The Complete Guide to Email Automation for Beginners

If you’re a marketer, you’ve probably heard of email marketing automation.

Email marketing automation is an essential part of building a profitable email list for any online business.

In this article I’ll try to cover some important points:

1. How does email automation work? 
2. What type of events trigger automation? 
3. The main terms you need to know before getting started 
4. Email marketing automation tools 

If you are unsure of everything email automation can do for you, then read on…

How does email automation work?

With email automation, when an event happens, an email is triggered (automatically sent). The email is sent from your email marketing tool or from your marketing automation tool.

The relevance of the email, and its timing is important. With a bit of smart automation, you can send the right email at the right time and to the right person, with information that is relevant to them, based on the actions they take on your website.

Another important thing is cleaning your email list. By doing so, you know that the email addresses are real and still active. Read more about how to clean your email list here.

What type of events trigger an automation

Below are some simple examples to understand what I am talking about:

• Email after someone signs up to your email list 
• Email when a website visitor is a previous subscriber – When someone is an email subscriber and visits your website, some email marketing tools can track which pages they have visited on your website and then trigger an email based on this. 
• Survey response – You sent an email to your subscribers and asked them if they were interested in a product. Based on their answer, a different email (or series of emails) is automatically sent. 
• Cart abandonment email – If you collect the email address of the person during the sales process – or if you already have the email address as the customer is an existing subscriber – you can follow up via email to encourage them to come back. 

Did you know that the average cart abandonment rate for e-commerce providers is over 60%. More than half of shoppers abandon their purchase after adding products to their cart.

What are the main terms you need to know before you start with email automation?

Before you get started with email automation, you need to get familiar with some of the most used terms of email marketing:

• Opt-in/Subscribe – when someone opts in to receive emails from you 
• Double opt-in – when someone opts in to receive emails from you and they need to confirm their opt-in 
• Spam – when someone doesn’t opt-in and you send them emails, or when someone does optin and you overdo it 
• Unsubscribe – when someone unsubscribes from your email list 
• Trigger – describes an event that causes something to happen (an email is sent) 
• Sequence – the sequence of emails that are sent after an event happens 
• Email campaign/Autoresponder – a series of emails that are sent for a specific event 
• Bounce rate – the rate at which emails are not delivered. A soft bounce is temporary, but a hard bounce is permanent and means that your message can never be delivered to that email address. 
• CTR – stands for Click-Through-Rate and is the number of times people click on links within an email 

Email marketing automation tools

The main difference between an email automation tool and a basic email marketing tool, is the functionality and the price. An email marketing tool is used for sending regular emails such as newsletters. With a marketing automation tool you can build automation around those emails.

Some features of a marketing automation tool are:

• email sequence builder 
• landing page builder 
• analytics 
• program management – manage marketing campaigns across multiple channels 
• online behavior tracking – email subscribers visiting your website 
• and more. 

If you’re looking for a marketing automation tool, you have a large variety to choose from.

Here are some popular examples: 

• ConvertKit – designed specifically for bloggers 
• GetResponse – growing functionality, but not as powerful as some of the other tools below 
• InfusionSoft – complex to use but very powerful 
• Ontraport – doesn’t integrate with as many products as InfusionSoft does 
• HubSpot – very useful and comprehensive tool, but the price will be higher compared to the other two 

What are the steps for building an email automation sequence

For any sequence that you want to build, the required steps will be similar.

1. Find out who you want to attract

Start by analyzing the customers who have bought from you in the past and try to figure out what are the characteristics and interests of your customers.

2. Do some research about the issues of your existing customers/audience

The next step is to do some research and find out the issues your customers/audience encounter while using your services/product. Doing that will help you come up with an incentive for people to subscribe to your services/product.

3. Use the info collected and create your incentive

Use the information from the above steps to create a buzz around that topic. You could also create a guide as a solution or use the info in your opt-in message. This will get people to sign up and then all you have to do is to offer them a free trial of your product.

4. Direct people to make the action you want them to make

You need to create some sort of a “map”, to think in advance. First you have a welcome email, then some follow-up emails with links to the guide created in the step above. After that, what should they do?
They could become a customer, so you must move them to a customer list
If they don’t become customers, you can move them to a newsletter list

A tool you can use for that is Lucidcharts.

5. Create your emails

When you’re creating the emails, think about the relationship you want to build with the subscriber. Make them feel welcome, as part of the community, tell them about yourself and deliver your promises (free trial, a guide, etc.).

With every email you send, make sure that you are building a relationship as well as providing quality content.

6. Create the sequence in the email automation tool

You will need to create a sequence, add emails to that sequence and then specify when the emails will be sent.

An example:
Welcome email – send immediately
Email no.2 – 2 days later
Email no.3 – 4 days later
Free trial/discount offer – 5 days later
Offer reminder – 6 days later
Add them to a customer list if they bought, or to a newsletter list if they didn’t

*days are counted after the welcome email is sent

Note: Your series of emails will be different depending on the type of service you provide and who you are targeting.

7. Deploy your opt-ins and segment your audience

Now you can setup the opt-ins on your site. Depending on the marketing tool you use, you might have the functionality and opt-ins required, but it’s always better to use a specialized tool.

OptinMonster has some smart functionalities and it also provides multiple ways to collect opt-ins.

Some examples of OptinMonster functionalities:
opt-ins based on your blog categories; this means that you can segment people based on where they opted in.
different opt-ins based on the page they visit
different opt-in based on their location
different opt-in based on their actions (abandon the cart or product purchase)
A/B testing for different opt-ins

8. Drive traffic to the opt-ins

Now that everything is in place, it’s time to drive some traffic to the opt-ins. This could be organic traffic, referrals from other sites, paid traffic from Google, Bing, Facebook Ads, etc.

9. Analyze and optimize your results

Measure what works and optimize it. To improve your opt-in rate you can change the words, the opt-in style or the incentive.

The same thing is available for your email sequence: if you notice that people are not opening your emails, you can test different subject lines. Keep in mind that the way you communicate with your new email subscribers needs to be completely different to the way you communicate with existing customers. You will need to split these two out.
Wrap

Successfully segmenting your email list guarantees that messages are landing in the right inbox at the right time.

You can educate. You can connect. You can sell.

Remember, the number one rule of email marketing automation is to keep your users’ experience as your top priority, so think outside of the (in)box!

Source

What Is Content Marketing?

Listen. If you are even remotely connected to the business, marketing, and advertising world, then you’ve probably heard the phrase “content marketing.”
You’ve at least been exposed to it through:

• Blogs
• Podcasts
• Videos
• Search engine optimization
• Email autoresponders
• White papers
• Copywriting
• Social media
• Landing pages

But what exactly is content marketing? Glad you asked, because I’ve got answers for you. One short answer, and one really long. Here’s our official definition:

Content marketing means creating and sharing valuable content to attract and convert prospects into customers, and customers into repeat buyers. The type of content you share is closely related to what you sell; in other words, you’re educating people so that they know, like, and trust you enough to do business with you.

Which brings us to another question: how do you actually use content marketing?
Well, even if you consider yourself a seasoned practitioner or you’re a fresh-out-of-the-box beginner, this handy, systematic, and exhaustive guide — loaded with 100 articles that cover content marketing essentials for building a viable money-making platform — is at your finger tips.

How to use this content marketing reference library

Content marketing can be simplified into the convergence of three spheres: your audience’s interests, your brand story, and your unique perspective or content medium. Combine these three to achieve content greatness.

The 100-article list below reaches back to November 2008 and goes all the way up to the present. It contains 10 categories:

• Content essentials
• Content strategy
• Content research
• Idea creation
• Content creation
• Content promotion
• Traffic generation
• Content marketing case studies
• Content auditing
• Content business building

Yes, I read all 100 articles. It took me 15 hours over six days. I recommend you do the same — but work through it at a pace that’s right for you!
First, bookmark it. That way, it’ll be easy to find when you need to answer a question or reference one of our articles in your own content.
Then, you could:

• Study one of the 10 categories each week, creating your own 10-week content marketing course
• Read one-to-three articles each day
• Identify the categories you need to brush up on the most, and make a note on your calendar to review them when you have free time

Side note: This list makes for perfect Twitter content … drip out just one article each day to your followers over a 100-day period, and you’ll look like a content marketing genius. 😉
This guide will fill in the gaps in your knowledge. It will help you become a content marketing expert in your industry or company.
And with that, I give you Copyblogger’s Ultimate Guide to Content Marketing.

Content marketing essentials

The Future of Content Marketing
New York City should have been destroyed 33 years ago. Because of massive amounts of horse manure. Here’s the lesson you can draw about the future of content marketing from that failed prognosis.

What’s the Difference Between a Professional Writer and a Content Marketer?
Five elements that separate high-quality content marketing from material that’s well-written but might not deliver the same business value.

What’s the Difference Between Content Marketing and Digital Commerce?
We’ve been talking a lot lately about “digital commerce.” This article for is anyone who’s wondered: “I thought content marketing was digital commerce: what’s the difference?”

The 3-Step Journey of a Remarkable Piece of Content
Remarkable content takes a three-step journey. If we keep this journey in mind, we can craft a profound experience for our readers. Pamela Wilson walks you through you each step.

Agile Content Marketing: How to Attract an Audience That Builds Your Business
How do you create a content marketing strategy that actually works? The first step is to get your head right.

The First Rule of Copyblogger
Great content marketing begins here. Those who obey this rule share content that’s worth reading with an audience who is hungry for it. Long-term gains in traffic, leads, and profits follow. Those who break this rule might experience short bursts of traffic, leads, and profits — but not for long.

What’s the Difference between Content Marketing and Copywriting?
When you combine great content with great copywriting, you end up with a powerful marketing platform that can launch you into the realm of the world’s greatest content producers.

The Three Essentials of Breakthrough Content Marketing
The glut of content on the web means that the market is crowded and cluttered. Your content needs to rise above that confusion. Here’s how to do it.

Why Content Marketing Doesn’t Suck
As the saying goes, “Haters will hate.” Don’t let them talk you out of the benefits that content marketing can deliver over a long period of time. This episode of The Lede (when it was still hosted by Robert Bruce) will show you what Procter & Gamble, soap operas, and content marketing have in common. And then some.

The Two Vital Attributes of Quality Content
Ever wondered what makes some blog posts funny, vigorous, and meaningful? You know, the types of blog posts you not only share — but save. Print out. Study. Wonder no more.

Everything You Need to Know About Creating Killer Content in 3 Simple Words
Try this sticky formula — one that basically consolidates what every guru, expert, and pundit has been saying about persuasion, usability, and web marketing — that will make creating compelling copy easy.

Content marketing strategy

Content Marketing: A Truly Winning Difference
A simple lesson about learning how to accentuate the positives in your marketing from a little story about Claude Hopkins and Schlitz beer.

10 Content Marketing Goals worth Pursuing
What do you want your content to accomplish? You do have goals, right? If not, start with these 10.

How to Build an Agile Content Marketing Team
Eric Enge provides nine tips on how to build an agile content marketing team in a way that might just make the size of the task a lot more manageable.

A Content Marketing Innovation Cheat Sheet
Successful content marketers often have deceptively simple cheats for churning out effective online publishing on a regular basis. Let’s take a look.

Digital Sharecropping: The Most Dangerous Threat to Your Content Marketing Strategy
We’re professional content marketers — not subsistence farmers — and our work doesn’t involve 12-hour days in grueling conditions. So, is sharecropping still dangerous? Yes.

A Simple Content Marketing Strategy for Creative Folks
How do you display your work while making it easy for prospective clients to learn about who you are? The conclusion is simple.

A Quick-Start Guide to Measuring Your Content Marketing Efforts
Your job as a content marketer is to show your boss the money — not traffic, not links — mon-naay. Mike King talks about how to get started effectively measuring your content marketing efforts.

5 Steps to Revising Your Content Marketing Strategy to Attract and Retain Future Customers
Whether you already have a product or are just getting started, here are five steps you need to take now to attract and retain future customers of your product or service.

How to Use Customer Experience Maps to Develop a Winning Content Marketing Strategy
Eighty percent of businesses say they are delivering an excellent customer experience. But only eight percent of customers believe these companies were actually delivering. That’s a huge discrepancy. Why such a big gap?

13 Simple Questions to Help You Draft a Winning Content Strategy
Square away an afternoon, ask yourself these questions, and document the answers in a notebook, on a whiteboard, in Evernote, or in the handy PDF we’ve created for you.

How to Create a Visual Brand and Fight the Dark Forces
What can we learn about building a visual brand from Star Wars? Grab these top visual branding tips from Rainmaker Digitals’s Lead Designer Rafal Tomal.

The 5 Keys to Content Marketing Mastery
If you’re happy being an average content marketer, then you can ignore this post. But if you want to be a content marketing master, tap into these five strategies of “deliberate practice.”

The Old-School Content Marketing Strategy that Scores Freelance Writing Clients
While the Internet is more effective and efficient in many ways, you won’t want to throw this approach to getting more freelance clients in the marketing dustbin — it still works. And marvelously.

Content marketing research

Research Ain’t Easy (But it’s Necessary)
What good research does for you and your readers. The first article in a three-part series by Beth Hayden.

A 6-Step Content Marketing Research Process
What should your research process look like? What steps can you take to gather the best possible data on your target audience? Beth Hayden answers those questions.

Become a Content Marketing Secret Agent with Competitive Intelligence
Using slick online snooping techniques and a little sweat equity, we can all find out what our competitors are doing well, what they could be doing better, and how we can adapt their best techniques to improve our own businesses.

A 3-Step Process for Painless Keyword Research
How to stay focused when doing your research and how to avoid getting bogged down in the stuff that doesn’t matter. Because you will.

How to Find the Keywords that Work for Your Content Marketing Goals
Accurate keyword research helps you optimize your website for the search engines, and it also allows you to shape your content strategy. So it’s vitally important that you use smart tactics to help you do your research in a fast, efficient way.

5 Ways Listening to Community Data Can Expand Your Content Marketing Strategy
When talking about content marketing, discussions often focus on decisions about topics, headlines, platforms, and distribution. But how much do you consider the data that supports these decisions?

Why Content Marketing is a Long Game (and How to Play It)
Whether or not you know it, you’re playing a long game with content. Let’s take a look at just a few ways to improve your online strategy.

How to Determine the Potential Size of Your Content Marketing Opportunity
Are readers already displaying a passion for your space? Are they looking for the type of content you’re producing or want to produce? Are they sharing it? Eric Enge explains

Don’t Create Your Content Strategy Until You Research These 6 Things
Here are six areas you should research to avoid a content strategy that’s DOA (Dead on Arrival), so your content marketing gets — and holds — your audience’s attention.

Empathy Maps: A Complete Guide to Crawling Inside Your Customer’s Head
The media you create can attract an audience. As that audience grows, you must learn their needs, wants, hopes, and fears. That information helps you learn about a customer’s worldview.

Tap Into This Psychological Driver to Create the Ultimate Message
Want to overcome content shock? Then you need to understand your audience’s outlook. In other words, you need to tap into their worldviews.

Idea creation

Surviving “Content Shock” and the Impending Content Marketing Collapse
You and I both know that there is a hell of a lot of content out there. Here’s why Sonia Simone is not worried about it.

Conquer Content Shock with Illegitimate Ideas
An illegitimate idea is one that is unnatural — a mongrel. We don’t know its origins. It comes out of left field and is so surprising and disruptive that we halt and pay attention to it.

49 Creative Ways You Can Profit From Content Marketing
Build a membership website. Yellow page ads that look like a blog post. Address popular objections. And 46 more ideas to help stoke your content creativity.

How to Use Content to Find Customers
What do birthday cakes and content marketing have in common? More than you think.

The 10-Step Content Marketing Checklist
Sonia calls this blog post a “checklist” for building a solid content marketing platform. I prefer “law” or “commandment” because if you break one of these rules, you’ll pay.

The Powerful Resource You’ve Always Wanted When Presented with Creative Challenges
Avoid producing copycat content and discover how to create not-to-miss, valuable, unique online content that helps you achieve your business goals

Zen and the Art of Content Marketing
Content marketing in the 21st century might seem like an endless high-speed car chase. But it doesn’t have to be. Not when you apply the simple principles of quality used by this world-renowned Japanese sushi chef.

Why Content Marketing Is the New Branding
Your content defines you. And it becomes the vehicle in which you communicate promises and expectations to your customers. Check out the nifty infographic from PRWeb on different options for sharing your brand online.

How to Brainstorm Brilliant Ideas for Your Blog
You probably know what brainstorming is. But do you know how to do it correctly? Do you know what you need to do before, during, and after the event to make it actually successful? I didn’t. Not until I read this article.

How to Write 16 Knockout Articles When You Only Have One Wimpy Idea
Are you struggling to write articles for your blog? It’s time to get creative. Stefanie Flaxman describes 16 different types of blog posts that you can apply to any niche.

Content creation

Is Content Marketing a Hamster Wheel You Can’t Escape?
Here is a technique that — in exchange for some bursts of intense hard work — will bring you long breaks from the content creation hamster wheel.

The Unstoppable Rise of the Digital Content Creator
Software and digital content creators have become a powerful pair.

3 Components of a Content Marketing Editorial Calendar that Works
Are you strategic about your content creation? Or do you wing it, publishing content with a short-term view? One will help you be successful for the long-term. The other will stunt your growth.

A Simple Plan for Writing One Powerful Piece of Online Content per Week
Want a beautiful four-step procedure for creating a drop-dead gorgeous blog post each week? One that draws out the process leisurely over four days? And lets you do it in your slippers? Read on.

58 Ways to Create Persuasive Content Your Audience Will Love
You want to be a great writer. Seduce readers. Climb above the competition. If that’s you, then start with this step-by-step guide to creating ridiculously good content. Henneke doesn’t disappoint.

The Copyblogger “Secret” to Creating Better Content
Content marketers use content to advertise a product, service, or idea. You want to attract attention. Create desire. Stoke interest. But you also want readers to actually do something. Here’s how.

22 Ways to Create Compelling Content When You Don’t Have a Clue
It happens to the best bloggers and content marketers. Idea dry spells. After dipping into the well every day for months … you come up empty. This infographic is a fast and helpful tool that jump-starts the content creation process.

A Crash Course in Marketing With Stories
Stories are easily the most powerful tool in the content marketer’s arsenal. People love good stories. Stories communicate complex ideas simply. And stories stick in people’s minds. But if you don’t know how to write a good story, then they won’t help you.

How to Constantly Create Compelling Content
Where are you supposed to get all your ideas for content? The answer can be found in a little-known intersection that artists, scientists, and songwriters have been crossing for centuries.

The Simple 5-Step Formula for Effective Online Content
Effective content marketing comes down to two things: education and personality. The right combination of these two elements will lead to leaps in traffic, subscribers and — ultimately — customers.

The 3-Step Cure for Boring, Useless Content
If your business could benefit from content marketing, the worse thing you could do is avoid it. The second worst thing is to create lame content. Geoff Livingston tells you how to make sure that never happens.

The 7 Essential Steps to Creating Your Content Masterpiece
Johann Sebastian Bach — one of the greatest composers who ever lived — had one of the most grueling production schedules one could imagine. And that, my friends, is one of the reasons he cranked out so many masterpieces. Mark McGuinness explains.

How to Craft a Marketing Story that People Embrace and Share
Storytelling isn’t limited to a blog post or a sales page. Storytelling works for your overall position in a market. So, how do you write a story? Use these three steps.

Master This Storytelling Technique to Create an Irresistible Content Series
Since your competitors are likely writing about similar topics, storyboarding is a technique you can use to craft a special experience readers won’t find anywhere else. Check out this storyboarding tutorial.

Content marketing promotion

The 7 Essential Elements of Effective Social Media Marketing
Here are the seven essentials that will turn your social media marketing from an annoying time-waster to an effective bottom-line booster.

Launching a New Product? These 5 Tips Will Get You the Testimonials You Need
If your content, product, or service is new, then you’re likely wondering how to get testimonials. I show you a smart way to gather proof with these five tips.

Content Marketing Is Easier When You (Partially) Delegate These 12 Tasks
These are partial delegation workflows you can assign to someone else that will either give you back the most time or help you with activities you’ve been meaning to do but don’t get to.

How to Create an Agile Content Marketing Strategy (and Stay Sane Doing It)
Pamela Wilson admits: “I spent so much time this past year creating content that I didn’t make enough time to read. And reading is important when you’re a content creator.”

The Proper Way to Automate Your Social Media Activities (and 5 Other Best Practices)
Automating some of your content may be beneficial for both you and your audience. Keep these six automation tips in mind as you set your social media strategy.

Why Content and Social Media are a Powerful Match
It’s not enough to create jaw-dropping content. You need to take that content to your audience members, who are sitting around those digital campfires (think social media). They’re waiting for you.

The Must-Have Social Media Tool Every Content Marketer Needs
Introducing the ultra-powerful, infinitely flexible social media tool that allows you to publish effective content without holding you to any arbitrary rules. It’s not what you think. Promise.

Are You Someone’s User-Generated Content?
The dangers of failing to build a digital asset that you own are real. Casualties abound.

Traffic generation

The Right Way to Think About Google
Google is going to shift. Sometimes abruptly. You don’t need to go along for the ride. Develop a sustainable approach, and leave the panic attacks behind.

5 Ways to Get More Traffic with Content Marketing
We all want it: more traffic. But how do we get it? It’s the most common question new bloggers ask. And it’s the question seasoned bloggers never stop asking. Try these five strategies for solid, proven results.

No Blog Traffic? Here’s a Simple Strategy to Seduce Readers and Win Clients
Do you have the right building blocks in place to seduce readers and win clients? If you want to create a simple blog plan that will help you win more readers, fans, and clients, answer the five critical questions in this post.

How to Make Winning Infographics Without Risk
Research suggests that publishers who use infographics grow in traffic 12 percent more than those who don’t. This is because an infographic, unless it’s completely awful (and they exist), will more than likely go viral. Discover the best ways to create them for your content marketing.

8 Incredibly Simple Ways to Get More People to Read Your Content
Most content marketers are fighting a losing battle with obscurity. They write, publish, and promote — and get nothing out of it. That’s painful. To make matters worse, this goes on day in, day out. Follow Pamela Wilson’s advice and that will change.

Should Your Content Aim for Traffic or Conversion?
Cosmopolitan and The New Yorker approach content marketing in two entirely different ways. Both approaches are super-successful. And anybody can combine and use these approaches to create killer results.

Content marketing case studies

Our monthly Hero’s Journey feature taps the collective wisdom of our community members to bring you reports from the front lines of the content marketing world. Here are five inspiring case studies:

• How One Entrepreneur Grew a Digital Business to Fit Her Life
• Guiding Online Dreams (and Dreaming of a New Community)
• From a Hidden Niche, an Empire Is Born
• How to Play the Long Game to Bring Your Idea to Life
• An Advocate Who Helps People Change the World with Content Marketing

What The New Yorker Magazine Can Teach You About Content Marketing that Works
In a few moments, you’ll know how to not only write content that engages but that also positions you as an authority in your space and dominates in the search engines.

How Chris Brogan Built His Content Platform
Look at Mr. Brogan now and you might think he’s a “master of social media.” He rules over one of the most recognizable independent content publishing empires. But life was not always easy for him. In fact, he struggled for eight years to get 100 subscribers. Here’s his story.

5 Marketing Lessons You Can Learn from a Weird “Real World” Business
Ideas are good. They are even better when they actually work. Here’s a content marketing case study of a business that creates high-end beauty products — for dogs. Weird, but true.

What to Do When You Absolutely, Positively Must Know if Your Content Will Rock
Predicting what content will resonate with readers is tough — if not impossible. You simply cannot know unless you do this one thing. Indie band Wilco did and discovered the truth. So will you.

The Grateful Dead 4-Step Guide to the Magical Influence of Content Marketing
I can hear you now: “Are you serious? An elderly, endlessly touring hippie band can teach me something about effective content marketing?” Yes, they can. Jerry Garcia was a genius. Or should I say “guru?”

Content auditing

5 Powerful Ways to Keep Building Authority Once Your Content Has Matured
In order to keep the early momentum of your blog launch and deepen that influence, you’ve got to adjust your content strategy to reflect the new demands of your audience.

8 Conversion-Boosting Ways to Personalize Your Content
People love to get personalized content. Sadly, that message doesn’t seem to be getting through to marketers fast enough.

4 Ways to Identify Site Visitors (and Why It Matters)
“With adaptive content we are supposed to deliver the right content to the right person at the right time. But how do you even know who is on your site?” I asked. In his exquisite English accent he said, “You could start with cookies.”

A Brief Guide to Fixing Your Old, Neglected, and Broken Content
There are a number of good reasons why you shouldn’t ignore old, broken, and neglected sections of your website. Here are three benefits of attending to expired content.

Is Content Marketing Worth the Effort?
Let me be frank with you: content marketing is work. It is hard work. Hard work like laying bricks or teaching middle school children. But for the practitioner who loves the work? It’s a turn on.

Why Nobody Cares about Your Content (and What to Do About It)
Glen Allsopp of ViperChill explains how to build your personal brand and authority by giving your readers everything they want — and never once talking about yourself.

Are You Creating Meaningful Content?
Ever think to yourself, “What does this content mean? Does it even matter? Is it significant? Do my readers care?” Those are good questions to ask yourself. And here’s the five-step framework to help you answer them.

How to Beat “Invisible Content” Syndrome
I’ve got some bad news for you: every new blog is born with a disease. Professionals call it Invisible Content Syndrome — or ICS. Others call it obscurity. The good news is you can conquer it. Here’s how.

The Foolproof Cure for Weak Content: 4 Ways to Get Some Perspective
You have a sweet idea for a blog post. You pop out of bed and hammer out the first draft. When you are finished, you read what you wrote and think that sucks. Don’t worry. That happens to all of us. And there are four great ways to fix it.

The Force that Powers Persuasive Content (And 3 Ways to Intensify It)
Bet you didn’t know this, but character building and content marketing go hand in hand. There’s a person behind every piece of content. Is that person honest, credible, and an authority? If not, then here are three ways to improve those essential components.

Content business building

How to Build a Business Using Paid and Free Content
Sonia will tell you how to raise your content marketing game by creating a platinum version of your content.

How to Decide Which Content to Sell and What to Give Away for Free
Not sure how much you should give away for free? Chris Garrett helps you find the line between freely available content and content that is locked behind a paywall.

The Key to Innovative Business Ideas: Cross-Pollination
No content marketer is an island. We all know this. But we don’t always take the initiative to strategically collaborate to generate the best content marketing ideas. Pamela Wilson reveals how you can get started.

Why Content is No Longer King (And Who’s Taking His Place)
Why would a novelist claim that content is not king? I mean, come one, this guy makes his living off of huge chunks of content. Check out his surprisingly good argument.

How to Use Ebooks Strategically and Reach Your Content Marketing Goals
Have you written an ebook yet? Some of the most respected content marketers have embraced ebooks for marketing their businesses and as a source of income.

Educate to Dominate Your Competition
Want to spark the buying process in your readers without resorting to a hyped-message? Dream of making your products so irresistible that customers hardly notice your sales offers? Then use the six psychological shortcuts of influence.

How to Succeed at Content Marketing Even if Your Content Skills Suck
Still a little weak in the knees about this whole content marketing thing because, well, you just don’t have any confidence in your skills? No sweat. Half the battle is doing this one thing.

Your ultimate guide to content marketing

Remember to bookmark this post and keep it as a resource to answer all of your content marketing questions!

Source

How to Make the Move from Fearless Freelancer to Remarkable Digital Entrepreneur

As a freelance copywriter, I’d always been excited by the thought of starting an online business.
What could be better than having total control over your schedule, freedom to do the work you’re most passionate about, and the potential to make money while you sleep?
But becoming a digital entrepreneur also sounded daunting to me — at least in the beginning.
Since I was working as a freelancer, I had little free time, no access to venture capital, and essentially zero business experience.
While I wasn’t about to let those constraints stop me, they did force me to take some unconventional approaches when building my digital commerce business.
In this post, I’m going to share six powerful lessons I learned along the way to help other freelancers do the same.

1. You don’t need to think up an idea

The biggest challenge most people have when starting an online business is: “I don’t have an idea!”

But freelancers are immune to this dilemma because they already have one or more skill sets that others would love to learn.

For example, as a freelance copywriter, one of my skills is finding clients. So, I cooked up an online course that helps freelancers do that.
You don’t need to be a world-class expert to:

• Write an ebook
• Start a podcast
• Create your own online course

There are no requirements based on how many years you’ve been working, a minimum number of conferences you’ve spoken at, or special degrees you need to hold.
No matter what level of success you’ve achieved in your freelancing business, there’s a good chance you can get paid to show others how it’s done.

2. You don’t need a sophisticated product

Investing lots of time and/or money into making your first product look polished is usually a mistake.
Instead, create a minimum viable version of your product. Make it awesome by filling it with all of the unexpected knowledge you’ve picked up during your freelancing career.
That’s what I did with my course. Its first version consisted of multiple videos embedded on a web page.
And by videos, I don’t mean studio-quality productions — or even me standing in front of a camera “performing.”
If you watch one, you’ll hear me reading from a script I wrote while you view PowerPoint slides on the screen. (I used Camtasia, a $100 screen-recording app, to create the videos.)
Even today, after more than $160,000 in revenue, the course looks pretty much the same.
People go bonkers over it — not because of its production value, but because I put my time and effort into making the content amazing. Here’s a snippet of a testimonial I recently received despite its bare-bones appearance:

This is the best course I’ve ever purchased — I will buy anything you create!

3. You don’t need a high-traffic blog

Being a freelance copywriter, I’ve run into many clients who hope that carefully optimizing their blog posts will someday flood their sites with visitors.
There’s another, often faster, way: Guest blogging.
For years I’ve encouraged my clients to drive traffic to their blogs using this simple strategy, but I never realized its true power until I tried it for my own digital commerce business.
The first guest post I ever wrote (on Copy Hackers) generated more than 300 email subscribers for me — in just a few hours!
What’s even more amazing is that the same post continues to bring visitors to my site each week, more than one year later. And I’ve written many other guest posts that do the same.
My favorite thing about guest posting is that it’s so accessible. Most blogs that accept guest posts even have dedicated pages that tell you exactly how to submit one.
As a freelancer, you’ll find it especially easy to land guest blogging gigs since you’re basically offering your services free of charge!
Guest blogging works so well that I continue to use it as my main source of traffic to this day.

4. You don’t need a big email list

Most freelancers don’t have thousands of email subscribers they can promote a new product to.
That’s okay — you can start with a small list instead.
Remember those 300 email subscribers I got from guest blogging on Copy Hackers? That was my entire email list when I first launched my course!
Each subscriber received a five-part autoresponder sequence that gave them valuable information and pitched my course.
Twelve of them purchased, giving me a nice four percent conversion rate on that small initial list.
As I continued to guest post on other blogs, the process repeated itself, generating thousands of dollars in revenue in just the first few months after launching.

5. You don’t need tons of content

As a trained copywriter, my instinct is to write — always.
But as a busy freelancer and family man, months have passed between writing posts for my own blog.
According to conventional wisdom, my scant blogging schedule should hurt my chances of building trust with readers, getting email subscribers, and even making sales. But it hasn’t.

The trick is to focus on creating great content your readers love. Quantity is far less important than quality.

Here are some numbers that prove it:

• My course brought in more than $10,000 in sales with just one post on my blog.
• More than $60,000 in sales came while having just two posts on my site.
• To date, I’ve collected more than $160,000 in sales — and grown my email list to more than 10,000 subscribers — with just seven blog posts total on my site.

What about SEO?

Contrary to conventional wisdom — which says you need to publish new content frequently in order to get organic search traffic — my small site ranks well in search engines for several high-quality keywords, including:

• How to make money on Upwork
• How to become a copywriter
• Upwork proposal

While I don’t necessarily recommend you follow the same form of extreme blogging minimalism that I did, I hope I’ve convinced you to focus on quality over quantity.
If you truly help your readers, you’ll be rewarded with more raving fans than you know what to do with — while still having plenty of time left over to serve your clients.

6. Failure is good

To freelancers, failure is a dirty word. Clients don’t pay us to fail. As a result, we’re programmed to avoid it at all costs.
But as a digital entrepreneur, you need to check this mindset at the door. Why? Because …

1. You’re going to fail many times, whether you like it or not.
2. Failure is a key part of the learning process — it’s how you figure out what works in your business and what doesn’t.

For example, what’s the best time to send emails to your list? You probably won’t guess correctly on your first try.

Digital entrepreneurship is filled with questions like this — questions that can only be answered by getting your nose a little bloody at times.

It’s okay to fear failure in your freelancing business, but in your digital commerce business, you need to embrace it.

One last thing …

Please don’t think you need to make the transition from freelancer to digital entrepreneur all by yourself. There are people here to support you.
Why reinvent the wheel when you can learn from others who’ve already succeeded?
I’d recommend starting with a free membership to Digital Commerce Institute.
Here is what you’ll get instant access to with your free registration:

• 4 free lessons from the paid course “Build Your Online Training Business the Smarter Way”
• 3 free lessons from the paid course “How to Create 
Automated Marketing Funnels 
that Work”
• 2 Case Study webinars on building a digital business
• 1 “Cutting Edge” webinar on using Periscope for content marketing
• Plus, one new episode every week of The Digital Entrepreneur — the new podcast hosted by Brian Clark and Jerod Morris about building a business around digital products and services

In addition, you’ll get valuable “how to” articles and case studies of successful digital entrepreneurs. All you have to do is click here, enter your first name and email address, and you’ll have instant access to your free Digital Commerce Institute membership.


Get Instant Access to Smart Advice for Digital Entrepreneurs


Source

7 Reasons Your Business Needs a Welcome Email

When someone signs up for your email list, it’s important to roll out the email red carpet and welcome them. Statistics show these new subscribers are most engaged within the first 48 hours. An automated welcome email (which is a type of autoresponder) can help you reach out to your new subscribers within that crucial window of time. Luckily, at the end of this month, we’ll be launching automated welcome emails in our newest version of VerticalResponse.

Why is an automated welcome email so important to have in your email tool belt? We’ve identified seven reasons why your business should take advantage of a welcome email:

1. Save time
What small business owner isn’t looking for ways to save time? We know you’re busy. With an automated welcome email, every time a new name is added to your list, your pre-made welcome email is delivered straight to their inbox. It’s that simple.

You don’t have to create and send a welcome email every time a new contact signs up, which means you’ll spend less time creating individual emails and managing your list. You create the welcome email once and it’s automatically sent to new subscribers.

2. Provide immediate value
New subscribers have high expectations. When they sign up for your emails, they expect high quality content in return. A welcome email sets the tone, instantly showing customers what kind of communication and information they’ll receive as a member of your email list. A welcome email is your time to shine. A sleek, well thought out welcome email shows subscribers your company can be counted on to deliver valuable content.

This example comes from BuzzSumo, a content marketing competitor analytics tool. They provide value by including links to their “Getting Started Tutorial,” free webinars and “Knowledge Base.” They also let you know that you can reply to the welcome email to get answers fast.



3. Tailor your welcome email with ease
Like many small businesses, your email lists may be divided into different groups. As an option, you can customize a welcome email to meet the needs of each group. For example, if your lists are divided by location (San Francisco or New York) you can create welcome emails that are tailored to a particular city or area. Each group receives a targeted look and message.

4. Make a great first impression
One of the biggest reasons to send a welcome email is to make a good first impression. A welcome email is like a digital handshake between two new people. It’s the first step to forming a relationship.
A welcome email gives you the chance to knock your first meeting out of the park. You only get one shot at a first impression, and delivering a professional email that extends a friendly greeting as soon as they sign up for your list can make your new subscriber feel welcome.

Plus, a welcome email can provide information about your company or offer a new-subscriber discount. All of these aspects add to the subscriber’s overall impression of your business.
This example comes from Hipcamp, a California campsite booking website. They thank you for joining, explain their mission, tell you what you can do on the site, and encourage you to explore, all in a friendly, welcoming tone.



5. Generate some buzz
Who doesn’t want to create a positive buzz around their business or product? Well, a welcome email does just that. As part of a welcome email, you can get prospective customers excited about what’s to come. Tell new subscribers why your email list will rock their world. For example, in the welcome email below Crate and Barrel tells subscribers they’ll get special offers, a look at new items, design tips and access to store events. That quick list gets subscribers pumped up about their new email relationship.



6. Take advantage of a potential sales opportunity
When a new subscriber joins your list, it means they want to know more about your product or business. Since the welcome email lands in their inbox while their curiosity is still piqued, subscribers may be more likely to make a purchase from your business. To provide a little extra incentive, consider adding a promotional deal to your welcome email.

Take a look at the email below. It not only welcomes the subscriber, but it also offers 20% off. The customer sees it as a nice gesture, and it opens up a sale opportunity for your business.



7. Increase email response rates
Every small business wants to see impressive email response rates. When you send an email, you want subscribers to open it, read it and take action. Statistics show welcome emails have impressive response rates.

The Epsilon Email Marketing Research Center says triggered emails – which include welcome emails, shopping cart reminder emails and anniversary emails – have an open rate of 46-53% and clickthrough rates between 9-11%. Other non-automated emails have an open rate of 26-32% and clickthrough rates that hover around 4 percent.

Simply put, subscribers pay attention to welcome emails.


Source

25 Proven Steps to Achieve Email Marketing Magic

If you’ve left email marketing out of the promotional mix for your business, you’re missing out on a method that has been shown to generate as much in revenue as all other types of digital advertising combined. Just how much revenue does email drive? Research last year found that such campaigns produce an average ROI of $38 for each dollar spent. To add to that, Econsultancy found email marketing was rated effective by more companies and agencies than any other channel.



If you haven’t been giving email marketing the focus it deserves, not to worry, this post is for you. Here are 25 proven steps you can start taking today to begin reaping magical rewards in no time.

1. Build Your List

Start by gathering email addresses from current and potential customers. Building your list can seem difficult and time-consuming, but it’s worth your while to limit it to those who choose to engage. Buying lists is a bad idea, since emailing anonymous contacts can seem invasive and often results in complaints, bounced addresses and unsubscribes. Gain trust by not sharing subscribers’ info with other companies, and by creating emails with useful or exclusive information and valuable offers, not just sales pitches. The options for growing your list are only bounded by your imagination. Some of the best ideas can be found here and here.

2. Segment Your List

Segment your audience so you can create targeted messages for different groups, leading to better open rates, lower opt-out and unsubscribe rates and improved deliverability. Check out our 2016 Complete Guide to List Segmentation. Segmenting allows you to separate your list according to geographic region, customer behavior patterns (buyers vs non-buyers, openers vs non-openers), age, area code, and more, so you can create content and offers most likely to generate responses.

3. Plan Your Content

Decide what range of content you’ll offer. Possible subject matter includes:

• Tutorials
• Recommendations
• Reports on industry trends or research
• Explanations of company functions
• Comments on current events
• FAQs
• Profiles of your clients or employees
• Surveys
• Contests
• Previews of coming events
• Descriptions/photos of new products
• Inspiring quotes
• Blogs
• News articles or humor

The medium might include copy, photos, infographics or videos. If you don’t want to generate the content yourself, source it from social media, business partners, online sources or content agencies.
In general, experts advise using a likable voice; employing sharp design; being different from competitors; incorporating snappy subject lines and offering discounts. A common mistake? Looking to your own preferences to determine what your audience would like. Perhaps most importantly, strive for a mix of 80 percent informational and 20 percent promotional content. Messages that aren’t sales-oriented may seem counterintuitive, but they work to develop brand awareness and customer relationships, paving the way for future purchases. Do recipients a favor by helping them solve a problem, providing inspiration, giving them direction toward a goal or quickly expanding their knowledge.

4. Analyze Your Competition

Study what competitors are doing. Sign up for other email campaigns and newsletters to compare your efforts with those of competitors and industry leaders. It’s OK to put your own spin on their ideas and techniques but always strive for original content that’s hard for your readers to find elsewhere.

5. Plan Your Email Campaigns

Devise a year-long email marketing plan that projects multiple messages, tying your content into holidays, special events, pop-culture happenings and current events when applicable. Work backward from preferred launch dates to set writing or sourcing deadlines. Shoot for three to five emails monthly.

6. Design with Mobile in Mind

Ensure your emails are mobile-friendly in design and content, since two-thirds of such messages are now read on mobile devices. That means limiting copy to 750 words or less.

7. Develop a Welcome Email Program

Create a series of follow-up emails to new subscribers introducing them to your company, products and website. Avoid the hard sell; start with a warm welcome for subscribing and follow with a reminder of the benefits, a thank you offer, helpful information about your products or services and links to your website and social media sites.

8. Implement Autoresponders

Use autoresponders that automatically trigger welcome emails, resend messages that were never opened, and send newsletters at regular intervals. Such a practice can increase your open rates by 30 to 40 percent. Other uses might include thank yous for purchases; reminders; polls; contests; or requests for comments, reviews or content submissions. Autoresponders are fairly crucial if you’re too busy to regularly monitor your email account.

9. Personalize Your Emails

Implement as much personalization as possible, using analytics and customer surveys to your advantage by recognizing birthdays and anniversaries, referring to previous purchases and shopping patterns, and otherwise making readers feel valued. Experts predict we’ll eventually have capability for highly optimized 1:1 emails within a single broadcast.

10. Track Performance

Track open and click rates, revenue and conversion, unsubscribes and bounces, and use your website’s analytics tools to gauge post-click through behavior. Note that services are available to fix bad data — incorrect or problematic addresses that increase bounce-backs.

11. Test and Optimize Your Campaigns

Continually test your campaign, and use the results to tweak further strategy. Consider a schedule for the testing of one campaign variable each month, such as copy length and content, time and day of the week, frequency, call to action, design and other elements.

12. Gather Customer Feedback

Listen closely to customer feedback about content, format and frequency, and respond quickly. To avoid being perceived as a spammer, be gracious and quick with those who ask to unsubscribe.

13.  Monitor Industry Trends

Email marketing is evolving so swiftly that business owners must be proactive to keep on top of important features and best practices. VerticalResponse helps you stay at the top of your email marketing game with its free and easy-to-use email marketing tool.

Once you’re on a roll with your campaign, consider elements that can improve your responses even more. Here are some ideas:

14. Use Visual Content

Gifs and videos can be powerful additions, since visuals are processed by the human brain in about one-tenth of a second.

15. Maintain Brand Voice

Develop a consistent voice, experimenting to determine which writing style and topics most appeal to your readers. An example of a defined voice is the tone of the informal and somewhat irreverent blogs posted on Groove HQ. “(The writer) addresses the recipient like human beings,” writes Jimmy Dala on Marketingland.com. “It sounds simple, but so many people lose the human touch when they are blasting bulk emails about Presidents’ Day sales.”

16. Use Humor When Appropriate

Devise fun and entertaining polls related to your industry, then record some of the best responses online. Cottonelle once staged a fun email survey asking consumers whether they rolled toilet paper over or under, incorporating results into video demonstrations, a U.S. map, social media and a website.

17. Socialize

Make sure widgets are installed into your emails allowing readers to instantly share your content on their social media sites.

18. Test Timing of Campaigns

Fine tune the timing of your email campaigns. Some report the highest open rates (leading to the highest conversions) are achieved in the evenings after the dinner hour. Others say those working are more likely to open an email sent just prior to the lunch hour. Experiment to find out what works best for you and your audience.

19. Use Email Sign Up Forms

In order to fuel continued and sustained list growth, it’s a no-brainer to have an email sign up form on your website, blog, and other digital properties like social media sites. Check out these three golden rules for sign up forms.

20. Give Incentives

Offer prizes as part of a contest on social media requiring entrants’ email addresses. Check out Social Sweepstakes to engage fans on Facebook and grow your email list.

21. Leverage Social Channels

Ask your social audience to stay connect via email. If Twitter is your primary channel, use a Twitter Ads account to glean more email addresses via Twitter lead-generation cards sent to Twitter users.

22. Incorporate Inspiration

Examine competitors’ emails more closely with the free tool Scope; it creates a web-based version, HTML source code and a view of how it appears on mobile, desktop and plain text.

23. Avoid the Spam Filter

Pre-empt being relegated to spam bins by running your emails through the Email Spam Test. A number of other tactics can also help you dodge the spam filter, which reportedly snags some 21 percent of all emails. Some have to do with coding, content and formatting, but you must also limit the repetition of seemingly benign words like “guaranteed” and “free.”

24. Test Your Subject Lines

Use SubjectLine.com to get viability scores on the subject lines of your email. The first query is free. Here are 50 all-time great retail subject lines for more inspiration.

25. Use Clear Calls to Action

One of the most important elements to your email campaign is the call to action (CTA). Subscribers typically read the first line, notice any images, and glance at your CTA. Eliminate any confusion by making your CTA obvious and compelling. Some are better than others, and here’s why.


Source

Automation takes your email marketing strategy to the next level. If you’re new to email marketing, we created this Beginner’s Guide to lay the foundation. As soon as you have the basics down, you can up your game with autoresponders.

Last week in the first of this three-part series, we covered the benefits of autoresponders and explored a variety of Welcome Emails. In this second post, we dive into Content Offer and Survey Emails. Here’s what you need to know about these two types of email campaigns.
Content Offer Emails

You can educate your audience by sharing your knowledge. Keep them engaged with content you know they will find interesting and useful.

Let’s look at a couple of examples that offer quality content.

#1

The Expert Institute uses an autoresponder that combines a welcome email and content offering.

The email above welcomes the new recipient, provides a point of contact and also includes a link to an in-depth article.

#2

In this next example, you can see how Eventbrite communicates with people who haven’t used their app in a while. They tell the user how much they’ve missed them and offer some content to re-engage.




Both product and service-based businesses can use these two types of content offer emails. Send your version to new customers and those who haven’t purchased from you in a while. Aim to make the recipients feel connected by providing them with thoughtful and relevant content.
Surveys and Feedback Emails

Another way to get customers to engage is by sending an autoresponder that asks for their feedback triggered by a recent purchase. Collecting this kind of information can be of great benefit to your business, and customers appreciate the opportunity to share their thoughts.

#1

In the example below, a chance to win a gift card is offered as an incentive for writing a review. The email also includes instructions on how to write the review and a quick reference to the product that was purchased.





#2

Sending a survey is yet another way to elicit feedback and engage your audience. In the following example, Coastal.com explains the reason for the email and provides a link to the survey. It also conveys that the survey is quick and painless, which is a good thing to mention as short surveys are always better received.




Creating a survey is a simple process. Once you’ve done so, add the link to your automated email or create an eye-catching button that takes the recipient to the survey when clicked. Be sure to use a catchy and relevant subject line to help get opens and stay compliant with laws.

Conclusion

Both Content Offer and Feedback emails give you a way to engage with leads and customers. By setting up these kinds of autoresponders, you maintain communication and keep your brand and business top of mind.

For the final part in this series, we look at Follow-Up and Confirmation emails.

Source