HubSpot's Inbound Internet Marketing Blog

Why Readers Lose Interest in Your Email Marketing [Infographic]

Corey Eridon — Fri, 25 May 2012 17:30:00 GMT

Marketers spend so much time creating content, building landing pages, and generating leads. As they should! With a boatload of leads, you can also send a boatload of amazing email marketing messages to nurture those leads into customers.

Problem is, the enthusiasm your email subscribers once felt can dwindle. And sometimes, no matter how amazing your email marketing is, some recipients will stop clicking, stop opening, and eventually unsubscribe.

But what if you had better insight into why your email recipients felt this way? Well, maybe you could actually do something about it. Litmus to the rescue! They've created this handy infographic that breaks down, in simple terms, all of the reasons your recipients become disengaged with your email marketing -- and what you can do about it, too.

Why Readers Become Disengaged With Your Email Marketing

Do any of these reasons for email disengagement surprise you? What do you do to ensure recipients stay engaged with your email marketing?

8 Ways to Integrate Social Media Into Your Lead Nurturing Campaigns

Kendal Peiguss — Fri, 25 May 2012 13:00:00 GMT

We often fall into the trap of assuming that lead nurturing is a completely email-driven strategy. But technically, lead nurturing is defined as consistent and targeted communication to move your leads further down the funnel. So while email has proven to be a very effective tool for this, it is not the only bridge between your company and its leads.

Social media has emerged as an increasingly important part of people’s lives, and the savviest marketers have found ways to integrate it into lead nurturing to build stronger relationships.

Consider this for a moment: According to ATYM Market Research, 85% of the American population is on Facebook, 49% owns a Twitter account, and most of them visit these sites daily. Research also shows that social media and purchase decisions are closely linked -- with ecommerce companies specifically, prospects are 71% more likely to purchase a product if referred through social media. Sounds like social media offers a pretty natural opportunity for lead nurturing, eh? So to help you establish stronger and more personal relationships with your leads, take a look at these ideas to help you better integrate your lead nurturing and social media marketing.

8 Simple Ways to Integrate Your Social Media and Lead Nurturing

1) Include social follow widgets in lead nurturing emails.

This is an easy addition to your lead nurturing emails that will also help you grow your social reach -- add social follow widgets to your lead nurturing emails! The more points of contact you can have with your leads, the better. Think about it, if you can talk with your leads through email and social media, you have twice as much opportunity to expose them to awesome content to drive reconversions, product updates, and other offers to pull them further down the sales funnel.

2) Use social share modules in your emails.

People are impulsive, and the internet moves fast. The best way to get something shared is to give leads the opportunity to do it with one click. Including social sharing modules in every lead nurturing email you send lets leads blast your content to their networks, effectively building your company’s social reach while building a more personal lead-company relationship.

Even better, including social share modules can also increase email click-through-rate! A GetResponse analysis reported that email newsletters with social sharing buttons had 115% higher CTR than those that did not. Just think, a few little buttons can increase your social reach, email engagement, and generate new leads -- all while nurturing current leads. Not too shabby!

3) Add social calls-to-action to thank-you pages.

Nurturing starts the second a lead completes a landing page form. In that moment, you should give them as many opportunities as possible to connect with your company in more ways. For HubSpot customers, social widgets are easily added to thank-you pages through pre-formed modules. HubSpot customer AmeriFirst Mortgage, for example, wastes no time connecting with leads on a social level. After downloading an ebook like Essential Guide to Buying your First Home, the lead is met with other ways to get in touch with AmeriFirst. This is great integration at work!

4) All together now ... add social widgets in thank-you emails!

Put together these first three tips, and you have tip number four! The first email a lead receives from your company is an important point of contact and can set the tone for future interactions. Often, that first email is in your thank-you or confirmation emails after they have downloaded a lead generation offer. Take this opportunity to connect with them on a more personal level by including all of your social widgets -- follow and sharing -- in your thank-you emails. A lead who, say, follows you on Twitter is far more likely to see other nurturing content that you push out via your social channels, which will help move them further down the sales funnel.

5) Initiate a lead nurturing workflow when a lead mentions your company on Twitter.

While email is the most common form of lead nurturing, with integrated marketing automation you can initiate a nurturing workflow when a lead connects with your company via social media as well. HubSpot, for example, can initiate a lead nurturing workflow when a visitor mentions "HubSpot Software" on Twitter. This integrated approach ensures that no lead is left behind in the system and that multiple touchpoints are utilized to get prospects back to your website.

6) Utilize your employee's social media accounts.

The old way of doing business is dying, and transparency -- on social media, specifically -- is more and more common. Whether you're an enterprise company or a small local business, prospects expect to be able to connect with actual people online. A recent IBM study estimates that the number of CEOs active on social media will increase by over 40% in the next five years. The study cites "openness within an organization" as an increasingly important component of business success.

So encourage your employees to be active on social media and share your lead nurturing content to amplify your reach. You should also make it easy for leads to connect with sales people (and even management!) via social media to make it apparent that there's a face behind the company. While it may not be feasible to give out personal account information to an early stage lead, once a lead has successfully moved down the funnel, give them access to connect with an individual sales person.

7) Always respond to social inquiries.

Leads sometimes have feedback or questions about a recent offer you sent them, and many will turn to social channels to get their answer -- especially since you've done such a great job building your social following during your lead nurturing! People expect to be able to contact companies directly through social media. If a lead's inquiry goes unanswered, they're likely not to return to your social channels, and the lack of communication can permanently damage your company's online reputation.

Closely monitor your Facebook account, Twitter mentions, LinkedIn comments, etc. to ensure that your leads are getting the attention they deserve. Failing to respond to social media comments and inquiries could diminish your leads' trust in your company; but doing so will instill even more trust in your leads, and can help you get them closer to sales-readiness.

Keep in mind that with Facebook's new timeline design, wall posts are not as prevalent to community managers as they once were. It's important to make monitoring a priority as part of a lead nurturing campaign so that when leads have questions or feedback, they get prompt and personable responses.

8) Monitor for branded terms that may indicate sales readiness

Finally, remember that leads are using social media to perform their research, too. Set up social monitoring of branded terms to find opportunities to "pounce" on sales-ready leads. For example, we at HubSpot can set up monitoring for terms like "marketing automation" to get alerted when someone is talking about that subject. And you know when it's particularly juicy to know that information? When they're already a lead within HubSpot!

We're often waiting for leads to "raise their hand" and indicate sales readiness by reconverting on landing page forms, but the truth is that leads indicate their sales readiness in a multitude of ways. Talking about it on social media is one of them!

What other ideas can you think of to integrate social media into your lead nurturing?

Image credit: alakuloo

The Best and Worst Brand Mascots of All Time

Corey Eridon — Thu, 24 May 2012 20:30:00 GMT

Tony the Tiger. Count Chocula. The Keebler Elves. Brand mascots have been a part of our lives since we were little kids looking for the next sugar-packed treat to enjoy.

But they extend beyond the hyper little kid target market. You know the Michelin Man? That half tire, half ghost-looking giant that represents, well, Michelin? He's been around since the late 1800s! And though his look has changed since then (and now we have animation to bring him to life) there are many brand mascots that have been going strong for years.

At the same time, there are other mascots that brands seem to hold on to for years despite an overwhelming distaste among the general public for their wily ways. This post will examine both extremes -- the brand mascots we all love, and the ones we all love to hate. Let's take a look, shall we?

1) Old Spice Guy

You might know him as Isaiah Mustafa, but it's more likely you know him as "The Old Spice Guy." He took the world by storm with his ridiculously over the top manliness in the video campaign, "The Man Your Man Could Smell Like." Don't remember? Here, watch it again real quick:

The campaign took off! Since then, the video has seen well over 41,000,000 views on YouTube, and the campaign has yielded countless more commercials, YouTube videos, and social media campaigns. In fact, when Mustafa gave real-time video responses to social media questions directed at him, it was the fastest-growing video campaign of all time, beating out Obama's victory speech when he won the presidential election. And the thing is, it's Mustafa that made the campaign successful -- he's hilarious, he's good looking, he's over the top, he's the stereotype of what every man wants to be like, and the stereotype of what every man thinks his woman wants him to be like.

2) London 2012 Olympic Games Mascots

What the ... what are these things?

Apparently they're named Wenlock and Mandeville, and according to The Atlantic Cities, they are modeled after, "droplets of steel fallen from the stadium." Cuddly.

The problem with these mascots -- aside from having confusing names and being completely unidentifiable as an object, animal, or person of any sort -- is that they don't clearly identify with the city of London, or the Olympic Games in any way. As one blogger put it, "the logo looks like it was dropped on the floor and I think the mascots look like rejects from a kids television show." In short, these things are super weird, the names aren't memorable, and most people just plain don't get it.

3) Pillsbury Doughboy

Did you know that the Pillsbury Doughboy actually has a real name? It's Poppin' Fresh, but come on, he's the Pillsbury Doughboy to all of us. He was created by Leo Burnett in the 1960s, and that chubby little guy is pretty darn adorable.

He's soft, fluffy, ticklish, and has a cute little laugh. What's more, he aligns with the Pillsbury product in a way that makes sense -- he's essentially a ball of dough -- but he's also a pristinely white baker, so it doesn't weird people out that he's messing around with their food. The Pillsbury Doughboy is non-offensive, non-obnoxious, relevant to the product, charming, and has withstood the test of time.

4) Mucinex's Mr. Mucus

On the other end of the spectrum, we have the offensive, obnoxious, and charmless Mr. Mucus. A representation of, well, mucus, this dirty little guy takes on an aggressive persona that tries to prevent you from getting better. The premise is that while he's tough and stubborn, Mucinex is so strong that it can combat Mr. Mucus.

The problem is ... this thing is gross. Giving the side effects of an ailment a quippy name doesn't make it cute, and his appearance certainly doesn't do anything to help their cause. Business Insider published a study from E-Poll Market Research in which they ranked character awareness, appeal, and other attributes of 1600 brand mascots. How did Mr. Mucus fare in the results? 50% disliked Mr. Mucus, the second most reviled brand mascot in their survey.

5) Dos Equis' Most Interesting Man in the World

He's kind of like the Chuck Norris of the beer industry. And like the Old Spice Guy, the Most Interesting Man in the World is one of those guys every man wants to be. He's suave, intelligent, worldly, and wildly popular with men and women alike. If it's out there, this guy's seen it! Not only that, but he's helping Dos Equis redefine their brand to be associated with all of those things. And isn't that the point of a brand mascot?

Plus, he has his own meme, which means the public has found him so captivating and humorous they want to riff off of him. This guy has gone viral! What more could a brand ask for from their mascot?

6) Mr. Six

Not as captivating, however, is Mr. Six, the mascot for amusement park Six Flags. An elderly gentleman like The Most Interesting Man in the World, Mr. Six hasn't had the same positive effect on audiences.

The same study that found Mr. Mucus to be extremely disagreeable also had respondents railing against Mr. Six, with 45% disliking him and calling him "creepy." It probably doesn't help that he's always found dancing erratically to the Vengaboys' "We Like to Party." The combination of what some consider to be an annoying song and the disturbing image of what seems to be a young dancer dressed up in geriatric garb has understandably left a bad taste in people's mouths. And as TIME Magazine put it, why use a creepy old guy to target kids?

7) Geico Gecko

Geico has had multiple sponsors, but the gecko has consistently risen to the top. Anyone remember the Geico Caveman? He still pops up from time to time, but certainly suffered from some overexposure. Then there was the inexplicable pile of dollar bills with two googly eyes on top. He didn't do quite as well. The gecko, however, has managed to maintain his popularity since 1999 when he first debuted.

Perhaps it's the British Cockney accent, perhaps it's that he's kind of a cute little guy, but I believe his success is mostly tied to the fact that he can convey Geico's message without being distracting. The Geico Caveman was creative and entertaining, sure, but so much so that people ran with the entertainment value and started offering him a sitcom. On the other end of the spectrum, the pile of dollar bills was a little too confusing to be an effective mascot -- people spent more time trying to understand it and less time listening to Geico's message. The Geico Gecko lets audiences actually listen to the Geico's message.

8) Offensive Sports Teams

I'm not going to call out any cities or team names specifically here, or show any team mascots that give a visual explanation of what I'm talking about. We've all heard it before, though. There are some teams that carry historical names that were at the time, or have since become, offensive to certain groups of people. While some say it's historical and as such the names shouldn't be changed, the bottom line is it offends people. Lots of them. And most marketers strive not to offend hundreds of thousands of people. Enough said.

9) Twitter's Blue Bird and Fail Whale

Never since the Viagra pill has a "little blue anything" been so in demand. But people love that little, blue Twitter bird ...

... and they love it's counterpart, the big blue fail whale, just as much!

What's so great about these two mascots is not only that they're cute (hey, cute goes a long way in marketing, especially when you're trying to explain why your product is broken!), but that they have a very clean design. They are whimsical, fun, and easy to riff off of for both users and Twitter's brand managers. That means they can be easily repurposed for plenty of different campaigns. You could see the little blue bird with a pumpkin pail on Halloween, the fail whale at a pool party in July, or you can just let the users create their own designs and scenarios which thousands of people have already done -- just do a quick Google of these brand mascots to see what I mean!

10) Burger King King

Does that guy scare the bejeezus out of anyone else? The Burger King King acted as the fast food chain's mascot for seven whole years. That's right, it took seven years of scaring kids and adults alike for Burger King to realize their extremely literal mascot wasn't the best fit for the burger joint. As TIME eloquently put it, this frightening mascot has been, "stalking people outside their homes and scaring young women" since 2004. Just take a look at this video -- how would you feel if you saw that glassy plastic face outside of your window?

What brand mascots do you love, and which ones make you cringe?

Image credit: HalloweenFashion

20 Revealing Stats, Charts, and Graphs Every Marketer Should Know

Magdalena Georgieva — Thu, 24 May 2012 16:30:00 GMT

As you know, we at HubSpot are crazy about data-driven marketing. So our new edition of 120 Awesome Marketing Stats, Charts & Graphs was in a way a demonstration of our passion, and an opportunity to share some insightful stats with fellow marketers.

In addition to information on inbound marketing, SEO, blogging, and social media, the 2012 edition of this presentation also includes data on email, Pinterest, Google+ and mobile marketing. I know, a lot has changed in a short time, eh? But instead of throwing all 120 amazing data points at you, in this blog post we wanted to highlight what we felt were some of the most interesting data points from the presentation. Take a look, and let us know what you find most fascinating!

1) Research is a vital part of online shopping.

79% of online shoppers spend at least 50% of their shopping time researching products. This makes sense as consumer research has drastically increased with the adoption of new technologies, which keep shaping our shopping behaviors.

2) 89% of marketers are maintaining or increasing their inbound marketing budgets.

This piece of data comes from HubSpot's 2012 State of Inbound Marketing Report. The overwhelming majority of surveyed marketing professionals said that they are planning on keeping their investment in inbound marketing stable.

3) Inbound remains more cost-effective than outbound marketing.

Inbound marketing costs 61% less per lead than traditional, outbound marketing. This is another data point that has remained consistent throughout the last couple of years.

4) Search engines are often a starting point for product research.

This means you should still invest some marketing effort in optimizing your pages for search. Ensure you are ranking for the keywords that bring you quality leads and customers.

5) More web pages mean more leads.

Businesses with websites that have 401-1000 web pages get six times more leads than those with 51-100 pages. By creating more offers and blog articles, you create more opportunities to rank in search engines.

6) 80% of email marketers send the same content to all subscribers.

Marketers seem to be recycling the content they send to their email database. Why, you ask? Well, marketers might only be blasting out promotional emails in which the content stays the same. Or, some might not be actively doing email list segmentation, which would require sending different content to different recipients. As a serious marketer, you should strive to expand your content library so you can pick and choose what offers to use to nurture your various buyer personas.

7) B2B marketers use email segmentation heavily.

84% of B2B marketers use segment targeting in their email campaigns. This is a key email marketing tactic to increase email click-through rates and conversions.

8) More and more people report reading email on mobile devices.

In our Science of Email Marketing study, over 80% of respondents reported that they are reading email on mobile devices. This means your emails should be optimized for mobile viewing. That means you can't rely on images to tell your story via email, but must write compelling email copy to cater to all email recipients.

9) Social media & blogging generate real customers.

57% of the respondents in HubSpot's State of Inbound Marketing study reported that they have acquired a customer through their company blog, 62% through LinkedIn, 53% through Facebook, and 44% through Twitter. This data supports the argument for investment of marketing time and resources in blogging and social media.

10) Social media adoption has grown drastically in the U.S.

Social media use in the U.S. has increased by 356% since 2006. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social networks have penetrated different generations who all share the need for staying connected and exchanging information online.

11) Social media conversations influence purchases.

Not only is social media becoming more popular, but it's also actively impacting buying decisions. On social media, people aren't only influenced by friends, people like them, and experts ... but also by brands and retailers!

12) LinkedIn drives the most customers for B2B organizations.

65% of B2B companies that answered our survey as part of The State of the Inbound Marketing said that they have acquired a customer through LinkedIn.

13) Facebook drives the most conversions for B2C organizations.

77% of B2C companies that answered the same State of the Inbound Marketing survey said that they have acquired a customer through Facebook.

14) Pinterest is popular mainly in the U.S.

65% of Pinterest's global web traffic is from the U.S. So if your target audience is not in North America, you should investigate to see what the adoption rate of Pinterest is in your location.

15) Most marketers recognize the value of blogging.

81% of marketers rated their blog as "useful" or "better." Business blogging has many benefits, among which is the potential to increase your rankings in search engines and earn you thought leadership.

16) Blog reading peaks around 10AM.

From The Science of Blogging we learned that the most reading of blog articles happens in the mornings. The chart above shows that later in the night is also not a bad time to attract the attention of blog readers.

17) Facebook grows in importance to marketers.

Looks like marketers are finally starting to come around on the value of Facebook as a business tool!

18) Most Twitter users are 25-34 years old.

19) Twitter drives more customers for B2C companies.

20) Mobile users rarely reopen emails on computers.

What is your favorite tidbit of information here? Or is your favorite contained within the full report of 120 marketing stats, charts, and graphs? Most importantly, how are you going to use this knowledge in your day-to-day marketing life?

How to Create an Ecommerce Checkout Experience Shoppers Don't Hate

Corey Eridon — Thu, 24 May 2012 13:00:00 GMT

4-night trip to New Orleans, flight and hotel included, for $499? Awesome! Buy Now!

My login information? I've never even been on this site before.

Oh, apparently I have, and I set up a username and password. Well, I don't remember them, so I'll check out as a guest.

There's no guest checkout? I just want to go to New Orleans! Whatever, I probably can't get off work that week anyway.

Sound familiar? If so, you've been the victim of a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad online checkout experience. We realized that we've written about how to design your website to entice browsers to turn into shoppers, and we've written about how to nurture shoppers who abandon their carts. But we haven't told you how to design a seamless, efficient checkout experience that ensures customers actually complete their purchases the first time they're in your shopping cart.

It all boils down to simplicity. The more options, barriers, and just plain annoyances you put in front of an online shopper, the less likely they are to complete a purchase. This post will show ecommerce companies how to set up their checkout experience for the least amount of pain and agony for their customers, and enjoy better shopping cart conversion rates as a result.

1) Don't Require Login Information

I kind of gave this one away in the intro, but it's such a huge barrier to completing a purchase it's worth reiterating. When someone is excited about a purchase, they want it, and they want it now. What a bummer to think you're minutes away from completing an order, only to find out you have an additional few minutes of required registration ahead of you. Or worse, you've already been through the registration process and you can't remember your login information, so you have to go through the rigamarole of confirming your high school math teacher's favorite ice cream flavor (case sensitive) to retrieve your login information.

Yes, it is more convenient for your lead nurturing and their future shopping to establish a login with your site, but providing the option for guest checkout will ensure you don't lose a customer and revenue today.

2) Let Shoppers Save Personal Information

On the flip side of the coin, shoppers that do choose to register with your site and complete their purchase logged in should be able to reap the benefits with an expedient checkout. And part of that means you've saved certain pieces of personal information with their permission, like name, address, and even credit card information (just make sure they verify it with a security code each time). On the sites I visit and purchase from often, I do elect to create a login and save my information for future purchases; and let me tell you, it feels great to complete an order with literally the click of a button.

3) Make It Short

Just like your landing page forms, the fewer fields you require a visitor to fill out, the better. Only ask for information you absolutely need, and offer shortcuts for shoppers like providing a check box that lets them indicate their shipping and billing address are the same.

But even if your checkout experience is short, it might not seem that brief to a shopper. Use visual tricks to ensure your shopper isn't overwhelmed at the prospect of checking out. The best one is breaking up the checkout experience into a few different steps. For example, you might start with just basic information, like Name and Email Address, and then encourage the shopper to click through to the next step. Working in phases like this not only helps a shopper feel less overwhelmed with a detailed checkout process, but it enables you to capture critical lead nurturing information that, should the shopper abandon their shopping cart, lets you recover the sale through automated email offers.

4) Give Indicators of Progress

This multi-step checkout approach, however, does have some pitfalls when not executed correctly. If a shopper has no idea how many steps are involved in the multi-step checkout or how far along they are in the process, they'll assume the worst -- that they're so far from the end they can't even see the finish line. Instead, take a cue from clothing e-retailer ModCloth, which breaks up their checkout into four clearly labeled steps:

Not only are the steps clearly numbered and labeled, but the current step is bright and bold to reinforce progress. Plus, the "Continue" button is designed exactly like any good call-to-action -- with a bright, contrasting color so the shopper knows where to go on the screen and what to do next!

5) Make Complementary Product Recommendations

You may think of cross-selling and upselling as opportunities for you, because it drives more revenue. Well, you're right -- but it also makes for a happier customer if they choose to take advantage of your recommendation. Just take a look at what Amazon recommends I purchase based on my addition of decorating bags to my shopping cart:

Oh, good call, Amazon. Buying a ton of decorating bags wouldn't be that useful if I didn't have the tips to go with them. Or maybe I already have the tips at home, but after decorating a bunch of cakes I've realized how annoying it is to keep switching between multiple icing bags. Good thing they have that handy dandy decorating bag holder!

If I don't purchase any of these additional items, that's okay; it didn't hinder my checkout experience in any way to see the recommendations. But if you recommend complementary products that make me enjoy my purchase more or trigger a reminder in my head of something else I almost forgot to purchase, I'm a happy camper ... and you will be too once you're rolling in all that dough (baking pun intended).

6) Set Up Forms in a Logical Flow

Most shoppers come to a shopping cart prepared to divulge a lot of information, but their willingness to actually complete the process weighs heavily on whether you're collecting the information in a logical way. People have gotten used to a certain flow -- usually something like you see in the ModCloth example in tip #4:

Contact information like name, email address, and phone number
Shipping information, or the physical address to which the order will be shipped
Billing information, typically your credit card information and an affirmation that the contact information and address provided before are associated with that card

Yes, there are other steps involved in many checkout processes, but these are the basic pieces of information almost any ecommerce site will require a shopper to provide. And they are grouped in the logical order to which we've all become accustomed! Don't start off asking for credit card information, then move over to phone number, then ask for their billing address, and then, well, you get the picture.

7) Offer Rush Processing and Shipping

When you offer rush processing and multiple shipping options, you're providing another win-win for you and your customer. If necessary, they get their order processed and shipped extremely quickly, and you get the benefit of earning a little extra money off of their purchase. But this only works if you're also upfront about the additional cost associated with these add-on services before the customer opts for them. Consider this scenario to see what I mean.

You found a great deal for that trip to New Orleans on a site that didn't have such an annoying checkout process, and decided to go shopping for a new bathing suit to rock along the Mississippi. You found one you love, added it to your shopping cart, and saw the e-retailer offered rush shipping. You think to yourself, "Self, I should probably get this rush shipped in case it doesn't look good, and I need to return it and order a new one before the trip." You select the rush shipping option, which includes no indication it costs any more than the regular shipping option. You click to review and complete your order, and HOLY COW rush shipping costs $35?! You debate whether it's worth it, decide you'd rather spend $35 on Bourbon Street, and instead head down to a local store where there's no shipping costs to contend with.

Long story short, tell shoppers the cost of your rush processing and shipping costs up front so they don't suffer sticker shock, and abandon the whole purchase as a result.

8) Keep Your Contact Information Handy

This is an oft-overlooked but simple change to make in your checkout process. Include customer service contact information in every stage of your checkout so shoppers can contact someone for help if necessary. The alternative is confused or reticent shoppers abandoning their shopping carts before completing a purchase. LessEverything performed a study that confirms that sites that include a prominently placed phone number not just in their shopping cart, but on every page of their website, typically see a 1.8% increase in overall site visitors that convert into paying customers.

9) Call Attention to Mistakes Quickly and Clearly

When filling out the required fields, many shoppers will mistype information. It happens, we're human. Do your part as an awesome ecommerce business by alerting them to it as soon as possible, and as clearly as possible.

For example, if someone enters only 9 digits for their phone number, they probably just slipped up. But don't wait until the end of the checkout process to tell them that -- alert them right away! Even worse, don't make it impossible to find and understand the mistake you just alerted them to. Mistakes should be in big, bright, bold letters with explanatory text so shoppers don't have to troll through all of the fields to identify which one contains the mistake, and the right way to fix it.

10) Reassure Buyers That You're Secure

People are increasingly wary of providing personal information, but ecommerce purchases are on the rise. E-retailers alone are seeing a 17% YOY increase in online retail spend according to comScore, bringing the e-retail sector's spending to a whopping $44.3 billion at the end of Q1 2012. That tells me people are excited about making their purchases online ... so overcoming that privacy hurdle shouldn't be too big of a barrier! Simply reassure your visitors that they can trust you to handle their sensitive information responsibly, like Zappos does below.

Be sure your shopping cart includes a link to your privacy policy for those extra-scrupulous shoppers, and visual cues of your trustworthiness like the third-party seals of approval you see above.

11) Let Customers Review Their Order Before Placing It

Finally, let customers review and finalize their order before actually placing it. Too many shoppers have been burned by ecommerce companies that have tacked on surprise taxes, shipping costs, or other surcharges to their final order without their knowledge. Even worse, some of those companies don't provide this opportunity to review your purchase before it is submitted, which means a shopper paid more than they originally intended. I'm sure you're not going to tack on those surprise costs to your customers, but this review screen also provides an opportunity to ensure little details are correct -- like shipping address, order quantities, and credit card information. The final review will make for happier customers that are more likely to return, and decrease the need for returns and customer service attention.

What do you do to create a seamless online checkout experience? Share your recommendations (or pet peeves) in the comments!

Image credit: takacsi75

How the Right Tools Can Help Remedy Your Website's Traffic Problem

Corey Eridon — Wed, 23 May 2012 21:00:00 GMT

Got low site traffic? If you're an inbound marketer, you know that investing in expensive tools and technology won't solve that problem for you -- you need to consistently create content to do that. But if you're just creating content and lack the right tools and technology to back up your efforts, you'll soon find you've hit a traffic wall.

We've talked a lot about how to increase site traffic on this blog, but we haven't given a lot of real estate to the subject of using the right tools to support your efforts. To remedy that, we've not only written an entire whitepaper about using technology to support your marketing efforts, but this blog post will highlight an important section from that whitepaper that teaches us exactly how it can help you grow site traffic, too!

Setting the Stage: Identifying Your Traffic Problem

Let's say you already have a robust analytics package in place. You take a look at your funnel, and your problem becomes abundantly clear: you don't get much traffic to the top of your funnel. Just take a look at your numbers!

So a decent chunk of the people who visit your site convert to leads -- even better, 75% of people who become leads on your site end up converting to customers! Your problem isn’t converting visitors to leads, and it’s not converting to leads to customers. Your problem, as you can see in the table above, is simply getting people to your website.

So what do you need to do to attract visitors to your website? In the traditional playbook, the answer was simple: buy traffic. Today, the smartest marketers are focusing on search engine optimization, blogging, and social media. In fact, HubSpot's 2012 State of Inbound Marketing Report showed that SEO, blogging, and social media were most frequently cited by marketers as channels with a below average cost-per-lead, and channels that were growing in importance. So it makes sense that marketers might want to invest in some technology to make their efforts with these channels even more effective. Hey, if your CPL is below average you have some change leftover! So how do you ensure that change isn't wasted? Here's what to look for when you start shopping.

What to Look for in SEO Technology

Search engine optimization is no longer the sexiest new online marketing technique (social media stole that honor some time ago), but it's still critical to generating site traffic.

There are two basic pieces of search engine optimization -- on page, and off page. On-page tactics focus on the code you can actually change on a page. The good news is that on-page SEO is easy to control; the bad news is that it's not critically important. Off-page SEO, on the other hand, revolves around the links that go into your site. Ready for some more good news/bad news? The good news is that off-page SEO is super important. The bad news is that it's harder to control. But a marketer looking to generate more site traffic needs to be concerned with both, and understand these three main factors when evaluating technology that will help them pursue better on- and off-page SEO.

1) Keyword Analysis - Keyword analysis should be the first step in any SEO process. It helps you understand which keywords you're ranking for now, and which keywords you should try to improve your rank for. To get this kind of insight, you need to be able to generate a report of all your keywords, and compare them by traffic, difficulty, and current rank. Those factors should dictate what keywords you need to focus on.

You don't want to waste your time trying to rank for keywords for which you're not currently ranking, that are highly contested, and that generate relatively low traffic levels. Instead, you want to focus on keywords that you're already ranking for but could have a higher rank, that generate large volumes of traffic, and that aren't very competitive. A good keyword tool will help you find these keywords.

2) Website Tools Designed for SEO - Keyword analysis tools help you develop metrics and plans for SEO; the right website tools will help you actually implement your SEO plan. When picking website tools, make sure that it's easy to change page attributes like the title, the meta description, and the keywords, and that new pages are created with default optimization like keywords in the URL address, and automatic sitemap generation. These are all on-page SEO elements that you can fully control and optimize.

3) Page-level SEO Analysis - The final key piece of SEO technology is page-level analytics. You need to be able to assess the SEO quality (and inbound links) of each of the pages on your website. Ideally, you'll be able to get a report on each of your pages, listing inbound links, their authority, as well as keywords the pages rank for, and any SEO errors on the page.

What to Look for in Blogging Software

SEO is a critical part of building traffic to your website, but it shouldn't be your only strategy. SEO tactics need to be coupled with content -- ideally, blog content! Think of it this way ... blogging is kind of like playing the lottery; would you rather have a fixed level of opportunities to rank well for a given term, or hundreds of thousands? Every time you write a new blog post, you're giving yourself another opportunity to win the SEO lotto. So if you're blogging to improve your SEO, and by extension your site traffic, here's what you should look for in a piece of technology to help supercharge your efforts.

1) Ease of Use - You need to be comfortable using your blogging software multiple times a week. Writing is hard enough, so you don't need to make matters worse with difficult software. Make sure it's easy to create, edit, schedule, and publish a post. Managing comments should also be simple.

2) Built-in SEO Tools - Business blogs should be designed with SEO in mind. The post URLs should have good SEO structure and page-level SEO features. You should have an easy way to add or change keywords for specific posts. Ideally, you'll also be able to get SEO feedback like keyword suggestions as you write.

3) Social Sharing and Email Subscription - Social sharing capability is a critical -- and fairly standard -- component of any blogging platform. Most blogging platforms make it easy to share your posts through social media. In addition to social media following, make sure your readers can subscribe to your blog by email, too.

What to Look for in Social Media Tools

Blogging and SEO are absolutely critical to driving traffic to your website, but they often struggle without a third element: social media. For consistent traffic growth, businesses need to continue building a community of fans and followers on social networks with whom they can share their optimized content and attract new site visitors. So it only makes sense that if you're investing in SEO and blogging software to improve your site traffic, you'll want some social media software to help you out, too. Here's what any social media software should have to help solve your traffic problem.

1) Social Media Monitoring - The first rule of social media software is don't talk about social media software. Just kidding, the first rule is actually, "listening." Many marketers do this for Facebook; then they hop over to LinkedIn; then they move over to Twitter; and before long they have 5 tabs open in their browser and spend the whole day hitting refresh. In other words, platform-hopping is complicated and time consuming. Ideally, your social media software allows you to monitor most social media discussions within one single application.

2) Integrated, Multi-channel Publishing - Chances are your customers and prospects are clustered across different social media sites. So if you want to reach all your customers and prospects, you need to publish to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and any other sites where your audience hangs out. It's a lot of work to publish a single piece of content on multiple sites, so you should make sure your social media publishing tools allow you to publish to all of them at once.

3) Easy Social Media Following - Building a following is a critical part of social media. The bigger and more engaged your network, the greater your ability to use social media to generate traffic for your site. You should have an easy way to encourage your community to follow you on your website, on your blog, in your emails, and in other places that you generate lots of new traffic.

4) Reach Tracking - Reach is a key metric for marketing teams. It's an indication of your ability to generate attention and traffic. A great piece of content will have a much bigger impact if it's driven by great reach. Your social media tools should make it easy to track the aggregate reach of your social media channels.

A Note on the Importance of Integration

All of these components are critical to a great piece of SEO, blogging, or social media software; but integration with one another -- and your other marketing technology, as well -- saves marketers time, money, and a whole lotta grief.

Let's take your SEO tools, for example. Wouldn't it be nice if your page-level SEO tools were integrated with your website management software? It would be a whole lot easier to fix errors that the report turns up if that were the case. Similarly, if your SEO tools are integrated with your marketing analytics tools, you can see the leads and customers generated from the keywords you're targeting. Same for your blogging tool -- if it's integrated with your marketing analytics tool, you can track the blog posts that drove the most leads and customers. And your social media publishing tools should be operating right alongside your website, blog, and landing page tools! Just think how much easier your life would be if you could track the social media activity of contacts in your marketing database, and track the leads and customer generated by social media.

The point is, you can do all of these things separately, but time is rarely an excess resource within a marketing department. If all of your tools and technologies are integrated with one another, you spend less time compiling data and reports, and more time analyzing and improving upon your marketing activities.

Want to learn what other marketing problems the right technology can help you solve? Download our free whitepaper How to Avoid Marketing Technology Paralysis.

Image credit: zzpza

Simple Step-by-Step Instructions for Setting Up a Facebook Ad Campaign

Dan Slagen — Wed, 23 May 2012 16:30:00 GMT

Between the IPO, debate around GM's ad performance, and Zuckerberg's recent marriage, there's been a lot of controversy -- or at least chatter -- around Facebook of late.

As we look across the digital landscape, however, we still get a lot of questions regarding Facebook ads and how to set them up, especially with the recent changes within the user interface.

This post is not to debate the efficiency of Facebook ads (I did that last week), but rather to show new users how to set up Facebook ads, and current users how to improve their existing ad campaigns by highlighting some of the nuances in the setup process. Let's get started.

How to Set Up Ads on Facebook

Step 1 - Create an Ad. When logged in to Facebook, look at the top right hand corner of your browser. You'll see a green button that says 'Create an Ad.' Click it and you'll be on your way.

Step 2 - Select What to Advertise. There are a bunch of options here. You can promote URLs (on or off Facebook), pages, applications, events, places or domains. For example, you might want to drive users off of Facebook to an external URL. Or perhaps you'd like to promote your Facebook page and get more 'likes' -- know as 'connections' in Facebook speak -- so that you can grow your fan base more quickly. As you can see below, I've chosen to promote our Inbound 2012 Marketing Conference!

Step 3 - Set Up the Ads. For Facebook ads, you'll usually need to write some short copy and confirm your URL. An ad preview will display on the right hand side so you can see how the ad will look once it's live. For certain ad campaigns, such as driving likes to your page, you won't need to write additional copy.

Step 4 - Target by Geography. Select the geographical region in which you want your ad to run. Pay particular attention to the checkbox that includes cities within 10, 25 or 50 miles of the region you've selected, as you may or may not want this additional targeting. Get as targeted as you can here, as the capabilities include country, state/province, city, and zip code; or you can even try to type in your target city as I've done below with Boston.

Step 5 - Target by Age and Gender. Select which genders and age groups you'd like to see your ad. Be sure to uncheck the box to the right, or else Facebook will be at liberty to show your ads "slightly" outside of your target market.

Step 6 - Target Your Ad to Precise Interests. At this stage, you can target users based on their hobbies, status, interests, ethical background, and more. Pretty crazy, right? Options include both broad categories and very precise interests, some of which you can see below.

Step 7 - Define Precise Interests. If the particular interests that you'd like to target your ad towards are not included within broad targeting, then this is the option for you. Simply type in the keywords that are most relevant, and Facebook will automatically show you options. For instance, I typed in "marketing" below and results instantly display for my exact keyword, as well as related keywords that I may also want to focus on.

Step 8 - Or, Use Broad Categories. Facebook also provides plenty of options within their broad categories. If you see categories here that fit your target market, simply check the box and your ad will automatically be included within the chosen segment.

Step 9 - Target Your Ad Based on Connections. While you can target by interests, age, and geographical location, Facebook also offers ad targeting based on connections. For example, you can target people who are connected to your business page or specific apps, and you can even target their friends. As you can see in the sample Facebook ad below, I've targeted people whose friends are connected to HubSpot. The strategy here is that you can target like-minded users who have an interest in your company.

Additional targeting features within this section include sexual orientation, relationship status, language, education and workplaces.

Step 10 - Set Your Objective and Pricing. This one is tricky. See the pop up below? If you aren't careful, Facebook will charge you on CPM pricing (cost per 1000 times your ad is displayed) rather than CPC (cost per click your ad receives). If you prefer CPM, then don't worry about this. But if you prefer CPC, like I do, then be sure to select "click on my ad or sponsored story" in the drop down like I did below.

Step 11 - Review Your Ad. Be sure to review your Facebook ad before taking it live, and check everything to ensure you know exactly how you're paying, when the ads are live, who the ads are targeting, and that every other detail below is as you intended!

Step 12 - Launch Your Facebook Ad! Click that blue "Place Order" button you see above to take your ad live. As always, be sure to watch your Facebook ads very closely during launch to ensure that everything is working properly, and that your budget is being spent wisely. Treat your Facebook campaign like any other well strategized campaign, and manage it with precision and diligence.

Have you set up a Facebook ad campaign yet? Were you happy with the results you saw?

Image credit: Diana Garcia BOG

The Inbound Marketer's Complete Guide to Newsjacking

Corey Eridon — Wed, 23 May 2012 13:00:00 GMT

Breaking news, you guys! Something really important happened in your industry. Or in an industry tangentially related to yours. Or ... somewhere in the world ... completely unrelated to your industry.

If you found an opportunity to write a blog post, launch a social media campaign, get press coverage, or generate some sort of sales or lead gen offer in all of those scenarios, then you're a newsjacker -- and that's a great thing to be as an inbound marketer! If you haven't heard of newsjacking before, well then this is the blog post for you. Without further ado, let's break down what newsjacking is, why every inbound marketer should be doing it, and exactly how you can do it yourself!

What is Newsjacking?

Newsjacking refers to the practice of capitalizing on the popularity of a news story to amplify your sales and marketing success. The term was popularized due to David Meerman Scott's book Newsjacking: How to Inject Your Ideas into a Breaking News Story and Generate Tons of Media Coverage. Basically, news is breaking every second in this crazy world of ours, and there's a point at which marketers have a unique opportunity to ride the popularity wave of a breaking story to benefit their business in some way. Now, the popularity dies down pretty quickly -- perhaps in hours, usually in days, if you're lucky, in weeks -- but the impact of seizing the story early to benefit your business is big ... especially compared to the effort you had to put in to get in on the action. Take a look at a visual representation of this phenomenon with Scott's timeline:

Makes sense, right? It's why we at HubSpot write blog posts when Google makes an algorithm update or, most recently, changes to the way they display search results. If people are going to be talking about it, and it affects our audience, we should be writing about it and getting in on the action!

But it extends beyond just news directly related to your industry. Scott explains the concept of newsjacking stories that aren't directly related to your business in his book with a Kate Winslet example. That's right, I'm working Kate Winslet into this blog post. You may or may not remember, but last year Kate Winslet was staying with Sir Richard Branson at a private retreat in the British Virgin Islands when lightning struck the home, setting it on fire. Branson's elderly mother was in the home, and Winslet carried her out of the fire to safety.

Pretty amazing, right? News outlets certainly thought so, and the story was picked up worldwide. But you know who else thought it was amazing? The London Fire Brigade who, within a few hours of the story's release, wrote a story for their website in which they offered Winslet a chance to train with their firefighters at their local training center. They let reporters in on their offer, and with little or no money the London Fire Brigade had tons of site traffic, inbound links, and media exposure to do with as they pleased. And that, my friends, is newsjacking!

Why You Should Newsjack

Here's the thing about newsjacking ... to do it well, you have to be quick. That's also one of the biggest benefits of newsjacking! Marketers often get so caught up in the details of a campaign or bogged down by the prospect of writing a blog post that they become paralyzed, and don't actually end up doing anything at all. Newsjacking requires marketers to, in the immortal words of Nike, just do it.

But boosting marketers out of an inactivity funk isn't the only benefit to newsjacking. It also yields SEO benefits, improves your brand's reputation, and drives highly targeted traffic that can turn into leads and even sales -- and it does it all really, really quickly at a very low cost. Consider this scenario that HubSpot finds itself in pretty frequently ... just last week, in fact:

1) Google released the Knowledge Graph, and a coworker who knew my penchant for newsjacking immediately sent me a link to the story.

2) I quickly wrote a blog post about the Knowledge Graph, explaining what inbound marketers should know about the new release and its impact on organic search results.

3) The post generated double digit inbound links, and improved our organic search rankings -- especially for queries related to Google's Knowledge Graph, as Google's algorithm rewards websites who publish content about news stories quickly since their freshness update late last fall.

4) The post has also driven thousands of visitors to our blog and main website, due to not just the organic search visibility we gained from writing the content, but because of the hundreds of social shares the post received, too. After all, everyone wants to be the first to break industry news on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+!

5) Because we always include calls-to-action in our blog posts, newsjacking this story also generated leads for our sales organization, some of which will convert into future HubSpot customers. Plus, we know exactly what to talk about with those leads when we nurture them and speak to them on the phone -- SEO and the Knowledge Graph!

6) HubSpot's credibility increases as we prove to our audience that we will always stay up to date on important industry news and teach them what they need to know to be great inbound marketers.

Convinced that newsjacking is something you should incorporate into your inbound marketing repertoire? This next section will tell you how!

How to Newsjack

You're about to learn how to newsjack, and it might look like a lot of steps. Don't be intimidated! Newsjacking is a pretty simple process, and remember -- the key to doing it successfully is thinking and acting fast. So while I've broken this out into many steps to make it easier to digest, when you do this for yourself for the first time, you'll see just how swiftly you move through the process.

Step 1: Set Up Alerts

To find stories to newsjack, you have to constantly monitor the news. You could spend the entire day reading the internet, or you could use technology to make monitoring much easier and less time consuming! I'm assuming you prefer the latter ;-) Set up an RSS feed that includes major news outlets as well as industry publications that will alert you to both natural and out-of-the-box opportunities. And don't forget about leveraging social media, particularly Twitter, as a means of stumbling upon newsjacking opportunities. We use our own social media monitoring tool to set up mentions of terms we'd like to monitor for, and perhaps newsjack!

Step 2: Check Keyword Search Volume

Once you find a story you'd like to newsjack, you'll need to create some content around it. Before you get writing, take a few moments to research the search volume around variations of the keyword phrase you'd like to target. Yes, Google's algorithm will reward you for writing about a news item first, but wouldn't you like to get that extra little organic boost because you chose to target a variation of your keyword phrase with higher search volume? For example, did you know that the phrase "what is the google panda update" has an approximate global monthly search of 14,800, while the phrase "google panda update explanation" has (gasp!) no search volume? That's a good piece of information to have when creating and optimizing your content, and all from just a few measley minutes of keyword research!

Step 3: Read About Your Topic

I know, you want to get to the actual newsjacking already, right? One more thing before you start creating content and promoting! Find the primary source of the news story, and what others have already written about the news story. This is important for two reasons: it allows you to maintain originality, and credibility.

Think about it this way -- if the London Fire Brigade offered their free fire training lessons to Kate Winslet a few hours after another group did the exact same thing, they'd look foolish and behind the times, not to mention their effort would be wasted. Similarly, if we had written a blog post explaining the Google Knowledge Graph based off of just one news outlet's understanding of the change, we could easily pass along incorrect information, or at the very least not present the entire scope of the story. Find the primary source, gauge what others have written, and get a firm grasp on the story before you proceed to the actual newsjacking.

Step 4: Write Quickly, but Accurately

Now that you're well versed in the breaking story you're going to newsjack, get to writing ... and do it fast! Usually when you write a blog post, you might spend time sifting through stock photography to find the best image to accompany the post. Or perhaps you experiment with formatting to see whether your list should be in bullet or number format. While we applaud your perfectionist nature, newsjacking is not the time for such things -- you want to be the first to respond to a news story, after all! As long as your content is accurate and has been read through once by a trusted colleague, the nitpicky things many of us typically do before publishing content should be reserved for later.

Step 5: Differentiate Yourself

You should always inject your own angle when you're newsjacking. Ask yourself -- what makes this story interesting to my audience, specifically? For example, a developer could newsjack the Google Knowledge Graph story by writing about how their algorithm was engineered, as opposed to writing about how it affects marketers and SEOs. Or maybe you're a tad late to the game and someone has already written your angle to the story. That doesn't mean you can't write it better -- perhaps you can be more thorough, more clear, or provide more meaningful examples. When you're newsjacking, you need to provide some reason for people to reference your content above all the other content out there!

Step 6: Get the Word Out

The last step to a successful newsjacking is actually marketing your marketing. Yes, you might get some natural traction from organic search, but that alone won't give you the power punch you wanted that made you newsjack in the first place. Let people know about your spin on the story! For example, we share all of our newsjacking content on our social networks to extend its reach. But we also foster long term relationships with partners and journalists who can help get the word out there when relevant. After all, others are always looking for juicy content to keep their web content flowing -- if you can be the one to offer them a unique story, you can bet they're going to give your newsjacking some coverage!

Do you already incorporate newsjacking into your inbound marketing strategy? Share your tips and tricks in the comments!

Image credit: Pasukaru76

The Technology You Need to Fix Dismal Lead-to-Customer Conversion Rates

Pamela Vaughan — Tue, 22 May 2012 21:00:00 GMT

Technology. It’s supposed to be a marketer’s friend -- the tool that democratizes and empowers marketing everywhere. Except ... how often does that happen?

Instead of empowering, it paralyzes. Marketers see all the choices -- marketing automation, social media, landing pages, content management systems, pay-per-click platforms, social tracking tools, social publishing tools, social advertising tools, marketing analytics, lead management tools, lead tracking tools -- they get overwhelmed, and they freeze or veer off course into a doomed solution.

So sure, maybe you've got the top of your marketing funnel all figured out. You've got a good amount of traffic flowing into your website, and your visitor-to-lead conversion rate is solid. But if you're like so many marketers, you may still be unsatisfied with your ability to generate the customers and revenue you want to be generating. If this is your case, the following excerpt from our new ebook, How to Avoid Marketing Technology Paralysis: A Guide for Marketing Technology Buyers, will help you understand the technology you need to help you convert leads into customers.

What to Look for in Lead Nurturing Tools

There is no shortage of email marketing software options, and you could read volumes about the differences between the various flavors. Here are the most important things to consider:

Choose Sending and Tracking Tools That Your Team Can Manage

There are lots of different levels of sending and tracking in email marketing software, but you have to make sure you pick the sending and tracking tools that you can manage. Make sure you don’t get stuck with a sending and tracking tool that goes beyond your needs and that is too complicated for you -- or one that is under-powered. The best way to find this fit is to run a trial of a potential new vendor.

If You’re Using a Shared IP, Make Sure You Have a High Sender Score

For most marketers, a shared IP address is the way to go. It’s far more cost-efficient, and less complicated to manage. Only there’s a catch: If your email service provider’s shared IP has a low Sender Score, many of your emails won’t be delivered. Make sure you find out if your ESP has a good Sender Score to ensure people actually see your emails.

Make Sure It's Easy to Manage Lists

Many email marketing programs make it difficult to manage lists. You have to export your lists from one app, then load them to another app, then deal with all the footing issues. You want a seamless way to manage lists, ideally within the email creation process itself.

Utilize Suppression Lists

Be sure any new email service provider you use allows you to upload suppression lists. A suppression list will prevent you from sending to all the email addresses on your main list that have unsubscribed. If you don’t upload a suppression list, you’ll end up emailing people who have already unsubscribed -- and those recipients will be unhappy, mark your message as SPAM, and hurt your Sender Score and deliverability rate.

Be Happy With Your Email Templates

Many marketers sign up for a new email service provider only to discover, halfway through producing their first email, that they can’t live with the template. Set up a trial with your
new email service provider and make sure you’re happy with the email templates they have available.

Make Sure There Are Custom Fields

The ability to customize and personalize email messages doesn’t have to be a complicated feature. If you collect your leads in the same application as the one the one from which you send your emails, you should be able to add custom fields in just a click!

Look for Integration

Your email tool should have good integration with your marketing database and list management tools. Without that integration, you’ll end up wasting a lot of time going back and forth between different tools as you download and upload lists. You should also ensure that your email tool has good integration with your marketing analytics platform.

What to Look for in Marketing Automation

Marketing automation is another key tool to help improve your lead-to-customer conversion rate. If you’re able to create well-timed, relevant, personalized interactions with leads, you’ll be able to engage them, build their trust, and turn them into customers. Of course, marketing automation runs the risk of appearing overly automated and spammy, too, so you need to proceed with caution. Here’s what you should look for in marketing automation software:

Be Clear on the Staffing Level it Requires

Marketing automation automates the email flow, but not the process of managing those email flows. Make sure you’re clear with your marketing automation vendor about the amount of time it typically takes to manage the types of marketing automation campaigns you need to run to achieve your goals. You don’t want to sign up for a marketing automation package, then get a big bad surprise when you discover how much time it takes to run it.

Don’t Pay for Tools You Don’t Use

Many marketers sign up for expensive automation solutions loaded with deep, sophisticated features, but end up only using a handful of them. Make sure you buy the tools you use ... and use the tools you buy. If you buy too much, the complexity will be overwhelming and will get in the way of doing what you wanted to do.

Make Sure You Have Content or Conversion Assist Reporting

Content is the fuel for marketing automation campaigns. It’s the stuff that produces engagement in your emails and draws prospects in. Most marketers guess which content will create the best engagement with their users. Don’t do that. Use tools like Conversion Assists reporting to measure which pieces of content are helping to convert the most prospects to leads and customers. Then use that content in your automation flow.

Get Support for the Trigger Actions You Want

Marketing automation typically means setting up flows of actions to take on a prospect once they hit a specific trigger or condition in your system. Before you commit to any specific
system, make sure it supports the triggers and actions you want. Key actions to look for are emailing, list actions (adding a contact to a list) and contact actions (changing a value in
the contact record).

Yet Again, Look for Integration

Your marketing automation platform should be tightly integrated with your email marketing, list
management, and marketing database tools. For example, you should be able to use emails created in your email marketing tool as part of your marketing automation flow. Your contacts lists should be able to trigger automation actions. And, of course, all this should be measurable in the same marketing analytics platform that you use to measure everything else.

What to Look for in Your Marketing Database

As a marketer, you need to be able to manage all of your contacts. You need a place to collect all of the leads that you accumulate, and add data to their record as you gather it. Which emails did a contact click on? Which pages on the site did they visit? When did they tweet about you? All this information should be stored in your contact database -- and if you do it the right way with the right tools, it will help you improve your lead-to-customer conversion rate. Here are the keys for tracking your marketing database:

Robust Contact Tracking

Your contacts are the core of your business -- they’re the people you are trying to build relationships with so that you can nurture them down the funnel. The more information a contact database tracks, the more it will help you in that nurturing process. Before you decide on a marketing database tool, go through all of your marketing activities, and make sure that as many of them as possible are being collected in your new marketing database.

Robust List-Building Capabilities

You need to be able to slice and dice your database so that you can zero in on specific segments of leads and actually do the work of nurturing. You should be able to create dynamic lists (a list defined by a set of criteria that is updated with every new contact that matches the criteria); static lists (a list that meets a specific set of criteria at a specific point in time); and list imports (lists that come from an external source via a manual upload).

It Should Feel Like Sending Email, Not Database Programing

Your marketing database should be easy to use. Too many marketing database programs are all database and no marketing. You don’t need to sacrifice one to get the other. Anybody on
your team should be able to navigate their way around your marketing database and become an expert.

Integration, Integration, Integration

To be most effective, your marketing database needs to be the hub of all your marketing activity. It needs to be (you guessed it) integrated with all your marketing activities, because it’s the place where you need to record all the activities of your contacts. That means blog activity, social media activity, webinar activity -- you name it. In addition to collecting a record of all your prospects’ activity, you need to be able pass that activity into your CRM, so make sure that your marketing database also has a great integration with your CRM.

To learn how to overcome marketing technology paralysis to help you solve problems such as no funnel data, low traffic, and low visit-to-lead conversion rates, download your free copy of our guide today.

Image Credit: Zach Klein

Why Purchasing Email Lists Is Always a Bad Idea

Corey Eridon — Tue, 22 May 2012 16:30:00 GMT

You need people to email, and you need them quickly. Oh, and if you could make them pretty cheap, that'd be great, too.

That's the mindset many marketers find themselves in when they're on the phone with a list-purchasing company. Acting on that moment of desperation, however, will cause them more long-term (and short-term) harm than good. Yes, thousands of contacts are a credit card swipe away, but your email marketing program -- a critical part of a well-rounded inbound marketing strategy -- will seriously suffer. Curious why purchasing email lists is a legitimate email marketer's kiss of death? Read on, my friend ... oh, and bookmark this list of squeaky-clean and effective ways to build your email list.

Methods of Acquiring an Email List

Before we get into the pitfalls of purchasing an email list, let's review (for those who are new to the game) three of the most common ways marketers acquire contact lists to email:

1) Buy a list. You work with a list provider to find and purchase a list of names and email addresses based on demographic and/or psychographic information. For example, you might purchase a list of 5,000 names and email addresses of people with children who live in a certain city.

2) Rent a list. Also working with a list provider, you identify a segment of people to email -- but you never actually own the list. As such, you can't see the email addresses of the people you're emailing, so you must work with the provider to send out your email.

3) Generate an opt-in list. Someone voluntarily gives you their email address either online or in person (at a trade show, for instance) so you can send them emails. They may pick certain types of email content they wish to receive, like requesting email alerts when new blog posts are published. Opt-in email addresses are the result of earning the interest and trust of your contact because he or she thinks you have something valuable and helpful to say.

When it comes to rented or purchased lists, you may come across vendors or marketers who say, "this email list is totally opt-in!" This means that the people on the list opted in to an email communication from someone at some point in time -- like the list provider, for example. What it doesn't mean, however, is that they opted in to receive email communications from your business. This is a critical distinction, and the next section of this post will go into more detail on why this type of "opt-in email list" (should be read with air quotes) is not a good idea for your email marketing program.

Why You Shouldn't Buy Email Lists

So now that I've told you a few ways to acquire email lists, I'm going to tell you why you should acquire them through method number three above -- the opt-in method in which you generate your list of email contacts!

Reputable email marketing vendors don't let you use purchased lists.

If you're using email marketing software now or plan to in the future, you'll find that reputable companies will insist that you use opt-in email lists. You might be saying, "I'll just use a non-reputable email marketing vendor." Wrong again. Using ESPs that don't require their customers to use opt-in email lists suffer poor deliverability if they're using a shared IP address. In other words, one customer's ill-gotten email list can poison the deliverability of the other customers on that shared IP address. You're going to want to hitch your wagon to the light side of the email marketing force if you want your emails to actually get into inboxes.

There's no such thing as a good email list that's for sale.

Unless you're in the process of acquiring an entire company, you're not going to come across a high quality email list you can purchase. It being for sale at all means that the email addresses on it have already been ripped to shreds by all the other people who have purchased that list, and emailed the people on it. Any email addresses that once had value have since been spammed to the ends of the earth!

If someone actually had a good email list, they'd keep it to themselves because they don't want to see the value of those email addresses diminished by letting other people get their hands on it. Think about it -- would you sell or share with another business the email addresses of those who have voluntarily opted in to receive email from you? I didn't think so.

People on a purchased or rented list don't actually know you.

I referenced this in the previous section of this blog post, but it's worth going into some more detail on this subject. Rented and purchased lists are sometimes scraped from other websites, which, I think we can all agree, is a dirty way to acquire email marketing lists. But often list purchase and rental companies will tout that their lists are opt-in. Sounds great, right?

Not really, because it means that the contacts have opted to receive emails from, say, the list-purchasing company -- not your company. Even if the opt-in process includes language like, "Opt in to receive information from us, or offers from other companies we think you might enjoy," the fact is the recipient has never heard of your company, and does not remember opting in to receive emails from you. And that means they will mark you as SPAM ... which takes us to our next point.

Your email deliverability and IP reputation will be harmed.

Did you know that there are organizations dedicated to combating email SPAM? Thank goodness, right? They set up a little thing called a honeypot, which is a planted email address that, when harvested and emailed, identifies the sender as a spammer. Similarly, things called SPAM traps can be created to identify spammy activity; they are set up when an email address yields a hard bounce because it is old or no longer valid but still receives consistent traffic. Fishy, eh? As a result, the email turns into a SPAM trap that stops returning the hard bounce notice, and instead accepts the message and reports the sender as a spammer.

If you purchase a list, you have no way of confirming how often those email addresses have been emailed, whether the email addresses on that list have been scrubbed for hard bounces to prevent identifying you as a spammer, or from where those email addresses originated. Are you really willing to risk not only your email deliverability, but also the reputation of your IP address and your company? Even if you find the light after purchasing or renting an email list, and decide to only email those who have opted in with your company, it will take you months (or maybe years!) to get your Sender Score up and rebuild the reputation of your IP ... and your brand.

Because you're not a jerk.

How do you like it when you get an email in your inbox from a company you've never heard of? I bet that's not the kind of company (or marketer) you want to be. If someone didn't ask to hear from you yet, it doesn't mean they won't want to hear from you later. It's your job to prove to them -- through helpful content and valuable offers -- that they should stay up to date with your company via email. If you force your email content on anyone too early, even if you know in the depths of your soul that they're a great fit for your products or services, you will preemptively lose their trust and their future business.

What do you do to generate legitimate, opt-in email addresses for your email marketing program?

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