How Francis Ford Coppola’s Rewards Program Connects Customers Across the Entire Brand Portfolio

Brands with multiple entities may find it challenging to connect their customers across their entire portfolio. The Francis Ford Coppola family of brands, which includes wineries, restaurants, resorts, and cafes made the investment in loyalty to unify its brands and reward customers for spending and engaging across all touchpoints.

Cat Rossi, Senior Director of Brand & Content Marketing at CrowdTwist, recently sat down with Rebecca Gilbert, Senior Brand Manager at Francis Ford Coppola, to discuss how Coppola is leveraging loyalty to create brand-authentic experiences that foster emotional loyalty. Here are the main takeaways:

Create one program that spans across all entities

With so many different business units, it’s valuable for Coppola to have a loyalty program that connects the brands across the entire portfolio. A Coppola consumer can interact with the brand in many different ways whether that be online, at a winery or restaurant, on social media, or in a grocery store. Before launching the loyalty program, Francis Ford Coppola had no way of capturing this customer behavior or rewarding their customers throughout their entire journey. 

Because members can earn points across all business units, the program encourages customers to explore more of Francis Ford Coppola’s offerings. Being able to interact and communicate with consumers across the entire profile allows the brand to build a deeper connection and drive emotional loyalty. 

Use receipt scan to reward members for all purchases

Since Francis Ford Coppola is sold through retail distributors like grocery stores and restaurants, the brand wanted to be able to capture purchase data and reward members for choosing their products. Previously, Coppola had no insight into the behaviors of the customers who made purchases in-store or at restaurants and had no way of communicating with them. 

Using receipt-scan technology, Francis Ford Coppola is able to reward customers for their purchases wherever they are made. They simply take a picture of the receipt and upload it into their loyalty profile in exchange for points. Including this perk in the Coppola Rewards program not only enhances the experience for members by making it easier for them to earn rewards, but it also gives Coppola an inside look into where their consumers are shopping and what else they are purchasing. Coppola can then use this information to help inform their decisions related to partnerships, promotions, and advertising to ensure that they’re maximizing customer reach and offering them compelling promotions.

Reward members for engagement activities

As part of their loyalty offering, Francis Ford Coppola rewards members for completing engagement activities, like reading blogs, taking surveys, and opening emails. This allows Coppola to keep consumers engaged with their program beyond purchases. It also serves as a valuable way to get first-hand information into what their consumers’ preferences are and how they like to interact with the brand. 

Francis Ford Coppola used Coppola Rewards to engage their members in brand-authentic experiences that are physically inaccessible for some customers due to geographic constraints. Reward members can earn points for completing engagement activities related to their Virtual Food & Wine Feast featuring recipes, entertaining advice, wine hacks, and culinary inspiration.

The feast was developed as a way to give consumers who did not live near Francis Ford Coppola’s winery in California a way to be involved in the action. Members are rewarded for participating in the feast and taking surveys about their experiences throughout. Campaigns like this provide Coppola with insight into how they can improve their rewards, how they can make the campaign even better next year, and the types of content that resonate best with their consumers so that they can better engage them, and drive brand advocacy and emotional loyalty.

Create unforgettable experiences

Francis Ford Coppola is a unique winery, and they aim to ensure that the experiences they offer to customers are just as unique. The rewards always tie back to the Family Coppola values, traditions, and passions and they center on creating unforgettable experiences for their members. Additionally, the rewards they offer further encourage members to learn about all of the Coppola brands and venture outside of their typical interactions.

For example, as part of Coppola Rewards, members were eligible to win a once-in-a-lifetime trip to tour three different Francis Ford Coppola wineries throughout California and one of their newest wineries in Oregon. Members outside of California were able to redeem points for sweepstakes entries into this “West Coast Adventure” prize for one lucky Coppola Rewards member. Not only did this campaign drive new member acquisition into the Coppola Rewards program, but it also helped to spread awareness and promote their new and existing wineries to their member base.

Coppola also offers ways for members to learn more about their properties in Belize, Argentina, and Guatemala, by offering them as once-in-a-lifetime reward experiences. By providing access to these exclusive wineries, the brand sets themselves apart from the competition and makes their customers feel valued and special.

Find new ways to differentiate your brand and keep the rewards program fresh

As brands look to the future, it’s important to introduce new and fresh ideas that will help to set themselves apart from the competition. Francis Ford Coppola plans to stay true to their brand, while also highlighting what makes them unique. The data and insight captured through the Coppola Rewards program helps Francis Ford Coppola evaluate which campaigns have resonated most with their members, what members want to see more of, and the business units that are earning the most love from their consumers. Coppola uses this information to inform their decisions as they grow and evolve their program, and as they continue to navigate how best to unify their brand portfolio. 

One way Coppola is looking to expand their program is through introducing a “Coppola Experts” reward. Through the campaigns they ran this year, they found out that many of their members wanted to be able to talk directly to their winemakers, chefs, and gardeners. Therefore, they decided to roll out a “Coppola Experts” series which allows members to have one-on-one time with their experts through Skype sessions. Doing this allows members to deepen engagement with the brand, creating even bigger brand advocates out of their members. 

                                                                       

It’s a digital world, and retail marketers need to create an emotional connection between customers and their brands. It all starts with “Getting the Digital Handshake Right.”

 

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Disaster and Crisis Messaging Best Practices

Disaster planning is all about preparing for rare events, whether they’re epidemics, hurricanes, blizzards, wildfires, floods, earthquakes, or some other calamity. Crisis messaging should be a part of any disaster planning so you can communicate effectively with your customers and give them the essential information that they need.

Let’s talk about what that should look like in terms of messaging, subject line and preview text copy, tone, design, quality assurance, and segmentation.

Messaging

The No. 1 goal with any crisis messaging is to address the burning questions that your customers have and to demonstrate that you’re doing your best to address their needs and that of your employees. Doing so will improve customer satisfaction and reduce confusion—which you’ll be able to measure partly from call center volume and the sentiment of the social media activity around your brand.

What those questions are will likely be different depending on whether the disaster has already hit or not. When it’s an event that can be predicted at least a few days ahead of time, it gives you the opportunity to proactively address customer questions such as: 

• How can your company help people prepare for the coming disaster? Are you extending your store hours or call center hours? Are you providing preparedness checklists? Have you stocked up on high-demand items?

• How can you help your customers plan for disruptions to their service, store closures, etc.? Can you alert them to what’s likely to happen so they’re not surprised? For example, during the Nor'easter that affected the 2009 holiday season, Neiman Marcus sent a segmented email to those affected by the blizzard on Dec. 20, saying in the subject line, “Can't get to the mall? Shop online and get FREE DELIVERY by Christmas at any price‏.”

• Are you canceling services or events? If so, are you providing refunds or giving credit? Are you automatically rebooking services for a future date or does your customer need to pick a new date? Are you providing any incentives to encourage customers to rebook or not cancel?

• Are orders likely to be delayed? If so, how long is the anticipated delay? What should customers do if they’d like to cancel their order?

• Are you changing your cancellation, return, or warranty policies? Are you allowing more time for returns? Are you allowing returns in ways that you don’t typically?

• Will you be closing stores? If so, when will they be closing?

• How can customers get current information? What webpage can customers go to for up-to-date information? What phone number can they use to contact your company to get their questions answered? For example, Xfinity emails customers who are likely to be hit by severe storms to proactively encourage them to visit their Storm Ready webpage and to download their free apps so they can get updates on outages. They also encourage them to download shows and movies that they can watch offline in the event that they do lose power.
  
  “Xfinity knows how disruptive service outages (WiFi especially) can be for their customers' daily lives,” says Ana Jablonski, Senior Consultant for Strategic Services, Oracle CX Marketing Consulting. “By understanding and anticipating what their customers need during a crisis, they are able to proactively provide resources throughout the year so customers can feel calm and prepared in a time of need.”

For disasters that can’t be forecasted and during ongoing disasters such as the COVID-19 pandemic, use your crisis messaging to address other questions such as:

• What’s the best way to get information on how your business is affected? Are you experiencing delays in customer service? If so, set the appropriate expectations and tell them alternative ways to get help.
  
  For instance, in a Mar. 12, 2020 email to users in the wake of new travel restrictions to control the spread of COVID-19, Expedia said: “We are clearly facing extreme call volumes at this time, and wish we could respond to everyone immediately. Please know that we are working as fast as we can to update our site with options that allow you to manage your itinerary directly, as well as re-deploying Travel Advisors from other parts of the business in an effort to assist those who are calling in. The quickest way to find out if your travel plans can be changed without a penalty will be to check the airline or hotel website directly.”

• Are you reducing capacity? If so, by how much? How might that affect your customers?

• When will your locations reopen? Will they resume normal business hours or will hours be longer or shorter than normal?
  
  For example, in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, Lane Bryant sent a segmented email on Dec. 4, 2012 to their customers near Oceanside, NY, announcing in the subject line: “We're Back - Our Oceanside Store Re-Opens Friday.”

• Are there alternative ways that your customers can get service? Can your customers get service from you some other way or can they get help from a partner, government agency, or charity?
  
  For instance, after tornadoes hit Nashville in early March of 2020, Comcast sent out a targeted email to customers in the affected area alerting them of new, public WiFi hotspots that had been added to allow for customers, friends, family and first responders to stay connected.

• What actions are you taking to ensure customer safety?
  
  For example, during the early phase of the COVID-19 outbreak, many airlines, stores, restaurants, and other public places communicated that they were increasing cleaning protocols and making more hand sanitizer stations available to customers.

Depending on the circumstances, you may also want to address how you are keeping your employees safe and ensuring the continuity of operations. For example…

• How are you keeping your employees safe? Is this why you’re closing locations temporarily? Are you allowing employees to work from home? Are you shifting workers to different locations to protect them (and your operations)? Are you instituting new safety procedures or a new sick-leave policy?

While most of your messaging will be about your company and your customers, there may be opportunities to be broader than that. For example...

• Can you direct your customers to trustworthy sources of information? For example, can you direct customers to the National Weather Service, the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, or other local, state, or federal websites?

• Can you direct your customers to trustworthy charity organizations? For customers who may want to help those affected by the disaster, can you point them to reputable charities? If your company is donating to one or more charities, that’s a great way to strengthen this call-to-action and get people thinking civic-mindedly. For example, during the wildfires in California, grocery delivery company Good Eggs sent an email about how they are working with relief centers in Oroville, CA to bring Thanksgiving dinners to people displaced by the Camp Fire. The company encourages subscribers to donate to the effort as well.

Consider ending your messages with a reminder that crises and disaster recoveries are fluid situations, says Doug Sundahl, Senior Director of Strategic Services, Oracle CX Marketing Consulting.

“Make sure you let them know your organization is keeping a close eye on the situation,” he says, “and will continuously work to adapt in the best interest of customers, employees, and the community as new information comes in.”

Subject Lines & Preview Text Copy

Especially in times of crisis, clarity is the order of the day. Don’t be vague with your subject line or pull punches. Be direct.

For example, the subject line of REI’s Mar. 15, 2020 email was “We're Closing Our Retail Stores Until March 27.” That is much clearer than “An update on our retail stores,” which was the subject line of another retailer that was also closing its stores.

Continue this philosophy of directness in your preview text, which allows you even more characters to give your subscribers the most critical information.

Tone

If your brand is funny, irreverent, zany, or really casual, it can be easy to get tripped by up disasters. It’s best to dial down your brand personality and be heartfelt and serious. 

Whatever the situation, the chances are high that property and lives are being lost, so the last thing you want to do is be indifferent or make light of things. Imagine that you’re good friends with your most affected customers. You should express sympathy for those affected.

“We typically see a lot of these messages come from CEOs and presidents,” says Sundahl. “In and of itself, that usually puts a more conservative and serious tilt to the messaging, which is exactly what’s needed.”

Most of all, you’ll want to avoid any perception that you’re profiteering off the disaster. “Make sure the messaging never appears to be opportunistic,” he says, “but value- and benefit-focused in an effort to help consumers. It could very easily come across as trying to capitalize on a bad situation, which would likely hurt your brand image and jeopardize long-term sales.”

Design

Your message design should be simple. Now is not the time for flash or creativity. Clarity of communication is the goal, so anything that distracts from that should be jettisoned from your design.

“It’s important to formalize the email versus making it look promotional,” says Jason Witt, Senior Director of Creative Services at Oracle CX Marketing Consulting.

Generally, what this leaves you with is an email with clear branding at the top of the email, often followed by a headline, and then your body copy. We don’t recommend using hero images in these emails, as they push your copy down, can distract from your message, or project the wrong tone. You can see this design aesthetic in action at a glance in this collection of COVID-19 messages on ReallyGoodEmails.com.

Because these messages tend to be text-heavy, make thoughtful use of subheads and bullet points to break up text and to create easy-to-digest chunks of information. And make sure your font size isn’t too small or all the text will look impenetrable, says James Wurm, Head of Coding Services, Oracle CX Marketing Consulting. 

“Depending on how much copy there is,” he says, “I find 14pt to 18pt to be appropriate.”

Using reverse copy, where it’s light text on a dark background, is okay, but you’ll want to pay extra attention to legibility and contrast ratios, says Witt. “It needs to be ADA compliant,” he says. “That’s key!”

Remember: It’s a time of crisis. Your customers are likely stressed. They may not be at their best. Make your email easy to scan and easy to read. Cut extraneous words and ideas wherever you can to highlight the most important messaging.

Quality Assurance

In times of crisis, you’re moving fast. But make time for QA, even if it’s less than usual. Thankfully, crisis messaging is fairly simple in terms of design, so most of your QA is simply copy proofing. Make sure there aren’t any typos, missing words, or bad grammar.

Segmentation

Most disasters are regional in nature, so segmentation is key to getting your message in front of the appropriate subscribers within your overall audience. Do your best with the geographic information that you have about your customers.

“If the disaster affects all of your customers, as COVID-19 does for many senders, then you’ll still want to use some segmentation. However, in this case, you’ll want to exclude your inactive subscribers to avoid causing deliverability problems and driving up attrition,” says Clea Moore, Director of Deliverability Strategy, Oracle CX Marketing Consulting. 

“With any large, full-file send, there is the potential for a performance and reputation hit, especially if the email is sent as a service message from a transactional IP address that usually has low send volume per day,” she says. “So, loop in your deliverability expert or consultant and assess which subscribers you’re going to send to and determine if throttling the campaign is necessary.”

Sending your crisis message may only be the beginning of your adjustments, as some crises have a lasting impact on consumer behavior. And because we always want to be in sync with our customers, that may require you to adjust your messaging, frequency, and other elements. 

—————

Need help with your crisis messaging strategy? Oracle Marketing Cloud Consulting has more than 500 of the leading marketing minds ready to help you to achieve more with the leading marketing cloud, including a Campaign Deployment & Monitoring Services team that offers crisis and rush campaign support to get your emergency campaigns out the door in 2 hours or less.

Learn more or reach out to us at CXMconsulting_ww@oracle.com

For more information about digital marketing, please visit: https://www.oracle.com/marketingcloud/.

 

 

 

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Building a Culture of Trust and Belonging

Building a Culture of Trust and Belonging written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing Podcast with Mike Robbins

Today on the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I sit down with leadership expert, speaker, and author Mike Robbins.

Robbins started his career as a professional baseball player, and it’s his background in sports that originally piqued his interest in leadership and teamwork. Many of the elements that he saw influencing the success of sports teams also play a role in business.

Robbins works with numerous clients, including Google, Microsoft, Coca-Cola, and Airbnb to help their teams collaborate and grow together. He’s an expert in emotional intelligence who teaches leaders to become more vulnerable and authentic.

He’s also the author of five books including We’re All in This Together: Creating a Team Culture of High Performance, Trust, and Belonging, which we discuss in depth on today’s episode.

Questions I ask Mike Robbins:

• How does We’re All in This Together look at the concepts of team and culture differently?
• What is psychological safety?
• How do you embrace sweaty-palmed conversations?

What you’ll learn if you give a listen:

• What role our customers play in our company’s culture.
• Why vulnerability is an important leadership quality.
• What steps we can take to become a more well-rounded leader.

Key takeaways from the episode and more about Mike Robbins:

• Learn more about Mike Robbins
• Pre-order your copy of We’re All in This Together
• Follow on Facebook
• Follow on Instagram
• Connect on LinkedIn
• Follow on Twitter

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 Zephyr.

Zephyr is a modern, cloud-based CMS that’s licensed only to agencies. The system is lightweight, easy to use, and incredibly fast. And with an array of beautiful themes to choose from, you can get your clients’ websites up-and-running quickly and with less effort. Or, if you’d rather build a custom site, Zephyr includes agency services to be your plug-and-play dev shop.

Zephyr is passionate about helping agencies create great websites for their clients. To learn more, go to Zephyrcms.com.

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How to Create a Brand Style Guide

How to Create a Brand Style Guide written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

When you’re starting your business, you spend a lot of time considering your brand. You want to find a name that fits just right and design a logo that represents the essence of who you are and what you do.

Once it’s out in the world, though, it’s tougher to protect that beautiful brand you’ve created. You want people to talk about your business, but what happens when they mispronounce your name? Or perhaps they post about your product on their blog, but change up your logo to match the color scheme on their website. Or maybe you sponsor an event, only to arrive on the day and find that your logo has been truncated on the signage the hosts created. These are the kinds of branding no-nos that make every marketer cringe.

So what can you do to ensure that your brand continues to be represented properly as your name spreads far and wide? That’s where a brand style guide comes in.

Brand style guides provide parameters for how anyone reproduces your brand’s name or image elsewhere. Here’s how to create a solid brand style guide that keeps your business looking professional and consistent out there in the big world.

Present How to Use Your Name

Some businesses have pretty straightforward names (Whole Foods, for example, is a tough one to mess up). But other brands have names that are a little less clear-cut. Some brands have created words for their name, while others have stylized ways they’d like their name represented.

When it comes to making sure your name is used correctly, it’s helpful to simply let people know how you’d like it used. Sometimes the easiest way to do this is to start with the story behind the name. What seems like a hard-to-remember brand name might become easier to get a handle on if your audience knows the why behind it.

Even if you don’t have the time or space to give your full story, there’s still an opportunity to educate the public on how to use your name. For example, Greek yogurt brand Fage includes the note “It’s pronounced FA-YEH” on all of their cartons of yogurt. While there’s not enough room on a little tin of yogurt to tell the whole story, they’re at least getting the basics of proper pronunciation out there.

It can also be helpful to address common misuses. This might be pronunciation-related, or it might be the way your name is stylized. For example, it’s Walmart, not WalMart or WalMART. This is a particular struggle for brands who have created their own name or use a combination of words as their name. It’s also relevant if your name incorporates a common phrase that itself is often misused (We’ve had some intrepid searchers over the years looking for Duck Tape Marketing online).

Simply by taking some time on your website and other online assets to give the backstory to your name and demonstrating consistently how you’d like it to be stylized, you can eliminate much of this confusion.

Explain How Your Logo Should Be Used

There’s a lot that goes into designing a logo. Selecting the right imagery, type face, color palette and more takes a lot of time. It’s also common for brands to create several approved versions of their logos. There’s the full logo that you use at the top of your website and in the banners on your social media profiles, but then you might have a smaller, modified logo that you use as the little round profile picture on your Twitter or Instagram profile.

But just because you have a few approved versions of your logo doesn’t mean that people are now free to get creative with your branding and do whatever they’d like. You need to outline how you’d like your logo to represent your brand. That way, your marketing team and anyone else who might use your logo to promote your brand knows what’s allowed and what’s not.

Define the Approved Colors

No matter how many versions of your logo you choose to create, it’s up to you to set the colors you’d like to be used.

Consider a brand like Target. Their bullseye logo is instantly recognizable in their signature red. But if it was yellow or blue, you’d be left scratching your head. They’ve set clear brand guidelines that their logo is to be produced with red logo on white background or white logo on red background, and not any other variation.

Other brands are more flexible with the color palette they use for their logo. The Nike swoosh, for instance, is one that we’ve seen in a variety of colors. They sometimes show it as a black swoosh on white background, sometimes vice versa. And other times it’s another color, like red. A brand like Nike can afford to be a little more flexible with their color palette, because their logo itself is so well-known. It doesn’t matter what color the swoosh is; consumers instantly know it’s Nike.

At Duct Tape Marketing, we settled on a palette with a variety of shades of blue, plus a complementary pop of orange. The black and white elements of our logo and accompanying design elements are not pure white or black—instead we opted for a grey-white called slate and a dark grey charcoal.

No matter what colors you choose for your brand, it is up to you to set approved colors. Make it clear that it’s only your logo if it appears in one of the colors you’ve outlined in your brand style guide.

Clarify Fonts

Fonts are another area where sometimes others try to get creative with your logo. However, as with your color palette, you selected your font for a reason. It conveys the proper attitude for your brand, and if someone’s going to reproduce your logo, they need to use the font you’ve set forth.

It’s not just about the font itself, it’s also important you dictate the size of the font, particularly as it relates to other design elements on the page or within the logo itself. Guaranteeing consistency in font size, placement, and style will make your logo more easily recognizable by consumers.

This is the font guide we’ve created for Duct Tape Marketing. As you can see, there are three different fonts that we use in a variety of styles, depending on the occasion. In our style guide, we clearly outline how to use each font, and how the elements should relate to each other on the page.

You Set the Mood

When you’re talking about the individual design elements that go into your logo, what you’re really dictating is the mood of your logo—its look and feel. Much has been written about the psychological influence of using certain colors. While there’s not a lot of scientific evidence about how colors influence our buying behaviors, it’s undeniable that was associate certain colors with particular emotions.

For example, someone starting a children’s toy company likely wouldn’t opt for a grey-scale logo. They’d want to pick “fun” colors. Something in bright orange or yellow would be more appropriate to connote the excitement children will feel when they engage with those products. The font might be something light and whimsical that bounces across the page.

On the flip side, a neon-bright logo would not be the first choice for a law firm. Lawyers want to convey their knowledge, expertise, and gravitas with their logo, so they might opt for something in a darker color palette and with a heavy, imposing serif font.

Establish Your Brand Voice

Once you’ve gotten clear on how you’d like your logo and name to be presented, you can broaden it out to talk more about your brand voice. This brand style guidance is most applicable for people who will be writing representing your brand. Whether that’s someone on your marketing or sales team, or an outside writer that you tap to help with your content, giving guidelines for your brand voice can help to maintain consistency across all of your messaging.

This is a great place to establish your brand’s personality traits. Do you want to be approachable and down-to-earth? Is the aim to appear authoritative and commanding? Of course, your brand’s personality will vary based on industry and area of focus.

It also pays to provide concrete examples for how you’d like this personality to be expressed. For example, is it okay for writers to use contractions in their communications, or would you prefer to keep things more formal? Are there specific words you’d like writers to either avoid or embrace? These granular guidelines can help keep everyone on the same page.

If there are words or phrases that are particular to your brand, it’s also a good idea to define how you’d like them referred to. For example, McDonald’s is clear on the name of their signature burger, the Big Mac. You don’t see them calling it the Big Mac on store signage and then referring to it as the Big McDonald’s on social media! Make sure that all of your branded words and phrases, not just your logo and business name, are set in stone and consistent across all marketing materials.

Include Supporting Visuals

When it comes to representing your brand, it’s not just about your logo. It’s about the kinds of visuals you use across your brand’s platforms and how they represent you as a business.

Set clear guidelines for those who might be creating images to accompany content for your brand. For example, if your brand relies heavily on cartoon images on your website, perhaps you’d like that same aesthetic mirrored across your social media channels. Maybe the images on your website all have a sepia-tone to them, and bright, hyper-edited photos would feel out of place in other representations of your brand online.

Whatever the case may be, clearly spell out what you expect to see when it comes to other visuals associated with your brand. It’s even nice to provide a gallery of approved images, so that people can either pull from that gallery directly or use it to inform their work as they select their own images.

Pulling together your brand style guide is a necessary part of ensuring that your business’s image remains consistent out there in the world.  You spent a lot of time thinking about how best to represent your identity, mission, and customers, and you want to be sure others adhere to the guidelines you’ve established.

If you’re looking for a helpful tool, Canva makes it easy for brands to create a kit with their established logos, colors, and fonts so that it’s easy to share with designers, writers, partners, and others who might be creating content for your brand.

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The New Way to Chat With Your Visitors

Marketing has evolved into an omnichannel approach. This means you can no longer just go after one channel to succeed.

Back in the day, companies like Facebook grew into billion-dollar businesses through one channel.

Facebook used email to grow and they did it by having you invite all your contacts to join Facebook.

Yelp was also similar. They grew into a multi-million dollar business through one channel… SEO.

Dropbox grew through social media. If you tweeted about Dropbox, they would give you more space.

These marketing approaches worked well for all of these well-known companies, but what’s wrong with them?

The law of shitty click-throughs

What worked for Facebook, Yelp, and Dropbox were all great strategies, but over time, all good marketing channels got saturated and stopped working like they used to.

As Andrew Chen puts it, first it works and then it doesn’t.

It really is that simple. Sure, those channels can still drive traffic and always will, but as people get used to them, they won’t work as well.

Just check out this image below.

Can you guess what that is?

That was the first banner ad. AT&T created that banner ad and placed it on HotWired.com in 1994. And here’s what’s really crazy… out of all the people who saw it, a whopping 44% clicked on it.

Just think about that… that banner ad had a 44% click-through rate.

We can all agree it’s not an amazing banner ad or design, it just so happens that it was new and novel at the time, so it generated massive amounts of clicks.

Just like how SEO was more effective earlier on, or paid ads were more affordable and produced a higher ROI, or referral marketing was much more effective. There are a lot of single-channel case studies that worked in the past.

Again, it doesn’t mean any of these channels don’t work, it just means that they don’t work as well as they used to work.

So how do you survive in a competitive market?

You take an omnichannel approach. You don’t have a choice other than to use all of the marketing channels out there.

Yes, they will be competitive and saturated, but they still work.

It’s a game of papercuts… papercuts are small and don’t do much damage, but if you have tons of these small papercuts, they will add up and can do some damage.

The same goes with your marketing. If you add up all of these channels that produce a small amount of ROI, it will add up to a big number at the end. But when you look at each channel individually, the results aren’t that sexy. But when you combine them, it looks great.

Start with chat

What do you check more, your text messages or your email inbox?

I bet you are going to say text messages because you look at your phone more often than logging into your email inbox.

But here is an interesting stat for you… did you know that over 6 billion SMS messages are sent daily?

Now can you guess how many emails are sent daily?

269 billion!

That’s a big difference.

And do you know how many people visit Facebook each day?

1.62 billion.

Now the point of me sharing those stats isn’t to try and tell you that email is better than text. Or that Facebook isn’t as valuable as text messaging.

It’s more so to show you that they are all massive channels that people are using each and every day.

So why wouldn’t you try and leverage all of them?

And you can easily do so through free chat marketing tools like Manychat that allow you to communicate to your visitors using text messaging, email marketing, and Facebook Messenger.

Once you have created your Manychat account, go here to watch how to set it up. They have tons of very helpful videos that teach you how to do things like setting up Facebook Messenger bots and connecting your Facebook page so you can start sending out messages.

Now that you are all set up, I want you to use the following templates for your business as I know they convert…

Templates that convert

My team and I have tested out tons of different messaging for all channels, such as email, messenger and text messaging.

Here are the ones that have worked the best for us…

Text messaging templates

My favorite text message to send someone is:

[first name]?

When someone sends you a text with just your first name and a “?” what do you do? Chances are you respond with… “who is this?”.

Once someone responds with who is this, our sales reps typically respond with…

This is John from Neil Patel’s team. I just wanted to follow up to see if you have any questions or if we can help you with anything.

It’s simple and it works well and it has boosted our sales by 4.69%.

Another one that works well is a “flash sales” text message…

Flash Sale: All product on [yoursite] are [x]% off for the next 24 hours. [insert URL]

This one works really well during holidays or anytime you want to run a promotion. Depending on the size of the business you run and how big your list is, you will usually see an additional 2 to 3% in revenue for that month.

And my favorite text campaign is…

Check out this new blog post, [subject of the blog post] [URL]

An example would be… “Check out this new blog post on doubling your SEO traffic [URL]”

When I send out text message alerts for new posts, it usually increases the traffic to that blog post by another 4%.

Email templates

You’re probably familiar with this email template as you get it from me every week. 😉

Subject: How to Generate Leads When You Have Little to No Traffic

If you have a ton of traffic, it’s easy to generate leads.

But what if you have a new website or one with little to no traffic?

What if you don’t have any money to spend on paid ads?

What should you do?

Well, there is a solution. Here’s how you generate leads when you have no traffic.

Cheers,

Neil Patel

I send out an email every Tuesday and Saturday that looks something like that.

It’s a simple text-based email where the subject line is the title of your blog post and the text of the email states a problem and solution, with the solution being a link to the blog post.

To give you a rough idea, that email format has been getting me 29% to 33% open rates and 4% to 7% click-through rates.

And if you are selling info products through webinars, there are 8 types of emails I use to generate sales (check out that post if you want to learn how to make good money selling info products):

1. Invite sequence – these are a series of emails that invite people to watch your webinar. (here are my invite emails)
2. Indoctrination – you need to build a connection with people. People are more likely to convert if they know more about you and trust you. (here are my indoctrination emails)
3. No shows – just because someone signs up to watch your webinar, it doesn’t mean they will attend. For everyone who doesn’t attend, you’ll want to email them and get them to watch the replay. (here are my no show emails)
4. Encore – not everyone will watch your whole webinar. If they don’t stick to the end they won’t see your offer. You’ll want a few emails that push the replay. (here are my encore emails)
5. Objection handler – there are a handful of reasons someone may not buy. You’ll want to answer each of those objections through email. (here are my objection handler emails)
6. Countdown sequence – you’ll want to close off your course. Letting people know that they only have a few days left to buy is a really effective way to generate sales. These emails will roughly make up 1/3 to half of your sales. (here are my countdown emails)
7. Last chance email – on the last day you’ll want to send a few emails letting people know it is about to close. (here are my last chance emails)
8. Free trial offer – the majority of people won’t buy from you. Offering the last chance free trial offer is a great way to roughly get 15% more sales. (here are my free trial emails)

If you are selling products, there are 3 main emails that I’ve found to work well. The first 2 are for cart abandonment.

Subject: Did you forget something?

We noticed that you left something behind. Don’t worry though, we saved the items in your cart so you can easily complete your purchase.

[insert picture of products]

CTA button: Return to cart

This simple abandonment email typically increases sales by 1.73%. I know it’s not a lot, but it’s all about the papercuts as I mentioned above. 😉

Subject: Still thinking about it?

If you can’t decide on whether [insert product name] is right for you, here are some of the benefits:

[insert benefit 1]

[insert benefit 2]

[insert benefit 3]

[insert benefit 4]

[insert benefit 5]

[insert benefit 6]

So, what are you waiting for? You have nothing to lose with our 30 day no questions asked money back guarantee.

CTA: Complete my purchase

On average this email has provided our customers an increase of 1.44% in sales.

Subject: Who doesn’t love 15% off?

Explore new [type of products you sell] that will help you with [insert benefit].

Sale ends at [insert date and time].

CTA: Claim my discount

Now with the discount/coupon code email, we’ve found the results to vary a lot. The bigger the discount, the more sales you will typically receive. The biggest gains are when companies offer over 30% or greater discount.

Facebook Messenger templates

Unlike email and text, you can’t just easily just message people on Facebook Messenger and do whatever you want. There are rules…

• You can message a subscriber within the last 24 hours of your last interaction.
• Within that 24-hour time period, you can send promotional material.
• After the 24 hour period, messages must contain one of these 4 tags: confirmed event update, post-purchase update, account update, or a human agent.
• For users who opt-in to receive messages after 24 hours, you can, of course, message them.

As for templates that work, because Facebook is continually changing Messenger rules, follow these templates over at Manychat as they constantly change based on real-time data of what is working or what isn’t.

Conclusion

You have no choice but to take an omnichannel approach with your marketing.

Sure, all good channels eventually get crowded and click-throughs will decrease over time, but if you go after all of the main channels the marginal gains will add up.

And the easiest way to start with going omnichannel is with chat. I know you are probably using email, but I bet you aren’t using text messaging or even Facebook Messenger bots. And I bet you aren’t using push notifications either.

So, how many marketing channels are you using?

The post The New Way to Chat With Your Visitors appeared first on Neil Patel.

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6 Tips to Keep B2B Marketing Teams in Rhythm While Working Remotely

In these unconventional times, many work teams are grappling with an unconventional dynamic: fully distributed personnel and remote collaboration. This setup presents a number of challenges, but thankfully we live in a time where technology makes it easier than ever to stay connected and tightly aligned on our work. For B2B agencies like TopRank Marketing, this has always been a point of emphasis. In servicing clients from around the globe, we’re accustomed to communicating across distances, borders, and time zones. We occasionally have our own team members work from home, and in fact, we have a few who do so full-time. While having everyone in the organization work remotely is uncharted territory for us, our built-in comfort with digital collaboration gives us a head-start, and has allowed us to hit the ground running with minimal disruption to our programs and workflows. To help other remote teams that might be trying to find the right rhythm and maximize their collective productivity, I thought I’d share a few practices and discoveries that are helping us stay close virtually, even as the circumstances of life push us apart.

How Team TopRank Maintains Tight Collaboration Remotely

Tailor Your Toolset to Your Team

As mentioned, there is a wide range of different tools and software available to power remote collaboration. Some of the common mainstays, like Slack* and Zoom, need no introduction. There are plenty of others out there with specific capabilities that might be suited to your team’s needs. Here’s a list from ProofHub arranged into several different functional categories. Above all, I encourage business leaders to solicit input and feedback in making these selections. The biggest key is identifying tools that people actually like using. Review the usage rates for your existing tech stack. If certain software isn’t being uniformly engaged with, or is surfacing a lot of frustration, there’s no better time to step back and reevaluate. Unsolicited plugs for a couple of our clients, whose offerings can be very useful at a time like this:

• Sococo provides a “virtual office” platform that recreates the dynamic of happenstance workplace encounters and productive chats at the water cooler.
• monday.com is a highly visual and intuitive work operating system, which employees tend to really enjoy using. As mentioned, that’s critical.

[bctt tweet="“Review the usage rates for your existing tech stack. If certain software isn’t being uniformly engaged with, or is surfacing a lot of frustration, there’s no better time to step back and reevaluate.” @NickNelsonMN" username="toprank"]

Focus on Details and Documentation

Not only is it important that your tools get used, but right now it’s vital they get used to the fullest. At TopRank, our work runs through a project management system, and I’ve noticed teammates making concerted efforts to attach client docs, source materials, and comprehensive information into the tasks themselves. As a content writer, it makes a big difference when I can find everything I need in one place, because it’s no longer as simple as walking to an account manager’s desk 10 feet away to ask a question.

Jump on the Phone Post-Meeting

While technology makes it easier to communicate and collaborate from afar, there are certain subtleties and productive habits that can be overlooked in the transition. As one example, when teammates and I hold a client meeting in the office, we’ll almost always stay in the room to debrief afterward, discussing takeaways and next steps. One way we’ve replicated this action remotely is by using the Slack Call functionality, which enables you to quickly spark an impromptu conference call straight out of the Slack app. Since we already have our client teams arranged into channels on Slack, all it takes is one click to get all relevant parties on the line for a quick post-meeting rundown.

Rely On One Another for Knowledge-Sharing and News Updates

If you find yourself constantly distracted by scanning headlines and refreshing your preferred news websites, you are not alone. Being in the midst of an ongoing global health crisis adds a unique disruption factor to the situation at hand. One way we’ve countered this at TopRank is by creating a #covid-news channel in Slack, where teammates can share updates they come across about the pandemic and its ripples that might impact our lives, our clients, or the business world at large. Knowing that I’ll get a notification whenever something new gets posted on that channel makes it easier for me to unplug from the Google News feed and stay focused on my work.

Get Faces On-Screen

It’s easy enough to hold conference calls when people are working remotely, but I highly recommend using apps like Zoom and Google Hangouts with video-conferencing capabilities, and urging everyone on the team to turn on their cameras. Seeing the faces of my coworkers really helps diminish feelings of isolation and disconnection that can be inherent in a scenario such as this.

Don’t Forget About Team-Building and Socialization

I’ve talked a lot here about ways we stay centered on our work, and that’s of course very important. But don’t let recreational team experiences fall by the wayside. Strengthening the overall cohesiveness of your various people through bonding exercises is maybe more essential than ever. Virtual happy hours are gaining a lot of popularity as a way for folks to ramp down and relax together after working all day. Consider also scheduling some fun and leisurely team activities during work hours here and there. There are plenty of games that can be played remotely while creating a feeling of togetherness. I recommend the Jackbox Party Pack series, which features all sorts of fun mini-games and allows everyone to participate from their own device. Our team delved into a round of Quiplash during a recent Friday meeting, and we all enjoyed several laughs while getting a chance to appreciate the creativity and cleverness our colleagues bring to the table.

Go the Distance with Remote Collaboration

It’s all too natural to get caught up in the stress, anxiety, and overall downside of what’s taking place in the world right now. Because of this, I find myself striving to find positives and silver linings. They really do exist. If we can all find ways to stay connected and collaborative during these challenging times, I know we’ll be able work together -- with clients, colleagues, and peers -- more effectively than ever once things return to a state of normalcy. We might even find ourselves with a few newfound efficiencies that stick. TopRank Marketing’s Social & Content Manager, Lane R. Ellis, is one of the aforementioned agency team members who works remote full-time, hailing from the northern reaches of Minnesota. He shared with me this sentiment that, I think, encapsulates the upside of a tough situation: "I think if we're open to it, our shared pandemic experience offers up a sizable opportunity in our lives — to reflect on what is truly important to us and how we work, to make positive changes that may until now have been perennially postponed, and to grow both our capabilities and our compassion in business and in personal life. It's also a time to listen, and to be especially sensitive to your professional associates, your business teammates, and most of all to your family and friends.” Well said, sir. For more insight about navigating this unprecedented event as a marketer, check out my recent post on how authentic content can build brand trust during uncertain times.

The post 6 Tips to Keep B2B Marketing Teams in Rhythm While Working Remotely appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

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How Do Digital Analytics Change Content Marketing?

Content marketers face many challenges when it comes to making their content stand out in a crowded content space across all channels. Plus, content marketing also must do a better job when it comes to segmenting and personalizing the content. But, keyword optimization isn’t going to effectively address either of those challenges. 

Enter digital analytics. Offering a competitive advantage, this data-driven marketing tool has been proven through various research to enhance content marketing results. Digital analytics is possible through various types of available software that does the data collection. 

Assess Content Impact

Digital analytic tools like Google Analytics enables you to gauge how your content performs and engages or where it may miss your target. For example, Google Analytics provides data on the impact your content has on conversions. Google Analytics and other tools like heat maps provide further evidence of what content captures the audience’s attention. 

There is also the need to understand how your content impacts search engine results. Google Analytics offers a way to examine search traffic trends over a designated period of time. Doing so can help improve how you develop a SEO content strategy while also tracking previous ranking performance, which may also reveal larger shifts in audience interests or pain points. 

Improve Personalization Efforts

The first way that analytics changes content marketing is by enabling a greater level of personalization within the content. Having so much information about your customers well beyond basic analytics like gender, age, and location means you can write directly to them and their needs.  

It’s previous customer interactions that now direct what content to share in regards to a product or service they bought. Now, content can be directed to those customers about what they specifically bought and how they can get more value out of it. Additionally, the analytics also tells you what time of year they bought so you can plan content for them around the same time to encourage reorder. 

Receiving this type of personalized content can make a comfortable feel more like the brand is interested in them as individuals. In turn, this can deepen brand loyalty and create more positive customer experiences. 

Heighten Channel Visibility

Digital analytics and data-driven marketing also change the impact and visibility of your content across channels. The analytics determine what content is working on what channel and when. Prior to this capability, marketing teams had to essentially guess what might work in terms of a promotional campaign. They couldn’t know for sure if a revenue boost came from a particular campaign or if it was some other factor. 

However, with digital analytics, they know for sure. The analytics can pinpoint each engagement and correlate directly with a particular content-driven campaign like an ad, video, blog post, or email blast. 

Effectively Follow the Customer Through Their Purchase Journey

Digital analytics also helps marketers track customers throughout their purchase journey—from initial interest and research to active shopping ad through the purchase process. Because of today’s multiple channel options, that journey looks very different and can even change from transaction to transaction. There are more online and mobile channels than ever before where the purchase journey could be influenced, altered, or even cancelled. 

Insights are provided thanks to digital analytics tools, such as website cookies and click-through rate (CTR). This tracking system helps marketers understand what’s working and what they need to improve across the entire purchase journey. The data insights also help to create a more detailed customer profile from all the purchase behavior. From there, marketers can improve how they develop a uniform, satisfying experience for each customer across all channels. 

Forecast Customer Behavior

Perhaps one of the most intriguing things that data analytics enables is the ability to forecast customer behavior so content can be geared toward that predictive behavior for greater engagement and sales. Digital analytics enable marketers to leverage audience profiling data to predict customer wants and needs so that targeted content can be created to influence those purchase decisions. 

It’s the equivalent of knowing what customers want before they know they want it. This capability to craft that inside-knowledge content can serve as a definitive competitive advantage. 

Not the Whole Story

Although digital analytics can’t uncover everything to help improve content marketing campaign results, it’s an effective tool that has been an immense aid to the marketing effort. And, with the introduction of more digital analytics powered by artificial intelligence, more things like brand perception and more details related to SEO impact will help further shape content marketing.   

                                                        

Find out what else digital analytics can do to boost your campaigns. See how to “Go Further with Digital Analytics.”

  

 

 

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