Email marketing is one of the most powerful strategies to get leads and capture potential buyers. With the average person receiving many emails daily, getting yours noticed can be challenging.

When it comes to email marketing, incorporating engaging content is crucial for capturing the attention of your subscribers. It is essential to craft content that stands out, resonates with your audience, and compels them to open, read, and interact with your messages.

In this article, we’ll explore the best content formats for email marketing. Also, we’ve curated seven practical steps to create engaging email marketing content that will leave a lasting impression on your subscribers.

The Best Content Formats for Engaging Email Marketing

Incorporating various content formats helps your messages stay fresh, engaging, and appealing to your subscribers. Here are some content formats you can include in your email outreach marketing or campaigns:

#1. Text-based Content

This is the most common type of content in email marketing. It includes well-written text that delivers your message, shares information, and encourages action. You can write your content directly on your email body or include a blog link for subscribers.

#2. Images

Including relevant and visually appealing images can enhance your emails’ overall look and feel. Images can showcase products, illustrate concepts, or connect with your audience emotionally. Just make sure to optimize the image sizes to prevent slow loading times.

#3. Videos

Videos can significantly increase engagement in your email campaigns. You can add videos directly to your emails or use a captivating thumbnail image with a link to a video hosted on a landing page or video platform. Videos can be explainer videos, how-tos, customer testimonials, or behind-the-scenes.

#4. Infographics

Infographics are visualization of information or data. They are great for presenting complex data, statistics, or step-by-step processes in a visually appealing and easy-to-understand format.

#5. GIFs

Animated GIFs can add an element of visual interest and grab attention. They are beneficial for showcasing product features, demonstrating functionality, or creating a sense of excitement. You can also use GIFs to show the brand logo.

#6. User-Generated Content (UGC)

User-Generated Content (UGC) is content customers create, such as testimonials, reviews, and ratings. Sharing those content in your email marketing can add authenticity and social proof. It can strengthen the connection between your brand and your audience. 

#7. Interactive Content

Interactive elements encourage engagement and make your emails more dynamic. Examples include interactive quizzes, polls, surveys, or interactive product catalogs. Interactive content can increase click-through rates and provide valuable insights about your subscribers.

Steps to Create Engaging Content for Email Campaigns

You can incorporate various content formats into your email marketing strategy. Ensure that the content is valuable and resonates with your audience and brand. To make your content engaging, here are some steps you can consider.

#1. Understand Your Audience

Before deciding on a content format and style, you must gain insights into your target audience. Understanding your audience requires you to delve into the target audience’s demographics, interests, preferences, and pain points. 

The audience insights help you tailor your content to their specific needs and interests. You can try several methods, including conducting surveys, analyzing analytics, and monitoring customer feedback. Take a look at the brief explanations:

Surveys: Conduct surveys or questionnaires to gather direct feedback from your subscribers. Ask about their interests, challenges, and what kind of content they want to see from you.

Analytics: Utilize analytics tools to gain data-driven insights about your audience’s behavior. Monitor key metrics, including open rates, click-through rates, and conversions, to understand which types of content resonate the most with your subscribers. 

Customer feedback: Pay attention to feedback received through customer support channels, social media, or product reviews. These sources provide valuable insights into the challenges and needs of your audience. 

Social listening: Monitor conversations on social media platforms related to your industry, brand, or relevant topics. Social listening tools can help you understand trends, discussions, and sentiments among your target audience. 

#2. Define Your Campaign Objectives

You need clear objectives that you want to achieve through email marketing. Having campaign objectives helps you align your content and messaging, including finding the best content format and style for your audiences.

Some of the most common campaign adjectives are generating leads, increasing sales, promoting a new product, and nurturing customer relationships. For example, to generate leads, you can focus on capturing your audience’s interest and encourage them to give their contact information.

In this case, offering valuable resources, such as e-books and exclusive content, can be a great option. Moreover, hosting a webinar with experts or influencers can also be an excellent alternative to attract people to join your community.

There are more strategies to align your content and campaign goals. For example, if you want to increase sales, include limited-time promotions or personalized offerings in your email. Meanwhile, sharing educational content and brand updates is excellent for nurturing existing customers and encouraging them to repeat orders.

#3. Plan Your Content Strategy

Another crucial step to creating engaging content is developing a content strategy. It outlines the types of content you will create (text-based, images, videos, etc.) and the topics you will cover in your email campaigns. 

A content strategy ensures that your content is aligned with your objectives and resonates with your audience. While constructing a content strategy, consider aspects such as content formats, topics and themes, tone and voice, and content calendar. Take a look at the brief explanations below.

Content formats: Determine which formats best suit your objectives and resonate with your audience preferences. Each format has strengths and can be used strategically to convey your message effectively. For example:

• Text-based content: Newsletters, blog articles, or educational guides.
• Images: Product photos, infographics, or visual storytelling.
• Videos: Product demos, customer testimonials, or tutorials.
• Interactive content: Quizzes, polls, or surveys.

Topics and themes: Identify relevant issues and themes for your audience and align with your brand. Consider what interests your audience and what kind of information or value they seek.

Tone and Voice: Define the style and voice you want to adopt in your content. This should align with your brand voice and personality and resonate with your audience—for example, energetic, professional, motivational, informative, etc.

Content calendar: Create an editorial calendar to organize your content creation process and ensure consistency. Plan your content, including the topics, publishing dates, and any relevant promotions or events. This helps you maintain a regular email schedule and avoid last-minute content creation.

#4. Focus on Engaging and Concise Copy

Short and straightforward content is best for email marketing. Most people skim through emails, so communicate your message clearly and concisely. Keep your copy brief and to the point. If you include a video, infographic, or other visual content, encourage subscribers to check out your content.

Make your email copy conversational by using a friendly tone that resonates with your audience. Imagine you’re having a one-on-one conversation with the recipient and focus on building a connection. Refrain from overly formal or sales language. 

Whether you create a written copy or use a video to deliver your message, highlighting the benefits of your content is crucial. Explain how your product, service, or information can add knowledge and solve their problems or improve their lives.

#5. Use Storytelling Method

Storytelling is a powerful technique to engage your audience emotionally and create a lasting impact. This strategy applies to any format, primarily if you use visual content like infographics and videos.

To incorporate storytelling into your email content, first, identify a narrative. Determine the key message or story you want to convey in your email. It could be a customer success story, a personal experience related to your product or service, or a relatable scenario highlighting the benefits or solutions you offer.

Continue with setting the scene. Paint a vivid picture in your subscribers’ minds by describing the context and setting of the story. Use descriptive and conversational language to make it more engaging.

It’s essential to develop and create an emotional connection. Tap into your audience’s emotions by highlighting the challenges, struggles, or desires that your story addresses. Connect with their aspirations, fears, or dreams to make the story more relatable and impactful.

Close your content with resolution. Present the solution or outcome that your product or service provides. Demonstrate how it helped overcome challenges or achieve goals and create a sense of trust and credibility.

Most importantly, invest in high-quality visuals to make engaging email content. Visual elements can enhance the emotional impact and make your story more memorable than a text block.

#6. Create High-Quality Visuals

In the age where attention span gets shorter, visuals can engage people more effectively than written content. We recommend using videos to deliver your marketing messages.

Videos have the power to communicate your messages compellingly. Besides, short story-driven narratives help your audiences to digest your message entirely, making your email campaign more effective.

Whether it’s a product demo, a tutorial, or behind-the-scenes footage, videos can captivate your audience and convey information effectively. Moreover, maintain consistency in your visual elements, such as colors, fonts, and logo placement, to reinforce your brand identity. 

#7. Make a Clear CTA

A clear and compelling Call to Action (CTA) drives engagement and conversions in your email campaigns. Use clear and action-oriented words in your CTA to prompt readers to take action. 

For example, words like “Shop Now,” “Download,” “Learn More,” or “Get Started” convey a sense of urgency and encourage immediate action. Also, ensure your CTA is concise and easy to understand.

Position your CTA where it is easily noticeable and accessible. Typically, placing it toward the end of the email or after providing the necessary information works well. However, if it suits the content and objective, you can also experiment with placing CTAs at the beginning or within the email.

Takeaway

Consider performing content testing to notice which content formats drive the most engagement and conversions. This strategy may require you to conduct A/B or split tests. You can monitor which content resonates best with your audience based on the analytics.

In conclusion, creating engaging content for your email campaigns requires a deep understanding of your audience, clear campaign objectives, and a strategic content plan. Also, you can captivate your subscribers and drive meaningful engagement by continuously testing and optimizing your campaigns.

The post How to Create Engaging Content for Your Email Campaigns appeared first on The Startup INC.

The role of marketing in every organization plays a critical role in 2022. With digital marketing at the forefront, we cannot afford to push these strategies to the back burner while focusing on operations. As a startup, it may be a challenge to bifurcate time and efforts towards the operational and marketing sides of the business, but it is essential if you wish to grow.

For those who are just starting as new startup owners and managers, the mistake made very often is the lack of diversified channels. For instance, startups may focus on LinkedIn and social marketing but negate conventional methods, which may lead them to lose a significant chunk of potential leads. To help you understand the options for deploying marketing strategies, we’ve prepared a list of the top 7 strategies you need to deploy in 2022.

1.Email marketing

Many people may think that nobody reads emails sent from a marketing perspective, but this is where the magic lies. Email marketing in 2022 has a new face and shape, where business owners provide valuable information that helps them convert to loyal customers. Have website visitors and interested social media followers sign up to email newsletters first. Next, send them timely and exclusive content and offer them inner circle benefits like discounts or freebies to convert them. Keep note of your email marketing metrics to see how effective they are.

2.Social media engagement

Your social media account is the largest hub of your custom audience. With billions of internet users, the sky’s the limit to your reach if you do it right. Engage with accounts, post regular and fresh content, offer to solve problems, and heavily push to maximize your visibility. The digital marketplace today offers the greatest benefits to startups from all industries, technical or otherwise.

Must Read: How Digital Marketing Influenced by Social Media Trends

3.Linear TV advertising

If you think linear TVs are outdated, think again. When questions like does linear TV still matter arise, it’s a grounding fact to remember how several households across the world still religiously use this medium. This makes it a valid and relevant means for your marketing campaigns. The linear TV advertising industry is still heavily funded, which is why startups stand a good chance of gaining visibility with smart and attention-grabbing advertising strategies.

4.Sponsor events:

Speaking of gaining attention, you can do the same in public with altruistic ventures or funding activities. Sponsoring events that resonate with your brand expression can help your startup get the opportunity of a lifetime where potential investors and customers are in the same audience pool. Make sure these events are promoted heavily and have the attention of your target audience. Sponsored events can create goodwill and audience curiosity, which is why you need to complete putting up your brand expression before participating in this marketing strategy.

5.Content marketing:

The power of good content is always going to grab eyeballs and attention. Most internet users look for well-articulated answers and thought leadership to help them understand current trends. If you don’t already have a team that pushes helpful content in blogs, pillar posts, guest posting, or video formats, make sure to get started on a CMS and content calendar as soon as possible. It also allows you to gain more site traffic through link-building activities.

6.Live chat conversion:

Live chats are today’s quickest lead conversion tools on the website. Your customer service team’s interpersonal communication skills and subject-matter expertise can get them to convince a visitor to buy a product or service. Moreover, providing a quick response time can help retain existing customers, turning them into raving fans.

7.Visit networking events

One of the best ways to market your products as a technology startup is to participate in networking events. Sign up for expos and trade shows to showcase your company’s services and products. Learning the art of business networking before participating in such events will give you a competitive edge, bringing you new contacts. Business networking offers great opportunities to find investors, buyers, and collaborators under the same roof.

Final Words

Deploying the right marketing strategies that fit the growth goals of your startup can be an absolute game-changer for your business. However, as a team, marketing is equal parts to planning, deploying, and assessing. Make sure that you regroup regularly to check up on the best key performance indicators to ensure that your strategy is going per the plan. These metrics will also show you what to do more and which places to withdraw your focus on. We hope this blog brings you the necessary information to ensure that your marketing channels are diversified!

The post 7 Marketing Strategies That Startups Need To Deploy In 2022 appeared first on The Startup INC.

Cold calling is a valuable strategy for new businesses to spread the word and capture leads. Although it is more like a hit and trial, it is perhaps the only way to go when starting from scratch. But calling people randomly and getting a poor response can be frustrating for a sales team. It can lower the morale of your employees and lead to a waste of already scarce resources. The best way to address the concern is to fine-tune your strategy to improve the success rates. Let us share some surefire cold calling tactics startup entrepreneurs can rely on. 

Think beyond scripts

Most companies have a tried-and-tested cold-calling sales script for their team, but startups begin with a clean slate. Consider it a pro instead of a con because a word-for-word script may actually leave you sounding stiff. Conversely, talking to a prospect without a script makes the conversation more natural and intuitive. You even have a chance to strike the right chord and get a quality lead. Using a loose outline to guide sales calls is a good option if you want something to start with. 

Avoid pushing sales right away

Although you will be eager to get off the mark with startup sales, avoid pushing the prospect at the first interaction. Follow the primary goal of creating contact and learning about their needs. It enables you to build a connection with the prospect and strengthen it in the subsequent calls. You can seal the deal within a few calls, and even better, create a long-term relationship with the customer. 

Partner with a pro

As a startup owner, you have endless to-do lists and tight budgets, so staying afloat is challenging. Experts recommend partnering with a pro to outsource Cold Calling Services instead of hiring a team to handle the process. Outsourcing has a dual benefit as it lets you achieve your lead generation targets and cut costs of hiring, training, and retaining an in-house team. Moreover, these experts have valuable experience that makes them great at the job.

Time your calls well

A robust cold calling plan goes beyond engaging the prospects with relevant conversations. It is also about timing the calls well so that the recipient is willing to listen and talk. You cannot expect a business leader to attend to your call in the middle of a busy workday. Likewise, you can find the industry-specific sweet spot to improve the chances of lead closure. For example, connecting near the end of the client’s fiscal year is a good option when selling financial products or services.

Have a follow-up plan in place

A cold call may go well, but you cannot expect it to yield a conversion because prospects tend to forget about it sooner than later. But having a follow-up plan gives you better chances to close the deal. You can schedule subsequent calls, send follow-up emails, and reconnect on social media platforms to stay in touch with the prospect. Be proactive and persuasive without pressing too hard.

Cold calling is vital to push your startup sales and maintain momentum. But you must have a robust strategy to get results from your efforts. These tips can help you set the pace and maintain it down the line. 

The post Cold Calling Tactics Startup Entrepreneurs Can Rely On appeared first on The Startup INC.

The personal loan market continues to grow at fast rates. In 2018, personal loans surged to a record-breaking number of $120 billion, which was a 20 percent increase from 2017. Globally, the personal loans market size had a value of $47 billion in 2020 and is projected to reach $700 billion by 2030. According to experts, the market will grow at a CAGR of 31 percent from 2021 to 2030. 

With the increasing demand for personal loans, more people are looking for businesses that can offer the loan solutions that they need. Your business can certainly do this, but the question is do they know about your business at all?

Today, the marketing game is all about being found by the right customers. To stay on top of other loan businesses, you must present yourself to the right customers at the right time. For instance, if you specialize in FHA loans, you must be seen by consumers in need of an FHA loan.

How can you do this? By leveling up your marketing game.

Start With Email Marketing

Borrowers have unique needs. Individual borrowers require different rates and terms from businesses. A loan to send a child to college isn’t structured like a loan to buy a home. Many traditional marketing initiatives don’t offer much wiggle room for such customization, but email marketing does.

Email marketing is ideal for loan officers who serve a variety of clients because it allows you to send different messages to different clients while segmenting your mailing lists. You can send emails on announcements and special deals to potential borrowers while current clients can receive personalized emails to notify them about interest rate changes, upcoming payments, and other important topics.

To get started with your email marketing, collect email addresses. You can get these from loan application platforms and your website.

Use Content Marketing to Empower People with Information

Clients are always in need of information. If you provide them with the data they need, you’ll become an authoritative source in their eyes.

Many people expect businesses to provide them with valuable content, so don’t let them down. Provide variable solutions, share interesting stories, and create unique experiences with informative and relevant blog posts, infographics, e-books, white papers, and other information that empowers clients with knowledge.

When making content for clients, the key is to appeal to them. Your clients aren’t always looking for personal loans. Some of them want to know more about loans first. So don’t just write dozens of content that discuss why you’re the best option for a loan. Instead, let people know why they should get a loan, the differences between their loan options, and more.

Some ideas you can cover are about how to:

• Create a budget
• Manage debt efficiently
• Improve your credit score
• Save more money
• Determine the connection between poor financial health and physical health

Optimize Your Website for Mobile

More than two billion people have mobile phones. So, it’s no wonder that smartphones account for half of the world page views worldwide. Make sure the right customers find you by optimizing your website for mobile use.

Consider investing in Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), which is an open-source initiative from Google that makes it easy for businesses to develop mobile-friendly versions of their websites. When your website has an AMP equivalent, you’ll receive a link with the code’s source. AMP pages are friendly to web crawlers, so search engines can easily link your webpage’s AMP version instead of the standard version.

The result? Your website loads faster on any phone. AMP pages are also compatible with different browsers!

Monitor Your Online Reviews

It’s important to monitor what people say about your business – both the good and the bad. Reviews can be posted on different platforms like Google, Facebook, and Yelp. If potential customers come across a single negative review on any of these, it may affect their view of your services.

Here are some ways to ensure you’re on top of your reputation:

• Claim ownership of your business online. Set up an account with major review sites. If your business is already listed, take ownership.
• Ask satisfied clients for reviews. Be selective with the clients that you ask to endorse you. Once you’ve chosen a client, ask them to endorse you so they can create a conversation.
• Respond quickly to negative feedback. When you see negative feedback, respond immediately to address the problem. Apologize while you’re at it.

There are many loan companies like yours out there. You need more than good services and quality clerical skills to reel more clients. You need to be creative in marketing too. Instead of fading into the background, stand out by using the right marketing techniques.

The post Make Marketing Work for Your Loan Business appeared first on The Startup INC.

It’s 2020 and the world has been suffering a radical change, a world pandemic came down upon the human race and changed the life of each and every single one of us.

This is a situation that most of us never thought of experiencing, we learned about similar ones throughout history and now that we are living it, it feels unreal.

However, life cannot stop and we must not stop living our own lives, there’s an urgent need to adapt and transform.

There are a lot of different fields of work that were affected and the face to face contact was limited. Nevertheless, brands and companies need to find their way to keep their business going.

The hard and raw reality is that those who don’t try to readjust to these new times will run the risk of suffering and see their business going down the drain.

The important thing here is to never give up, so today I’m here to give you some popular marketing trends that have been put into practice to help businesses keep their doors open post COVID 19. Let’s find out more about it.

Online Advertising Is the Way to Go

We have already seen advertising spread all over the streets, either is posters, big outdoors, or flyers in coffee shops. Nonetheless, this pandemic made people switch their typical hangouts with friends or walks at the end of the day, for the comfort of the sofa and home office. Maybe not by choice, but that we all must accept.

Spending more time at home means, inevitably, spending more time online, and with this, business owners are avoiding paying for outdoor advertising but instead putting their money on the online ones.

Besides that, they are easier, more attractive, and capable of reaching even more people. There’s no doubt that there’s no limit for what it’s possible to create from here, as online ads give you the opportunity to be more creative and freer of advertising what you want.

Adding to this, with good customer service online, clients feel more confident to reach out and can help you to improve your business. Sometimes, adapting can even change things for the best. Furthermore, ads are not the only way to reach success, investing in a website will also give you a good opportunity to reach more people, efficiently.

More and more users opt for making their shopping online, it’s quicker and you can make it from the comfort of your house.

Adapting your business, and putting your products or services online might seem like a huge challenge, but it’s an investment that will help you around this time, but also, when we get back to our reality, this can still be seen as a good investment and a good addition to your brand. Without a doubt, a win-win situation.

Trust Towards Clients

In a time of so much uncertainty, fear, and insecurity, people look out for safety and trust in what’s around them and everything that is consumed. Consumers are one of the most important keys to a successful business, and without them, there’s no profit.

This way, brands are putting into practice exactly what the client needs: Trust, confidence, security, and having a positive attitude during what we already know it’s a hard time.

Sometimes we forget that any service is a relationship between people and not robots, and most of the time a good human interaction is way more important.

This is not only a bond for this difficult time, but for a long-lasting connection even after all of this. This way, you have a network of faithful customers that, when in doubt, will choose your brand.

Adding to this, brands are creating the right narratives, making sure every message makes sense during the pandemic, and to avoid passing the wrong idea to your customers, you’ll have to double-check every content that leaves your company.

Each passing day, people are more afraid because there are many companies trying to use this to trick others and profit from lies and promises of fake solutions. Brands need to be honest with people and that will only help. Remember – any brand/customer relationship is founded on trust.

Quality Work and Products

There’s a high demand for quality over price. This might sound like it doesn’t make any sense since people are usually more resilient to spending money. But nowadays, people feel a great necessity of feeling good, safe, and because of this, it can be more expensive but gives them a bigger guarantee of more quality.

Just like it was mentioned before, one of the marketing trends is creating a bond between brand and client. A sense of trust, and a guarantee of loyalty are more important than ever and should never be taken for granted. One way to make this happen is through the quality of the products your brand sells.

Products that are well protected and sanitized are also a great tip. More than ever, safety is an important part of any business. As much as this doesn’t sound too relevant, it’s extremely important that your collaborators are feeling well.

That’s an essential need to make sure that all the client desires are fulfilled. A pandemic can cause a lot of complications to a person’s mental health, it’s something that sometimes is not taken very seriously, but that needs to be taken care of, as well. For your employees to give their best, they need to be at their best.

Social Media

Social media is a complicated topic, there are people that love it and use it frequently and people who hate it and don’t even know much about it. Nevertheless, there’s no doubt that more than ever, social media is a valuable resource to help businesses in troubling times.

These networks have an incredible advantage of reaching so many people, allowing the world to be connected. Besides that, as mentioned before, when a business is made into an online version, it opens a whole lot of doors, and since the face to face meeting was reduced, the screen became the new way of contact between business and customer.

With all of these connections, your products or services are possible for a whole new group of people, and you might have exactly what they are looking for.

Knowing how to deal with social media, you can create your content with the purpose of reaching the right crowd, and make your products reach the right customers.

Even when things get better, a lot of people won’t risk going out as much and adopt this new way as their main one. There’s not a single doubt that this investment will work even when the live shopping gets to normal.

Conventions and Conferences

There are many brands that rely on annual live events, like conventions or conferences with all the people in the same business. However, these events are all canceled and completely impossible to maintain during a time like this.

Fortunately, a lot of the major events made sure to invest all of their resources and time into turning themselves into online events.

Most of these are arranged to show the world new products or services of brands from all over the world. Making this online, the only thing lost is the live essence of these events, meeting people face to face, and being surrounded by all the creativity.

However, brands won’t give up showing off their projects. This new resource also gives the possibility of people from far away and other countries, when they don’t have the opportunity to travel, to still join and be part of the event, so for either buyers or new brands, it’s possible to reach out to even more companies.

If your business relies on these experiences, then joining as many of these events as possible, will keep the relationships strong, as well as the trust of the clients.

One Last Thought

With our world turned upside down with something new and kind of scary, it’s time to get up and face this problem with a positive attitude. There’s a new challenge that the world threw us and there’s a necessity to adapt and face it without fear.

Some markets might have more trouble adapting, but there’s a solution for everything. In the beginning, I said it’s important to adapt and those who don’t, end up losing, so take this as a message that will stay with you to motivate you at all times.

With all of these alternatives, be sure to take the ones that make more sense to your business and give you your best shot. Things will get better, life will go back to normal, and we will be able to meet once again with our loved ones, and on a professional level as well, but for now, it’s necessary to keep a positive mind and trust your work.

Don’t take your clients for granted, don’t give up on having a service of excellence, and make sure you are following all the sanitary rules, to make everyone around safe. I hope this article helped you find new alternatives and hopefully they will lead your business to success. Thank you for your time.

The post Top 5 Post Covid-19 Marketing Trends appeared first on The Startup INC.

In today’s fast-paced digital era, marketing trends tend to come and go. However, now and then, few trends manage to take the digital marketplace by storm. Here we’ve curated a list of five crucial data-driven marketing trends making waves in the marketing landscape.

Because businesses nowadays have a wealth of data at their disposal, the way they market their brand and products has changed drastically. Firms use the latest tools and cutting-edge technology like Artificial Intelligence to increase their business’s outreach and establish a long-lasting relationship with the consumers.

From hiring a blog outreach agency and promoting the brand to using social media for advertising their product, there are multiple ways in which firms are trying to evolve in the ever-changing world of business. Firms use data to drive their marketing strategies for maximum gain. Read on to know about the latest marketing trends that companies need to exploit to conduct growth and achieve goals.

Personalized User Experience

Offering personalized user experience can prove to be extremely advantageous for any business. E-commerce giants like Amazon offer personalized user experience by showcasing customized product recommendations to the users. It serves as a great tool to build stronger relationships with the customer, reduce bounce rates, and drive more business sales.

Personalized product recommendations, personalized offers, discounts, etc. are smart and effective marketing strategies that businesses use to get ahead of the curve and create a long-lasting relationship with the customers. Use data analytics to understand customer behavior and drive personalization that further enhances the brand’s value.

Identity Resolution for a 360-Degree Customer View

Using a customer-centric approach can help businesses thrive in today’s highly competitive digital marketplace. This is where the latest trend of identity resolution comes into the picture. Firms use identity resolution to create a 360-degree view of how a particular customer engages with the brand on multiple platforms. This will help you use the plethora of data that customers leave behind on your business websites, mobile app, and social media pages.

By identifying the customer’s behavior on various channels, the business can offer a personalized experience that suits its preferences. Using this marketing strategy has yielded positive results for many firms, so more firms are following suit. Gain an insight into a customer’s buying journey to offer a better experience to them across digital platforms and drive sales online.

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

The AI (Artificial Intelligence) technology and machine learning are shaping the future. Marketers use these groundbreaking technologies for multiple crucial tasks like personalizing marketing campaigns, automating content creation, etc. By using both these technologies, businesses can make better use of customer data and provide tailored experience.

Some of the biggest companies that use AI and machine learning are Google, e-commerce giant Amazon, social media platforms, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. While AI technology helps the business understand customer preferences, machine learning marketers can go a step further and design better campaigns and enhance the overall user experience.

Predictive Analysis

In today’s data-driven marketplace, firms can predict the behavior of their customers in the coming future. This revolutionary trend is transforming the digital marketplace as it allows them to make more customer-centric decisions. Many firms have access to a wealth of past data that allows them to gain insight into future developments, create plans, and take smarter actions based on that data.

Predictive analysis is an indispensable marketing strategy that lets firms determine the likelihood of future market trends and customer behavior using historical data. By analyzing past data, firms can make smarter decisions and create ad campaigns that would yield maximum gain. Moreover, with predictive analysis, a business can effectively manage risk and gain a competitive edge over its competitors. A majority of the businesses are using this powerful tool to make data-backed decisions.

Omnichannel Marketing

Omnichannel marketing involves using various digital platforms to reach out to the customer. Companies use this cost-effective strategy to connect with their customers on multiple platforms like social media, mobile, desktop, etc. With this strategy, you can gain an in-depth understanding of customer behavior and figure out which channels yield better results and higher return on investment.

This is the latest strategy to make waves in the marketing landscape. Brands are using this strategy to enhance their brand’s outreach. Any company should consider exploiting this trend to run ad campaigns on multiple channels. This can be helpful for all businesses, irrespective of the size. By doing so, the business can boost brand awareness and drive more sales.

Conclusion

The aforementioned marketing trends are transforming the way marketers engage with customers. Employing them in your firm’s marketing strategy is bound to help your business propel in the right direction. From boosting brand awareness to enhancing customer experience, there are many ways in which these strategies can prove to be beneficial for the business.

The post 5 Crucial Data-Driven Marketing Trends And Ways To Exploit Them appeared first on The Startup INC.

Being a founder of a small or mid-sized business, all the tasks fall into your to-do list and getting them done is your priority. Being a solo decision maker, all the verticals such as your product, customer, employees, finances, etc are your sole responsibility.

The basic mentality of every startup owner pushes them towards thinking more about

• The various ways to grow their business,
• Generate more leads,
• Capture more prospects,
• Make more paying customer base, and
• Keep increasing sales revenue every month.

You might have a decent flow of leads coming in every month with your marketing and content sharing efforts, yet, sometimes you feel your sales process is lacking something really important.

There can be many reasons for such a feeling.

• Your lead information is scattered all over the place.
• Maybe you are not able to follow-up with every lead on time.
• Or maybe you are even forgetting about these leads and remembering their existence after months or years. 
• You may be experiencing a chaotic sales process and that must be affecting your sales pipeline health too.

The good news is, there are ways and methods that can help you curb the issue and streamline the sales process.

• Streamlining your sales process will help you maintain a healthy sales pipeline where the prospects are getting followed-up regularly and the deals are moving at a better pace.
• Such a healthy sales pipeline is really required for achieving good growth and scalability for your startup.

a) What will you learn today?

Today, in this post, I am going to help you understand the basic nuances of a healthy sales pipeline. I will also provide you with the information to help you develop a seamless sales pipeline for your SaaS product.

But before that, let’s talk about SaaS a bit more.

The world that was without SaaS

To explain SaaS to you, I must first take you back to the time when there was no SaaS!

When software as a service was not available to business over the cloud, there were times when small and mid-sized businesses missed on the use of technology to push their sales force ahead and bank on their effort to enhance the revenue.

Let’s say you were one of the businesses looking to purchase software for yourself. Your need may range from tracking your sales team’s individual work effective work hour or the sales activities they did in the past month and the related outcomes.

Or maybe you want to streamline your contact and all of their data in a centralized location using a CRM software.

• If you are a budget-driven business then having your own IT team is out of the question.
• You might have already outsourced your initial setup task to an IT team.
• The bill they charged you will stop you from consulting them again for getting an opinion on the types of above-mentioned software.
• If you are a growing business and you may have the budget to afford an IT consult. That IT person will recommend a few companies that can provide you with the required software.
• Once you shortlist a few of them, you meet them with your requirements.
• They share pricing details, send your proposal and the dotted lines get signed.

The process doesn’t end here. You get the software and then train team members. The implementation may take weeks or even a few months. There might be times when team members were not able to grasp the overall functionality of the software and even the complicated instruction manual is of little help.

Such situations create a void in your productivity, ultimately affecting your revenue cycle and profits.

b) What is SaaS?

Software as a service (SaaS) is a software distribution model in which a third-party provider hosts applications and makes them available to customers over the Internet. – TechTarget

The digitized world allowed technology to utilize cloud computing and develop SaaS products that were also available to small and mid-size businesses.

• Your search for the required software online.
• Read the review on various rating sites.
• Shortlist a few of them.
• Select one out of your short list.
• You take a free trial to learn how the SaaS product functions for your business.
• You opt for the subscription based on the pay per user per month subscription model that modern SaaS products follow.

What is a SaaS product?

“The only thing that matters is the product/market fit.” – Marc Andreessen

SaaS product is the perfect reflection of the best practices of the evolving technology. Modern businesses are leaving dated legacy systems and introducing modern user interfaces to streamline their process.

• Such product allows you and your team to save more time with help of features like automation that cuts down your manual labor.
• Saving time on manual work allows your teams to perform their core activities freely and without much worry.

c) What is the sales pipeline?

The primary objective of a healthy sales pipeline is to provide a visually appealing and easily understandable view of your overall sales.

• The sales pipeline enables you in understanding how soon you will be able to achieve deal closure in the coming week, month or quarter.
• Sales pipeline lets business owners see the exact stage their leads currently are in.
• Knowing the stage, business owners and sales managers can strategize the strategies for moving these leads to the next stage eventually push them towards successful closure.

The stages in a sales pipeline depend on the sales process of individual organizations. Most sales pipeline have at least these five stages:

1. Prospecting

When your leads or prospects are in this stage, congratulate yourself as you’ve identified someone who’s interested in your offering.

You can successfully identify this crowd when they fill-up your website contact us form, opt for your free-trial, contact you about their issues and ask you if your solution will solve their problem.

2. Qualification

In this stage of the sales process, your sales reps will be verifying if the prospect actually needs your solution.

It is really important for the sales reps to establish that your prospects actually see the potential value of your product. Your sales reps must also clear one fact that your prospects are having the budget to opt for your offering.

3. Assessment

In this stage, your sales reps contact your prospects and have a brief conversation regarding their current problems.

This is a crucial stage where your sales reps assess the magnitude of the prospect’s problem and how much it is affecting their businesses’ revenue cycle. The assessment stage allows your team to know if your product can get rid of their pain points.

4. Proposal

In this stage, your sales personal send out a proposal to the prospect explaining all the terms and condition of opting to your solution with the complete pricing structure and implementation time.

This stage also involves the sales reps to get your prospects to sign the contract and turn them into paying customers.

In this same stage, all those prospects who have opted for your free trial are contacted by your sales reps and persuaded for the paid subscription.

Convincing a client to choose your offerings over competitors is a challenging task. The best way to go about it share proposals that do the talking for you. Use simple language, present offer in a concise format, clearly specify pricing details when drafting your proposal, and convert clients to customers.

5. Closure

This is the final stage of a sales pipeline and the entire sales process.

In this stage, all the qualified prospects who sign the contract or successfully sign up for your paid subscription plan to use your service/product are counted. This is the stage where the result of Won or Close gets decided.

Both the outcome allows your sales managers to assess the entire process and understand the loophole, so the same mistake is not repeated in the future.

d) Importance of a managed sales pipeline for your SaaS product

Having a well-managed sales pipeline for your SaaS product will allow you to save more selling time. Not just that, you will save more resources and can direct them optimally towards winning more sales.

Your well-managed sales pipeline helps you:

• Eliminate various complexities inside your sales process
• Keeps your sales activities organized
• Stimulates timely actions resulting in better outcomes
• Tracks potential prospects
• Builds effective sales strategies for quickly pushing deals forward
• Make sure the deals don’t slip through the crack

e) Developing a seamless sales pipeline for your SaaS product

For your SaaS product, the sales pipeline might have a different look.

1. Prospect

A new visitor lands on your website. He fills up his personal details in your contact us form. With the help of a smart sales CRM and its automation process, a new contact gets created inside the CRM system.

Not just that, a follow-up activity gets automatically created and assigned to your sales rep.

2. Contact made

A meeting or follow-up call with a demo is scheduled to help them understand how your product functions.

This demo session is the perfect opportunity for your sales reps to show the value your solution will add to their business process apart from solving their pain points.

3. Qualified

In the next stage, your sales reps will verify if the prospects fit your ideal customer profile. It is important to remember that these prospects have the budget to opt for your solution and see the true value of your offering.

4. Trial

In this stage, the prospect signs up for a 30-day trial of the product where they just need to share their credit card information. They are charged only when the free trial ends, so they are not worried about being charged for no reason.

5. Closed/Won

If those prospects who opted for free trial, continue using your solution after the 30-day duration then they have successfully converted into paid customers.

Wrapping it up

I hope this article will serve as a guideline for you to develop a seamless sales pipeline for your SaaS product.

I have been writing about startup tools, techniques, other startup related articles for a long time now. Based on my research and the various other references I have gone through, including a CRM in developing and managing your sales pipeline is a very smart and economical move.

You may think that being in the early startup days, you don’t require CRM as you can easily manage various things using spreadsheets.

This is where many startup owners make mistake.

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Once you are out there, you never stop yourself from making or creating conversation. Conversations always end up in creating connections and before you know it you have more than enough contacts that sometimes start slipping through the cracks.

Any missed opportunity at the early days of your startup will cost you majorly in the later years.

That is why you require a sales CRM that comes with features like, contact and deal management, sales and email automation, email tracking, built-in virtual phone system and a dashboard that allows you to view all your deals, contacts and company information at a single place.

So, make the smart choice and include CRM in your sales process for managing the sales pipeline of your SaaS product effectively.

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