10 Ways to Grow Instagram Followers and Engagement

“Instagram Famous” is a term that has worked its way in to social media lexicon.
Forget the YouTube stars of the past – it’s all about how many followers, likes and comments everyone can garner from the endless recesses of the internet. And claiming your favorite celeb as another member of your own personal fan club is now cooler than a Grammy, just sayin’.
But you can’t buy fame.
There’s plenty of hacks and shortcuts and “sketchy” companies out there claiming to be able to double your following in seconds or share a delicious secret to instant Instagram fame that everyone else just happened to overlook.
Don’t believe any of it.
When Momma said there’s no substitute for an honest day’s work, she was actually right.
Here’s 10 ways to grow your Instagram following and engagement the new old fashioned way.

1. Keep your photos consistent with your brand

Your Instagram is an extension of your business and your brand, so make sure that the photos you post stay true to what you’re all about. People that follow you chose to do so because there’s something they like about your brand. They want more of it, so give it to them.
Think about what your brand is all about. What words best define and describe it? Keep your images aligned to those core traits.

For instance, a high-brow interior design company would want to focus on modern, minimalist photos of chic living spaces that exemplify good taste and clean lines. If an account like that were to include images of the mess after a crazy office party or someone’s fabulous-looking salad the overall theme would be completely disrupted.
Consistency in photos will keep attracting the right kind of followers, ones who appreciate your brand and who will thoughtfully engage. It also demonstrates professionalism and your authority as an expert in your space.

2. Focus on liking and commenting on photos within your niche

When someone gives you a compliment, you want to give them one back, right?
It’s kinda like that on Instagram, too.
One of the best ways to get people coming to your Instagram and seeing what you’re all about is by liking or commenting on a photo on their page so they can follow your handle back to your account. And hopefully, like or comment on your photo or maybe even follow you.
Carve out the time to find accounts within your niche market and like 5-10 photos and leave a comment or two. Every day.
Why is focusing on accounts within your niche so important? Because they’re managed by the people most likely to be interested enough in your brand to like or comment back.
Think about it – if you’re a beverage brand and you go liking and commenting all over a footwear designer’s Instagram, chances are that followers on that page are more interested in something to add to their closets, not their refrigerators. So your chances of engaging with the right people on there would be slim.

3. Captions matter, seriously

Of course Instagram is image-based. Everyone knows that.
But how many times have you gone to like or comment on that hilarious cat photo…only to be so annoyed by the lack of wit in the comment that you can’t even bring yourself to like it. Because if one’s brand is all about hilarious cat photos, then one better have some equally hilarious comments to go along with them.
Captions help solidify a consistent tone to tie together your theme of images. They also help you connect to your followers and show that you put thought into what you do as an expert in your field.
Treat your captions as though you’re speaking right to your best customers. What’s important to them? How is what you say a reflection of your brand?
Careless captions turn away knowledgeable people within your niche and confuse your brand message.
Thoughtful captions inspire thoughtful responses and genuine followers.

4. Ask for action

Duh! Just ask people to like you, right? It’s just that easy!
Well, almost.
When you’re posting to your account, think about adding a call to action into your caption to solicit a response from your viewers and/or followers.
It doesn’t have to be complicated. Just something short and sweet. For instance, under a photo of a massive ice cream cone with a text overlay that reads “Ice Cream Cures All,” you could add the caption, “Like if you agree!”
This incites a no-brainer action by the viewer vs. just adding the caption, “I love ice cream!” which doesn’t necessarily incite any active response.
Make it easy for your followers to engage by telling them exactly what to do.

5. Use and create relevant and thoughtful hashtags

As on all social media platforms, hashtags help build community and bring together people with similar likes and interests.
The people you want liking and following you.
So with hashtags consistent with your brand and tone, you’ll be attracting people within your niche who will be more likely to engage and help build your following.
Focus on hashtags that are highly relevant within your industry, such as #motivation and #fitness if you’re a personal trainer or #organic and #cleaneating if you’re a vegan chef.

You can even create your own hashtags pertaining to perhaps a social campaign you’re currently running. When your followers start using it, you can then like or comment on their photos, repost them and create a dialogue.
Combine hashtags with thoughtful messaging to caption your themed photos and you’ll be well on your way to Instagram stardom. Or at least more engagement and a larger following.

6. Don’t forget to geotag

So simple, yet so often forgotten.
When you post your photos, remember to geotag them with your current location.
Doing so helps build camaraderie with followers who may also have a connection to that particular city, restaurant, gym, etc. or share common sentiment toward the place you’re posting from.
Because kinship breeds commentary.
For example, say you’re a food critic and you’re visiting a highly acclaimed restaurant in San Diego.
When you share a photo of your exquisitely crafted meal, be sure to geotag that restaurant as a location in your post.
This way, others who have eaten there or who live locally will be inspired to perhaps share what their thoughts were on their meals, like your photos or follow you thinking that by doing so they’ll get more insider scoop on great restaurants in their hometown.

7. Ask people to follow you via your other social accounts

Believe it or not, having additional social media accounts like Twitter and Facebook can actually help you build your following and engagement levels on Instagram.
Generally, any avenue to get your name and brand out there online will help generate interest around your brand, and thus, interest in your social channels.
But you can also use your other social channels to ask your current followers there to also follow you on Instagram.
Think about it. If they already like you and your brand enough to follow you on one account, it’s probably a pretty safe bet that they’ll be more than willing to follow you on another one.
And you can even give them a little sample of what they’re going to get on your Instagram by linking it to your Facebook page. So whatever you post to Instagram will also show up on your Facebook page.
Asking followers on one social account to follow you on another is a smart way to earn more of the “right” followers who have a genuine interest in your brand and who will be more likely to comment and create a thoughtful dialogue.

8. Consider mixing business with pleasure

In most areas of business, combining your business and personal accounts isn’t always a recommended activity.
But if your daily life can somehow compliment your brand, or vice-versa, it may be a smart idea to incorporate your personal photos into what you’re posting for business purposes.
For instance, say you promote an energy-boosting green drink, made of organic, locally harvested produce. Along with posts of your bottles as part of a well-balanced breakfast and of customers drinking it at their local gyms, you may consider posts of you harvesting your own vegetables in your home garden or shopping at a farmer’s market.
Not only do images like this reinforce your embracing the essence of your brand in your everyday life, but doing so helps potential customers and followers better connect with you, as a person. And when that happens, it leads to a deeper connection with your brand.

9. Research and learn from other successful accounts

The cool thing about social media is that the whole purpose of it is to share.
Share posts, share pictures, share copy, share…ideas.
There are tons of people out there just killing it when it comes to earning a constant stream of new followers and above-average levels of engagement. So they’re doing something right.
What?
Do they run awesome campaigns? Have a really solid brand message exemplified throughout their photo stream, hashtags and captions? Are their photos done off-the-cuff and spontaneously? Or are they highly orchestrated down to the last detail?
You definitely want to make your brand your own and stay true to your own persona and voice.
But looking for ideas that have been successful on other top accounts and applying that general framework to your overall strategy can help you take your efforts to the next level.

10. Start using Iconosquare, Schedugram or InstaEasy

Using various social tools to help you better manage your Instagram account can help you save time and strengthen your efforts to build your following and boost your engagement.
Iconosquare can help you better manage your account by offering you an easy-to-use dashboard with more detailed search and engagement capabilities involving other Instagram accounts.
Schedugram is a great tool to use if you’re looking to schedule out future posts in advance. You can set times and stay organized with what you’re featuring and how it plays into your greater brand initiatives.
InstaEasy allows you to grow your Instagram following on autopilot. You can follow by hashtags or another user’s followers. Plus you can automatically like images based on hashtags and unfollow users. Did I mention that once this is setup, it runs automatically?
If neither of those tools give you what you are looking for, you can browse this list of over 500 social media tools – many of which work for Instagram.

Growing your following and engagement isn’t an overnight achievement

Rome wasn’t built in a day.
We’ve all heard that one before. But in today’s world of instant gratification, patience is at an all-time low. For everything.
If you’re looking to work your way to Instagram fame the right way, by earning followers who really care about your brand and who want to contribute to intelligent conversations, the investment of your time and energy is an absolute must.
You’ve got to regularly engage with people within your niche, upgrade your caption copy, seek out popular hashtags, ask people to take action and to follow you – and don’t forget to geotag.
At the end of the day, your potential to gain a mass following and high engagement depends on the kind of effort you’re willing to put into each one of these tactics. Of course, you can choose to use an automation tool like InstaEasy to help you skip the mindless and redundant necessities of you Instagram account.
And with the right amount of work and the right amount of patience, you’d better start planning what you’re going to do with all that newfound fame.
Because in the right amount of time, you’ll have Instagram success in the bag.
Ready to become “Instagram Famous”?
Let me know how you plan to do it in the comments below. Or if you are already a star, why not spill the beans on how you did it?

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How to Use a Facebook Contest to Promote Your Business

FACEBOOK has emerged as one of the most influential social networks in the world.  It has also become a platform for companies to increase their reach and promote their business. However, one of the most highly interactive ways to do so on Facebook is also one of the most under-used: a contest.

Contests provide a great opportunity for businesses to generate a buzz, and increase brand recognition. Here, we will outline the process of hosting a contest on Facebook to promote your business.

Step 1. Preparation

Using a contest requires preparation, but first and foremost, you should review Facebook guidelines for organizing a promotion. Knowing the rules and guidelines set forth by Facebook will allow your contest to be completely legitimate. This is vital to your success so we recommend you read the guidelines in their entirety. To summarize, any promotion on Facebook (such as a contest or sweepstake) must contain:

• Official rules
• Terms and eligibility requirements
• A complete release of Facebook by each entrant or participant

Once you are familiar with Facebook’s rules, spend some time researching other contests that have been successful. Explore feedback, review what participants have said about previous contests and take note of which contest posts had the highest engagement.  This will help you establish some best practices for organizing a Facebook contest, and be informed about current contest trends.

Expert tip: Optimize research by seeking out competitors in your niche. Targeting preparation by investigating your competition will help maximize results.

Finally, establish a method for hosting the contest. While a Facebook page may be used for this purpose, you may find a hosting app to be more suitable. Hosting apps often feature contest management tools, quantifiable insight and reporting components, branding capabilities and more. Fandom Marketing recently published a top 10 list of the Best Social Media Contest Apps, which is a great reference to get you started.

Expert Tip: Contests may be administered on Fan Pages, Business Pages or within apps on Facebook. Personal Profiles may not be used for sponsored promotions.

Designed by Freepik

Step 2. Planning

Once you have finished preliminary research and preparation, move onto planning your specific contest. Every social media marketing strategy needs a solid plan, but not every marketer knows where to start. If this is your first Facebook contest, here are some important things to keep in mind:

• Budget – Will your contest require hosting, traffic/advertising? How much will be spent on prizes?
• Promotion – How will participants learn about your contest? Ads, Emails, Social Media Posts, Etc.
• Contest Length – What are the start & end dates? What is the length of time allowed for entries? When are winners announced?
• Entry method – How do participants join? What information is required to do so?
• Participants – Who can participate? Amount of entries allowed (total, and per person)?
• Prizes – What are they? What value do they bring?
• Winners – Number of winners? How they are determined?
• Legal Documents – Privacy Policy, Terms of Use, Etc.
• Goals – What quantifiable results do you want to achieve? What is your baseline for success?
• Tools – Does your hosting app cover the basics? Do you need other solutions to track statistics and measure goal achievement?

Each of these components will be important when it comes time to take action. Be sure you set yourself up for success and plan accordingly.

Expert tip: Planning sets the stage for your entire promotion, and can make or break your contest. Don’t skimp on time or effort with this step!

Step 3. Take Action

With a defined plan, you are ready to take action. Begin by implementing the contest strategies outlined during the planning phase.

Compile your prizes, sign up for your hosting app, and create the content needed for your contest. For example, if your advertising plan centered around using your email list to reach previous customers, design an effective series of messages that will help you reach these subscribers and urge them to participate.

Then, up your engagement! Since Facebook is a social network oriented towards user interaction and social relationships, connect with participants.

The end goal here is to promote your business, right?  So, take this time to really interact with Facebook users who are interested in your contest. Use the research compiled during your preparation phase and post some targeted and highly engaging updates.

Expert tip: Engagement matters! Ask questions. Answer questions. Like. Share. Post pictures and spread the word about your contest. 

Step 4. Monitor

Planning and hosting a Facebook contest is great for promotion but don’t stop there! We also recommend that you closely monitor performance metrics.

By carefully monitoring your contest, you have the opportunity to notice if an ad doesn’t convert, if a link is broken, if a follower posted an inappropriate comment or anything else that could be having a negative effect on your promotion.

Observing statistics during your contest allows you to recognize issues and, more importantly, adjust accordingly. For example, if paid advertising for the contest is not resulting in conversions – quickly pause your campaign, revamp your ad to increase the click-through-rate and encourage more Facebook users to join your contest.

Crisis (and wasted funds) averted.

Step 5: Analyze

You set out to host a contest, so once the contest is over and prizes have been awarded, you’re done, right?

Well, kudos on the follow through, but since the real goal was to promote your business your work is still not quite finished: The final stage of organizing a Facebook contest involves analyzing the results.

Analysis is important because it helps you determine:

• If you met your planned goals
• What worked and what did not
• If this type of promotion is worth repeating

The best way to analyze your results? Compare the before and after.

Use trackable links and other marketing tools to compile data and make comparisons based on standard metrics. If you chose an application for hosting, this is a great opportunity to review the data, and analyze the efficiency of your Facebook contest. The more information you gather before, during and after the contest, the better.  When it comes to analysis, you want to have a well rounded set of data to reference and draw conclusions from. This information will help you set standards for future marketing efforts.

Wrapping It Up

Facebook contests can be a viable marketing strategy to generate results for your business. A successful contest goes beyond just having participants and giving away prizes; requiring preparation, planning, action, monitoring and analysis. These steps offer a guide to building a contest that will promote your business to a larger audience and with real, tangible results.

Over to you! Take a minute to post comments or share any ideas you have about Facebook contests. Have you used them before? What worked, and what didn’t?

We’d love to hear from you!

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8 Ways to “Fine-Tune” Your Email Engagement

AS the CEO of SendLane, having helped our customers deliver over 3.2 BILLION emails, I’ve learned a lot about email engagement and the best ways to keep customer interaction high with your list.

I want to share with you today, the 8 ways to help fine tune your email engagement with your email list.

1. Clarity over Creativity.

Yes, mysterious or “blind” emails will create bigger engagement. But at the same time, they lose trust.  And as an email list owner, you need to “keep trust”. Keep it relevant and obvious. This will keep your list more engaged with you for a longer time.

2. Find the perfect time and stay consistent.

Experts say 8 – 9am EST and 3 – 4pm EST are the best times to email. If your list is fresh, it would be wise to send a message at these times, using your autoresponder.

But here are facts: the BEST time to email them is based on the BEST time they listen to you. That means it’s also the best time that YOU like to email for your business.

3. Avoid the Spam Filter.

• Prominent calls to actions – saying “CLICK HERE FOR SAVINGS” will get you in trouble.
• Bad HTML code – Most autoresponder and email service platforms won’t allow this. But if you are self emailing, or self coding your HTML form, make sure it has GOOD form.
• AVOID using Microsoft Word. This is a big no no. Do not copy and paste from Word. It carries over bad HTML that will encourage spam.
• Using “Re:” and “FWD” in your subject lines. Not only is this ILLEGAL but it’s also very misleading AND will cause a higher rate of spam.
• Avoid single image emails. Yes, they look fancy, but using 1 image as the entire email including all text, will get you in trouble. Try creating a template and fill it with raw text.
• Never purchase an email list, use a purchased or found email list, or trust anyone that “GIVES YOU” subscribers.  First (and again), it’s ILLEGAL to buy an email list and email someone without their permission.  Remember, you are running a business, nothing is ever truly done for you. Each subscriber should cost $1-2, if not more. If it’s less than that, it’s probably junk.

4. Personalize your sender name.

I’m much more likely to open an email from “Jimmy” than if I saw “IMPORTANT MESSAGE” or “MEMBERS ONLY”. If you want, you can have it come from a company or brand, but don’t list it as the raw email either.

5. Avoid “Free, Help, Percent off, Reminder, Urgent”.

These are major spam trigger words…avoid them! These 5 are the worst offenders. Let’s stop using them and diluting the value of these words.

6. Beware of the same subject line blinds.

This is simple. Stop sending the same email subject line over and over. I get that it’s powerful. It worked in the past. But let’s face it: we all become blind to repetition.

7. Get to the point.

STOP with the super long emails. I know you are trying to pre-sell, share a story, get a message across, etc. but let’s look at Twitter: 140 characters…there’s a reason for that.

People have short attention spans. Take the first 50 characters or less and get your point across FAST. People spend less than 51 seconds in their inbox when on a mobile phone. 50% of email users use mobile phones. Hurry, get your message across ASAP!

8. HARD stop emails.

You’ve seen it before…

“Hey you there

Yes this is me.

You are about to learn

about taking better pictures”

The reason it was done in the past was to keep it “mobile friendly” but that was the past. With most email marketing tools, it automatically now adjusts your email messages to fit the mobile screen perfectly.

Now, when you do that, it looks like this:

“Hey you there

Yes this is me.

You are about to

learn

about taking better

pictures.”

This looks terrible.  STOP IT!

That’s all for today. I hope you can take these 8 tips and expand your email marketing!

Let me know what you think below and don’t forget to share with your friends!

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Increase Your Open Rates with Sizzlin’ Summer Subject Lines

If you run an outdoor pool or an ice cream parlor, summer is a booming time for business. But even without summer-themed products and services, you can still add a splash of excitement to your marketing.

Memorial Day is right around the corner, and as people are starting to spend more time grilling and soaking up the sun, how can you capture their attention with your email subject lines? Remember, a subject line is just as important as the email itself because it’s the first thing people see in their inbox. Use these summer subject line ideas to get your emails the attention they deserve.

1. Draw attention with summer words and phrases
How are you celebrating summer at your business? Let it shine through in your email subject lines, but remember to keep it short and attention-grabbing. Use common summer words and references like these suggestions:

• Celebrate summer with a heat-wave sale
• Provide solutions to summer problems like mosquitoes and sunburn
• Make a list of lawn maintenance tips or suggestions for a fun family grill-out
• Talk about summer must-haves, summer safety, or summer places
• Use summer words and phrases like fun in the sun, beat the heat, high temps, and dog days of summer

2. Promote a summer sale
An easy way to tie your email to summer is to promote a seasonal sale. Craft an exciting line that encourages customers to open the email immediately. Tell them exactly what they’ll see when they open it. For example, “Don’t miss out on the big summer sale — Promo codes inside.” You could also tie your sale to a summer holiday, from Memorial Day to the 4^th of July or Labor Day.

3. Create a calendar of local events
People will look forward to your emails if they know they’re getting more than just an in-your-face promotion. Everyone wants to know about the hottest and most popular summer events, so add a calendar of local events to your emails. Give your customers something to get excited about, from local fireworks to the best farmers markets around town.

4. Use common sense
Your email subject lines should be fun and personal. If you wouldn’t send it to a friend or family member, you shouldn’t send it to current or potential customers either. But don’t go overboard. Stay away from emoticons if using them doesn’t align with your brand. All caps and excessive punctuation should also be avoided. Keep your email professional.

5. Create content people want to read
Your customer wants an answer to the question, “What’s in it for me?” That means it’s important to give them relevant and engaging content in each email. One way to do this is with a summer-themed educational list. If you sell clothing, try talking about the top five summer trends. Or if you run an auto repair shop, list helpful ways to keep your car running smoothly. And don’t be afraid to add a bit of humor. Bonus points if you make your customers laugh.

Don’t let all that hard work on your email marketing campaigns go to waste. Use these tips to keep your open rates up and your business growing all summer long.


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List with a Twist: 50 Creative Tips for Gathering Customer Emails

If you don’t have a strong email list for your customer base, you’re missing out on a great marketing tool that’s both reliable and free.

Compiled correctly, your list should represent a significant captive audience that’s already interested in your offerings.

 “It gives you the opportunity to contact your prospects at any point in the future with any kind of messaging you want — and you’re not bound by search engine rankings or social media algorithms,” notes Jayson DeMers in Forbes.

Building up your list can seem difficult and time-consuming, but it’s worthwhile to include only those who have chosen to engage. Buying lists from another vendor is a bad idea, since emailing anonymous contacts can come across as invasive and often results in complaints, bounced addresses and unsubscribes. Your list will be most effective if you gain trust by not sharing subscribers’ info with other firms and creating emails with useful or exclusive information and valuable offers — not just sales pitches.

“Your content needs to be amazing if you want people to stay subscribed and forward your emails to their friends, family and colleagues (not) already on your email list,” notes Andy Pitre on HubSpot.

Consider the following list of email list-generating ideas.

1)      Add an email signup offer to the back of your business cards.

2)      Include opt-in forms as well as forwarding options on every page of your website, blog and social media networks. Don’t forget “about you” sections.

3)      Include a link to your sign-up form in every personal email signature.

4)      Add your sign-up form link to all your printed receipts. Better yet, consider offering emailed receipts (vendors include Transaction Tree and yReceipts).

5)      Bring a sign-up book to tradeshows, Chamber of Commerce events and “lunch and learn” type gatherings in your local business community.

6)      Offer a birthday or anniversary club with a premium for those who sign up.

7)      Pay employees commission for valid addresses from willing subscribers.

8)      Gather addresses via a discount offer with Groupon or similar daily deal site.

9)      Solicit addresses when your business appears at fundraisers, festivals and artisan markets.

10)  Ask customers for new subscribers’ names in exchange for a discount.

11)  Retrieve bounced-back emails, sending postcards asking contacts to sign up again.

12)  Place your opt-in link in another business’ newsletter, doing the same for them.

13)  Optimize your website for your keywords, striving for the top of the organic search results for those seeking your products (see Google Adwords).

14)  Use your list of snail-mail addresses to request email opt-ins.

15)  Stage pop-up requests for those leaving your website or blog.

16)  Include forward-to-a-friend links in all emails to make them easier to share.

17)  Archive newsletters on your website so subscribers know what they’ll get.

18)  Consider a platform like BuddyPress for WordPress (and add opt-ins), creating a community that fosters interaction among customers.

19)  Ask every caller to your business if you can add them to your list.

20)  Invite customers to enter business cards into a counter fishbowl for a weekly prize drawing, logging their addresses and announcing winners in your email newsletter.

21)  At trade shows, collect business cards and (with permission) scan them for addresses.

22)  At retail locations, set out a sandwich board asking for emails.

23)  Ask for emails on the credit card receipts signed by customers.

24)  Stage a contest asking customers to produce one-minute videos about why they like your product. Others can vote for the winner on your social media pages, accessing opt-in invitations.

25)  Use your smartphone to add addresses on the go.

26)  Place opt-in invitations in product shipments.

27)  Add similar invitations to customers’ shopping bags.

28)  Nonprofits: Include an email-address line on donation envelopes/forms.

29)  Retailers: Ask customers for addresses during in-store promotional events.

30)  Solicit personal friends and business colleagues as subscribers.

31)  Send requests to other Chamber of Commerce members.

32)  Offer a free e-book or informational guide for signing up.

33)  When speaking at an event, offer listeners a free consultation with newsletter subscription.

34)  Conducting a survey? Include email sign-up info.

35)  Include an opt-in form on invoices.

36)  Place an opt-in on your WordPress site or blog.

37)  Give discounts when a customer buys from you and then mentions it on Foursquare via their mobile device. Get the address for the “mayor” and give them a big discount each month.

38)  Offer insightful comments on blogs or forums your prospects or customers would visit, adding links to your opt-in form.

39)  Make sure your website’s sign-up landing page is appealing, easy to use and outlines the value of signing up. Note that requesting too much information too soon discourages sign ups.

40)  Create a video about your business, adding a URL to your opt-in form and posting it on YouTube. You can also add note boxes and speech bubbles using YouTube’s “Annotations” function, and/or link your video to another video, playlist, YouTube channel, or Google+ profile involving your business.

41)  Make sure even transactional emails (i.e. order information or shipping updates) include a link to your email sign-up.

42)  Survey current email subscribers about likes and dislikes, using the data to create more effective email content and up-front value propositions.

43)  Online tool Rafflecopter runs Facebook giveaways that automatically glean email addresses from participants, starting at $13/month.

44)  Online tool Justuno automatically provides customers a coupon code for your products or services if they provide their email; price is up to $40/month for small businesses.

45)  Online tool Binkd gathers email addresses from participants who tweet a message about your brand, then you randomly select a prize winner. Price: Up to $2 per day.

46)  Online tool Woobox sets up Facebook quizzes participants can share on their timelines, then you gather emails and draw prize winners. Small businesses spend about $49 to $99 each month.

47)  On Pinterest, pin coupon codes, e-books, guides, video series, online training seminars, checklists and webinars, and include calls to action for your email list.

48)  While it may seem counterintuitive, weed out the disinterested parties by sending contacts a new opt-in promising to remove their name if they don’t respond.

49)  Publish links to your opt-in page on your LinkedIn company page and/or in relevant discussions on LinkedIn.

50)  Co-host a project like an e-book or webinar with an appropriate business partner, then cross-market it with both businesses to solicit emails.

Finally, understand that maintaining a viable email list is bound to be more a marathon than a sprint.
“Your email marketing database degrades by about 22.5 percent every year,” notes Pitre. “Your contacts’ email addresses change as they move from one company to another, opt-out of your email communication, or abandon that old AOL address they only use to fill out forms on websites. As a marketer, it’s your job to make sure you’re constantly adding fresh contacts to your email marketing campaigns so you can keep your numbers moving up and to the right.”


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How to Use Social Media to Engage Your Customers

SOCIAL media is not just for sharing memes and photos of friends – it’s how you build your customer base.

Old-school advertising on televisions and billboards reached consumers at home and on the road. Now, with the advent of social media sites, businesses are reaching their customers on their favorite social media sites. The average American checks their social media sites no less than 17 times a day. These websites are the perfect places for businesses to engage audiences, nurturing long-term relationships that lead to sales.

Why Engagement Matters

A study conducted by Socialbakers found that the more consumers engaged with a company on social media, the more likely they were to visit a company’s site. As social media analyst Alexandria McCulloch summarizes, “Every Like, share, comment, retweet on your status updates, photos, videos, etc. means another opportunity for website conversion. Building a loyal, engaged following improves your ability to drive sales.”

5 Tips to Anchor Your Strategy

As a company, how do you start to build engagement with social media? Business owners who are new to the digital space struggle to hone in the easiest ways to engage their audiences. Here are five easy starting points:

1. Define Your Audience

To engage an audience, you have to know who you’re speaking to every day. Instead of winging your content, define your ideal customer. The more specific you get about your buyer personas, the more clarity you bring to your conversations online.

2. Create a Schedule

Just as one workout isn’t going to help you meet your fitness goals, one tweet or Facebook message isn’t going to make a difference to your social media strategy. Set up a schedule for posting on and responding to social media — and stick to it. Start with three times a week or once a day before increasing your activity.

3. Interact with Your Audience

Customers want to interact with brands rather than passively view their posts. Use cleverly worded questions on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter to start a conversation. You can also enlist the help of user-generated content with hashtags. Blogger Grace Bonney of Design Sponge developed an faithful following by asking people to share their own photos and tag them with relevant hashtags like “#dsfloors” and “#dspetsstyle.”

4. Use Original Images

Research conducted by Stone Temple Consulting reveals that new social media users benefit from attaching images to posts. Twitter users with a small following generate five to nine times the amount of retweets when they use images, and experience four to 12 times as many favorites. When you start to share content, personalize it with photos that resonate with your audience.

5. Partner with Other Businesses

Develop partnerships that give you the opportunity to tap into the audiences of other brands. If you run a clothing shop in town, for example, consider partnering with another local business — a high-end bakery, or a bookshop — to host a giveaway on social media. This kind of cross-promotion is an easy way to boost engagement in an online community.

Next time you want to engage with potential customers, head to the social media platform of your choice. Start by implementing one of these five ideas, always with the intention to foster engagement and brand awareness among your ideal audience.

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3 Strategies for Maximizing Email Deliverability

Let’s get one thing straight: deliverability is sexy. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. It’s the only way your emails get seen, opened, and clicked on. And if you can increase your deliverability by even just 1%, it can have a significant impact on your ROI.

But achieving high deliverability rates that could make even a mailman jealous doesn’t come easy. Think of it this way: as an email marketer, you’re like the friendly neighborhood mailman. Every house that you deliver email to has a guard dog (ISP). And on days when you have junk mail (spam) or aren’t friendly to folks on your route (poor IP reputation), these dogs will chase you away and only let you deliver some of your mail. To maximize your email deliverability, you need to be familiar with these three deliverability tactics:

1. Set Lower Bounce Thresholds

When you hear the word “bounce,” you might think about fun trampolines or bounce houses. But for marketers, when an email bounces, it’s like bouncing on a trampoline except without all the fun with about 100 times the danger. Okay, I might be exaggerating—but there are definitely some business risks involved. To understand why, let’s first define soft bounces and hard bounces.

Soft bounce: A temporary problem with email deliverability that can be due to an unavailable server or full inbox.

Emails that soft bounce over and over again should be retired from future campaigns. If an email continuously soft bounced 10 times in the last 10 campaigns, it might be soft bouncing for reasons other than a temporary server issue. To keep your deliverability rate high and the risk of that soft bounce becoming something more, it’s best to retire that email for good.

Hard bounce: A permanent failure to deliver an email, usually as a result of the email address being non-existent, invalid, or blocked.

The less hard bounces, the better. ISPs prefer senders to have low hard bounce rates because it shows that you take care of your email lists and keep them fresh. Furthermore, because a hard bounced email may be invalid, non-existent, or blocked entirely, it’s a great candidate for a spam trap, which is an inactive, deliverable email address owned by an ISP to catch spammy senders.

Hitting a spam trap will severely hurt your deliverability and sender reputation, especially with a specific ISP, and could potentially put your IP address on a blacklist, an online database of spammy senders. Once your IP is on a blacklist, you’ll find it awfully difficult to get your emails delivered.
So what should you do to improve your soft bounce and hard bounce rates? Employ a bounce management strategy! Here’s how:

Managing soft bounces: Whether you use an email service provider (ESP) or a marketing automation solution, you should be able to set a soft bounce threshold. Oftentimes, these are set to a conservative number like 10 soft bounces = a hard bounce or an email that should be retired from email campaigns for good. To see how we manage soft bounces here at Marketo, check out my previous blog.

Managing hard bounces: Retire all invalid address hard bounces immediately. Most email providers and marketing automation solutions do this for you, but not all do, so make sure that any email that hard bounces is removed from your list. And if you’re using an ESP where you load email lists into the campaign from an external data source like SQL tables or Microsoft Access, be sure to regularly export all of your hard bounces and add them into a suppression list after each campaign. Then, scrub them against your email database when running a list selection.

2. Don’t Buy Lists

Whether you’ve been doing email marketing for a while or you’re a brand new business just starting up, buying an email list and having a larger email database can seem attractive, but it’s generally a poor practice and it may be detrimental to your deliverability rates and sender reputation. Here are four reasons why:

1. Unsolicited emails: If your recipients have never heard from you before or never opted in to receive your communications, your emails could look like spam to them.

 

When an email recipient marks you as spam, your sender reputation will decrease and ISPs will be suspicious of your activities. With enough spam complaints, you could land your IP on a blacklist, ultimately making it harder for all your future emails to be delivered to the folks who actually opted-in to your communications.

 

2. Quality: You can’t always trust the quality of a list. You don’t know where the names came from, whether the email addresses are correctly formatted, and whether they’ve been scrubbed for spam traps or syntax errors. The email addresses could be old and the demographics can be all over the place. You just never really know what you’re getting yourself into.

 

3. Spam Rate: Email service providers and marketing automation solutions typically have spam rate thresholds in place so if you receive a certain percentage of spam complaints per email delivered, they may terminate your contract. This is because if you are using IP addresses associated with an ESP or marketing automation solution and you’re sending spam, it’s a bad reflection on them as well to ISPs. And they need to maintain good standing relationships with ISPs to properly service their other clients. I’ve heard that for some ESPs, if your spam rate goes above 0.5%, they’ll reach out to you to do a full audit of your sending behaviors and list hygiene practices. They don’t want to jeopardize their business reputation just because you had to buy some lists.

 

4. Bad Metrics: This one should be obvious. Your email metrics will plummet with bad lists! These people didn’t want to hear from you, so very few of them will open and click your emails. Is getting a few email clicks worth losing customer engagement? No, especially when you have to explain the reason to your executives.

3. Segment by Engagement

Getting an ISP to love you is no easy task. Getting all of them to love you is arguably more difficult than getting your celebrity crush to love you. Believe me, I know (you know where to find me, Adele). The number one thing ISPs love to see is high levels of engagement, which means lots of recipients opening, clicking, reading, scrolling, and engaging with your emails on a regular basis.
When you have high email engagement, ISPs will allow the majority of your emails to hit the primary inbox because the demand from your recipients is high. This is called inboxing, which is the percentage of emails that hit the primary inbox as opposed to the spam folder or junk folder. So how do you use email engagement your advantage to get more email inboxing?

Let’s take a look at four scenarios based on this mock situation:

Let’s say you send 100,000 emails that all get delivered. Of those 100,000 emails, 20k engaged within the last 90 days and the remaining 80k haven’t shown any engagement in more than 90 days (the numbers in the examples are made-up based off of my previous experience with campaigns of this nature).

Scenario 1: If you were to just send emails to the engaged group of 20k, the open rate would be 18%, the click-through rate would be 3%, and the unsubscribe rate would be 0%. I’m assuming the unsubscribe rate is 0% because typically when people just engaged, they aren’t likely to unsubscribe. So these are great metrics!

 

Scenario 2: Conversely, if you only sent an email to the 80k group of unengaged emails, the open rate would be 3%, the click through rate would be 0.2%, and the unsubscribe rate is a little high at 0.31%. Metrics that could definitely be better. Again, these numbers are just to illustrate a point.

 

Scenario 3: Now, if you send an email to all 100,000 at the same time, the open rate would be a 6% open rate, with a 0.76% CTR, and a 0.25% unsubscribe rate. This example is probably what most marketers do and therefore the metrics you’d expect based on this example.

 

Scenario 4: If you take a different approach and only send the email to the group of 20k engaged email addresses first, wait 30 minutes, and then send the email to the group of 80k unengaged emails, you’ll get better inboxing rates. This is because when you send emails to engaged recipients first, the ISPs will boost your reputation based on the high engagement on that email. So, when you send to the group of unengaged emails, you’ll actually get higher inbox placement just because you warmed up your sender reputation. In this example (and similar experiences I’ve had), by sending the 20k engaged emails first, inboxing for the group of 80k unengaged emails increased from 55% to 70% when email sends were staggered. The overall effect on inboxing was an increase from 63% to 75%, which definitely moves the needle!

 

Key takeaway: If you stagger your sends by engagement, you’ll see higher deliverability rates and much higher inboxing. This is a really cool strategy that not too many people use today, but it is extremely effective.

Deliver results

Get your emails delivered and placed in the primary inbox by following the three deliverability strategies I’ve outlined. First, set lower soft bounce and hard bounce thresholds to reduce your risk of hitting spam traps and hurting your sender reputation. Second, do not, I repeat, do not purchase lists. You can’t always control for list quality or cleanliness. Lastly, stagger your email sends by levels of engagement. You’ll achieve better inboxing and overall stronger email metrics.

Do you have any deliverability tips or tricks that work for you? Share them in the comments below!

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