Email Still Trumps Social Media for Online Marketing [INFOGRAPHIC]

Email marketing wins more online customers than Facebook and Twitter, but it lags behind organic search.

The customer acquisition landscape is constantly in flux. The introduction of disruptive technologies and tools over the last few years has spawned enormous changes in online marketing. But a recent report from Custora, maker of a predictive analytics platform, reveals that online retailers are winning new customers via traditional email marketing at quadruple the rate they did four years ago. The good old-fashioned marketing method still provides the biggest bang for the buck when it comes to reaching and retaining high-value customers online.

The study analyzed data from 72 million customers from 86 U.S. retailers across 14 industries and tracked the channels from which customers were clicking to e-commerce sites. While email proved to be a strong channel for growing a customer base, organic search was found to be the most popular driver. Facebook drove very few sales and Twitter drove none. Email was also shown to carry a higher customer lifetime value (the profit a company expects to earn from their entire future relationship with a customer) than social media channels.

The report also revealed that the lifetime value of customers acquired through Twitter is 23% lower than average, and that the most valuable online shoppers tend to come from more rural states. Here is some more detailed information from the study:

Channels

Customer acquisition via email has quadrupled over the last 4 years.

Email marketing has been a growing trend in e-commerce, with an increasing number of retailers building communities and collecting email addresses, then converting those contacts into customers. Organic search continues to grow as a reliable channel, accounting for nearly 16% of customers acquired. The latter finding reinforces the use of content marketing along with investing in search engine marketing.

Customer lifetime value

The CLV of customers acquired through Twitter is 23% lower than average.

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) refers to the future profit a company expects to earn from a customer throughout their relationship with the business. The highest-value customers arrive through organic searches (54% higher than average). Customers acquired through Twitter tend to be worth about 23% less than average. This may be attributed to the frequency of discounts offered within tweets.

Geography

The most valuable online shoppers overall tend to come from more rural states.

Shoppers in rural areas tend to have fewer options for buying specialty goods locally and make more purchases online.




Article curated from Social Media Today

To learn more about how email marketing can help your business, call us at 855-IES-MARK or click here.

4 More Ways to Boost Your Twitter Followers

Social media experts weigh in on the best ways to attract loyal followers.

I'm so close I can feel it.

Over the past months, I've been experimenting more and more with social media, trying to find out how to gain more followers. It's not just for fun. If you only have a few hundred followers, you're speaking to a small audience.

For me, Twitter helps spread the word about new articles and keeps me connected with readers. It's also one of the primary tools I use for connecting with public relations folks. Sometimes, I even send out a mass tweet and let people know I'm leaving for the day or that I'm focusing on answering emails for the next hour or so. It's invaluable.

Back in 2011, I wrote a fairly seminal piece (at least, it was seminal for me) about gaining more Twitter followers. My goal back then was to hit 800 followers in a few weeks. I used a tool called Sprout Social. (In fact, I'm still using this app on my HTC One smartphone, on the Web, and on my iPad after two years.) It's best feature is the ability to post one tweet to multiple accounts at once and then track your success in how many people retweet what you say. And, I love the simple interface.

After two years, I am now approaching about 5,000 followers. It's great. I know my social media efforts have paid off and that there's a wider audience that reads what I post. What I've heard from a few experts is that my audience for social media is more "organic" than most. People seem to follow because they really want to read my posts. They say it's better to have fewer "real" followers than thousands of fake ones who may or may not care about what you have to say--and never click on your links.

That said, I'm still open to ideas. So I put out a call with a few social media experts who looked at my Twitter activity and they came up with a few more ideas. These tips seem to be working so far, although I have not quite hit the 5,000 mark yet. I'm close!

1. Post the same links multiple times
Rebecca Caroe is a social media expert at Creative Agency Secrets in New Zealand. She helped me quite a bit because I was making a big mistake. I usually only posted a link once or twice, but people tend to make "drive-bys" on a Twitter stream and only check for recent activity. There's a reason why the show Million Second Quiz on NBC posts a dozen tweets an hour. They are hoping casual followers at least see a few interesting links.

Caroe told me to post my own links at least three times in a day hitting a few different time zones. I've started doing this lately. Over the past month, I've added about 130 followers which seems to be tied to this change in how I post my links. I may even start posting the same link more times per day and see if that helps.

These links increase your followers when people visit your Twitter page and see what you've been up to and what you do. People follow active posters.

2. Follow your followers on other social channels
This one seems obvious but it's easy to overlook. The fact is, the followers you have on Facebook, Google Plus, and LinkedIn might not be following you on Twitter.

Maybe they don't even know you are on Twitter--or they don't know your handle. Caroe also told me to ping my followers on other nets and ask them if they want to follow me on Twitter. This is a manual process, unfortunately. (There's a good start-up idea right there--a tool to automate this.)

Of course, the trick is to follow people in your same field and who have similar interests. You should also look for "influencers" who have a lot of followers. By following these folks, you are making an introduction to state your intent and, in many cases, they will follow you back. In general, following the influencers is a strategy every social media expert told me about. 

By spending a few minutes looking for the gurus and following them, you can find a bastion of new followers for yourself.

3. Interact with your followers like crazy
Harry Hawk, the social media strategist for Leske's Bakery in Brooklyn, told me he increased his followers to 5,000 in just two months, mostly by following key influencers. He says the key is to go beyond just a follow, though. He told me he's interacted with high-profile companies like @KlondikeBars and @Toyota by posting questions and interacting with them. Eventually, after a relationship develops, the influencers will feel compelled to follow you back. This is also a great way to keep the followers you do have--letting them know you are alive and active on Twitter, not comatose.

4. Show your personality
I keep hearing this advice from most social media experts like Phil Laboon, the CEO of marketing agency EyeFlow, so I've been trying to live this one out. The idea is to be yourself--to show your character. Too many Twitter streams have a banal list of links and nothing else. You get the feeling there's a bot generating them. New followers will find you eventually, but they will decide whether they want to stick around when they see you are a real person talking about a real company. I've been inserting a few jokes here and there, adding quips and quotes, and always (always!) answering direct messages. When someone gives me a mention on Twitter, I try to thank them and post a follow-up response. This tells new followers they will get the same kind of attentive response.

"Don't just build followers. You really need to stay active and continually engage with your audience, not just build useless followers you never engage with. You need to share engaging, valuable, or educational content. You really have to establish yourself as an resource for something whether tips, articles, news, opinions, or humor," says Laboon.

After two years of working hard, my goal is on the horizon. When I finally do hit 5,000, I'll post again with the tips that worked the best.

To learn more about how Twitter can help your business, click here.

Article curated from Inc. Magazine

4 Key Elements of Your Facebook Marketing

With all the ongoing changes happening with Facebook, it’s sometimes tough to keep up and sort out what’s important and what may or may not impact your everyday efforts to engage with a vibrant community, reach a wider audience and ultimately communicate more efficiently. Below are the four key components to consider in order for brands to succeed on Facebook:

1. ORGANIC EFFORTS

Folks familiar with Facebook’s infamous EdgeRank algorithm will know that brands posting on Facebook will only reach, on average, 16% of their fans. Depending on size of page, type of industry and audience and, more importantly, how the page is managed, this percentage can vary anywhere between 7% to 33%, and sometimes as high as 50%. To reach such levels of penetration within your Facebook fan base usually requires dynamic community management, with tactics such as:

• Posting aspirational, humorous or emotional pictures
• Asking questions, not always directly linked to the brand, but coherent with its identity and community interests
• Contests and special offers – after all, number one reason why people “like” a brand is in order to get deals, discounts or access to exclusive offers or events
• Sharing relevant articles, photos and videos
• Asking people to complete a sentence, fill in the blank, insert a caption, etc.

As part of its recent major changes, Facebook announced two features – Story Bump and Last Actor – allowing engaging posts you haven’t seen to be bumped up to the top of News Feed later in the day, thus increasing the odds of you seeing it and interacting with its content: like, comment or share.

2. PAID COMPONENTS

The truth, however, is that no matter how dynamic their community management may be, brands now need to plan for investments on Facebook in order to reach more people, get more likes, shares and comments, and to enhance the overall page performance. And while Facebook ads are still part of the equation, there are now a variety of options to consider:

1. Classic Facebook Ads, appearing in the right side – desktop only. These can be purchased directly within the Facebook ad platform, or through more sophisticated techniques using retargeting, through Facebook Exchange (FBX).
   
    
    
    
    

   
   

   
   

   
   

   Boosting a Post on Facebook

   
   
2. Promoted Posts, also known as “boost” posts. For a given amount, you can ensure that a given post will reach a wider audience, with the range varying according to the set amount you invest in.
3. Page Post Ads are similar to promoted posts, in that they serve to highlight a given post. However, its mechanism resembles more of classic media buy, with CPM  or CPC targets, and more precise audience demographics and targeting capabilities.
4. Sponsored Stories are ads appearing in your Newsfeed, including on mobile devices. This is important since 60% of active users access their account through a mobile device! Brands highlight a given user’s activity, so there is less creativity and control, but these ads tend to perform better given their authentic nature, since user’s friends are exposed to a “genuine”message from someone in their network.
5. Facebook Offers. Facebook used to offer the option to send out online offers to fans, but this ceased on July 3rd, 2013. There is still the possibility to extend in-store offers, using the “offers” feature. Facebook Offers are free to create, but you will need to spend some money to promote them to your selected audience.

As you can see, there are plenty of ways to spend money to spark your fan base, and savvy community managers now juggle between some of these initiatives in order to follow up with organic, more natural techniques to keep the interest alive and conversation going.

3. CROSSING PLATFORMS

The biggest mistake brands make, and most organizations in general, is to look at Facebook as its own entity. Facebook is a great platform, but it ought to be inserted in an over-arching online vision and strategy, aligning with email marketing initiatives, i.e. newsletters, automated emails, etc. as well as other social media, such as Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube or TripAdvisor. There also needs to be a content marketing approach, identifying what role for the corporate blog, what role for social media, what role for user-review sites, and so on… within an editorial and tactic calendar.

Brands who achieve optimal results with Facebook are those who cross-promote their various channels, including moving beyond online with offline (in-store) offers, for examples. Such initiatives also help providing tangible results, which in turn tend to contribute to ROI calculations that are often an issue to demonstrate, specially for brands who rely solely on engagement indicators.

4. ANALYTICS

Speaking of indicators, Facebook greatly enhanced its Insights module in the administrative panel. Among other improvements, we can now clearly see the distinction between paid and organic reach, with simpler metrics and easier to download, for those wo wish to export or extract data for further analysis. In case you missed them, here are some of the salient improvements:

• Each post now has its own scorecard, which helps to determine which type of post works better for your specific audience.
• The “Virality” indicator has been replaced by “Engagement”, in which post clicks are now included.
• There are now six tabs to choose from and where one can dig for lots of useful data about the page performance: Overview, Likes, Reach, Visits, Posts and People.

BONUS: A REVIEW SITE?

A lesser known feature was also unveiled recently that could prove to be a boon or a bombshell with the travel & hospitality vertical: the “Review” button that now appears on Facebook pages.

The new “Review” button on Facebook Pages

Most people don’t necessarily rely on Facebook for other users’ reviews and comments, with sites such as TripAdvisor or Yelp that have a strong leadership and awareness for this purpose alone. Nevertheless, Facebook positioned itself strategically earlier this year within the search field, launching its Graph Search functionality, so it would only make sense to now add this layer of user reviews. For an upcoming trip to Las Vegas, Chicago, Paris or Rome, users may want to use their Facebook search capabilities, now combined with these reviews that add context, in particular if comments come from folks within our network. Is that really Facebook’s intention? Hard to tell at this point, but travel marketers should take note of these developments. One never knows…

Sample of user reviews for Fairmont Chateau Frontenac hotel, in Quebec City

Are there other new features within Facebook you think are true game-changers or should have been mentioned in this post? 

To learn more about Facebook's recent changes or how Facebook marketing can help your business, click here for a free quote from IES Marketing.

Article curated from Social Media Today

Five Easy Ways to Expand Your Clientele Using LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a versatile platform for businesses to expand in many different ways. If you know how to use the networking site to your advantage, you can take your company to greater levels using it. Here are five simple tactics by which you can bring in more clients and more value to your business.

Use company status updates






If your gutter guard manufacturing company has a LinkedIn page, then make sure that you use the facility where certain employees and managers under you can update news and other relevant information on the page directly. By doing this, you are effectively cutting down your own work regarding developing and updating the page, and at the same time keeping your followers engaged. These updates can then be shared, commented on and liked by viewers, which helps keep them thinking about your company at all times. This way, clients will think of your company first because of the repetition and frequent renewal of interest.

Focus on specialization and find an exact target group



LinkedIn is different from other networking sites because it is targeted at working professionals and people who wish to expand their network of like-minded people in their areas of expertise. Since the target group is already specialized, you can grab the attention of a very specific group of individuals. These people are already prospective clients, making it easier for you to communicate with them.

Head hunting and LinkedIn



Search for skilled labor through this networking platform. LinkedIn makes things easier for you because information is freely available. Background checks can be done and you will be able to hire
 competent and efficient workers. If your staff is good, it is an automatic indicator that your company will deliver positive results. Many clients look at the employees of a company before working with the company itself.

Differentiate yourself and stand out among the crowd



There are many opportunities for you to expand your clientele using LinkedIn. However, it is important to remember that there are a large number of organizations participating in similar activities as you, each one trying to best the other. If you do not have anything special to catch people’s attention, it will be difficult for you to be found, even to your target audience.

Use LinkedIn as a place to promote even offline activities



If your company conducts seminars or other such sources of information regularly, it is advisable to promote this through LinkedIn. Send out invitations to such events online, and you will find that you have an additional number of interested people attending them. This will give you a better opportunity to pitch your business strategy and acquire more clients. Offline methods are excellent for sealing deals.

LinkedIn can only help you get the attention of potential clients. Offline advertising has more of a personal touch and is directed only at the select viewers at that moment. The Internet simply provides you with opportunities to eliminate a large number of people so that you know who to pitch to. 

Article curated from Social Media Today

How Often Should You Post Social Media Updates?

One question that business owners new to social media ask us often is this one: How often should I post status updates to my social media accounts?  The answer is, it depends.

Keep in mind that all social media is different. Facebook and Twitter are very different from Google+ and LinkedIn.
 
Before you start posting to any social media site, you should take some time to understand the expectations of its current users. Social media communities are all different, and each of the popular social media websites are a unique community with distinct differences.

Twitter users, for example, don’t mind seeing your posts several times throughout the day. Twitter streams are so full of messages that fly on and fly off your screen so fast that you can miss most of the updates one of your followers posts and you won’t miss a thing. You can always go back and review those posts if you want.

Facebook is a little different. You want to stay relevant and visible, but not post too much. Typically one to two posts per day can be enough for  Facebook.

LinkedIn users, on the other hand, expect that you’ll be too busy to constantly post to your LinkedIn profile. On LinkedIn, a couple of times a week is generally enough.

So to answer the question, there’s no definitive answer. Post to your social media accounts as often as you have something useful to say, but keep in mind that each community is a unique community and has its own set of standards and expectations. Learn what those are and see how you – and your unique business message –  fit in, and you’ll find the recipe for your social media posting frequency that works right for you.

Article curated from Social Media Today

When to Tweet It Twice

Maximize the potential of your most popular tweets by recirculating them (but don't just literally retweet yourself).

For brands or individuals on Twitter, getting a blizzard of retweets can be a coup--and a disappointment. There's nothing like the thrill of successfully engaging your fans, delighting them enough to share whatever you had to say or link. But you also know that only a portion of your audience saw your uber-shareable message. In that case, you might wonder: Can I tweet it again?

Tomasz Tunguz, a Redpoint Ventures partner and former product manager for Google's social media monetization team, had the same question. Tunguz, who focuses on consumer Internet, online marketing and digital media investments, decided to experiment with periodically re-upping some of his older tweets.

While his methods wouldn't hold up to peer review, the results should still intrigue anyone managing a social media account. For this experiment, Tunguz used his personal Twitter account, which has just over 10,000 followers. He chose 30 of his previously-used tweets to recirculate, using identical language each time, but varying the timing of attempts. 

"Sometimes it's a few days, otherwise it several months or even quarters," he explained over email.

Tunguz's results hint at two potentially useful discoveries. First, "each subsequent attempt gains about 75% of the previous number of retweets--a very encouraging metric," he wrote on his blog. This would indicate that the second or third tweets aren't likely to achieve the success of the original, but could still be worthwhile for driving attention.

What's really interesting is what Tunguz found by looking more closely. He noted that tweets with high initial retweet rates acted differently than those with low rates. "Recirculating a moderately successful post, one with about 2 initial retweets, results in about 2 more retweets. But recirculating a very successful post, one with on average 9 retweets, creates a cascade of another 4 retweets," he blogged. The numbers suggest that it's only useful to recirculate your most popular content.

While Tunguz is clear that his results may not be consistent for different publications or accounts, it seems like it might be a strategy for others to test out: Let unpopular tweets drift down the Twitter stream for good. But if there's something your audience really likes, recirculating it, even months later, may help draw noticeably more attention.

Article curated from Inc. Magazine

How Online Marketing As You Know It Has Changed

Google just took big steps to make search more secure. What it means for marketers? Time to rethink your SEO strategy.

Think search marketing is old fashioned? Maybe, but it's still probably the source of your most valuable customers. The thing is, the way you handle SEO has just changed for good--but not in a way that will make you happy.

What Happened

Google has just moved to secure search. That is, all searches are now performed using HTTPS rather than just those for people who are signed into their Google accounts. Put in non-technical terms, that means that Google will no longer pass keyword search data to websites. That means you can't track users by the keywords they've used.

Knowing keywords is vital in online marketing because that's how you know what prospects and customers were looking for when they show up at your virtual doorstep. You might be able to adjust your content and targeted keywords and then see how each change affects trends, but forget real time. You're running blind. Here's how integrated marketing firm V3 puts it:
 
For instance, if I've got a client that sells little girls' accessories, and I know there's a lot of search traffic for the phrase "girls red tutu" (instead of, say, the phrase "red tutus for girls") I'm going to make sure my product descriptions on the website use that phrase, my blog content uses that phrase and my social media content utilizes that phrase. That's like using honey to draw the bees. You do the homework to find out what it is they are searching for, then make sure your marketing messages and content speak in the language customers and prospects use when they are searching.

The change at Google doesn't affect what other search engines like Bing do, but let's get real: Google has maintained about two-thirds of the search market. When you lose Google, you lose the big majority of the keyword data you used to get.

As V3 notes, this isn't a death knell. It takes the emphasis off getting on the first page of Google and puts it onto creating content that provides real value to customers and prospects. Simplistic strategies such as relying on the right combination of a few words lose power. Instead, you need the expertise to create what people will actually want to read, view, and hear. However, make no mistake: this is one major upset and a lot of marketers will have to make some big shifts.

Article curated from Inc. Magazine