Anatomy of effective cold direct mail

4 September, 2019/0 Comments/in B2C, Direct Marketing, Lead Generation /by Rebecca Caroe

I love getting really timely direct mail messages that are relevant.

This one came just in time to help me navigate a change to podcast categories.

Let’s analyse the direct message

Hello podcaster,

[Small fail here as they don’t know my name. Implies a purchased list rather than an opted in CRM database.]

In case you missed it, Apple Podcasts have changed how they categorize podcasts. In short, new categories like True Crime have been introduced, old categories have been rebranded and lots of new sub-categories dedicated to sports, comedy, TV and more have been added!

[Opening paragraph – helpful link to contextualise in case I haven’t seen the news. It’s a blog post on their website…. that’s good because it drives traffic and cookies my browser. Nice bold text for likely interesting new categories to draw my eye.]

Unfortunately, some services as SoundCloud don’t support them yet. Spreaker is a platform dedicated to podcasting and we put the podcasters’ needs first.

[Natch! a snipe at a popular competitor. I use SoundCloud for my podcast and so this is relevant to me. Could be a merge field – but not likely. I think they may have targeted me from the SoundCloud platform.]

For this reason

our podcast platform already fully supports the new Apple Podcasts categories so you can improve your show’s discoverability
Spreaker allows you to set three categories – your podcast will rank in more than one category on iTunes at the same time – and fully customize the RSS feed tags
our service enables you to earn money with your podcast thanks to the Spreaker’s Monetization Program.

[Small quibble about supplying 3 reasons and not numbering them… and referring to “this reason” when it should be “these reasons”. However, their nimble coding enabling the new categories quickly is encouraging when considering an alternative hosting platform. Hopefully they keep up the speedy work.]

If you want to start using the new Apple categories and are curious about what Spreaker could do for your podcast – why not give us a try with our FREE, no strings attached, month-long trial.

All you need to do is click this special code: GETAPPLECATEGORIES

[Simple offer, clear time limit and a coupon code so they can identify subscribers from this campaign.]

If you need instructions to move your podcast over to Spreaker, you can follow this guide.

[More useful user guides to smooth a transition.]

We hope to see you on Spreaker sometime soon!

Template your own message

Follow the same paragraph structure when approaching your own prospects and try this for yourself.

Read more of our articles on copywriting and learn tips for your own marketing.

5 Essential elements of SMS marketing

1 September, 2019/0 Comments/in SMS Marketing /by Sudip Mutt

As a business owner, you’re always looking for ways to boost your sales, enhance customer relationships, and stand out from your competition. This is why you should engage your customers through SMS marketing.

If you use it the right way, it can be your most powerful marketing tool. It’s an indisputable fact that many people are now hooked to their devices and are spending more time on them. You can exploit this and connect with your audience at a more personal level.

So, how do you use SMS marketing in the best way possible? Here are five essential elements that have been tried and tested for all businesses.

1. Valuable Message

This is one of the core pillars of SMS marketing. Before sending text messages to your audience, you should sit down and seriously consider what you’re offering your customers.

Before sending an SMS campaign, always ask yourself whether the message offers any value for your audience. If your answer is ‘No’ or ‘Not Sure,’ then you should reconsider the campaign or have a brainstorming session with your team to come up with a message that’ll have your audience see your campaign through your eyes.

Always put yourself in your readers’ shoes. Ask if you’d like to receive the kind of message you’re sending. Nobody wants to feel their precious time is getting wasted by reading a message with no value.

When it comes to SMS marketing, the trick is to center the message around your customer. Your texts should address your customers, their problems, and the solutions you’re offering to make their lives easier. Make the value in the message captivating and timely. Doing so will boost your response rate.

2.Call-To-Action

Call-to-action can be described as a marketing phrase that prompts a specific action or sale. A call-to-action gives your audience a direction on what next to do. It’s also meant to keep them going.

As small as it may appear to be, a call-to-action plays a huge role in the success of your SMS marketing campaign. This is because, with SMS, you don’t have a lot of space to convince your clients to take action. When you give your audience a direction on what to do next, you eliminate the possibility of indecisiveness.

A good call-to-action is clear and straightforward. Remember, it should give your readers the direction to take. The most common call-to-action phrases include:

Buy
Subscribe
Call
Contact
Start
Click

Your call-to-action can come at any place within your message. Either way, make sure your readers understand what benefit they’ll enjoy by clicking the link.

3.Sense of Urgency

When sending your SMS marketing campaign, you don’t want your readers to vow to reply or take action later, then end up forgetting. You should motivate them to act there and then. The most common way to do this is by including a limited offer.

You don’t really have to shout to show it’s urgent. Simply create a sense of urgency in your readers such that they have a ‘fear of missing out.’ One way of doing this is to have an expiration date for your offer or service for a limited number of subscribers who act first.

Phrases that can show urgency to your audience include, ‘now,’ ‘fast,’ or ‘quickly.’ For example, ‘Act now as this offer runs until today midnight’ or ‘This offer is only limited to the first 20 subscribers.’

What most people don’t understand is that this strategy also brings in social proof. It shows your readers that your products and services are already on demand.

4.Brand Identity

No one wants to receive a message without knowing who the sender is. This is why your audience needs to know who’s sending the text. Your entire SMS marketing campaign will be meaningless, regardless of how amazing your offers are, if you fail to identify yourself.

Proper identification is not only necessary but also a requirement by law. Some countries require that you either identify yourself through a sender ID or within the message. To take it a notch higher, include your site’s link in the text.

You should prioritize including your brand name in all your messages. Brand identity also helps build a relationship with your customers. Besides, your brand will stay at the top of your client’s minds.

5.Measure Results

Your SMS marketing campaign should be measurable. You should be able to track how many messages you sent, to whom they were delivered, the number of responses received, and who unsubscribed. You can also go into the details such as how many promotions were redeemed. These details enable you to measure the success of your SMS marketing campaign.

After each campaign, make sure you see and carefully analyze such data. By using data on sales from your SMS marketing campaign and customer traffic, you can come up with a strategy for an enhanced campaign in the future.

Key Takeaways

SMS marketing can be the most significant marketing tool for your business. To maximize it, make sure your messages offer value to your customers. Also, include a call-to-action and a sense of urgency to increase the click rate. Remember, your marketing campaign would be pointless if you omit your brand name.

Podcast marketing

14 August, 2019/0 Comments/in Marketing, Podcast /by Rebecca Caroe

What are the key essentials for promoting and marketing a podcast to grow listeners so you can improve monetisation? This article runs through some of the fundamentals and also asks some important questions so you can find out if a podcast is the right marketing tactic for your brand.

Brand suitability for podcast marketing

Here are some simple questions for you to review before deciding to start a podcast.

Microphone for podcast: Photo credit Neil Godding on Unsplash

Who is the target audience?
Are they are already listening to podcasts?
What does your brand want to get out of the podcast (leads, brand awareness, thought leadership etc)
Which channels to market do you already use?
What headcount / analytics are in each of the existing channels?
What will success look like?

These are all questions worthy of a full day workshop. Now, assuming you have robust answers to each of them, let’s dig into the tactics suitable for marketing a podcast.

Podcast marketing tactics

Cross-promote through all existing channels controlled by the brand
Select guests who have a large audience on the understanding they will cross-promote
Add listeners by adding podcast into existing marketing tactics e.g. record a live episode at a trade show / a conference stage
Get other podcasters to do a mutual episode with each broadcasting the same episode to their feeds
Record in video and audio so you can use YouTube as a distribution channel
Advertise
Use clips and short video as content for social sharing
Run campaigns which include the podcast e.g. contests where you have to listen to find out how to enter
Use the podcast shownotes on your website and blog as SEO

Plus take a look at all the Quora questions I’ve answered and articles I’ve written about podcasting.

Customer Reviews – a reality check

5 August, 2019/0 Comments/in B2C, Digital media, Lead Generation, Marketing ideas /by Rebecca Caroe

The New Zealand Commerce Commission is investigating online retailers who they claim have manipulated customer reviews and testimonials in

“…conduct that was liable to mislead consumers by creating artificially positive impressions…”
NZ Commerce Commission website

What actions constitute “misleading consumers”?

Is Guest Posting Dead?

1 August, 2019/0 Comments/in Blogging, Digital media, Direct Marketing, Local Marketing, Marketing, Social Media /by Sudip Mutt

In 2014, Matt Cutts, former head of the Web Spam team at Google, wrote the following:

“Okay, I’m calling it: if you’re using guest blogging as a way to gain links in 2014, you should probably stop.”

Ever since the state of guest blogging has been debated heatedly. Indeed, guest blogs with low-quality content have truly been dead for decades.

On the other hand, high-quality blogging is an effective strategy to create backlinks, and drive traffic to your website. Even Cutts eventually published a correction, and said: “There are still many good reasons to do some guest blogging (exposure, branding, increased reach, community, etc.)”

So, the question is, how can we create quality guest blogs every time?

Here, we have outlined three easy and effective strategies to create guest posts that are sure to attract links, and bring in traffic:

The Robin Hood Technique

The Robin Hood technique, as suggested by SEO Gold Coast, is a quick and effective way to write guest posts with good quality content. This technique involves recreating great content from popular blogs and offering them to platforms with a low ranking, and less credibility and traffic.

Keep in mind, however, that this does not mean plagiarizing the content – instead, you must only take inspiration from the blog to recreate ideas for your own post.

The following steps can be undertaken for this technique:

Ahref’s Content Explorer Tool contains one billion pages and can be used to find blogs you can write a guest post for

Source: ahrefs

Enter a keyword corresponding to your chosen topic to find similar articles
Check the “one article per domain” box to find unique blogs related to your keyword
Sort the results according to Language, Shares, Domain Rating, Organic Traffic, and Number of Words to truly find a customized blog post idea

Note the importance of Domain Rating (DR) that showcases the popularity level of a backlink, based on a scale of 1-100.

While it is tempting to only work with high DR blogs, low DR blogs are also worth investing your time and energy in, as they usually have a niche following and are bound to grow.

What’s more, low DR blogs usually receive fewer pitches and have less strict editorial standards – thereby making it easier to get featured or published.

Finally, you can move on to step 4:

4. Read the content of your chosen blog piece, and recreate it by adding a unique spin to it – conclude by pitching it to low or high DR blogs through email outreach

Splintering Content

Another effective way of guest posting is by splintering or breaking existing blogs into shorter, but authoritative posts.

The point of splintering content is to dive deep into a topic that you have already researched before, as it is easier to recreate, revise, or rewrite.

After writing detailed individual posts, you can then pitch the pieces to online magazines and platforms that would publish it as guest posts, whilst still re-directing the reader to your original blog post – thereby creating quality backlinks.

The Perspective Technique

A small change in perspective can lead to a completely new, and unique piece of writing.

The trick here is to use a previously written blog post and turn it into multiple guest posts by simply tweaking your overall perspective.

For instance, if your previous blog post was on the “The Future of Link Building” – you can now write on a variety of topics by changing your viewpoint, such as:

Future of link building for small business
Future of link building for E-commerce
Future of link building for startups, and so on

Effective Guest Posting

The techniques outlined here are a good way to get you started. Keep in mind, however, that once you start pitching your guest posts, you may be faced with some problems.

For instance, editors and bloggers may routinely reject your pitch, negotiations may take months, or the link to your article may be taken down suddenly and without prior notice.

To address this concern here is what you can do:

Focus on creating good quality content for your blogs
Pitch to multiple blogs at the same time
Include links to your other guest posts to generate more traffic
Keep exploring and writing for new platforms and sites

In short, by following the techniques outlined above, you can defy Matt Cutt’s claim that guest posts are dead. Indeed, guest posts are thriving and can be used to generate traffic and brand awareness for your business in the long run.

How to Successfully Market Your Website

25 July, 2019/0 Comments/in Branding, Content Marketing, Digital media, Marketing, Marketing ideas /by Sudip Mutt

Digital marketing is very finicky. You are not just contending with customers; you have impartial algorithms to contest with, the attention market, your competitors, technological glitches, and so much more. Knowing how to successfully market your website means more than simply knowing the basics. Yes, email newsletters help. Yes, social media marketing is an option. Knowing how to successfully implement these tactics is the real challenge, and to help you overcome the common hurdles of these marketing hurdles we have put together a great beginner’s list to guide you:

Improve the Quality of Your Website

The first step to successfully marketing your website is to improve your website. All marketing efforts will be wasted if you do not improve it. Consider this – if you have a treasure map, and went through the effort of following it, how would you feel if you turned up to an empty field or a busted down house? Your customers follow a similar path to your website. Sometimes it is direct, other times it takes several attempts to get them to your site, but if your site is not worthwhile, they will leave immediately.

Example: A Slow Website

If your website is slow, then all the marketing efforts in the world will be a waste of money. That is why one of the first steps you should take is to switch to Krystal, which offers 300% faster speeds than most other competitors.

Improve Your Social Media Approach

To improve your social media approach, you need to understand how each platform works. Optimizing a post is standard practice, but you will want to go beyond and see how your competitors have succeeded or failed. Once you have that information, work on creating an account that provides users with the experience they are looking for in a company such as yours.

Example: A Technical Social Media Account

Take a company that offers technical service, like computer repairs. How can you possibly market such a company on a social media site like Instagram? What if you were an accountant?

The answer is to provide information. Create simple yet well-designed text posts. Be unique with your photography – a computer repair company has plenty of interesting textures you could photograph, for example. Try to be a source of information so that people follow you to get tips and tricks daily. Collaboration and PR is one of the best ways to market your company, as it gets your name out there and brings in high-quality inbound links.

Example: Collaborating With Another Business

To collaborate with another business, you will want to first see if there are any opportunities in your business model. If you sell high-quality phone cases, for example, partner with local artists that have a healthy, dedicated, and real community of their own. They create phone case designs for you, you give them a healthy chunk of the profits (after costs), and in turn, their fans know about you, buy from you, and then go on and advertise your product to their friends and family.

There are so many ways you can improve your marketing efforts, and hopefully, with these examples, you have a more concrete idea of how you can grow your community and reach.

Apple Podcast analytics beta

17 July, 2019/0 Comments/in Data, Metrics, Podcast /by Rebecca Caroe

Apple has launched a beta service to analyse listenership of your podcast episodes on Apple devices and via Apple services.

I took a quick look – log in to iTunes Connect and select the drop-down next to the header. [Note the URL – since podcasts are being split off from iTunes, it’s now got its own URL podcastsconnect.apple.com]

The service obviously only works on Apple devices and so this will in all likelihood be a small segment of your audience. But the data has all the normal data points [#devices, #total time listened, time listened per device] defaulting to a past 60 days view.

The most interesting data point for me is the percentage “Average Consumption” measure defined as

The average percentage of the episode that was played across all devices. Playback duration is compared against the episode duration as reported in the podcast feed. If a device plays the duration time of an episode more than once, the consumption from that device will be greater than 100%
Apple podcast analytics beta

Trends, episodes and overview

Neatly summarising most of what you’ll want to see – the Apple Podcasts Analytics beta has a nice dashboard showing Total time listened, a country analysis and split of subscribers and ‘not subscribed’. This is neat as I’ve always wondered about the proportion of my listeners who are not subscribers but do listen.

Partial audience analysis

In the analytics help documentation I noted the following:

Podcast Analytics begins gathering data as soon as users play content in the Podcasts app (iOS 11 or later), in iTunes 12.7 or later (macOS and Windows), or on HomePod. [NOTE only recent app versions]
Apple only displays data from users who agreed to share their diagnostics and usage information with providers. [NOTE Reduces total audience size]
To collect data, the duration of a play event must be at least five seconds. [NOTE fair enough]
To display data, more than five unique devices must play the show or episode content. [NOTE fair enough]

Final thoughts

Get on to Apple and take a look at your stats. Compare it to other analytics services [I use Podtrac] and compare the data points and your absolute numbers.

My Apple numbers and Podtrac numbers are not directly comparable as one is included in the other. But for me the average consumption metric is pretty neat and will be something I add in my media pack for advertisers.

The images below show the respective analytics for 7 recent episodes.

Podcast RSS automatic update

15 July, 2019/0 Comments/in Podcast /by Rebecca Caroe

The RSS feed helps people subscribing using a podcast app (like Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Casts etc) to receive your episodes.

Each time you upload a new episode, the RSS feed updates the app.

Then the listener downloads a local copy of your episode to listen to.

So you don’t need to do anything else.

NOTE: I always subscribe to my own podcasts so I can check the feed is working. I had a client recently whose feed stopped working and I logged into Apple Podcasts Connect [https://podcastsconnect.apple.com/] and you have the option to refresh the feed manually.

This “force refresh” re-started the downloads for my client.

How to refresh the RSS feed in Apple Podcasts

Another Podcast launched

19 June, 2019/0 Comments/in B2C, Case Studies, Podcast, Social Media /by Rebecca Caroe

Today we announce the Economy Watch podcast by Interest.co.nz has launched. It’s a daily summary of the key overnight news that affects the New Zealand economy.

Short podcasts for news

In scoping the content and audience for this podcast, we decided that a short format podcast was a good choice. Listeners are on their way into work and can catch a 6-10 minute update quickly during their commute to work.

Authored by David Chaston, Editor and voiced by me (Rebecca Caroe), we are really pleased with the early listener feedback.

Please go and listen and tell me what you think. Appreciate it!

Tongue twister podcasting

Now here are the things I’ve found hard to say coherently in the episodes so far. See if you can spot them in the audio

German government bonds sold at a record low yield overnight. They sold 10-year Bunds [bund / bond]
India imposed higher retaliatory tariffs [why was retaliatory so hard?]
China’s Central government coffers [coffers was the issue here]
at the Japanese-hosted G20 summit [not sure why I can’t say summit]