Weekend Favs June 29

Weekend Favs June 29 written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

My weekend blog post routine includes posting links to a handful of tools or great content I ran across during the week.

I don’t go into depth about the finds, but encourage you to check them out if they sound interesting. The photo in the post is a favorite for the week from an online source or one that I took out there on the road.

• CostMe – Compare and contrast costs for payment providers.
• Revively – Track down failed payments from Stripe transactions.
• Hatchful – Create logos quickly by selecting from hundreds of templates.

These are my weekend favs, I would love to hear about some of yours – Tweet me @ducttape

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Digital Marketing News: Brand Trust Survey, Top Social Posting Times, YouTube’s Comment Hiding, Amazon’s Ad Share Growth & More

The post Digital Marketing News: Brand Trust Survey, Top Social Posting Times, YouTube’s Comment Hiding, Amazon’s Ad Share Growth & More appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

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MarTech: Research and Strategies Behind Utilization

Recently, Ascend2 and its research partners fielded the Marketing Technology Utilization Survey. On the week of March 18, 2019, 245 marketing influencers responded. The resulting summary report, called Marketing Technology Utilization, which was published in April of 2019, represented the opinions of all the segments that were surveyed.

These segments included:

Number of Employees

More than 500 - 24%

50 to 500 – 34%

Fewer than 50 – 42%

 

Role in the Company

Owner/Partner/CXO – 36%

VP/Director/Manager – 46%

Non-Mgmt Professional – 18%

 

Primary Marketing Channel

B2B – 40%

B2C – 41%

Both B2B and B2C Equally – 19%

 

What did the research find?

 

Primary Objectives

The majority of marketing influencers found that improving marketing efficiency (61%) and increasing marketing ROI (57%) were primary objectives for their MarTech utilization strategy.

 

Strategic Success

About 43% of marketers consider a MarTech utilization strategy to be very successful (or best-in-class), at achieving their primary objectives, 52% somewhat successful, and only 5% said unsuccessful.

 

Critical Challenges

According to a plurality of marketing influencers, the most critical challenge to a MarTech utilization strategy is increasing marketing ROI (47%). The next two biggest-ranked critical challenges included improving marketing efficiency (40%) and attributing revenue to marketing (39%), both of which are concerns related to ROI.

 

Budget Trend

Of the marketing influencers surveyed, two-thirds (or close to 63%) think their MarTech utilization budget will increase moderately. More than a quarter (26%) think will it will increase significantly.

 

Objectives Versus Challenges

61% of the marketers surveyed found improving marketing efficiency to be a primary challenge, and 40% thought it to be a critical challenge. 57% considered increasing marketing ROI to be a primary challenge, and 47% found it to be a critical challenge.

 

MarTech Effectiveness

More than half of the marketing influencers (53%) found marketing automation/email/crm to be the most effective MarTech. Marketing data/dashboards/analytics came in second at 43%.

 

Adding to the MarTech Stack

Marketers think new technologies are being added to the MarTech at a rapid pace, with 39% saying they add to it monthly, 39% quarterly, 21% semi-annually, and 12% annually or greater.

 

MarTech Difficulty

Half of the marketing influencers surveyed found optimization, personalization, and testing to be the most difficult MarTech to utilize. 40% thought the most difficult was experience/relationship marketing, and 39% said marketing data/dashboards/analytics.

 

Utilization Resources

64% of the marketers said that they use a combination of in-house and outsourced MarTech utilization efforts. Only 19% only outsource, and only 17% use in house only.

 

Effectiveness Versus Difficulty

More than half surveyed (53%) found marketing automation/email/crm to be the most effective MarTech, and only 27% found it to be the most difficult to utilize. 43% found marketing data/dashboards/analytics to be the most effective, and only 39% thought that it was the most difficult to utilize.

 

Conclusions

The data quite clearly points to more and more marketing influencers thinking that MarTech utilization will become more important to marketing successful, particularly when it relates to marketing efficiency and ROI. Marketing automation/email/crm stand out as what is thought to be the most effective MarTech and the least difficult to make use of. Wise marketers will take note of the research and plan accordingly.

                                              

Learn how Oracle Eloqua empowers B2B marketers by reading “5 Keys to Successful Automated Marketing.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Buyers vs. Buying Committees: Not Knowing the Difference Could Cost You

Working as a marketing or sales professional in B2B presents a unique set of challenges and hurdles. One that probably doesn’t get discussed enough is the nuance of trying to reach and engage buying committees, as opposed to single customers. It’s a hugely important distinction that too many strategies fail to fully account for. If you’re not speaking to everyone, you might be speaking to no one. And we all know where that leads.

The Expanding Buyer Committee

A buyer (singular) is a sole decision maker responsible for researching solutions, vetting vendors, and authorizing purchases. It is exceedingly rare to see this type of setup in place anymore, unless at a startup or a very small company. Given the typical weight of these decisions, several people tend to now be involved with the process, and sign-off is often required from at least one high-ranking executive. Harvard Business Review reported a couple years ago the average number of people involved with B2B purchase decisions had risen to 6.8, and it’s fair to guess that figure has risen since. As Amanda Bulat wrote in a recent post for the LinkedIn Sales Solutions* blog, “Large enterprises sometimes have a dozen or more people with significant influence on purchases.”  This creates a conundrum for the modern B2B marketer. You could theoretically execute a masterful campaign, engaging a pivotal contact at a key account with compelling and persuasive content, only to have that company choose another solution because you failed to generate awareness with another key player who held more sway.  In the interest of helping you avoid such a disappointing outcome, we’ll cover some methods to ensure you’re fully understanding, and accounting for, the buying committee.

How B2B Marketers Can Reach the Whole Buying Committee

First, you map the buying committee out. Then, you develop a plan for comprehensive engagement. Finally, you put that plan into action. Let’s break down each of these steps. (Note that this guidance generally applies when you’ve already identified specific accounts to pursue, under an ABM-style framework, although you can also incorporate many of these tips more generally.)

Step 1: Map the Committee

There is no fail-safe way to ensure you’re accounting for each influencer on a buying committee. As an outsider, there’s an inherent level of obscurity involved with this process. But there are a few techniques for gaining a much clearer view. For example:

• Check the prospective account’s company website. Oftentimes, there will be an “Our Team” page or something similar, listing employees and their positions. Create your own rundown of executives and others with titles that frequently play a role in key business decisions.
• Research the company on LinkedIn. There are many handy features for B2B marketers on LinkedIn, and gaining insight around buying committees is one of them. The platform makes it easy to dial up a list of employees with a particular organization, plus accompanying job titles. Then it’s the same deal as above: spot the roles that are more likely to impact the buying committee. In some cases, people will actually list this as a job duty in their profiles, removing some of your guesswork.
• Ask your contacts. If you or another person on your team has an established relationship with someone who works in — or has worked in — the company you’re researching, it might not be a bad idea to ask about who in the business drives decisions, and who has their ear. 

Step 2: Coordinate with Sales

Alignment with sales is always critical for B2B marketers, but especially in this case, for two reasons:

1. Sales reps usually have the most direct contact with people at an account, and can get a closer read on who the influential players are. They can be very helpful with informing the step above.
2. Consistency in messaging is vital. You don’t want marketing content and salespeople to be sending a completely different message to different committee members, nor do you want to be repeatedly contacting the same member due to lack of communication. Formulate a plan in tandem with your partners in sales.

Step 3: Refine Your Targeting and Personas

Now that you’ve painted a picture of the buying committee’s composition, it’s time to adjust your marketing scope accordingly. When we say “refine your targeting” we mean it both in terms of how you’re delivering your content — you want to build concentrated awareness and engagement within an account, so tweak your ad targeting, email lists, social promotion, etc. to reflect — and also your tone and personalization.  Are you speaking directly to the specific individuals you need to win over? Is your content designed to create conversations within the buying committee? Does it answer questions that emerge in the late stages of a purchase decision? These are necessary questions to ask yourself in assessing whether your marketing approach is optimized for committees.

Shore Up Your B2B Marketing by Committing to Committees

Buying committees can vary greatly depending on the company and industry. As always, it’s essential to view this matter through the lens of your own context, and tap into the institutional knowledge of people who work closely with your customers and clients.  As our CEO Lee Odden wrote recently, “B2B purchasing is a team sport involving individuals at multiple levels from buying committees conducting research and making recommendations to executives with budgets to decide.” [bctt tweet="#B2B purchasing is a team sport. @leeodden" username="toprank"] Similarly, marketing to B2B committees is a team sport. Get your team aligned and focused on this objective, and you’ll be on your way to overcoming one of the toughest challenges in B2B marketing. At TopRank Marketing, we have many years of experience working with enterprise brands and helping them engage with large, distributed buying committees. Contact us today to learn more about our approach and philosophies. *Disclosure: LinkedIn Sales Solutions is a TopRank Marketing client

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The Three Step System for Keeping Clients for Three Years or Longer

Marketing Podcast with John Jantsch on the 3 Step System to Keep Clients 3 Years or Longer

I’ve been a marketing consultant for many years, working with all sorts of small business owners. Not only that, but I’ve also spent a lot of time with fellow marketing consultants, having developed the Duct Tape Marketing Consultant Network.

The topic of this podcast relates to any business, but especially to those in a service business or those who are marketing consultants. When you’re running this type of business, the key to success is developing a specific method for keeping clients happy and getting them increasingly better results over the years.

My business took off when I realized that there was a process to doing this, and in the intervening years, I’ve created a three step system, which I share with the Consultant Network, that helps them to keep clients for three years or longer. Today, I’m going to share that process with you.

1. Develop a Repeatable Process

Having a process that you can repeat and get better at is one of the secrets to scaling a consulting firm and keeping clients longer.

The Duct Tape Marketing System is our repeatable system. It relies heavily on the idea of placing strategy before tactics; we call our practice strategy first. We help our clients understand who their ideal client is, what their core message and value proposition are, and then use content as the voice of that strategy. All of this is mapped out over the customer journey, or what we call the marketing hourglass. Any client that walks through our door gets a variation of this service. After that, we get into build, grow, and ignite—our terminology for our implementation steps.

This allows us to have a repeatable process that isn’t simply cookie cutter. In reality, 80 percent of small businesses all need the same 80 percent of services. They just need those services applied in slightly different ways, depending on the specifics of their business and their core strengths. That is really what the consulting part of the job is; the other stuff is about implementation.

Beyond the repeatable marketing system for developing your strategy, you must also have a repeatable methodology. Every client is educated the same way, converted the same way, the discovery process and research you do for the client is managed the same way. You not only have a repeatable process for getting them results, you also have a repeatable process for their experience.

Our system is also built around the fact that marketing is always changing and evolving. We have 11 channels that our approach is built around.

We have to understand that all of these channels exist, and our job is to look at where each business is and then see which channels make sense for them. For example, if a business has an outdated website and no social media presence, they’re not going to be ready to start a podcast. We’ve got to go back to basics with them and get those foundational steps up and running before moving on to other channels.

We use the build, grow, and ignite roadmap to show a client how they’ll move down the roadmap. We charge a monthly retainer fee and can show a client exactly where we’re going to take them. A lot of consultants sell a project or specific result; we show clients how they have the ability to grow over the years if they stick with us and our broader plan for their business.

2. You Need a Consistent Flow of Leads (and a Process to Convert Them)

You don’t need a ton of leads or a complicated funnel to find them, you just need to make those leads convert. You need to get to a point where 50, 60, or 80 percent of those leads see a compelling reason to hire you.

A lot of consultants can get by with only a handful of clients at any given time. That means you only need to be speaking to two or three leads—as long as they’re the right leads—every month.

It’s important to establish a set of funnels. Don’t just put all of your prospecting eggs in one basket. Network with strategic partners to tap into their existing set of customers and contacts. Go out and speak at relevant events and conferences, establishing yourself as a thought leader and showing to people the value that you could add to their business, should they choose to hire you.

Content plays a huge role in the prospecting process. I’ve been speaking a lot recently about the value of hub pages.

If you want an example for how a hub page looks in the wild, check out our local marketing guide. This page is structured in a way that looks like an online course, and it contains everything you could want to know about local marketing. A lot of this content was written long before we created this hub page, but it was scattered everywhere.

We know people are looking for information about this broad topic, so we built a hub pages where we’ve taken all of our relevant content that we’ve written over the years, and structured it in a way that would be helpful for someone looking for a total crash course on the topic.

Then on the page we include a content upgrade—someone looking for local marketing tips is probably interested in the local SEO checklist, too. From there, we capture their email address and are able to start a conversation that gets us on the road to nurturing that lead.

Once we’ve shared information via our hub page and gotten the attention of leads with a content upgrade, we offer our Total Online Presence Audit. As a part of this audit process, we’ll look at your website and understand the message; look at the content, structure, SEO, paid leads, competitive landscape; and then provide you with a full report and recommendations on what should be your top priorities.

We charge a little money for this service. And the reason we do this is because it attracts leads that have the mentality of wanting to invest in their marketing. We’re then able to use the research from the Total Online Presence Audit to put together a thoughtful, specific proposal for that business, should they choose to engage us for marketing services.

This approach not only allows us to convert more people, but to also convert them to a higher priced fee. Customers get bought into wanting to really fix the problems we’ve identified, and then we’re able to convince them of the value of investing in a broader marketing strategy.

3. Have Trained Partners and an Account Team

Unless you’re just doing strategy consulting and not offering any sort of implementation, you’re going to need extra hands to help you get it all done. It doesn’t make sense for you as the consultant who’s building the business to spend time on implementation for each of your clients. You need to be free to do the higher level thinking on behalf of your clients and on scaling your own business.

Bringing in a team of qualified partners and an account team allows you to free up your time. And when your process is repeatable, it’s easy to delegate tasks to this team.

There are components of a repeatable process that you can train outside people to do. There are so many great freelance remote workers out there; you as the consultant can do the strategic thinking, but then you can ask the account manager to deal with the more tactical work.

They can also manage reporting. An account manager is able to keep track of both your clients and your partners, communicating with them on a weekly basis. You as the consultant can then stay at the strategic level, but you can remain in clients’ fields of vision each week so that they know they’re being taken care of.

Bonus Step: Invest in a Mentor and Community

When you’re a solopreneur, it’s important to have a community for feedback and support. You want proof that you’re not crazy, help finding new clients, and feedback on your strategy and approach.

Working by yourself in a room every day can be lonely and leave you feeling disconnected. Finding a community that is doing the same thing you’re doing can be extremely valuable (both in growing your business and keeping your spirits high).

If you’re a consultant and anything resonates that you’ve heard here today resonates, check out ducttape.me/discover for information on upcoming live trainings with me, where I walk you through the methodology of our Duct Tape Marketing Consultant Network.

Like this show? Click on over and give us a review on iTunes, please!

This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by SEMrush.

SEMrush is our go-to SEO tool for everything from tracking position and ranking to doing audits to getting new ideas for generating organic traffic. They have all the important tools you need for paid traffic, social media, PR, and SEO. Check it out at SEMrush.com/partner/ducttapemarketing.

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15 Reports Charting the Future of Content Marketing

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5 Instagram Marketing Strategies Every CMO Should Use

Instagram is known as the best social network for organic engagement with an interaction rate of 2.2 percent. Users respond well to the image-driven framework of the platform, and they come back every day for more.

CMOs know better than anyone the importance of a clearly-driven marketing plan for every social network you use. To cultivate a loyal following for your brand on Instagram, consider these marketing strategies that some of the most popular brands and CMOs use.

1. Use Micro-Influencers, Not Macro-Influencers

Influencer marketing holds great promise for CMOs. With the help of more established brands on Instagram, you can read your target audience based on their needs, interests, problems, motivations, age, gender, education level, and geographic location.

When considering influencer marketing, you might think that the best approach is to reach out to influencers with a massive amount of followers. Those with 100,000 followers or more would bring the best awareness to your brand, right?

Yes, your awareness numbers will spike, but if you’re after engagement, sales, and followers, micro-influencers offer the most bang for your buck. These influencers have less than 100,000 followers and as such, their audience is far more engaged. Connecting with a non-competitive influencer in your brand will also connect you to more potential customers.

Besides that, they’re more affordable. A macro-influencer like Kim Kardashian can cost as much as $250,000 for a single post. Other macro-influencers charge about $1,000 per 100,000 followers, an expensive investment without a targeted return since you’re paying for both interested users and not.

A micro-influencer, on the other hand, charges about $100 per 1,000 followers, so your marketing budget can better absorb the cost. Plus, you’ll get a better return by connecting only with Instagram users who are likely to follow you and become repeat customers.

2. Write Better Hashtags and Use More of Them

Hashtags are more important than many marketers realize. They make your posts searchable and increase potential traffic for each post. You’ve probably already been using hashtags, but if they haven’t been performing as expected, use these tips to improve them:

• Use relevant and trending hashtags. These hashtags were created by other brands in your industry and are performing very well on related posts. Because they’ve already generated heavy traffic, you’ll get more attention to your post that brings a unique spin to a trending topic.
• Create branded hashtags also. These tags are connected with your brand only so that your loyal followers recognize your brand and can use the hashtag on their own posts. This increases brand awareness and connects you with more potential customers.
• Keep your hashtags short and memorable. According to research, the best length for a hashtag is 21-24 characters. This is short enough to spell and remember, but long enough to contain all the relevant information.
• Use the right amount. Some argue that you should use as many hashtags as possible. The limit in your post is 30 hashtags, but you can add another 30 to the comments if you like. Just make sure that you enter down a few spaces in your post to hide your hashtags from your users’ feed, making your post look less spammy.

Others argue that you should only use a few, relevant hashtags for optimum engagement. You can learn the best number to use for your posts by posting some content with a lot of hashtags and some with a few and see what perform best.

3. Use Instagram Stories Every Day

Stories is one of the most popular platforms on Instagram with more than 500,000 followers logging on daily. You can create massive leverage by using Stories to connect with your customers, entice interest, show sneak peeks at new products, launch giveaways, and promote sales. If your brand is verified on Instagram, you can even post links in your Stories that takes consumers straight to your product pages.

Stories are popular because they make your brand look and feel more authentic. They also elicit the classic FOMO emotion (fear of missing out). Because Stories are only posted to the platform for 24 hours, consumers must log on daily in order to see what’s new from their favorite brands.

Instagram statistics show that brands get up to 37 percent of their total impressions and engagement from Instagram Stories. This is engagement you can’t afford to miss!

4. Make Live Videos

Everyone wants to feel like they’re on the inside track or that they’re being given insight into something few others can access. Behind-the-scenes footage, exclusive product reveals, unique tips and tricks, and more can all be captured in live video form.

You can depict situations that allow viewers to relate to your business or to picture themselves in a scenario of your creation. You have the ability to create a visual narrative through your live videos that can compel a deep connection to your brand. It’s like you’re offering something special just for your special followers.

But it’s more than that. Live videos in Stories actually put your video at the very front of the queue. This means that consumers will see messages from your brand before anyone else’s. You might feel uncomfortable getting in front of the camera without the ability to redo or edit anything, but this kind of engagement is simply too good to skip!

5. Follow Competitor Brands and Executives

As you proceed on your way to becoming the best brand on Instagram, you can’t ignore those in your industry who are already killing it on the platform. By following and running competitive analyses on them, you can learn what works and doesn’t for your target audience.

You can learn a lot from following executives of a brand as well. Many executives of large corporations in your industry will have an Instagram account where they attempt to connect with their audience and grow awareness and engagement for their brands. Analyze these accounts as well to learn from mistakes and victories on their part.

As you put together a competitive analysis that compares the successful actions of your competitors to your own, you’ll understand much about running a successful Instagram marketing campaign.

That being said, don’t get so caught up in copying your competitors that you fail to let an original, creative, and potentially dynamite piece of content reach your audience. There’s always room for creativity, especially if it has the potential to make your brand an Instagram star.

These are merely five tips that successful brands are using on Instagram to increase number of followers and engagement, thus driving sales. Try them out for yourself if you want to see similar results.

                                        

Intrigued by influencer marketing? Do you want a better idea on how to get started? Read “5 Q/As About Influencer Marketing Success.”

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Transcript of How to Make Your Brand Unskippable

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Transcript

John Jantsch: This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast is brought to you by SEMrush. It is our go-to SEO tool for doing audits, for tracking position and ranking, for really getting ideas on how to get more organic traffic for our clients, competitive intelligence, backlinks and things like that. All the important SEO tools that you need for pay traffic, social media, PR and of course, SEO. Check it out at semrush.com/partner/ducttapemarketing. We’ll have that in the show notes.

John Jantsch: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch, and my guest today is Jim Kukral. He is an expert in online marketing and branding, also an author of a book we’re going to talk about today. He’s written a few others as well, but we’re going to focus on Your Journey to Becoming Unskippable. So Jim, thanks for joining me.

Jim Kukral: It’s great to be here on your awesome podcast.

John Jantsch: So let’s define the word unskippable. What are you trying to say there?

Jim Kukral: Well when I came up with the concept of unskippable, it was really about what it meant to me. And it’s today’s busy business world, and society in general, it’s a mindsets. What are you unskippable to yourself, your family, your friends, your customers, right? And I really kind of make the argument in the book that the world has become skippable. DVR’s allow us to fast-forward through the commercials, and we’re staring at our phones an average of three hours a day. Kids are staring at their phones an average of nine-and-a-half hours a day. And it’s getting harder and harder to break though and get yourself noticed. So when you become unskippable, you do things like purposely attract lifetime customers. You use a different level of thinking of how to make yourself stand out in today’s really complicated and busy world.

John Jantsch: So I’m assuming most people think, and you’ve already mentioned the context of business, but really you spend a lot of time in this talking about how people are skippable. And you’re not just talking about a brand or a product, but that there’s an element to life in general that needs to be applied to this unskippable. So how do we do that?

Jim Kukral: Yeah, so that’s why it’s called Journey to Becoming Unskippable in Your Business, Life, and Career. And when I started writing this book I had just come off a really tumultuous point in my life, I made a huge mistake and I decided to get into local politics. And that I tell the story in the book, but it almost destroyed my marriage, it almost destroyed my businesses, it almost destroyed my finances. And that really caused me to change the way I look at my life, on my businesses, on my relationships with friends and family. And of course, it also helped me learn how people think and how people buy.

Jim Kukral: I mean there’s something about marketing yourself to people, to their face as opposed to just being a faceless brand on the internet. And when I went to thousands of doors in my neighborhood and talked to people about myself and my values and my beliefs, and actually communicated with people face-to-face, I really learned what it took to become unskippable to those people. And I don’t want to ruin the story in the book, but I won my first election. And then what happened after that became extremely difficult, and that’s when it almost ruined everything for me, so that’s really what it’s all about.

John Jantsch: I actually spent the first couple years of my business doing a lot of political work, marketing for political campaigns. And it didn’t take me very long to realize that I didn’t want to be in that world. So I can’t imagine being on the other side being an elected official as well. But the good news is you did not fail, you learned, right?

Jim Kukral: I did learn, and it was a big learning lesson for me, and it really changed my perspective on business and life. And that’s really what this book is, it’s kind of a cross-genre inspirational business book. There’s a ton of business case studies, and marketing studies and things like that in it. But it’s all flown around the concept of what it is to be unskippable in those instances, in marketing and business, but also in your life and your career.

John Jantsch: So I can imagine some people, and we’re going to get into this, so I’m going to give you the chance to defend this position. I can imagine some people thinking, “Okay I become unskippable by figuring out how to get more attention, and maybe by being louder.” And I’m not sure that that’s actually what you’re suggesting is it?

Jim Kukral: No, actually the first book I wrote nine years ago, Attention, was about that concept. But that was nine years ago, the world’s changed a little bit since then, right? So attention, the argument that people make that it’s harder and harder to get attention, in one way that’s true, but that’s really not what this book is about. It’s about trying to get through all the distractions. So I talk about stories about how college kids, did you realize that college students they don’t watch Netflix or television shows or anything. They do it with the closed captioning on. And after you ask why it’s because they say, “I can retain more information” because they’re doing multiple things.

Jim Kukral:  My kids they don’t watch TV, they watch YouTube videos. And when they’re watching the TV show, they’re also watching a YouTube video. And at the same time, they’re chatting with friends on Instagram and Snapchat. And they got one bud in, and it’s frustrating as heck when I’m trying to watch a show with them. But in today’s world, we’re so distracted, more than ever. And it’s not about attention, we don’t have an attention problem. We just have a problem of getting people to pay attention long enough so that when they do like our content, and they do like what we put out there, then they will pay attention and consume it veraciously.

Jim Kukral: And that’s true, it’s like binge watching. So once you find a show that’s validated with social proof and everyone says, “You should watch this.” And once you get into it and watch it, you’ll sit down and watch 10 hours of it straight. So it’s not an attention problem, it’s a problem of trying to create content that people really want to pay attention to.

John Jantsch: It’s funny you mention that demographic of millennials, and another kind of common thing that I’m seeing is if someone does commercials or a commercial entertainment that is really good and really effective, I mean they’ll eat that up as well. They don’t see it as advertising at that point because it’s so engaging.

Jim Kukral: Yeah, it’s absolutely true. I mean creating content, the book’s not a content marketing book. Content marketing still works, traditional benefit based marketing tactics still work. You got your free shipping, and your coupons, and all that stuff, that’s never going to go away. The difference is in today’s skippable world, those things are expected. They expect you to have those things. Now people want something more from you, of course they want great content, and they can spot the ads even the content marketing, get my white paper and get with your email … they realize that’s an ad.

Jim Kukral: I like to say it’s like remember the movie Christmas Story when Ralphie gets his secret decoder ring, and then finds out that the message is, “Drink more Ovaltine.” Even younger generations today, we’ve reached the point where people are like, “Okay I get it, it’s an ad, but I really need more from you as a brand. And I need to understand why you’re going to share same beliefs with me, because I want to support you on that level now. I don’t want to just do business with somebody who has a good free shipping offer,” I guess is the best way to say it.

John Jantsch: So what are some of the key attributes of an unskippable business. And I don’t mean the things they do, I mean how would you know your business is unskippable?

Jim Kukral: Well obviously if you’re attracting lifetime customers, and I like to say purposely attracting lifetime customers, and one of the things I talk about in great depth in the book in part two of the book is belief driven buyers. And Edelman did a study about this last year where they talked about belief driven buyers and 64% of consumers now consider themselves to be belief driven buyers. And a belief driven buyer is somebody who chooses to do business with, or not do business with, based upon a shared belief. And consumers, regular people now they used to trust politicians and governments, they don’t anymore. Their turning to brands who now share their same beliefs.

Jim Kukral: I talk of the story of course about Colin Kaepernick and Nike in there, and how they use Kaepernick to share a common belief with their belief driven buyers. I tell a story in the book about Yeti Coolers, who they got into kind of a scuffle with a national organization, and their belief driven buyers turned on them and started blowing their coolers up with dynamite, and shooting them with high powered rifles. But here’s what’s interesting, the people who used to be their customers who stopped buying from them, the other people who never knew about Yeti started buying their product.

Jim Kukral: So we talk about this polarizing world that we’re living in and how people want to share these beliefs, and I give a ton of case studies and stories about how important it is, because I always say this, would you rather have 1% of the entire market, or 100% of half of it? Because there’s a lot of people right now you’re a struggling business owner and you’re like, I don’t know how I’m going to make payroll this month, I don’t know how we’re going to do this, we’re going to get by over the next six months. Well guess what, sometimes you don’t have to take political stands, but customers want to know what you care about. And they’re choosing to do business with people who share those values with them, and that could be the difference between you making payroll, or that could be the difference between you having the best year ever.

John Jantsch: Yeah. I always tell people, “You don’t have to take a stand, but you have to stand for something.”

Jim Kukral: Exactly.

John Jantsch: And I think that’s the way to look at it. And it’s funny, and I don’t want to go down this rabbit hole because it’s easy to do, but I think a lot of people scratch their head and don’t understand how are people loyal to Trump, how did people vote for him? The people that are on the side that are not favored, I think people fail to realize that he’s not a politician, he’s a brand for those folks. And I think that’s why he gets away with things that other politicians would never get away with. And I think that’s the explanation for it is his fans, or whatever you want to call them, see him as a brand and not as a politician.

Jim Kukral: Well that’s why the entire part two of this book is called Understanding Today’s Consumer and Polarized World. And there’s a great quote in the beginning of that chapter and it says, “You will continue to suffer if you have an emotional reaction to everything that is said to you, true power is sitting back and observing things with logic.” Now the internet isn’t sure who said that, they either say it was Bruce Lee or Warren Buffet. But it’s really a great quote, and it’s kind of a good set up for the whole middle part of this book which is exactly what you said, understanding how people think is what you need to really get through your head. In today’s really tribalized world, once you have an understanding of how your customers think, then you can market to them in a better scenario.

John Jantsch: So and again I’m putting myself in a position of a listener out there because I get these questions all the time when I talk too, but what if I’m in this really boring business? A business nobody talks about, or even wants to talk about, because they don’t want people to know that they’re going to a psychiatrist, or they’re doing x, y, z? I mean how does the boring business make themselves unskippable?

Jim Kukral: I actually talk about that in the book. I did a great interview with our friend Andrew Davis, amazing speaker, amazing business person. And we talked about that, and we talked about an accounting firm. And he brings up the great point, he’s like “The joyful experience that they don’t give me when I turn in my taxes is something that will not make me recommend my firm to somebody else.” So if somebody goes on social media, which happens a million times a day, “Hey who do you use for your accounting or your tax services?” Well there’s two answers you can give.

Jim Kukral: The first one is, “I use x, y, z tax and they’re fine.” Or you could give the other answer, which is, “Oh I use x, y, z tax. They are the best tax company in the world. They come and they pick up my tax information from me at my house. And then when it’s done, they call me and invite me to this breakfast at the place over on 130th Street with those great pancakes and they give me free breakfast, and they hand my tax stuff over.” Those joyful experiences that you create with a customer, even with a boring business.

Jim Kukral: I mean accounting to a lot of people is boring, it’s boring to me, I don’t like doing my taxes and accounting. Even if you’re a plumber, or an accountant or whatever, it’s about creating joyful experiences for your customers. And those are going to be the things that they’re going to talk about, talk about Jay Baer’s Talk Triggers book in there. When people have a joyful experience with you, that’s when they talk about you. Like Jay Baer says with the Cheesecake Factory. There’s so many great examples in the book about those types of things.

John Jantsch: I think some of the biggest blow up crazy businesses over the last decade or so are people that have changed or disrupted what you call a poor experience. I mean getting a taxi and getting in a taxi and going from point A to point B was a terrible experience, people did it because they had to get from point A to point B. Uber completely disrupts that poor experience, and whether you like Uber or not, today I mean that company went from nothing to really, really giant by disrupting a poor experience. So how do we look at our market that way?

Jim Kukral: Yeah, you’re right about the disruption. I mean I tell a lot of stories in the book about disruption from the angle of thinking differently about your business and how you can disrupt something with joyful experiences. And the one basic conclusion I come to is do you know why retail’s dying, a lot of it? It’s because people don’t want to go to the store anymore. They don’t want to get in their car, and they don’t want to be bothered.

Jim Kukral: You know why car dealerships are not going to really be effective in the future? Because nobody wants to go to the car dealership and deal with the car sales person with the clip on tie trying to get a deal from their manager, and three hours there, and signing paperwork. That’s why companies like Carvana.com are exploding, because you go online, find the car you want, get the financing. Then you have it delivered to the vending machine near your home, you drive over and you put your token in, and out pops your car and you drive home.

Jim Kukral: You don’t have to deal with the sales person, you don’t have to deal with all those not enjoyable experiences. Same thing with anything, Warby Parker, getting your glasses sent to your home. You try them on, figure out the one you like, and you send the rest of the ones back. The other one that I really love is Casper, who does mattresses. So you don’t have to go to a store to deal with a pushy mattress sales person anymore. You can go to their dreameries, and there’s no sales people in there trying to sell you anything. They just want you to come and test out the mattress.

Jim Kukral: Then you go back to the website, figure out the mattress you want, order it. They’ll ship it to your house, bring it, put it into your room. You sleep on it for 100 days, and if you don’t like it, all you have to do is literally call them. They’ll come and pick it up, take it back, and give you your money back. It’s not like you have to take it to the post office and put a bunch of stamps on it, I always thought that was a pretty funny mental image. So they’re disrupting this entire model, which is people don’t want to be bothered with leaving their houses anymore. They don’t want to be bothered with all of these things that take time and create so much pain for them.

John Jantsch: Well and unfortunately, or fortunately if you’re a consumer, I mean the more companies that do that and disrupt those industries, the more it just becomes an expectation. That they are actually creating buyer behavior that hey if you’re not, that becomes the minimum bar now. If you’re not doing that, then why would I even consider it? Because once I’ve had that experience, I start wanting it everywhere, don’t I?

Jim Kukral: Well that is what Jeff Bezos has trained us to do. We now expect that we can go online, click a button, and have something delivered to our home. There’s a company called Enjoy Technologies, and basically what they do is if you order an iPhone you can go to the Apple store, you can go to your AT&T center, you can go to Best Buy. But what Enjoy will do is if you order the product, the iPhone online, they’ll actually bring it to your house, have a trained expert bring it into your home. Sit down with you, transfer all your files, set it up for you, and show you how to use it, and it’s all free. So why would you want it any other way?

John Jantsch: Yeah. And so now we start demanding it. So if you’re one of those companies out there that are still doing things the way that they’ve always been done in our industry, I mean I speak at a lot of conferences for sometimes outdated business models that are still hanging on there. But they want to learn how to use the internet, and things that people have been doing. And it’s like hey, you may not think that this is where it’s going, but these other companies, you have to take notice and you have to do it. So at the end of the book you make an offer for people to write a book with you, what’s that all about?

Jim Kukral: Yeah, I really love the concept of how to become unskippable in pretty much any vertical or industry. So I’m looking for people who want to write books with me in different industries and verticals. So if you’re the best plumber in the world, or goat herder in the world, or accountant and you’re interested in writing some type of unskippable book with me, I’d just say reach out to me because I’d love to talk to you about it. Because I really think that the unskippable mindset applies across pretty much any vertical. Once you understand what it is you’re trying to accomplish, and how you want to stand out and be different, it’s just a matter of applying that to your industry. So that’s my plan is to write a bunch of different books in different verticals that are going to help people.

John Jantsch: And the unskippable franchise is born. Jim, where can more people find out about unskippable, and you in general, and maybe if they want to write that book with you?

Jim Kukral: You can just go to beunskippable.com, that’s beunskippable.com. And you get to my website, and you can see everything there. And yeah, I really enjoyed writing this, John. This was the, it’s the best thing I’ve ever written, and the most personal thing I’ve ever written. And I’m really proud of it, and I know that people are really going to enjoy it. So thank you for taking some time for allowing me to tell people about it because I really respect your business, your career, and everything you’ve done, and it means a lot to me.

John Jantsch: Well thank you, Jim. And your passion for this comes across and this is more than a book, this sounds like a movement. So we’ll have beunskippable.com in the show notes. Appreciate you tuning in. And Jim, hopefully we’ll run into you soon out there on the road.

Jim Kukral: It’s been my pleasure John, thank you again.

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How to Make Your Brand Unskippable

Marketing Podcast with Jim Kukral
Podcast Transcript

Today on the podcast, I chat with marketing and branding expert Jim Kukral. He is a keynote speaker and author of several books, including his latest, Your Journey to Becoming Unskippable in Your Business, Life & Career.

As an entrepreneur, he has started and sold two of his own online marketing agencies. His writings about marketing have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, USA Today, Huffington Post, and other major publications. He has also taught marketing as an adjunct professor at The University of San Francisco.

On this episode, we discuss his latest book, and Kukral shares the secrets to applying his unskippable method to marketing and brand missions for any business in order to strengthen revenues and build a lifelong customer base.

Questions I ask Jim Kukral:

• What does it mean to be unskippable?
• How does someone in a less-than-glamorous industry make themselves unskippable?
• How are the disruptors creating new buyer behavior?

What you’ll learn if you give a listen:

• What role belief-driven buyers play in building a repeat customer base.
• Why understanding how people think is the key to creating an effective marketing approach.
• How you can disrupt industries by creating joyful experiences.

Key takeaways from the episode and more about Jim Kukral:

• Learn more about Jim Kukral
• Order your copy of Your Journey to Becoming Unskippable
• Follow on Twitter
• Follow on Facebook
• Follow on Instagram
• Connect on LinkedIn

Like this show? Click on over and give us a review on iTunes, please!

This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by SEMrush.

SEMrush is our go-to SEO tool for everything from tracking position and ranking to doing audits to getting new ideas for generating organic traffic. They have all the important tools you need for paid traffic, social media, PR, and SEO. Check it out at SEMrush.com/partner/ducttapemarketing.

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How I Grew My Dying Facebook Traffic

Is it me, or does Facebook just want to keep you on Facebook?

Every time I post a link to my site, I get less and less traffic. And it’s been this way for years.

In other words, my organic reach on Facebook was dying.

And to make matters worse, they give you hope every time they launch a new feature.

For example, when they launched Facebook Live, you used to be able to get tons of views because they promoted it organically… but not really anymore.

The same goes with Facebook Watch. I used to easily get 30,000 plus views per video when Facebook Watch came out… again, not anymore.

Now I am lucky to get 10,000 views.

But hey, I can’t really hate on Facebook. They are a business and they have to do what’s best for them. So instead of getting upset at Facebook, I decided to run some tests to see if I could find a way to get more organic traffic.

Because there has to be a way, right?

Well, there is. 🙂

And here is my traffic from Facebook over the last 7 days:

That may not seem like a big increase, but I generated 10,621 visitors the month before. In other words, I took my Facebook traffic from 10,621 visitors PER MONTH to 10,085 visitors PER WEEK.

I am getting roughly the same amount of traffic I used to get in 30 days from Facebook, now in just 7 days.

So how did I do this?

Taking control of your own destiny

As marketers, our faith typically relies on the big giants… you know, Google, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram…

If they decide to change their algorithms your traffic could go up, down, or stay flat.

For that reason, over the last few years, I’ve been building up marketing channels that aren’t as reliant on algorithms.

For example, you may learn about new blog posts I publish through my email lists because every time I publish a new post, I usually send out an email blast.

Or it could be through browser notifications.

Every time I release a blog post or a video… again, I send a message out through push notifications.

But why can’t we do the same with Facebook?

Sure, you can post on your wall or page like everyone else, but if Facebook doesn’t want to show it to people they don’t have to.

So, I decided to push really hard on Facebook Messenger, which gives you the same ability.

In other words, you can send a direct message to everyone on Facebook through their chat feature and share a message or a link to your website.

Something that isn’t too controlled by an algorithm… similar to text messaging or email marketing.

I built this list of 129,560 Facebook Messenger contacts and leveraged them to continually generate traffic back to my blog.

Now before I break down the exact steps I took to do this, the tactics here take execution and elbow grease. It isn’t rocket science, it’s not hard to do, but it does take a bit of work.

But first, let’s go over how Facebook Messenger marketing works.

Facebook Messenger

First, let’s back up on why Facebook Messenger is working so well today.

Facebook Messenger open rates are 50-80% click-through rates post elite stats.

When you send an email campaign, you can expect a 20% open rate on a really good day. On average, I get 28 to 31% with my NeilPatel.com email list.

In other words, if you send your email newsletter to 100 people, 20 people will open it. If you scrub your list and work really hard like me, roughly 30 people will open it, which still isn’t great.

However, when you send a Messenger message to 100 people, 88 people will open it and read it.

We’re talking about an 88% open rate on Messenger. That is crazy!!!!

Now over time, you will notice that it will go down, but it is still substantially higher than email.

But here is where it really gets interesting.

With email marketing, you’ll typically see a 2% to a 4% click-through rate. So for every 100 emails you send, you will get 2 to 4 clicks back to your site.

To give you a benchmark, again, I spend a lot of time fine-tuning my emails and I can get about 6 clicks for every 100 emails I send.

Better than the 2 to 4 percent most people get, but still not life-changing.

With Messenger? You can get 20% click rates.

Over time, you will see it go down, but it is still substantially higher than email marketing.

And it is not just marketing, it works with pretty much any industry. Here’s an example of a real estate company that leverages Facebook Messenger:

As you can see from the screenshot above, Facebook Messenger works like how you would chat with a friend on Facebook or even email. You don’t always have to promote or link, you could just have a conversation with a friend.

This is why their adoption rate is continually climbing in the United States.

That’s almost 140 million users that are projected to use Messenger.

Messaging apps are also surpassing social networks in popularity. Just ask yourself… how many times do you use WhatsApp each week?

But the key is to start now because it will become saturated just like every other marketing channel that works. So whoever builds the biggest list early on will have the best shot of doing well in the long run.

If you are already leveraging Messenger, great, just skip to the tips below to start growing your Facebook traffic.

If you aren’t, just like email marketing you are going to need software so you can send the messages on Facebook. You can start off with this free software called MobileMonkey.

Now let’s get into how you can build your Messenger list and get consistent Facebook traffic.

Tactic #1: Website Messenger widget

My own tests have shown that chat on a website can boost conversions 45%.

So I wondered, what would happen if I installed a Messenger bot on a website?

What’s great about adding this is that visitors get answers to their questions immediately, 24/7. Say goodbye to conversion bottlenecks.

But also, everyone who starts a chat on the site becomes a new contact in my Messenger list.

So how does this work?

Add a Facebook Messenger bot to your website with a widget.

Everyone who visits your website is invited to become a Messenger contact. Website traffic turns into Messenger contacts.

Most users are already logged into Messenger on their desktop or device. So when they have questions or want info and see the Messenger widget, they tap it and boom — new Messenger contact.

If your site is on WordPress site like 34% of the world’s sites, a WordPress plugin called WP-Chatbot is the quickest way to add Facebook Messenger chat to your site.

Install the plugin on your WordPress site and you’ll have Messenger chat on your site in just a few minutes.

This widget makes list building easy. An active website could get hundreds or thousands of new contacts from the visitors on the site who engage the chatbot every day.

Think about yourself.

Are you more likely to search for a contact form on a site, fill it out, and sit back and wait who knows how long for an answer to your question?

Or are you more likely to pop open the chat window, ask your question, and get an immediate response?

Tactic #2: Run Facebook click to Messenger ads

You can do a lot without leveraging paid traffic, but if you really want to put some fuel on the fire, a few hundred dollars goes a long way.

And for the purpose of this blog post, I spent $391.58 just so I would have some stats to share with you. 🙂

Facebook Messenger ads are a Facebook Ad format in which the user who clicks on the ad is immediately added to your Messenger contact list as opposed to going to a landing page where they may bounce or exit, anonymously.

Everyone who clicks the button on the ad converts when they send the advertiser a message — becoming a permanent Messenger contact.

The key part is… they need to send the advertiser a message. In other words, if you don’t get them to send you a message they won’t be added to your Messenger contact list so you won’t be able to send blasts to them.

That’s why you want to use an autoresponder. If which you automatically start talking to each person to increase your chance that they will get added to your contact list.

Here’s an example of an ad:

How much will Facebook click-to-Messenger ads run you?

I personally haven’t scaled a campaign too large yet, but with a $391.58 test budget, I’ve been able to generate leads for roughly 62% less than traditional Facebook ads.

But again, the key with all of this is in the autoresponder. Without that, your numbers won’t be too great.

Within MobileMonkey, use the bot content builder to create the autoresponder to your Facebook Ad.

Then create a new Messenger ad in MobileMonkey to connect your autoresponder to your Facebook Ad.

Next, pick the autoresponder from a drop-down of all your bot dialogues and connect it to your Facebook Ads Manager account.

The result is a low-cost ad campaign that drives more contacts into your Messenger list.

Facebook Messenger ads work time and again across industries, including e-commerce and service businesses.

Now, if you are like me and you prefer to do things a bit more organically and save some money, here’s how you generate more contacts without spending money.

Tactic #3: Use organic Facebook post autoresponders

Growing your list with a little ad spend goes a long way, but this next list building power tactic is totally free.

Anyone who comments on your Facebook Page posts instantly becomes your Messenger contact.

A Facebook post autoresponder adds people to your Messenger contact list if they comment on any Facebook post.

Here’s how it works.

1. You post to your Facebook Business Page.
2. Someone comments.
3. A Messenger bot automatically responds and as soon as that person replies, they’ve become a contact in Messenger.

You can see an example of this tactic in action here:

The more engaging your Facebook post, the more likely it will be that people will want to comment on it.

These kinds of posts always get a ton of comments and contacts:

• Quizzes
• Contests
• Riddles

You could ask fans to post a GIF in response to a question. “Describe your boss with a GIF.”

Or ask them to tell a story or ask them a question like “What industry are most of your clients in?”

Even just asking them “what do you do?” is super-engaging because people love to talk about themselves!

This store asks fans to name how many duck species are in the photo. Comment with your guess and get a discount code in the autoresponder follow-up.

You can create the Messenger dialog for this technique in MobileMonkey with the “FB Comment Guard” tool.

That feature is what allows you to add the autoresponder to an organic post.

I love this technique because it converts my hard-fought organic Facebook engagement into a list of contacts I can follow up with.

Tactic #4: Convert page fans into Messenger contacts

I’m a fan of cross-promoting, traffic-sharing, and allowing various marketing channels to build off each other.

After all, if someone follows you on one channel, they may want your updates on a different channel as well. This increases your odds of connecting with them and amplifying your content reach at any given time.

This tactic combines several methodologies for a boost to Messenger contacts.

If you’ve gone to the effort of building a robust Facebook page, you will want to convert these fans into Messenger contacts. Fans are great, but Messenger contacts are better because Messenger is personalized, interactive, one-on-one, and has way more visibility than Facebook News Feed.

Organic reach on Facebook is very low. Maybe 1%, of your fans on your Facebook Page will even see your post.

Using Facebook Messenger changes this. Instead of a low organic reach, you’re getting high-powered interactions that are personalized.

This is important because page fans aren’t automatically Messenger contacts. You have to invite them or connect with them in Messenger first.

Here are three ways to convert your Page fans into Messenger contacts.

First, and this one is pretty obvious, you can change the CTA button on your Facebook Page to “Send Message”.

Right now your Facebook Page CTA button might be sending traffic to your site with a button like “Learn More”.

Hover over the button until you see “Edit Button.” Then choose the option to “Contact you” and “Send Message.”

Customize the message that people will see when they click that button in MobileMonkey.

Boom. Now anyone who clicks the “Send Message” button from a Facebook Page will become a Messenger contact.

Second, create a Facebook Post Autoresponder (see tip #3).

This autoresponder was a simple invitation — Stay in touch! Sign up for Messenger updates.

Third, you can then use Page fan audience targeting of a click-to-Messenger Facebook Ad campaign.

Remember, your existing Page fans are more likely to take another step into more interaction with a brand that they know and trust.

Tactic #5: Turn your email subscribers into Messenger contacts

Email marketing has a low engagement rate.

Facebook Messenger has high engagement.

Would you rather send your content to your subscribers in a channel with a 2% click-rate or 20% click-through rate?

Ideally, you should do what I do and leverage them both.

Send your email list an invitation to join your Facebook Messenger list. Those who choose to do so will become email subscribers and Messenger subscribers, but their engagement level (and therefore your reach) will increase using Messenger.

One of the most effective marketing methods is to convert your existing contacts into more effective marketing channels.

Using MobileMonkey’s chatbot builder, you can create an opt-in page consisting of a quick and simple “Want to receive occasional updates?” invitation.

Link to that invitation anywhere you’d normally include a link.

Link to that invitation in a button, like the examples below.

And here:

Link to your Messenger experience in your:

• Email signature
• CTAs in blog posts
• Business card in QR codes
• Landing pages
• Newsletter subscription forms

The list is as long as you are clever. And it works very well!

Conclusion

You are always going to deal with algorithms, but if you want more consistent traffic you need to take matters into your own hands.

Just look at me, I leverage email marketing, push notifications, and even Facebook Messenger marketing.

I’m now looking into leveraging text messaging too.

Sure, I leverage SEO, content marketing, paid ads, social media marketing… and every other major channel out there.

But I focus a large part of my efforts on controlling my own destiny and you can too.

If you haven’t started, start with Facebook Messenger. It works so well right now and I expect it to last for a while. The key is getting in on the right time and time is right now.

So what do you think about this strategy? Have you tried Facebook Messenger marketing yet?

The post How I Grew My Dying Facebook Traffic appeared first on Neil Patel.

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Email Rules and Regulations to Follow

If you’re just getting into email marketing (or even if you’ve been at it for a while!), you may be unaware of some of the rules and regulations that come along with managing a mailing list and launching campaigns.

While you may be eager to get things up and running, there are some legal guidelines you should know about before undertaking any email marketing.

In 2003, President Bush signed the CAN-SPAM Act into law. The act set very clear guidelines for how marketers are allowed to contact consumers, what information they must disclose in their mailings, and how requests from consumers regarding their personal information is handled.

More recently, the European Union ratified the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), their data protection law, which also sets forth some requirements for email marketers. It’s important that you know about this if you’re reaching out to any consumers abroad.

Here, I’ll walk you through the essentials of all the relevant laws so that you can make sure your email marketing practices comply.

Keep Headers and Subject Lines Honest

The CAN-SPAM Act requires marketers use accurate header information. The “To,” “From” and domain name and email address, must all show the real name of the business or person who sent the message. No pretending to be a celebrity or fictional character in your email address!

Similarly, your subject lines must reflect the actual content of the message inside. You can’t indicate in the subject line that you’re giving away a free car and then have an email body that never mentions it again.

Declare That It’s an Ad

Not every email that you send from your business to consumers will be an advertisement. Some businesses run a newsletter, where they share purely informational content with their subscribers. Others have a need to reach out to customers to confirm shipping of a purchase or to follow up on a customer service request.

If you’re reaching out to your mailing list with commercial content, which the CAN-SPAM Act defines as”[content which] advertises or promotes a commercial product or service, including content on a website operated for a commercial purpose,” then you have to clearly announce within the email that it is an ad.

Include Your Address

You must include your business’s address—either a street address or P.O. Box—in the footer of the email. It has to be a valid address for your business, too. So if you’ve moved recently, add the footer of your email to the list of places where you must update your address!

Allow for Unsubscribes and Honor Requests Quickly

Both the CAN-SPAM Act and GDPR have some pretty strict rules about how you handle unsubscribe requests from folks on your mailing list.

First and foremost, you must give all subscribers the option to unsubscribe. This opt-out messaging must be included in every email you send, and the means for unsubscribing from your list need to be clearly outlined. Additionally, your opt-out process can’t involve carrier pigeons and a scavenger hunt; it must be easy for people to request an end to communications from you.

If someone does ask to be removed from your mailing list, you need to take them off quickly. CAN-SPAM requires that you honor the request within 10 business days.

For GDPR compliance, you must also keep evidence of consent to reach out in the first place. This evidence of consent should cover the who, when, and how of each interaction. For example, “Joe Smith provided consent for us to reach out to him by signing up for our mailing list on our website on June 5, 2019.” You must also indicate the messaging they received from you at the time of consent. All of this information must then be maintained by you, and if they do revoke consent at any point, you need to note that, too.

Know What Others Are Doing on Your Behalf

If you hire a marketer to do your email campaigns for you, be sure that they’re up to date on these laws. If you break any of the rules, you could be hit with a hefty fine. And both the marketer and your company may be held responsible for any gaffs when it comes to adhering to the laws.

Email marketing is a powerful tool for companies wishing to reach prospects and customers. But it’s important that you’re aware of the rules that come along with the medium. As long as you follow these fairly simple and straightforward laws, you can take advantage of this wonderful marketing channel.

from Duct Tape Marketing http://bit.ly/2YbxcYn
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