content marketing

Laptop with email marketing campaign

9 tips to create email campaigns that convert

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With active email accounts expected to hit 5.6 billion (Source: Statista 2019 via Hubspot), email marketing offers a great inbound marketing option. Here’s our top tips for creating a successful email marketing campaign.

Good quality data

Make sure you have good quality data. Segment your list, clean it and don’t be upset when people unsubscribe. You don’t want to be sending someone emails that they feel are spam. You want to make every email count which means that those left on your subscriber list are relevant. Segmenting a list makes it targeted. Recipients are 75% more likely to click on emails from segmented campaigns than non-segmented campaigns (Source: MailChimp, 2017 via Hubspot)

Be compliant

You must always have an unsubscribe option in your email as well as a link to your privacy policy. If people are not interested, then by making it easy to unsubscribe, you’ve cleared someone from your list that wasn’t going to engage further. Remember, you need to be GDPR compliant, so transparency is important.

Make content snappy

Don’t forget the point of your email. With hundreds or emails received by people daily – what’s the purpose of yours and why should the recipient read it, how will you make yours an effective email? Knowing the key challenges of your target audience will not only help you create content that answers their questions but also will help you to personalise your email.  

Call to action

Make it obvious what you want the recipient to do. Download a case study or report? Answer a short poll? Follow you on social media? Have a link to your blog posts? What the call to action is will vary from the types of email you send out. There are many actions that you can add but make it easy for your reader to know what to do.

Website landing page

Make sure links in your email work and are going to the correct page on your website to avoid bounces. You may need to create a specific landing page or update content to be relevant to your email campaign.  

Images

Make sure your email template is easy to navigate but most of all you have enough pictures or video to make it eye-catching and attractive to look at.

Be mobile responsive

With 46% of emails opened on a mobile, it makes sense to ensure your emails are responsive for all devices.

AvB test

Always test the subject line of your email. Test some of the distribution list initially with a split of subject lines and then with the most successful open rates, send out the remainder using that title.

Analyse your results

Make a note of what works and what doesn’t. Campaign monitoring is important so avoid copying old formats which don’t get clicks, be innovative and creative.

We hope this provides you with the help you need to embark on your email marketing campaign. If you need support on this, then do contact us, a email marketing agency and digital marketing agency in London, and we can chat through your marketing requirements.

Website design and development

Where can I find the best web designer in Croydon?

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Your website is your sales pitch to potential clients. The look and feel of your website are therefore vital to attract the target audience for your business. So, once you’ve ascertained that your website may need a little update, how should you go about finding a web design company in Croydon to help your business stand out in the online world?

Here’s our advice of what web design services you should cover off with your developer so that you can build a great website.  

CMS

Build a bespoke website with a good Content Managed System (CMS). This means that once the website is built and with a little training, you can manage the upload of content yourself.

Easy navigation

Make sure the navigation and menu of your website are easy to read and navigate. Any page of importance should be no more than two clicks – preferably one click – from the homepage.

Using pillar pages will help you structure your site map. The titles of these pillar pages will also be the names of the URL. Really think about these as this is what you want to be found for. So, think carefully about your core offering so you can get this menu right at design stage.

Call to action buttons, strategically placed on pages will really help with engagement and your visitor’s movement around the website. As will white space. Don’t be too cluttered.

Content marketing

Web Design CroydonWhen you embark on creating your website it’s a great time to review your current collateral and what should be on the website and what shouldn’t. It can also highlight gaps that you need to fill. If you look at your competitors – how are they talking about their services? What’s missing from your website?

Optimise your website

Any agency you work with will tell you about Meta Descriptions, Alt Tags and H1/H2 headings. A web designer can provide you with simple training on this once your website has been developed. Or you can engage a digital marketing agency to manage this for you moving forward to improve your search results. This means they can keep an eye on your keywords for you. But this is for another blog. You can read more about Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).

Be visual

Images must not only be relevant, in focus and look good, they must also be optimised for your wordpress website. A developer should be doing this for you when they upload the images. This means they are the right size for the website and will help with the site speed by not being too large. These will also help with viability when sharing on social media such as Facebook and twitter

Research indicates that marketers using video grow revenue 49% faster than non-video users (Source: Wordstream). Video is therefore great for engagement. Placing video toward the top of a page, so that it is seen straight away, has been known to keep visitors on pages longer.

Back up your website

Most CMS provide modules to allow you to back up and to make safe against hackers. Unfortunately, with web robots (automated programs) checking thousands of websites a second for weaknesses to exploit the owner it’s important to do as much as you can to make it safe. Talk through the options with your web developer such as the SSL certificate and captcha forms for your website.

Get your website seen

This is just a short overview. If you’d like to chat about your current website if you’re looking to design and build a new one or generally about design services in Croydon, get in touch today and our website designer and developer can look at the best options for your business and how we would work closely to get the best results for your online presence.

Web Design Croydon

Smart Cow is a top online marketing and web design agency in Croydon that fully understands your requirements and provides user friendly websites and professional web design for accountants and local businesses at affordable prices.

Accountants digital marketing plan

Digital Marketing for accountants in London

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Is your accounting practice looking to attract more quality clients and qualified leads? Digital marketing for accountants is key.

A digital inbound marketing strategy could be the answer to help you reach potential Clients and retain existing ones.

Attract and retain clients

With the top 15 accounting firms in the UK based in London alone, having a search engine marketing strategy in place to help your website stand out is vital to lead generation.

Ultimately you want to generate traffic for potential customers, nurture those leads and then convert to a client. This journey is very rarely a one-stop shop. Your prospects will have done their research, checked out you and your competitions services and read online reviews.

But first things first, to generate traffic you’ll need to take a few steps for your firms website to be found using online marketing.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Through optimisation of your website and a good digital marketing strategy you can help generate traffic and attract good qualified leads from business owners who are interested in your services.

Read our blog post about what SEO agencies should offer London firms to help you review your current website and implement some quick win optimisation tricks.

Content marketing  

As part of your accountant website review, take a look at the content. Is it easy to read, to the point and simple to navigate? Offering tips on accounting services and advice on new regulations helps position you as a thought leader to your client base. With fresh blog content, search engines have new content to find you for and that can easily be shared on social media.

But one review you can make is your use or keywords – are they relevant? For instance are you using such phrases as ‘accountants in London’? This all helps search engines find you and show you in relevant search results.

Pay Per Click

This digital marketing tactic offers a truly targeted way to reach potential prospects.

Pay Per Click campaigns (PPC) mean you can focus on geographical areas, pinpointing areas of London and Greater London as well as choosing demographics to fit your target audience.

Be succinct and to the point in your ad messaging as you only get a limited word count to play with. Test out your messaging too. The beauty of a PPC campaign is you can tailor and continue to tweak ads depending on results. In doing so you can really begin to see a Return on Investment (ROI) with a Google AdWord campaign.

Our blog on tips for setting up and running PPC campaigns will give you more insight to set up a specific campaign.

While a remarketing campaign provides that all important brand awareness as those ads will follow visitors around the web. Understanding how remarketing can grow your business has more helpful tips for you to consider for your accounting firm.

Lead nurturing & automation

Even if you have a good conversion rate, you’ll still need to be managing hundreds of leads through the life cycle. To make this efficient, you may want to consider applying several automation tools. From email campaigns, sequences and workflows, automating repetitive tasks can help free up time.

A good Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution can also pull teams together to work effectively on leads and clients.

Looking for leads?

There’s no doubt that optimising your website will help create stand out and help you be found for your services. However, as you’ve read, there’s a whole host of ideas to consider, and more. So, if you feel you need support in attracting leads to grow your accounting firm, then get in touch with Smart Cow, a digital agency for accountants, and we can look at creating a digital marketing plan specifically for your practice.

Book a Free consultation.

Using social media for inbound marketing

8 social media tips to drive inbound sales

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With an estimated 2.65 billion people using social media around the world (source: Statista), it makes sense to be part of the conversation when marketing your business.

Now, one size does not fit all. So, we’ve gathered a few top tips on what to consider when embarking on improving your social media presence for your inbound marketing strategy.

  1. What social media platforms should you use? There’s no clear answer to this but what’s certain is that one size does not fit all. Review what social networks are right for your business, brand and the client base you want to reach out to. Don’t waste your time speaking to everyone. So, if you’re an accounting firm for small businesses or business owners of local businesses then using social media channels such as LinkedIn and Twitter are ideal for lead generation. But don’t dismiss Facebook. While you may think that it’s all about what you’re eating or doing at the weekend, having presence on this social media channel provides a link to help domain authority but also people use Facebook as a search engine so it means your business will be found.
  2. Who do you want to speak to? It’s important to be targeted. You need to know and understand your audience. Define your audience and create a persona for them, read more about setting this up. This will help you build trust with your audience as they come to understand that you understand their challenges and you are helping them to overcome them.
  3. Content is king: Once you’ve uploaded a blog to your website, share it on social media with a link back to your website. But, don’t just post without thought of what you’re writing. Tailor posts to the social platform, its users and your target audience. Regularly follow industry specific contacts and thought leaders, engage and share posts relevant to your audience. When you share another article, add comments to the post to move the story on or show your appreciation of what an article was about.
  4. Imagery: Content is also about imagery. With people watching nearly 2 billion videos on Twitter per day, it makes sense to include pictures or video to help standout.
  5. Be a thought leader: Provide your product services in the form of tips, advice and comments that your target audience will be interested to hear about and would want to share themselves. But all the time, be genuine and engaging while remaining respectful.
  6. Be chatty yet professional: Get the right tone for the social platform you are using and make sure it’s right for building your brand awareness, your target audience and potential clients.
  7. Remember it’s social: With social media marketing don’t lose sight that this is meant to be a social environment and people are generally not there to be sold to. 
  8. Part of the inbound sales marketing strategy: When it comes to Return on Investment, it may be one of the lowest returns in an inbound digital marketing strategy, but that by no means implies ignore it. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts, therefore incorporating social media into your digital marketing plan means you have added another touch point to reach your audience, engage with them and learn about your offering. This is a vital part of your overall inbound marketing strategy to help build awareness and trust.

Free marketing consultation

If you need help, from a social media agency, with setting up your social media channels or your entire inbound marketing strategy, contact us today for a free consultation. We also work with on social media for accountancy marketing.

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