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What to check before you send your next email marketing campaign

06/14/202107/03/2020 by scmarketing

An email marketing campaign can be an incredibly effective way of reaching your target audience. Whether you’ve captured data from an email newsletter sign up box on your website or because a visitor downloaded a document, by showing this engagement your email subscribers are interested to learn more about your products and services. So, a regular email marketing campaign is a great way of keeping your potential clients informed.

However, email marketing can be daunting. There’s pressure to get your content right and with so much to review little things can be missed which could affect click through rate, engagement and worse – lead to unsubscribed. So, here’s our tips on what you should check before you hit send so you have a great email campaign.

Proof-read

Even though you will have automatically done a spell check, you still need to take time to thoroughly proof-read the content of the email. Check for spelling, grammar and the overall flow.

Try and read it as if for the first time and check whether your message is getting across clearly. If you can get a colleague to look at it too, even better. If someone who hasn’t been close to the content up to this point looks at it, they can usually spot things quickly that you may have overlooked.

But, don’t just read the body of the email. Always double check the titles and footer too. We’ll cover these in a little more detail.

What’s the subject of your email?

You want people to open your email so remember to check the subject line for typos. Also check it not only makes sense but will it entice people to open it? A good benchmark is to work to 50 characters. Succinct and to the point. Remember that 47% of people open an email based on the subject line.

[FIRSTNAME]

If you’re adding in the recipient’s name using dynamic tags then you need to check that these are working correctly. You want their first name showing not another field from your database! Generally, you’d only be using the dynamic tag for a first name so make sure that this is working correctly.

Check all links

When you send yourself a test email, check that all links work including social media handles and that they lead to the correct page. Fix any that are broken.

This means checking the links in your footer too, especially that the unsubscribe link works. While you don’t want people to unsubscribe, it is inevitable. For someone wanting to unsubscribe they will find it rather annoying to then not be able to complete this function all because it wasn’t on your round of checks before distribution. This could then lead to bad reviews.

Call to action

You’re sending an email for people to engage with and ultimately take action. Whether that’s to read more, book a consultation or watch this video. Having a bold call to action button will entice people to click, this makes this a crucial button to ensure that the link is not broken.

We’ve already mentioned that you need to check these links work but this is also a note that if you have icons in your email that they need to be clickable. It’s just natural that we want to click them. So, don’t just think you can have an icon and assume people will go to Twitter and try and search for your business. You need to make it really simple. Cut out unnecessary steps to keep your prospects engaged for longer.

How’s the formatting?

Check that the layout of your email is not affected on the test and fix any issues. Look out for call to action buttons or bullet points – are they positioned correctly? Is font colour and size consistent and easy to read?

Responsive

Check your test email on all devices. Does it look OK? Are the images replicated well on each device? It’s worth doing that last check on your mobile. Let’s face it 81% of us open our emails on a smartphone – so make sure it looks good as that’s a lot of potential clients you could lose.

Unsubscribe

If you’ve previously sent emails to customers in the past, then you’ll know all about GDPR compliance. Ensuring you have a clearly visible unsubscribe link is essential. It needs to be very simple for people to stop receiving your emails. It’s usual to include this in your footer of the email but just because it forms part of the template does not mean you shouldn’t check it each time. This is a definite to do on our email marketing checklist of actions before you click send. That’s why we’ve mentioned in twice!

Email marketing agency Croydon

Email marketing offers a great Return on Investment – 42% of B2B organisations say email is one of their most effective lead generators.

Or email marketing service forms part of our inbound marketing services in our suite of digital marketing tools to help businesses grow through online lead generation.

Depending on your business goals, we can provide email marketing strategies as a standalone service or as part of a digital marketing package as email marketing consultants in Croydon. Why not get in touch for a free consultation and we can discuss the best approach for your business.

Video content strategy that will help with your inbound marketing

Marketing for virtual business events

07/07/202007/02/2020 by scmarketing

We’ve all had to adapt significantly during these last few months, none more so than the networking and events industry.

In the past, we’ve talked about networking events being a really powerful place for small businesses to grow. So, as we went into lockdown you could have been forgiven for having a moment of panic about how you were going to cope without those vital networking opportunities and face to face connections.

Well, I think we can all agree that we’ve adapted somewhat. During this time, we’re sure you, like many other businesses have attended and benefited from the talks webinars and virtual events such as the fantastic accounting event – The Virtual Summit and the recent London Festival of Architecture. What they now have in common is an event that people worldwide can take part in – not just those in London.

So, the question is, do we see these virtual events continuing? If so, how do we get the message out there more widely when we’re doing our marketing so that attendance skyrockets?

Tips for marketing your own webinar

What virtual events have given businesses and networking groups is potential of a wider reach.

We love a networking group and have spent many a great session at the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) events with other amazing members.

We’ve all become much more adept to conducting business with colleagues and clients via screen. So as more and more of us look to create our own webinars as a way of talking about products and services, here’s a few tips to remember when setting up your virtual event.

Be clear on the event details

As with anything you are promoting, be clear about what your event is about. Just like any other marketing you want to be targeting the right people to attend to ensure that you have quality leads.

Promote on all digital marketing channels available

Promoting the event through all channels available to you is essential. So, from social media through to email marketing, obvious presence on the homepage of your website and reminding colleagues to all share details of the event to their network.

Create a marketing tool box

If you have other speakers on your panel then make sure they have marketing information from you. It’s one of those things you can easily overlook but it’s key to encourage people to share the relevant information. It also ensures that your event has a consistent look and feel. Make sure your panellists have the following:

Share the specific event details so that everyone is saying the same thing
Make sure all involved have the right website address for registering so they can share to their contacts. You can also ask them to use a specific trackable link
Event images / videos – keep consistent. Ask people to use the images you supply
Share the relevant social handles and hashtags to promote the event

Our client Symphony was a speaker at The Virtual Summit and the organisers provided a suite of images to use, sized per social channel as well as links. This meant that well over 40 speakers and their companies had the ability to share to their own networks at the touch of a button. This could be one of the key reasons that led to the event having over 14,000 registrations and over 4,000 tuning into our client’s session.

Segment email marketing lists

If you’re sending out email marketing, then remember to segment your lists so you know the different target groups and demographics. You can then personalise information sent so that by being targeted you are likely to encourage more sign ups.

Partner up

If you’re not too good with technology and think that working in partnership would be better for you then why not look at what networking groups such as LCCI have been doing. We’re proud members and had the privilege of running a session on growing your business through online lead generation. Therefore, perhaps you can approach a local business or join a networking group and see about getting your business on their fixtures of upcoming webinars.

Virtual events – the new norm?

Let’s address the elephant in the room, we don’t think this is the death knoll for physical events. We can safely say that the need for face to face contact and engagement still exists. However, we do see a shift occurring.

At exhibitions there’s often many streams of different talks happening simultaneously. So, you really have to pick and choose carefully. So, will we start to see seminars with more recordings being offered post event? This is a great way for marketing to continue after the doors have closed. By having information in a gated area, you can gather contact details to add to your database for ongoing communication.

However, this must not impact the numbers attending an event. So, there’s still a need for those exclusive happenings at summits and exhibitions such as the keynote speaker whose presentation won’t be available unless you attend.

Extend the reach of your business

We’ve talked about how a virtual event can help extend the reach further. This is the same for digital marketing. With 81% people conducting online searches for products and services, if you don’t already have a website now is the time to reach potential customers and clients. The website is at the centre of your online marketing strategy. This is something you own so that all your marketing can lead back to your website.

If you’re hosting a webinar a website is where you want to be holding all the details for it. By pushing all communication back to your website it helps with search engine optimisation (SEO) and will help boost your rankings in online search engine results.

We’re a digital marketing agency in Croydon, if you have any queries let’s chat further. Book a consultation.

Using social media for inbound marketing

Why we love social media in Croydon

09/20/202106/24/2020 by scmarketing

Safe to say that these past three months were not in any business plan or strategy for 2020. But up and down the country what we’ve seen is how communities have come together as we help family, neighbours and our local businesses.

Croydon, like any other part of the UK, has come together to help the local business community. Social media has been prevalent in spreading messages of care, business support and #shoplocal to help get us through.

Maintaining online presence

At the start of lockdown, we continued to talk about the importance of businesses maintaining online presence for continued brand awareness. Social media was the avenue of choice for many businesses. With the ongoing daily changes, it meant the ability to keep clients and prospects informed of updates quickly and in a timely manner.

We’ve seen local hospitality and retail businesses really have to dig deep and adapt. And adapt they did. From bars and pubs full of customers to changing business model overnight to offer a takeaway service. But what social media has allowed is an army of local followers to keep spreading the word that it’s business as usual as can be at this time.

The local community wants these businesses to thrive as we know that society will come out of hibernation like never before.

Social media has helped us to stay connected, engage and spread the word.

Community connected

In a crisis such as this you often see pop-up businesses as quick-thinking entrepreneurs see a gap and they have the necessary skills to adapt and put out an offering in a super speedy fashion. You also see how community social media handles work out how they can serve the community better with creative social initiatives such as that set up by East Croydon Cool with its #Localslovelocally to encourage the community to support local businesses.

It’s this sense of community that makes us love social media in Croydon all the more. The immediacy of sharing our thoughts about latest business ventures, ordering from them, writing reviews, sharing posts about them online has given a sense of being in this together and support for all.

We’re looking forward to after 4 July to revisit the actual premises of hospitality businesses. What we know through our personal social media experience is that those entrepreneurs who may have had a tough time will be back and as with all the local community we will be looking out for them to help with reviews, word of mouth and sharing on social media channels such as Facebook and Instagram.

If you’ve been looking to take your social media marketing to the next level, why not contact our digital marketing agency in Croydon?

As social media consultants, we can chat through the different social media platforms and digital marketing tactics available as you may find that a mix and match approach is best for your business. On an initial call with you, we’ll get to understand your business goals and your target audience so that we can tailor a digital marketing strategy that will generate leads for your business.

We’re a digital marketing and social media agency based in London and Croydon, book a consultation today.

Overview of the different types of Google Ads

12/06/202106/23/2020 by scmarketing

You’ve more than likely heard of Google Adwords and you may be familiar with the term Pay Per Click (PPC) campaign. Well a Google Ad is a type of PPC campaign.

However, there’s a few different types of campaigns that you can actually run from your Google Ads account.

So, here’s a short summary of the types of Google ads you can run as part of an online marketing advertising campaign. There’s a wide choice so you can find the best fit based on your business objectives.

Google Search ads

If you set up a Google Search campaign then this is the type of ad that appears in the Google search results when you type in something that you want to find. In the search engine results pages, you’ll see a few suggestions at the top of your page with a little ‘Ad’ icon beside it which denotes a Google Ad.

What’s good about a Google Ad campaign as this is the most popular search engine and by running ppc ads your business is visible on the first page of the search results.

This is a great way to get brand awareness of your business, a new site or new products and services. Plus, you can add in calls to action to really help drive visitors to your website.

Google Display ads

These type of Google ads can appear across a network of websites. Google says you can reach more than two million sites and apps across the internet using a Google Display ad.

These ads can also help increase awareness and reach to your core audience as you can target specific interests.

Google Video ads

Google video ads are still a form of PPC, meaning that you as the advertiser will only pay if someone decides to watch your video ad.

A video ad can help you reach your target audience at scale by appearing when someone is perhaps researching a product or service. This way a potential customer has the chance to view your video as it appears on YouTube or the network of sites as mentioned in Display ads.

Google Shopping ads

You know the run of ads that appear at the top of search when you Google a product? That’s what these shopping ads are. Another great way to get your product to appear in search and next to other Google text/responsive ads.

This is a great way to raise awareness of your products and boost traffic to your website for purchases.

Google App

According to Google, these ads run in search, play and YouTube. Plus a raft of its network of sites. This campaign is about getting downloads and you just need to add text, how much you will pay for the click of the ad (known as Bid) and then Google optimises it for the best results.

Ad copy

The copy is a key part of the advertising and should stem from your overall content marketing plan. Your text ads should be succinct, to the point and specific to your target audience to really encourage your ads to be clicked.

Make sure that the landing page you choose is specific for your ads. It can take time to set up the ad campaigns so knowing that all the information relevant to your campaign is in the landing page is essential for success. YOur website landing page should also be mobile optimised – so do check that too before you make your ads live.

However, the beauty of Google ads is you can hone your campaign. So, you can tweak copy here and there depending on the CTR (click through rate) or maximum bid you have associated with the ad.

Lead generation with PPC marketing

A PPC marketing campaign such as running a Google Ad (in whichever ad form) is a great lead generation tool. With the sophisticated technology you can really target your audience so you can obtain good quality leads from conducting such a campaign.

So, if you’re looking to increase brand awareness, promote your latest products or want to encourage people to take action, then perhaps a PPC campaign is right for your business.

Pay per click Croydon

We’re a PPC agency in Croydon working with a range of businesses on their digital marketing activity. We can work with you on a standalone PPC campaign or create a mix and match of digital marketing approach depending on what your business goals are.

If you would like your Google Ad Campaigns set up for you, we can do this and then let you continue to run the campaign yourself. Or we can provide this service on a monthly retainer basis. Get in touch and let’s chat further.