Email Marketing: Still Far from Over

 

The status of email marketing is a popular topic for debate in every Digital Marketing Agency. Is it dead or alive as of now? Well, email marketing is something that will never ever leave its place in the world of digital marketing. Its importance and presence can never be ignored. Email marketing is not dead, definitely not, and neither will it die anytime in the near future.

A simple statistic will prove the importance of emails in our everyday lives: Over 200 million emails are sent out in a single minute every day. So, you see how heavily email is used as a communication platform for brands, marketers, and even consumers.

There are even more numbers to prove this fact. Over 72% of the adults in USA have stated that they prefer the companies to communicate with them through email rather than any other platform. 91% said they would love to receive promotional emails from the companies that they do business with. As far as the companies are concerned, 72% of them have said that they use email marketing as an integral part of their business and marketing efforts. 25% of the companies consider email as the top most priority and channel for an advantageous return on investment.

Read Also: 14 Smart Tips to Get Your Email Subscriber’s Attention

If you are still not convinced and doubtful about the existence of email marketing, here you have three major reasons why email marketing is not going anywhere. Go through them and decide for yourself.

  1. The advantages of social marketing

Social media has a lot of fancy and exciting options to it. This is why there are several rumours that it is slowly killing email marketing which is more of old school. Well, even though social marketing may seem to be more effective in certain case, this one marketing medium is not able to do anything alone by its own. This is one point you need to keep in mind. Vanity metrics and other hollow impressions usually give the marketers a sense of false satisfaction about social marketing. There are simply distracting you.

There are a number of marketers who try their best to gather attention through slightly spammy tactics on social media like filling out Twitter feeds with automated tweets all round the clock, blasting their pages on Facebook with completely irrelevant posts and updates, sending direct messages that are nothing but automated, and also using a huge number of cat memes and circulating them. They do not understand how annoying these techniques can be. Spamming only reduces your followers. They tempt the users to click the unfollow button, and you do more harm than good.

Email marketing, on the other hand, provides useful and relevant content to the audience. This audience consists of people who have willingly subscribed to receive newsletters and other informative emails and would love to learn more. As per data collected in 2012, nearly 90 percent of the internet users have an email account while a smaller number of just 70 percent have an account on any of the social media networking websites. This proves that email is still reigning as the top most form of communication. If you want to reach a majority of the audience and increase your reach, then email is definitely what you need as it is the most effective method in this case.

  1. It is evolving at a higher rate

With emails, brands could get the power to drive customer engagement by monitoring, testing, measuring, and tweaking the emails sent out as newsletters or targeted offerings. The whole game of email marketing has now changed and evolved to a greater extent. Slowly, it is ceasing to be a medium purely for communication purposes to a complete platform that could help the different brands deliver their experiences across various channels.

Here are some of the key email trends that have been explored by Liga Bizune in a recent article that illustrate how emails are slowly evolving to become more than just a channel for communication:

  • Wearable technologies are evolving. This will slowly change the way brands communicate with the email subscribers.
  • A new technique of email marketing will surface, which will be hyper-targeted and also location based. The credits for this goes to the integration of proximity and geo-location applications into emails.
  • Behavioural email marketing will start to get driven by predictive analysis.
  • As emails are transitioning to mobiles, it has become more necessary than ever to develop better and more creative content. This is the only way to capture the attention of the audience and keep them hooked on.
  • Videos have started to evolve and find their own place in the world of marketing. They will start playing an even bigger role in email marketing. A bigger emphasis needs to be put into this aspect.

You May Also Like: 10 E-mail Marketing Hacks That Every Marketer Should Know

  1. Correct execution makes it most effective

Emails need to be used properly and effectively to make it more than just a passé. The biggest challenge you face in case of newsletters is that only a small part of the subscribers actually care to open and read the email newsletters you send out to them. This does not, in any way, imply that email is dead or dying. It just points to the fact that your newsletters are not able to make the mark among the audience. They either fail to create the interest in them or your calls to action are not effective enough. Ask yourself a few questions to get your answers:

  • How is the tone of your content? Is it purely promotional and impersonal, or is it helpful and friendly?
  • Are you making an effective and meaningful one on one engagement through your content?
  • Are you striking up a conversation with the reader, or are you just talking at them to get your job done?

These questions will help you understand where you are going wrong. Understand the effectiveness of email marketing to be able to use it in the best way possible.

One thing you need to remember is that email marketing is not going anywhere. Each and every Digital Marketing Agency makes sure to emphasise this point. If you even believe that emails are dying and there is no point in marketing via emails, you will surely start missing out on the wide range of opportunities that this platform has got to offer you. Do not make this mistake, and keep your place in the digital world.

Snapdeal on Its Way to Create Digital Commerce Ecosystem

Snapdeal is planning to build a discovery platform and associated tools for brands as well as for its sellers on the marketplace.

This platform would leverage artificial intelligence, real-time data and other tools, delivering high return on investment for advertising campaigns.

It is being built by an engineering team led by technology entrepreneur Ali, which has customers across UK, US and India.

Read Also:Brick and Mortar Stores Still Important to Digital Buyers

Speaking about this acquisition, Rohit Bansal, Co-founder, Snapdeal, said, “At Snapdeal, we are always on the lookout for talented people, who come with specialized skills that augment our capabilities. Ali comes with 17 years of rich experience in building web scale technologies, Product Management and building highly specialized teams focused on a data platform and ad tech products. We are confident that Ali and his team will further strengthen our technological capabilities.”

Snapdeal has the widest assortment of 15 million products in more than 500 categories.

Ali joins a growing battalion of successful entrepreneurs and technology leaders who are joining Snapdeal to build most impactful digital commerce platform in India.

 As a part of this vision, Snapdeal has partnered with several global marquee investors and individuals such as SoftBank, BlackRock, Temasek, eBay Inc., Premji Invest, Intel Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Ratan Tata amongst others

Website Localization – The Future of Digital Marketing?

 

You may have a well optimized website with good search engine rankings and increased user visits. But the increasing competition makes it vital to ensure your digital marketing efforts are also focused locally. Consider website localization. Reports state that web users are more likely to purchase from a company that communicates in their own language.

Localizing a website will provide fruitful results such as-

  • Add value to your brand
  • Increase in site visitors
  • Increase the number of customers
  • increase the number of visitors returning to your website

Localization process of a website involves numerous technical and linguistic stages: preparation, cultural adaptation, translation, multilingual adaptation, integration of multilingual content, functional and linguistic validation, quality control, final validation and the final process of going online.

Read Also: Ways Digital Marketing Will Change In 2016

Is it enough to translate your original website content?

A common mistake with localized websites is considering the translated content to be just another version of the pages in the original language. Translation isn’t everything. Of course, for the user it’s all about the content. The user will check whether the content is relevant and understandable and in line with the user’s cultural context. Therefore, winning consumers in these new highly competitive business markets will require companies to scale their global marketing initiatives and manage cultural diversity at a whole new level.

Localizing a website is an important business decision that will have a great impact on how well you achieve your business goals in certain markets. Before localizing any content, make sure to partner up with a digital marketing agency. This helps to better understand the target audience, and check whether your product meets local standards and is in line with the core cultural values of the audience. Understanding the basic differences in customs and practices between nations is important.

Translating a website (especially a complex one) can be a challenge. You need to decide on your core markets first and then choose the language version accordingly. Decision should be made earlier whether to display a language version based on the user’s IP address or on the browser’s settings. To be more effective in emerging markets, global brands must ensure that their content not only speaks to the culture of the audience but also reflects the intended brand message consistently from one region to the next.

What surveys indicate:

A survey conducted by Lionbridge earlier in 2015 revealed that

  • Many companies don’t have a localization strategy. Nearly 40 percent of respondents say they do not currently have a web content localization strategy and 13 percent of respondents handle localization requests on an ad hoc basis
  • When asked about the most important aspects of website localization, a majority (56 percent) of respondents identified quality and accuracy as the top answer, followed by customer experience (34 percent)

You may also like: 6 Benefits of Digital Marketing for Small Businesses

Businesses will need to radically change their mindset about localization, as well as their translation processes and allocation of resources. It is very important for companies to focus on building a localization strategy to ensure the process is streamlined, consistent, and, most importantly, effective. By addressing the regular cadence of localization needs in a centralized manner, companies can ensure that translation quality and brand consistency are maintained across a number of channels, languages, and projects.

Few elements that you should keep in mind while localizing a website are – branding, culture-specific design and simple forms, lines, text and composition. An experienced digital marketing agency can provide comprehensive website localization services that can ensure that all content is addressed in an efficient and effective manner. It helps brands to stay engaged with customers and offer the best customer experience possible across all markets.

Ways Digital Marketing Will Change In 2016

Marketing and sales have come a long way from how they used to work in earlier days. The buyers have changed and their behaviour has seen drastic changes. Following the traditional marketing methods do not work anymore. As such, many businesses are failing these days. There was a time when a little amount of advertising and cold calling was able to get you a whole lot of appointments. But, this is not the case anymore.

A major change is that the buyers have control over the sales process these days. Every piece of information is available on the internet. If you need it, you get it! Earlier, sellers were able to control the sales process. The buyers had to interact with the sales people for all requirements. But now, they have every bit of information readily available. All you need is your phone or laptop. In such a situation, the buyers engage with the salespeople only when they are ready.

Adapt to the Changes

Every company now needs the help of a digital marketing agency to take up the job of marketing and promotions. With drastic changes in the buying process, businesses have been forced to change and adapt to these changes. You need to make strategic buying decisions and use marketing to match the all new buying techniques. The changes in marketing have also brought  some new opportunities.

Buyers have now started to become more knowledgeable. As such, marketing has turned out to be lesser of a single sided endeavour. The customers now place a whole lot of emphasis on building good relations with companies. This has led to the two most important concepts in marketing – Responsiveness and Personalization. Marketing now has to be become more of a dynamic creature that could incorporate all kinds of technologies to help efficient communication between the business and the buyer.

Read Also: 6 Benefits of Digital Marketing for Small Businesses

Content Marketing

It has been found that about 25% of all the marketing dollars in the US are now spent on custom and branded content. This is a great step with the fact that content marketing had just started baby steps one decade ago. With the advancements in this field, the demand for a good and efficient digital marketing agency has increased considerably.

These days, organizations are investing heavily on digital content and marketing. From white papers to custom videos, there are numerous options in front of you. This is a field that is changing rapidly. Every company is now used to send visually stimulating emails about the various deals and offer, and also has its own blog. If you do not put in much effort into your organization’s online content management, you are sure to be in for a loss.

Expectations for 2016

Based on the latest trends and changes in the market, here are a few ways in which the market could be expected to change in the year 2016. A look at these points would help your organization go a long way ahead:

  1. SEO will move way ahead from being just Search Engines 

It is not always possible to find everything you search for on the usual search engines like Google, Yahoo, or Bing. There are over 30 trillion pages on the web, and no matter how much the algorithms improve, accommodating all of them to show you the best results is not always accurately possible. You do not always get what you want.

The consumers these days have become more social as far as purchases are concerned. It is seen that about 88% of the consumers decide on a purchase based on comments and reviews. They rely on others’ experiences before buying. As such, you can see an increased search for products on YouTube and Pinterest.

The brands that are sharp and smart enough will start the move from pure search engine based efforts to social media networks. They will invest both time and money into making their mark in social media. Building strategies for more social and interactive ways to get your customers is advised.

  1. Competition will become even more Fierce

At the current stage, content marketing is the second largest component of digital marketing budgets. It falls just behind mobile marketing, which includes optimizing websites for the mobile version. The amount spent on content creation and management is tremendous for SMBs and enterprises. For extremely talented content makers who have a good track record, the competition is really high.

This is some unfortunate news for beginners and amateurs. For individuals who have niche specialities and can drive really good results, things will get worse. In the coming year, the following competencies could turn out to be the most sought after by the content departments in organizations:

  • Visual email marketing specialists
  • Workflow content specialists
  • Data-driven content creators
  • Sales/case study experts

The shortage of entry-level creators would never turn out to be a problem now. Individuals who have high creativity and knowledge of technology would be in greater demand.

  1. Touch screen/Interactive Content will see a Rise

Mobile optimization is of utmost importance in this era of smartphones and other gadgets. Every digital marketer could understand how important it is to keep up with the rising demand for mobile optimization of all websites and content. Using the tablet or smartphone to perform the various actions online will only increase your prospects for the better. Here are a few actions that you need to focus on:

  • Listen to music and watch videos
  • Read and write text messages and emails
  • Research and navigate local business listings
  • Use the various social media networks
  • Consume news, entertainment, or other types of content that are relevant professionally
  • Use the different apps or media to send messages to friends, family, and colleagues
  • Research products and make purchases online
  • Consume or complete product reviews

Making your website mobile responsive is very important. It must be designed such that it appears well on any kind of screen size. Creating content that is optimized specifically for touch screens is the main aim of the sharpest digital marketers.

Most people are likely to prefer to shop on a mobile app rather than taking pains to surf on the mobile website in the Smartphone. In every aspect, the mobile app is well optimised and comfortable. Creating mobile apps is now much easier for organizations, even if they have on-staff mobile developers for the different smartphone platforms.

In case you need time to optimise your concept of a branded app and create the related content, you could delay the release of your app. As such, you could think of the following ideas for creating mobile-only content:

  • Discounts codes, deals, or coupons specifically for smartphones
  • Emails or landing pages that are mobile-only
  • Social media content designed for smaller screens
  1. Budgetary Control will Change

Till now, budgetary control has always rested in the hands of CFOs and sometimes the CIOs. As per predictions, this practice will slightly change and the control of budget will shift to the CMOs.

Extreme flexibility is required for good and proper content. “Agile SEO” and “Agile Inbound Marketing” have started to become buzzwords. The brands that are able to pivot, respond, and also create proper and relevant work in real time will turn out to the best content brands in the world.

For content marketing teams, the traditional budgetary approval processes could never work out. Navigating through the usual processes like filling out forms and waiting for signatures from the management are difficult and time consuming, especially in an agile environment. As such, the average CMO will need to have much more control over the budget and monetary autonomy than before. Companies that have a strong leadership and strategic marketers will surely get benefits by following this step.

  1. Bigger Digital Content

Recently, the CMO Council’s Annual Survey has revealed that digital marketing will soon overtake television ads. Though expected by the year 2018, the world has slowly started to move in that direction. This is exciting news for all digital marketing companies given the fact that creating television ads is actually so expensive and time consuming. You need to have a good budget set up if you want a great commercial.

Enterprise organizations would soon shift from expensive TV commercials to strategies involving web marketing. The quality of the content created exclusively for mobile devices, tablets, and computers will increase considerably. This will offer high-quality games and apps, amazing web interfaces, and an exciting experience online. With fewer television commercials and better content for the web, the consumers are sure to be happy.

Recommended Read: What Is Content Curation? How Is It Relevant To Digital Marketing

  1. Virtual Reality

A number of virtual reality devices are set to release in the coming years. This will increase the emphasis on virtual reality especially for applications like video games and others used on a general basis. The Oculus Rift is the most hyped device based on Virtual Reality which is slated for release by the first quarter of 2016. An entirely new medium of online advertising will open up with these devices storming the market. Integration to the popular social media platforms, the video channels, and even messaging services will be an additional feature.

  1. Wearable Technology and the Internet of Things

Wearable Smart Devices will start getting more focus by the year 2016. The Apple Watch was unveiled in 2015 as the first generation smart watch. Come next year, we could expect a lot more smart watches and other wearable technology in the market to change the face of marketing completely. This will immensely blur the line between online marketing and real marketing.

The above trends are the most significant ones among the many that would make an impact in the year 2016. The way these trends will manifest and how they will impact the customer-client relation is something that you will have to wait and watch. Since most of them are driven by customer adoption, you could place a safe bet on trying them out to see positive results.

Video Marketing and Its Impact On Your Business

 

When it comes to digital or online marketing, the use of videos is gaining in popularity. The reason for this is the impact they provide. It is far greater than mere words as text and even static images. Research by top digital marketing agencies says that on Facebook, videos are clicked more often than mere pictures or text. And we know that Facebook‘s move to auto play videos is only going to increase video viewership.

Sharing of videos through social media has become the recent trend and statistics has shown that sharing of videos is 267% more when compared to posts.

Recommended Read: Video Content Marketing Trends 2015

Why Videos?

What videos have achieved is not a big secret, but what has led to this boom in video marketing is something to be analyzed. So, what is so special about videos?

  • The engagement power of a video is very high. While a reader may leave a post mid way, a video is capable of holding him onto his seat, simply because it has the capability to tell a story.
  • A video can easily convey an emotion to the viewer when compared to a reading an article or any other content.
  • Time is an important factor. A thousand words article may take some time to read, whereas the same article can be explained elaborately through a video.  1.8 Million Words = 1 minute video is something to keep in mind.
  • An average user of the internet sees 32.2 videos in a month and 16 minutes and 49 sec is the time he spends on watching online videos in a month.
  • A 2010 survey showed that the advent of videos increased the click through rate by 96%.
  • Moreover videos can also increase brand association by up to 139%.

How to Make Videos that Can Make an Impact?

While it is true that videos can make the impact that can push your products online, one should be really careful about the videos that they make. A bad video can be as viral as a good one. If not made properly, a video can do more damage to your business and you may not even realize it. So how to make videos that can boost your business?

  • Knowing what the audience wants is the key. When marketing a product online using a video, it should target the audience to whom the product or service is intended for. The viewer should easily relate to the video and understand what it is.
  • What is the product, how it works, how it helps the user, how can the viewer get the product, are the common question that the video must answer.
  • Remember, the idea of making a video is to free the viewer from reading a lengthy description page and hence save his time. Therefore making a 5 minute video can be suicide. The video should be short and simple.
  • Videos that are 15 sec or shorter are shared 37% or more than those between 30 sec to 1 minute.
  • The video should be engaging right from the beginning. If not, viewers may choose to skip them midway. 8 seconds is the amount of time within which the video must grab the attention of the viewer. VisibleMeasures, a popular consumer behaviour research team found in their research that 20% of viewers click away after 8 sec or fewer.
  • The video must be visually appealing to the audience and there should be clarity in the idea presented.
  • It was also found that 16% of YouTube videos that are liked or shared are on Tuesdays between 11 am and 1 pm. Hence, care should be given about when and where to post a video.

You may also like: Role of Visual Content in Digital World

The importance of videos is clear. But one should also keep in mind that video alone cannot help boost your product or services. Giving importance only to videos may also affect your online marketing strategies.

When combining videos with full page ads, it can boost engagement by up to 22% as compared to using them individually. It is noted that while 80% of the visitors go for videos, the remaining 20% prefers text. Even though it is a smaller percentage, it is an important one. A comprehensive technique is vital for online marketing.

Why Is Segmentation Important In Email Marketing?

 

When we talk about email marketing, the success of your effort is mainly affected by the nature of your email segmentation. By knowing how to segment your email audience properly, you can create more effective email campaigns for enterprise level marketing and can achieve your goal efficiently.

When we discuss the significance of this type of email list separation, you must know exactly why segmentation is important in email marketing? It’s quite simple:

  • All Your Customers are Not the Same. Generally businesses serve more than one type of clients. Even if you deal with only single product or service, there are various types of clients that should be treated independently, with a specific end goal to get their attention in the most effective way.
  • You’ll Create Your Fame. It could be excessive, but here it’s one more of a chance: If you send focused, significant emails with luring content to your potential client base, you will come to be more fascinating and captivating to your customers. This will result in finding increased number of subscribers.

Read Must: 10 Best E-Mail Subject Line Formulae to Rock Your E-Mail Marketing Campaigns

  • You Need More and More Leads. The more you speak to your different customers about the value of your services, the probability of them purchasing from you is also higher. If you furnish content that speaks and relates to your clients, you will develop a bond with them. This bond creates an interest your emails, and they will come to see it! What’s more, with such a relationship, you will be the main priority when they want to buy a product.

Once you have segmented your lists, no matter to what extent, it’s vital to keep the categories up-to-date. Segmenting your lists can be tedious. This can be helpful when you have both prospects and buyers on the list. When someone becomes a customer, they can easily be moved from one segment to another without any kind of subscription process.

So, it’s necessary as it helps you to comply with applicable laws and send the right messages to your contacts. And you can expect immediate positive responses from your customers once you’ve gone through the process.

6 Benefits of Digital Marketing for Small Businesses

 

Today’s competitive world demands digital marketing for growth and establishment. Digital marketing agencies elevate communication and association of your brand with targeted clients to a higher level. Through social networking sites, instant messaging and mobile applications, it escorts your business to the next level. If you are a business holder, deciding on a marketing strategy can be confusing. Most companies lack in resources to deal with the diverse digital channels that are available today. Digital marketing agencies can rescue you during such situations and help prioritize the channels to be focused.

Recommended Read: 6 Essential Steps to a Successful Blog Post

Already excited over the idea of opening a digital marketing plan? Here are 6 benefits of Digital Marketing:

Digital Marketing Connects you with Online Customers

Gone are the days when people explore pages and pages for information. 80% of consumers now utilize internet for better and handy access of information. Business owners can achieve targeted customers and connect to them easily with online marketing.

Save Money with Online Marketing

Companies with very limited resources can generate desirable outcomes with minimum expense. It’s significant for any small business owner to lay down reasonable goals. But, keep in mind that the more attempts you make to attract social followers, the better your results would be.

Higher Conversion Rates Possible through Digital Marketing

Digital marketing opens the doorway to success by helping you reach out to more targeted customers. It enables to converse directly with the customers. Choose at least three social media sites and start discussing with them. Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus are good options to start with. You can get suggestions from customers and execute them in a way that giant companies can’t.

Recommended Read: 10 E-mail Marketing Hacks That Every Marketer Should Know

Enable Real-Time Customer Service

Online marketing offers great impact on the success of your business by providing a one to one chat with customers. Business owners instantly get to know customer response and experience can increase sales through personalised offers. It also helps in maintaining and creating new, contented, customers.

Generate Higher Revenues

Usage of minimal cost and greater savings helps to reap the benefits of generating higher revenues. Big companies may be capable of spending a great deal on multimedia but your profit as a small business is having an individual touch to your endeavours. This moreover enables an opportunity to locate yourself as part of your community.

Digital Marketing Keeps You at Par with Competitors

With persistent transformations and fast-paced competition, how do you make sure your small business remains at par with already established ones? Being unique is the key here. Exceptional service quality and products permit you to position yourself along with bigger marketing giants.

So, do you think there are other benefits? If you do, please share with us in the comment section.

Effective Social Media Marketing Tricks for 2015

Any digital marketer will know the importance of Social Media Marketing, be it for promoting their brand or for increasing sales. Social media is a vast medium which is constantly changing. So, as a marketer, unless you stay up-to-date with the current social media marketing trends, you might not be able to make any significant difference. With hordes of businesses flocking the social media market, you have to use every trick up your sleeve to get that edge. To make your job easy, we give you some effective social media marketing strategies that will improve your online presence.

  • Relook & Revamp Your Social Media Profiles: You might already have created your social media profiles or might be working on profiles that someone set for you. But, that doesn’t mean you should not go back and review the profiles. There are umpteen reasons to do that. Polish your profiles – personalize them. Social networks often keep updating their features to improve user experience. You should also do the same. Keep checking for updates and take advantage of the latest features introduced. Update your profile with the latest photos. Professional background graphics or images make a huge difference.
  • Don’t Shy Away From Multimedia: They say “A picture is worth a thousand words” and rightly so. Give your customer the inside perspective of the product or service you sell. Use professional pictures and videos of the products extensively, so that the customer gets the look and feel of the product. This will make the customers come back to your profile everytime they want any details of the product. Don’t just stick to images or videos about your businesses. Customers like to relate to the brand. So, go ahead and highlight your corporate events that you participated or some in-house events that occurred.
  • Invest in Integrated Social Media Strategy: To achieve optimal results, it is essential to integrate your social activities. So, devise a strategy that is flexible and that will meet the ever-changing needs of social media. Make a calendar with all the upcoming events or any other promotion that you plan to do. Use social share buttons wherever possible to make your content shareable.
  • Personalize Your Approach: Each of your media post relating to your business can be plain boring. Social media is the platform where people come to communicate and engage with others. You have to understand that audience needs to be felt included, and the best way to do that is to personalize your approach. Humour is a great way to reach out to your audience. Conduct simple polls, post on your clients pages to publicly thank them for their business, ask questions based on the current topics and most important of all, respond. Don’t let it be one sided, respond to the tweets and posts of others. Comment, like, retweet, say a simple Thank You for their comments or apologize for some error that occurred.
  • Work on Social Login: Registering on websites can be an annoying process and most often will dissuade the customer from doing so. People think twice before adding a new username and password to their already long list. You have to adapt the simpler method to improve your website visitors’ experience and to improve your registration conversions. And the best way to do it is through social logins. Give your customers the choice to login using their social media profiles. This way you are minimizing the registration process, while getting the chance to import their photographs, personal details and their addresses.Another advantage is that you will be reducing spam as well.
  • Be Punctual: To get the maximum results, timeliness is a crucial factor. Respond timely; don’t wait for hours to respond. Craft your message around the most happening issue on social media. If you take your own sweet time to respond, you’ll lose out on the chance of having your message heard. Timely response, matched with a crafty slogan and a hard-hitting image will give you the right boost.

Recommended Read: 10 E-mail Marketing Hacks That Every Marketer Should Know

Google’s New CEO is India-born Sundar Pichai

Google co-founders—Larry Page and Sergey Brin announced Chennai-born Sundar Pichai as the new CEO of the search giant. Creating a new organisational structure, the co-founders are now heading a mother company called Alphabet.

The 43 year old Chennai native Sundar Pichai is a product of IIT Kharagpur. He had later went to Stanford and Wharton universities. He will be in charge of a slimmed down Google, which has been rechristened as Google Minus.

Pichai had joined Google in 2004. He worked on Chrome and Android, both of which have made amazing progress.

 “very fortunate to have someone as talented as he is to run the slightly slimmed down Google and this frees up time for me to continue to scale our aspirations…I know Sundar will always be focused on innovation—continuing to stretch boundaries…”.  Wrote Larry Page in a letter to investors on 10 August.

Regarding the restructuring of Google, Page said in a blog "We've long believed that over time companies tend to get comfortable doing the same thing, just making incremental changes. But in the technology industry, where revolutionary ideas drive the next big growth areas, you need to be a bit uncomfortable to stay relevant,"  He further added "new structure will allow us to keep tremendous focus on the extraordinary opportunities we have inside of Google."

Sundar Pichai joins an elite group of Indian-origin CEOs, including Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft. There are at least half a dozen of them in Fortune 500 companies. Indra Nooyi at Pepsi, Ajit Banga at Mastercard, and Sanjay Mehrotra at SanDisk are among them. Also, Ajit Jain is strongly tipped to succeed Warren Buffett at the third ranked Berkshire Hathaway.

10 E-mail Marketing Hacks That Every Marketer Should Know

E-mail marketing plays a vital role in digital marketing campaigns these days. But most of their process lacks proper structure. So, they fail to achieve expected success with their campaigns. With 81 new mails reaching inboxes at an average, 84% of them being spam, you need something to make your mails stand out.

Before you can access your click-through rates, revenue generation or any other business growth metrics, your prospects need to open your e-mails. For this, your mails need to be special, the kind that generates curiosity in the reader’s mind. Here are some ways digital marketing companies can improve those e-mails and get great customer response and better revenue generation.

1. Create a Short, Intriguing Subject Line

The difference between your e-mails being opened or reaching the trash is the awesomeness of your subject line. Avoid those dumb, boring clichés and go for something that can generate curiosity, subconsciously forcing the reader to want to know more. Try to keep them as short as possible for better open rates, but not too short that the reader doesn’t understand what it is.

Don’t say more, but just enough to invoke curiosity. So are your subject lines really good to get you those valuable open rates?

Recommended Read: 5 SEO Factors That Are More Important Than Keywords

2. Make the message a personal one

Adding a personal touch to your e-mails can take you a long way. Using your client’s, company’s or the industry’s name in your subject line is good method of creating response. A person’s awareness heightens when hearing his/her name, which makes them feel unique and special. This will help your mails standout and that is good for business.

3. Resend E-mails

The client’s inbox may have thousands of mails and yours can easily be overlooked. So feel free to resend relevant content to those clients in case they have missed the first one. This second chance is often appreciated by the clients and you can drastically improve your overall open rate.

4. Being Provocative Can Help

Tests by A/B and Promise Media have found that subject lines with a little personality and flavour can help you get the attention that you desire from your mails. This includes controversy and humour, which are far better than most ordinary topics. But remember there is a fine line between being provocative and being offensive, so choose wisely.

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5. Know What Your Audience Wants

Create emails in a way that the readers want it. According to Science of Emails 2014 64% of the readers preferred HTML based emails rather that plain text. Studying more about the audiences you want to focus on will help you a lot. It was found that 63% of the people between age group of 18-29 use automatic email filters in their inboxes. So, choose your candidates accordingly.

6. Timing is of Utmost Importance

When to send an email is as important as to whom you send the email. People go through mails during business hours and commuting hours rather than over lunch or dinner time. Moreover be aware of the time zones and cultural tendencies in relation to time.

7. Use Active Verbs

Strong verbs can help convey action, excitement, and intrigue. Using active verbs in subject lines and if possible throughout email copy can excite your readers and engage their interest.

8. Use a Proofreader

You might think that your emails are perfect, but there is no harm in hiring an extra pair of eyes. This has proved to be an asset more often than not and makes your emails as perfect and error free as possible.

9. Emails Coordinated With Buyer-facing Messaging

Consistency in the experience across all your platforms is essential for getting satisfactory customers. This can be the message that you are trying to deliver through all your blogs, tweets, posts, emails, offers or sales calls.

10. Go Past Open and Click Rates

The executive team may not care about opens or clicks. For them revenue is what is important. Find ways to connect your email marketing campaigns with leads transferred to sales to deals closed and revenue earned. This can be good for both your company and your career.

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