Love 'Em or Hate 'Em: 9 Interesting Facts About List Posts

October 02, 2015 at 02:00PM

You see them everywhere. You read them daily. You’ve probably written a few yourself. You’ve also probably gotten tired of them.

What are these ubiquitous rulers of the internet content world?

List posts.

List posts or listicles are articles that are organized around a numbered list. Let me give you a few examples.

• 4 Ways Animation Can Actually Improve User Experience (ConversionXL) 
• 11 Great Landing Page Examples You'll Want to Copy (HubSpot)
• 50 Split Testing Ideas (You Can Run Today!) (me)
• 5 Things to Take Advantage of When You’re Starting Something New (Copyblogger) 
• 12 Really Important Reasons You Are Running Late (BuzzFeed)

You get the idea. These bad boys are everywhere. List posts are a fixture of content marketing.

But rather than merely accept them as being, we should understand them. More importantly, we need to know if they’re effective or simply a tacky way to push content online.

So, here’s a list post that will give you everything you need to know about list posts.

1) List posts get results.

Here’s the bottom line. If you want to stop reading this article at this point, fine. You will have gotten the main point.

The fact is, list posts get results. Heck, even Google (basically) says so!

(Screenshot taken on August 25, 2015; not photoshopped.)

What kind of results? True to my promise, I’ll tell you what you need to know in the rest of this article, but for now, let’s do a flyover of these benefits:

• More clickthroughs
• More engagement
• More social sharing
• More dwell time
• More organic traffic
• More conversions
• More comments
• Less bounce rate

See what I mean? List posts work. Let's get to why.

2) List posts provide a specific number, and the brain loves specificity.

The whole organization of the list post is around a number. The list post, as Copyblogger explains it “makes a very specific promise of what’s in store for the reader.”

The brain loves that.

Why? Psychologists surmise that it’s a result of cognitive functional specialization. What’s cognitive functional specialization? It’s the idea that different areas in the brain are specialized for different functions.

Image Credit: Wikimedia

One reinforcing theory is known as modularity, which states the following:

There are functionally specialized regions in the brain that are domain specific for different cognitive processes ... One of the fundamental beliefs of domain specificity and the theory of modularity suggests that it is a consequence of natural selection and is a feature of our cognitive architecture. 

Because our brains are organized in function-specific ways, our cognitive and neuropsychological preference for ordered lists is simply one of the results of this organization.

You know how some people just love to make lists for everything? They are responding to the well-ordered intentionality in their brains. Every human has an innate desire for order and organization. Numbered lists speak to that innate desire.

As a result, we click faster, dwell longer, and anticipate being satisfied with what we view.

Jacob Millen, who contributed to CrazyEgg, said it really well. Advising on the power of specificity, he writes this:

Get super specific … Headlines aren’t the place for ambiguity. Get specific. Get REALLY SPECIFIC.

I think you get the point. The best list posters in the world make super specific list posts. I mean, how specific can you get?

3) People prefer numbered list headlines over any other type of headline.

There’s a simple headline formula to making ultra-clickable headlines: Throw a number in there.

Seriously, it’s that easy. Obviously, you want to do a bunch of other smart things with your headline, but numbers are clutch.

Data proves it. A few years ago, Conductor performed a survey of headline preferences, and, no surprise, numbered headlines came out on top -- way on top, smashing the next-best contestant with a 71% increase.

4) Women tend to prefer list posts more than men.

The data tells it like it is: People like lists posts. Yet for some reason -- I’m not venturing into the why -- women prefer list posts more than men.

Here’s the data:

5) People prefer list posts because the list post is clear.

Conductor’s data gets even better.

It’s great if you enjoy list posts, but why are they so appealing? Answer: Because they are insanely clear.

Based on the study, numbered articles are preferred because they are so clear.

There are two popular models of headline creation: The suspenseful curious headlines, and the ones we’re talking about -- list posts.

The curiosity kinds are common on sites like ViralNova.

(Oh geez, now I have to watch the video of the magpie on the dog!)

That kind of headline really works to pull people in. People love to satisfy their curiosity. But clarity is even more effective.

6) Longer lists make people feel like they’re getting more.

Numbered lists in general are great, but really long numbered lists are even better.

Why is this the case? Because people have a sense of greater benefit from bigger numbers. What’s going on is known as numerosity -- an unconscious cognitive response to seemingly larger numbers.  

The Atlantic describes this preference:

The basic finding in numbers research is called numerosity, and it refers to people's tendency to infer larger sizes or "more" of something from larger numbers.

Numbered lists into the 100s are hard to write. (They take a long time.) But the benefits are worth it.

7) Odd numbered lists perform better than even numbers.

In a far-ranging and deeply researched article on Medium, Gilad Lotan explains that odd numbered lists are superior to even numbered ones.

Lotan dove into BuzzFeed’s love for lists, crunched the numbers, and came up with an unstoppable truth:  “Using data, we’ve found statistically significant difference between performance of odd vs. even numbers.”

Image Credit: Betaworks

Other research, thankfully not just from BuzzFeed, confirms the same theory. Steve Davis of Baker Marketing explains, “grouping information in parcels of three or five can help people absorb information better.”

Maybe it’s because we have an easier time processing it. Maybe it’s because we’re just odd. Whatever the case, odd numbers perform better.

8) 25 is the best number for your numbered list.

Back to that BuzzFeed study for a second.

Those researchers, that curious lot, figured out that 25 was the best number for a list post.

At this point, we feel confident about the number 25 being the top performer in “best of” lists. While we can’t guarantee a million views each time you include 25 in the title, we can say that it consistently performs better than any other number.

So if you’re wanting me to just give you the best number for a list post, there it is: 25.

9) Numbered lists might make you unhappy.

Behind every silver lining is a dark cloud. Some people aren’t so happy about list posts. In fact, they declare that list posts can make you unhappy.

Why? Because three reasons, according to Right Life Project:  

1. They feed your craving for instant gratification.
2. They give you tunnel vision.
3. They leave you up to your ears in clutter.

Honestly, I’m not sure that these sad facts are unique to list posts. List posts, after all, aren’t in such a powerful position of clutter-creation, tunnel-visioning, and instant gratification over some other article type.

Whether or not you’ve felt sad after reading a list post, I don’t know. But I do know that I wanted to add another number to my own list post, and this seemed like a good point to add.

Besides, now I have an odd number. ;)

Conclusion

The internet is a place for all things listed. Sure, listicles have been a bit overused perhaps. But they still work.

They are a content marketer’s go-to technique, a masterful method for accomplishing anything meaningful, and an effective technique for organizing your thoughts and message.

So, go ahead and give the listicle a try.

Do you like list posts or loathe them? Why?

http://bit.ly/1L8zJrP

3 Quick Ways to Figure Out Someone's Email Address

October 02, 2015 at 12:00PM

So you've created a truly awesome resource that you want to share with as many people as possible. You think, “It would be a good idea to get in touch with influencers on this topic. Maybe they’d be open to sharing it with their followers.”

But how should you get in touch?

Influencers likely get hundreds of Twitter notifications and LinkedIn requests a day. There’s too much noise. You think email's your best shot. But how do your find their email address?

We have some solutions for this scenario. The following three methods each take less than five minutes to find an email. We’ve also included a video walking you through our favorite technique.

Solution 1: Try Voila Norbert.

Voila Norbert might become your best friend when it comes to influencer outreach. The tool is simple. Put in someone's first and last name as well as the domain of the company they work for, then press “Work for me, Norbert.” And … voila.

If for some reason you can’t find which company the person works at, this tool won’t be as helpful. Sometimes the influencer is a consultant and doesn’t work at one company. In this case, you might get lucky putting “gmail.com” as the domain.

Solution 2: Export LinkedIn connections.

If you're connected to the influencer on LinkedIn, you're in luck. There’s a slightly hidden method for collecting the information of all your LinkedIn connections. Here’s how:

1. Log in to LinkedIn and from your homepage.
2. Click on “Connections” at the top.
3. Click on the cog icon to the right of the screen.
4. Click “Export LinkedIn Connections” on the right side.
5. Choose to export as a .CSV file.
6. Open the .CSV in Excel or Google Sheets.
7. Find the name of the influencer and their corresponding email.

Below is a quick GIF showing how to do it.

**Note: If you misuse this tactic for list building, it will result in a spam penalty.

Solution 3: Strategic guessing.

While this method is more involved, it still takes less than five minutes to guess their email. Again, this method has a higher chance of success if the influencer works at a specific company and has a company email address. Here’s how it works:

1. Search for other company email addresses (use Email Breaker to find out a company’s email structure).
2. Plug the person’s information into that structure.
3. Check the email with Sidekick.

Below is a video walking us through these steps more concisely.

Just like that, you can find an influencer’s email address. Now, it's up to you to write an email that demonstrates the value of your project and gets the influencer to respond. Good luck!

http://bit.ly/1Vu3mVO

From eBay Side Project to Top Fashion Brand: An Exclusive Interview With Nasty Gal's Founder [Podcast]

October 01, 2015 at 06:00PM

The year was 2006. Sophia Amoruso was sitting in her apartment in a bathrobe, putting together a vintage clothes store on eBay. She was the “one man band” behind Nasty Gal: finding the vintage clothes, styling the outfits, modeling them for product pictures, shipping her products to eager customers, and collecting feedback along the way.

Years later, Nasty Gal was generating $100 million in revenue, employing hundreds of employees in a swanky LA office, and selling clothes in both online and brick-and-mortar locations.

How’d Sophia turn her side-project into one of the hottest fashion brands for young women today? 

In this special episode of The Growth Show recorded live at INBOUND 2015, Nasty Gal founder Sophia Amoruso gives us an inside look at the beginning days of Nasty Gal and some of the strategies she used to build a cult following of fashionistas. Highlights include:

• Nasty Gal metrics: then and now (0:40)
• How Sophia got started selling vintage clothes (1:10)
• Why Sophia decided to get off eBay and launch her own website (2:55)
• The secret to Nasty Gal’s success (hint: It’s not "product" or "people.") (3:55)
• How Sophia used social media to fuel Nasty Gal’s growth (4:45)
• Why Sophia named Nasty Gal “Nasty Gal” -- and how the name has helped the company stand out (5:35)
• Why Sophia recommends people never grow up, become boring, or let the man get to you (7:27)

Click the play button below to listen to this episode in your browser, or subscribe on iTunes to download episodes on your mobile device:

This is the second in a series of podcast interviews we recorded live at INBOUND 2015. Stay tuned for next week's episode with Todd Rowe, Google's Managing Director of Global Channel Sales. Also, check out the latest recaps of The Growth Show episodes by clicking here. 

 

http://bit.ly/1JGAeUr

7 Examples of SaaS Companies with Exceptional Marketing

October 01, 2015 at 05:00PM

Who doesn’t love a good story? The characters. The page-turning twists of fate. The surprise endings. You might not expect to hear one from SaaS companies. (I mean, how exciting is software?) But in the marketing world, they’re like the Grimms' fairy tales.

The SaaS sector is relatively young and seriously competitive, which means companies have had to wring every last drop of creative juice from their patchwork just to get on the map. And usually, with only a fraction of the budget their larger competitors are working with.

We’re going to regale you with true tales of marketing triumph. Some involve small start-ups going from rags to riches with one great idea. Others are displays of true grit. But all of them are amazing examples of what can happen when you get creative with your inbound strategy. Without further ado, here are seven SaaS companies doing it right.

1) HipChat

HipChat is a private chat and instant messaging service that provides one-on-one and group chatting, as well as cloud-based file storage, video calling, searchable message histories and online image viewing. It began as an unknown start-up in California and wanted to run billboard advertising campaigns to generate awareness and traffic, but realized quickly that it couldn’t afford it. Billboards run between $30,000 and $50,000 per four-week campaign.

HipChat co-founder and CEO Pete Curley put on his business pants and thought about it from the billboard supplier’s point of view. He speculated that there must be occasions where a buyer backs out, or a campaign falls through at the last minute. And in those instances, he assumed the billboard company would prefer to sell the ad space to someone for a lesser amount than let it sit vacant and worthless.

On a whim, he reached out to his CBS Outdoor rep and asked to be notified if there were ever a case like this. Sure enough, a few weeks later, that rep called him with an opening, and HipChat landed prime-location advertising at 101 North in the San Francisco Bay area for four weeks. Its total bill: $6,999 — tens of thousands of dollars less than the true value of the space.

But that genius streak wasn’t over. Now that it had the space, it had only days to come up with an ad that would attract attention. HipChat (a faceless company at the time) decided to keep it simple and used a relatively popular Internet character, the Y-U-No guy from Rage Comics, to turn heads in its direction. By associating a character familiar to drivers with an unfamiliar product, interest was piqued …

The result: This ad campaign is still paying off. Pictures of the billboard showed up on Twitter, Tumblr, FAIL Blog (in the “Wins” category), and the coveted TechCrunch. The company saw a 300 percent rise in online searches, an onslaught of new customers and a warp-speed transition from three guys with a good sense of humor to a small (and successful) business. Not long after, HipChat was acquired by a larger company.

The bottom line: The initial investment was expensive, but the huge success of the overall campaign and the subsequent influx of new customers helped offset the CAC. The exact number of customers accrued wasn’t disclosed, but at $2 per month per user, and an infinite number of impressions generated during that four-week time frame, Curley was impressed with the outcome. As for customer LTV — it, too, went up.

2) Trello

Trello is a free collaboration tool that organizes projects into boards to make them easier to monitor in one glance. Its marketing approach is inimitable because … it doesn’t have one.

You heard right. Instead of investing in advertising, Trello focused its entire budget on building a sound, user-friendly product that people and businesses truly need.

The result: High-volume word-of-mouth appraisal. Countless blogs mention the service, organizations rave about how much it’s helped them organize tasks quickly and easily, and how cost-effective it is. And those that haven’t switched to it are at the very least debating the move via online discussions. Though Trello’s baseline service is free, the company offers upgrade versions; a Gold package for individuals is $5 per month or $45 per year. For businesses, there are two paid service options.

The bottom line: With word-of-mouth as its main source of advertising, Trello’s CAC is incredibly low, and because the overall opinion of its product is high, so is its customer LTV. Trello provides productivity content on its social media pages and blogs, and has in the past let its members earn free, upgraded Trello access for a limited time by sharing Trello social media posts or getting new members to sign up. This result is more users without Trello spending any extra coin. Customers do all the marketing work. The company continues to focus its money and efforts into providing a superior product — and everybody wins. 

3) Intercom

Intercom is a communications platform that connects businesses with their customers in a simpler way. Its strategy is a little more … conventional than some of the other SaaS companies listed here. But the angle it uses is entirely unique.

Instead of targeting buyer personas, Intercom targets the jobs it is being hired to fulfill. Its philosophy: Knowing the job helps find the audience. Here’s how it does it:

First, Intercom works to understand what creates the need for a company to buy a certain product. It reflects on conversations with customers, former customers and prospects, and uses any feedback to identify trends and improve how it explains the product. This information feeds into the development of its five job packages: observe, acquire, engage, learn, support.

Next, Intercom creates a messaging guide for each job package it offers, which it now uses as the template for putting together landing pages for each. It includes questions like, “What problem are we solving?” and “Why would people hire Intercom for this job?” Each landing page is laden with SEO strategy and designed using visually appealing graphics to present the question/problem a prospect might have, like, “Is your customer support process broken?”

Then, it uses more graphics to move the page into a solution, with a headline such as, “Sort it out with Intercom,” and a description that presents the job and how Intercom can do it best.

Finally, Intercom created a short video (less than 2 minutes) for each job to effectively show how it gets it done. Each page includes a sticky navigation bar that stays at the top of the browser window as viewers scroll down the page, enabling quick access to key sections of the page (like pricing and a call-to-action).

To establish credibility with visitors and showcase the types of businesses it caters to, Intercom also displays the logos of reputable customers and features customer photos with a quote describing how Intercom has helped their business. Pricing, sign-up and trial information is front and center — making it a no-brainer to find. And Intercom uses programs like Google Analytics, Inspectlet and Optimizely to monitor and measure prospect interaction with its pages, and test customer engagement hypotheses.

The result: The depth of knowledge it gains throughout its targeting strategy provides it with the foresight to know what types of events to attend/sponsor/speak at in order to meet the type of people who would use its product (hence its philosophy).

The bottom line: With each job-focused landing page it built, Intercom saw a conversion rate of approximately 5 percent. Its top-of-funnel traffic has more than tripled and continues to grow on a weekly basis, and its conversion rate remains consistent. Because its strategy is so focused on solving specific customer problems, its customer LTV is high, and while it does put a great deal of time and energy into developing this strategy, the conversion rate helps offset its CAC.

4) HootSuite

HootSuite is a social media management system that helps businesses track and manage their social media channels. HootSuite tirelessly looks for new ways to entertain audiences and last year, a pop culture-inspired video campaign helped it break personal records.

As “Game of Thrones” fans, the HootSuite team decided to theme the video after the opening sequence of the hit series and release it just in time for the season premiere. Taking the idea a step further, they drew a parallel between what the show is about and what HootSuite does for businesses (helps manage the quiet battles fought between social networks). Fans totally got it — and loved it.

The result: Within hours of release, the video had thousands of likes and shares on social media networks, and found its way to some major media outlets. Since then, it’s been viewed more than 850,000 times and is regarded as the single most successful piece of content the company has created. Like Eat24, the video reached a whole new market — “Game of Thrones” fans. Sure, some fans may have already been HootSuite users, but this video made an impression on many fans who weren’t using the service.

The bottom line: The entire video was produced in-house and HootSuite mostly relied on owned media to promote the video. Plus, social sharing ended up carrying the bulk of the video’s promotion. Combined, these elements resulted in a relatively low CAC.

5) Buffer

Buffer is a social media scheduling app that allows users to create updates in a queue for dispersal throughout the day at peak time frames. Like Intercom, its marketing success sprung from conventional strategy paired with a unique approach.

One of its main advertising channels is blogging. At first, it only blogged about topics related to social media, but the strategy had limited reach. That’s when a presentation by Moz co-founder Rand Fishkin sparked a new strategy idea. Instead of creating content for potential audiences, Buffer decided to target the influencers who were already reaching it.

The new angle? Telling stories that incite people who already have a captive audience. This led to covering topics a wider audience could relate to — topics like psychology, creativity, multitasking, life hacks and more.

After changing its content game, Buffer posts experienced a substantial increase in social media shares. Actually, more than four times the amount, taking their counts from 250 to more than 1,000.

Kicking it up a notch, Buffer decided to start guest blogging to build new relationships and reach larger audiences. This connected the site with friends and followers of major social media influencers. The impact wasn’t immediate, but eventually, Buffer started hitting big numbers, like 100,000 new users in less than a year.

The result: Buffer went from a small company with no experience, no funding and no connections to a major player in the content marketing game. It has more than 1 million users and earns almost $4 million in annual revenue.

It eventually reached viral status with the blog post “30 Things to Stop Doing to Yourself,” which received more than 500,000 Facebook likes, 400 comments and 20,000 Tweets. The company learned three things from the post:

1. Even if a post is lengthy (this one was over 1,500 words) it will get read if the layout is easily skimmed.
2. Using psychology to create headlines will generate more views. In this case, the title incited curiosity from potential readers, and made them wonder if the article applied to them.
3. Don’t always rely on previously tested methods for creating content, and don’t be afraid to test unconventional ideas. You never know what might go viral.

The bottom line: Because much of Buffer’s writing was done by co-founder Leo Widrich, the company’s CAC is relatively low. Buffer did hire a full-time writer to head a second blog focusing on the culture of work life at Buffer (it provides a unique setting that values exercise, healthy eating and world travel). It received more than 900 applications for the job in just one month.

6) Contently

Contently is a content marketing (gone full-on media) company that connects freelancers with publishers (usually brands) who need content for their websites or marketing strategies. It’s known for drawing some serious brand dignitaries — like Pepsi, GE and American Express — into extended contracts. How did Contently do it? It re-invented the compensation model to pay out writers at a much higher rate than other media sources.

To turn a profit, Contently licenses its marketplace software to publishers instead of offering traditional revenue share with writers, where they take a cut of the prices set by the publishers.

It’s a win-win setup. Customers gain access to the entire Contently network of freelancers, and get to select whomever they like best. Writers are connected with work for hire, but without having to worry about managing the process (which Contently does for them). This frees them to focus on their craft and produce better work. And recently, Contently expanded its service to help writers market themselves online and file their freelance tax returns. 

The result: Contently attracted a lot of investors, who have helped the company raise millions. Its business model also sets new ethical standards for the treatment of writers. Moreover, its compensation model draws in some serious talent, which is why it’s managed to land big brands.

The bottom line: Contently sports a high customer retention rate, which contributes to a high customer LTV. It also has the support needed to expand, and plans to incorporate publishing and business results into its business model, making it the content marketplace to emulate.

7) Zendesk

Zendesk is a cloud-based customer service platform that provides ticketing self-service options and a slew of other customer support features. It also is the mastermind behind a truly bizarre marketing ploy that earned it major attention.

The Zendesk team regularly monitors search terms. In fall 2013, the team noticed a trend — people kept using the term “Zendesk alternative” in search for other platforms like Zendesk. The company’s genius marketing team decided to win some organic search traffic by embracing the search term in a very … involved way.

They created a comedic “Making the Band”-themed video, and invented a fake alternative music group, naturally dubbed Zendesk Alternative. The company bought the domain name, created social media pages for the band on Facebook, Twitter and MySpace, listed the band name on Bandcamp and Reverberation, applied unique keyword rich anchor text, title tags and page content, uploaded their video and eagerly awaited reaction.

The result: Days after launch, the CEO of Helpscout (Zendesk’s biggest competitor at the time) made a congratulatory Tweet after Zendesk took its place as No. 1 in the ranks.

The bottom line: The faux site, zendeskalternative.com converted at a 95 percent higher rate than the main website, launching in October 2013 and closing five deals by April. In addition to winning over Google’s ranking, it also won the hearts of customers by poking fun at the competition with charm and class. The time, money and effort that went into the campaign likely increased its CAC, but the influx of recognition offset this spike, and customer LTV increased.

Some of the biggest marketing mistakes SaaS companies make are focusing too much on software and not enough on service and results; failing to delight current customers; unnecessarily driving up CACs; not maximizing customer LTV and following conventional marketing models without original thought.

These seven examples of exceptional marketing strategies side-step the pitfalls beautifully, and prove that you don’t need a huge budget or strong footing in the market to climb your way to the top. A sense of humor, creativity and bold, unorthodox thinking is enough to rival even the most successful competitors.

http://bit.ly/1GkQbj0

13 Email Workflows You Should Be Using in Your Marketing Automation

October 01, 2015 at 02:00PM

Are your contacts going with the flow, or are they just sitting dormant in your marketing database? If you don't have any automated email workflows set up, your answer is probably the latter -- which means you're missing out on some major opportunities to nurture and engage your existing contacts.

Did you know that B2B marketers who implement marketing automation increase their sales pipeline contribution by an average of 10% according to a report by Forrester? But wait ... there's more.

Lead nurturing campaigns aren't the only type of email marketing automation you can use to get more out of your contacts database. Think about the contacts who are already your customers. Email automation can not only help you convert leads into customers, but it can also help you delight your existing customers and encourage activity like greater product adoption, upsells, evangelism, and additional purchases. 

If you want to get more out of your contacts database, this post will give you some ideas for automated email workflows you can set up to engage and activate all different types of contacts in your database.

To learn more about how to use automated email workflows, download our free guide here.

Setting Up Email Marketing Automation Workflows

If you hadn't already guessed, email workflows need to be set up using marketing automation software. Different software providers will have different features and functionality, but the concept of marketing automation is pretty universal. 

If you're using HubSpot's Workflows App, for example, you can create personalized, automated email workflows that can get triggered in a number of different ways -- when a contact gets added to a list, submits a form on your website, clicks a link in an email, views a page on your blog, clicks on one of your AdWords ads, or becomes a marketing qualified lead. 

You can also set up email workflows based on any information you have about the contacts in your marketing database, such a page views, email or social media clicks, content downloads, contact properties, or any combination of these and more. That's some pretty powerful stuff! 

And that's just the beginning of what you can do with workflows. Workflows can also enable you to automate other actions besides email, such as setting or clearing a contact property value, updating a contact's lifecycle stage, adding/removing a contact from a list, and other administrative tasks that allow for more targeted, effective marketing to your prospects and customers. But we'll save all that for another post. ;-)

Now let's walk through some examples of automated email workflows you can set up to start getting more out of your contacts database and marketing automation tools.

13 Examples of Email Marketing Automation Workflows You Should Try

1) Topic Workflows

Main Triggers: Page Views or Content Offer Downloads

Create a workflow for each of the industry-related topics you create content about. So if, hypothetically, you're a unicorn breeder whose main content topics include unicorn diets, unicorn gear, and unicorn boarding, you could bucket your content marketing offers (e.g. ebooks, webinars, kits, etc.) and blog posts by these topics, create an email workflow for each topic, and trigger the appropriate workflow when one of your contacts views a page or downloads an offer centered around that topic.

So if a contact downloaded your ebook called 10 Tips for a Balanced Unicorn Diet, your "unicorn diet" workflow would be triggered, sending that contact other helpful content, like blog posts about unicorn dietary tips.

2) Blog Subscriber Welcome Workflow 

Main Trigger: Subscription to Your Blog

Give your brand new blog subscribers a nice, warm welcome with a blog welcome email. You can use this email to thank contacts for subscribing, remind them what they'll get out of reading your blog, review their subscription settings (and allow them to make adjustments), and promote your blog's best-performing articles or other offers.

Get tips for creating a successful blog welcome email here, and learn more about optimizing welcome emails here.

3) New Customer Welcome/Training Workflow

Main Trigger: Lifecycle Stage

While we're on the subject of warm welcomes, consider setting up a series of welcome emails when a contact converts into a paying customer, which you can trigger when a contact's lifecycle stage gets updated to "customer."

Not only is this a great way to kick off your new customer relationship on a positive note, but it can also keep your customers engaged after they buy. And if your product or service requires a little training on your customers' part, use this workflow as an opportunity to introduce helpful training materials on an incremental basis.

4) Engaged Contact/Evangelist Workflow

Main Triggers: Visits, Clicks, or Form Submissions

Create a dynamic list (we call these Smart Lists in HubSpot's Marketing Platform) that automatically updates to include contacts who are really engaged with you. To create this list, use trigger criteria such as a high threshold of visits to your website, clicks on your emails or social media posts, or form submissions. Then create an email workflow to leverage this list as a way to encourage evangelism of your top content in social media.

Because these contacts are highly engaged with you already, they're more apt to share your top content. You can also consider adding list criteria to pull in contacts with a certain number of Twitter followers so you can leverage the power of those social media influencers in your database. 

5) Lead Nurturing Workflow

Main Trigger: Multiple Top-of-the-Funnel Conversion Events 

If a contact has downloaded several of your top-of-the-funnel marketing offers like ebooks and webinars, it might be a good sign they're ready for a little bit more. Set up workflows that help to advance these contacts further down the funnel.

If the contact is a lead, try sending them emails containing more middle-of-the-funnel content that might upgrade them to a marketing qualified lead (MQL) or an opportunity in your sales process. This workflow could include content and web pages you've identified from an attribution report analysis as influential in converting leads into customers -- perhaps content like customer success stories/case studies, free trial offers, or product demos. 

(Bonus: If you're using HubSpot's Workflows, you could set up a condition that automatically upgrades these leads to a new lifecycle stage as a result!)

6) Internal Sales Rep Notification Workflow

Main Triggers: Bottom-of-the-Funnel Page Views/Conversion Events

On any given website, there are certain page visits and conversion events that indicate product interest more so than others. First, identify these pages and conversion events using an attribution reporting tool like HubSpot's. You’ll notice that, more often than not, the pages you unearth will be your pricing page, your product pages, etc. -- pages contacts view when they're truly evaluating your products or services.

Use workflows here to trigger an internal email notification to your sales rep informing them of these high-value activities. Using personalization, give the rep all the information they need about the lead in question, including relevant mid- and bottom-of-the-funnel content that they can send to the lead in their outreach email. This allows you to connect sales reps with the best possible leads at the right time.

7) Re-Engagement Workflow

Main Trigger: Inactive Contacts

Reawaken inactive contacts with a re-engagement workflow, enrolling contacts once they've met certain list criteria. For example, you could set conditions such as the length of time since their last form submission, website visit, or email click, triggering the email when it's been a while since a contact last engaged with you.

In your workflow, try sending them an exclusive offer or coupon to get them excited about your company again. For more tips about launching an effective email re-engagement campaign, check out this post.

8) Event Workflow

Main Trigger: Registration or Attendance

Hosting a live, in-person event? Or maybe an online event, like a webinar? Use email workflows to automate your communication to event registrants and attendees before, during, and after the event.

For example, create a workflow that delivers important information registrants should know leading up to the event, such as hotel accommodations and agenda information for live events, or webinar log-in information for online events. When the event ends, set up a workflow that gives attendees online access to session slides and continues to nurture them with additional content or promotion for future events. 

9) Abandoned Shopping Cart Workflow

Main Trigger: Shopping Cart Abandonment

If you're an ecommerce business, you'll likely benefit from an abandoned shopping cart workflow. The concept here is simple: When someone adds an item to their online shopping cart but leaves your site without completing the purchase, you can trigger an email workflow that reminds them of their forgotten purchase and motivates them to complete the transaction by offering a special discount code or some other incentive to buy.

10) Upsell Workflow

Main Trigger: Past Purchases

Communication with your customers shouldn't stop after they make a purchase. This is especially true if you sell a variety of different products and/or services. Use workflows as an opportunity to upgrade or upsell your existing customers, or sell them complementary products and services depending on what they've already purchased.

Create dynamically updating lists of contacts who purchase a certain product -- or combination of products -- and create workflows aimed at recommending other products/services or encouraging upsells or add-ons.

11) Customer Happiness Workflow

Main Trigger: High or Low NPS Scores

If you administer regular Net Promoter surveys of your customer base, you can use customers' Net Promoter Scores as a property to trigger workflows.

Simply determine what your ideal customer happiness score is, and use that as the threshold for your dynamic list of happy customers. Then trigger a workflow for customers with "happy" scores and reward them with exclusive content, offers, or discounts.

Trigger a different workflow for your "unhappy" customers that includes content/offers aimed at helping to improve their happiness. We'll give you a few bonus points if you segment those unhappy customers by the reasons they're unhappy, and send them even more targeted workflows aimed at addressing the issues that are making them so grumpy.

12) Customer Success/Engagement Workflow

Main Triggers: Success Metrics or Product Usage

If you keep track of customer success metrics, you have a prime workflow opportunity on your hands. For example, if you're trying to build up your arsenal of customer case studies, you could automatically trigger an email that asks customers if they'd be interesting in being featured as a success story once certain customer success metrics were met.

Furthermore, if you keep track of customers' product adoption or feature usage, you could trigger a workflow for users who are exhibiting low product engagement, providing resources that educate and train them on how to use the product features they're not taking advantage of.

13) Upcoming Purchase Reminder Workflow

Main Trigger: Purchases Made on a Cycle

Does your contacts database include customers who typically purchase on a cycle? Enter those people into a workflow that gets triggered when they make a purchase.

For instance, let's say you sell eye care products, and a customer purchases a six-month supply of prescription contacts. Enroll that customer into a workflow that sends them an automated email five months later as a reminder that their six-month supply is about to run out, and it might be time to order a new batch of contacts.

What other automated email workflow ideas would you add to this list?

Editor's Note: This post was originally published in September 2012 and has been updated for freshness, accuracy, and comprehensiveness.

 

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Tracking and Increasing Audience Engagement

October 01, 2015 at 01:00PM

We all know that improving conversion rates on lead generation campaigns translates to more leads for advertisers. Yet most publishers don’t have a strategy in place for improving these numbers. Easier said than done, right? 

The way people consume content has changed. Invasive tactics have simply lost effectiveness with the advent of new technologies that aid consumers in tuning out advertisements; DVRs to skip commercials, ad-blockers in web browsers, and Gmail’s smart labels just to name a few.  

Publishers spend valuable time crafting beautiful newsletters, advertising campaigns and sponsored content, yet so little focus lands on who receives these messages. There is a fine line between invasive junk-email and a helpful newsletter, and that line is largely controlled by context. In other words, people will only be compelled to read and convert on your content if the subject is relevant to them in the moment they receive your message.

You wouldn’t expect mall shoppers to walk into every store, so why would you expect readers to digest every article you write? Get the context right, and your message will demand the attention of your readers. Get the context wrong, and you’ve bought a one-way ticket to their junk folder.

That’s why tracking and understanding your audience is so important—so you can create smaller, more targeted campaigns instead of sending every sponsored email to your entire database.

Understanding Your Publication's Online Engagement

This begs the question, how do you begin to understand your audience? The good news is that publishers tend to already have a strong following. All you need to do is start is paying attention to what your readers are already doing. Apply the following strategies to learn your audience’s historical behavior and trends, and your database will be primed for future segmentation.

Topic Tagging

The quickest path to getting to know your audience is to start tracking what each member is interested in at an individual level. Even with a niche publication, there will be some variance in people’s interests. To achieve this level of detail, you’ll need to categorize your content. Create a set of topics that your readers might come across throughout your articles or other media, and then start to keep track of which topics each reader engages with.

Once you have this history about each contact in your database, you’ll be able to intelligently select who you want to target with each sponsored campaign and encourage your readers to become promoters of your content. This approach will enable you to fine tune your overall sponsored campaign strategy to maximize engagement and conversion while reducing the occurrence of irrelevant emails.

Analyze Content Type

People absorb information in different ways. Roughly 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual, and visuals are processed 60,000X faster in the brain than text. Because of this, many people respond best to written and image-based content such as blogs, ebooks, whitepapers, and infographics. The next largest segment are auditory learners, making up 30% of the population and learn by memorizing sound. They will absorb new information best by listening and talking, so webinars, video, or podcasts would be a better approach to reach these people. It’s important to keep this in mind when developing a strategy to understand your audience.

Pay attention to how they consume content -- who is attending webinars? Reading articles? Watching videos or downloading audio? In addition to helping you identify large-scale trends in terms of what format is most popular with your audience, at the individual level this will help you identify what type of content should be promoted to each member of your database. 

If you have a group of people who respond to your webinars but seldom click through your newsletter, they may be auditory learners that will not respond as well to written or visual content. You are likely better off promoting a video, podcast or webinar over an ebook to this segment. You may even notice trends in these preferences from publication to publication, so it’s an important factor to keep tabs on.

Engagement Frequency

Keep track of your frequent flyers; your evangelists. These are the people that click through every newsletter, visit your website for new content consistently, or follow you on social media. History of frequent engagement with your digital presence is a good indicator of future interaction, so consider this group your A-listers and treat them as such. Especially where email deliverability is concerned, if content is king then engagement is queen.

To keep your reputation high, make sure to treat your frequent flyers with your best content and then consider syndicating it out to your B-list group, or even C-list if it’s proven to be a successful piece of content. This is especially true if the call-to-action in your message is a big ask. Consider the value your sponsor’s content will provide the consumer when crafting your landing pages and choosing how many or what depth of questions to require on conversion forms. A reader that consistently clicks through your newsletter content is more likely to open and click through a sponsored email than a dormant or cold lead, especially for those high-value offers.

Building a history of these metrics in your marketing database will make a big difference in your ability to deliver the right message at the right time.

• Tracking the topics your audience is interested in will foster higher conversion rates on sponsored lead generation campaigns because your messages will be relevant and interesting to the recipient. This in turn results in your content being shared more often on social media, and your readers will become promoters of your content.
• Analyzing what type of content your contacts prefer will enable you to deliver media in the format the individual is most receptive to.
• Keeping tabs on prior engagement will help identify your most engaged contacts, so that you can prioritize your sponsored offers and share user data with advertisers to prove you have an audience with purchase intent. 

Ultimately, being more deliberate with your sponsored campaigns will help your publication increase lead generation by increasing engagement with your content, preventing database exhaustion and slowing the rate of database decay.

Do you keep track of your readers’ interests and preferences? Let us know in the comments below.

 

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How Ad Blocking Works: Everything You Need to Know

October 01, 2015 at 12:00PM

When Apple unveiled its new iPhone and iOS 9 operating system two weeks ago, it dropped a proverbial wet blanket on marketers everywhere: A new feature in the operating system called Content Blockers will now allow iOS 9 users to install ad blocking applications from the App Store. These ad blocking application will let people easily block advertising, trackers, and other third-party scripts.

The new feature isn't a total shocker: Apple's gave the go-ahead for iOS 9 app developers to build ad blocking extensions for Safari, their default browser app, back in June 2015. And neither are ad blocking applications a new concept -- they've actually been available for desktop and Android for a few years now.

So why is everyone freaking out? Because this is the first time Apple is allowing them for its over 700 million iPhone users. Use of the mobile Safari app represents more than half of all mobile internet usage.

There's a fair amount of confusion around what ad blocking applications are, how they work on iPhones and iPads with iOS 9, how they affect websites, and what marketers like us should do about them. We know many of you are concerned, so we're here to clear the air as much as we can. Let's dig in together.

What Are Ad Blockers?

Ad blockers are applications (like plugins or browser extensions) that remove or alter advertising content on a webpage.

Some of these applications replace that advertising content with something else. Others don't replace it with anything, leaving holes or broken links on the page where the ads would've been.

What do ad blockers block? The specific content that's disallowed varies from app to app. Some of them are meant to eliminate all advertising on a webpage. Others specifically block things that could compromise a user's privacy -- which includes the tracking codes that provide marketers with information about visitors' activities on the page (like how long a person spends looking at the page or which other pages they look at on the website).

Right now, ad blockers target the more "annoying" types of ads like pop-ups and banner ads. According to HubSpot Product Manager Lars Osterberg, Google Adwords ads are often whitelisted by default by many popular ad blockers since they're seen to be useful, and because sometimes Google pays them to do so.

The Pros & Cons of Ad Blocking

Blocking ads, tracking codes, and other third-party scripts benefits users by increasing page load times, improving battery life, and protecting privacy. Not to mention, you know, eliminating the annoyance of interruptive ads.

At the same time, some argue they totally undermine the infrastructure of the web. After all, advertising is how a lot of free content on the internet is supported financially. When a product is free, you are the product. Your attention is what's being bought and sold.

That's why there's a lot of controversy surrounding Apple's newfound support of these applications, and why the creator and developer of the popular ad blocking app Peace actually ended up pulling his app from the App Store.

"Ad blockers come with an important asterisk: While they do benefit a ton of people in major ways, they also hurt some, including many who don’t deserve the hit," Arment wrote in a post to his personal blog.

“Users are inadvertently putting their favorite websites out of business,” said Sean Blanchfield, a long-time online gaming engineer who worked on Call of Duty and Guitar Hero.

Among those who ad blockers hurt are marketers -- they could potentially lose a lot of analytical data from people using iOS 9. Many of the most popular tools marketers use to measure and analyze visitors' activities on their websites -- and improve user experiences -- may be affected.

Luckily, there are ways to create content on the web that aren't affected by ad blockers. It's just a matter of understanding what they are and how they might affect your website, and then prioritizing strategies that aren't affected. 

How Do Ad Blockers Work?

First, a person downloads and runs an ad blocking application, whether it's a plugin or a browser extension or something else. Then, that person opens their browser and tells it to visit a website. While that webpage is loading, the ad blocking application they downloaded looks at the site and its scripts and compares them against a list of sites and scripts it was built to block. If it finds any, it blocks them.

The ad blockers available to iOS 9 users work in much the same way, except for one difference: On iOS 9, the Safari browser app can process the list of what to block before the page even loads. The result? Much faster page load times iOS 9 users who've downloaded one of those content blockers.

Check out how page load time is improved for a Bloomberg article, for example:

Image Credit: TheNextWeb

Faster page load times, eliminating annoying ads, and more secure web browsing ... the benefits for users are crystal clear.

For marketers, not so much.

How Ad Blocking Can Affect Your Website

While ad blockers have clear benefits for users, the tools widely used by marketers to measure and improve online experiences may be affected.

(Keep in mind, by the way, that the iOS ad blocking applications only block ads for users browsing the web in the mobile Safari app. In-app ads won't be blocked for mobile users -- so anyone scrolling through their Facebook News Feed on the Facebook app will still see Facebook ads, for example.)

It can mess with your analytics.

Because many of the ad blockers available on iOS 9 block both advertisements and analytics scripts, marketers could have trouble collecting the data that gives us insights into our web visitors' behavior.

Any iOS 9 visitor to your site on the Safari app who has a script blocker installed will appear "invisible" in your analytics. So, let's say 100 people came to my website, and 10% of those people were using the Safari app and had script blockers installed. My analytics would tell me that only 90 people visited my site, and those 10 people would be totally invisible to me.

Your website could be totally functional for the end user, but you could still be losing out on critical marketing data like page views and traffic sources.

It can mess with user experience.

Some apps don't let user experience of the hook, though. Remember when I said some ad blockers don't replace blocked content with anything else? To a site visitor using one of those apps, your website might look like it's straight up missing content or has broken links. Or it could look like you traveled back in time to 1994 with just inline text and images dropped on a page.

For instance, the folks at KISSmetrics have reported missing calls-to-actions thanks to ad blockers. Below you can see what users see when they don't have the ad blocker Adblock installed (left) versus when they do (right):

 

Image Credit: KISSmetrics

So, What's a Marketer to Do?

While most marketers have likely run into issues caused by ad blockers on desktop, we haven't had to worry too much about this on mobile devices until now. But mobile users are more important now ever, thanks to online search on mobile devices surpassing desktop searches earlier this year.

But alas ... ad blocking technology isn't going away. The reality is that marketers will need to learn to live in a world where desktop, Android, and now iOS users have access to ad blockers for some browser applications.

Overall, this means we'll need to reevaluate and be smarter about where we spend our marketing dollars. Here's what we recommend.

1) Evaluate how well your ads are actually working for your audience.

If ads are part of your media mix, it's time to sit down and dig in to how well they're really working for your business. If you're just throwing money at advertising and not being critical about whether it's actually working, then an increase in ad blocker usage is only going to make it worse.

First, ask yourself: Does your target audience use ad blockers? If you're marketing to people who aren't super tech-savvy, then there might only be a small chunk of your audience using ad blocking technology ... and you may not need to worry as much. But if you're marketing to a more tech-savvy crowd (like gamers, where all of this ad blocking technology originated) then you'll have to worry more.

Who tends to use ad blocking technology, you might be asking? While it's too soon for there to be any significant studies on the demographic of people downloading ad blocking apps on iOS 9, Adobe and PageFair conducted a study on ad blocker usage in 2014 that gave us a better idea of the demographic of people who use ad blockers.

For example, they found ad blocking is most popular with millennials: 41% of people between 18-29 years old say they use ad blocking software. They also found that men are 48% more likely than women to use ad blocking software when browsing the internet.

Next, do some research to find out how your prospects and customers really feel about your ads. Do they like them and think they're helpful, or do they totally hate them? If your audiences like the way you advertise, you might be on to something. If they hate them, well ... you'll need to restrategize.

You can ask your customers using a survey. The big networks like Facebook, Twitter, Google, and LinkedIn also offer feedback loops that'll give you an idea of whether people like your ads on those networks.

For example, Facebook calls this metric "negative feedback," which is "a rating based on the number of times your audience hit your ad or otherwise indicated a negative experience, such as choosing not to see ads from you." If your negative feedback is high, it means people don't want to see your ad.

At the end of the day, make sure your ads are making money for your business. Watch your metrics closely, and if you're seeing that ads aren't affecting your bottom line -- or, even worse, if you're seeing a noticeable decline -- then it's definitely time to rethink your strategy.

2) Focus on ad viewability.

Real talk: Are your ads even being seen? Digital ad fraud has always been an issue for advertisers: Before the iOS 9 update, a study from ANA found that 11% of online display ads and 23% of video ads aren't actually displayed to real people. Instead, they're being seen by robots creating fake impressions and clicks.

Now, we have to worry about ads being hidden or removed from our websites by ad blockers, which would render those views and impressions invisible altogether to our marketing analytics. This won't just affect display and banner ads; it could also affect native ads for iOS 9 users using ad blockers who are browsing the internet on Safari.

If you're advertising on Google, the Google Display Network will help tell you how many of your ads are actually being viewed by people. They're trying to set a new standard in the industry by only counting an impression if they're confident it's being seen by a real human.

Marketers who use display advertising in their marketing strategy should take the same approach, says Marcus Andrews, product marketing manager at HubSpot. They should demand viewability, and be more critical and more focused on making sure their ads are being seen -- and restrategizing and reprioritizing if they're not. 

3) Choose ad networks that have a more inbound approach to advertising.

Google's display network was engineered to measure true viewability for display advertisements -- as in, only reporting the number of actual humans they believe views those ad.

Facebook's changes are also geared toward creating better experiences for their users. This includes their News Feed updates, which are giving users more and more control over which content they're shown in the News Feed. It also includes Facebook's approach to native advertising, which encourages marketers to advertise their content in a way that doesn't feel like an advertisement.

LinkedIn's Sponsored Updates take a similar approach by letting users read a broader audience than their followers, but by promoting content that's relevant and could be helpful and interesting to that audience.

(Remember: While some of the most popular iOS ad blocking applications can still block native advertisements in the Safari browser, they won't be able to block them for mobile users who are viewing the in-app advertisements.)

So put your money with ad networks like Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter because they're doing advertising the best right now. And if you want to advertise with publishers, here's a directory of HubSpot-verified publishers that are some of the best and most-trusted out there.

4) Take a more inbound approach yourself.

Being hooked on advertising has never been sustainable -- but now, it can put marketers in an even more precarious spot. The rise of ad blocking on mobile is yet another reason for marketers to think: Should inbound marketing be a bigger part of my mix?

Increase organic traffic to your website instead of relying on referral sources by building out your website's blog and content. Every time you write a blog post, it's one more indexed page on your website. Every new indexed page is one more opportunity for you to show up in search engines and drive organic traffic to your website. (Read this blog post for more tips on building out your company's blog.)

Now that Apple's opened the doors for ad blockers for such a huge online audience, it's more important than ever for marketers to be smart about where they invest their advertising resources. They want to avoid getting their ads blocked -- and, you know, create better ad experiences for their site visitors.

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