Want to learn more about blogging for businesses? Register for our upcoming 15 minute Coffee Break webinar on Thursday, December, 17th at 11am, PST.
Starting and maintaining
an informative blog for your business can be one of the most rewarding,
challenging, and productive marketing tools you can develop as a business owner.
A blog is a great way to bring fresh, new content to your website, driving
higher SEO for your online properties, as well as branding you and your
business as an expert in your industry. If you want to drive clients to your
business and build trust, start blogging.
Running a blog means
keeping up with your industry and consistently delivering new content—a lot to
ask if you’ve never posted content online. If you’re a beginning blogger, here
are a few tips to help you get going.
Develop a blogging schedule
When it comes to creating
new content, it’s imperative that you set up some sort of regular publishing
calendar as well as set aside specific time to write. Make sure you are real
with yourself about what you can and can’t do. If you know you’ll only have
time for one post per week, set aside that time, and don’t skip.
To keep yourself on
track, create a weekly content calendar. A simple spreadsheet is a great way to
lay out your publishing schedule and makes it easy to collaborate if you have
multiple blog writers in your company. Download our free blog schedule template
or build your own—whatever you use, have a plan and stick to it!
Come up with blog topics
Beyond creating the
content itself, one of the next most challenging parts of keeping a business
blog is coming up with relevant, interesting subject matter to write about week
after week. For me, ideas for blogs often come to mind randomly—never during
any scheduled “blog writing” time.
Make sure you record
these random inspirations! The beauty of our mobile devices is you have a great
place to take notes at any time, wherever you are. Whether it’s a spreadsheet
or a simple note file, I recommend keeping all of your blog ideas in one place.
Download our free blog schedule template and check out the Topics sheet for an
example of how to record and track your blog ideas.
Be enthused and interesting
Staying engaged as a
writer can be difficult at times, as not all business topics are all that
interesting. But, if you can press your enthusiasm into your writing, it will
come through to your reader. Whether you’re writing a targeted how-to guide or
a fun weekend read, make your content easy to consume, keep things interesting,
and get your point across with as little fluff as possible.
Make sure to distribute
If you are going to take
the time and effort to write a blog, make sure you do a good job at
distributing the content. Here are a few things to keep in mind to maximize
your reach:
Make sure your content
includes keywords and #hashtags aligned with your SEO strategy
Don’t forget other
SEO-related components, such as page meta titles and descriptions
Share on social media
Distribute through email
marketing
Distributing your content
across the web, and giving others the ability to like, comment, and share your
information, goes a long way in developing a brand of industry expertise and a
following of potential clients for your business.
Blogging is a great way
to really humanize your business. It gives your target audience something to
connect you and your industry with, and it allows you to communicate with your
peers. It can be a challenge to get started and maintain a quality content
marketing schedule, but you’ll quickly find that content creation gets easier
the more you do it. Keep at it, and you’ll start to see the fruits of your
labor: more business, industry respect, and a fantastic sense of
accomplishment.
Register for our upcoming 15 minute Coffee Break webinar on Thursday, December, 17th at 11am, PST where we’ll dive into more tips and technologies to help you build your blogging strategy!
Want to learn more about how Qebot can help you grow you business? Check us out at qebot.com.
Qebot Coffee Breaks are 15 minute, hyper-focused business tutorials that provide quick tips and insights into local business marketing, management, and operations topics.
In this week’s webinar, Qebot CEO, Matthew White, will discuss business blogging and show how technology can make blog management easier.
All webinars will be recorded and available on the Qebot blog at blog.qebot.com
Want to learn more about how Qebot can help you grow you business? Check us out at qebot.com.
Even the most seasoned content marketers run into creative lulls—and every business owner is busy. You will have days when you simply don’t know what to post to social media. While there are countless articles online to help stimulate your social media imagination, technology can be a lifesaver when you simply haven’t the resources to generate original content.
Use your competitors for inspiration
Take a look at what your competitors are talking about. You won’t likely want to promote competing companies by engaging their content directly, but competitors’ social posts can be a good source of ideas and a bellwether for customer sentiment and interest.
Sendible keyword monitor for “Chipotle” revealing the restaurant’s Halloween promotion
Sendible’s keyword feed shows you which of your competitors’ posts are seeing the most engagement. Use this knowledge to find similar articles online (from more agreeable sources) that are more in line with your company’s values and more appealing to your niche in the market.
Let technology do (almost) all of the work
If you’re really short on time, tools like Sendible’s content curation and recommendation engine through Qebot will suggest fresh content based on posts you’ve already shared and what your fans are likely to engage. Here’s a sample of suggested content the recommendation engine sent our way this week:
If you’re having trouble executing your social media strategy as a small business owner, let technology do most of the heavy lifting. There are plenty of tools available, so have a look around.
We love Qebot’s Sendible integration because it makes social media management simple: access all of your social media profiles, clearly see when your audience is active, schedule posts when it’s convenient, and even get suggested content from around the web. Visit qebot.com to check it out.
Want more? Join our upcoming Coffee Break webinar. We’ll spend 5–10 minutes running through how you can use technology to make your life as a content marketer a whole lot easier.
Want to learn more about how Qebot can help you grow you business? Check us out at qebot.com.
This week, we’re taking a look at how to use technology to optimize social media engagement for business. Tired of reading? Join our upcoming Coffee Break webinar, where we’ll take 15 minutes to run through a few of these concepts live.
Today, we’re covering that lingering question: what is the best time and day to post to social?
Post when people are online
Maximize your reach by posting to social media when your audience is most likely to see and engage your content. This may seem obvious, but it’s important to keep in mind because if you post when your audience is inactive, the reach of your content is immediately hamstrung.
If you’re unsure when to post, start with times that users are generally busy on social media, and experiment from there. The best times to post will vary by such factors as your industry and target demographic, so keep an eye on what’s working for your specific business.
Facebook Post Engagement Probability by Time of Day
The only way to know the best times to post is to look at your own data. Tools like Sendible’s reporting, available through the Qebot platform, show you exactly when users are consuming your posts. Drill into your data! Break things down by day of the week, time of day, and social media platform to find out when your audience is really tuning in.
Schedule your posts
The rub? The best times to post are often the least convenient times for you, as a business owner, to be fussing with your social media accounts (1pm and 3pm in the example above!).
Your LinkedIn audience may be actively engaging your posts on their 8am commute to work—right when you’re trying to open your storefront for the day. Your Facebook audience may active as they tire of work at 3pm—right when you’re securing last-minute deliveries for the evening dinner rush.
Make your life easier by scheduling posts ahead of time. While many social conversations happen in real time, much of the content you create can be shared with social posts that are scheduled ahead. You can post your blog the night before and schedule your social posts for the following day. Or set the promotional social posts for the month leading up to a sale, and forget about it!
Recurring Weekly Promotional Post Scheduling
Sendible through the Qebot platform is great for scheduling posts as well. Find a time that works for you, create your content calendar, schedule your posts, and go back to focusing on your employees and customers during those core business hours.
If you’re a business owner running your own social media campaigns, social media management software can be your best friend! Go to qebot.com to learn more about the Qebot platform, or join our upcoming webinar to see how easy social media for business can be.
Want to learn more about how Qebot can help you grow you business? Check us out at qebot.com.
Qebot Coffee Breaks are 15 minute, hyper-focused business tutorials that provide quick tips and insights into local business marketing, management, and operations topics.
In this week’s webinar, Qebot CEO Matthew White puts technology to work to generate social media content.
Qebot Coffee Breaks are 15 minute, hyper-focused business tutorials that provide quick tips and insights into local business marketing, management, and operations topics.
In this week’s webinar, Qebot CEO, Matthew White, will discuss how to use social media to track competitor marketing behavior online.
Register today to learn how to increase open rates for your email marketing campaigns and drive more customers to your business.
With digital tools and online marketing, it has become
easier and cheaper than ever for businesses to launch marketing and public
relations campaigns to gain traction and stay ahead of the competition. New
campaigns can be created and launched in a matter of days or hours. This is why
it’s so important, even for local businesses, to track and analyze competitors
in real-time.
The upside of the internet age, if you’re a business owner, is
that most of your competitors’ marketing efforts are going to have some sort of
digital footprint. Be it through social media, PR, advertising, or content
marketing, it’s all being indexed online, available for you to view. You just
need the right systems in place to help you wade through all of the
non-essential content and find the information that matters.
Tools like the social media monitoring technology found in the
Qebot platform help you do just that. Use the tool to monitor the internet for
keywords related to your industry and competition. You can even adjust your
search by geo-location to only see information about your local community.
Once your feeds are configured, you’ll start to see all of
the relevant information you want about the industry and the competitive
landscape of your local community. Use this to understand what your competitors
are doing for promotions, PR, community relations, and social media marketing.
Say you want to do one-off searches for specific key terms
of interest, but only for a short time. For example, you’d like to see if
anyone is starting to talk about Labor Day weekend and promoting their massage
business, but you don’t want to make an entire feed about it and clog up your
usual content. The search tool solves this problem.
Or, say your competition write blogs on a regular basis and you
have Google Alerts set up so that you can keep up with their regular content
creation. Use the Feeds tab to aggregate all of their content into an easily
consumable format, keeping you up to date with what they are doing and saying.
With these tools you should be able to stay well aware of
what your competition is doing in your local area and ensure you are
positioning your business in the best way possible to stay ahead of the curve.
Tools like these can also help to spark creative ideas and give way to engaging
content for your business to start sharing through your own social and online
marketing channels.
So get out there and start understanding your competitive
landscape.
To learn more about the social monitoring tool,
or any other tools on the Qebot platform, check us out at Qebot.com or email us
at success@qebot.com for more information.
Want to learn more about how Qebot can help you grow you business? Check us out at qebot.com.
Online reviews have become key to the success of any
business. Review sites have essentially put the power into the hands of the
consumer, giving a voice to both the people that love your products and
services, as well as those who don’t. The impact of this trend over the past
few years has been stunning. Many businesses have used the power of reviews to
thrive and gain more customers, while others have been pushed to close their
doors. Moreover, it’s now become just one more thing that small business owners
need to be checking up on and managing on pretty much a daily basis to ensure
your company’s reputation is seen in a positive light.
With that being said, it’s important to note how many review
sites you or your management team is actually checking on a daily basis. It’s essential
to be actively engaging with those that are rating your business, both good and
bad. Learn review response best practices from these posts:
Most businesses that we speak to try to be as active and
engaged as possible, checking the big review sites at least a couple times a
week and responding to them when they notice something new. But as the internet
grows, and more review sites continue to pop up and gain traction, reviews can
become overwhelming and almost impossible to keep up. Right now, for a small
business owner, there are over 20 different review sites that are popular
enough that you really should be checking in and seeing what people are saying.
But that would literally take up hours of your day—time that small business
owners simply do not have.
This is where technology can help. Review monitoring
services like that available on the Qebot platform can make this chore a whole
lot easier. By aggregating all of your reviews across these channels, you can
set up notifications to tell you when you have a new review to respond to, see
all of your reviews in line in a single dashboard, and respond right through
the interface. For around $20 per month, a tool like this saves you hours every
week in checking all of these reviews and ensures that you are seeing and
engaging with every review that comes in. Think about the damage that can be
done if you are simply unaware of a negative review, but your potential
customers are seeing it and being turned off to your business. On the other hand,
say you have a positive review that you could engage with, alerting that person
to a new product or service you have. If they loved it the first time, you can
suggest they try another product or service you offer. It’s a great platform
for driving repeat business!
Reviews and review sites can make or break small businesses.
The best way to manage your business is to understand what’s being said and
take appropriate action to help engage promoters or counteract detractors. But
if you aren’t even aware that these resources are there, it could do you a lot
of harm. Email us at success@qebot.com
to learn more about the Qebot Platform and Marketplace, and the tools available
like the Reputation Management application.
Want to learn more about how Qebot can help you grow you business? Check us out at qebot.com.
If you’re a local business owner, you might not know where to start when it comes to creating your first Instagram content. Here are a few ideas from established brands to get the creativity flowing.
1. Leak a new product
Instagram is a great place to announce new products. One way to generate followers is to build a reputation for leaking new products on Instagram before any other channel. Buyers who like to be in the know will start keeping an eye on your account to get the latest information about your company.
2. Show your product in action
Show your product being used in a way that that reinforces your brand identity. Take this a step further by showing a novel use of your product that encourages people to use your product in a new way. Doing so may even convert consumers who didn’t realize they had a need for your product.
3. Show what you can do
Selling a service, rather than a product? Show people what you can do. This post by a moving company gives consumers a real-life example of what they can expect from from the service. Seeing that painstakingly wrapped heavy furniture hauled down a truck ramp is enough to remind anyone how nice it is to get help moving.
4. Show some personality
Instagram is an excellent place to craft your brand identity. But show some personality as well. The fact that the photo above doesn’t fit nicely with the coffee shop aesthetic makes it unexpected and helps it cut through the noise.
5. Comment on a current event
A timely post about a current event can spark engagement from people who might otherwise pass over your posts. The above post inserted the brand into the greater discussion surrounding the Super Bowl, at a time when the subject was top-of-mind for many. Talk about the things people care about, and they just may join your conversation.
6. Make yourself part of a local event
If you’re a local business, engage your community! Show that you care, as much as your customers, about things going on in your area. This post also reminds people of where they can buy the poster’s product while they attend the event being discussed.
7. Build anticipation for an event
Hosting your own event? Post about it as the event approaches to generate excitement and encourage attendance. Instagram can be used to build anticipation for just about anything: product launches, store openings—anything with a date.
8. Let people inside your company
Show people how your product is made or where it comes from. In addition to satisfying curiosity, letting people behind the scenes helps to legitimize your organization and gives depth to your brand identity.
9. Introduce your employees
Show the world that there are real people who make your company what it is. Humanizing your brand is a great way to build trust with consumers.
10. Encourage post engagement
Try posts that ask for user engagement to boost the reach of your posts. For example, this post asks users to identify the location of the photo. Many other options exist that you may recognize from other social media platforms. Ask for opinion: try showing an image of multiple versions of your product (different colors, say), and asking your followers which is their favorite. Or simply run a contest: offer a prize to one of the first 100 commenters.
This is just a small sample of how to use Instagram for business. If you need more inspiration, start following major brands to get an idea of what is possible, and check out others in your industry to get a feel for how you can create a unique voice that stands out from the rest. Good luck, and happy posting!
Want to learn more about how Qebot can help you grow you business? Check us out at qebot.com.
So you’re starting or are already sending out a regularly
scheduled email newsletter to your contact list for your business. This is a
great step in developing a well-rounded and extremely effective marketing
strategy that will not only help you drive new business in the door, but will
also keep you top of mind and seen as the expert in your respective industry
for past customers.
A typical question asked by those sending out email
newsletters is what is the best day and time to be sending out your email blast
to get the best opens, clicks, reads, and conversion. Although it can vary
greatly depending on your business, the type of customers you target, and what
you may be trying to get them to do, there are some pretty set standards that
are fairly effective across the board based on Mailchimp’s Send Time
Optimization feature.
Which days get
more opens?
For most email campaigns sent throughout the week,
Mailchimp’s data shows that the best days of the week for open rates tend to be
Thursday and Tuesday, with Wednesday and Monday following a bit behind, and a
drop off on Friday and into the weekend.
What times get
more opens?
When it comes to the actual hour of the day that you
should be scheduling your send, it can vary a bit, but the data shows that the window
of around 9 am to around 3 pm is typically the best. The peak time is around
the 10:30 am timeframe.
This is data based on millions of emails sent. There are
dozens of nuances to your specific email campaign that could make this data
completely irrelevant. A great example would be the entertainment industry. The
weekends could be the perfect time for a local movie theater or museum to send
out their newsletter, when people are the most apt to be interested in
activities in their downtime. Another differentiator may be the type of content
you are sending out. If it’s based on work productivity or better management of
your company, then your content may be interesting during the workday when
that’s what people are involved in. But if your information is more based on
news or non-work related content, perhaps it’s best to get your content into
the hands of your audience early in the morning or later in the evening.
The most important thing to remember is who you audience
is. Really strive to understand your recipients and build your campaign
strategy around that. Try using A/B testing for different days and times,
segmenting out your contact lists to see what works the best for your business.
Mailchimp, through the Qebot platform, has great tools for setting up your
email marketing campaigns, testing your campaigns side by side, and getting the
most out of your time and resources.
To learn more about email marketing through the Qebot
platform, visit us at Qebot.com, or email us at success@qebot.com to set up your free
account, and get started optimizing your marketing and business operations.
Want to learn more about how Qebot can help you grow you business? Check us out at qebot.com.
As a small business owner, you are probably being told on a
daily basis, from other business owners or sales people, about the incredible
importance of online directories. You know that your business needs to be
listed, that your listings need to be claimed, and that your business
information should be accurate and consistent across the sea of directories
online. But what’s the point? How do online directories benefit your business? Should
you be paying for a service to help manage this? Moreover, if you do decide to
pay someone to do this, how much will it cost?
Let’s shed a bit of light on what these directories are, what
they’ll provide your business, and the return you can expect for resources put
towards this project.
First, let’s talk about the directory listings themselves.
Directories have mostly spawned from old form phonebooks and paper-form
business directories. As the Internet took hold, these businesses needed to
find a new way to keep ad revenues coming in the door and business owners reliant
upon their products. Online directories such as YP.com, Yelp, CitySearch, and
hundreds of others jumped onto the web to continue their business in a new,
electronic era. Some directories have a lot more reach and authority than
others, and some focus heavily on niche products and services. These sites take
information about your business, publish it on their website, and hope that you
will pay advertising dollars to show up higher in their own search algorithms. Directory
sites also work very hard at ensuring high SEO value, making their sites, featuring
certain products or services, are being listed high in search results on Google
and Bing.
From an SEO standpoint for your business, this is where
directories become important. These directories typically have high SEO value
themselves, meaning, if your business information is listed, and links to your
website, SEO value can passed to your site. The more high-value links you have
to your website, the more authority search engines find your business to be on
specific topics or product searches, and the better you will rank.
What you need to look out for, however, is consistency
across these directories. One of the biggest issues that most businesses have
with directory listings is that they were typically placed on the directory by
a third party, or through online scraping software by the directory themselves.
Many times, this creates a listing for your business containing information
that may not be fully correct. Having your business name, address, and phone
number match across all of your directory listings is extremely important in
ensuring search engines recognize that this listing does correlate with your
business, and that you are a relevant result for search queries based on your
products or services.
But that’s just covering SEO value. Many of these sites also
have many ways of pushing customers directly to your website and business
themselves. Some of the more prominent directories like Yelp, YP, CitySearch,
and Angie’s List get millions of visitors per day. Making sure you have an
informative, fully filled out listing, containing the right information, can have
amazing effects for lead and sales generation. This is why it’s so important to
make sure your info is correct across all of these sites and stays that way.
So the big question is, how can a business owner update this
information, and continue to manage it when there are now hundreds of these
directories? Can you just fill it all out once and be set? What are the short
and long term strategies?
There are a number of tools and technologies that can help
you deal with this new opportunity. Here are some important factors to keep in
mind when looking at potential service providers:
How many listings do they post to? Most
providers have an average of 50 or so, with some getting into the hundreds.
It’s most important to ensure that they are hitting all of the top directories
like Google, Bing, Yelp, CitySearch, and YP. Also ask if they do any niche
directories that are related more specifically to your industry. Some will also
include setting up social media profiles for you if need be.
Do they claim your listings or just submit
changes? Many companies will submit change requests to directories and hope
that it takes. Get a list from your provider on what directories they will be
claiming and which they will be requesting changes for. All of the top
directories should be fully claimed, and it can typically take a bit of work on
your side.
Does the service include ongoing checks and
updates of your listings? And how can you go about updating your information
with the company and the directories they submit you to? You should have some
sort of easy-to-use portal or interface where you can quickly and easily make
any changes to your listings. And be sure to ask what the turnaround time for
updates would be. If it’s longer than a couple of days, your provider could be
costing you precious business, as well as hurting your search ranking. Also,
directory listing services are software-run companies and have frequent changes
to their technology that can affect the way your business is listed. Make sure
your provider does regular checks on directories to ensure your information is
correct.
And of course, pricing. Return on investment
(ROI) for a tool like this can vary widely based on the industry you are in. A
lawyer may miss one case that could cost them thousands of dollars in
opportunity, where an ice cream shop would have to sell a number of cones to
recoup the price of a service. Make sure you do your comparison-shopping to see
what different providers charge and the level of service each provide. Then do
a cost-benefit analysis, and really see how a difference in directory listings
would drive more customers and revenue. A product like Qebot’s directory
management tool comes in at $20 per month, so weigh that against your potential
growth in sales. Some businesses also charge nominal fees for updates or
reporting, so make sure you get a list of everything you could be charged for.
If you’d like more information about directory management,
or other online tools and services to help you run your business more
effectively such as local websites, email marketing, social media management,
review management, loyalty programs, or advertising, email the Qebot team at success@qebot.com to learn more.
Want to learn more about how Qebot can help you grow you business? Check us out at qebot.com.
Slide 1 – Intro Thank you for joining us today for our monthly Qebot Coffee Break – This is a 15 minute, hyper focused webinar series aimed at providing quick, easy to consume marketing and business operations tips to help you run your business more effectively. Today’s Coffee Break will focus on optimizing subject lines for your email marketing campaigns to drive more opens.
Slide 2 – Host My name is Matthew White, CEO of Qebot, and I’ll be your host for today. Qebot consolidates the tools and applications that small and local businesses use to manage their marketing and day-to-day operations into a single portal, decreasing time, effort, and resources necessary to build your business.
Slide 3 – How to Interact with today’s webinar Today’s webinar is being run through Go-To-Webinar. Please use the question feature as shown on the screen to ask questions throughout the presentation. To keep our webinar on schedule, we’ll answer the most pertinent questions at the end of the webinar. Question and Answer will be limited to only 3 minutes, so if we do not get to your question, please email us at success@qebot.com, and we’ll respond to you directly. All attendees will receive a link to the recording of this webinar for reference.
Slide 4 – Overview Todays webinar progress as shown – Use cases, subject line best practices, subject line do not’s, statistics, an example, and our Q&A and wrap up.
Slide 5 – Use Cases Here are a few ways that you can use email marketing to engage with your customers:
Slide 6 – Newsletter Newsletters are a great way for your to keep in regular contact with your clients, and keep your business on top of mind. It also works very well to keep them updated with any changes, updates, new products or services, or pertinent news you may want to share. Include a few interest pieces about your industry that link to your blog to really show that you are an expert.
Slide 7 – Promotions Do you send out promotions or coupons to your clients to keep them coming back? There is no better way to do that than through email.
Slide 8 – Updates Let your loyal customers know if there are updates to your business, products, or services that they should know about.
Slide 9 – Events Events are a great way to get to know your customers and local community. If you have regular events at or for your business, remind your customers about them through and email campaign.
Slide 10 – Subject Line Best Practices Now that you have an idea about how businesses are using email marketing, and perhaps some ideas of your own, let’s talk about how to draft email marketing subject lines that drive opens, and get people reading your content.
Slide 11 – Keep it Short and Simple The more concise, the better. Try to convey your message, and get across what you want your reader to know what he or she will get out of this content in 3-7 words. More than that typically get ignored, or often times, will be cut off by the email platform your customer is using.
Slide 12 – Personalize it This is an interesting one. A few years ago everyone was talking about using your recipient name in the campaign to make it directed towards them. Data is showing as of late, however, that most users these days are pretty aware of how email marketing technology works, and that people are realizing that having their name in an email subject line is a basic option for most marketing technology these day. Instead, use information about their location. Talk about their city or community, and you’ll see much better open rates.
Slide 13 – Add Benefits Another tricky one here. You want to demonstrate a benefit to your potential reader, and let them know you have a sense of what they may be interested in, but too heavily benefited could be seen as spammy. Terms like “lose weight now,” or “make money today” are going to get your flagged as spam, and your recipient may never see your message. Find out what your recipient is interested in, and direct your attention there. A few example might be: “check out our webinar to increase sales”, or “We’re having a sale at (Location) Saturday.”
Slide 14 – Missing Out Make your recipients feel like they are missing out on something big. Try putting time limits in your subject lines to push people to read now. This one can be tricky though. Too short of a timeframe can be off-putting and stress your recipient out. Stress makes your recipient lose interest fast, and not care about your offering. Try using more open-ended timeframes like “limited spots left,” or “limited deals available.”
Slide 15 – Call to Action If you can, try to include a call to action in your email. If you want your reader to do something specific, let them know from the beginning. Example would include terms like “register for our webinar,” or “sign-up to receive discounts.” You can even use more personal subjects if you are targeting potential customers like “I’d like a minute to discuss (whatever).” It lets your readers know from the beginning why you are reaching out and can create trust up front.
Slide 16 – Subject Line Do Not’s Just as there are great things to do, there are also a lot of things you should make sure you steer clear from doing.
Slide 17 – Don’t go Negative People enjoy being excited about things. By going negative, you turn people off from opening your email, or, if they do open it, they enter your content with a negative viewpoint. Subjects like “Not doing (this) is hurting your businesses,” or “You’ve missed out on (whatever),” You’re creating a negative tone, and can also be seen as insulting your potential client.
Slide 18 – Don’t Use all Caps This just makes it seem like you are yelling at your audience and, again, gets into that threatening behavior. While it may catch an eye in a person’s inbox, it gives off a level of arrogance that your intended reader will not want to engage.
Slide 19 – Don’t Use a Subject Line that is Unrelated to Your Content Exaggerating the actual content of your email in the subject line, or even worse, writing something with the sole purpose of getting opens, but has nothing to do with your business is one of the worst tactics you could use. Sure, you may get opens on that first email campaign, but you will quickly see that drive down as you completely lose the trust of your audience.
Slide 20 – Don’t use Spammy Words Spammy words will ensure your emails never make it to their desired recipients inbox, and rather end up in the lost spam folder. just a few common examples of words that, when used in subject lines can flag your email as spam, keeping your message from even getting into your recipients’ inboxes: Free, opportunity, affordable, bargain, cheap, discount, deal, hello, friend, sale, #1, 100%, guarantee, no-obligation, trial, risk free, satisfaction guaranteed, call. Just don’t use them.
Slide 21 – Statistics Now that you have a good idea of what works and what doesn’t here is some statistical data to back up what you’ve learned here today.
Slide 22 – General Stats • Subject lines alone are responsible for 33% of email opens • Personalized subject lines have a 20% higher open rate • 69% of spam is reported based on email subject lines alone • 66% of total email opens are on mobile
Slide 23 – Subject Line Length • Shorter subject lines often perform better because keywords are visible in recipients email clients • 40% of emails are on mobile first (4–7 words visible on screen) • Effective word choice within the visible portion of the subject line has more impact than length
Slide 24 – High Performing Keywords Here are a few words that prove to have high performance measurements for your campaigns: • “Urgent” • “Announcement” • “Free” • “Tomorrow” • “Re: ” • (no subject)
Slide 25 – Low Performance Keywords A few more words that may not be considered spammy, but have low performance are words like: • “Help” • “Reminder” • “Meeting” • “You” • “Quick” • “FW: ”
Slide 26 – Example For a quick example of a great tool we use here at Qebot, I’m going to switch over to the Qebot platform itself. Here, among a number of tools to help you run your marketing and business operations, we have email marketing. For time purposes I’ve skipped through the campaign set up and put us right here into our integrated partner, Mailchimp’s subject line researcher tool. Here you can check keywords for your email campaign.
For this example, we’re working as a local retailer or heating service provider looking to have a winter sale that the business wants people to register a time for. We used sale, winter, and registration as our main keywords to our subject line.
Here, the system, using data that it has aggregated over the millions of emails it sends per day is able to show you what keywords get good open rates, how you can pair some of these words together, and what to not use. A very handy tool for ensuring you are getting the most out of your subject line.
Slide 27 – Wrap Up Thanks for joining us today. We hope you found this topic to be interesting and informative. Email marketing can be one of the best tools in your marketing bag to keep your business on the top of mind for your customers. Just make sure you know how to get them to open those emails.
Slide 28 – Q&A Now, we’ll answer a few questions that have come in during the webinar. As suggested, we are only going to answer a few questions today to stay within our allotted timeframe. If we do not answer your question, feel free to email it to success@qebot.com, and we’ll answer it directly.
Slide 29 – Find Out More Thanks again for your time today. Please keep a look out for next month’s date and subject for our Qebot Coffee Break series.
Want to learn more about how Qebot can help you grow you business? Check us out at qebot.com.
Last week, we addressed the uncomfortable issue of engaging negative online reviews. And while damage control of this sort is key to online reputation management (ORM), it’s equally important to build and nurture your company’s online fan base. In this post, we’ll cover how to respond to positive online review, as well as how to start generating them, if your business is just getting started.
How to Respond to Positive Online Reviews
Already receiving positive online reviews? Great! This recognition will be especially refreshing after reading comments from less-satisfied customers. But don’t just sit back and soak up the compliments. As much energy should be invested in leveraging positive reviews as negative ones. Here are some things to keep in mind when engaging positive reviewers:
Say “Thank You"
Many people are quick to jump online to point out your faults. If a customer makes an effort to do the opposite, show your appreciation! Thank them for their time, their kind words, and any input that makes your business better.
Emphasize the Good
Reiterate any qualities your reviewers point out, and let them know how pleased you are that they had a good experience. Hopefully, the strengths of your customer experience are by design—capitalize on this free advertising by reinforcing the good.
If your reviewers point out strengths that you were unaware of, take notes! Online reviews can provide excellent insight into your business. Take an objective look at the comments to learn new ways of improving your customer experience and business operations.
Be sure to affirm any employee recognition given by your reviewers. Doing so adds a very personal element to your online identity and reinforces the positive experience had by the customer. Take your accolades internal, as well, recognizing employees who get customer shout-outs. Internal recognition reinforces the importance of your online review strategy and will be especially appreciated by employees whose roles are heavily customer-facing or customer service-oriented.
Know Your Goals, Be Genuine, and Acknowledge Issues
Reputation management is a part of your marketing strategy, and you should have a plan that guides your online customer interactions. Having a plan ensures that you’re engaging customers purposefully, in a way that benefits your business. Plus, it makes writing review responses a whole lot easier.
Also, be genuine online. Prospective customers will use online reviews to make a lot of assumptions about the caliber of your company. Show them how they can expect to be treated.
Lastly, don’t overlook any issues raised in your reviews. Positive reviewers often weave lesser complaints into their praise. Any criticism memorable enough to make it into a review should matter to you as a company owner. Acknowledge gripes, no matter how trivial, and thank your reviewers for helping you improve your business.
We dig into these and other related points in our post on handling negative reviews. Remember that online review conversations are like in-person customer interactions that have permanent, extended visibility and should be handled with the same level of professionalism.
Be Careful with Rewards
You may be tempted to reward positive reviewers with a coupon for your business or other gift. This seems reasonable, right? You’d give discounts to your best customers in person. And it seems to follow that, if done privately online, similar behavior wouldn’t qualify as “buying” good reviews. Unfortunately, when it comes online reviews, compensation can be risky.
Your safest play is not to reward online reviewers with anything of monetary value. Rewards violate the terms of service for most online review sites, so be sure you know each site’s rules. Also, as soon as you provide compensation to an online reviewer, you make a giant leap into Federal Trade Commission territory concerning endorsements and disclosures. Brush up on your FTC regulation or find a good lawyer before swimming in these waters.
Know the rules, weigh your risks, and check your ORM strategy before deciding to reward reviewers. Monetary compensation could get you into trouble with online review sites and even the FTC. On the other hand, a sincere response from a business owner rewards a reviewer with great customer service, validates the purchase decision, and increases the likelihood of repeat-business. It also shows off your customer service quality to prospective customers. Perhaps these are benefits enough.
How Do I Get Good Reviews in the First Place?
Treat your online reputation as a part of your marketing strategy. To get good online reviews, make online reviews a priority. Campaigns to acquire reviews will differ by business, but if your review sites are bare, here are some things to consider:
Make Online Reviews a Company Priority
If online reviews are important to you as a business owner, get your employees on board! While it may be risky to reward your reviewers, you can certainly reward your employees. Set up a program that incentivizes employees whose clients leave reviews for your business—just make sure they’re aware of your organization’s policy on compensating customers.
Claim Your Listings
There are dozens of major online review sites and scores of niche listings that are applicable by industry. Do your research to make sure you know which review sites are relevant to your business. Once you have your list, claim your listings by creating business accounts for each site. Claiming lets you control the accuracy of your listings and gives you moderator privileges for your accounts.
Stay on Top of Review Sites
With your listing claimed, you need to find a way to monitor your various review sites for customer posts. The easiest way to stay on top of multiple review sites is to use a tool like (Qebot’s)[http://www.qebot.com], which monitors the Web for new reviews and lets you know when it’s time to respond. Whatever your ORM strategy, make sure you have a plan to monitor all relevant review sites and respond to customers in a timely manner.
Make Reviewing Easy
Let your customers know that you’d like to be reviewed and which review sites you prefer. Point people to your review listings in your client emails and on your website. Many review sites gladly provide resources that help you direct customers to their site—you’ll find marketing verbiage, website widgets, even in-store signage to promote your business review listings. Decide where you want your reviews, and tell your customers where to go.
Ask for Reviews
Often, the best way to get reviews it to simply ask for them. Some consider asking for reviews to be unprofessional, but many customers are happy to help, if you’ve treated them well. Style is important here, as you will want to avoid aggressively soliciting positive reviews. You’ll have to decide whether this tactic aligns with your values as a businessperson, your company identity, and your desired customer experience.
Your online reputation can be one of your strongest marketing channels. The customer-facing nature of online reviews can make them seem intimidating, but with a good strategy, you can engage promoters and detractors alike to in a way that benefits your company image. And if online reviews are lacking for your business, make them a priority! A few friendly posts today could push customers in the door tomorrow.
Want to learn more about how Qebot can help you grow you business? Check us out at qebot.com.
