Survey Finds Top Tactics to Get E-mail Subscribers

Digital marketers recently shared both the most popular and the most effective ways they use to acquire e-mail subscribers in a survey by ExactTarget. Unfortunately, some of the most common tactics are not also the most effective. A general e-mail sign-up form on the website was the most common e-mail gathering tactic, for example, used by 74% of the 395 digital marketers surveyed. But those website sign-up forms were rated as effective by only 42%. Conversely, some tactics rated as very effective in capturing e-mail addresses are not widely used. Effective but underused tactics included paid search ads driving to landing pages with opt-ins (50% rating as effective but only 27% using); opt-in options with mobile app content (59% rating as effective but only 12% implementing); and requiring an e-mail address to register a mobile app (seen as effective by 55% but in use by just 13%). Business type and facilities led to low usage of some other highly rated tools: Capturing e-mail during inbound sales calls (71% rated effective), inbound customer service calls (63% rated effective), and in-store loyalty program registrations (67% rated effective) were limited to the survey's marketers with brick-and-mortar locations and call centers. For more on e-mail acquisition tactics and trends, see the MarketingProfs report on the ExactTarget survey at http://www.marketingprofs.com/charts/2013/12044/the-most-effective-tactics-for-acquiring-email-subscribers

How to Pick Words That Sell Your Social Media

Social media marketing relies on word economy, so the challenge is to pick the few words that will best deliver response for your tweet, Facebook post or blog info. A post on Target Marketing's blog recently summarized research on the subject, promising "38 marketing words that sell in social media." It should come as no surprise that studies generally support the basics of marketing copy: Keep verbiage short and simple; use more verbs and adverbs than nouns and adjectives; make a specific offer; and include a call to action. A review of the most "retweetable" messages came up with 20 words/phrases for success, including "you" (personalizing), "please retweet" (call to action), and offer words such as "free" and "how to." Facebook posts follow the same short-and-sweet rule to an extent, with posts of 80 characters or less getting 66% more engagement. But words aren't enough for Facebook fans. You really need a photo or video to juice response. The article cites KISSmetrics' findings that adding a photo to a Facebook post boosts "likes" by 53%, comments by 104% and clicks by 84%. For blog posts, research supports another traditional direct marketing copy lesson: Negative words are powerful--such as fear, kill and dark--and win viewers. The promise of learning also gives a viral boost, especially with novelty or significance--hinted by words such as science, smart, surprising and big. But avoid obvious promotion--words such as announcing, wins and grows--which can dampen social media response. For the full article (all 38 words), go to http://www.targetmarketingmag.com/blog/38-marketing-words-that-sell-social-media#

How Marketers Can Spur Social Content Sharing

Social sharing of your digital content not only boosts marketing ego, it boosts Google search ranking and expands brand audience, according to studies. So how do you spur more sharing? A recent article by Tom Mangan of Reputation Capital Media Services, an agency offering content marketing support, helpfully summarizes the simple advice of multiple experts. Tip No. 1: Make it easy to share by adding social sharing buttons to your blog, website, e-mail, etc. No. 2: Make it exciting to share by adding an image. Web experts agree that any image, but especially an interesting and original graphic, increases sharing. No. 3 is a standard for marketing: Write an attention-grabbing headline. For a basic rule of thumb, keep it short and include a motivator for response or sharing, such as fear, exclusivity, greed or peer approval. No. 4 is more technically challenging: Use content meta data tailored to sharing on the social platforms targeted, which should be the platforms most used by your target audience. Examples are OpenGraph tags for Facebook and LinkedIn, and Twitter Card tags for tweets. And No. 5: Time your posts to maximize sharing. To hone in on the right day and time, you can start by learning directly from your own audience through your online traffic analytics. To read Mangan's article with helpful links, go to http://repcapitalmedia.com/how-to-get-people-to-share-your-content/

How to Rev Up Your PPC Campaigns

If you're a typical small to mid-sized business, you're likely wasting 25% of your pay-per-click marketing budget, according to a MarketingProfs report on a study by search software provider WordStream. So where's your PPC effort leaking dollars? WordStream graded the PPC activity of 500 small to mid-sized businesses in terms of account activity, ad relevancy, keyword optimization, landing page quality and mobile search to come up with five fixes for more traffic, leads and sales. Some takeaways: 1) Make mobile PPC best practices a top priority and get ahead of the over 80% of AdWords accounts that fail to create mobile-preferred ads; 2) Create market-relevant, call-to-action landing pages with conversation tracking instead of relying on a generic home page or single landing page; 3) Improve text writing and relevancy for better click-through and Google quality scoring, and watch your cost per click drop by as much as 50% and your cost per action by up to 80%; 4) Optimize your keywords with strategies like lower-CPC long-tail keywords, modified broad match keywords, and negative keywords; 5) Increase your commitment to PPC by spending at least 20 minutes a week on optimizing your Adwords account. The gain in 2014 from such fixes? Just looking at markets that AccuList USA frequently serves -- multichannel retail, automotive, computer and electronics, education, B2B and insurance -- the study estimated optimized PPC to annually yield 569 more product sales, 273 more vehicle test drive appointments, 211 added enterprise software inquiries, 202 more student inquiries, a 157 gain in B2B supplier leads, and 126 additional insurance quotes. For a helpful infographic, go to http://www.marketingprofs.com/chirp/2013/11993/five-ways-to-give-your-ppc-advertising-an-extreme-makeover-infographic

B2C Content Marketers Give Top Marks to Events

B2C content marketing tactics of all kinds are on the rise, but B2C marketers rate in-person events as the most effective in growing numbers, per the recent "B2C Content Marketing: 2014 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends" study from CMI and MarketingProfs. A range of content marketing tactics A-to-Z, from blogging to infographics to videos, have been adopted by 90% of B2C marketers today, with 60% of those surveyed saying they plan to increase their content marketing budgets in the next 12 months. Not only are use and spending up from the prior year, more B2C marketers consider themselves effective at content marketing: 34% this year compared with 32% last year. But they also rate some tactics as more effective than others. In terms of usage alone, social media (other than blogs) is the most popular (88% use social platforms), but B2C confidence in tactical effectiveness puts in-person events at the top, with 74% believing events are effective, followed closely by e-newsletters (73%). This is the second year in a row that in-person events have received top effectiveness marks from B2C marketers, plus confidence in events has grown significantly; the 74% effectiveness vote is up from 62% last year. For more on the study, go to http://www.marketingprofs.com/charts/2013/11873/2014-b2c-content-marketing-benchmarks-budgets-and-trends

Comparing B2B Social Marketers to Trick-or-Treaters

It's Halloween time, and we can't resist the chance to compare B2B social marketers to costumed trick-or-treaters. Our thanks to Dennis Shiao for his post on Social Media Today. Shiao created the Halloween analogies from findings in the recent "Social Insights Report" by Leadtail and DNN, which analyzed 113,039 tweets (from 500 North American B2B marketers) for the June-August period to reveal social networking and content trends. The report shows, Shiao points out, where B2B marketers, like veteran trick-or-treaters, go for the sweetest results on social networks: 35% share content on LinkedIn, compared with just 3% on Facebook. They choose familiar sources for sharing of safer treats, which is why industry media make up 62% of the 100 most popular content sources. But B2B marketers know the value of creative costumes, so the most shared social sources are also visually oriented: The top five most shared are YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, SlideShare, and Facebook. Like the house with the spookiest decor on the block, if you want to lure a crowd, you'll need to offer an overall standout experience, observes Shiao, so check out the top-rated vendors mentioned by B2B marketers to see what they are doing right with their sweet content, including HubSpot, marketo, salesforce, ShareThis and Eloqua. For more treats from the article and a link to the report, see http://socialmediatoday.com/dshiao/1861616/how-halloween-reminds-me-b2b-marketers

Retailers Can Use 'Big Data' for Bigger Holiday Sales

OK, retailers, if you've been gathering reams of online and offline data about your prospects and customers, it's time to use it to wrap up a holiday sales gift to yourselves. How? A recent MarketingProfs article suggests three tips for using "big data" to deliver a merrier holiday season to e-commerce and brick-and-mortar merchants. No. 1: Combine customer profiles and buying/shopping histories with real-time situational data (location, time/seasonality, limited-time offers, remaining inventory, etc.) and apply that data across devices and channels for more targeted, personalized and relevant promotions in real time (in-store mobile ads, for example). No. 2: Retarget site abandoners with video ads, which drive more engagement than display ads and e-mails--and use data to make sure videos are relevant and timed to the customers' buying cycle. No. 3: Don't stop with customer acquisition. Deliver multi-channel welcoming experiences to new customers for retention, cross-sell and upsell to keep sales flowing into the New Year. For specific implementation ideas, see the article at http://www.marketingprofs.com/articles/2013/11924/how-to-harness-big-data-for-better-holiday-shopping-experiences