by John Heida | Mar 10, 2022 | Email Marketing
Email marketing has been around for a long time, so many marketers have formed opinions on what works and what doesn’t. However, they are based on the changing nature of digital marketing. Old beliefs have become outdated, while some myths persist. This is why we thought it would be useful to put together an article debunking common myths. If this is something that you’re interested in, read on as we debunk the four biggest email marketing myths.
A lot of people talk about how email marketing is dead. It’s a common misconception; in reality, email still plays a big role in digital marketing. For example, 93% of B2B marketers use email to distribute their content. On the B2C side, 59% of consumers report that information in an email has influenced their purchasing decisions, and everyone checks their emails every day.
Although some people have reservations about using email marketing – fear of getting lost in the fray of junk mail, for example – it is still one of the most effective forms of marketing. A survey from Marketing Charts found that the average person receives 416 marketing emails each month. But these statistics only show that everyone’s inbox is already flooded with messages; they don’t mean you shouldn’t send any (or very few) of your own. The key to avoiding that spammy feel is ensuring that your content is always valuable. If you send emails that add value, provide information, and are actually helpful to your audience, you are more likely to see open rates and fewer unsubscribes than if you were simply blasting out random emails.
Unsubscribers Are Always a Bad Thing
When a subscriber unsubscribes from your list, it can certainly sting. But the reality is that unsubscribes are not necessarily a bad thing. A clean email list is key to staying on ISPs’ (Internet service providers’) good sides, which will keep your emails from being blocked from inboxes. And if an email does get blocked, there are easy ways to get your subscribers back.
There are ways to fix your mailing list; you can run scans for typos and offer people the chance to re-subscribe if they have been unresponsive to your recent email marketing efforts. Unsubscribes are people who say they are no longer interested in your content, and that could be for any number of reasons.
Long Subject Lines Are Ineffective
Marketers were once told not to use subject lines that were too long to be displayed in someone’s inbox. That sounds reasonable, but it turns out that using long subject lines is not always ineffective.
While email subject lines between 41 and 50 characters performed best, it’s actually longer subject lines with 61 to 70 characters that performed the best. So don’t focus on fitting all of your subject lines into the narrow parameters. Instead, work to create a subject that is eye-catching and gives the reader a peek at what’s inside the email.
Conclusion
We hope this article proves to be useful when it comes to furthering your understanding of how email marketing works. As you can see, some of your preconceived notions about email marketing couldn’t be further from the truth. Be sure to keep everything that you learned here in mind so that you can make the most informed decisions that will allow you to maximize your email marketing efforts.
We recommend you work with professional email marketing services, such as Silo Hill Media to enhance your email marketing campaign. We create custom-tailored solutions for your digital marketing needs to help grow your business. Worry no more about digital marketing, and contact us today! We are located in Caldwell, ID.
by John Heida | Mar 2, 2022 | Social Media
Knowing that most customers seek an online presence in the brands they support, most companies get tempted to create social media accounts to promote their business. However, just signing up and being on social media is no longer enough.
If you want to connect with your customers, you should do social media the right way. The first thing you should do is make an effort and get to know how you can connect with your target audience.
Here are some steps you have to follow to find your target audience and succeed in social media marketing.
1. Define Your Target Audience
Before you start connecting with your customers, you should know who your target audience is. If you want to attract new customers, you should know your potential customers. You can create an ideal customer profile (ICP).
To create your ICP, you have to fill in these categories:
- Age
- Gender
- Occupation
- Hobbies
- Interests
To gather information about your target audience, you should gather data by asking questions. After collecting data, you must know where your target audience is hanging out.
2. Identify the Social Media Platforms Used by Your Target Audience
Now that you already know who your target audience is, the next step is to understand where they are hanging out.
The best way to know your target audience is to follow them on social media. As mentioned earlier, your target audience is already online, and it is easier for you to connect with them. Through the help of social media, you can learn how to reach out to your target audience.
You can start by identifying the social media platforms used by your target audience. If you want to make an effective connection with your target audience, you should know where they spend most of their time. Here are some of the social media platforms your target audience might be using:
- Facebook
- Twitter
- YouTube
- Instagram
- Snapchat
- LinkedIn
- Pinterest
- TikTok
3. Ask Your Current Customers
Once you know your target audience, it is time to start connecting with them.
Start by asking your current clients where they heard about your company or how they find information about your company. You can also ask them to give you feedback about your products or services.
You can also take advantage of surveys to figure out where your customers spend most of their time. Through the help of surveys, you can also ask your customers what social media platforms they use and how frequently they use them.
4. Decide on Your Specific Niche
Once you have identified the social media platforms used by your target audience, the next step is deciding on your specific niche. Once you have figured out the niche, you have to start posting content that appeals to your target audience. You have to post content that will take you closer to your target audience.
5. Use the Right Tools
It is vital to get the help of the right tools when trying to find your target audience. Tools can help you define your target audience more accurately. To help you understand your target audience better, you need to use the following means:
- Google Analytics
- Google AdWords
- Facebook Insights
- Twitter Analytics
- YouTube Analytics
- Hootsuite
Final Thoughts
Setting up your own business is not just about having good ideas, but it is also about how you promote your business. You need to set your business up on the right social media platform to promote your business properly.
For social media marketing for small businesses, work with us at Silo Hill Media. Handling social media is one of our main solutions in bringing more and more business clients to your business. Schedule a call with one of our experts today to learn more about our digital marketing services in Boise.
by John Heida | Feb 22, 2022 | Email Marketing
According to New York Times, it is an excellent time to start a business even with an unstable economy. The columnist explains that people are less likely to take such risks. Thus, you have lesser competitors.
Besides that development, the United Nations pointed out the growth of e-commerce. After taking these into account, what would it mean for your company? You might want to re-evaluate your marketing scheme.
You have various digital marketing tools at your disposal—from SEO to email marketing. This article will focus on the latter because we want to work on your existing client base.
Basics
Kindly note that email marketing is only effective if you have an up-to-date and accurate email list. Remember that your email list is the basis of your email marketing campaigns because they contain the email addresses of your subscribers. These people are already interested in your brand. Thus, it would be best if you merely continued feeding them with valuable information to convert them into paying customers.
Email marketing can be likened to direct mail, but it is more powerful. For example, you can mail a paper letter to your address, but you can only do it once. When you conduct an email marketing campaign, you have a list, and you can reach out to these subscribers anytime you want.
It is important to note that you should not spam your subscribers. Although it may seem easy to bulk email to hundreds of people, you will likely get high bounce rates and low open rates. It is because your subscribers will quickly become annoyed and unsubscribe from your emails. Thus, you won’t be able to reach out to them again and again.
Furthermore, you can use emails to collect the email addresses of your subscribers. You need to have a signup form on your landing page to do this. This way, you will have more people to email your offers.
What Is an Email List Management?
As mentioned earlier, email marketing is only effective if your email list is up-to-date. It is why email list management is essential in the success of your overall marketing strategy. If you regularly manage your email list, you can deliver more value to your email subscribers.
Staying relevant is one of the keys to email marketing. You want to send information relevant to your subscribers’ interests. Think of ways to give them something they want, not just a “hard sell” of your product or services. You want your subscribers to be open to your emails and not delete them into their trash or spam folders.
Make your subscribers believe that you are an expert in your field. Do not be afraid to provide information that teaches your customers. Your prospects will appreciate the extra information you are providing, which may be helpful for them.
Best Practices
If someone requests more information from you, you should send them a coupon, a comprehensive brochure, or an offer for a product of interest to them. There are many ways you can use your email list to create a relationship with your subscribers. At the same time, you want to make sure you keep your email marketing efforts professional.
Conclusion
Email list management is essential in email marketing. Making an effort to ensure that your audience is active will eventually bear fruit. Please take note that a bad list means an unsuccessful email marketing campaign.
To ensure the success of your email marketing campaign, you should ask for assistance from Silo Hill Media. We can help you in every step of this project. Book an appointment now and let’s take your marketing campaign to the next level.
by John Heida | Feb 21, 2022 | Email Marketing
Cold emailing is one of the oldest digital marketing techniques still used to date. The format of cold emailing is modeled after cold mailing, where promotional mail is sent to specific individuals included on a mailing list.
The goal of cold emailing is to spark interest through spontaneous contact. While many people may think cold emailing is outdated and ineffective, they are incorrect. Cold emailing remains one of the most digital marketing strategies, as long as it is done correctly.
If you plan to launch your cold emailing campaign soon, make sure to take the necessary steps. In this article, we will guide you through creating your cold email marketing campaign.
1. Define Your Prospect
Who are you planning to reach with your email campaign? Before creating this campaign, you need to understand your audience and appeal to them. The best way to do this is to create a buyer persona or profile.
Do not just settle for their basic demographics. Instead, you need to fully understand their personal lives, the decisions they make, their shopping habits, and more. It is essential to get a full grasp of their personality before starting your campaign.
2. Build Your Emailing List
Now that you have a prospect, time to create your email list. Scour through the internet for emails that meet your prospect profile and file these email addresses.
Make sure that you are not simply building a list of email addresses. Create a database of these prospects. You can do this by compiling the email addresses that you have and keeping their profile information. Ensure that each email address is associated with a particular profile to give you a basic understanding of who they are.
3. Create a Catchy and Interesting Email Subject
Most people will quickly delete what looks like spam mail without even sparing it a second look. However, if you create a catchy and interesting email subject, they may want to go back and click on it.
Make sure to keep it short but interesting. Remember that what is interesting to you may not be attractive to your audience. Put yourself in the shoes of your prospects and find what may be an exciting email subject to them.
4. Ditch the Sales Talk
Sales talk can seem intrusive and pushy to a lot of people. This could put people off and result in them deleting your email. Try to avoid sounding like a sales pitch and sound more like something they need.
You can seem more casual in your email and avoid heavy formatting. Be straight to the point in announcing what you offer them, but do so in a way that shows that they need your product. Do not try to force these products on them.
5. Test Your Campaign
Try to test your email marketing campaign on a certain number of people on your emailing list. You do not just make an immediately successful campaign; you may be required to revise.
You can follow up with three more emails, but do not do more than that. Your email campaign will be marked as spam, and your prospects may just find it annoying.
Conclusion
Creating a cold email marketing campaign can be difficult. However, if done correctly, it will yield results. Just follow our steps above, and you will have a successful email campaign in no time.
We recommend you work with professional email marketing services, such as Silo Hill Media to enhance your email marketing campaign. We create custom-tailored solutions for your digital marketing needs to help grow your business. Worry no more about digital marketing, and contact us today! We are located in Caldwell, ID.
by John Heida | Feb 21, 2022 | Reputation Management
To grow your business, you have to master your customers’ experience of your product or service. The way potential customers find out about you—and the reputation you build for yourself in the process—varies from industry to industry.
You will need a positive brand reputation that establishes authority, builds consumer trust, and drives sales. Your brand reputation is built through consistent, authentic communication with your customers in the spaces they are already using.
Let’s take a look at how you can use Online Reputation Management (ORM) to improve your brand reputation.
An audit is the starting point to any attempt at ORM. You need to know your online reputation before you can make any improvements. This means understanding what’s already out there and what’s being said about you.
A review of your Google search results will give you an idea of what content about your business has been shared. Additionally, you’ll want to check for “bad reviews.” You’ll also want to evaluate the tone of the content and determine the intent of each piece.
2) Plan an SEO Strategy
Content marketing is one of the best ways to make sure that what you want people to know is what they’re hearing. You can also increase your chances of showing up in organic search results by creating quality content and optimizing it for search engines.
Successful SEO takes a lot of planning and preparation. It’s easy for your strategy to get out of touch with your business objectives, so be sure to keep your goals in mind when developing your content.
Like your website, social media represents your public persona. It’s important to be active on the networks you choose and to connect with a wide variety of your customers. In this case, the value of social media is the two-way communication it allows. It’s a chance to directly connect with your customers and build relationships.
If you don’t want to manage your company’s social media directly, consider hiring someone who can. This person can then build trust, positive relationships with your customers, and engagement by responding to questions and comments.
4) Generate High-Quality Content
The content you feed your customers needs to be high-quality. This is critical for your ORM strategy. Your content should answer your customers’ frequently asked questions and give them a reason to stick around.
A well-constructed website with valuable content is the foundation of any ORM strategy. It helps you control the message that your customers receive. It also helps you generate new leads and nurture relationships.
Benefits of Online Reputation Management
The benefits of ORM are pretty straightforward: it helps you control your brand’s reputation, correct any errors, and build positive brand awareness.
If you want a successful business, you need a strong brand reputation. Your brand reputation is how your customers and potential customers perceive you, and it is what will define your business. When you control your brand reputation, you control the way you are perceived.
Conclusion
ORM is an essential part of any business plan. In today’s digital world, your customers are listening. You might not see them shouting from the sidelines, but they are definitely there. Whether your brand is new or established, it’s important that you make your presence known and that you have a unified message.
Evaluate your content plan and become better at online reputation management with the help of Silo Hill Media. We offer digital marketing services in Boise to boost the strength of your online presence. Get in touch with us today to learn more.
