Raz is CMO of Orange Sky CMOs in Sydney, Australia. We caught up recently and got his insights into the latest in email newsletters for business marketing.
Raz Chorev
You’ve been doing email newsletters for years. How frequently do you change something major e.g. layout, frequency, type of article?
Every couple of years: content, structure and design.
When you assess the analytics on a newsletter, what are the top 3 metrics you use?
Open rate, engagement rate, and unsubscribes. This keeps me focused on people opening the email, reading / engaging with it, and not getting pissed off or bored with it.
Do you have a view on whether B2B brands should re-use blog content in newsletters?
Content can be repurposed, based on the audience. not the sender. You can use blog posts, videos, images, tweets, quotes – anything to engage your audience and add value to them as they read.
What’s one tip for the future in newsletters?
Talk to your audience, like as a person, like in a conversation. See what I’ve just done here? Don’t talk AT them. Try talking WITH them – and they’ll respond.
What’s your favourite AdTech for newsletters?
I’m not fussed either way. they are all pretty similar. it’s your content which is the most important, not one fancy feature over another.
Connect with Raz via LinkedIn or Orange Sky outsourced CMOs.
A robust, scalable business is always based on strong processes. And if you are in the business of offering a Software as a Service (SaaS) product, you will doubtless have a recurring revenue model.
Our business debit card expires tomorrow and so I’ve been in the throes of receiving alerts, notifications and emails from a range of providers asking me to update my card details so they do not lose their revenues. The experiences were very varied from the best, smoothest, least painful to the worst where I had to raise a support ticket.
Given SaaS firms risk losing revenue from non-renewals, this is a critical business process.
Here’s what we found
The earliest “nag” emails came from Hootsuite, Unbounce, Xero and MailChimp. They were sending them 30 days prior to expiry.
The laggards include Upwork, Skype, FeedBlitz, Teamwork and LinkedIn (from 10 to 5 days in advance),
The “best” process just allows me to update the expiry date on the card (PayPal) without having to re-enter all the other information
The “worst” don’t send me a link into the EXACT page on my account where I can update my details after logging in. Skype was particularly irritating with a hideous UX on their mobile browser. They leave me failing to find the right billing page detail and resorting to search / help / customer tickets.
The Very Very Worst was Teamwork where they successfully hide the link in an upgrade screen which is not where I’d look to find my payment information (see below)
Hard to find link for payment information on Teamwork.com
Mystery shopping
Any customer process needs testing and constant monitoring to keep it relevant and improved. Clues which may indicate you have this problem can be found:
Check the exit pages on your website
Check the long dwell time pages (that you don’t expect)
Check the customer service enquiries
Check the Searches on your website
When did you last mystery shop your business?
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https://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Teamwork-upgrade.png11262516Rebecca Caroehttps://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CAS_Logo_1line_RGB.jpgRebecca Caroe2017-10-30 16:14:062022-12-19 11:57:27SaaS renewals that are easy for customers
Creative Agency Secrets provides digital marketing services for brands and businesses. We are a leading agency innovating with new marketing techniques like SEO, community building, direct response and advanced blogging.
When working with us, you will learn how to run and manage digital platforms such as a website, e-commerce shop, blog as well as learn the ins and outs of email marketing, database management, and social media marketing.
If you want to get a career in marketing but haven’t found yourself a job – this will get you your first position on your CV and some solid experience.
Being a digital native on the internet is essential, so a Marketing, Communications or Business Studies degree would be considered favourably. No prior knowledge of websites, blogs or online marketing is needed – full training is provided.
Send your CV and Cover Letter to Conrado along with one page describing an event you ran (party, event, gig, etc), outlining what you did to market and promote it, the tools and techniques you used, what worked and what didn’t work and the outcomes.
This job is a 4-week unpaid internship. The start dates and hours are negotiable, and can be suited around your studies. If there is work available for the best candidate after 4 weeks, you may be offered part-time work at $20 per hour.
Applicants for this position should have NZ residency or a valid NZ work visa.
We pitched a client – we didn’t win. And so I decided to show you all how we assessed their website in scoping out the work that is needed to improve the search engine optimisation for this company.
They offer a local service and have two principal products.
Find out how your current site performs. Both give you a score out of 100. Easy to see your score.
This site scores 53 out of 100. Definitely in the could-do-better group.
Summary areas for improvement
Both the named services should be in your meta description
The Headings structure needs adjusting so it includes H1 as well as H3 (currently all 4 are H2 which is not good)
Change the SSL certificate from BlueHost to your own business name
Incoming links are low – so we’d recommend getting local directory listings to improve this (there are 36 free ones)
You should be on Google My Business as well because that will enable Reviews and a location pin to appear when people search
Improve website messaging
I think there’s some other places where a bit of clearer marketing communication could help
Strapline. The name of the business does not describe what you do [I also provide sensational services – but of a different type]
Pearl Waterless is a strong point of difference for one of the services – but you don’t EXPLAIN it.
Plus it’s a “Green” product and you could be selling the environmental benefits.
One service page does not have any heading titles, it doesn’t have any testimonials and it doesn’t explain that you offer a mobile service
The other service page has a gigantic photo and doesn’t explain the service in detail compared to the other service page. They should be similar – consistency matters.
You have a Facebook page but there’s no link to it on the site. 42 people have shared your website onto Facebook – but you aren’t tracking links like this.
Have you got any customer testimonials?
Have you got any photos of your ACTUAL Team doing the work?
Any funny stories to tell about your jobs? What about the Facebook photos you share – the team celebration – could these go on a blog on the website too?
Why would you change?
What’s important here is that the website owner sees a rapid return on investment for his marketing spend.
The areas where I believe we can show a quick ROI are the services descriptors and aligning them to search phrases, pulling out the points of difference. And then making it super-easy for the site visitor to get in touch by phone. That rapidly increases enquiries, the business owner feels his spend is justified. Later we can get more sophisticated.
And so if you would like us to improve the SEO and re-write some of the pages, go to our shop and buy our SEO Starter Pack and then come into the office and we’ll prioritise, get started and tick off all these things for you.
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https://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/hubspot.png274949Rebecca Caroehttps://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CAS_Logo_1line_RGB.jpgRebecca Caroe2017-10-11 16:51:212020-01-24 01:45:01We Review a Service Business Website
Here is how I would re-write the email in order to prevent others doing what I did. [Aside: surely I’m not the most stupid customer Kiwibank has…please, humour me!]
Dear Rebecca
You have a Notice Saver bank account with Kiwibank. The interest payments for this account come from our PIE Unit Trust. The money you save in your account is invested in the fund and profits are paid back to you in the form of interest.
As an investor in this fund, we are obliged to share its recent financial performance with you. You can view an electronic copy of the financial statements for the year ended 30th June 2017 on our website via this link.
[insert rest of the statutory text here].
Lots of love, Mark Wilkshire, Kiwibank
Why is this clearer?
I think this text improves the context for receiving the message. It explains an investment I didn’t know I had and how the investment performance is relevant to my personal situation (bank interest).
Personally, I wouldn’t try to push out messages about other investments in this message. Make it simply about this one thing, and how to contact us.
The full truth about what I did on Kiwibank
And, I would anticipate possible confusion among customers by enabling self-help tools on the website to be advance programmed to have answers to questions relating to this investment.
My “Kiwibot” experience below reveals more about the lack of customer orientation and more about the regulatory communication box-ticking which probably sits behind this email misunderstanding.
Kiwibank Bot does not answer questions
Why the HELL NOT?
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https://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CAS_Logo_1line_RGB.jpg00Rebecca Caroehttps://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CAS_Logo_1line_RGB.jpgRebecca Caroe2017-10-11 10:00:002017-10-11 17:21:59Kiwibank, this is how I'd re-write your email
Attracting traffic to a website can be a big challenge, even for the most experienced professionals.
However, more than just herding the masses to your digital spot in the world, it is essential to understand what they’re doing when they’re there. And what they’re NOT doing as well.
One of the most important indicators in your Google Analytics report is the Average Session Duration. If your visitors are abandoning your website without spending a decent amount of time checking it out, chances are something is not working as it should.
This could be happening for one or more reasons. Investigating the causes through experiments is critical to understanding your public. There is no absolute truth in marketing, and everything can be tweaked to perform even better.
Keeping user experience in mind is essential in times of task overload
We developed the habit of going straight to the answer to our questions by “scanning” text or searching for terms with a “ctrl+F” command. The number of shares, the size of the fonts, a user-friendly layout; there are many key elements that will determine if you are hanging around or running away from a website.
Unconsciously, we are always measuring the effort required to consume content
Remember that time you looked for a dinner recipe on YouTube and decided to watch a video that’s 5 minutes instead of another one that was 12-minutes long? Why did you do that?
Video and audio have a fundamental decision factor displaying right in your face: the time it takes to watch/listen. In the end, because we’re always busy, we do everything possible to avoid wasting time.
Overcome your visitor’s objections
As you probably know, there’s a massive amount of written content online. According to WordPress, around 80 million posts are published every month using their platform. Take the Creative Agency Secrets’ website as an example: organic search is responsible for 80% of our traffic and the overwhelming majority lands first on one of our blog posts. But we are not the only ones. More companies are using this as a strategy to bring traffic every day.
With so many options out there, your audience has to feel assured that the time invested in reading your content is worth it. One of the visual tricks we use is subtle but powerful: we tell people how long it’ll take them to read our posts. Moreover, a little coloured bar on the top of the screen shows the progress of your reading while you scroll down the page.
Showing the estimated time needed to read an article might calm down the reader’s anxiety. It increases the likelihood of the visitors to finish reading the text because, in their minds, they’ve already allocated that precise amount of minutes for that.
More time spent on your website, more chances of conversion
Worst than not attracting visitors is wasting what you already have. Traffic by itself is useless if your website does not have a clear objective. It might be getting new leads, selling products on your e-commerce, giving you a call, etc. When you increase the time on page, the visitor is spending more minutes experiencing your brand and one step closer to fulfilling your objective.
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How should creative agencies and search agencies collaborate when relaunching a website?
The key part of any site build and launch is continuity for the search engines. Few brands are creating websites for the first time nowadays (although SMEs are). For me, the key parts of this agency collaboration are based around making sure the visitor experience for the new site is an improvement on the old one.
You must not lose any of the strong key word traffic which the old site had. And so a careful keyword tactical plan ensuring similar phrases are used on the major website pages, meta descriptions and alt tags is needed.
Secondly, check whether the URL structure is going to change or not. Frequently ecommerce stores use different structures and so this risks breaking all the historic data for the site. Set up a 301 redirect so that traffic gets to the right page.
As a marketing agency, I always recommend running an inbound campaign to drive traffic to the new site as soon after it launches as possible. This starts the process of “re-educating” the search engines about the new site structure as quickly as possible. And above all, test and measure EVERYTHING.
This was a submitted answer for Northcutt’s Experts, Gurus and other Mythical Entities article series.
northcutt.com
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The major reason why you need to invest in a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system is to improve the relationship with your current customers, engage with potential customers, and win back former customers. You can implement this system in your business by using a software that enables you to collect, organize, and manage customer information. An upgraded CRM system is good for both small scale and large-scale business enterprises. Here are some of the benefits of investing in a CRM system for your business.
CRM Image Credit: ITAlley.co.nz
Enhanced communication
The prime reason why CRM is good for your business is enhancing communication. A CRM system will provide every employee in your business access to the same customer information (single customer view), and thus enable them to provide the same important level of service across the board. In some cases, a customer may have a single point of contact in a business and it can be very hard for another employee to handle such a customer without access to the customer’s data. However, with an upgraded CRM system that collects, organizes, and manages customer information, every customer can be handled efficiently and satisfactorily by any of your employees. In other words, it doesn’t really matter who is working currently with a client because all employees have access to the same information. Furthermore, since CRM is cloud-based, it can be accessed from any location at any time provided an employee has a stable internet connection.
Improved customer relationships
A good email marketing CRM system that meets the current market dynamics can improve the relationship between your business and its customers incredibly fast. Good customer relationships translate into customer satisfaction and good Returns on Investment (ROI). The CRM system will make all dealings with the marketing and selling of products or services to your customers to be organized and systematic / process-led. Being able to provide services to customers through understanding their issues will help improve customer loyalty and ease of purchase. Your customers will be more inclined to recommend your products or services to their friends and close family members if they’re satisfied with your business.
Customized marketing strategies
A CRM makes it easier to increase your company’s revenue with customized marketing strategies. With the collected customer information, you can analyze data using other tools such as Big Data analytics to understand the behavioral patterns and shopping trends of your customers. With this data, you can customize marketing strategies that target different types of customers more effectively.
Maximize upselling and cross-selling
The CRM system will enable you to offer your customers premium products that fall in their preferred shopping categories. It can also help you to give customers complementary products based on what they purchased earlier. This can be achieved through the improved customer relationship which gives you room to interact with customers in a user-friendly manner.
A CRM system will help you understand your customers’ needs and be able to personalize your products or services in such a manner that it suits their specific needs or desires. The collected information from a CRM system is stored in a central database that is accessible to all employees, and thus it will promote internal communication.
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Hello, my name is Antoinette Nguyen and I am the latest intern for Creative Agency Secrets. After spending two months here in New Zealand, I’ll be heading back to California to finish my final year of university. I’m grateful for all the learning opportunities I’ve been afforded from working at a marketing agency, and have had the joy of meeting some brilliant people. It will be an interesting transition back to the classroom after having had a taste of the working world.
Looking Back: What I’ve Learned
While at Creative Agency Secrets, I had the chance to work with a diverse clientele and employ a wide range of tools. I’ve progressed from shadowing Rebecca, Conrado, and Tabhitha as they manage their clients, to being responsible for a few projects of my own. I have also learned how to ensure new development pitches lead to securing new clients, while avoiding soliciting free work—one of many lessons in how to successfully run a marketing consulting business.
Email marketing is an integral aspect of many businesses, as I learned first-hand how newsletters that feature regularly updated content can ensure ongoing relationships with existing consumers while simultaneously attracting new customers. Using Feedblitz and other CRM platforms, I designed newsletters and managed email lists to drive greater brand awareness and potential sales.
Data analytics is another cornerstone of effective online marketing, and I worked with tools like Google Analytics to evaluate and suggest actionable steps to improve clients’ online presence. I created reports for clients that appraised their website SEO strength and rankings, on top of tracking incoming traffic. SEO optimization weighs heavily on content, but I learned how much website design and functionality matter as well.
Through operating several client blogs and websites, my copywriting skills and knowledge of web development have grown considerably. I also drove engagement through several social media accounts, with the help of applications like Buffer and Hootsuite. One of my larger projects was overseeing a Facebook ad campaign from start to finish—including editing multiple versions of ad copy, overseeing the A/B testing results, and reporting back to the client. And to top it all off, I also gained experience in organizing a promotional giveaway on an international scale.
A Heartfelt Thank You
My internship wouldn’t have been nearly as fulfilling without the guidance of the whole team at Creative Agency Secrets. Thank you Rebecca, Conrado, and Tabhitha for taking me under your wing and being wonderful mentors in my professional development—I’ve learned so much in this short time! You all have my best wishes for the future.
