interesting.

Content Tips 4: Words to evade using in Your Email Content

You may not even have thought about it but there are certain words that can make your email
land in the recipient’s spam folder. There are almost 200 such words. While it is not like you
cannot use them at all but from a practical perspective, minimize their usage. Do not ever use
them in the email’s subject line to be on safe side. We gave listed a total list of words that
trigger anti-spam apps in this e book’s sixth section. The following list however constitutes
words that can be deemed as disastrous for email marketing. These may lead your emails
straight into the recipient’s spam folder:

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Ø Free
Ø Opportunity
Ø Visit our website
Ø Click here
Ø 50% Off
Ø Call now
Ø Bonus
Ø Subscribe
Ø Prizes
Ø Save up to
Ø Discount
Ø Important information regarding
Ø Information you requested
Ø Great Offer/Deal
Ø Special Promotion
Ø Guarantee, Guaranteed
Ø Order Now
Ø One Time
Ø All New

Now, you may actually use such words in your email and it is also true a lot of companies
actually use those terms in their business emails. However, ending up in the recipient’s junk or
spam folder is the result of a complex algorithm and matrix which remains unique to every
email service provider. Using such words may make your emails land in delivery problems. So,
be careful about using those problematic words in our email content and in most situations, use
them frugally.

Content Tips 5: Formatting Content

Finally, the way you format the content in business emails is no less important than the content
itself. Below listed are a handful of content tips to be used for email formatting:

No Copy and Paste from Word! There is no denying that Microsoft word is one of the most
widely used and user friendly word processor. However, it is disastrous to just copy content
from the app and paste in email marketing platforms. Word content is not exactly web ready
and display issues will crop up. It is prudent that you use Notepad in between to avoid getting
garbled text.

Use Bold Tags, Font Sizes and Font Colors-As we already mentioned, it is imperative that you
adopt measures to make the email content visually appealing. Using varied font sizes and colors
in email content help you achieve this. Using bold tags occasionally using inline tags also makes
sense.

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Underline Links- In another section, we elaborated on the best practices to enhance email click-
through rate. To get a full summary, you may read that section in case you skipped. However,
keep in mind when you format email content, it is customary to format links using an
underlined font as it helps enhance click-through activity.

Use Headlines- Ensure you divide your content by usage of bolder and larger headlines. This
helps convey to user what each section is about. It makes the recipients scan the content for
things that they deem important.

Small Text Blocks- We've mentioned it frequently as it is really important. You have to use
small blocks of text and then resort to using powerful calls-to-action elements. This will
definitely lead users to your website or its specific page where they will get full content. It will
make the email more text-friendly as well as boost web traffic.

Legible Font: The number of web ready fonts is aplenty. However, for successful email
marketing, you have to pick a font that is quite legible. Most remarketers stick to fonts like Arial
and some non-serif fonts. The ideal font size is 10 or 11. You should evade using script fonts and
heavy serif fonts in email content.

Content is definitely the king of the web, and that holds true for email as well. Take time and
follow the content tips for both selecting and creating content. Your email campaign will be
successful.

Designing for Email

Designing for email is important because it is about utilizing the brief encounter you get with
the target users and subscribers. It is one shot that you will get and so deploy the available
tricks to your advantage! The below listed principles are about paying respect to your readers
by offering them something which they find worth their time and also in sync with the reason
they signed up with your service for.

Ø Be Transparent- This is possibly the most important aspect. It is absolutely necessary to
evade using cryptic and puzzling sender names, copy and subject lines. Lack of clarity is
sure to make your readers confused and then they are likely to delete the mail or send it
to junk folder.

Let your readers know who you are and the reason you are sending the email to them.
They also need to know what they are going to get. These should be conveyed at the
beginning of the content in your email. This basically ensures as soon as the readers
open your email, they get to know your identity and intentions.

Ensure your sender name, pre header, subject line as well as 'above the fold' content

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are all quite meaningful and they sync with your reason for mailing the readers.

Ø Be Obvious and stick to Convention: It may not sometimes sound an exciting idea to
you. However, being conventional is convenient for emailing. People do not read emails
for a long time and so every element should be conveyed in regular manner.
Ø Make Your Links clearly identifiable- You should generate easily clickable, tappable and
big buttons for your links. For mobile sites, make them big enough for reaching with one
finger.

If you use text links within the copy, make sure they're bold and also use a different
color. It is better that you evade putting too many links in close proximity. Doing so may
make it hard for the readers to click on the right link, more so for mobile device users.

Using an arrow is fine as studies have indicated they are useful but at first, you may test
on your subscribers.
Ø Make the Benefits of Clicking clear- The best buttons blend the advantages of clicking
through along with the action itself. Examples are, “Claim your free trial” or “Start using
your new account”. It is both easy and timesaving for the users.

Ø Say less- Don't write a lot. Your recipients will read the email for content that is of
interest to them and they may not read the whole of it. So, you may divide content into
bite-sized short pieces.

You want the people to click the email and land up in your website, as it is. So, do not
use a lengthy monologue- it is not necessary. Lengthy looking emails arouse a sense of
mental fatigue in most recipients.
Ø Make It Scannable- Ensure the email is punchy with clear text. The headings should be
clear and in bold fonts. It helps readers who are in a hurry to get the point.

You can elaborate—but do it Later

If you are in a trade where sending longer content is what your readers enjoy, I will not say that
can’t be done in email marketing.

People tend to read email in various scenarios. Some people read them while commuting to
office while there are others who read emails after retiring home from office. Some people
check emails on their phone while they are in toilet, however much you may dislike the
situation! The situations are varied but sill you may cater to all of them by adhering to a logical
hierarchy.

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Offer the punchiest and shortest information first and then offer longer-form content beneath.
This way you aren't forcing a recipient to wade through lengthy content barring those who
want to or have patience to go through entire content.

Repeat the Main Call to Action-When your email is really lengthy and the user has reached the
end of it, he should be able to get a call to action there without having to scroll back to the
beginning of the email. So, provide a call to action link at end section of the email.

Promotional Emails and Announcements

These tips are applicable for marketing messages where you have to contact your subscribers
about a couple of major aspects.

Don't Dilute Your Message

If you are writing about something to the readers, try to evade mixing in other topics. If you do
that, the risk of getting them derailed is there.

Discard elements that are not necessary

It is necessary that you evaluate the design of your email. Try to find out things that are not
essential for conveying the message. Remove such elements without hesitation. When the
distractions are fewer it ensures better communication.

Don’t Offer Too Many Choices

Too many choices can be confusing for your readers and it basically it raises cognitive load on
the readers and they find it hard to take a decision.

You need to focus on the minimum requirement for getting readers to click and reach your
website. The detail can be introduced thereafter. Do not overload the reader with details are
the beginning to ensure they do not move away.

If you want the subscribers to pick a product, do not give all options in the email itself. It is
important to get them to the website and that is where you may introduce complexity.

Try Engaging People Gradually

Sometimes it looks way too intimidating when you get an email with the terms like “BUY IT!
SIGN UP!”on top. Don’t send such emails to your recipients either. Instead, you should try to
get more people to visit your website first to see the available products.

Have a Focal Point

The primary call to action should be the email’s main focal point. Ensure that your readers do
not end up looking incessantly for the call to action.

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Creating the focal point, thankfully, is not complicated. To begin with, ensure there is a primary
goal. Then, you will have to urn it bigger than rest of things. There should be adequate space
around it to entice the eyes. This is applicable more for desktop design, more so, when users
get to see plenty of emails at once.

Deploy Whitespace Around Elements

Using too many things with similar dimension and appearance without any whitespace around
make them look like a big, amorphous block which is quite an eyesore for the readers! So, you
have to make use of whitespace around elements to ensure the readers are drawn to the
content easily.

Universal Tips

When People Want to Leave, Don’t resist

There is no reason for you to hide or obscure unsubscribe information. It may actually be
detrimental and in some countries, illegal as well. If a person wants to unsubscribe from your
brand newsletter and you resist that, it is not going to be fruitful for either party. They may
badmouth about your company online or send your emails to spam folder.

Evade having many Vertical Divisions

Using many vertical divisions in layout is actually distracting to the eye. Ideally, you should
deploy two or three vertical divisions inside a grid. Keep in mind that solid borders can also be
quite distracting to human eye and try to use them minimally.

Practical Considerations

Keep the width under 600px

This is usually deemed as the safest maximum width as far as desktop design is concerned.
When you stick to the dimension, the users need not scroll horizontally.

Use Progressive Enhancement

It is prudent that you think of how the layout will work sans drop shadows and rounded corners
before using these enhancements. The base design should be chosen first and later you can
always add the enhancements.

Creating bold shapes using square edges looks quite nice and users will see the rounded
corners as added bonus.

This approach is going to save you lots of time when setting up your email, for sure. If you were
to make a rounded cornered text box and with added drop shadow and this was meant for each
email client, using images would be required to get the effect. This is very time consuming.

Give Your Design a bit of Breathing space

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You have to accept the reality that in every email client getting things looking identical is not
always feasible. If you remember this fact while designing mail that will help keep the
annoyances and irks at minimal level.

Make designs that have some amount of breathing room. Whatever you do, at least evade
using extra-finicky and tiny details that may look broken or visually unappealing.

Think of the Whole Experience

Your email is kind of a cohesive whole and so you should think how things can work together.
Users will see the email first and then go through the sender name, pre header and subject, as
it is. Thereafter, they will get to see a version of the email sans images and it is default for
majority of email clients. Finally, if they enable images, the email will be displayed as it is.

Ensure all elements in e-mail are tied together and subscribers are able to get your message
conveyed in a clear way, even if they choose to disable the images.

It is a wrong step to include the main message inside the images. It will get blocked by default
and chances are there several email clients will not show the alt tags.

In this example below, you see the way nearly everything in the message can be missed if
images are kept disabled, for the aforementioned reason. This is definitely not desirable.

Style the Alt Tags

You may add CSS styles to the used images (or their link tags) to make sure they are rendered
nicely in clients offering support for alt tags. This is going to improve overall subscriber
experience for sure.

Test for Color Blindness

In case you use a tool like Photoshop, this is actually inbuilt. Of course, there are a lot of apps
that will let you test how the design is going to look to a section of people afflicted with some
type of color vision issues.

Link Everything

When building the email, don’t just be content with your buttons. Ensure you link everything
which means the users can literally click anywhere. You may for example, link the headline,
button and image.

Ways to design Mobile-Friendly Email

There are some ways in which you can succeed in designing email that are mobile device
friendly.

1. Single Column and Device-Agnostic Design

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It is, beyond doubt the most effective and easy way to design mobile-friendly email. With this
method the text and images are going to be big and that ensures the reader finds the font
perfectly legible. This is going to be uniform across platforms.

The advantage of such design is you will have to code a single layout. This is your easiest and
quickest option. Smartphone clients with support for scaling will scale the email down to 100%
width. Even on those clients lacking this support, the horizontal scrolling is going to be quite
minimal.

The downside is its desktop version is going to be quite large but it is not much of a deal
breaker.

To get this layout:

● Design your email with 450 px width

● Headings need to be30px
• Body copy needs to be minimum 20px

2. Fully responsive email design

A totally responsive HTML email makes use of media queries to show the email in certain ways,
based on device size and screen resolution etc. While major webmail and desktop clients do not
support media queries, the case is opposite with tablet and mobile centric email clients. So,
coding responsive emails is like treating desktop version as the base and the max-width query is
aimed at smaller devices.

Advantage of this type of design is you can design a multi-column email that is rendered as a
single-column and easy-to-read mobile version. Media queries are actually quite versatile since
you are able to target several screen sizes and resolutions.

However, there is a downside. The Gmail app for Android which is very popular Android mail
client, is not compatible with media queries. It can generate unusual results when displaying
fully responsive email builds. Besides, fully responsive emails are built over longer period of
time than the device-agnostic types.

3. Fully Fluid Email Design

You may think of this like responsiveness sans the media queries.

This method involves developing a fluid design which is 100% wide and with a width of 600 px
maximum. Conditional comments are needed (for Outlook) and a media query (for Apple Mail).

The advantage of using this kind of design is that it will be responsive in all email clients,
including that Gmail for Android app. This method may be used in alliance with media queries
to tweak design aspects like text size and buttons.

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The drawback is that it will work with designs that end to be rather uncomplicated and have a
single column. Two-column content when it is small enough to render on mobile screen, is okay
to use.

You also need to use percentage widths for the images which is not possible when making
templates.

Enhancing Your Email Design Further

Finally, there are a number of fancy things which you may use to develop really nice emails that
catch attention at first sight!

Background Images

Background Images used to be a bit of hassle for use in email design but the Bulletproof Email
Backgrounds generator is there now to make it easy. So, you need not fret about using
background images in e-mails.

Web Fonts

Using web fonts is surely a nice way to ensure your design stands out amidst mediocrity. By
spending a little more time and using design consideration sense, using web fonts that display
well in a lot of email clients becomes simpler.

CSS3 Animation

Most of the present generation email clients like Apple Mail and the ones found on Android
devices are actually compatible with CSS3 Animation. So, you may actually thinking about
adding a few cool looking stuffs in your email campaign! Transitions and those keyframe
animations actually render quite well and those may serve as nice addition to your emails. They
eventually do not add to the file size like an animated GIF clip.

Summing it up

A lot actually needs to be taken into account when you think of designing emails. The tips
mentioned in this article will help you get a good start. Look for more such posts in this series
those will cover more aspects like responsive design and web fonts in greater detail.

======================== END======================

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INBOUND MARKETING

THE INBOUND METHODOLOGY

The most apt way to convert strangers into customers as well as promoters of your business.

Figure 14

Inbound marketing is the technique of bringing the potential customers to you, as opposed to
your company’s marketing efforts battling for grabbing their attention. Sharing is caring and
this is a part of this strategy. In inbound marketing content is created and shared with the rest
of the world. By creating content designed with a purpose to appeal to your target customers, it
attracts suitable prospects to your company and also makes them returning customers.

● Content Creation + Distribution- Generate targeted content that resolves basic queries
and needs of customers and prospects and then share it far and wide.
● Lifecycle Marketing: Promoters don’t emerge out of thin air, they actually begin as
strangers, contacts, customers and visitors. Certain selected marketing actions and tools
help turn those strangers into active promoters.

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• Personalization- Tweak your content to the needs and choices of the people who view
it. As you know more regarding the leads over time, you are able to personalize your
messages to meet the needs better.

• Multi-Channel: Inbound marketing is predominantly multi-channel in nature. It
approaches people exactly where they are and in the mode that they want to interact
with the provider, ie you.
• Integration- Content creation, analytics and publishing tools work together much like a
well-oiled giant machine – enabling you to concentrate on bringing out the right content
at the right time in the right place.

The Four Inbound Marketing Actions:

Attract: We would prefer the right traffic to our site, not just any traffic! We want people, to
visit our site who will become leads and eventually happy customers. Now, who are these
“right” people? They are our ideal customers, often referred as buyer personas. Buyer personas
can be deemed as absolutely what your customers should be. Personas encompass the
challenges, goals, common objections to services and products, pain points and demographic
and personal information shared among the members of that specific customer type. Your
personas are basically people around whom the entire business has been built.

Some of the most effective means to attract the right type of users to a site are:

• Blogging- Inbound marketing begins with blogging, for sure. A blog is your best weapon
to entice new visitors to a website. To attract the right and prospective customers, you
will have to make educational content which can serve as answers to their queries.
• SEO: Your customers start the buying process online and most of the times they use a
search engine to locate the desired product or service. So, your site should appear in
their search results and that is where SEO comes into picture. For this, it is necessary to
analytically and carefully pick keywords, create content, optimize your web pages and
build links around popular and probable terms.
• Pages- Your website pages are actually digital storefronts. So, it makes sense to put up a
good show! Optimize your website so that the ideal buyers are attracted. You need to
make your website a resource of useful content so that the strangers turn into buyers in
the long run.
• Social Publishing: Successful inbound strategies are built on amazing content and
through social publishing you can share such valuable information on social networking
circles. This gives your brand a human face and your prospects are engaged. You have to
interact on those networks where the target customers are mostly engaged.

Convert: After you succeed in attracting website visitors, your next stop would be to convert
such visitors into leads by collecting their contact information. You have to procure their email
ids at least. Contact information is of utmost importance to an online marketer. To ensure your
visitors to offer you the contact details, it is necessary you give them something in return. It

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could be in forms of eBooks, content, whitepapers- information your personas will find valuable
as well as interesting.

Some of the vital tools required to convert visitors to leads are:

• Forms-The visitors should be offered online forms for filling up, if making them leads is
on your agenda. You need to optimize the form to ensure this step in conversion
remains smooth.

● Calls-to-Action-Calls-to-action are basically links or buttons that persuade your site

visitors to take actions like Download a Whitepaper etc. If your calls-to-actions are not
attractive or they are inadequate, you won’t be able to generate leads.
● Landing Pages- As a website visitor clicks on such a call-to-action, he or she is taken to a
landing page. A landing page is the place where the offer shown in call-to-action gets
fulfilled. This is where the information submitted by a prospect can be used by your
sales team to initiate a conversation. When website visitors complete filling a form for
the first time on a landing page, they become contacts.
• Contacts- It is necessary to track the leads you're converting by means of a centralized
marketing database. Saving and storing all data at a place lets you analyze each
interaction made with the contacts. It could be obtained through email, social media
and a landing page. You will also be able to optimize the future interactions so that
buyer personas can be attracted and converted with ease.

Close: Now, you are on the apt track. You’ve managed to attract the right visitors and have
converted them into leads. Now, it is necessary that you transform such leads into customers.
How can you do this effectively? Some marketing tools can be deployed at this stage for
ensuring you’re closing the most apt leads at the perfect time.

Closing tools are:

• CRM- Keep track of details regarding the contacts, deals and companies and contact the
right prospects at suitable timing. Customer Relationship Management apps facilitate
sales by ensuring you get right information easily to engage with the prospects in each
channel.
• Closed-loop Reporting-You may be unsure of which marketing efforts are fetching you
the best leads? Is the sales team closing such nice leads into customers? Integration
with CRM system enables you analyze the efforts of sales and marketing teams
together.
• Email- What to do when a visitor has done everything required- including clicking on a
call-to-action, filling out the landing page and downloading your whitepaper, but he is
yet to convert? A series of tailor made emails based on useful and relevant content can
help turn such prospects into customers.
• Marketing Automation- This process involves developing lead nurturing and email
marketing tweaked to the lifecycle stage and needs of every lead. For instance, if a site
visitor downloaded a whitepaper in the past you may think of sending that visitor a

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number of related emails. However, for those following you on Twitter and the
returning to your site, you may have to tweak the message.
• Delight- The Inbound way revolves around offering remarkable content to the users,
whether they are existing customers, leads or visitors. You cannot overlook the
customers who have bought something from your store online. Inbound companies
engage with current customer base so that they feel delighted and serve as word of
mouth promoters.

Tools used to entertain customers are:

Surveys- What can be better to find out needs of the customers than asking them? You should
utilize surveys to ensure the customers are getting what they seek.

Smart Calls-to-Action- These give various users with offers that alter based on lifecycle stage
and buyer persona.

Smart Text- Offer the existing customers with valuable content tailor made to meet their
interests. Help them get what they have been looking for. You may also introduce new products
as well as features they are seeking.

Social Monitoring- Keep track of those social conversations that are vital for you. Listen out to
know about customers’ questions, dislikes and likes. Then reach out with relevant content to
them.

Why is Inbound marketing the ‘in’ thing nowadays?

We live amidst oodles of information and attention scarcity is a reality. The pace of creation of
such information is going up. As per the data obtained from IBM, we now make 2.5 quintillion
bytes of data a day. Amazing as it may sound, 90% of the global data has been generated in last
couple of years.

There is no denying the customers are an empowered lot nowadays. From the web they obtain
information on literally everything anytime. So, they can obtain data on specs, pricing and
reviews of any products whenever they want. Besides, the social media plays a proactive role
and urges them to compare and share and popularity of mobile devices adds the instant factor.

"Inbound Marketing is so powerful because you have the power to give the searcher/consumer
exactly what answers they are looking for at the precise point that they need it. That builds
trust, reputation, and authority in whatever niche you are practicing this form of marketing in.”

Joshua Gill, Inbound & SEO Marketing Consultant, Inbound Authority

Owing to this, traditional marketing tactics those are based on “renting” attention built by
other— and interrupting the customer— are becoming less useful gradually.

Why Youhave to use Inbound Marketing for Survival

Inbound marketing offers a number of benefits. When utilized properly, it can:

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• Develop a brand preference and have an impact on future purchases

• Generate social media sharing as well as inbound links.
• Put focus on customers
• Help boost search engine optimization endeavors.
• Boost brand awareness.
• Enable customers engage with the brand 24/7, for their needs.
• Make qualified leads for less amount of money (as opposed to traditional marketing).

Unlike conventional marketing initiatives, inbound efforts develop upon themselves gradually.
A powerful piece of content offers several immediate as well as long-term benefits. It gets your
company focus when launched and it will offer relevance to the clients for the duration on site.
As the content begins to get more exposure, it serves as a steady source of inbound traffic
through SEO, word of mouth and social media sharing etc.

The priority is developing a powerful content strategy tweaked around your personas and
focused on buying cycle stages. When you do this, you basically offer valuable content to the
specific visitor. This enables them go through the buying cycle stages, answers their queries and
develops trust too. These factors lead to a shortened sales time, better qualified leads and
easier target for the sales team as well.

Types of Inbound Marketing: How to make a Successful Campaign

You will not get any specific inbound marketing tactic that works singularly, to be sure. Bill
Faeth shared the following with us on healthy inbound marketing ecosystems:

“Inbound marketing can’t be segmented into separate categories, with each section holding
independent power. While we rely on SEO to draw in visitors from organic search, that SEO
doesn’t work if there’s no content. Without social media, blogs don’t reach new, interested
people. And SEO, content, and social media are all completely useless without a lead
generation process in place.”

Most thriving inbound marketing campaigns involve all or some parts of the below listed
elements:

SEO-Search engine optimization remains a vital part in effective inbound marketing. Deploying
effective keyword analysis, SEO “best practices” and well-structured site design to launch the
company on search result top ensures the content reaches the right audience. As a result, you
get the most apt and useful leads. See more in resource: “The inbound Marketers Guide to SEO
and PPC”.

Blogging- Blogging is said to be the most widely used weapon for inbound marketing. It drives
traffic as well as nurtures leads. See more in resource: ‘The Social Marketers Blogging Cheat
Sheet.’

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Social Media- With more than 65 percent of adult web users resorting to social media for
information sharing, you cannot overlook hugely popular online communities like Pinterest,
Twitter and Facebook. See more in resource: ‘: The Definitive Guide to Social Marketing.’

Live Events and Webinars- Take inbound marketing to new heights with live events and online
webinars. See more in resource: ‘Managing Successful Webinars: A Marketer’s Must-Have
Checklist, The Definitive Guide to Event Marketing.’

And there is actually so much more: Videos, e-newsletters, eBooks, public speaking,
whitepapers. Any opportunity to distribute important content is actually an opportunity to
carry out inbound marketing.

How to begin Your Inbound Marketing

As far as inbound marketing goes, the more you invest the better is return. Creating superb
content is more about commitment and brains rather than budget. It is not about throwing
money- you need to utilize your brain and heart.

Here’s the way to get started:

Identify the target audience and then learn whatever you can about them. It does not make
sense to write content to inform the buyers unless you are aware what clicks with them.

Think of what could be your compelling and unique story. Why would the audience listen to
you?

Choose the delivery platforms carefully. Will you use blog? Or utilize Facebook, Twitter or
Pinterest?

Create and execute the content calendar.

It is necessary to make a schedule with the intention to create relevant and fresh content to
engage your audience on a continuous basis. Remember the theme should be customer
focused and not on your brand.

StacieChalmers (@staciechalmers), writes in “The Inbound Marketing Company”:

“Rather than focusing on ‘enough’ content, marketers should be focused on publishing quality
content. Content that educates their audience and builds brands and authority. The right
content will be shared, increasing your reach, increasing awareness, increasing trust and
increasing leads. The wrong content will lose followers and damage your reputation.”

Besides, do not forget setting aside time to analyze things on a weekly basis. Doing so will help
you realize the efficacy of your inbound marketing endeavors and areas where that can be
improved for better results.

Using Marketing Automation for your need

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You cannot really depend solely on inbound marketing to generate business and increase
revenues. For a more balanced approach, mix outbound activities and inbound efforts. The
former involves lead scoring, lead nurturing and other ingredients of marketing automation.

Marketing automation gives inbound marketers strategies and tools to convert followers and
fans to customers and leads. Automation accomplishes this through cultivation of relationships
with those leads which are yet to buy. Mostly, targeted email campaigns are used for this.
Automation also improves your inbound efforts by aiding you to segregate legitimate leads
from others. Moreover, linking marketing automation to the CRM system ensures the leads are
not left unutilized.

Leveraging inbound marketing campaign with marketing automation is similar to throwing fuel
to marketing fire.

What is Marketing Automation?

Marketing automation can be described as a type of technology that enables companies to

automate, streamline and measure marketing workflows and tasks- so that they can enhance
operational efficiency and hike revenue faster.

IDC predicts overall market meant for automating marketing is expected to grow from:

Figure 15

Marketing automation

Software is deployed in several modern marketing processes, to aid businesses of all kinds

-includingB2C and B2Borganizations.

Marketing automation aids marketers streamline lead nurturing, segmentation, lead

generation, lead scoring, cross-sell, customer lifecycle marketing, marketing ROI measurement,
customer retention.

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Some of such practices can be done at small volumes minus software but then technology
becomes mandatory after a limit, given the fact increasing number of channels that marketers
have to cope with. These processes need:

A central marketing database-A place where all your marketing data, including the customer
and prospect interactions behaviors are stored. You can segment as well as target the apt
message to every customer. It is kind of a “system of record” applicable for your marketing
information.

An engagement marketing engine- An environment to create, manage and automate

marketing processes and conversations across offline and online channels. This is like an
"orchestra conductor" for customer interactions.

An analytics engine-Way to measure, test and optimize marketing ROI along with impact on
revenue. You may think of as a place where you go to learn what worked and what missed the
mark and areas where improvements can be made.

Who makes use of Marketing Automation?

Large enterprises have understood importance of technology but then marketing automation is
not useful just for large organizations. As it is, mid sized and small Businesses constitute the
largest growing segment here. There are plenty of smaller entities that are making use of
automation nowadays too. The initial adopters were mostly in B2B sector ( like high-tech,
manufacturing, software and business services). However, companies across nearly all
categories including B2C entities like financial services, healthcare, retail, media and
entertainment are adopting the software. They are doing so for its engagement-oriented and
real-time approach for extending and maintaining customer relationships all through customer
lifecycle.

What Are The Common Functions and Features?

The features include landing pages and forms, email marketing, engagement marketing,
campaign management, prediction and scoring, CRM integration, customer lifecycle
management, mobile marketing capabilities, social marketing capabilities and marketing
analytics.

● Email Marketing
● Landing Pages
● Lead Management
● CRM Integration
● Campaign Management
● Prediction/Scoring
● Social Marketing
● Marketing Analytics

What Is The Importance and ROI Of Marketing Automation?

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Companies can expect a few core benefits: more pipeline, higher revenue, and more productive
Sales reps, as seen in the Marketo Benchmark on Revenue Performance(as of Sept 15, 2012
n=489).

Figure 16

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In one benchmark study done by eMarketer, research showed that B2C marketers deploying
automation- including everything from cart abandonment programs to birthday emails- have
witnessed high conversion rates- by 50 percent or so.

Furthermore, as per the views of Nuclear Research, 95% of entities got benefit from deploying
marketing automation. They found that organizations can expect hike in marketing staff
productivity bordering 7% and enhance sales productivity by 4 percent so.

Marketing automation fetches ROI and value to your various marketing efforts. The apt
marketing automation platform, coupled with smart process and organization alignment,
makes it possible to bind the dots between promotional emails sent earlier and previous year’s
webinar and the revenue seen this week.

While there remain vital differences between several vendors, success is primarily determined
by the following aspects:

1. Your process and strategy

2. content and lifecycle
3. Your people

By investing in these 3 areas, it is possible to achieve great ROI using marketing automation.
You need to “start small, think big and move quickly”. In other words, begin with what you have
now and invest in an incremental manner to get the best results.

What Marketing Automation can do?

What are the parts of Marketing Automation software? Along with efficiency and time-saving
related benefits, marketing automation also enables business processes essential to modern
marketing department. For B2B organizations, it includes lead nurturing, lead lifecycle
management and lead scoring. For B2C organizations, it includes up-sell, cross-sell, along with
customer loyalty. For all entities, it offers marketing ROI analytics.

Nurture relationships with those leads that aren't prepared to buy-On an average, only one
fifth of leads are seen to be sales-ready by the time they come in. This means you have to
resort to a disciplined process- which is lead nurturing- to build qualified leads till they get
sales-ready. When done well, nurturing can lead to 50% hike in sales leads at 33% reduced cost
per lead.

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Retain and then extend customer relationships-The marketer's job is not finished once a
prospect becomes a customer. For most sectors, the real value is obtained from deepening the
customer relationship and retaining it over time. This includes selling same products again to
the customer and selling other products to him, the later referred as cross selling. Also included
are customer retention and loyalty. Keep in mind that relationship marketing denotes more
than sending just a monthly newsletter. You will need several tracks for every buyer persona
and buying stage that actually listen" to how a customer behaves and makes adjustments
accordingly- as is the case with a relationship in real world situations.

"Without marketing automation, you are just guessing – just hoping that people will take the
bait and be ready to buy your products. Statistics show that buyers don't do that. They want to
learn at their own pace and be reached when they need more information or are ready to buy.
A well-constructed marketing automation strategy makes that a reality." – John McTigue, Kuno
Creative

Conclusion: Make inbound marketing click For You!

In today’s fast-paced society where social networking and the web play a major role in daily life,
the customers get exposed to never ending volume of information. This is making them better
informed and also shaping their buying behaviors. As a result, both B2C and B2Bmarketing
efforts need to be adjusted to cater to this shift.

Now, businesses are waking up to the reality that outbound efforts are not adequate to yield
profits. Instead, the inbound marketing techniques should be used to get more leads and
promote better brand preference. To strike gold in inbound marketing, businesses should
introduce a balanced approach for content creation and use marketing automation tools that
aid them score and nurture leads, and optimize the way such leads flow through their sales
pipeline.

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“I can’t say enough good things about Marketo’s Customer Engagement Engine. With our prior
solution, we had the right content but we couldn’t attain the level of focused delivery that
Marketo gives us. Now we can offer targeted content and speak to prospects directly.” -
Shantel Shave, Director of Demand Generation, Hootsuite

“Marketo RTP Content Recommendation Engine auto-discovered our content, analyzed the
content performance, and then utilized predictive analytics to recommend relevant content to
inbound prospects. The results have been phenomenal.” - Terry Erisman, Chief Marketing
Officer, Percona

What is Lead Nurturing?

Lead nurturing is a process meant for developing relationships with the customers at each stage
of sales funnel, and also through each step of the customer’s journey. It focuses communication
and marketing efforts on observing needs of prospects and providing answers and information
needed by them.

● On an average, 50% of the leads in the system are not really ready to purchase
(Marketo).
● Almost 4/5th new leads do not become sales (MarketingSherpa).
● Companies that are good at lead nurturing create 50% more sales ready leads for a 33%
less cost (Marketo).
● Nurtured leads constitute 47% larger purchases compared to non-nurtured leads (The
Annuitas Group).
Effectively developing leads in contemporary buyer-driven marketplace means developing and
nurturing consumer relationships with strategic lead scoring method and thereafter using a
content marketing plan to fill out that framework.

Ways to Score Leads for Nurturing

Marketing and sales should get together to build a lead scoring tactic, to focus on where a
specific lead is within a brand’s buying model. It serves as backbone of robust lead nurturing
system as it identifies how and when to add ressevery customer with the most relevant and
timely communications.

The details of lead scoring system are definitely specific to each brand, based on aspects like
your niche, industry and target audience. However, there exist four dimensions for lead scoring
that need to be evaluated as you build the strategy.

1 - Lead Fit: Is She Your Type?

Lead fit shows how much a specific buyer matches with the ideal prospect of a brand, or usual
customer. It is kind of an introductory-level data that can reveal if a lead obtained is worth
dealing with or not. It is segregated in 3 categories-

● Demographics— The customer’s job title, location, company size, experience, etc.
● Firmographics- The organization’s name, location, size, annual revenue, etc.

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• Budget, Authority, Need, Time- IS your company suitable for the lead? Is he/she in a
position to buy? Can you answer his/her needs? What about the timeline?

Most of this data can be collected with forms using email subscriptions, Google search etc.

2 - Lead Interest: Does She Like You?

Tracking online behavior to figure out how appealing your company is to a customer is the next
step of lead scoring. Does the customer spend lots of time in your website? And does she also
engage with social networks? You have to use numerical values to such behaviors.

3 - Lead Behavior: Is She Utilizing You for Your Body (of Content)?

Monitoring lead behavior with attention reveals if a lead is actually serious about purchase or
she is just getting the information. Allocate lower values to behaviors such as clicking through
blog posts while better values should be given to actions like registering for a webinar or
downloading gated content.

4 - Purchasing Stage and Timing: When to Ask the Question

Scoring for purchasing stage helps figure out where a buyer stands in the sales model of the
company. An effective way to score purchasing stage is aligning behaviors with bottom, middle
or top of the sales funnel. Give better scores to clicks on product demos and pricing sheets.

Nurturing Leads using Content Marketing

If lead scoring can be deemed as backbone of any thriving online marketing strategy, content
marketing is like muscle. In contemporary marketplace buyers tend to be always wary of and

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they educate themselves a lot too through the funnel. Content marketing can be used to give a
voice to brands.

In other words, content marketing is a method of creating valuable and relevant content- from
infographics to blog posts to video- that can entice, engage and serve the target audience.
Customers are already combing the internet for answers to their queries and solutions for
numerous problems that entities are positioned to provide. Content marketing greets them at
each stage of customer’s journey and aids them proceed through the funnel.

Content Marketing and Email

Despite the preemptive obituary of the Wall Street Journal, and the infamous Gmail tab scare
which prevailed a few years back, email marketing remains a solid way to interact with the
target audience.

• 74% of consumers like to get commercial communications through email.

• Email marketing offers ROI of 4,300% (Direct Marketing Association).
• Relevant emails bring in 18 times more revenue compared to broadcast emails. (Jupiter
Research)

Email is possibly the most undeviating way to send specific content to a particular lead.
However, effective email marketing should have 5 traits:

• Trusted- A smart opt-in method sets up precise and happy expectations, and that means
the content will be received well in someone’s inbox.
• Relevant- It does not make sense to resort to email “blasts” anymore. Segment the
audience as far as you can and send small and relevant campaigns.
● Conversational- Give your buyers some scope to revert and ensure the next set of
content carries it forward.
● Coordinated- Email content should act as the hub for linking social media and website
content.
• Strategic- CTRs and Opens are good but finally you want sales! The system used for
emailing content should be capable of delivering good ROI metric.

To know more on email marketing, go through “The Definitive Guide to Engaging Email
Marketing”, ebook or refer to The Email Marketing Cheat Sheet slide deck.

Content Marketing on Website of Your Brand

Your brand site can be called the online home base. With deployment of solid SEO strategy, it
becomes the first impression your brand for your audience. Then, it serves as a constant and
continual resource to generate leads at each step of the customer’s journey.

There are three parts of your brand website upon which a content marketing strategy should
focus:

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• Strategic landing pages- You have to set up strong landing pages that use user intent
and keyword combinations strategically and show authority on a specific topic of
interest.
• Blog- The branded blog plays a key role in keeping website content updated and fresh.

● Resource Center- Like an online library, the resource center of your entity gathers
content on each topic, and strategically arranges and presents it for offering killer user
experience.

Content Marketing on Social Media

Taking content strategy to the social media circles calls for a different type of creativity for sure,
but each social channel serves as outlet for branded content, too.

Strategic social marketing is not equivalent of producing all types of content for all available
channels. The target audience demographics should be matched to major networks
demographics and you have to choose the type of content that tell your brand’s story the best.
Focus the social content strategy on areas where the two mingle. Also, keep in mind golden
norms of social marketing:

• Don’t take yourself very seriously.

• Inbound is not all you need
● You must have solid offers and good content.
• Always add value.
• You need a robust CTA.
• Social media is a two-way street.
• Peer-to-peer sharing gets your messages heard the best.

How Marketing Automation Aids in Nurturing Leads

An entrepreneur can develop trust and also maintain authentic conversations with about two
dozen leads. Even a small marketing team with top time management skills may outperform
bigger ones. However, you will need over 50 leads in your funnel for continued growth.
Marketing automation is a powerful technology solution that lets brands automate and
streamline their marketing efforts in various channels,-to enhance efficiency and bring in more
sales.

Automating a workflow aids in aligning all marketing messages and efforts and ensures each
lead gets the most apt messages at the right times.

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Small business as well as startup scan keep track of a brief list of leads for creating meaningful
and conversational campaigns. However, with time business scales and so top of the funnel just
gets wider. Then, nurturing leads becomes tedious for a single person- or even if there is a team
of marketers.

Lead Nurturing Can't Wait

As sales funnels grow longer, the customers become more independent and as a result their
attention spans shrink. But prospects of effective and strategic lead nurturing keeps growing. If
your brand isn’t making efforts to nurture a buyer, rival brands will do that. As a result, you will
lose out sales along with market share.

Get marketing and sales team together to develop, hone and review the lead scoring process.
Thereafter, begin building content for delivering to your personas within a small range of
points. As you find spreadsheets getting out of hand or think you should allocate time to other
things, it is better to deploy a powerful marketing automation system. This will aid in nurturing
leads effectively and you will get time to develop the company.

CONVERSION RATE OPTOMIZATION

What Is Conversion Rate Optimization?

As far as internet marketing goes, you can produce more revenue in one out of two ways. You
can drive more traffic to your website for enhancing sales. Alternatively, you can enhance
efficiency of your site for boosting sales with the exact volume of traffic you have now.
Conversion rate optimization, called CRO actually focuses on the latter.

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Figure 17

Through conversion rate optimization, you assess sales funnel of your website and identify
ways to improve your site and get more people signing up for the services and products. Then,
you may use a hypothesis to test. Then, you can use a modified web page and landing page to
see how the fare against the existing version. It will be easy to see which one appeals more and
get people signing up or placing orders. Eventually, you deploy the variation that works with
highest percentage of site visitors.

It may sound somewhat amazing that small and big modifications to design, layout and copy
can actually affect the number of visitors who sign up to buy products and services offered by
your company. Switch Video, for instance, found that altering just a word in one of its call-to-
action button resulted in enhancing qualified leads obtained from their homepage by a
whopping 221%. Similar result was seen by Performable, which was later acquired by Hubspot.
It just changed a button color from green to red.

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Figure 18

Results like this definitely show how and why conversion rate optimization has become vital for
brands nowadays. Even small alterations lead to a significant effect on the bottom line.

However, focus should be given on testing, as far as CRO is concerned. Without testing, you
only have the gut instinct to find out what can be more effective. However, testing ensures
whether a change drives hike or deficit in conversion rate. It basically eliminates guesswork
when you design web pages and use content.

The numbers of such tests can be endless. You may test different headlines, varying button
colors, call-to-action copy, new value propositions and much more. Every change has the scope
to affect conversions, and each small win adds up over time.

Why Is It So Valuable?

As you can probably visualize, conversion rate optimization is crucial as it produces more sales
for the exact volume of traffic you currently get. Instead of investing more in PPC ads or
popular digital marketing methods for fetching more traffic, you have to think of ways to
convert your present traffic into sales or leads. And when you think of driving more traffic, your
CRO improvements denote you’ll derive more from the increased marketing efforts.

Think of a hypothetical situation where you own a software-as-a-service (SaaS) venture. Before
optimizing your site, you persuade 5% of people for signing up for your service for $50 per
month. It clicks with 50 new customers for every 1,000 visitors and the monthly revenue is
$2,500. Now, if you optimize the web site and hike conversion rate to 7.5% from 5%, there
would be 75 customers. The monthly sales will be worth $3,750.

Do you see the advantage? You didn’t have to change anything else in your venture. But, just by
optimizing the conversion funnel, sales went up by $1250 from the exact amount of visitors.

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The pricing did not have to be changed. Your sales funnel became more effective, and you were
able to make more money eventually.

Why You Should start by collecting Data

A vital lesson I got after spending a whopping $252,000 after conversion rate optimization is
necessity of collecting qualitative as well as quantitative data before starting to test. If you
don’t collect data, then you will have to make changes based on your assumptions. It surely is
not a prudent idea and you may end up wasting both time and money. It’s prudent that you
spend a month collecting data and you will be able to test based on insights acquired rather
than based on your assumptions. Without this, you simply increase risk of failure.

It’s also necessary to collect both qualitative and quantitative data and you should not only look
at numbers alone. Quantitative data gives you a good starting point for sure but numbers don’t
depict the whole picture. So, you also need to use qualitative data. It denotes you will have to
ask your existing and potential customers queries on your products or services. Qualitative
answers offer you more insights about the reason customers are or are not purchasing your
service and products. These often lead to the most important breakthroughs.

Figure 19: Use tools like SurveyMonkey to gather insightful qualitative data.

It is not bad if you deal with oodles of data- it does not hurt. It’s easier to recognize patterns
and locate useful information using 100 survey responses than with 10. From both sample sizes,
you can learn lessons but extra information makes you better informed eventually. And the
data is too much, you can surely ignore unnecessary information, but it’s tedious to take a
decision using insufficient data. This is precisely why you should spend around a month
collecting and analyzing data prior to testing. You will be able to save both money and time.

HOW TO GATHER DATA

Google Analytics

Google Analytics (GA) is among the best options to start with. Google Analytics offers numerical
data on how people actually use your site, where in the funnel they drop off and many more.

To start, click on “Conversions” and thereafter “Funnel Visualization” to find out what your
site’s funnel conversion rates are.

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Figure 21

If you don’t possess this set up, setting up conversion goals is what you need to do first. Then,
you’ll have to establish a conversion funnel. Conversion goals reveal the percentage of your
visitors actually converts. Conversion funnel shows the number of visitors proceeding from one
step to the next.

If your site visitors adhere to a traditional conversion funnel, you can gain a lot from analyzing
this data in Google Analytics. For instance, if you operate a SaaS website and it leads visitors
from homepage> pricing page> trial free sign-up page> confirmation page-the Google Analytics
conversion funnel will reveal percentage of visitors reaching from one page to another.

Figure 20

Knowing this enables you to assess every step of the funnel for finding scope of bottlenecks for
sign ups. If 50% of site visitors shift to the pricing page from the homepage, but only 5% of
them move to sign-up page, it is time you find how more people can be moved on to sign-up
page to raise overall conversions. Conversion goals as well as funnels in Google Analytics aid
you in keeping track of such valuable stats.

To know about funnels and conversion goals and ways to set them, go through post from
KISSmetrics named ‘The Google Analytics Conversion Funnel Survival Guide’. You may also
watch a YouTube video –‘ How to Set Up Conversion Funnels in Google Analytics’.

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Once you are done with setting up conversion funnels wait for some time so that it can collect
data. Then you can revert to it and find out and analyze results on conversion rate optimization.
Mainly, you will have to see the areas where drop off is taking place in the funnel. Are people
dropping off at the last step or somewhere in between first and second step? Take note where
bottlenecks are occurring and think of changes that can be introduced to enhance conversions.

After identifying drop offs, you have to utilize the data to achieve a hypotheses for testing every
step along the path and prioritizing the tests you’ll have to run. It may be still somewhat early
to conduct a test. However, you may proceed and recollect what you’ve found. Then you have
to think what changes can be made to enhance your conversion funnel. You will need to
monitor overall conversion rate of funnel to figure out efficacy of your site’s conversion. (We
will talk in details about ways to come up with thoughts and ways to prioritize in subsequent
chapters.)

Another major piece of information to be learnt from Google Analytics is site load times. For
finding out how your website’s load times, click on “Overview”, “Site Speed” and “Behavior”.
The chart indicates your site’s average load times and then you may dig in to know daily and
average load times for each page.

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Figure 22

Knowing the load times for a site is important since because every second matters. Even the
delay of a single second in page response may lead to 7% decrease in conversions. If an e-
Commerce website fetches revenue of $100,000 a day, delay of a single second may lead to loss
of $2.5 million a year. Besides, a site that requires over 3 seconds to load, risks losing about
40% of visitors. (Read the neat infographic: How Loading Time Affects Your Bottom Line, to
know more on conversions and loading times)

If your load times tend to be slow, take steps to bring down page load speeds and see
conversions go up. Such steps include switching to a professional hosting company,
decompressing images, optimizing your CSS etc.

There’s even more data obtained from GA that offers insights on conversion rates and ways to
enhance your website. However, we’ll make use of conversion funnels as well as page load
speeds to start from. Then we will cover how to collect qualitative data.

Customer Surveys

The next stage in collecting data is surveying your buyers. By surveying buyers who made a
purchase successfully or signed up for services offered by you, you’ll learn what factors
motivated them to purchase and gain data on ways to convince more people to sign up or buy
products/services.

BEFORE WE MOVE INTO THE DETAILS, HERE ARE A NUMBER OF TIPS TOACRRY OUT
SUCCESSFUL SURVEYS:

Don’t ask lots of questions at once.

Customers usually get annoyed by lengthy surveys and remember everyone’s time is valuable.
When you offer the customers shorter surveys they are more likely to fill it and you will get
more responses for analysis. We recommend you to limit survey to 10 questions or so and to
make use of various surveys in case you want to ask any questions.

Offer prize as incentive.

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As we’ve already said, everyone’s time is important and that holds true for your customers too.
If you offer them prize as incentive, the number of people willing to fill out the survey will go
up. This may be a Starbucks gift card or even a free music player. Such prizes will ensure more
people fill up your forms.

Ask them open ended questions.

Multiple choice questions are good for some such surveys, but for CRO, you want subjective
responses written by the customers. If you make use of a lot of multiple choice questions, the
answers of customers in detail that could be of use to you will be missed.

You may use many options for surveying service. However, a lot of marketers make use of
SurveyMonkey and you may use it too. You may also resort to using Google Forms and Wufoo.

Figure 23

Once you’ve zeroed in on a survey tool, it is time to decide questions that you want to ask. The
goal is asking questions which will offer insights on what convinced the customers to buy and
what seemed hurdles to them. You also need to know what they found as most tedious in the
buying process.

GOOD QUESTIONS COMPRISE OF (THESE QUESTIONS ARE BASICALLY VARIATIONS BORROWING

MOSTLY FROM QUESTIONS ENDORSED BY CRO EXPERTS JOANNA WIEBE AND PEEP LAJA):

1. What other choices did you consider before picking [product/service name]?
2. Why did you choose to go with this [product/service name]?
3. What almost stopped you from signing up?

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4. What queries did you have on the [product/service]?

5. What eventually convinced you for signing up?
6. How could we persuade your friends and/or colleagues better to choose
[product/service name]?
7. How would you convince more people to select [product/service name]?
8. What are you thinking of accomplishing with [product/service name]?
9. When did you feel you needed something like our product? What actually made you to
come searching for [product/service name]?
10. What hassles would you say the [product/service name] reduces for you?
11. What are the adjectives/words would you deploy to describe the product/service?

Each of these questions should be tweaked depending on your product, service, as well as
niche. However, each of them offers open-ended responses helping you know the buyers
better. These will also help you obtain clearer idea of what they like about your service and
what features of your products are liked by them. It is fine if you ask them several multiple
choice type questions that are relevant to your business. However, you will learn better from
the open-ended responses. (We’ll elaborate on ways to assess the responses in the subsequent
chapter.)

On-Site Surveys

The next kinds of survey you may take into consideration are on-site surveys. The main options
for this are Google Feedback Surveys and Qualaroo.

Figure 24

On-site surveys the website. Could it be the price? Are they actually confused? Is there any
functional issue with the enable you to ask visitors on your site at a given time. This gives you
the scope to survey the visitors who turn buyers and ones who browse your site but eventually
may not end up buying anything. Actually, the second kind of visitor is one you are targeting
using on-site surveys. Your target is to learn what’s stopping the visitors from becoming buyers.
You want to know what is thwarting them from placing an order in your brand website. These
are queries that you want to be answered using on-site surveys.

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HERE ARE SOME SOLID QUESTIONS YOU CAN USE TO LEARN ABOUT YOUR SITE VISITORS
BETTER:

1. Is there anything you fail to find on this webpage?

2. Is there anything that makes you confused about this page?
3. Do you have any queries at this juncture?
4. What’s your biggest worry about buying [insert product name here]?
5. What’s the prime reason that’s thwarting you from buying?
6. What else you want to find on this page?
7. What can we aid you find?
8. Why you refrained from completing your purchase today?
9. What should we do to convince you to finish the purchase?
10. What’s the biggest hassle we can aid you solve?
11. What are you actually looking for in the ideal solution?
12. What else we could place on this page so that you are convinced to buy?

Figure 25

Again, the reason you use on-site surveys is for finding out what is stopping the site visitors
from turning buyers. The answers will enable you to know if they want to enjoy a free trial
before buying or if they think prices are exorbitant or is there is any other issue. We’ll elaborate
in coming chapter regarding ways to assess the results.

Usability Tests

Usability tests are ideal to learn more regarding the visitors and for finding out what’s stopping
them from finalizing an order on your website.

With such a usability test, you offer a number of steps that a user needs to complete. Then, you
have to get someone to complete the steps, and ask him/her to be vocal about what they’re
going through as they are using your site. You also have to record what they are saying and

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completing steps offered by you. The video of such session provides you with details about
what exactly was baffling in the website and what the user found good and whether they has
queries etc.

If you don’t carry out user tests, you risk missing obvious ways to tweak your site. For example,
the site visitors may face issues with check-out process and it could be because they find it hard
to put in their contact number. Your IT team probably may not have thought about this hiccup
but for a user this can be pretty annoying and reason to leave the buying process midway.
Without carrying out a user test, it is hard to find out these kinds of problems that are easy to
solve.

So how do you conduct such test? There are two ways. The first is to carry out the user test and
also recruit participants yourself. You may equip your computer with a good microphone along
with screen recording software, and visit a local shop, and then recruit participants for this test.
That is one method.

Another way is to resort to a website like UserTesting.com. This site helps make it easy to carry
out such user tests through automation of recording process and also offers scenario templates
apt for specific business types. The tests cost $49 for every time, however you may need no
more than 5 such tests at one time and so the cost may not burn a hole in your pocket.

Figure 26

Irrespective of which one you select, the reason of doing user testing is to reveal out how
visitors are eventually using your site, and what they feel about it, which queries are there in
their mind and also if they are not ok with it. It’s the ideal way to know what they think and
really learn what’s their site usage experience is like.

SO WHO ARE THE PEOPLE CAN YOU TEST THE SITE ON? HERE ARE A FEW OPTIONS:

You are an ideal candidate for using the site and conducting a user test.

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Often marketers and business owners devise something and they leave it for others for usage,
but as industry saying goes, you may as well “eat your own dog food.” In short, you need to use
stuff what you’ve created and it will help you learn the site in a better way- every part of it.

Your buyers are another testing option

Since your buyers are definitely ideal candidates to test your site, it is easy to understand.
When you can, pick from people from the customers to test the site.

Even others can be good candidates for testing

Even though some people may not be a part of your target customer niche, they may still be
able to point out what’s wrong with the site or the baffling aspects. Nowadays, fading web
users is cakewalk.

Based on availability at the time of carrying out the test you may pick the candidates. You may,
for example, start by asking employees in your organization to test a site and the move on to
ask outsiders. Then you may move to websites like UserTesting.com to carry test on people
falling within your customer demographic.

To carry out such a test, you have to be ready with a number of tasks meant for the test
participants. You can begin by asking users to try a path your customers usually take to browse
your website. For instance, you could ask them to do a Google search to find your product and
then listen to their feedback and experience on the search results. You may then ask them to
follow the result and/or visit your website, and observe it for five seconds, and then ask them
to tell you what their impression is like. Thereafter, you may ask them to try to place order for a
particular product and then see them conduct the test to figure out if any hurdles crop up along
the way.

Figure 27

A/B Testing

How you should Run Your First A/B Test for Finding out a Winning Variation

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Now that we’ve covered conversion rate optimization, why it’s so important, and what type of
information you need to collect to take informed decisions, it’s time to walk you through the
process of running your first ever A/B test to find out a winning combination. This also covers
the type of software that is required to carry out a test and ways to set it up.

Choosing the Software

The first decision that you have to take is what software you want to carry out the test. There
are a number of testing software available nowadays, but you may pick from 3 leading
contenders. They are Optimizely, Visual Website Optimizer and Google Content Experiments.
Here’s a breakdown of the apps:

Figure 28

Google Content Experiments is one free service that is offered through Google Analytics. It
enables you to test five iterations of a single webpage. First, you need to make a new version of
one web page, and then you put in the new page data into Google Analytics and then conduct
the test. Content Experiments calculates the results, and shows conversion rates for all pages
and the picks a statistically important winning variation. The advantage of using Google Content
Experiments is that it comes free, but the drawback is you need to design as well as code new
variations prior to testing.

Visual Website Optimizer lets you execute and assess tests just the way you do using Google
Content Experiments. However, here the added bonus is a WYSIWYG editor. This WYSIWYG
editor lets you perform changes without requiring altering the underlying CSS or HTML code for
test purposes. You can modify a headline or button copy and then execute a test without
requiring enlisting IT resources for setting it up. You may also alter the Javascript and CSS if you
have the knowledge but for several tests it is not necessary. So, the advantage of using VWO
and many such testing platforms is they let you execute tests minus usage of IT resources and it
can be beneficial for many companies.

Optimizelyis a bit similar to VWO. It also comes with an inbuilt WYSIWYG editor. You may make
alterations and execute tests without requiring change of the codes of a page. Both the tools
have similar ways of operation and the features are also similar.

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Figure 29

Eventually, the testing software you utilize is a matter of choice. If you are okay with editing
pages prior to testing and want to evade paying a monthly subscription amount, then using
Google Content Experiments is prudent. However, if carrying out tests minus enlisting IT
matters to you, then Optimizely, Visual Website Optimizer and similar testing options is what
you should pick.

The most vital thing is you have software which makes running tests and assessing the outcome
simple. All these tools calculate conversion rates automatically and assess the statistical
probability that one variation can perform better than another- and this helps reach a
conclusion.

It is advisable to execute all your tests till the time you get 95% chance to edge out the original.
This number of course may fluctuate throughout the test. The smaller is the difference in
conversions; you will find it taking longer to reach 95% or higher probability. However, after
waiting for so long, you increase the scopes of the increase (or reduction) in conversions to be
statistically relevant.

Besides, it is also deemed as a good practice to run a test for a minimum of seven days.
Sometimes, it may not be a necessity and the site traffic can also vary. The results may fluctuate
and a seemingly winning variation may not last for a period of 7 days. And in case it does not
last for a week you would not wish to implement that result for use in your website, aint it so!

SO FOR TESTING,

STICK TO THESE 2 RULES OF THUMB:

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• Always carry out testing unless the 95%

chance to override the original variation is there. and

● Think of carrying out test for a period of 7 days to ensure the measured result will stand
test of time.

Coming Up With A List Of Tests

As we earlier mentioned, to set up the initial test, you will have to zero in on any software. We
will choose Visual Website Optimizer for this.

Next, you need to think of what to test. Before we do that, we need to find out the goals for
your site. What do you want? Are you trying to create more leads for your business or want
more signups for a SaaS venture? The test is determined by your business goals for sure.

We’d also want to remind you the vital goal for your venture is what has to be measured. If
your most pressing target is generating more free sign ups, then use that as the primary
conversion goal. If you want paid account sign ups, that is what should be measured on your
website. Each test should boost conversions for the most vital goal on your website.

As for our example, we will run a theoretical test on the site CrazyEgg.com and our goal is
measuring number of free trial sign ups. So, eventually the number of people signing up for free
trial would be the metric that we will use for assessing rate of success.

To start, we would want to come up with a number of tests we would run. This would usually
be based on the data gathered by us. However, for this instance, we will just utilize a number of
standard tests that is relevant for most websites- headline, call-to-action button copy and sub-
headlines. All such items have proven impact on conversions on other sites. So we would use
variations to run tests on Crazy Egg.

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Figure 30

Prioritizing The List

At this point you are likely to possess a list of tests that you want to run. However, it is
necessary to prioritize the tests which you think will leave the hugest impact on the
conversions. Do you feel using a testimonial may lead to a win? Or you think a revamped call-
to-action button copy can do the trick? Either way, the target is coming up with a series of tests
to be run and then you can prioritize them on the possibility of making the biggest impact.

It is also fine to keep track of those test ideas in your collection. You may possibly want to try a
call-to-action button copy, test a new headline and think of adding free shipping icon at a
suitable place in your website. All these are quite good but you have to list them so that you do
not lose the good ones and are able to test one idea a time. The ideal way for this is making a
spreadsheet to log and give priority to your ideas for subsequent tests.

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Figure 31: This is an example of a spreadsheet you can create to keep track and prioritize your
testing ideas.

Something that you have to keep in mind that testing one item at once may lead to incremental
enhancements, but big changes may lead to big wins. For instance, testing a handful of small
elements can enhance conversions by 25%, but with one big change they may go up by as much
as 125%.It’s advisable that you try with bigger changes to grab larger wins. However, it makes
sense to begin with small tests and then move to the large ones gradually.

So, to start on small scale and wet our feet, we are about to list the tests we would run, set
priority and then think of which ones to execute first. Here is the list (which we’ll assume is
based on the data we’ve collected before coming up with the list):

1. A new headline: Crazy Egg shows More Than just Regular Analytics

2. A new description: Deploy Crazy Egg heat maps for finding out insights on the website
not possible with Google Analytics

3. New button copy: Begin Optimizing Today

It’s hard to figure out which one will improve conversion rates or from using which one you
may benefit the most. However, our best guess is using the headline can make a large impact
and so that is where we begin.

Preparing the Test

The subsequent step is setting up the test. For this experiment, we are choosing Visual Website
Optimizer as the testing platform.

First, we will log in to VWO and then click “Create Test” to begin the process.

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Figure 32

At next step, we will select “A/B test” to execute the A/B split test. You may run a split URL test
or multivariate test if you think that is relevant for the test you want to run. But we will advise
beginning with A/B tests till the time you become more comfortable running an experiment and
assessing the results.

Figure 33

The subsequent step is entering the url that we’ll be testing.

Figure 34

Then we will deploy the VWO WYSIWYG editor for creating a variation using the new headline.
You will see it’s quite easy to alter the headline and the size and font will be similar to what is
used in the website. You may use html for tweaking the new version but running simple tests is
also possible without writing new code.

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Figure 35

Now we’re in step four and so will enter the actions that we want to track. The first step we
want to assess for this test is the sheer number of people going from the site’s homepage to
subsequent step in the funnel -that is https://www.crazyegg.com/signup.After that we will
track the quantity of people signing up for one free account which ensures they land on the
web page: https://www.crazyegg.com/confirmation.

Figure 36

It is necessary to keep in mind that final conversion goal is what your attention should be
directed to. It is nice getting more visitors who land up on the signup page from the homepage.

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However, it is even more important to note how many people actually sign up for their free
trial. Next, what matters the most is the number of people going for a paid subscription. Those
are actually the conversion goals for a SaaS business that matter a lot and not how many
people reach the signup page after clicking on the site’s homepage.

While that is true, it’s necessary to know the conversion rates for every step of the process. At
time, you may realize that there’s some bottleneck existing between the signup page and the
homepage. So, you use a test with the hope it will make more people click. However, keep in
mind you should test for your final conversion as more people clicking through does not
indicate more people will opt for your service or its trial for free. Even when more people
actually sign up for free trial that does not denote a lot of them will become paid buyers.
Measuring each step of the process is a necessity that you simply cannot ignore in this regard.
You have to remember that selecting a winner based on the outcome will have greater effect
on the bottom line.

Now, for the final step of this process, we’ll choose the test, add a few notes and determine
percentage of traffic to be used and decide if you want to filter out any kind of traffic like
location, organic, paid etc. Here these are described even more:

The name can simply be what you want to call this test so that you can distinguish it from
several tests that you have run. A name like “Crazy Egg Homepage Headline” may work quite
fine.

Notes are the means for keeping track of hypothesis for the test or details about the different
variations. This part is quite optional and may be deployed if you wish to record notes about an
experiment run by you.

The percentage of traffic offers you the option of not testing on all the traffic. In most cases,
you are likely to leave it at 100 percent but sometimes you may lower it to each visitor that may
not be the part of such experiment.

Target test to a segment lets you filter out some kinds of traffic. You may filter out desktop,
mobile traffic and international visitors, based on what is relevant for your business. For
instance, if you have a U.S. based site, selling products within the US territory you may filter out
international traffic and it will not affect the results.

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Figure 37

Your new variation is set for testing. When it is set, VWO will automatically reveal the new
version to half of the traffic and the base version (the control) to its other half. After adequate
traffic is sent to both the versions, a winning variation will get selected which you can deploy
permanently (or until the subsequent winning variation can be found). If the new version fails
to improve conversion rates, you may very well stop the test and then move on to subsequent
option in the list of conversion tests.

In the subsequent chapter we talk about ways to interpret the results for selecting the winning
variations.

How to Interpret AB Test Results

We covered ways to execute your first A/B test for finding a winning variation. We walked
through the process of creating new variation using the VWO WYSIWYG editor and ways to
begin testing a variation versus the control. Hopefully, this has aided you get started with
preparing for an A/B test.

Now, we are about to walk through ways to interpret the results for selecting a winner and this
will be done by analyzing the results of an example test we set up earlier in previous chapter.
However, we have to remember a couple of things before we get started.

Your test should run till the time there’s 95% chance for beating the control.

At times ,it may seem tempting to conclude a test earlier but it is only proven option to learn
the conversion rate improvement is actually and statistically relevant. You should learn the
smaller the improvement, longer this test will have to be run for reaching any statistical
significance. A test with 5% enhancement needs to be run for longer period compared to
another test with 45% improvement.

You should also test for a week at least.

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This takes into account the traffic variations occurring on weekends and weekdays and it also
ensures the winning variation stands test of time. If it can’t produce winning results for seven
days, can you actually count on it to enhance conversion rates for long-term? Not quite.

Now that our short review is rather out of the way, we will talk about ways to interpret your
results.

Interpreting the Test Results

The first thing worth observing is if your software is able to track multiple goals. Most tests
cover engagement (sheer number of clicks on one page)by default, and also assess other
significant goals set up when the test was started.

For this sample test, we did set up goals or people making it to the sign-up page and people
making to the confirmation page. That denotes people who are opting for a free trial. Had this
been a proper and full-fledged test, we could also track people who are signing up for the paid
accounts since the revenue generated is what we count on, as opposed to people signing up for
free accounts. So, we will track that too. We’ll also cover engagement as a goal so that we get
idea of which version can enhance engagement.

The first thing you can see when clicking on “Reports” and next on “Running Tests” in the VWO,
is your existing test summary. It shows you the number of total visitors, conversion rate, total
conversions, number of variations and tracked goals. It also offers a brief summary table
showing a green or red bar showing if new variation has boosted conversion rates (green for
positive, red for negative). This data is useful for fast update at a glance. However, you will
know more by clicking on its “Detailed Report” tab / button.

Figure 38: Note: The sample data in this example is based on a test that was not conducted
on CrazyEgg.com. We’re using the data for example purposes, not to show real results from
the Crazy Egg website.

Figure 39

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After you click on the “Detailed Reports,” tab, you will get an option to switch between a chart
and goals showing the conversion rate for every variation (inclusive of the control).The chart
shows conversion rates for every variation and aids to get idea on suitability of one version over
another over the test phase. In the instance below, the purple line (aka new variation) began
rather well and then came down a bit and continued to outshine the variation for the week.

Figure 40

Below the chart you get a detailed view of results for selected goals. It compares the control
with the variation(s) showing the conversion rate along with conversion rate range, chance to
beat the original and percentage improvement. You also get to see visitors for each variation
and number of conversions. We’ll look at results even more closely shortly in next section.

Figure 41

A Detailed Look At The Results

For our example data, we will assess engagement, the free-trial sign ups and visits to sign-up
page. Let us have a look at each more closely.

Engagement

When we analyze engagement, we find the new variation boosted engagement by 2.48% while
having 82% chance to race ahead of the original. Engagement for this new version stands at
60.69% while engagement for the control stands at 59.23%.

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Figure 42

TAKEAWAY:

Since this isn’t very vital stat for the test, we would observe it to learn about the new variation,
however we won’t weigh it in any way or the other. This is because sometimes versions
reducing engagement may lead to better conversion rate for the other goals. This means
reduced engagement is desirable than more for certain variations. We’re not worried about
getting 95% or better chance for beating the original for engagement since it’s not most vital
stat for this test.

Sign Up Page Visits

Then, we observe sign-up page visits. The example test boosted click-throughs to the website’s
sign-up page by a margin of 2.5% and a 72% chance to outshine the original. Conversions for
the control stand at 36.41%, while conversions for new variation stand at 37.32%.

Figure 43

TAKEAWAY:

Once again, it is not a vital goal for our test and so we’ll see what we may learn from enhanced
conversion rate. But we will not base the test outcome on this result. It’s good to see click-
throughs have shot up which denotes top of the funnel is converting fine. However, there is no
guarantee this will cause more sign-ups (However, it may do so and we take it as an
encouraging improvement). Of course, it is a stat we may learn from but not something we will
deploy to select the winning variation.

Free Trial Sign Ups

Subsequent and final stat is the free trial sign ups. Our primary goal for this test is getting more
people signing up for free trial, and so it emerges as most vital goal of three tests we have
included so far. Even though other 2 goals enhanced conversions in previous steps of the
funnel, unless the free trial sign-ups get a boost, we won’t implement the changes.

What we find from stats is the new version boosted conversions by 8.21% along with 92%
chance for outshining the original. The conversion rate for control stands at 24.86%, conversion
rate for new variation stands at 26.9%.

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Figure 44

TAKEAWAY:

The takeaway obtained from the results looks very promising. This test was on for a week and
the new resultant variation has 92% likelihood for enhancing conversions by 8.21%.It’s still
quite early to decide a winner based on this reference to wait till 95% chance to outshine the
original. However, the results do look promising. We’ll continue to run the test for some more
time till the time it reaches 95% or more chances of winning. However, there is good chance of
our getting there since we stand at 92% likelihood.

Declaring A Winner

Based on the results, the new version may be declared winner as long as it continuously
improves conversions until reaching 95% or more likelihood of winning. We may continue to
observe the other results along with conversion improvements. But the third goal is vital and
we would declare winner of this test based on the version with better conversions for the goal.

And after we select a winner, we will submit the winning version’s information either to a web
developer or to the IT department for implementing the change. Visual Website Optimizer is
great for testing simple changes without involving a developer but the changes have to be
made on a permanent basis on your website. This means you will have to seek services of an
apt web developer who is capable of implementing the changes.

What Could We Learn From This Test?

Did the results look interesting? This new variation boosted engagement by 2.48% and boosted
sign-up page visits by a margin of 2.5%. It also increased the free trial sign-ups by a margin of
8.21%. The biggest lesson we got from this test is final goal completions are more vital than
micro-conversion improvements from any other goal. As we are concerned more about people
signing up for their free trial, which is the goal we care about. We need to use that goal to
decide a winner eventually. We saw Visits to our trial free sign-up page shot up by 2.5% while
free trial sign-ups shot up by 8.21%. If we were only assessing click-throughs to sign-up page, it
would be impossible to learn how useful this test was for data that really matters. This reveals
how vital it is to assess the most vital goal for your site, over micro-conversions.

It’s also necessary to point out the most important goal is paid account sign-ups. If we desire
improving the bottom line through this test we will also have to assess per centage of people
signing up for the paid account eventually. It is likely that we enhance number of free and trial
sign ups but reduce quantity of paid account sign ups. This means we need to assess all through
the way to end of funnel to achieve apt results.

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Additional Tools: Heatmaps & Clickmaps

Visual Website Optimizer also has heatmaps and clickmaps that you may utilize to get further
insights. By observing the heatmaps and clickmaps used for your test, you get a better idea of
the way people interact with the website. You’ll know the buttons and links clicked the most by
them and the ones overlooked by them as well. You will also know what in the site is baffling
them and what they mistake as a link. This information is required for coming up with ideas and
learning if the visitors are getting baffled when using the website. You may look at this data
both during and after the test to get even more insight into how visitors use your site.

Figure 45

This is an instance of what clickmaps and heatmaps look like in the Visual Website Optimizer.

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Crazy Egg also has heatmaps and clickmaps offering detailed insights about the visitors. The
VWO version is surely a nice add-on for A/B tests. However, Crazy Egg offers a more full-fledged
version offering better insights. It offers clicks based on varying traffic sources as well as
scrollmaps showing how far down your page visitors scroll. The clickmaps and heatmaps
provided by VWO is good to begin with and a nice add-on for A/B tests. However, Crazy Egg is
better suited for long-term data collection.

A Few More Tools

Visual Website Optimizer has 4 additional free tools useful for testing needs.

Figure 46

Landing Page Analyzer

The Landing Page Analyzer offers a series of queries on your landing page resulting in eventual
score on varying elements like reducing hesitation, removing distractions, call to action,
motivation, relevance etc. It also offers detailed feedback with recommendations and
suggestions on ways you may enhance the landing page after you complete a series of
questions used by them to analyze a page.

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Figure 47

Test Significance Calculator

The Test Significance Calculator aids in calculating how important your test is based on
outcome received by you. This is measured with Optimizely, Visual Website Optimizer and
Google Content Experiments. In case you want to run your own test manually, using Test
Significance Calculator to verify results makes sense.

Figure 48

A/B Ideafox

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The A/B Ideafox lets you search for case studies which are based either on website type or
challenge (sales, signups,d ownloads). You can also utilize the search feature for finding case
studies based on a kind of criteria which is suitable. The A/B Idea fox is good to know more
about CRO and to locate studies those will reveal apt testing opportunities on the website.

Figure 49

Test Duration Calculator

The fourth as well as final tool is Test Duration Calculator. This calculator helps a user know the
duration of latest required for getting suitable results. You may have commenced a test in VWO
which improves the conversions by 8%, though it can’t reveal the duration to get the apt
results. The Test Duration Calculator aids you in knowing the percentage of visitors, average
number of daily site visitors, number of combinations, expected improvement based on current
conversion rate.

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Figure 50

One Final Point about Traffic

You also need to remember the amount of traffic received by your site determines the duration
for running a test to get results that are statistically relevant. If your site gets a large quantity of
daily traffic- you will achieve apt results faster than another site that gets small daily traffic.

Besides, smaller variations in conversion rates need you run tests for longer duration. If you
lack much traffic and variation differences are small, it may be required to run test for quite
long time. The good thing is you may utilize the Test Duration Calculator for estimating how
long you would have to run a test to achieve significant results. You may also need to consider
locating ways to fetch new traffic to determine one winning variation in shorter time span.

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