How to Use Email Marketing to Build Meaningful Relationships

The following is a guest post written by Ryan Robinson, an entrepreneur and writer who teaches people how to start meaningful, self-employed careers at ryrob.com. If you’re looking to start a business while working your day job, check out his upcoming online course, The Launch While Working Formula. 

Since it’s inception, email marketing has catapulted into becoming the primary method by which most businesses generate a substantial portion of their revenue.

In fact, a few of my products are only available for purchase if you’re in my email community. To me, email marketing represents so much more than just a revenue driver for my business.

There’s already an incredible amount of resources out there about how to use email marketing for growing your email list and bringing in revenue. But not much is said about how you can use your email marketing to actually build more meaningful relationships with your subscribers. Relationships that are beyond just transactional.

In a world of increasing personalization and growing consumer demand for experiences that are custom-tailored to their exact wants and needs, both brands and individual business owners have a lot to learn about how to use their email marketing to create a reputation that’s built on something deeper than dollar signs.

Personalization in email marketing

Each week, I get anywhere from twenty to a hundred replies to my weekly updates and personalized autoresponders. While no doubt time consuming, choosing to create email content that directly calls my audience to action, engages me with many of my subscribers on a one-on-one basis.

I use a very simple principle employed by all great conversationalists, to get my subscribers to share with me – ask people to talk about themselves. This alone has had a dramatically positive impact on both the engagement and revenue on my website, ryrob.com.

Here’s an example of my primary autoresponder that new subscribers receive when they download one of my pieces of content, sign up for a waiting list, or for my weekly email updates on starting a profitable side business.

The subject line is simply, “Hello from Ryan.”

It’s short, to the point, shows my personality, and calls all of my new subscribers to one specific action. I ask each and every new person who joins my community to reply with their #1 question they want answered about starting a business while keeping their day jobs, which is often the reason they discovered me in the first place.

I get anywhere from 40-100 new subscribers on an average day. Since my autoresponders are so focused and personalized, about 10% of these new subscribers reply to them, which sets in motion a lot of one-on-one relationships with members of my community.

The open rate on my autoresponders hold steady at above 70%, which is almost unheard of in email marketing, especially for an email that really isn’t essential to open in the first place.

Through these exchanges, people share very personal stories, struggles, failures, ask highly detailed questions, and give updates on their progress as time goes on. I reply to every single one of them. It often takes me a week or two (or longer), but I make it a point to reciprocate the vulnerability they show, in taking the time to write me personally.

Vulnerability in email marketing

Beyond just my autoresponders, I extend my deep personalization and vulnerability into my weekly email broadcasts.

Each week, I share with my community something I wrote either on my blog, for a publication, or brand that I’m working with. All of my broadcasts start out with a personal story, transition into a critical lesson I learned in business (usually the hard way), and end with asking my community to read the related post & take a specific action either in the comments or by replying to my broadcast.

Here’s an example of a reply I received from a recent broadcast, where I shared the story and lessons learned, from my biggest failure as an entrepreneur.

This has become a winning formula for me.

Because my community knows I care about them personally, the open rates of my weekly broadcasts stay well above 30% with click rates around 10%.

The vulnerability I show through storytelling in my email marketing helps me establish deeper connections than if I were to simply deliver a bland RSS-template email each week with a new blog post.

Translating personalization and vulnerability into revenue

This approach isn’t for those who are looking to turn a quick profit on their email list. It’s an investment you’re making in your business, that over time pays off in great dividends.

Vulnerability and personalization always start the conversation. However, you’ll need to deliver on the value you’re promising, time and time again.

Over time, this is what allows me to warm up my audience, build long term relationships, and establish a platform of trust based on the genuine value and personal insights I provide through content like my detailed breakdown of the best tools for starting an online business.

After the foundation of trust is established, occasionally, I offer something deeper than everything else I cover for free on my site.

This is usually in the form of a course or activity that’s transformational enough to charge for, and if it’s relevant to a segment of my audience, I’ve already provided enough value to them, that their decision to buy isn’t impeded by a lack of confidence in me. They’re already sold on me as a person, which makes the decision to buy something I’ve created for them, much easier.

The first online course I created on Writing a Winning Freelance Proposal last year, was launched directly to a small segment of my email list that signed up for the waiting list to purchase this course once it became available, just over 400 people in total.

In the first week the course launched, 28 of my subscribers purchased the course, a 7% conversion to purchase rate at a relatively high price point of $129.

It’s no coincidence that most of the members of my community who end up purchasing a paid product of mine are those whom I’ve had one-on-one email exchanges with prior to purchase.

5 steps to using email marketing to build meaningful relationships

1. Provide value

Email marketing helps grow my business in several ways.

Instead of viewing your email list as a means to make money for your business, think about it as a vehicle to provide value to your subscribers. The amount of value you provide to your subscribers is particularly important when you’re just getting started with building your brand, because you don’t automatically command their trust. You have to work for it.

Ask yourself how you can provide such an insane amount of free value to your subscribers on a regular basis, that once you do offer a paid product, they are jumping at the opportunity to pay for more.

Take for example, my 9,000 word post about the best business ideas. It’s one of the largest organic traffic drivers to my website, and because it’s incredibly detailed, it converts into the most new subscribers for me each day.

Start with these simple, yet often overlooked questions to deliver more value to your subscribers, the way they want to receive it:

• What do my subscribers want to know about most?
• What do others charge for, that I could provide for free?
• Which content medium is easiest for my subscribers to consume?

From a revenue perspective, my email list serves as the primary, and often the sole channel, through which I offer paid products and consultation sessions.

My subscribers are the people who know me best. The people who I’ve built trust-based relationships with. Ultimately, they’re the people most likely to value and pay for my services.

2. Be personal

All things being equal, people will always prefer personalized products and services. You need to write like you’re speaking to the individual person at the receiving end of your email.

With that in mind, I recommend adopting a very conversational tone with your email marketing. Having a style of conversation that shows your personality and differentiates you from the corporate sounding marketing emails will help you build the foundation for stronger long-term relationships.

Use first name personalization whenever possible. How much more likely are you to open an email that starts with addressing you by first name, compared to a more generic-sounding email that’s more clearly designed to sell you something?

Regularly ask what pain points your audience has, and you’ll get valuable feedback about future offerings you can create. Take time to read their responses and reply as much as possible. This will significantly help deepen your personal connection and nurture relationships that’ll strengthen over time.

3. Be vulnerable

Become a storyteller with your email marketing.

Share things that make you uncomfortable. Bring your subscribers closer to you, by getting them personally invested in your journey. If you can get them to care about you and your mission, you’ve already won half of the battle.

Ask yourself these questions to determine how you can effectively convey your vulnerability with your email marketing:

• Which experiences that I’ve had could my subscribers benefit from hearing about?
• What lessons have I learned that can be translated into meaningful advice for my subscribers?
• Which of these experiences and stories can naturally relate back to the core offerings of my business?

4. Use intelligent autoresponders

Having a full-time business, or even one you’re just running on the side, takes an enormous toll on your time and energy.

Autoresponders, customizable email messages that follow a preset deliverability sequence, help you build one-on-one relationships with your subscribers.

In my experience, autoresponders provide my audience with more meaningful and individualized experiences. This in turn, helps build stronger connections, deeper engagement, and higher conversion rates.

Make sure your autoresponders meet the following criteria:

• They’re customized based on signup source.
• They’re personalized and address subscribers by name.
• They have one (and only one) simple call-to-action and encourage engagement.
• They set the right expectations for what’s to come in future emails and updates.
• They convey the personality of your brand.

5. Stay in touch regularly

Think about the truly great marketing emails you receive. You don’t want to unsubscribe, and in fact you probably want more.

Your goal is to keep your subscribers always wanting more, and give them a clear expectation as to when they’ll be receiving more. Choose a regular cadence that you can realistically commit to for sending great email updates to your community.

I personally send weekly emails, so that I’m regularly appearing in my subscriber’s inbox. I want to stay very top of mind, so that they don’t forget who I am and the value I regularly provide in their lives.

But, it’s easy to bite off more than you can chew in this department.

Start with evaluating how often you can produce new content that your audience will be interested in. You absolutely need a call-to-action in your emails, because it trains your audience that they’re supposed to take action every time they open your emails. So, if you can only commit to publishing a new blog post, video, quiz, or something else, once a month, it makes sense to have an email frequency of once a month.

The only thing worse than not staying in frequent contact with your subscribers, is wasting their time with too many emails that don’t provide genuine value.

Build your email community the right way

The relationships I carefully build through my email marketing, are always meant to reach far into the future.

I gladly sacrifice the dollar today for the opportunity to show how helpful I can be with free content, and eventually offer a much more premium solution that digs deeper into helping my audience achieve their bigger goals. That’s exactly what I’m doing with my upcoming course, The Launch While Working Formula.

If you hope to eventually generate revenue from your email list, you have to provide value first. It’s as simple as that. If you aren’t willing to provide that free value, your subscribers will seek it out elsewhere.

The post How to Use Email Marketing to Build Meaningful Relationships appeared first on Email Marketing Tips.

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Twitter Direct Message: To DM or Not to DM?

Private or public messaging, that is the question—especially when it comes to social customer service. While most customer service interactions on Twitter start as a public message from a consumer, mentioning the name or @mentioning the handle of a brand, public messages aren’t always the best place to share certain information or resolve an issue.

So when and why is it appropriate to initiate a Twitter Direct Message with a consumer? Read on to learn the ins and outs of Twitter DMs, how your brand can use them to provide better customer care, and other creative ways to use DMs to improve your presence on this popular network.

What Is a Twitter Direct Message?

The public side of Twitter allows users to Tweet messages of 140 characters or fewer, and these messages show up on their profile page and on the Home timelines of their followers. Direct Messages, on the other hand, are private one-on-one or group messages that only show up to those involved.

While Direct Messages used to be limited to 140 characters, just like public Tweets, Twitter expanded the character limit of Direct Messages to 10,000 in August 2015. Users can also send pictures, videos, GIFs and emojis via Direct Message.

You can start a Direct Message with any user or group of users who follow you, and you are also able to reply to anyone who sends you a DM even if they do not follow your account. Many businesses on Twitter have also enabled a setting that allows them to receive DMs from anyone, even accounts they don’t follow, which is a strategic way to offer customers a private way to reach out. To receive DMs from anyone, you need to enable this functionality from the Security and Privacy settings page on Twitter.

Direct Messages for Twitter Customer Service

Brands can use Twitter Direct Messages in a variety of ways, from customer care to sales outreach. The most common use case is for social customer service. this allows brands to communicate in a private message, which gives users greater security if they need to share sensitive information to help resolve an issue. Additionally, the longer character limit allows both parties to explain an issue in greater depth.

Consider using a Direct Message if you want to:

• Send or request sensitive information
• Use more than 140 characters to troubleshoot an issue
• Change channels to email or phone and request contact information to do so
• Gather feedback on customer service interactions

To allow the customer to DM you, make sure you are following their account or have the option to allow DMs from anyone. In terms of protecting sensitive information, we recommend moving the conversation from public Tweets to Direct Messages if you need to ask for any of the following:

• Email address
• Phone number
• Mailing or billing address
• Personal account information
• Billing information
• Specific items they have purchased from you
• Security question or verification

You can also use Direct Messages to gather feedback after a customer service interaction. The Customer Feedback survey experience from Twitter allows users to privately share their feedback after service interactions with businesses. This feature is only available through Twitter customer service solutions partners like Sprout Social. Get more information on this feature here.

If you manage social for a brand, develop a protocol for when to use Direct Messages instead of public Tweets, and make sure everyone on your team is aware of guidelines and best practices. Protecting your customers’ information should always be a priority on social and in customer care.

Make the Switch: Taking a Conversation From Tweets to Direct Messages

While users often reach out with a Tweet, you can prompt them to switch to Direct Message instead. On native Twitter, you can simply reply to their Tweet with a request that they send a DM.

If you use a social media management tool like Sprout, it’s even easier to switch to Direct Messages. Once you have configured your settings on Twitter to allow anyone to DM your business, you will see an option in Sprout to send a DM prompt in your Twitter reply window. When responding to a Tweet, click the Add DM Link button to add a deep link that will take the customer directly to his or her Direct Message Compose screen.

When switching from public Tweets to Direct Messages, we recommend sending a public reply first so it’s clear you’re addressing the conversation in a private channel. This way any other users who witnesses the interaction will know your brand is responsive and available to address any issues that arise.

Creative Uses for Twitter Direct Messages

DMs can also be used as a channel to facilitate sales outreach, connect with influencers and potential partners, surprise and delight community members or develop relationships with members of your community.

Surprise & Delight Your Fans

A quick look at M&M’s handle shows its social team practices social media monitoring to identify opportunities to create deeper experiences with consumers and fans. When one user shared her love for the song in an M&M’s commercial, the brand found an opportunity to share a sweet treat and sent her a message to take the conversation to Direct Message.

.@NDmom No better way to start your day! Can you DM us for a sweet treat? – The M&M’S Crew http://pic.twitter.com/ujSKaJfW67

— M&M'S® Brand (@mmschocolate) March 23, 2016

Connect With Influencers & Members of the Media

Monitoring mentions of your brand on Twitter should be part of every business social media strategy. When you use these mentions as a talking point, you begin fostering relationships that ultimately build up your community.

Start by identifying mentions from members of the media and social media influencers, and develop a strategy for personalized outreach using Direct Messages. Whether you send a simple thank you, offer to put them in touch with the best point of contact for future stories, or propose a partnership, DMs can be a great way to get the conversation started.

Nurture Sales Leads & Facilitate Social Selling

Consumers are increasingly turning to social media to research products and services before buying. In fact, 75% of consumers say they use social media in their buying process. Paying attention to conversations about your brand as well as adjacent topics can help you identify opportunities for social selling.

For example, here at Sprout Social, we often see Twitter users asking their peers to share their favorite social media management tools. When appropriate, we casually strike up a conversation to answer any specific questions they may have about Sprout and offer a link to a free 30-day trial if they’ve expressed interest.

In many cases, these conversations are public-facing. However, when someone wants to schedule a demo, inquires about custom pricing often take up more than 140 characters. So we take the conversation to Direct Messages in order to get contact information and to connect people with a Product Specialist.

Develop Relationships With New Followers

Welcoming new followers to your community is a nice touch, whether you send a Tweet or a Direct Message. Consider using Direct Messages to start a conversation with new members of your audience. For example, you can open with a question about what brought them to your brand or offer to help. You can even provide a discount code to thank them for their interest in your product or service.

Some brands opt to pursue new follower outreach with automated Direct Messages. But we encourage you to think about all the possible ramifications before adopting automatic social media messaging platforms for your business. An impersonal and clearly automated message comes across as spam. Automated DMs can quickly transform a new follower from an eager potential customer to someone who dismisses your brand and unfollows you outright.

When considering whether to automate any part of your brand’s social presence, ask yourself whether you’re adding value for your audience. If the answer is no, automation probably isn’t the best fit.

Best Practices for Twitter Direct Messages

Most of the best practices that apply to using Twitter Direct Messages ring true across public and private social channels:

• Be human. Treat DMs as a conversation and reflect the same brand voice and tone you use publicly—even when dealing with a frustrated or angry customer.
• Send timely responses. If you have a Twitter account, customers will assume they can use it to talk to your brand. If you ignore DMs or take hours—or even days—to respond, you are missing an opportunity to make your customers happier and increase brand loyalty.
• Provide value. Your social media strategy should include both marketing tactics and a significant plan for social customer care. Make sure you are using DMs to effectively resolve issues, help customers and leave them with a positive impression of your brand.

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As Twitter has expanded its offerings to help businesses practice social customer care, Direct Messages have continued to provide a way to build trust and relationships between brands and consumers. Don’t be afraid to address your customers on a more personal level. But at the same time, make sure you’re following the right DM etiquette before you start messaging away.

How does your business use DMs? Leave a comment and let us know!

This post Twitter Direct Message: To DM or Not to DM? originally appeared on Sprout Social.

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How are businesses using Google Posts?

Google has recently debuted a new feature giving individuals and organisations a new platform for communicating with the wider public.

Dubbed ‘Google Posts’ by most commentators – although Google has indicated that the feature does not have an official name yet – the new platform appears as a carousel of ‘card’ style updates within a search engine results page.

The feature was originally introduced as part of the U.S. Presidential Elections, as a way for presidential candidates to deliver a personal message to the public via Google. Later on, some sharp-eyed searchers noticed that Posts had been rolled out to a very limited number of local businesses in the US, and was being given a prominent billing on search results pages.

Google has been fairly quiet about the new feature’s existence so far. Search Engine Land managed to confirm with the company that this was an official test, which has been rolled out to a “few dozen” local businesses.

Of these, only three seem to be widely known about: a day spa and massage therapist, a comic book store, and a jeweller’s specialising in engagement and wedding rings. So how are these lucky few making use of Google’s newest innovation, and what can we take away for when the feature is rolled out more widely in future?

Andrews Jewelers

Andrews Jewelers was the first business to be spotted using the new feature, by local search expert Mike Blumenthal as he searched for engagement rings in Buffalo, New York.

Searchers who enter the right keywords on Google.com are presented with a miniature carousel of the most recent few posts by the business in the search results page. Each has a time stamp, and a share button which allows the posts to be republished on social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook and (in weirdly meta fashion) Google+.

Although the posts are showcased prominently in search results, businesses using Google Posts don’t seem to be artificially boosted to the top of the results page. Rather, the Posts carousel will appear directly below the business’s highest entry on the search results page, whether it be the top search result or the fourth.

Clicking on the company’s logo takes you to a feed of published posts by that company which is presented on, in Blumenthal’s words, “a slimmed-down Plus like page”. The resemblance to Google+ (and the fact that well, it is a Google creation) has caused many to speculate that the new feature could eventually be phased in as a replacement for Google+, which has noticeably been stripped out of branded searches as of late.

As a retail business, Andrews Jewelers has made use of the strong visual element of Google Posts to show off its products, with eye-catching images of their diamond rings and custom designs.

Andrews Jewelers’ updates on Posts are slightly more evergreen compared with something like its Twitter feed, promoting longer-lasting content like a diamond-buying guide, a post on the importance of prong maintenance, and current trends and styles in the jewellery world.

The business is good at linking up its various different channels, drawing attention to five-star Google reviews and encouraging readers to visit its Google+ Page.

Most interestingly, company founder Andy Moquin published a longer piece to his business’s Posts page, addressing an “ongoing debate in the jewelry industry” about gemological laboratories and diamond grading.

I’m on the fence about whether Google Posts makes the best platform for this kind of piece. The no-frills platform interface makes text posts very readable, but without an image, a text post is only given a few lines of preview in the main feed, and is very easily overlooked between the more attention-grabbing visual posts.

I almost missed the text post here when scrolling through the feed.

Then again, when you’re one of the first businesses ever to make use of a new Google platform, anything is a good idea from a visibility standpoint. It’s cool to see businesses experimenting with different types of post on the new platform, and hopefully there’ll be plenty of room to find out what works when the feature is rolled out more widely.

Escape Pod Comics

Another local New York business, Escape Pod Comics in Huntingdon, NY, has also been spotted using Google Posts.

Escape Pod has a good mix of posts going on in its feed, using images, video, GIFs and text posts to promote the business, spotlight individual artists and highlight upcoming events. As a comic book retailer, it uses visual posts to great advantage, using GIFs to showcase a creator’s distinctive style ahead of a signing, or to show off products within the store every Wednesday (the day new comic books are released).

The page features some cross-promotion of Escape Pod’s blog, as well as a post which makes use of a screenshot from the store’s Instagram. With posts dating back to 29^th February, Escape Pod Comics is also our earliest adopter of the three Google Posts businesses, as the other two feeds both date back to 1^st March.

I found it entertaining that, when searching for Escape Pod Comics on Google.com (Google Posts currently only appear in search results for Google.com and not any of the localised Googles), Google has already begun to make associations between searches for the different businesses who are using Google Posts.

A Healthy Choice Spa

Our third Google Posts business is based in Lincoln, Nebraska, which promptly did away with my theory about whether the businesses that Google has chosen to debut Posts had any geographical link.

A Healthy Choice is our most frequent updater on Posts, often publishing two or three posts per day. The updates tend to be short and simple, containing just a single line of text, an image or GIF, and a link.

At this stage, it’s impossible to say whether updating more frequently on Google Posts could be an advantage, a disadvantage, or not really make a difference. In a situation where most or all businesses on Google have their own Posts feed, it’s conceivable that Google could boost the more active publishers higher up the search results, but this could also turn out not to be a factor at all.

Currently, the most that it affects is the number of recent posts which show in the ‘carousel’ on the search results page, which seem to have a cut-off period of about one week; the more posts which have been published in the past week, the more will be displayed in the carousel.

As well as updates promoting its business and the health benefits of massages, A Healthy Choice uses its feed to support and promote local events, history and causes. This isn’t unusual for social media, but when publishing to a platform which feeds directly into search results pages, I wonder if it’s such a good idea.

On the one hand, it looks good for a business to be seen promoting its local area, and building trust and respect with the nearby community is always important for local businesses.

On the other hand, with Posts from businesses appearing directly within search results, businesses might have to put on a search engine ‘hat’ and consider how to deliver the most useful information to searchers who are looking up their business on Google.

I can see it going either way, but as with most things, it will be up to businesses to refine what works when Google Posts is rolled out on a larger scale.

What’s next for Posts?

It’s difficult to speculate too much about what Google plans for Posts, given that Google itself has kept so quiet about the whole project. None of the businesses taking part in the initial, experimental testing stages seems to have made an announcement about being approached or selected, leaving searchers to stumble across these early users by accident.

The homepage for Posts on Google definitely implies a wider implementation of the platform, calling it an “experimental new podium” which will allow people to “hear directly from the people and organisations [they] care about on Google.”

“Verified individuals and organisations can now communicate with text, images and videos directly on Google,” it proclaims. Anyone who is a “public figure or organisation” who would like to publish on Google can join the waiting list, though noticeably, the form doesn’t require anyone to specify why they are significant or even what organisation they represent in order to sign up.

Based on what we’ve seen of Posts so far, Google’s new feature seems like a halfway house between a new social media outlet and a publishing platform. Certainly, the early adopters seem to be using it that way.

But I think there’s potential here for Posts to become something completely new altogether. As I mentioned before, the fact that Posts are published directly into search results means that publishers will have to bear searchers in mind as their audience with their presentation and the information they provide.

The key thing setting Google Posts apart from social media (and blogging platforms) is the lack of interactivity. You can share posts, but not otherwise comment on or interact with them. That could always change in future, but I think it’s a statement of intent as to where Google is going with this feature.

Speculation about replacing Plus aside, I don’t think Google is setting out to create a self-contained social network with its own ecosystem, but something that extends more seamlessly from existing Google search. It’s not just another social network or another publishing platform – both of which Google already owns.

But combining elements of both with the huge ‘audience’ that Google (as the world’s most popular search engine) commands makes using Posts a very attractive prospect indeed, at least from a business perspective.

I think the next big consideration will be whether users find it beneficial, or whether it will be seen as just another level of clutter trying to draw their attention away from the information they’re searching for.

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9 Ways Social Media Measurement Can Improve Your Marketing Strategy

Do you know how effective you are with social media marketing? Are your Twitter and Instagram accounts resulting in business growth? How do you know which platform drives more customers? It’s hard to know these answers if you aren’t up to speed with social media measurement.

The problem with a lot of businesses is they struggle with actually measuring social media marketing. This is because they either don’t have the right tools in place or realize how beneficial social media data can be.

Unfortunately the only metric many businesses measure is their follower count. However, that number alone won’t do much to help you make important business decisions. You need deeper data from tools like Sprout Social and Google Analytics to get actionable information.

Aside from knowing how many followers you have, here is how social media measurement can help improve your business, and build your brand:

1. Know Your Audience

Your number of followers isn’t nearly as important as knowing exactly who is following you. It’s absolutely critical to know your audience demographics.

Knowing your social media demographics will allow you answer questions like:

• How old is my average follower?
• Are my followers mostly men or women?
• Where are my followers from?

Answering these questions allows you to tailor your messaging to your audience. Not only that, but your social media following is a good indicator of your customer base. You can use the data you collect to create new products and services targeting a specific demographic or customer avatar.

In addition to the data you get from Sprout, Twitter also provides some very in-depth information about your audience. With Twitter Analytics, you can find out more about your followers, such as their:

• Interests
• Language
• Lifestyle
• Consumer behavior
• Interests
• Income level
• Occupation

2. Create & Share Better Content

You’ve probably heard the phrase “content is king” in regards to SEO. Content is also crucial for social media marketing as well. If you’re not posting great content that resonates with your audience, then you’re going to have a rough time generating results.

One of the most important metrics you need to track is the social media engagement of each post. You should know exactly which Instagram and Facebook posts are generating the most engagement.

Once you know which posts people resonate with the most, you can create more of it. Maybe a certain headline formula you use catches readers’ attention or perhaps you notice your most popular Instagram photos all use the same filter. Look for any sort of patterns and similarities with your top social media posts and try to replicate it with future content.

3. Figure out the Best Time to Post

One of the most common questions business owners and social media managers ask is “when is the best time to post on social media?” The answer depends on your audience. If you don’t have a social media measurement plan in place, you’ll have to rely on your best guess.

Why guess when you can get hard data that shows you exactly when to Tweet or post to Facebook?

All you have to do is find your social media posts that have the most engagement, then look at what time they were sent out. Hopefully, you’ll notice a pattern in either the days or times these posts were made.

Figuring out the best time to post on social media is even easier with Sprout’s ViralPost feature. Instead of manually looking through your past social media posts to find patterns, ViralPost does the hard work for you and automatically schedules your posts to be sent when your audience is most active.

Don’t make assumptions on when you should post. Look at your social media analytics and you’ll find the answer.

4. Learn the Most Effective Hashtags

Hashtags have become synonymous with social media. Almost every well-known social media platform integrates them, so it’s important to track the hashtags you’re using. Hashtags serve three main purposes on most social media sites:

1. Categorize content
2. Make your posts more discoverable
3. Brand your company or specific campaigns

Sometimes you’ll notice a correlation between your most popular hashtags and your best performing posts.

Using the right hashtags on Instagram can instantly expand your content’s reach. Using Sprout’s Instagram reports, you can easily find your most engaged hashtags. If you’re struggling to come up with effective hashtags, give these tools a try.

5. Make Your Team More Efficient

Email and phone customer support teams are usually evaluated on metrics such as their response time and rate. The goal is to provide quick and effective help to keep customers satisfied. Now that more consumers are turning to social media to voice complaints and to look for customer support, you need to measure your social customer service as well. According to a report from SalesForce Marketing Cloud, 83% of customers like or love when a business responds to them on social media.

If your business offers any type of support through social media, you need a tool that will allow you to quantify your team’s engagement.

It’s a good idea to set benchmarks and goals to measure your team’s performance, so you’ll have a starting point to improve upon. To give you an idea of where to start, Lithium Technologies found 53% of Twitter users expect brands to respond to them within an hour.

6. Connect With Influencers

Social media is the perfect platform to connect with influencers since people use Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram to connect with others. Most brands start outreach campaigns by identifying influencers they’ve never connected with before. You should absolutely plan to build relationships with these people, but what if you could quickly identify users that already share your content?

With Sprout, you can see which Twitter users currently mention you the most, as well as which accounts you’re frequently mentioned with.

This data is helpful because instead of reaching out to people cold, you can start with the users that have engaged with your Tweets. They’re already familiar with you from sharing your content, which makes the initial conversation much easier.

7. Better Allocate Your Time

One of the worst things social media marketers can do is waste time on platforms that aren’t doing anything for their business. The shiny object syndrome can make it extremely tempting to jump from one network to the next. Before you know it, you’ll find yourself spread thin across Snapchat, Instagram, Pinterest and five other social networks.

When you measure your social media efforts, you can see which platforms have the best results. Then you can focus your time where it’ll have the biggest impact.

You can see which social networks are driving the most traffic to your site in Google Analytics under Acquisition & Social & Network Referrals.

If you you’re spending a lot of time on a particular social network and not getting any real results, you can allocate more time toward better performing channels. On the flip side, if you’re receiving a lot of social media referrals from a platform you’re barely active on, it could be a great opportunity to ramp up your efforts.

8. Calculate Social Media ROI

Calculating your ROI is one of the main benefits of social media measurement. If you’ve ever debated whether or not social media marketing is worth it, or had to show C-level executives why your company should invest in social media, measure your ROI.

If you’re not a data-driven person, this might not sound like the most enjoyable task in the world. However, it’s not as difficult as it seems. Measuring social media ROI involves figuring out the costs you’re spending on social media marketing, and calculating the value you’re getting from your efforts. This metric is important because it puts a monetary value on social media marketing, which is something many brands mistakenly believe is impossible.

We created an entire guide that explains how to measure social media ROI, but here is a quick rundown.

• Specify an action social media visitors have to complete such as buying a product or signing up for a free trial.
• Attach a monetary value to that action.
• Set up goal tracking in Google Analytics so you can monitor the number of actions completed.
• Add up all the expenses related to social media including man-hours, content, ads and tools.
• Subtract your expenses from the revenue you calculate in Google Analytics.

A survey from Convince & Convert found 41% of companies had no idea if their social media marketing was paying off. Hopefully, more businesses will get into the habit of tracking their efforts so we can lower that stat.

9. Create a Better Strategy

Social media measurement enables businesses to make better decisions. Once you know what works and what doesn’t, you can make changes to improve your strategy moving forward.

There’s no reason to go into social media blind. With tools like Sprout, you have an arsenal of data that makes it easy to spot holes in your strategy and measure the success of every campaign.

Start by developing a clear and concise social media strategy. Don’t just brainstorm a plan in your mind, write it down. Your strategy should include milestones and goals you want to accomplish. Periodically review these to see if you’re on course. If it seems like you won’t meet your goals, look through your data using the information you read above, and make the necessary adjustments.

Social Media Measurement Is a Necessity

As nice as it is to take a free-spirited approach to social media marketing, you eventually need to become more data-driven to maximize your results. You should track your social media marketing with the same precision and effort you use to track paid ads or landing pages. If you’re not measuring your efforts, you have no idea whether or not you’re reaching your potential, or if you’re even making money.

It’s time to go beyond vanity metrics and get serious about social media measurement.

This post 9 Ways Social Media Measurement Can Improve Your Marketing Strategy originally appeared on Sprout Social.

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Meet Team Sprout: Ali, Relationship Manager

How to use video in email with Jay Moore [Podcast]

Video in email. It’s a thing. You can’t ignore it.

Well, you can ignore it, but I wouldn’t recommend that.

Successfully implementing video in your email campaigns can yield higher open rates, and a ton of clicks from your subscribers. If you’ve been looking for a new way to stand out in the inbox, this is the episode for you.

Concerned about the whole “creating a video” part? No need to worry – producing video has become incredibly accessible and affordable these days. Do you have an iPhone? Great, you’re equipped to record video!

To dive deep into this topic, and help equip you with the tools you need to test and optimize video in email, I’ve recruited our in-house education guru (and video specialist), Jay Moore. He’s been running a successful webinar series on this topic, so he shared a few key points.

In this episode you’ll learn:

• Why you should test video in your emails
• How to effectively use video in your emails
• What types of videos you should create
• Various tools and software for creating video on a budget

You don’t want to miss this.

Listen below:

Here are a few links referenced in the episode:

• AWeber’s Video in Email webinar replay
• Screenflow
• Camtasia
• Skype Call Recorder
• Wistia’s Blog
• Litmus’ Blog Posts on Video

Have a question about email marketing? Leave us a message at aweber.com/podcast.

The post How to use video in email with Jay Moore [Podcast] appeared first on Email Marketing Tips.

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How to Create a Webinar That Gets Results

At Sprout Social, we love webinars. In fact, we have three different types of webinars and in a single month, we may run and participate in as many as six different sessions. One of the more recent webinars we ran was with an amazing company called Wistia, and it was oddly enough a webinar on how to run amazing webinars.

You can check out the recording at the previous link, but we decided to create this step-by-step guide on how to create amazing webinars to ensure you have everything that you need to get started.

Click below to jump to each section of the article:

• Webinar Types
• How to Create a Webinar
• How to Run a Webinar
• Webinar Hosting Platforms

From why you’d want to run a webinar all the way through to the tools you can use to get started, this post covers everything you need to know on how to create a webinar and to get your program off the ground.

Why You Should Learn How to Create a Webinar

When Sprout Social started our first webinar program, it was all about customer education. The purpose was to give customers an advanced look at how to use Sprout Social’s platform and to provide them with the chance to ask questions.

While these types are still a huge part of our program, we discovered other reasons to run webinars. We developed two other versions of webinars that include:

• Partner webinars are created with other companies within and outside our industry
• Thought leadership webinars are made to specifically speak to social media marketing issues.

Each of these webinar types helps accomplish one of these unique goals.

Creating Partnerships

Throughout 2015 Sprout had the opportunity to work with 15 other leading companies on joint webinars. And already in 2016, we’ve worked with nine additional businesses. This is great for a few different reasons:

1. These are typically adjacent companies with a similar audience to yours. If the time ever arises that a partner’s customers need a recommendation for a tool like ours, we can usually rely on them for a recommendation.
2. These companies have also ended up being some of our greatest customers. As we’ve worked with these companies they’ve discovered more about our platform and realized they could use their own social media management tool.
3. A lot of there partnerships have lead to deeper relationships. Relationships that turn into discussions about other joint pieces of content like eBooks, or even talks about higher-level things like product integrations.

Generating Leads & Customers

The main reason companies decided to start their own webinar program is typically due to lead generation and customer acquisition. This is because webinars are still a great way to drive qualified leads into your sales funnel. Our friends at Wistia recently shared some information on how their own webinar program performed in terms of lead generation in just three months.

Not only are webinars great for generating leads, but at Sprout we’ve found the leads generated from webinars convert to customers at a much higher rate than most of our other lead generation channels.

Bolstering Relationships

Webinars aren’t just great for generating new leads, they’re good for growing relationships with leads already in your system, or even your current customers. Leverage your webinar program to increase engagement with these groups of users to reduce the risk of them churning. Try and use your webinars to show these groups how to use your product in a way that they may not have imagined.

Building Your Brand and Trust

If you properly setup and run your webinar, not only will you drive a lot of leads into your marketing funnel, but you’ll also create a lot of impressions for your brand. Between the reach your webinar hashtag see and the sheer amount of people sharing your registration page online, you’ll gain access to a new and trusting social media audience.

Social media webinar with @SproutGKeenan & @MPatterson22 from @SproutSocial #SproutWebinar http://pic.twitter.com/iSmrUjkO7r

— Catherine Babin (@catherinebabin) February 23, 2016

Educating Your Audience

If you think beyond the importance of new leads for revenue and reducing your churn, you get to a much more fundamental webinar goal: sharing your knowledge with others. Even if a person joins you doesn’t immediately start paying for your product, that doesn’t mean it’s not a worthwhile venture to try your best to teach him or her something new.

How to Create a Webinar

Given the lead generation, branding and partnership potential of webinars, you’d think they’re a no-brainer. Well the difficulty with webinars lies within execution. Unfortunately it’s not as easy as slapping together a PowerPoint presentations and bringing home the sales. This next bit will discuss how to create a webinar, then we’ll move onto how to actually run that webinar.

Establish Your Goals

Why do you really want to know how to create a webinar? It’s important to hammer this out first because a webinar that’s geared toward teaching your customers how to use your platform and one aimed at driving new leads aren’t going to have the same audience, topics or presenters. Figure out what you’d like to do and plan the rest of your webinar accordingly.

Define Your Target Audience

Once you choose a topic, you can move toward picking a target audience. If you’re creating a product-specific webinar, that specific audience may have already started a trial of your service, or they could even be your current customers. If it’s a lead generation webinar, then that audience is likely similar to those you target with your paid advertisements. Try using a tool like Sprout Social to dig into your social media demographics data.

Find the Right Topic

Choose a topic that you know will resonate with your audience. If you can’t think of any ideas, try asking your sales team if there are certain questions they receive frequently that would make for a good presentation. You could also dive into your website analytics to see if there are any popular blog posts that are worth repurposing as webinar.

Find the Right Presenter

The fact that webinars aren’t in front of a live audience may lead you to believe they’re not difficult to do. It might seem like at the end of the day, it’s really just you speaking to an empty room. However, that’s not the case. A webinar can be just as difficult as giving a live presentation, so make sure you choose a presenter who is up to the challenge. If it’s your first time, you might want to have two presenters on the call so that one can take charge if the other has any hiccups.

Find the Right Partner

It’s not always necessary to include a partner in your webinar, but it can add a fun dynamic, helps scale the lead generation efforts and you have a person there to help you tackle questions. When choosing a partner, make sure you find one with a similar audience relevant to the content that you plan to deliver.

Create the Registration Page

After you have all of the content and presenters decided, you can build your registration page. This is the page you’ll send users to so that they can register for your presentation. Most of the webinar platforms give you the ability to create a page with their template, though it lacks customizability.

You could also create your own page that plugs into the webinar provider you use. This allows you to make it a bit more on brand. Here’s a look at a portion of the landing page we use at Sprout Social.

Drive Registrations

Once you’re ready to start collecting leads, it’s time to start driving them to your page to signup for the event. There are so many different ways to promote your webinar to drive leads to your site, but here are a few of the channels that we’ve found most successful.

• Email
• SlideShare
• Blog Sidebar
• Paid Social Media
• Organic Social Media
• Content Submission Sites

How to Run a Webinar

At this point, you’ve chosen a great topic and presenter, gotten all of the audience into a room together and are ready to present your webinar. Here are some things that you should keep in mind when it comes to actually running the webinar:

Practice Ahead of Time

No matter if you know the webinar content inside and out, it’s still good to run through what you plan to say a few times. Even though it’s really just you sitting in front of a computer, talking and presenting can be a somewhat nerve-racking process–especially if you’re not prepared. If you end up getting thrown off at any point, lose your place or find yourself fumbling, remember to take a deep breath and start over your last talking point.

Click the Record Button

Before you begin your broadcast, make absolutely sure that it’s recording. It’s a terrible feeling to put on an amazing show only to realize that none of it was recorded. If you don’t record your webinar, you can’t send copies out to those who didn’t attend or left the presentation early. If the webinar platform you choose doesn’t have recording functionality you can always use a screen recording tool like Quicktime to capture it.

Take Care of Any Housekeeping Items

Typically at Sprout Social, we start our webinar by addressing two things:

1. Tell your users how to engage with the webinar. The main reason of running a webinar is that your audience can directly interact with the presenter. Give your audience a unique hashtag they can use to ask questions. You can also tell your audience how they can do it through your webinar platform, which allows you to answer questions throughout the webinar or or after. Try to encourage users to engage with the hashtag by offering a prize for the most engaged Tweet containing that hashtag.

   

2. Let the audience know you’ll send out a recording of the webinar. If any of your audience members have to leave at any point, let them know they’ll be able to view it on-demand. You’ll likely find that this is the question that gets asked most often, both during and after the presentation.

Introduce Your Topic, Company & Self

When you finish your housekeeping, move on to introductions. Start by telling your audience what the topic is about with some background information. Then shed some light on why your company is doing this webinar and tell the audience what makes you qualified to discuss that topic to give yourself some credibility.

Deliver Your Content

This isn’t The Kings Speech or your high school debate class, and we don’t propose to show you how to give an amazing speech, but we will say that our best performing webinars are those that remain conversational. There’s no reason you can’t be fun and informative in the same show. Try not to sound like the ongoing instructor that drones on without asking any questions or getting the class involved. Keep it interesting.

Closing Remarks & Small Product Push

Once you’ve finished discussing your content, it’s time to move on to the closing remarks and questions. During the closing, it’s practical to take a moment to discuss your company a little bit or to extend an offer to the audience. Make sure you keep your pitch brief. You don’t want to soil the content you discussed because you came off as overly-salesy. You may also leave a bad taste in the mouth of the viewer, and when it comes time to send them a followup email, they may be turned off.

Questions & Answers

After the closing remarks, you can start to answer some of the questions that came in during your webinar. One great tip we can give is to come up with a few seed questions beforehand, that way you can address a topic no one asked. Sometimes it takes the audience a few minutes to warm up to the idea of submitting questions.

Webinar Hosting Platforms

This list is by no means all encompassing, and make sure you do thorough research on your tools before going out there and starting your platform. However, here are a few tools that we’ve come across:

GoToWebinar

GoToWebinar is a member of the Citrix family and offers some solid functionality. Email automation, customer branding and polls make it a good choice. The only issue we’ve run into is that if you plan to have over 1,000 attendees, you’ll have to bump your plan up to GoToWebcast. Then you’ll actually have to download the GoToWebinar software to your computer.

On24

Another amazing solution is On24’s webcasting platform. One of my favorite things with On24 is you can load your presentation to the platform ahead of time so you don’t have to worry about actually sharing your screen.

AnyMeeting

AnyMeeting provides a webinar hosting solution that seems to have all of the same features and functionalities as the others but with a much lower price point. Unfortunately if you are a fan of sharing your screen, that functionality is limited to a few of their plans.

Other Useful Webinar Tools

Over the course of our webinar career we’ve found some other great tools that you should include in your toolkit.

Keynote

The presentation creation platform from Apple makes it really easy to build a beautiful, informative webinar. If you have a solid design team, you can ask them to build out a robust template so you can create all of your own presentations with limited design requirements moving forward.

SlideShare

Make sure to put your finalized slide deck up on your company’s SlideShare page. This is a great way to get more impressions on your content after you’ve presented it. Here’s a look at the month-over-month impressions we’ve driven from SlideShare since regularly submitting our webinar content.

Wistia

SlideShare will house your webinar deck, but what about your webinar video? Look into creating a Wistia account for your video hosting. Wistia has great functionalities like the ability to add custom call-to-actions to your video and monitor some robust analytics.

Sprout Social

Sprout Social is actually the company that brought you this blog post. There are a few really great ways to utilize Sprout’s social media management platform to help you run an amazing webinar.

To Drive Registrants: Social media should be one of the biggest channels for driving registrations to your webinars, but it can get cumbersome constantly signing in and sharing a post to your webinar intermittently. Use a social media scheduling tool like Sprout Social to create promotional webinar posts and schedule them for days leading up to the event.

To Assist Engagement: Engagement is such a big part of running webinars. It’s important to encourage your viewers to reach out to you during the webinar to create a better overall experience. However, it can get difficult to manage all of these conversations while presenting.

With Sprout Social’s Smart Inbox, you can manage all inbound messages during your webinar. Choose to filter by specific hashtags, social media profiles or keywords to ensure you’re not missing any of the conversation. You can also mark messages as complete as you go, making room for the new messages you receive.

Further Learning

If you’re still on the fence about whether or not you should start your own webinar program, check out the recorded video of the recent “How to Run an Amazing Webinar” video.

This post How to Create a Webinar That Gets Results originally appeared on Sprout Social.

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