15 Email Newsletter Examples We Love Getting in Our Inboxes

When people first start doing email marketing, they often assume they need an email newsletter.

"It'll have everything our customers care about, all in one place," they rationalize. "Our list will be different -- people will actually look forward to getting our newsletter," they argue. "Since we're only sending it once a month, it'll be a breeze to put together," they say.

And while all of those things may become true for a few lucky individuals, lots of email newsletters flop. They become an uninteresting mush of content people automatically ignore, archive, delete, or straight up unsubscribe from. And this isn't great for you, your metrics, or your company's success.

So if you're thinking about creating an email newsletter, read this blog post and think really hard about whether that's the right move for you in terms of your marketing strategy.

If you've decided that you want to start an email newsletter, or you want to revamp one that's not performing well, keep on reading. We've compiled some of our absolute favorite email newsletters to inspire you to make the best email newsletter for your company possible.

Each newsletter on this list is fabulous for different reasons. Some have exceptional design, some have exceptional copy, some have exceptional calls-to-action ... but all are exceptional at solving for their subscribers' needs. Check 'em out.

15 Email Newsletter Samples to Inspire Your Own E-Newsletter Design Ideas

1) NextDraft

NextDraft is a daily email written by a man named Dave Pell, which is a curation of the best web content of the day. As Pell describes it, "Each morning I visit about fifty news sites and from that swirling nightmare of information quicksand, I pluck the top ten most fascinating items of the day, which I deliver with a fast, pithy wit that will make your computer device vibrate with delight."

You can tell he's a great writer. His copywriting is one of my favorite things about the newsletter. It starts with the subject line, which is usually a play on words or a clever one-liner on the top news of the day. It then extends to the body of the email itself, which is always descriptive, accurate, and clever. Finally, the minimalist design is fantastic.

Not only is content delivery is clear, organized, and digestible, but also the inclusion of social share buttons underneath each story is brilliant. Rather than assuming that the reader is going to make it to a social sharing option at the bottom of the newsletter, Pell provides them with multiple opportunities throughout. Social engagement can play a big role in growing your newsletter, as every share on social opens up a valuable opportunity to attract more subscribers. 

For those who'd rather read news like this in a mobile app, the NextDraft app is free in Apple's app store.

[Click here to see the entire email.]

2) Austin Kleon

Not to play favorites, but this newsletter from Austin Kleon is one I really look forward to. First, I love the simplicity. It's not flashy, nor is it overly promotional. That's the hallmark of a successful email newsletter: The most effective newsletters aim to educate, not sell. 

I also love the overall informal tone he takes, as it makes it feel as though you're hearing from a friend. If you're looking to lower the barrier between your company and your audience, consider using language that is friendly and inviting, not buttoned-up and jargony. 

[Click here to see the entire email.]

3) InVision

InVision's newsletter is a weekly digest of their best blog content, a roundup of their favorite design links from the week, and a new opportunity to win a free t-shirt.

Not only is their newsletter a great mix of content, but I also love the nice balance between images and text, making it easy to read and mobile-friendly. They make great use of animated GIFs in their emails (which you can see when viewing the whole email here). I also love the clever copy on their call-to-action buttons:

• "Cat GIFs on Every Page"
• "Set Your Sights"
• "Why So Serious?"

In addition to classic CTA buttons, they engage their audience at the bottom of every newsletter with a "You tell us!" text CTA.

[Click here to see the entire email.]

4) Community.is

Community.is is a handcrafted newsletter created for people who "put people at the center of their work." This unique concept attracts a variety of readers from executives at ad agencies, to community managers at startups, to marketers and creatives of all shapes and sizes. 

In an effort to cater to their melting pot of subscribers, Community.is adopted a three-tier format: Short, Mid, and Long. While an executive may only have time to skim the short stuff, a marketer might be looking for a more in-depth read to spark some inspiration for their next campaign. Organizing a newsletter in this way helps ensure that you're serving the distinct needs of your audience without it being too confusing. 

[Click here to see the entire email.]

5) Vox Sentences

Vox Sentences is a nightly email meant to quickly get its readers up to speed on the best stories from the day. The content ranges from the day's top news to fun stories from all over the web. They do a great job balancing their own content with external sources, and the stories they choose are always really high quality.

You can read Vox's entire newsletter from start to finish and get a great sense of the stories they're covering -- but you can also click through to any of the linked stories to get a more in-depth approach. 

6) Fizzle

Fizzle's newsletter is aimed at entrepreneurs who want weekly tips on building a business sent directly to their inbox. Although they have a business blog and a podcast, what makes Fizzle's newsletter unique is that the email content is independent from those other content assets. In other words, it's written entirely for their subscribers.

The copywriting style makes the newsletter unique and appealing, too: It's casual, honest, and written like the author is writing to a friend. The writing gives off the vibe of real, down-to-earth business advice -- without the fluffy stuff. At the same time, it's written with clear headers and sub-headers to break it up, and the important stuff is bolded, making for easy skimming.

 

7) TheSkimm

If you want to stay up on what's happening in the world and have some delightful writing delivered to your inbox first thing in the morning, look no further than TheSkimm. It's a daily roundup of what's happened in the news in short, punch paragraphs.

The best part? You don't have to click out of the email to read the news if you don't want to -- although they do link to their sources if you want to read further. And when it comes to more complex news topics (think: Brexit or the Cannes Film Festival), they'll cover the most recent updates but link to their Skimm Guides, located on their website. These guides provide context for larger topics, and are written in the same style as the emails.

For your own email marketing, TheSkimm is the place to go if you're looking for writing inspiration or for emails without much visual content. 

[Click here to see the entire email.]

8) Medium

Medium is a blog-publishing platform that has been continuously building momentum since its launch in 2012. Publishing on the site has really picked up in the past few years, and nowadays, there are a ton of people publishing posts on the site every day.

Of course, that means there's a lot of content for the average person to filter through. To help bring great content to the surface, Medium uses email newsletters. And after I open this newsletter every day, I end up going to visit several Medium posts without fail. (Mission accomplished for Medium, right?)

Here's why: The newsletter feels pretty minimal. Because of the way that Medium uses colors and section dividers, they're able to give you a ton of content in one email without it feeling overwhelming. Plus, they offer both a daily and a weekly version of the digest, allowing users to opt in for the email frequency they feel most comfortable with.

9) BrainPickings

BrainPickings is one of the most interesting newsletters out there. In fact, the folks who write it call it an "interestingness digest." Every Sunday morning, subscribers get the past week's most unmissable articles about creativity, psychology, art, science, design, and philosophy -- topics that are really appealing to a wide audience. At its core, it explores what it means to live a good life.

This is one of the longest newsletters I've ever read, but what makes it still work well is how high quality and well packaged the content is.

(Bonus: Check out the delightful microcopy in the top right-hand corner.)

[Click here to see the entire email.]

10) Litmus

You'd hope that an email marketing testing company would have great emails ... and Litmus definitely does. While the content of the emails is certainly interesting, I'm especially digging the design. The blocks of color help break up the newsletter into sections that are easy to differentiate.

I also like that the text calls-to-action at the end of each post's description don't just say something generic, like "Read this post." Instead, they are matched with specific actions related to the post's content, like "Get the checklist" and "Discover why you should test."

[Click here to see the entire email.]

11) General Assembly

There are a lot of creative things you can do with images in your emails, from designing your own custom graphics to creating animated GIFs. General Assembly, an organization that helps expand professionals' skill sets, likes to employ tactics like these in their newsletter.

From their attractive and minimal layout to their concise copy and helpful information, this is a great example of a newsletter that gives subscribers quick information in an easily scannable format.

[Click here to see the entire email.]

12) This.

This. (yes, the full stop is part of the brand name) is another great newsletter for finding -- and sharing -- the best and most entertaining content on the web. What makes their newsletter unique is that it isn't just content curated by one person or one team; it's content curated by a community of people on the internet.

Members are allowed to share one, single link every day -- presumably the best content they find the entire day. The result? "We’ve built something we hope will connect you to the best the web has to offer -- all its weirdness and beauty and diversity and ambition," reads the website.

The newsletter consists of the editor's picks from all the amazing content their community members have shared. Subscribers also have the option of signing up for a custom newsletter, which includes the editor's picks and a custom feed from curators they can pick and choose. That's some pretty cool personalization.

 

13) SaaS Weekly

This is the ultimate SaaS newsletter, from a guy that kind of knows a thing or two about SaaS. (Hiten Shah is the co-founder of CrazyEgg and KISSmetrics). 

While his approach is simple, this roundup is packed with value and organized in a way that makes it easy to discover content around your specific interests. Shah does this by breaking the list of curated posts into different sections -- Business, Product, Marketing Growth, Tip of the Week, etc. -- which makes it easily scannable.

[Click here to see the entire email.]

14) The Ringer

Remember Grantland, the sports and pop culture blog owned by ESPN that was started by sports journalist Bill Simmons? In October 2015, ESPN announced it would be ending the publication of Grantland. Shortly thereafter, Simmons formed Bill Simmon Media Group and recruited a whole bunch of former Grantland staffers to launch a brand new newsletter in March 2016 called The Ringer.

Although The Ringer is written and run by many former Grantland employees it's a different project than Grantland was. Where Grantland focused on sports and pop culture, The Ringer branches out into other areas like tech and politics. Jon Favreau, a former speechwriter for President Barack Obama, is among the contributors. I like how focused they are on experimentation: "We want to have fun, take chances, analyze, theorize, obsess, and try not to take ourselves too seriously," said Editor-in-Chief Sean Fennessey.

Another differentiator? The Ringer's website was developed in partnership with publishing platform Medium -- which means the newsletter reflects that clean, minimal design.

[Click here to see the entire email.]

15) Hacker Newsletter

Many marketers don't frequent Hacker News, but they should still check out this hand-picked curation of the social network's top stories of the day.

Why? The newsletter is clean and minimal, but still sends a ton of really great content its subscribers' way. The way it distills potentially overwhelming information is by bucketing content into sections. The newsletter also looks very similar to the site, so for those who love the site and how it's laid out, the newsletter feels like a comforting, familiar way to consume content.

[Click here to see the entire email.]

Even though newsletters are one of the most common types of emails to send, they are actually some of the hardest to do right. We hope these examples gave you some quality inspiration so you can create newsletters your subscribers love to get in their inboxes.

Which email newsletters do you love? Share your favorite ones with us in the comments so we can keep the inspiration going.

Editor's Note: This post was originally published in December 2013 and has been updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.

 

from HubSpot Marketing Blog http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/email-newsletter-examples-list

How Real Brands Are Retaining Customers: 8 Strategies From Starbucks, Amazon & More

What’s better than acquiring a new customer?

If your first thought was “retaining a current customer” then your strategic thinking is in the right place. While there's a certain allure that comes with capturing new customers, keeping customers coming back will continually result in a greater ROI.

How do you create a customer retention strategy that keeps your current customers engaged?

Below, I've detailed eight retention strategies that the biggest brands are currently using to inspire loyalty. From leveraging convenience to prioritizing personalization, these are elements any marketer and business owner can take and test today.

8 Examples of Customer Retention Strategies in Action

1) TOMS: Begin with a mission.

Sometimes a brand inspires loyalty not through tactics and systems, but through what they stand for.

If you’ve ever watched Simon Sinek’s TED talk “Start with Why,” you probably already know a thing or two about the importance of having a mission, or “reason why.”

TOMS has built their entire business model around making the world a better place. As Fast Company contributor Jessica Weiss put it:

TOMS669 has integrated old-fashioned, for-profit entrepreneurship with new-wave, bleeding-heart philanthropy."

The way they do this is in their “One for One” policy. For every pair of shoes that are purchased, they give a pair to people in need, thus far donating over 60 million pairs of new shoes.

As consumers, we’re focused on the altruistic and environmental effects that our buying habits have beyond consumption. Doing good is becoming more and more important to us.

This doesn’t mean you should build your marketing around an altruistic message just to do it. The lesson is in finding something that people care about and positioning your brand around it.

2) Starbucks: Empower customers with convenience.

The coffee goliath has always been innovative with their marketing, especially in the customer acquisition department.

In the early days, Starbucks founders Zev Siegl, Jerry Baldwin, and Gordon Bowker focused on the sounds and the smells inside their shops in order to provide a delightful customer experience.

But to grow, they had to get innovative. One of their most innovative customer retention moves is their Mobile Order & Pay feature within their app. Thanks to the new feature, customers can order their coffee before they even arrive at the shop.

Image Credit: AskMen

What'd their customers think about the addition? In short: They loved it.

669"Just this morning I parked at my kid's school, placed my order in the parking lot, took him inside, then walked over to the Starbucks and picked up my drink. Mobile Order & Pay can cut 10 minutes out of my morning routine. I told my boss that it’s the reason I'm actually on time for work now," explained busy mom Danielle Lesikar.

The simplest takeaway here is this: make your products and services as accessible as possible. Identify the desires and behaviors of your customers and create tools and systems that empower them. Whether that be an app or other traditional methods, it’s up to you.

3) Tesco: Add a personal touch.

This supermarket giant has a strong presence in the UK, with over 2,000 stores nationwide.

For huge brands like these, coming across as authentic and human can be a challenge. Online grocery shopping and self-service scanners are convenient, but people still like dealing with other people.

Customer service is still necessary, and the folks at Tesco have chosen to use Twitter as a way of executing this with a human touch. They show they care by adding personality to their interactions with customers. Check out this recent interaction:

To get started with an approach like this, identify your audience personas and communicate with them on their preferred channels. It doesn’t matter if it’s email or Snapchat, as long as it’s where their attention is.

From here you should encourage your customers to speak directly with you through that channel. Make it part of your messaging and remind them during and after the buying experience.

And always add personality to every message. Nobody likes a robot, so make sure whatever you’re communicating sounds like it’s coming from a human.

4) R&G Technologies: Speak to your customers.

We’ve taken a look at several B2C examples, but what about the B2B world? R&G Technologies is an Australian IT support firm that has developed strong, long-term relationships with their clients.

They solidify these relationships with rapid response times and strict SLAs. They get back to their clients quickly, and their employees have been bought in on this by tying these KPIs to how much they earn.

However, the biggest lesson is in their customer satisfaction surveys. They give their clients an opportunity to express what they’re doing right and, more importantly, what they’re getting wrong. This allows them to identify unhappy customers before they churn.

Image Credit: Client Heartbeat

R&G focuses heavily on asking the right questions in order to gain insights they can execute on. They use this information to make better business decisions and retain customers.

Most importantly, these discussions identify the challenges of R&G’s audience. This can help inform both your overall marketing as well as your retention strategy. Don’t underestimate the power of one-to-one conversations with your clients (especially if you’re running a digital business).

5) MeUndies: Use gamification and referral programs.

Touted as the most comfortable pair of underwear in the world, MeUndies drives great retention through two elements. The first, which we’ve already covered, is in their “reason why.”

The folks at MeUndies were tired of the struggle that comes with finding a great, comfortable pair of underwear. To back this up, they’ve fostered a strong culture and are very transparent with the process. They have an entire page dedicated to their factory (it’s beautiful by the way).

Although this makes for great retention, our focus is on their clever referral program. Customers are encouraged from the moment they purchase to refer a friend, and the rewards are worth it: For every friend you refer you get $20 and they get 20% off their first purchase.

There’s a gamification element that shows how far through the buying experience your friend is, too, including a “nudge” button. If a friend adds a product to the cart but hasn’t completed checkout, you can use this to send an email reminder about it. In other words, MeUndies has found a way to use their current customers to reduce cart abandonement, while providing social proof in the process.

When done well, referral systems can be really effective for retention. The key is to focus on strong incentives and gamification to get people invested. Most importantly, don't forget to empower and encourage your customers to become advocates for your brand in the process.

6) Apple: Create a divide between you and your competitors.

Want your customers to see you as the obvious choice over your competitors? Make note of Apple's strategy, demonstrated by their 669“Mac vs. PC” ad campaign.

The campaign starred John Hodgman as the inept PC and Justin Long as the cool, collected Mac. The two would quip humorously over what made the Mac a better choice than a PC in a really entertaining manner.

The “Mac vs. PC” campaign was a very tongue-in-cheek -- and it generated a lot of dispute. Not only that, but it divided the market and set Apple apart from their competitors by identifying the kind of consumers who should buy Apple products.

Sticking true to who you are as a brand shows integrity and makes it easier to attract customers that just might become your strongest brand advocates.

Can you find a cause to fight for (or against)? If your brand is more friendly than this, you can still put some fire behind your story and create a rally affect. Don't be afraid to be a little bold in your marketing to get the best results from this approach.

7) Amazon Prime: Use subscriptions to bolster the experience.

It’s unusual for a commodity-based organization to implement a subscription service into their business model.

Which is exactly what Amazon created in the form of Prime. The subscription was originally created to bring customers faster delivery. It generated a lot of controversy, but quickly became popular with regular shoppers on the platform.

Since its launch they’ve added other benefits, such as access to Amazon’s Instant Video platform. It’s a move that seems costly, but is actually a strategic play. It’s estimated that Amazon loses $1-2 billion in revenue every year, however that’s easily made up for by the increase in purchases.

How can you use subscriptions to achieve growth goals and increase customer retention?

You don’t need to charge a fee for your subscription model in order to gain customer loyalty. Providing benefits in the form of exclusive content and events is another way to leverage this approach without spending a ton.

If you’re going to take a page directly from Amazon's playbook, then make sure you’re offering something people want. This goes back to customer development and understanding your audience’s desires and challenges.

8) Coca-Cola: Use experiences to elicit positive feelings.

Experiential marketing has long been used as a way for brands to create positive sentiments with their customers.

Coca-Cola had a 70-day campaign around the 2012 Olympics, and part of this was their “Coca-Cola Beat Generator” app. This experience brought together music, sports and the Coca-Cola brand.

Image Credit: Figment Productions

They showcased it during their roadshow around the Olympics, using samples and sounds from the games themselves. Users could then take the MP3 recording with them and share it via social media. The results? 16,500 visits to the web version and 1.78 million Facebook impressions.

Even though Coca-Cola produces beverages, they figured out a way to tap into the positive hype around an event by providing delightful customer experiences that reached beyond point of sale.

Look for ways to create positive feelings in the form of new experiences outside of your main products, services, and value propositions.

Which of these customer retention strategies could you implement? Are there other examples we’ve missed? Share with us in the comments.

from HubSpot Marketing Blog http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/customer-retention-strategies

Why Content Marketing Volume is Increasing but Engagement Isn't (and What You Can Do About It)

When content marketing first arrived on the marketing scene, it was novel, innovative and pushed the norms of traditional marketing. The idea of inbound marketing seemed outrageous. Letting the customers come to us? Marketers with years of practice in cold calls and direct mail questioned if generating content and letting their audiences find it would even work.

With refinement and thoughtful strategy, inbound marketing generated more leads, conversions and increased brand reach. This, of course, was aided by the advancement of technology and the increase in the number of platforms for communicating with customers. With the huge increase in content marketing volume, it was much easier for customers to find new companies on their own terms.

This explosion of success drove all types of businesses to start creating content to inform customers, engage prospects and contribute to the overall industry conversation. The growth in popularity caused a huge surge in the amount of content flooding the Web. Brands started believing that the medium of delivering content was smart because now customers could consume it at such fast rates, allowing them to take in even more information than previously possible.

Why More Channels Doesn't Equal More Engagement

However, this couldn’t be further from the truth. As content marketing volume continued to rise, engagement rates stagnated. More options did not mean people would consume more. A recent TrackMaven study found that the amount of content produced last year rose 34%, but engagement decreased 17%. In their words, this engagement crisis is similar to the television offering phenomenon.

The number of channels the average viewer chooses from has dramatically increased over the years, but the amount they actually watch remains the same. This trend proves that people are only willing to consume as much content as they can handle and nothing more, even with more options available.

The amount of content marketing is not going to decrease any time soon, so brands hoping to become one of their customers’ chosen outlets for information need to have a strong strategy for their content, messaging and customer journey.

The better companies understand their customers’ needs, the better they can target content appropriately. There are a few ways to reach customers most effectively, but using the tactic of personalization is particularly successful.

Using Personalization for Good

Personalization is nearly ubiquitous within marketing, with 94% agreeing it is important and 85% of brands using at least the most basic form. The challenge is using it in a way that customers feel comfortable with and aggregating real-time results for instant application.

A survey of marketers using personalization found that 40% can’t gain insight quickly enough, 39% don’t have enough data and 38% worry about inaccurate data. Despite these challenges, marketers overcome the obstacles to implement real acumen into their content. The ones who do find they have on average a 19% lift in sales.

When customers feel the content they are consuming is both relevant and informative, they return for more. One sure-fire way to create relevant and informative content to your specific customers is to learn what else they consume, what they respond to and what they look for in their content.

It also helps to identify each touchpoint of the buyer's journey that can be tailored with specific information you’ve collected. For example, if your customers enjoy commenting on LinkedIn posts and sharing articles on Facebook, you can retarget them in these places based on what they are already interested in.

Start with consistent trends among your audience to avoid the challenge of keeping up with changing preferences. Once you have a handle on foundational personalization, you can adapt to the most current reality of your customers’ habits.

Control for Change

Personalization is knowing more than where your customers spend time and what topics they are likely to click on. It’s also being aware of what is related to their interests, so you can recommend additional content and lead them down the funnel. The most important aspect at any point of the content journey and the use of personalization is giving customers some amount of control.

While 60% of customers are aware personalization plays a role in the online content they consume, 29% prefer to have little control and 41% prefer to have a great deal of control over how brands use this tactic. The levels of control you can offer include privacy controls, voluntary information forms with options of what a customer can give you and choosing their own content journey. This requires you to tailor your content to different demographics if you are trying to reach a broad audience.

Control doesn’t sacrifice personalization for your purposes, but simply puts the power in your customers’ hands, which can be beneficial to you. Trustworthiness and an established relationship emerge from giving customers control, leading you to have a transparent personalization process for more effective results.

Content Types for Success

Before gracing the industry with your content or producing more ineffective blogs and social, you should determine the types of content worth generating and what is likely to promote engagement.

You want to avoid the dry, lifeless content that so many companies are guilty of throwing online. The following content formats should help stop the decreasing engagement rate right in its tracks:

• Short and sweet. Bounce rates are the kiss of death in online marketing. Most people only read about 50% of an online article before leaving the page. But if you limit your blog posts to half the length of a typical blog, you’ll see an increase in lingering visitors and potential conversions.
• Questions and answers. On social media, if you are asking questions that are probably going through your customers’ minds, make sure to give them an answer. Lead them to your site to discover an in-depth answer to any question, no matter how small.
• Community forums. People love to share their own opinions more than anything. It’s why companies with community forums see so much success in engagement. Cultivating and monitoring the community is also a great place for content inspiration.
• Anything with visuals or interactive elements is instantly going to grab your prospects. Use them thoughtfully and creatively to make a splash with your innovative content.

Infusing these formats with the insights gained from personalization creates a real connection between your brand and customers.

To escape the engagement crisis that is resulting from the surge in content marketing volume,  you can collect information from your customers with their control and apply it to content better suited for interaction. This tactic is no task larger than adjusting your sails in the winds of change.

Then you will be prepared to navigate the marketing space with intelligence, wisdom and ingenuity.

from HubSpot Marketing Blog http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/why-content-marketing-volume-is-increasing-but-engagement-isnt

Hive shines a light on the connected home with new campaign

Hive, a British Gas innovation, has today announced the launch of its new brand marketing campaign – entitled ‘Your Home Comes Alive with Hive’. Going live this week and next across radio, OOH, digital and print, the new campaign showcases the breadth of Hive products now available, such as Hive Active LightTM and Hive Active [more…]

from TheMarketingblog http://www.themarketingblog.co.uk/2016/06/hive-shines-a-light-on-the-connected-home-with-new-campaign/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=hive-shines-a-light-on-the-connected-home-with-new-campaign

Awards are more than just a trophy, they deliver higher ROI too – DMA reserach

Last night London’s Blue Fin Building played host to the launch of the DMA Awards 2016, where the DMA also revealed its latest insight into what it takes and means to be an award winner. The research into the last 4 years of DMA Award entries reveals that a win can mean much more than [more…]

from TheMarketingblog http://www.themarketingblog.co.uk/2016/06/awards-are-more-than-just-a-trophy-they-deliver-higher-roi-too-dma-reserach/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=awards-are-more-than-just-a-trophy-they-deliver-higher-roi-too-dma-reserach

New iProspect Consult practice to drive business success in the digital economy

iProspect has today launched its Consult practice, as part of its long-term mission to drive business performance in the digital economy. Designed to offer specialist consultancy on marketing technology, experiences and audience activation, while also helping clients structure themselves to stay ahead. The business is already working with Wickes and Diageo. Consult helps deliver a [more…]

from TheMarketingblog http://www.themarketingblog.co.uk/2016/06/new-iprospect-consult-practice-to-drive-business-success-in-the-digital-economy/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=new-iprospect-consult-practice-to-drive-business-success-in-the-digital-economy

Why We 'Overspent' on Our Website (And You Should, Too)

As you plan a new website -- or updates to an existing one -- you may wish the sky was the limit. Unfortunately, we are all faced with the same monetary Catch-22. There is a limit to what can be spent, even if there is no limit on what can be done.

As you contemplate the development of your website, you’ll have to ask the familiar question, “How much should we spend?”

The answer to that timeless question is never easy. There are always trade-offs, as we discovered at my firm, Hinge, when redesigning our website not too long ago.

We could have gone with an off-the-shelf system, but we knew that every change down the road would require more assistance from a developer. So we made the very deliberate decision to invest in optimizing our site from the start. We developed a modular system of templates that allow significant flexibility without the need for constant help from our web developers. We also took advantage of filtering and content categorization tools to dynamically link different data sets (lists of authors, topics, etc.) in a variety of places on the site.

But perhaps the most important investment was integrating our website with our customer relationship management (CRM) platform -- as well as a host of other online platforms. This integration ensures we get the most out of every online interaction and allows us to maximize the relationship with prospects and qualified leads.

Some may think we overspent, but when you look at the rationale and return, it makes perfect business sense.

The Reason for a Redesign

There are many reasons to redesign a website. The aesthetics may be dated. It may not have the most recent mobile-friendly, responsive design features. It may lack a few must-have features, like a blog, landing pages with lead generation offers, or integration with your CRM or marketing automation software. And your content may no longer reflect changes in your services.

Newer technology may also make it much easier to maintain your site and keep the design looking fresh. Most importantly, there are always opportunities to improve your site’s user experience.

But the real reason for a redesign is ROI.

A company website -- even in the professional services -- can attract a significant amount of new business. In our case, more than 80% of our new business comes through our website.

If you consider your website investment in this light, it is easy to see the fault in our earlier question, “How much should we spend?” The question you really should be asking is, “How much can we productively spend?”

What do we mean by “productively”? Well, if you earn $10 for every $1 you invest, you will want to invest as much as you possibly can. What you need to know is when does the incremental investment no longer generate a positive return. Be bold, but plan carefully.

Making a Poor Impression

It takes courage to invest heavily in your website. So it is not surprising that most B2B companies are drawn to a seemingly more conservative approach: Reduce the risk by spending less.

Great, you saved a few thousand dollars. But what have you lost? According to Hinge’s recent Referral Marketing Study, more than 50% of people who are referred to a B2B services firm will rule out that provider because their website reflected poorly on them. Cheap websites almost always make poor impressions.

How many new clients do you need to lose before the savings start to feel like a liability?

Planning Your Budget

Most firms have only a vague notion of what a new website should cost. They tend to think only about the direct expenses. They overlook the value of research and message development, for example. How can you find the right balance?

The best place to start is to calculate your minimal low-cost scenario. In other words, what is the least you could spend and “get by.” You can easily spend 3-5 times that amount before you run any danger of over-investing. In our own case, we spent 10 times that minimum and in retrospect, not a penny was wasted.

As with any professional service, you’ll get better results when you work with a firm that knows what it is doing. That means reaching out to a firm that has the web design, user experience, project management, online strategy, SEO, social media, and lead nurturing chops to turn your investment into high quality leads and new revenues. This kind of expertise may cost a bit more up front, but you’ll see the investment in a sophisticated new website can make real dollars and sense.

Smaller Budgets Don't Minimize Risk

Many firms believe that minimizing the budget reduces risk. It’s understandable to want to minimize cost -- but it's a trap. You are favoring short-term spending over long-term returns. And that’s rarely a good strategy.

If you stop to consider what a competent marketing website should be able to deliver over the long term -- a steady flow of high-quality leads -- you’ll understand that it doesn’t take many new clients to pay for your entire investment.

from HubSpot Marketing Blog http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/overspent-on-website

Michael Gove to stand for Conservative leadership

Michael Gove to stand for Conservative leadership – BBC News on @BBCNews https://t.co/DKXF8ry0ta pic.twitter.com/WB1yNpSdRS — Will Corry (@slievemore) June 30, 2016

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Laughter Spot : A man walked into a supermarket with his zipper down

A man walked into a supermarket with his zipper down. A checkout chick walked up to him and said, “Your barracks door is open.”Not a phrase that men normally use, he went on his way looking a bit puzzled. When he was just about done shopping, a man came up and said, “Your fly is [more…]

from TheMarketingblog http://www.themarketingblog.co.uk/2016/06/laughter-spot-a-man-walked-into-a-supermarket-with-his-zipper-down/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=laughter-spot-a-man-walked-into-a-supermarket-with-his-zipper-down

Laughter Spot : Have you ever been unfaithful to me?

An elderly couple was having dinner one evening when the husband reached across the table, took his wife’s hand in his and said, “Martha, soon we will be married 50 years, and there’s something I have to know. In all of these 50 years, have you ever been unfaithful to me?” Martha replied, “Well Henry, [more…]

from TheMarketingblog http://www.themarketingblog.co.uk/2016/06/laughter-spot-have-you-ever-been-unfaithful-to-me/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=laughter-spot-have-you-ever-been-unfaithful-to-me

The Functional Content Masterplan – Own the Knowledge Graph Goldrush with this On-Page Plan

Posted by SimonPenson

[Estimated read time: 17 minutes]

On-page content is certainly not one of the sexier topics in digital marketing.

Lost in the flashing lights of "cool digital marketing trends" and things to be seen talking about, it's become the poor relative of many a hyped "game-changer."

I’m here to argue that, in being distracted by the topics that may be more "cutting-edge," we're leaving our most valuable assets unloved and at the mercy of underperformance.

This post is designed not only to make it clear what good on-page content looks like, but also how you should go about prioritizing which pages to tackle first based on commercial opportunity, creating truly customer-focused on-page experiences.

What is "static" or "functional" content?

So how am I defining static/functional content, and why is it so important to nurture in 2016? The answer lies in the recent refocus on audience-centric marketing and Google’s development of the Knowledge Graph.

Whether you call your on-page content "functional," "static," or simply "on-page" content, they're all flavors of the same thing: content that sits on key landing pages. These may be category pages or other key conversion pages. The text is designed to help Google understand the relevance of the page and/or help customers with their buying decisions.

Functional content has other uses as well, but today we're focusing on its use as a customer-focused conversion enhancement and discovery tactic.

And while several years ago it would have been produced simply to aid a relatively immature Google to "find" and "understand," the focus is now squarely back on creating valuable user experiences for your targeted audience.

Google’s ability to better understand and measure what "quality content" really looks like — alongside an overall increase in web usage and ease-of-use expectation among audiences — has made key page investment as critical to success on many levels.

We should now be looking to craft on-page content to improve conversion, search visibility, user experience, and relevance — and yes, even as a technique to steal Knowledge Graph real estate.

The question, however, is "how do I even begin to tackle that mountain?"

Auditing what you have

For those with large sites, the task of even beginning to understand where to start with your static content improvement program can be daunting. Even if you have a small site of a couple of hundred pages, the thought of writing content for all of them can be enough to put you off even starting.

As with any project, the key is gathering the data to inform your decision-making before simply "starting." That’s where my latest process can help.

Introducing COAT: The Content Optimization and Auditing Tool

To help the process along, we’ve been using a tool internally for months — for the first time today, there's now a version that anyone can use.

This link will take you to the new Content Optimisation and Auditing Tool (COAT), and below I’ll walk through exactly how we use it to understand the current site and prioritize areas for content improvement. I'll also walk you through the manual step-by-step process, should you wish to take the scenic route.

The manual process

If you enjoy taking the long road — maybe you feel an extra sense of achievement in doing so — then let's take a look at how to pull the data together to make data-informed decisions around your functional content.

As with any solid piece of analysis, we begin with an empty Excel doc and, in this case, a list of keywords you feel are relevant to and important for your business and site.

In this example, we'll take a couple of keywords and our own site:

Keywords:

Content Marketing Agency
Digital PR

Site:

www.zazzlemedia.co.uk

Running this process manually is labor-intensive (hence the need to automate it!) and to add dozens more keywords creates a lot of work for little extra knowledge gain, but by focusing on a couple you can see how to build the fuller picture.

Stage one

We start by adding our keywords to our spreadsheet alongside a capture of the search volume for those terms and the actual URL ranking, as shown below (NOTE: all data is for google.co.uk).

Next we add in ranking position...

We then look to the page itself and give each of the key on-page elements a score based on our understanding of best practice. If you want to be really smart, you can score the most important factors out of 20 and those lesser points out of 10.

In building our COAT tool to enable this to be carried out at scale across sites with thousands of pages, we made a list of many of the key on-page factors we know to affect rank and indeed conversion. They include:

• URL optimization
• Title tag optimization and clickability
• Meta description optimization and clickability
• H1, H2, and H3 optimization and clickability (as individual scores)
• Occurences of keyword phrases within body copy
• Word count
• Keyword density
• Readability (as measured by the Flesch-Kincaid readability score)

This is far from an exhaustive list, but it's a great place to start your analysis. The example below shows an element of this scored:

Once you have calculated score for every key factor, your job is to then to turn this into an average, weighted score out of 100. In this case, you can see I've done this across the listed factors and have a final score for each keyword and URL:

Stage two

Once you have score for a larger number of pages and keywords, it's then possible to begin organizing your data in a way that helps prioritise action.

You can do this simply enough by using filters and organising the table by any number of combinations.

You may want to sort by highest search volume and then by those pages ranking between, say, 5th and 10th position.

Doing this enables you to focus on the pages that may yield the most potential traffic increase from Google, if that is indeed your aim.

Working this way makes it much easier to work in a way that delivers the largest positive net impact fastest.

Doing it at scale

Of course, if you have a large site with tens (or even hundreds) of thousands of pages, the manual option is almost impossible — which is why we scratched our heads and looked for a more effective option. The result was the creation of our Content Auditing and Optimisation Tool. Here's how you can make use of it to paint a fuller picture of your entire site.

Here's how it works

When it comes to using COAT, you follow a basic process:

• Head over to the tool.
• Enter your domain, or a sub-directory of the site if you'd like to focus on a particular section
• Add the keywords you want to analyze in a comma-separated list
• Click "Get Report," making sure you've chosen the right country

Next comes the smart bit: by adding target keywords to the system before it crawls, it enables the algorithm to cross-reference all pages against those phrases and then score each combination against a list of critical attributes you'd expect the "perfect page" to have.

Let’s take an example:

You run a site that sells laptops. You enter a URL for a specific model, such as /apple-15in-macbook/, and a bunch of related keywords, such as "Apple 15-inch MacBook" and "Apple MacBook Pro."

The system works out the best page for those terms and measures the existing content against a large number of known ranking signals and measures, covering everything from title tags and H1s to readability tests such as the Flesch-Kincaid system.

This outputs a spreadsheet that scores each URL or even categories of URLs (to allow you to see how well-optimized the site is generally for a specific area of business, such as Apple laptops), enabling you to sort the data, discover the pages most in need of improvement, and identify where content gaps may exist.

In a nutshell, it'll provide:

• What the most relevant target page for each keyword is
• How well-optimized individual pages are for their target keywords
• Where content gaps exist within the site’s functional content

It also presents the top-level data in an actionable way. An example of the report landing page can be seen below (raw CSV downloads are also available — more on that in a moment).

You can see the overall page score and simple ways to improve it. This is for our "Digital PR" keyword:

The output

As we've already covered in the manual process example, in addition to pulling the "content quality scores" for each URL, you can also take the data to the next level by adding in other data sources to the mix.

The standard CSV download includes data such as keyword, URL, and scores for the key elements (such as H1, meta, canonical use and static content quality).

This level of detail makes it possible to create a priority order for fixes based on lowest-scoring pages easily enough, but there are ways you can supercharge this process even more.

The first thing to do is run a simple rankings check using your favorite rank tracker for those keywords and add them into a new column in your CSV. It'll look a little like this (I've added some basic styling for clarity):

I also try to group keywords by adding a third column using a handful of grouped terms. In this example, you can see I'm grouping car model keywords with brand terms manually.

Below, you'll see how we can then group these terms together in an averaged cluster table to give us a better understanding of where the keyword volume might be from a car brand perspective. I've blurred the keyword grouping column here to protect existing client strategy data.

As you can see from the snapshot above, we now have a spreadsheet with keyword, keyword group, search volume, URL, rank, and the overall content score pulled in from the base Excel sheet we have worked through. From this, we can do some clever chart visualization to help us understand the data.

Visualizing the numbers

To really understand where the opportunity lies and to take this process past a simple I’ll-work-on-the-worst-pages-first approach, we need to bring it to life.

This means turning our table into a chart. We'll utilize the chart functionality within Excel itself.

Here's an example of the corresponding chart for the table shown above, showing performance by category and ranking correlation. We're using dummy data here, but you can look at the overall optimization score for each car brand section alongside how well they rank (the purple line is average rank for that category):

If we focus on the chart above, we can begin to see a pattern between those categories that are better optimized and generally have better rankings. Correlation does not always equal causation, as we know, but it's useful information.

Take the very first column, or the Subaru category. We can see that it's one of the better-optimized categories (at 49%) and average rank is at 34.1. Now, these are hardly record-breaking positions, but it does point towards the value of well-worked static pages.

Making the categories as granular as possible can be very valuable here, as you can quickly build up a focused picture of where to put your effort to move the needle quickly. The process for doing so is an entirely subjective one, often based on your knowledge of your industry or your site information architecture.

Add keyword volume data into the mix and you know exactly where to build your static content creation to-do list.

Adding in context

Like any data set, however, it requires a level of benchmarking and context to give you the fullest picture possible before you commit time and effort to the content improvement process.

It’s for this reason that I always look to run the same process on key competitors, too. An example of the resulting comparison charts can be seen below.

The process is relatively straightforward: take an average of all the individual URL content scores, which will give you a "whole domain" score. Add competitors by repeating the process for their domain.

You can take a more granular view manually by following the same process for the grouped keywords and tabulating the result. Below, we can see how our domain sizes up against those same two competitors for all nine of our example keyword groups, such as the car brands example we looked at earlier.

With that benchmark data in place, you can move on to the proactive improvement part of the process.

The perfect page structure

Having identified your priority pages, the next step is to ensure you edit (or create them) in the right way to maximize impact.

Whereas a few years ago it was all about creating a few paragraphs almost solely for the sake of helping Google understand the page, now we MUST be focused on usability and improving the experience for the right visitor.

This means adding value to the page. To do that, you need to stand back and really focus in on the visitor: how they get to the page and what they expect from it.

This will almost always involve what I call "making the visitor smarter": creating content that ensures they make better and more informed buying decisions.

To do that requires a structured approach to delivering key information succinctly and in a way that enhances — rather than hinders — the user journey.

The best way of working through what that should look like is to share a few examples of those doing it well:

1. Tredz Top 5 Reviews

Tredz is a UK cycling ecommerce business. They do a great job of understanding what their audience is looking for and ensuring they're set up to make them smarter. The "Top 5" pages are certainly not classic landing pages, but they're brilliant examples of how you can sell and add value at the same time.

Below is the page for the "Top 5 hybrids for under £500." You can clearly see how the URL (http://www.tredz.co.uk/top-5-hybrids-under-500), meta, H tags, and body copy all support this focus and are consistently aligned:

2. Read it for me

This is a really cool business concept and they also do great landing pages. You get three clear reasons to try them out — presented clearly and utilizing several different content types — all in one package.

3. On Stride Financial

Finance may not be where you'd expect to see amazing landing pages, but this is a great example. Not only is it an easy-to-use experience, it answers all the user's key questions succinctly, starting with "What is an installment loan?" It's also structured in a way to capture Knowledge Graph opportunity — something we'll come to shortly.

Outside of examples like these and supporting content, you should be aiming to

create impactful headlines, testimonials (where appropriate), directional cues (so it's clear where to "go next"), and high-quality images to reflect the quality of your product or services.

Claiming Knowledge Graph

There is, of course, one final reason to work hard on your static pages. That reason? To claim a massively important piece of digital real estate: Google Featured Snippets.

Snippets form part of the wider Knowledge Graph, the tangible visualization of Google’s semantic search knowledge base that's designed to better understand the associations and entities behind words, phrases, and descriptions of things.

The Knowledge Graph comes in a multitude of formats, but one of the most valuable (and attainable from a commercial perspective) is the Featured Snippet, which sits at the top of the organic SERP. An example can be seen below from a search for "How do I register to vote" in google.co.uk:

In recent months, Zazzle Media has done a lot of work on landing page design to capture featured snippets with some interesting findings, most notably the level of extra traffic such a position can achieve.

Having now measured dozens of these snippets, we see an average of 15–20% extra traffic from them versus a traditional position 1. That’s a definite bonus, and makes the task of claiming them extremely worthwhile.

You don’t have to be first

The best news? You don’t even have to be in first position to be considered for a snippet. Our own research shows us that almost 75% of the examples we track have been claimed by pages ranked between 2^nd and 10^th position. It's far from being robust enough yet for us to formalize a full report on it, but early indication across more than 900 claimed snippets (heavily weighted to the finance sector at present) support these early findings.

Similar research by search data specialists STAT has also supported this theory, revealing that objective words are more likely to appear. General question and definition words (like "does," "cause," and "definition") as well as financial words (like "salary," "average," and "cost") are likely to trigger a featured snippet. Conversely, the word "best" triggered zero featured snippets in over 20,000 instances.

This suggests that writing in a factual way is more likely to help you claim featured results.

Measuring what you already have

Before you run into this two-footed, you must first audit what you may (or may not) already have. If you run a larger site, you may already have claimed a few snippets by chance, and with any major project it's important to benchmark before you begin.

Luckily, there are a handful of tools out there to help you discover what you already rank for. My favorite is SEMrush.

The paid-for tool makes it easy to find out if you rank for any featured snippets already. I'd suggest using it to benchmark and then measure the effect of any optimization and content reworking you do as a result of the auditing process.

Claiming Featured Snippets

Claiming your own Featured Snippet then requires a focus on content structure and on answering key questions in a logical order. This also means paying close attention to on-page HTML structure to ensure that Google can easily and cleanly pick out specific answers.

Let’s look at a few examples showing that Google can pick up different types of content for different types of questions.

1. The list

One of the most prevalent examples of Featured Snippets is the list.

As you can see, Media Temple has claimed this incredibly visual piece of real estate simply by creating an article with a well-structured, step-by-step guide to answer the question:

"How do I set up an email account on my iPhone?"

If we look at how the page is formatted, we can see that the URL matches the search almost exactly, while the H1 tag serves to reinforce the relevance still further.

As we scroll down we find a user-friendly approach to the content, with short sentences and paragraphs broken up succinctly into sections.

This allows Google to quickly understand relevance and extract the most useful information to present in search; in this case, the step-by-step how-to process to complete the task.

Here are the first few paragraphs of the article, highlighting key structural elements. Below this is the list itself that's captured in the above Featured Snippet:

2. The table

Google LOVES to present tables; clearly there's something about the logical nature of how the data is presented that resonates with its team of left-brained engineers!

In the example below, we see a site listing countries by size. Historically, this page may well not have ranked so highly (it isn’t usually the page in position one that claims the snippet result). Because of the ways it has structured the information so well, however, Geohive will be enjoying a sizable spike in traffic to the page.

The page itself looks like this — clear, concise and well-structured:

3. The definition

The final example is the description, or definition snippet; it's possibly the hardest to claim consistently.

It's difficult for two key reasons:

• There will be lots of competition for the space and answering the search query in prose format.
• It requires a focus on HTML structure and brilliantly crafted content to win.

In the example below, we can see a very good example of how you should be structuring content pages.

We start with a perfect URL (/what-is-a-mortgage-broker/) and this follows through to the H1 (What is a Mortgage Broker). The author then cleverly uses subheadings to extend the rest of the post into a thorough piece on the subject area. Subheadings include the key How, What, Where, and When areas of focus that any good journalism tutor will lecture you on using in any good article or story. Examples might include

• So how does this whole mortgage broker thing work?
• Mortgage brokers can shop the rate for you
• Mortgage brokers are your loan guide
• Mortgage broker FAQ

The result is a piece that leaves no stone unturned. Because of this, it's been shared plenty of times — a sure fire signal that the article is positively viewed by readers.

Featured Snippet Cheatsheet

Not being one to leave you alone to figure this out though, I have created this simple Featured Snippet Cheatsheet, designed to take the guesswork out of creating pages worthy of being selected for the Knowledge Graph.

Do it today!

Thanks for making it this far. My one hope is for you to go off and put this plan into action for your own site. Doing so will quickly transform your approach to both landing pages and to your ongoing content creation plan (but that’s a post for another day!).

And if you do have a go, remember to use the free COAT tool and guides associated with this article to make the process as simple as possible.

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