Jul 29
With the rise in popularity of social media and its use for marketing, there has been some debate about whether email is dying in the face of social media. In fact, Ben & Jerry’s recently decided to drop email marketing in favor of social media in the UK.
Just because social media may be a new addition to your marketing mix doesn’t mean email marketing should be eliminated. In fact, social media can help to enhance your email marketing efforts.
Luckily, it looks as though marketers are starting to figure this out. As reported by eMarketer today, in an April 2010 survey by email marketing agency, eROI, two-thirds of US marketers are now integrating social media into their email marketing campaigns. In addition, email marketing and social media marketing solution provider, StrongMail indicated that the percentage of marketers who had integrated social and email (or planned to this year) is 71% worldwide, based on June 2010 research.
Other Key Research Findings:
- 71% of business executives surveyed worldwide indicated they were promoting their Twitter, Facebook or other social media presence in their email marketing messages (Source: StrongMail research).
- 63% of those surveyed said they were enabling email recipients to share email content with their social networks (Source: StrongMail research). In eROI’s April research earlier this year, the survey revealed a slightly smaller proportion of US marketers — 59.1% — using “share with your network” buttons.
- When surveyed about the types of social media tools integrated in email marketing, 91% of marketers incorporating social media into email marketing used Facebook in their campaigns, followed by Twitter at 83.9% and LinkedIn at 48% (Source: eROI research).
Marketers: Use Social Media to Complement Email Marketing
As a marketer, you shouldn’t undermine the importance of email marketing — email is an effective lead generation tool. If you’re still not convinced, read this great guest post we published about why email is so important.
Instead of dropping email for social media, use social media as a way to complement your email marketing efforts. Without social media, the limit of your email marketing campaigns depends on the size of your email list. When you incorporate social media into your emails, you’re essentially expanding the potential reach of your email campaigns beyond that list. By adding social media, you’re enabling email recipients to share and spread your content to people who aren’t on your email list. How great is that?
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HubSpot has compiled over 50 original marketing charts and graphs on topics including Lead Generation, Blogging and Social Media, Marketing Budgets, Twitter and Facebook
Download the ebook now! to have access to these charts for use in your own presentations
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Connect with HubSpot:
Jul 29
With the rise in popularity of social media and its use for marketing, there has been some debate about whether email is dying in the face of social media. In fact, Ben & Jerry’s recently decided to drop email marketing in favor of social media in the UK.
Just because social media may be a new addition to your marketing mix doesn’t mean email marketing should be eliminated. In fact, social media can help to enhance your email marketing efforts.
Luckily, it looks as though marketers are starting to figure this out. As reported by eMarketer today, in an April 2010 survey by email marketing agency, eROI, two-thirds of US marketers are now integrating social media into their email marketing campaigns. In addition, email marketing and social media marketing solution provider, StrongMail indicated that the percentage of marketers who had integrated social and email (or planned to this year) is 71% worldwide, based on June 2010 research.
Other Key Research Findings:
- 71% of business executives surveyed worldwide indicated they were promoting their Twitter, Facebook or other social media presence in their email marketing messages (Source: StrongMail research).
- 63% of those surveyed said they were enabling email recipients to share email content with their social networks (Source: StrongMail research). In eROI’s April research earlier this year, the survey revealed a slightly smaller proportion of US marketers — 59.1% — using “share with your network” buttons.
- When surveyed about the types of social media tools integrated in email marketing, 91% of marketers incorporating social media into email marketing used Facebook in their campaigns, followed by Twitter at 83.9% and LinkedIn at 48% (Source: eROI research).
Marketers: Use Social Media to Complement Email Marketing
As a marketer, you shouldn’t undermine the importance of email marketing — email is an effective lead generation tool. If you’re still not convinced, read this great guest post we published about why email is so important.
Instead of dropping email for social media, use social media as a way to complement your email marketing efforts. Without social media, the limit of your email marketing campaigns depends on the size of your email list. When you incorporate social media into your emails, you’re essentially expanding the potential reach of your email campaigns beyond that list. By adding social media, you’re enabling email recipients to share and spread your content to people who aren’t on your email list. How great is that?
|
|
HubSpot has compiled over 50 original marketing charts and graphs on topics including Lead Generation, Blogging and Social Media, Marketing Budgets, Twitter and Facebook
Download the ebook now! to have access to these charts for use in your own presentations
|
Connect with HubSpot:
Jul 29
The following is a guest post by Peter Rastello, the founder of Inbound Market Link, an Inbound Marketing agency specializing in helping small and medium, B2B and B2C businesses to succeed on the internet.
If you are a marketing professional in charge of your small/medium sized business’ (SMB) Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Inbound marketing, you are not alone. According to Marketing Sherpa, SMBs spend roughly 20% more on staff salaries to handle SEO & internet marketing than do large sized businesses who tend to out-source this activity. For this reason, it is critical that SMB marketers focus carefully. Here are the abbreviated 10 steps to effective marketing online:
- The Importance of Google – with approximately 80% of all searches being conducted via Google, it is critical to primarily focus SEO effort on this search engine. Yahoo and Bing, are less important but still an important part of search engine marketing.
- Keyword Selection – Pick keywords that are relevant to your business but also fairly easy to rank for. Look for multi-word phrases or ‘long-tail keywords’ as they are usually less competitive
- Content is King - Prospects are more likely to buy from you if you are a thought leader, so establish yourself as one by creating extraordinarily helpful content. Take decisive action to ensure prospective customers are attracted to your site as a place to find answers.
- Generosity is Also King – Another key part to attracting customers is your generosity in giving away information, access to tools, etc., which also earns you inbound links which improves your search engine rankings.
- Social Media – Focus on the top three social media venues: Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Remember, ‘be real’ and ‘be there’ to help the community rather than to push products.
- Calls-to-Action – It’s important to provide something of value that solves a problem for visitors in exchange for their contact information. Often traffic will not be ready to buy right away, but a tempting call to action will lead them down the sales funnel.
- Landing Pages - Everything that has been done to draw qualified traffic to a site, from improving SEO, to generating great content comes to a head in the landing page. Leads should be confronted with an inescapable case for them to leave their carefully guarded personal information on the form. Having one offer, recapping benefits, and a short form are all key.
- Lead Nurturing – follow up calls to action with a ‘thank you’ email and a lead nurturing campaign that further entices leads down the sales funnel with additional free offerings– this is a free opportunity to keep touch with a lead.
- Tracking Progress – Effective Inbound Marketing is all about experimentation. Select a strategy based on experience with customers and industry to get people to both visit and convert on the website. But anticipate that initial assumptions about keywords, or what it takes to get traffic to convert will not be right (or not right enough) and changes will need to be made. For this reason, it is essential to have a complete internet analysis tool-suite to help figure out what’s working and what’s not.
- Patience & Tenacity – It’s easy to become discouraged and frustrated if Inbound Marketing is approached as a point solution. In reality, it’s a long term strategy only rewarding those who approach it with patience and tenacity
This was a condensed version of the full white paper, The Ten Essential Steps to Effective Marketing Online which you are invited to download for free.
(image by: ExtraNoise)
Free Download: 2010 Online Marketing Blueprint
Connect with HubSpot:
Jul 29
The following is a guest post by Peter Rastello, the founder of Inbound Market Link, an Inbound Marketing agency specializing in helping small and medium, B2B and B2C businesses to succeed on the internet.
If you are a marketing professional in charge of your small/medium sized business’ (SMB) Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Inbound marketing, you are not alone. According to Marketing Sherpa, SMBs spend roughly 20% more on staff salaries to handle SEO & internet marketing than do large sized businesses who tend to out-source this activity. For this reason, it is critical that SMB marketers focus carefully. Here are the abbreviated 10 steps to effective marketing online:
- The Importance of Google – with approximately 80% of all searches being conducted via Google, it is critical to primarily focus SEO effort on this search engine. Yahoo and Bing, are less important but still an important part of search engine marketing.
- Keyword Selection – Pick keywords that are relevant to your business but also fairly easy to rank for. Look for multi-word phrases or ‘long-tail keywords’ as they are usually less competitive
- Content is King - Prospects are more likely to buy from you if you are a thought leader, so establish yourself as one by creating extraordinarily helpful content. Take decisive action to ensure prospective customers are attracted to your site as a place to find answers.
- Generosity is Also King – Another key part to attracting customers is your generosity in giving away information, access to tools, etc., which also earns you inbound links which improves your search engine rankings.
- Social Media – Focus on the top three social media venues: Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Remember, ‘be real’ and ‘be there’ to help the community rather than to push products.
- Calls-to-Action – It’s important to provide something of value that solves a problem for visitors in exchange for their contact information. Often traffic will not be ready to buy right away, but a tempting call to action will lead them down the sales funnel.
- Landing Pages - Everything that has been done to draw qualified traffic to a site, from improving SEO, to generating great content comes to a head in the landing page. Leads should be confronted with an inescapable case for them to leave their carefully guarded personal information on the form. Having one offer, recapping benefits, and a short form are all key.
- Lead Nurturing – follow up calls to action with a ‘thank you’ email and a lead nurturing campaign that further entices leads down the sales funnel with additional free offerings– this is a free opportunity to keep touch with a lead.
- Tracking Progress – Effective Inbound Marketing is all about experimentation. Select a strategy based on experience with customers and industry to get people to both visit and convert on the website. But anticipate that initial assumptions about keywords, or what it takes to get traffic to convert will not be right (or not right enough) and changes will need to be made. For this reason, it is essential to have a complete internet analysis tool-suite to help figure out what’s working and what’s not.
- Patience & Tenacity – It’s easy to become discouraged and frustrated if Inbound Marketing is approached as a point solution. In reality, it’s a long term strategy only rewarding those who approach it with patience and tenacity
This was a condensed version of the full white paper, The Ten Essential Steps to Effective Marketing Online which you are invited to download for free.
(image by: ExtraNoise)
Free Download: 2010 Online Marketing Blueprint
Connect with HubSpot:
Jul 28
Facebook recently passed 500 million users and now is adding an important new feature to its platform. Today, the social networking platform released Facebook Questions. This new feature allows users to ask questions to the “entire” Facebook community. As companies like Yahoo and LinkedIn have used a Questions feature for years, this is not an unprecedented addition, but it highlights the possibility for individuals to communicate in a new way with people outside of their direct Facebook network.
According to Mashable, Facebook Questions will allow users to do a few things:
- Photo questions: Users can post pictures of objects that they have questions about or have problems identifying and then can receive answers from other users.
- Simple Polling: This is a big one for marketers. Now that a Facebook user can quickly create a poll to answer a question, the amount of available data to mine for industry and business insight will increase.
- Tagging: Tagging is the method Facebook uses for organizing questions. The point of tagging is to allow users to easily discover new questions and answer the ones relevant to them.
- Following: Users who want to keep track of certain answers can “follow” a question to see responses as they get added.
Facebook Questions is public and will be open to everyone. The feature is currently in beta and only available to a portion of Facebook users prior to its release to all users. Brands that have Facebook pages will be allowed to answer questions.
Marketing Takeaway
Today, Facebook made its platform more valuable to marketers. Marketing on Facebook has been challenging because of privacy and a clear separation of profile and business pages. Facebook Questions provides a new way for businesses and prospects to communicate and discover one another in a relevant way. LinkedIn Questions has long been a valuable tool for B2B marketers and it is likely that Facebook will be used in similar ways but on a larger scale.
As a marketer, it is critical you understand that Facebook Questions or any other questions platform is not a place for advertisement. Instead, this new feature provides an environment for contributing value and relevance to potential customers and establishing trust between them and your business. As people start using this feature, look for questions and tags relevant to your business and provide answers to questions that you have the experience and expertise to answer.
Do you plan on adding Facebook Questions into you social media marketing plan?
Free Download: 2010 Facebook Marketing Guide
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