Data Harvesting - The Vital Marketing Tool to Help You Target Specific Prospects

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Automated Webinar Registration: Time-Saving Tools for Convenience and Professionalism

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Scorecards: an Excellent Way to Collect Valuable Data About Your Prospects

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How Web Calculators Can Help You Increase Conversions

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Google Web Stories

Google’s new Web Stories Plug-In for WordPress

A couple of weeks ago, Google released a WordPress plug-in focused on created Web Stories.  As is often the case with Google, this is a small step in a project that started a couple of years ago, namely the AMP project.  I won’t bore you with the details of the Accelerated Mobile Page (AMP) project.  Let’s just say it was Google trying to reengineer the internet for Mobiles and was way too complicated.  The objective was to make pages load much faster on mobile devices, which is a good idea.

So the WordPress plug-in is a tool that the 455 million WordPress sites can use without needing to get into software engineering.  Happy Days!

Anyone who has used Facebook, Instagram, Snap Chat or WhatsApp, will have seen “Stories”.  The little portrait images that come at the top of the apps.  Well Google quite likes that idea and has decided to put little image and video stories above search results. 

In other words they are going to place stories (organic and paid) above any other paid content.  Right now, very few people are creating Google Web Stories.  So, they don’t have much in the way of stock for this highly priced real estate.  If you have stories on your website they are likely to get prioritised by Google.

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Say it in less that 60 seconds

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Sure-fire Ways that Will Get Your More Customers

Overall, Infusionsoft promises better customer engagement, profound retention rate, speedy marketing processes and return on investment that is worth all your effort. Whatever your reasons might be for wanting to use Infusionsoft, just like other small businesses out there, you want to realistically boost your sales and see those figures spike at the end of the month.

Infusionsoft is known to thousands of small businesses for its efficiency as a marketing, sales and customer management tool. Behind the hood are astonishing functionalities centralized in one powerful software. Matter of fact, even day-to-day routines in your organization can make use of Infusionsoft.

Email marketing the way it should be

You know how it’s done: you need to send newsletters, promo updates or discount coupons to your contacts. Although your small business customer base might not be enormous, it’s hard to get in touch with these people one-by-one so the solution is to automate.

Unlike other software out there where email marketing is done through batch-and-blast techniques, with Infusionsoft campaigns are targeted so your recipients only get messages that actually resonate to them.

While batch-and-blast messages are generic and blunt, targeted and personalise messages through Infusionsoft connect to their readers. This email marketing system is behaviour-based which means that emails sent to a contact is based on their journey with you. Their activities are taken into account, so messages relevant to the actions they’ve taken.

More repeat sales in lesser effort

Forget about the old-school ways of re-selling something to your existing customers. If you can get a hold of them online, then there sure is a way to sell to them using Infusionsoft. There are enormous numbers of campaign options and templates that you can use.

Here are some effective ways to gain more repeat sales:

• Promote to existing customers based on their “journey” with you.
• Ask referrals from your customers who provided positive feedback on your product.
• Upsell more effortlessly by displaying products relevant to a customer interested in the product.

Leverage abandon carts

About 70% percent of customers tend to abandon carts but that doesn’t mean you just let them walk away. Marketing studies show that all it takes is strategic customer nurturing for these people to get back to their purchases. Follow-ups, specifically, are very important for keeping up with abandoned carts.

One way to lure back customers to get to their abandoned carts is by offering incentives. For example, they can get 10% off their purchase when they complete it within the next 42 hours.

Don’t underestimate the power of Thank You

Your after-sales responsibility does not start with answering post sales services. It starts when you appreciate your customers even with a simple Thank You note. Showing gratitude to your customers add trust and make them feel special; building loyalty and even deeper connection with your brand.

Good thing about using Infusionsoft is that you can send personalized and automated Thank You notes to customers who recently bought your product.

Useful for digital marketing approach

If you are using Google, Facebook and other platforms for your reach, then you are definitely on the right track as these 3rd-party resources can also be integrated within Infusionsoft. These effective ad platforms plus Infusionsoft’s innovate segmentation capabilities, you sure are on your way to your marketing success.  Inside Infusionsoft are robust reporting dashboards which display campaign progresses, sales reports, lead scores — just to name a few with insightful data that you can use for your business.

Business websites running on WordPress can be integrated with Infusionsoft. Infusionsoft also have a lot of add-ons too, that help manage your WordPress site even easier.  Invoicing, billing and collection can also be integrated with Infusionsoft so it’s easier instantly to collect payments from customers. Hundreds of other technology and software integrations are also available through Infusionsoft intelligent APIs so you can centralize everything under one roof.

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Whether your service business is small or big, automation can help you expand it in a whole new level. By mastering your way on how to use this technology, you are able to save time and accelerate your way to success.

It is a given thing that as your service business grows, you need to do more. But that’s not how it works when you use an innovative tool like Infusionsoft. With an automation software like this, your organization gets to focus on your services as you do less of the usual redundant and repetitive tasks.

From marketing to after-sales services, even creating your referral scheme — there’s a significant number of tasks in your organization that can make use of automation.

Segmenting your leads

The old ways of email blasting simply don’t work anymore. Not only that, your message is likely to end up in the spam box, clients don’t want generic, monotonous messages. The world of marketing and advertising leveled in the past few decades and people are only interested in messages that resonate with them.

Segmentation allows you to communicate to your market more effectively. Through segmentation, you can send targeted and personalized messages that actually resonate with your clients. With it you can group people on your list accordingly. Common factors that you can segment include demographic, buying behaviors, genders, among others.

Automate what you must

The good thing about automation using an innovative software is that tasks are done in the most human way.  For example, Infusionsoft has a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system that lets you nurture your clients automatically. Messages are only sent when clients do a certain action.

For example, if you are away from your business and a client sent you a message, you can set-up an autoresponder notifying your client that you will attend to them when you get back. Alternatively, your autoresponder could also have information on how to contact you through a direct line.

With Infusionsoft, you can create landing pages, keep track of their conversion and tweak what you must. This way, marketing campaigns are made more efficiently. There are split-testing and multi-testing functionalities so you analyze which campaigns work best may it be for your lead generation, referral programs or email marketing.

There are also useful metrics, statistics, and reports from campaigns you ran. You will know which lead capture form works best, you will see your ROI’s progress and through these powerful metrics, you can refine your efforts.

Repetitive tasks such as sending thank you notes or birthday greetings can be automated. Client information is automatically collected and organized. Contracts, agreements, invoices, and screening of new hires can even be automated.

Do it NOW

An innovative software like Infusionsoft lets you work smarter, not harder. Through automation, you are not chasing down opportunities manually. Everything is automated so engagement with your prospective leads and clients are timely. Automatically follow-up to your clients, even while you’re asleep!

Realistically speaking, some businesses who use automation software found it ineffective for them. The reason is simply because while they want to accelerate success, they just use the software right away without mastering its functionalities.

Just like any other tool or technology, using an automation software needs fluency.

If you want to reap the benefit of an automation software like Infusionsoft sooner, then, you should get help from a qualified Infusionsoft consultant. That person can walk you through the processes of how to effectively use a software like this for your organization.

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How to Make Your Everyday Office Operation Way Easier with Automation 

While not every office work can be automated, there are loads of time-consuming day-to-day tasks that can make use of automation. From typing emails to chasing last-minute paperwork’s, and welcoming new clients to closing a sale -- automation can absolutely help. 

 Have you ever got the chance to reflect as to how much time you or your staffs take to open emails, or organize meeting or set follow-calls for potential customers? How about the selling process? Do you spend enormous time to close even a single deal? 

If you want to cut to the chase, make operations more efficient and bring in better return on investment for your business without having to spend enormous time, money, and resources, then automation should really be an option for you.  

Do you know that most successful companies out there use automation for their businesses? The core benefits are efficiency, better customer relationship management and increase on return on investment. Here are major aspects in your campaigns and operations that can use automation. 

Better email handling with automation 

According to statistics, employees spend 28% of their workweeks reading, responding and writing emails and that time spent technically translates into 650 hours a year. That's a lot of time spent only on mails! Those precious hours could have been spent on being productive. What is worse, researches show that unnecessary emails cost a company about $1800 per year.  

Not only are emails a time-killer but they also add up distraction in the workplace. On average, a person takes about 15 minutes to recover focus from an email message. 

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Better Marketing Through Automation 

Automation is like the Jack-of-all trades when it comes to customer management and marketing. B2B and B2C companies benefit the most from it. Keap, for instance, is an innovative tool that allows you to centralize campaigns and customer management under one hood.  

So instead of multiple tools and people doing the job, tasks are automated using a single tool and its multi-functionalities. While not all work in the business can be automated, the most common tasks such as lead management, email follow up, lead conversion, closing a sale, handling payments, among others can be efficiently executed and tracked down through automation.  

Automation for Your Email Marketing

You know the basics to effective e-mail marketing: deliver a message that resonates and it is likely that you’ll get a conversion. But, what happens when you should send personalized messages to, say, a thousand people?  That is almost impossible to do manually! And, should you insist, that's going to take a lot of time and resources.  

With automation, e-mail is personalized through segmentation and tagging so you can send targeted message by bulk to a specified group of recipients.  There is also a library of pre-define automated campaigns that can be dropped and dragged. Customers can be sorted by sequence so every message is moved along the sequence.

Automate your welcome emails, order follow ups, reactivation, or renewals. Even with a fresh contact's information, you can send them automated welcoming e-mails.  

What Keap does is ease out the hassle of having to use multiple software to accomplish your email marketing tasks. The intuitive, simple layout is easy to use. Creating forms and emails is quick even for those who don't know design, they can do it like a pro.

Automation with Infusionsoft goes beyond email marketing itself. You can do fax and voice too. You can also trigger campaigns, return on investment tracking, and make use of a powerful database. Dynamic coupons can also be done to your product pages or shopping carts.

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The commonly asked is for work experience, sales results and strengths but beyond that, there are questions that can help you easily evaluate and find the right fit.

Warm-up questions

Find the candidate that interests you the most even at the beginning of an interview. Here are some ideas.

Tell me about yourself, something that’s not here in your resume

• If you were a bird, what kind of bird would you be?
• Why do you love sales?
• What did you  have for breakfast?
• Any advice you would like to give to your previous boss?

You see, some of these questions may be irrelevant to the job position but it’s a good way to see how well they do with communication. The ability to answer questions on the spot is an essential skill of a good sales rep.

The last one will probably stun them as they are not likely to expect that. Their answer to that let’s you evaluate them deeply on how they handle their relationship with their superiors.

Skill-based questions

• What are your methods to stay up-to-date in the industry?

• What are your favorite questions to ask your leads and prospects
• How do you handle customer objections?
• How do you utilize social media for selling?
• When do you stop chasing or pursuing a customer?
• Do you pursue selling even if everyone else in the team have given up?
• Your greatest achievement in your professional job so far?

Also ask questions about selling and technology tools that the candidate has used in the past. It would be better if you were to hire people who also know how to handle any technologies or tools your company uses.

Personality assessment questions

• What’s your most hated part of being a sales representative?
• What are your motivations?
• Describe yourself as a sales rep in three adjectives
• In a day-to-day basis at work, what does success look to you?
• Can you describe to me the people in your past company?
• Why did you leave your last job?

Closing questions

• If I were to hire you, what will you do in, say, the first week or month?
• How do you handle a hard day?
• By the way, where did you hear about us?
• What are you plans in the next 5 or 10 years?
• Why did you choose us?

Do not limit your hiring questions to these. Challenge the candidate with questions that they won’t expect.

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If you are struggling to get more customers to your business, then you are definitely not alone. Matter of fact, statistics say that while 50% of business owners strive the first year in the industry, only 1 in 10 businesses succeeds.

Whatever the type of business you might have now, know that the right technology can help you speed up processes and bring in more customers to your door faster. No special computer wizard-like skills needed. Just have your marketing mindset ready.

But before that . . .

Re-evaluate your overall product and make it the best

You know why they say let the product speak? That’s because at the end of the day, it’s all about the product. Say, you have a brilliant marketer who can sell just about anything.  They might be able to sell, but sooner or later, consumers are going to talk about how crappy the product was.

Your product needs to be the best that it could be.

Have you ever thought what’s WRONG with it instead of just plainly praising it all the time, just like those on your marketing messages? It’s important to evaluate your product and that means going far beyond you positioning messages.

Think about these:

• What are your customer’s post-sale complaints about your product? How about the services?
• Are your products priced right? Look at your competitions to get the hint!
• Are you able to do timely follow-ups on after-sale communications?
• Does the product do as the selling point proposes?

Keep this in mind: the product shouldn’t just be the product itself but an overall package including pricing, customer service and technical support if need be.

Know where on the Internet your customers “virtually” reside

Majority of your customers are somewhere on the Internet; probably lurking around websites that you need to tap. Detailed psychological and demographic segmentation can help you find them.

Here is an example of a scenarios. If you concluded that your target customers are professional artists, you might want to build reputation on LinkedIn or Quora, as these social networks are both highly use by professionals. If you are targeting work-at-home moms, you may try freelancing forums, mom-dedicated social media groups or websites specifically for work-at-home moms.

Get ready to offer a digital something

So, you’re in your potential customer’s’ circle and you know exactly how to communicated with them. Now that you analysed where they reside on the digital world, the next problem is building relationships with them.

First, you need to find a way to contact them. In digital marketing, email information is the key ingredient. An email could go a long, long way. But then, nobody just wants to give away their email information, right? So, the answer is to bribe these people with an offer they cannot resist.

Ever heard of “lead magnet”? If not, it is simply an offer in exchange for a lead’s information. A lead magnet could be anything enticing. It could be a free report, a download trial (if you are selling software), a promotional code — anything that would suit your niche.

When you finally perfect your offer, then there goes your lead magnet.

You need a powerful lead capture form

A lead capture form can be created as a simple landing page where your potential leads are redirected. Once they provide you with information, they will then receive the promotional offer which is your lead magnet.

Your lead capture form should:

• Clearly state what the person should expect after he/she signs up.
• Short and easy-to-understand form blocks.
• Call-to-actions that work; and,
• A thank you page.

When you have their contact information, begin nurturing relationships until you are able to bring them to the buying cycle.

Infusionsoft to do the rest of the job

From creating your lead capture forms, to nurturing leads and even selling your product, all can be done automatically with Infusionsoft. Yes, you’ve read it right — AUTOMATION.

Bring in more customers to your business with the help of automated campaigns, follow-ups and targeted promotions. And while “automation” may be the core function of this technology, there is nothing to worry as Infusionsoft does its magic according to what your customers desire. Insightful leads, sales and marketing reports are also available in Infusionsoft so you practically know where you are on your campaigns.

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How to Make Sure Automation and CRM Bring You an RoI You Deserve

Automation and CRM bring better RoI, or so you’ve heard. But really, how far can these technologies help you when it comes to improving your overall business and your team? They still are pieces of technology, and technology is likely to have its own downsides.

Truth be told is, these software can be a friend or an enemy to your business but that depends on how you use them. You see, an automation and CRM software like Infusionsoft is quite an investment for you. That alone gets you thinking if they are worth having in your business, plus the time and resources you use to get them working for you and your team.

What you can do to make the most from your automation and CRM software is to plan strategically; what it is for, what part of your business operation needs it and what are you expectations when using it.

Cloud-based and automation technology like Infusionsoft has been a buzz in the marketing and business world for the past years. Majority of people who utilize technology say that such tool brought them great benefits like better positive RoI, productivity, speed and efficiency on their workplace, marketing and selling operations.

Choose a specific goal to avoid numerous (and sometimes useless) amount of tests. Setting a specific goal allows you to track with better metric data and focus on those goals. What are your productivity, conversion and RoI goals for using a software?

Sales and marketing department make use of automation and CRM. Get your users (the people to use the system) on board in most of the operation. Make them have their hands-on experience on using the system.

Use the system data and metrics for your marketing. These data are goldmine of information that lets you filter important information for your marketing. These data make it easier to see your company and team’s weak points and strength. Basically, you get more useful insights and have a better customer relationship management plan.

By making use of automation, you reduce marketing cost as you utilize clean, accurate data and segment points to find the best prospects. You are also able to determine the interest of your prospects and bring in more interested leads in a faster time-frame.

Make use of automation for onboarding new clients. The first 60 days of new customers is very important and you got to solidify this relationship. Segment to identify people who are considered risk; they are likely the one not engaging. Make use of satisfaction profiling.

Leverage automation and CRM to create sequenced prospect nurturing campaigns for leads to go to the buying stage. Create intelligent campaigns, market more intelligently with personalization and automation to send relevant, targeted messages. Score leads through demographic and psychographic data to qualify and advance leads. Get to the right people with the right message.

Importat lead database for clean, structured, data. Automate to avoid spending time manually cleaning of messy lead database or information. Get a 360 degree view of data by making use your software.

Use technology to make your content dynamic and automatically tailored to your target audience. Use dynamic content for landing pages, calls to actions, sidebars, among others.

Improve customer experience with the help of an automation software: automate responses and automatically assign reps or manage routinely inquiries with automated responses. Automate from building a fresh list of leads, sequencing them to stages of nurturing and even up to the buying cycle. Nurture leads and sort out customers accordinging to their psychographic and demographic profile so you can send the right product to the right people.

Make operations scalable, intelligent and flexible according to your company's processes and routines. While some say failure is one step closer to success, that is not wholly so when it comes to your business. Failing, in the business world, means losing resources, money and time. So you want to prevent from failing at anything and that include using technologies. You want to make the most of it and make sure it plays the part.

Learning to use a new software can be time-consuming and perhaps, frustrating specifically for business owners who are not much into technology. To make the most of an automation or CRM technology, consult a specialist to avoid costly mistake.

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The Stunning Benefits Your Small Business is Missing by Not Using or Mastering Infusionsoft

Let One Innovative Software Centralize Your Business Operation and Accelerate Your Way to Growth this 2017

It’s 2017 and there are so many days ahead waiting for your business to conquer. Have you been using Infusionsoft already? This software can do far beyond what it looks like on its aesthetic and so much more than what it proposes. When you become the master of this innovative tool, you will see it is a necessity you couldn’t go without at any given day of the year.

Twelve thousand businesses and counting, Infusionsoft brags its efficiency as an automation, e-mail marketing and customer relationship management software. There are many essential benefits this tool offers to small business owners like yourself

Automate -- in the most HUMANLY SENSE

The word “automation” may frighten you because after all, what type of customers would love to talk to robots and automated messages?

It’s the digital era. Your potential customers are smarter. They want to feel connected and silently, they demand for you to provide them messages that resonate to their very needs. Automation with Infusionsoft is made humanized, with innovative features that let you automate in ways that connect to your audience. For example, when a birthday coupon is automatically sent to your customer, Infusionsoft can make that coupon specifically dedicated to that customer and not just another birthday coupon.

And because processes are automated, consistency is there -- that means timely communication, campaigns and operations. Metrics provided by Infusionsoft allows you to understand your customers' pain points, making it easier to craft solutions specifically for them.

Nurture relationship with customers like never before

Customers are different from one another so they shouldn’t be treated like a generic crowd. The good thing about Infusionsoft is that it lets you nurture relationships and speak to customers according to their needs. Data collected based on customer behaviour is scored, so interactions are personalized according to the buyer's journey.

Since lead nurturing is automated, you save time, reduce (or even eliminate) possibilities of manual errors and get trackable results that you can use for conversion analysis.

Powerful follow-ups without all the chaos and repetitive tasks

Research suggests that follow-ups can increase sales for up to 80%. Here’s a quick statistic on follow-ups:

• Only 2% of sales are made the first time a customer finds a provider,
• 3% on the second follow-up,
• 5% on the 3rd follow-up,
• 10% on the 4th follow-up and,
• 80% are made on the 5th-12th contact.

These figures essentially mean that follow-up is a key to growing your sales. Your follow-ups should be consistent, timely and targeted. Infusionsoft is built with intelligent follow-up features that are triggered according to a customer’s behaviour; sending him to a sequenced journey of follow-ups and nurturing until he finally gets to buy your product.

For a small business, even a hundred customers are hard to keep up. Larger numbers are even harder and messier to follow-up with. Infusionsoft can ease all the chaos of follow-ups for you.

Minimize routine tasks

Boring office tasks are mostly those that are done on daily or regular bases. Your staffs are just so used to routines that they think it’s blunt, lifeless and are not challenging to work on. Automate welcome emails, price lists, policies, surveys, questionnaires, among others.

Infusionsoft is dedicated to help small businesses to grow, scale in the most efficient way and automatically do routine tasks that slow down your operations. You minimize routinely workload.

Market and sell like the expert that you are

Spend less time on creating your marketing materials and actually sell your products, without having to go through many more marketing mistakes. Keep track of your customers, tasks and even your organization in one place. Lead nurturing and even after-sale processes are also automated. Basically, you can close sales way faster than ever.

Infusionsoft proficiency is a must

So, you decided to have Infusionsoft as a part of your company’s operational and marketing tool. But does it end there? Definitely not!

Having it is the first way to success, but it is mastering this tool that brings in benefits to your company. Just like any other tools, your road to proficiency with Infusionsoft may be slow if you were to do it on your own. Ask guidance from an Infusionsoft consultant to help you kick start using this tool and strategize campaigns specifically for your small business.

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Welcome to the world of Internet marketing; where jargons are abundance, where marketers become Jack-and-Jane-of-all-trade and where the Internet holds an Almighty power. If you are a rookie Internet marketer, you are bound for an undying journey of challenges. Fret not, it’s a virtual world does not only offer opportunities but also growth for you.

First and foremost, it is very important to know the essential A-Z of Internet marketing. Here’s a glossary of jargons, slangs and words commonly use in the Internet marketing world. Keep them in mind. You’ll come across most of them in your day-to-day life.

A/B Testing

Also called split testing, A/B testing is a process of comparing two campaign materials — both which are the analyzed to be right fit for the campaign — to see which one works best. The one that brings better conversion wins and is use for future marketing campaign. A/B testing could also be in form of a simple part or chunk of a marketing material. For example, you can do A/B testing with email subject lines. So basically you are testing two different subject lines for the same e-mail content and see which subject line gets opened the most.

Analytics

Is the practice of analyzing, measuring and managing marketing performances. These figures show which aspects are weak links and which works best. Insights provided by analytics are helpful on sales, leads generation, trends and forecasting. Understanding how analytics work make you more efficient on your job and lessens unnecessary spending

Automation

Is a process of automating campaigns like emails, newsletters, PRs, among others. With automation, audience responses are recorded and you respond to them according to their behavior and journey along the process. For example, if a customer sign up for a coupon promo, after he successfully sign up, he will automatically receive a coupon. Automation can be done through a software like Infusionsoft.

B2B

Simply as Business to Business, B2B is marketing products or services to organizations and businesses. Put simply that your target market are businesses so technically you are selling products that suit for business needs. An example is Infusionsoft selling automation and CRM software to businesses. On the Internet, B2B is most commonly tagged as ebiz.

B2C

B2C is an acronym for Business to Consumer. A business is promoting products directly to consumers. Campaigns are made according to a consumer’s mindset. Examples are clothing companies selling directly to consumers or an e-commerce selling beverages to the local area.

Behavioral marketing

Is a strategy implemented to create marketing messages for particular audience matched to their past purchases, Web behavior or websites visited. An example of behavioral marketing is when a makeup ad appears on Facebook page after an Internet user searched on Google about makeups. Browsers have “cookies” that retained the user behaviour which are then used by other permitted channels or websites to integrate and correlate data to display relevant ads.

Blogging

Blogging is publishing materials – text, images, videos or all of them on the Internet. Compare to a website, a blog is updated more often for better engagement. There’s no pre-requisite to blogging. These days you can blog about anything. And because of blogging platforms like WordPress and Blogger is easy to manage, everyone, even those without a programming skill can set up a blog without the need of any special kind of technology.

Bounce Rate

Bounce rate is a percentage of visitors that move or bounce away from your website after visiting a certain page. Bounce rate is measured for better page optimization. For example, if an average amount of readers bounce from a certain page in as quick as five seconds, then that particular page could probably use some changes on its headlines or visuals to captivate the audience.

Buyer Persona

A buyer persona represents an ideal customer base on real time data and market researches. To create an ideal buyer persona, marketers do various researches from buyers’ behavioral patterns, demographics, motivations, goals and pains. Through this you get a picture of how they think, what their problems are and how you can address those problems with your product. Creating buyer persona is like profiling and creating dimensional profiles that help you understand more of your market.

Call-to-Action

Call to action could be an image, a line of text, or a button prompted to the person to do the action based on a given scenario. Examples of call-to-actions are those that you see in sign-up form buttons: sign-up now, grab your access, get your freebie, etc.

Churn Rate

Is the yearly percentage of customers that stop subscribing or how quickly customers leave. Essentially your growth rate must exceed your churn rate. Churn rate can be calculate based on non-renewal of contracts, closure of accounts, cancellation of subscription or shifting to another provider.

Click-through Rate

Most commonly abbreviated as CTR, click through rates are the average number that an ad receives. The average is calculated based on clicks and impressions. For example, if you have 5 clicks and a thousand impression, then the ctr would be .5%. High CTR means you are doing your job well and your marketing efforts are relevant to your end goal.

Content

In Internet marketing, a content could be a text, image, video or audio, a combination or all of them. So basically, a content could anything produced and published in the Web. Good content are basically original, well-crafted and dedicated to your targeted audience.

Content Management System

A Content Management System is a platform, software or a piece of technology use to manage contents in the Internet. With a CMS, you can publish, manage and curate your content. A CMS also have other features like traffic dashboard, organic search origin, media library, just to name a few.

Conversion Rate

Your conversion rate is the percentage of which a potential customer, a website visitor or a lead take an action. Example of this is the number of new leads acquired at a given time in your specific marketing campaign.

Cost Per Lead

Known to marketers as CPL, is a model use to track how much it cost to acquire a lead. For example, if you get 10 leads out of your $1000 expense, then the cost per lead is $100.

Customer Acquisition Cost

Commonly abbreviated as CAC, this is calculated by dividing cost on acquiring customers to the number of customers acquired in a certain time. For instance, if your company spent 200 on marketing annually and you acquired 200 customers, therefore, the CAC is $2

Customer Relationship Management

Customer Relationship Management is a software that can hold a database containing details of customers that the company can use for marketing, ads and sales. Infusionsoft is a CRM software use by many marketers for the past years.

Dynamic Content

A Dynamic Content is a part of a website, page, or email body that changes based on the interest of a viewer. User experience is personalized and more targeted. An example would be a  generic campaign page with dynamic content that can change based on a viewer or reader’s geolocation.

Keywords

Keywords are a group of words or phrases that a searcher entered when using a searching engine like Google. You use a keyword when you search something on the Internet. Keyword research, on the other hand, is about finding the right keyword profitable for your marketing campaigns.

Landing Page.

It is a specific web page where a user gets redirected when clicking a link. A landing page could be a simple website homepage, a social media page or a specific marketing page.

Lead

Is a person or information of a person collected for list building, acquisition or promotion. Lead nurturing,  is the process of building relationship with leads from the moment they sign up  until the buying process

Mobile Marketing

Is a specialized marketing technique dedicated to acquiring leads who are using their mobiles as a way to use the Internet. Basically, everything in your campaign from your market research up to executing the very campaign, all are optimized for mobile audiences.

Pay per Click

Pay per click is an Internet marketing model where the advertiser pay each time someone clicked their ad. The advertisement could be displayed on social media like Facebook, in search engine such as Google or in particular websites. The end goal is to get those who clicked to be redirected to the website where services or products are offered.

Qualified Leads

Qualified leads are basically prospects that already expressed interest on products. These are the kinds of prospects that you would like to give extra time to nurture. For better nurturing, segment qualified leads from your general list so you can create a more targeted campaign specifically for them.

Return on Investment.

Most popularly abbreviated as RoI, It’s basically the percentage of gain or loss from an investment. Marketers use RoI as an end-goal of measuring campaign outcomes progress and revenue.

Search Engine Optimization.

Is to optimize a single page, multiple pages or all website pages so they show first in search engine results. An optimized page that shows first in the search results gets more visitors which means more opportunity for it.

Social Proof

Is a psychological phenomenon use by marketers to portray or show proofs. For instance,  a software company could show that they have 2 millions users as a social proof or a natural slimming pill can show clinical studies related to the efficacy of the product. Showing social proof adds trust factor.

Viral Content.

A material that has become an online sensation all of a sudden. The easiest way to get viral on social media is to create meme that correlates to your industry. For a content to go viral, it has to arouse emotion whether negativity or positivity.

Word of Mouth

Word of mouth is a recommendation by a satisfied customer to a friend, colleague, family or other people for the good product or service. Just like traditional marketing, word of mouth plays a vital role in digital marketing when it comes to building better brand, gaining more customers and expanding RoI.

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When your company is young, it has to take advantage of every possible channel where it can reach its potential target market. Creating a website is a must-have for startups.

An ideal start-up business website goes beyond its aesthetics. It’s more than just building a presence in the World Wide Web. The goal is for a website to build a better brand, expand your market reach and most of all, grow your RoI.

Start with the basics. You need a logo that resonates your brand as well as graphics and colors that correlate the company’s message. Your website should have powerful call-to-action and easy-to-see search field.

As a startup, you want people to know about the latest updates on your company so having a news or blog area is also important. If you are targeting multiple countries, you may also add language-switching option.

As people use various device types when they are on the Internet, you should make sure your website is compatible to all devices. Although 91% of searches happen on laptop and PCs, Smartphones accommodate some 80% searches in daily bases and tablets of 47%.

Your website should also be compatible with major browsers like Safari, Chrome, Firefox and Internet explorers. Site speed is very essential. If your site takes more than 3 seconds to load, you will lost 40% of your potential visitors.

You might probably already heard that content is the king, and that is an undying truth when it comes to an Internet presence. Outstanding content is the lifeline of your website. Mediocre contents and grammatical errors will not only hurt your Internet presence but so to overall business credibility.

Take security SERIOUSLY. The numbers of online breaches are overwhelming and scary most specially for businesses. Make sure you’re site is running in secure host and server. Everything should be backup in case of data lost. Your site’s login system must be secured. Don’t share login info with unwanted parties and your site’s login pages should be fully encrypted.

A 404 Page is a crucial part of a business website. It is inevitable that a page could be wiped out or relocated and when a website visitor goes to this particular link, it will display an Error 404 Page which makes website visitor unhappy.

What you can do is supply the reader enough details as to what happened to that page and provide search box or navigation menu where the user himself can find a specific page they are looking.

Put effort on your homepage. Studies show that 80% of a website’s traffic goes to the homepage. When a visitor gets to your homepage, the clarity of the message should be quick and easy to digest. It has to have your value proposition.

Navigation should be user-friendly. Pages should be clearly labeled and links to social pages must be accessible.

As your online presence continue to expand, you can make use of visitor data to improve your startup and this is when analytics’ role come to play. Overall, analytics work to track your site visitor’s behavior providing valuable data such as where they come from, how long they stayed in your site, which page is viewed the most — just to name a few. The numbers presented in your analytic tool help define your future goals and optimize your online strategy.

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when anyone says to me that all they want to do is increase their list size I always come back with, ‘Well what about your list quality?’

It doesn’t matter what your list size is, if they aren’t responding to you. This is why you should always look to improve the quality of your list, the accuracy of your marketing and the value of your lead magnets.

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In 2015, for SMEs according to GetResponse’s investigation (The State of Email Marketing by Industry, January 2016), the open rate across all industries was 21.73% with a click-through rate of 3.57%.

That’s an interesting number right there. I have had clients unhappy with open rates of over 40%!

This all comes down to individuals not really knowing what to expect from email marketing.

Your open rate is directly linked to a number of factors:

• The quality of your list
• Your understanding of your list
• The expectations of your list
• The wording of your subject line
• The value of what you give away

Firstly, the quality of your list; If people are on your list that you haven’t talked to for years, haven’t had any enquiries off, haven’t opened any of your emails then do you realistically expect to make a sale?

Infusionsoft have recently added the Unengaged Marketable email status. Have you checked it? Have you tried to re-engage these people? Are they simply on your list, sitting there but not actually doing anything?

Secondly, understanding your list is vital. Who are these people, when are they most likely going to interact with your emails? If it is a leisure product going business to customer, then is sending your emails during day-time appropriate? If you are targeting a market when the customer is likely to be parents with young children, would an email mid-evening have a better open rate?

Thirdly, the expectations of your list are vital. If you say that you are going to have a monthly newsletter and then bombard them every week, that is going to turn some people off immediately. If you don’t deliver your promised newsletter, then are you going to deliver on any sales?

Fourthly, what makes people initially open your emails? They are not sitting at the desk waiting with baited breath for your next email to drop into their inbox. When it does, it needs to sell itself. Now, it could be that you have the type of relationship with the client, that when they see your name on an email they know it is going to be valuable and worth their time, and time is money, right. However, you will probably need to catch the attention of some of your list, so think about what will grab people’s attention.

Finally, you have to think about the quality of what you give away. If it is of low quality or not relevant, then people are going to unsubscribe from your list and not want to do business with you in the future.

So, how do you improve the quality of your list?

You need to have targeted the right people to work with you. You need to fulfil your promises so your list stays engaged with you. You need to remove people that don’t want to talk to you.

Increasing the size of your list is a good thing but only if you get quality.

A side note story that you need to consider is Kids Bowl Free (KBF) in the USA. They do advertising for bowling alleys, and it’s pretty obvious what they do, they advertise that if there is a paying adult, then the kids bowl free. What they also do however is have a call team that contacts anyone who unsubscribes from their list to make sure the person understands what they are unsubscribing from.

KBF have found that this is a lucrative source of leads. We have to consider why is that? Well some people respond well to email, some to video, some to a physical person talking to them. The ‘cheap’ option of email marketing failed in this case and a more expensive version (the physical person) worked.

So where does that lead us? In my opinion opt-outs are a good thing. They have decided your product is not for them. This improves the quality of your list as you are then only talking to the people who want to hear from you via email.

However, you might want to reach out to the opt-outs in a different way.

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Silvia and Miguel are a young and dynamic couple originally from Spain, who passionately love what they do and came together in 2012 to start the International Swimming Academy in London.

They both have long histories with swimming and started in the water from an early age – Miguel at the age of 6 was diagnosed with a rare back and skin conditions and used to go to the sea with his father, following advice from his doctor, that not only would this help with the healing of his illness but would also act as a distraction from it. Miguel became fascinated by the water that eventually cured him. Silvia at the age of four had a passion for the water slides close to her home in Madrid, and a dislike for the overcrowded and somewhat daunting swimming lessons that she attended, these lessons didn’t put her off her love of water, far from it, they only encouraged her to find a better way for others to learn how to swim.

After many years of acquiring every possible swimming qualification they both discovered SWIM-FLOAT-SWIM -the only method where children learn from the age of 6 months how to be safe in the water and undertook training in the USA with their mentor Joy McGinty the founder of the Pediaswim method – where children learn the SWIM-FLOAT-SWIM technique -(It is believed that this may be the reason why the US swimmers collect so many Olympic medals)- and became ambassadors of this way of teaching everyone how to swim. 

Fuelled by their joint passion of water and a wish to make being in the water a safer place for swimmers and making sure no student EVER gets left behind! The International Swimming Academy was born.

Miguel who is a former full-time lifeguard, competitive swimmer and a professional swimming teacher says: I work with children every day in the water and they are always smiling- they make me smile so much. 

Doing what you do best is really rewarding whatever it is, working with EXELA with what they do best—getting Infusionsoft automation up and running quickly and smoothly – meant that Miguel and Silvia could get on with what they do best – coaching their students and making them safe in the water. A win-win situation.

As their academy becomes weekly more popular with waiting lists for their coaching at three different pool venues, they decided that in order to manage their ever growing list they would need to harness the power of Infusionsoft to service both their existing clients, and their new customers and prospects. We started the Small Business Success Method (SBSM Kickstart) together and were able to identify the Priority Path and set up their first automation quickly, allowing them to be able to see the results of what they had in place shortly afterwards. The momentum of this perpetuated the enthusiasm to get working on the next project.

We find that most people want to talk with an instructor before signing up which is fine, they want to understand how and what will happen to either themselves or their children in the SWIM-FLOAT-SWIM coaching sessions. Inherently people have a fear of water and we want to break this fear, when you see a 6-month old baby turning to float in the water quite naturally you start to break down the old paradigm and allow a new way of thinking. Once the parent sees this they can’t believe it, they are amazed and delighted.

The first problem that Infusionsoft automation solved for the couple was managing their call lists, now when a potential client clicks a button (a call to action) on their website or in an email they get dealt with quickly and efficiently and Silvia and Miguel know exactly who they are speaking with and what they want to talk to them about, a task is created and added to the task list in Infusionsoft which lets them know everything they need to about that person. They can now schedule a time each day when they are not in the water to call them and discuss the needs and requirements of their client – they are fully informed about them, which course they want, which pool location, what the swimmer’s name is – which means no more ill-informed dripping wet calls to prospects on the poolside.

The second solution Infusionsoft gave them also saves a huge amount of time and energy, while on the call they can start a campaign automation with the click of a button depending on the outcome of that call: what happens next –  what they want to do – observe a lesson, book a course, complete a Terms and Conditions form or a Registration form for a course- and they can follow-up with them immediately  no more hours of waiting and then sending 100’s of emails to people and forgetting or losing information, these follow-ups  are now ticked off their manual list and are fully automated with the templates we have created– which gives them more time- to enjoy what they do best – coaching.

The great thing is that any user from our Team working in Infusionsoft has transparency to see what any given contact is doing, has done, wants to do, it is all available in their record – again, more time saved with not having to undertake Team updates!

Silvia who has a keen interest in all water sports and physical activities says:

We want to help everyone to safely and confidently have fun in the water, after all the water is a theme park of fun

The couple are already planning their next Infusionsoft campaigns and processes with the support of the EXELA team and their coach, and with a similar ethos to Silvia and Miguel, EXELA also want to help everyone to confidently have fun setting up their Infusionsoft systems.

Watch their video testimonial here.

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Okay, so we’ve been told that we need to have an SPF record and that we should update it to include Infusionsoft within it, but if you’re anything like I was, you’re stumped at the first mention of SPF!

SPF and Other Acronyms

An SPF record or ‘Sender Policy Framework’ record is just a text entry stored in the DNS…..clearer now, right?!

Okay, to fully understand what an SPF record is, we first need to understand what the DNS is, as they go hand in hand.

DNS?!

Think of the DNS (Domain Name System) as a directory that holds all of the information needed to communicate with websites, email servers and much more.

The DNS allows us to visit websites using ‘human’ speak rather than in numbers (‘computer’ speak). So if we want to go to a website, we simply type in the address name e.g. www.exela.co.uk – we don’t have to know the ‘computer’ speak address, also known as the IP address (107.170.172.85).

Okay, so now I’ve added another acronym – IP, which is why getting your head around the subject of SPF records can be so tricky!

IP?!

Each website and email server has an IP address or Internet Protocol address – it’s a series of numbers which is unique. Just like our telephone number, an IP address sends us to the right place.

So let’s use the telephone number analogy; nowadays if we want to phone someone we look up their name in our phone address book and press dial….this is a whole lot easier than having to remember their phone number. Imagine If every time we wanted to visit a website we had to remember and then type in a long string of numbers (the IP). I don’t know about you, but for me I doubt I would be using the web as much as I do. The DNS is the thing which lets us to use website names, which, let’s face it, are much easier to remember.

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Okay so now we’ve got a bit of an understanding about DNS and what it is, let’s focus back on the reason we’re here… the SPF record.

So we know that an SPF record is just a text entry in the DNS, but what does it do and why is it important for us Infusionsoft Users?

What Does an SPF Record Do?

An SPF record does two main things:

1: it tells the world who you trust to send emails for you

2: it also tells the world what to do when someone you don’t trust sends an email that

looks like it’s come from you (either accept it or throw it away)

Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam

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Every time an email is received by a mail server (e.g. gmail, Hotmail, outlook), the mail server will track back and check to see if there is an SPF record. It’s trying to decide whether this is a genuine email or whether it’s spam. If the email ‘From’ details aren’t in the SPF record, then this can indicate that it’s spam.

This is important as one of the tricks cybercriminals use is ‘spoofing’, this involves using legitimate email ‘From’ details to make it look as though the email they are sending has come from someone you trust.

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Infusionsoft and SPF Records

Okay so now we know what an SPF record is let’s look at why it’s important.

When we send emails from inside Infusionsoft, either in a campaign or via an email broadcast, Infusionsoft acts as a mail server, sending the emails for us but using our email address.

As Infusionsoft users, it’s vital that we have an SPF record telling the world that we trust Infusionsoft to send emails on our behalf otherwise it may get tagged as spam, meaning all that hard work we put into our email copy will be for nothing!

How Do I Set Up My SPF Record to Include Infusionsoft?

I’m not going to go into full details within this blog but what I will say, is that it is easy to make mistakes if you’re not sure what you are doing.

The best advice I can give you is to ask your website developer or the people who host your website (e.g. GoDaddy) to help you.

And here’s a link to the Infusionsoft help page where you can find more information:

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http://help.infusionsoft.com/userguides/campaigns-and-broadcasts/email-deliverability-guide/configure-your-spf-records

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Hopefully you now feel a little less in the dark about SPF records and at the very least, recognise that you need to have one.

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Happy SPF record creating…..or at least getting someone more technical to do it for you!

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How Infusionsoft Can Reinvent the Meaning of Success for Your Business

As a business owner, it is not surprising if you are juggling too many tasks. From keeping tabs on sales, brainstorming how to increase leads, crafting the next campaign, managing operations and dealing with finance. The list could go on and on.

What makes it worse is if you are using a whole bunch of systems to manage your business. There could be one system for e-mail marketing, one system for communication, one system for lead generation, one system for selling. Oh, how chaotic that could be, even if you have people who do it for you?

If you want to ease out all the chaos, then taking your next big step with Infusionsoft is definitely your clever move. Everything (and we mean EVERYTHING) important for your sales and marketing can be done in Infusionsoft; saving you enormous time and money.

If you are not using Infusionsoft, then this post will definitely lighten up every reason why you should choose Infusionsoft compared to conventional marketing platforms. If you have been using Infusionsoft, then this post will uncover some of the great things you probably haven't known yet about Infusionsoft.

Saddle up and dive into something that makes automated marketing conversion rate soars. With robust functionalities that allow you to analyze lead behaviors, track engagement, craft followup messages, just to name a few, Infusionsoft is one powerful CRM that even the biggest businesses around the world are using.

Infusionsoft is an Ecosystem of Reliable and ROI-converting Tools

From the outside, Infusionsoft looks like a complicated platform but the truth is, it is just a complete ecosystem of useful elegant, reliable and effective tools with powerful automation capacities build to help every businesses, small or big.

There is a reason why Infusionsoft currently has more than 130 000 users on board and the numbers of businesses using the platform continue to expand. It is simply because it works.

Lead management via Infusionsoft is made easier and powerfully effective that increases conversion 5-10 folds. Lead management core principle when using Infusionsoft is to organize contacts, turn them into leads, and from leads make these people into dedicated customers and transform those customers into your product's loyal fans.

With Infusionsoft, you will never miss an important lead again - ever. It humanizes your e-mail marketing efforts. Contrary to what it does -- which is automating everything including email campaigns -- Infusionsoft functionalities are built to personalized leads by tagging and segmentation. With this, you can create general emails to correlate your customers' behaviors. The bottom line is more focus marketing efforts, higher Return on Investment and not wasting valuable leads.

Infusionsoft supports you all along the way via digital storefront. It's easier to sell to your customers. Here is where you can set up everything along the selling process from shopping carts to billing to creating discounts or coupons, all using a single system.

Infusionsoft also makes you track your customers accurately. Know where your customers came from through the Lead Source tracking function. This function makes lead auditing way easier. You can look back and quickly calculate leads, customers and revenues through this function. Tracking leads also help forecast what you must need to change in terms of campaigns for better efficacy.

Infusionsoft is also easy to integrate or plug in to WordPress sites or business blog. Infusionsoft can also be Integrated with a wide range of third-party apps via an API. As we wrap up, know that Infusionsoft might make marketing automation way easier for you, but it is so much more than an auto-responder. Every campaign is audience-specific targeted to make relevancy at most.

Why would you continuously pay system by system, put yourself and your team to the headaches of managing different platforms when it can all be done using one, powerful tool that has it all?

Succeed in every aspect of your marketing, not just on ROI but also time-efficiency and centralizing campaign management using one powerful tool: Infusionsoft.

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August… Why is it the best too be working?

Its summer the kids are off school it’s the holiday season the weather looks better skin gets darker and people become more relaxed.

Although its summer this is the best time to resist the temptation of the sun beds and cocktails This is the time to be getting ahead of your game! At this stage in the year people tend to sway a tiny bit away from work so those businesses that really mean it when they say they want to achieve great. This is your time! Put the work in and get ahead of every other competitor, Sun is known to help people’s moods so if you can control this into the right mind-set you can be sat down achieving all sorts right now.

So let me guess your think ahhh but my holiday….? Do it on holiday you can be achieving your goals anywhere at any time at any place it’s all about MINDSET think of it this way in 5 years’ time you can be a named top company or you can be slightly ahead because the months of July and August are holiday seasons and you decided its fine to “cop out” for two whole months. No Success is in the mind and heart if you want complete success you will be willing to work at everything possible to achieve it.

I watched a video a little while back that gave me my motivation maybe it will help you

So what do you think? Time to end August on an up not a down!

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