The importance of having a well versed Sales Development Rep / Business Development Rep has never been more clear than now.

In 2021 having a representative to head your sales and business development out reach is vital to your company’s success. Without a proper outreach strategy you will struggle to bring in new business and new accounts. This is where having a knowledgeable and skilled Sales Development Rep / Business Development Rep comes into play.

These are the 10 Skills Every Sales Development Rep / Business Development Rep (SDR/BDR) Needs in 2021.

In this article we’ll take a a look at some these most important aspects of sales & business development and how you can implement these within your outreach teams.

There are many factors that can determine the success of a company’s outreach strategy. Having a knowledgeable and skilled Sales Development Rep / Business Development Rep makes that success easier to obtain.

I hope this article can serve as a guide to help you get started with the 10 Skills Every Sales Development Rep / Business Development Rep (SDR/BDR) Needs in 2021

With a good foundation to start off of you can build off of this list and grow and expand your company’s current outreach strategy.

This is a list of the top 10 Skills Every Sales Development Rep / Business Development Rep (SDR/BDR) Needs in 2021. I came up with this list on the fly in less than 5 minutes. If you feel that I have missed something go ahead and leave some feedback in the comments below.

1. market research

As companies become more and more competitive the skillset of a sales development representative/business development representative must expand from basic outreach to being able to develop a comprehensive sales strategy from the ground up.

The first place you, as a Sales Development Rep / Business Development Rep should start, is with market research.

Being the on the frontlines of your company’s outreach strategy it has never been more important to know your target market in depth by gathering information about your target buyers’ needs and preferences.

As a Sales Development Rep / Business Development Rep having an edge in market research puts you ahead of the competition. It is a very important component of business strategy and a major factor in maintaining competitiveness.

Knowing your audience means knowing how to better personalize and segment your outreach strategy. This is a big advantage over your average Sales Development Rep / Business Development Rep who is most likely doing only basic outreach functions totally overlooking the importance of performing proper market research first.

This will allow you to better build out your outreach strategies through multiple channels and multiple touchpoints. You will put yourself in a position to target more qualified leads and in turn raise your conversion rate. This not only increases your bottom line but saves you time as well.

2. prospecting & Data Scraping

One the first functions that one must be well versed in when building out a sales campaign from scratch is prospecting and data scraping.

Rather you use a CRM or a spreadsheet finding prospects that fit your product or service as well as their direct contact information is the most important starting point for any outreach campaign.

Think of prospecting and data scraping as the foundation of your house. Without a strong foundation you can’t build a big luxurious house. The same goes for your sales outreach campaigns.

You must first do your due diligence in prospecting. What good is a list of prospects if the contact information is incorrect or your prospects don’t match what you are trying to deliver.

The objective of sales prospecting is so that you, as a Sales Development Rep / Business Development Rep, have correct and updated information when performing your initial outreach. You want to be able to get in touch with a decision maker as quickly as possible and prospecting correctly makes that part of the process so much easier.

3. lead generation & Appointment Setting

Now we get to the outreach itself which all starts with generating leads. Rather you are setting appointments for a sales closer to closed down and convert or you are  handing off a hot lead to an account manager it all starts with lead generation and appointment setting.

There are multiple ways to go about this and there many different approaches and strategies one can take when performing lead generation. Here is an article in which I take much deeper dive into the ins and outs of lead generation. You can read it here.

There many different channels and touchpoints you can and should use when trying to generate leads for your purposes.

These can channels can range from your typical cold calling to emailing or social media and much more.

The main idea here is that you are taking a prospect who has either no knowledge or limited knowledge of your product and/or service and creating awareness and building some interest.

You want to be able to move these leads down your pipeline and into the hands of your sales closers or account managers. An informed lead with some general interest is much easier for your sales team to close and convert than a totally cold lead that has never been approached from anyone from your company. This is why appointment setting is so vital.

Again, this is the initial step of actually performing your outreach and it is highly recommended that you utilize more than one channel.

Now each strategy will ultimately be determined by your product and your target market so keep that in mind. You want to be where your potential customers are.

4. calling skills

This should be on the first skills that a Sales Development Rep / Business Development Rep learns. Personally, I and many other successful sales executives, have built our careers off of cold calling.

The thing that makes calling, specifically cold calling, much easier as a Sales Development Rep / Business Development Rep is that you yourself are not trying to close a sale on your first call. You are just trying to get your lead to agree to take a meeting with your closer.

Typically these calls are short and are use to create awareness, build interest, ask questions, and determine that the lead is a good fit for your product or service.

You shouldn’t read a script as it can make you sound robotic and inauthentic. However, when first starting out you should have some kind of guide or call outline until you are able to get the flow of the call down.

I highly recommend watching some Grant Cardone or Jordan Belfort videos as the provide some great insights and tips on how to perform a great cold call and on how to set appointments that stick.

If you have the extra money to spend I would say Cardone University or Jordan Belfort’s Straight Line System are well worth the investment. Those course can greatly enhance your ability on the phones and the stronger your ability the more confident you will feel.

I would also suggest getting some kind of phone system and not dialing off of your personal phone for a couple reasons. One, you can get a local line if you are reaching out to companies not in your geographical area which is often the case. Two, you are probably not going to want leads and potential customers blowing up your personal cellphone.

5. email outreach

This a skill that anyone who wants to be a successful SDR/BDR needs to learn and master. Pairing great calling ability with knowledge on email outreach will make you that much more effective as a SDR/BDR.

There are multiple ways to go about email outreach. There is the cold email blast, opt-ins, and email follow ups.

However you choose to implement your email outreach you should know how to craft an eye-popping headline, attention grabbing content, and a CTA that gets your leads to take action.

Email outreach can also provide a great jumping off point for your calls too. For example you can lead into your call with “Hi (Lead’s Name), this is Lance from XYZ company. I actually sent over an email a few days ago, just checking to see if you had a chance to check it out and wanted to get your thoughts on it.” It is also a great way to follow up an initial call.

In any event email outreach is a very important skill that any SDR/BDR needs in 2021 in order to stay competitive. For more information on this I’ve written an in depth post about email marketing which can be found here.

Also if setting up a CRM specifically for email automation and segmentation I highly recommend you checkout the following:

• ConvertKit
• GetResponse
• Aweber

There are others such as MailChimp and ConstantContact. However, in my experience the 3 listed above provide the best value for email outreach purposes.

6. linkedin expertise

I mentioned social media above and for a more in depth look at performing outreach across different social media platforms you can read a comprehensive article I put together here.

Now that article is geared more towards marketing for bloggers but there are a lot of principles and strategies that can be incorporated into your outreach strategy.

The main social media channel you need to get to know as a SDR/BDR is LinkedIn and Sales Navigator. This is another great channel for finding your target audience and sending personalized segmented messages.

I have incorporated LinkedIn and specifically Sales Navigator into many outreach strategies in the past with great success. Sometimes you will find this is one of the best ways to get in touch with decision makers depending on who your target audience is.

Sales Navigator has a few different monthly subscription plans geared towards individuals and teams but is well worth the investment.

There are also several training courses provided on Sales Navigator so even if you aren’t too knowledgeable in LinkedIn and Sales Navigator you can be within a few hours.

Being an expert in LinkedIn is just another way to give yourself a big advantage as a SDR/BDR. It is an important channel that should be implemented in your outreach strategies.

7. crm certifications

Knowing the ins and outs of different CRMs as a SDR/BDR is imperative. Although you could potential start with a spreadsheet through Google or Excel, at some point you need to learn how to operate a CRM.

So, what is a CRM? A CRM is a technology for managing all your company’s relationships and interactions with customers and potential customers. A couple of the most known CRMs being Salesforce, mostly geared towards large enterprises and HubSpot which mostly geared towards startups and smaller sized businesses.

Outside of the major CRMs there are options to choose to from. Some of these being multipurpose CRMs for storing contacts, logging calls, and creating email segments and some are built for a more specific purpose like email marketing.

When it comes to email marketing our favorites include:

• ConvertKit
• GetResponse
• Aweber

Whichever route you choose to go with when it comes to CRMs there is no debate that this technology is a must have  for any modern outreach strategy. The good news is it is every easy to get the training and information you need for free online.

A couple of great examples of some free CRM courses include HubSpot Academy and Salesforce Trailhead. It is a good idea to spend some time learning the ins and outs the 2 biggest CRMs out there right now and a certification or two doesn’t hurt.

8. closing ability

Although your main focus as a SDR/BDR may be to generate leads and set appointments for your sales team the ability to close sales on your own just adds that much more value to your skillset as a SDR/BDR.

In my experience if you are a SDR/BDR but also possess the ability to close this leads to bigger opportunities, raises, higher commissions, and bonuses. Being able to execute a sales campaign from the very start all the way through the close makes you a very valuable asset to many companies.

This helps increase your bottom line and your value while at the same time allowing your client or employer to cut down on operating costs by allowing one person to take on more of the overall sales strategy.

If you are well educated on your product then selling shouldn’t be too difficult for you.

A this point it is assumed that you’ve already done the hard legwork like cold calling, generating interest, and setting appointments. Why would you not want to profit off of that by executing the most glamorous part of the process by asking for the sale?

If you want to learn how to be an excellent closer rather its over the phone or in person I highly recommend two of my favorite salespeople Grant Cardone and Jordan Belfort. Grant Cardone has Cardone University while Jordan Belfort has his Straight Line system. In my  opinion both are incredibly effective.

9. lead nurturing

Lead nurturing is the process of developing and reinforcing relationships with buyers at every stage of the sales funnel.

A successful lead nurturing program focuses marketing and communication efforts on listening to the needs of prospects and providing the information and answers they need to build trust, increase brand awareness, and maintain a connection until prospects are ready to make a purchase. That’s why it’s crucial to nurture relationships with buyers through a strategic lead scoring system.

Additionally, lengthening sales funnels fosters independence within prospects, creating a greater need for well-crafted lead nurturing programs.

Marketing automation platforms like CRMs can allow marketing teams to develop flexible, adaptive communications at scale by forming a lead nurturing strategy.

In doing this, you create a pathway through which you not only create relationships with potential customers, but also maintain those relationships while the prospect moves through the buyer’s journey at their own pace.

10. great customer service

Finally, the last aspect of a great SDR/BDR that can separate you from your competition is delivering great customer service and a great overall customer experience.

Being able to build and execute a comprehensive sales strategy from the ground up while being able to close adds incredible value to your skillset. Providing exceptional customer service gives you even more of an edge.

Although this skill may usually be more closely associated with account managers and less so with SDR/BDR roles the ability to do this makes you an even more valuable asset.

Providing exceptional customer service doesn’t mean only providing customer service up to the point of the sale. It also means following up with your customers and ensuring that everything is running smoothly with your product or service.

Having all these skills and putting it all together will make you stand out above your competition when it comes being a great Sales Development Rep / Business Development Rep.

You may not use all of these different skillsets for a single campaign but the ability to do so makes you stand out and gives you the ability to perform multiple functions for your client/employer.

 

10 Skills Every Sales Development Rep / Business Development Rep (SDR/BDR) Needs in 2021

– Lance Ulin

Let’s CEO

Social Media Marketing for Bloggers. How do it right and drive results!

In this article we’ll explore how you can drive consistent traffic using multiple social media channels and touch points.

Social media is a powerful digital marketing tool for your blog. With now billions of users and multiple ways to market your content, good social media strategies are a must for any blogger in any niche in 2021.

When it comes to social media marketing for bloggers depending on your niche you may find some social media platforms more useful than others.

Considering that my niche is built around entrepreneurs with a focus on freelancing these are the most useful platforms that I have used to build my blog traffic listed in order.

Again, blogs are unique so different platforms may work better depending on your target audience.

facebook

Let’s start with Facebook. Facebook has the largest network out all major social media sites with a whopping 2.85 billion users. With a user base of this size this should be your starting point when starting out with any new blog.

As you start off trying to find who your target audience is Facebook is a good place to start and experiment with different types of marketing and outreach.

Outside of your individual profile you have the option of creating a business page. Start by completely filling out your business page profile fully and accurately. Use a logo that represents your brand and a good header to match.

Now that you have your business page how can you increase your brand awareness and drive traffic to your blog?

The first obvious options are sharing your content to your news feed or asking friends to share your content. However you have to expand your audience outside of just your Facebook friends. Let’s take a look at a a few ways you can do this.

Niche Groups

One of the best ways to network, gain exposure, and drive traffic to your blog on Facebook is by joining niche groups.

These are groups with like minded individuals that share and discuss information related to the group topic. You can and should join groups that are specifically geared towards social media marketing for bloggers.

Keep in mind that most quality Facebook groups do not allow you spam your blog. Instead you should engage in discussion and share useful relevant information that provides value to the group members. By doing this you will have plenty of opportunities to inject articles from your blog while not coming across as a spammer.

However, there are plenty of groups that are built for you to spam your blog links and view other blogs in exchange for a view of your blog. This can be a useful way to drive traffic to your blog in the beginning. The only downfall is the quality of traffic isn’t going to be great and as you move forward building your blog QUALITY traffic will be an absolute must.

Advertising

Facebook Ads are another way of driving traffic to your Facebook page, posts, and blog. The great thing about Facebook Ads is that you can target your specific audience so that only the Facebook users who match your criteria will see your add. This will make your add budget much more efficient.

I would suggest in the beginning you should focus on building your brand and gaining exposure. You can run an effective ad campaign on Facebook with as little as $5/day.

It is good when starting out to experiment with your ads a little to bit too see what works and what doesn’t. You want to keep your cost per engagement relatively low based on your goals. The higher the cost per engagement the less effective our adds are and the less efficient your ad spending becomes.

Hashtags

Using hashtags is a good way to drive organic traffic to your Facebook page. Hashtags on Facebook are far less effective than hashtags on other platforms like Twitter and Instagram.

However, the good thing is that the organic traffic you drive using hashtags is typically of high quality consisting of users that are interested in your content. 

You should be sure to use relevant hashtags in all of your posts. Look to see what hashtags are trending and see if you can implement any of those hashtags into your post.

Influencers

What are influencers? Oxford defines Influencers as people with the ability to influence potential buyers of a product or service by promoting or recommending the items on social media.

Influencers are typically able to do this due to the high number of followers they have. Contacting an influencer and having them share your page or post can generate a large amount of quality traffic. However, influencers can sometimes be expensive so plan accordingly.

 

 

Linkedin

Niche Groups

Similarly to Facebook joining niche groups on LinkedIn are a great way to attract more followers. Like Facebook there are many groups that fit different niches. However, some types of blogs will do better here than others.

Blogs geared towards anything having to with business can generate some great quality traffic this way. At the same time it may be more difficult for a non-business blog to gain as much traction on LinkedIn.

Advertising

Again, similarly to Facebook, targeted advertising can be used to build your brand and serves as a great way to generate more traffic to your page or site. You’ll have to play around with different budgets and different keywords to find what works for you.

Just like with Facebook your ads will be shown to your target audience and you will get your results based off of your budget. There is no one-size fits all here, you just have continue to experiment until you find what works for your brand.

Hashtags

Unlike Facebook, hashtags on LinkedIn are far more useful for attracting your audience. One of the main differences between hashtags on LinkedIn and other social media platforms is that the hashtags used here are more specific and used to drive more defined audience to your page.

You should use relevant hashtags on all your posts. Hashtags are one the main ways I was able grow my LinkedIn page organically. The traffic will be of higher quality because the people that view your posts or page from searching for hashtags more than likely have a legitimate interest in the topics you are covering.

Influencers

Just like any other social media platform LinkedIn has it’s influencers too and it operates the same way. Seek out a page with a high number of followers within your niche and send messages inquiring about influencer services.

As with any social media site this another great way to drive traffic to your site. This method can potentially bring a high number of followers within your niche. The downside? Depending on the influencer prices can be quite high and it is something you’ll have to plan to add into your marketing budget.

pinterest

Pinterest is a social media site that probably not many people think of when they think of ways to drive traffic to your site. However, if used correctly Pinterest can be a very powerful marketing tool.

Create Boards

The first thing that you’ll do after signing up and creating an account on Pinterest is to register a business account. From here you’ll begin posting what are called “boards”. Boards are how you’ll categorize your posts or pins. Create board for the different topics that your site touches on. However, don’t create to many boards at first as you don’t want to spread yourself too thin.

Add Pins

Pins, as mentioned above, are your actual posts that will be added to whatever board you choose. Be sure to correctly categorize your pins. Just like most other social media platforms Pinterest also uses hashtags in the same way. Use relevant hashtags on your pins to drive reach users that may be interested in your content.

Engage With Other Users

One important thing that you should do on Pinterest in order to build your brand on the Pinterest is engage with your followers and other users with similar interests. This is a must in order to sustain your following on the platform.

Advertising

Like other social media platforms Pinterest offers digital advertising also and it operates similarly to the other platforms mentioned above. Ill be honest, this isn’t something I’ve messed around with much as most of my traffic on Pinterest is organic.

instagram

Hashtags

I know that we have mentioned hashtags several times throughout this article. When it comes to Instagram however hashtags are much more important and have more value than arguably any platform we’ve covered. Hashtags are the number one way that users find your posts. So, using hashtags is a must.

Influencers

Influencers can be found on Instagram too and they operate the same way. In my opinion Instagram is by far the best option for influencer marketing and it is actually something that Instagram is well known for. If I were looking at platforms for influencers I would definitely start with Instagram.

Engage with Audience

As with all other platforms it is always important to engage with your followers.

Advertising

Instagram offers similar advertising as covered on the other platforms.

 

 

Twitter

Hashtags

When it comes to hashtags Twitter’s only rival here is maybe Instagram. Twitter has always been and continues to be the king of hashtags. Hashtags should always be used on Twitter. Not doing so will cause your post to be seen by far less people. So, using hashtags is an absolute must on every tweet.

Influencers

Covered several times above. One main ways that influencers help promote brands is through use of retweets. A retweet is when a someone re-shares your content on their feed allowing your content to be seen by all of their followers.

Trending Topics

One way to gain more attention on Twitter is build tweets around trending topics. You can see what is trending on Twitter under the trending sub-header on the homepage and search page.

Tweet Often

Of course your content should always be of decent quality. That said Twitter is more useful if you post multiple times per day. That doesn’t mean you have to spend all day creating content for your twitter account. It just means you should be posting and sharing throughout the day.

It doesn’t even have to be your content. You can share other content or link to curated content. Just be sure you’re not taking credit for someone else’s work. As long as you are providing value to your followers throughout the day you are doing it right.

Other Platforms

Tumblr

Tumblr acts as a mini-blogging site where you can share posts and interact with other users. I have not found much use for Tumblr yet but maybe it can do something for you.

YouTube

I put YouTube on the bottom here as there are a lot of ways that you can incorporate videos into your marketing strategy. However this isn’t something you’ll probably be doing for a while unless your blog is built around a podcast. This is a a channel I would wait on using until you have more experience running your blog and you are sure of the direction you want to go in.

I wouldn’t recommend YouTube as a go to in social media marketing for bloggers. Unless you are somehow incorporating into your niche.

Final Note

When deciding on the best platforms for your blog I wouldn’t recommend trying to market on all of these channels all at once if you are doing this by yourself. If you do you could spread yourself to thin and/or overwhelm yourself. Set up a presence on all of the platforms listed here by focus on just a couple to drive daily traffic.

 

Social Media Marketing for Bloggers

Lance Ulin

www.letsceo.com

What is “lead generation”? Why is it vital to driving sales?

Wikipedia defines lead generation in marketing practices the initiation of consumer interest or enquiry into products or services of a business. Leads can be created for purposes such as list building, e-newsletter list acquisition or for sales leads.

For our purposes we will be exploring a couple different types of lead generation including prospecting and list building. We’ll take an in depth in dive in how you should go about finding prospects and locating necessary information.

“You are out of business if you do not have a prospect”

– Zig Ziglar

sourcing/prospecting

Google Sheets

This is typically the starting point for all lead generation campaigns.

Opening a new google sheet is as simple as typing “google sheets” into google search. Start with a blank sheet so that you can set up your columns after you decide which data you will include.

The great thing about Google Sheets is that it is an easy and free way to store your contact until you’re ready to migrate to a CRM and even then Google Sheets still have their place.

Another useful function Google Sheets can preform is that it can continue to manage contact information of prospects you have not yet added to your funnel yet while you reserve your CRM for all of your leads that have made it into your funnel.

Setting Your Criteria

Before you perform any searches or input any data you need have a criteria by which to score your prospects to ensure you are sourcing leads that fit your project.

For instance, maybe you are need companies that are only a certain niche, say AI or Machine Learning for example. Let’s also say you need companies that are financially strong in either they are receiving large amounts of funding or have a lot of revenue. Now lets say you need to specifically target C-suite decision makers for your project.

Now you have a criteria to go off of and you have a way of determining which prospects to pursue. This will also come in handy later when deciding on what tools to use.

After you have a defined criteria you then need to know what pieces of data you’ll be collecting.

The most common data collected when prospecting is:

• Date
• Company
• Location
• Website
• Contact Name
• Title
• Email
• LinkedIn
• Outreach Status
• Notes

Now you are ready to move on to setting up your tool selection to begin collecting your data.

data collection/Tools

Now that you are ready to begin collecting your data you need to know what tools work best to collect each piece of information.

We’ll use the example above of the different data columns you’ll list on your Google Sheet.

Date:

-Pretty straight forward, look at your calendar or your phone and add the date

Company:

-This is the first piece of information you should be looking at

-If you need resources for finding lots of similar companies I recommend business directories

-Here are a few major and reliable directories:

• Crunchbase
• Zoominfo
• Rocketreach
• Owler
• CraftCo

Location:

-In some cases you may need to find all locations of a given company

-Here are the most reliable resources for this:

• explore the companies website, usually listed under “contact us” or “about”
• CraftCo usually has all locations listed
• check the comapny’s LinkedIn page on the “about” tab
• Google: “company name” locations

-If you happen to come across conflicting information the company website should be your first resource

Website:

-You shouldn’t have any problem finding a company website

-If for whatever reason you are having issues locating the website:

• Find the company on a directory, the website should be listed there
• Locate the company page on LinkedIn, the website will be listed under the “About” tab

Contact Name:

-In order to locate a prospect name you must already have a job title in mind

-For the example of above we used c-suite executives like CEO, COO, CTO, CMO, CFO, ect

-Tool = LinkedIn Sales Navigator

• open and login to Sales Navigator
• preform a search using your selected job title and defined criteria
• you’ll now see thousands of matching profiles nearly all which could be qualified leads

Title:

-If you can’t tell if a prospect title matches your target title click on the profile and check status

-Keep in mind that some titles are interchangeable or almost identical

-If you are unsure of a specific job title consult Google

Email:

-This one kind of depends on job title

-For our example we are tracking down decision makers

-Tool = Hunter.io

• start by typing the website into search bar on the home page
• a list of suggested emails will populate
• enter the name of your contact into the smaller search bar that now appears
• an email will display with either a colored dot or a green checkmark
• green checkmark = email is correct and verified, simply copy and pate into your sheet
• colored dot = email is likely a match but can’t be verified

-What to do if Hunter.io can’t verify or find an email

-In the event Hunter.io does not return a matching email with a green check there are 2 other scenarios that occur.

1. Hunter.io found a likely match but can’t verify the email
2. Hunter.io failed to return any results

-In the case that Hunter.io can’t verify email

• copy the likely email and paste into Hunter.io’s email verifier
• Hunter.io will either verify and confirm the email as valid or it will show “accept all”
• “accept all” means the domain accepts any combination therefore it can’t be verified
• copy and paste the email into Google and use quotes to seeif anything turns up
• as a last ditch effort you can try manually sending a msg to the likely email

                                                               

list building/scrubbing

And what is list building? A simple yet accurate definition would be that list building is a process of developing a database of prospects who would be interested in the kind of products or services that your business offers.

I’m sure that some people will relate list scrubbing to email lists only but it can be applied to any list you need to maintain.

For our purposes list scrubbing would be more closely defined as an audit to your list where you go through and throw out old or outdated information and update your list with current correct information.

It is important that all your data be organized, uniform, and accurate. This makes the process of uploading your lists into your CRM much easier and contacts in your CRM are so much more important than contacts on your Google Sheet.

Essentially when you add contacts into your CRM you are adding prospects into your funnel and thus changing the status of a prospect to lead. However, this is done after you have performed some kind of initial outreach to the prospect and marked the prospect as an MQL (marketing qualified lead) meaning the prospect matches your criteria and they are now aware of you.

and with that…

I will touch more on CRMs, funnels, outreach, segmentation, and automation in the next article!

Stay tuned…

 

Lance Ulin

Let’s CEO

www.letsceo.com

 

Resources:

1. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/
2. https://www.crunchbase.com/home
3. https://www.linkedin.com/premium/products/?intentType=FIND_LEADS&upsellOrderOrigin=guest_login_sales_nav
4. https://hunter.io/

Unleash the full potential of your marketing campaigns by utilizing a comprehensive email marketing strategy!

Try our recommended products for email marketing!

ConvertKIt  »   GetResponse  »   Aweber

The pace of innovation and the number of resources available to marketers today is nothing short of incredible.

An astounding 1,876 companies across 43 different marketing categories, including SEO, social, video marketing, sales enablement, mobile analytics, and dozens more exist according to VentureBeat.

What’s more, many of the categories didn’t exist in the report just one year earlier.

But just one category continues to perform well year after year: email marketing.

WHAT IS email marketing

Email marketing is a powerful marketing channel, a form of direct marketing as well as digital marketing, that uses email to promote your business’s products or services.

It can help make your customers aware of your latest items or offers by integrating it into your marketing automation efforts.

It can also play a pivotal role in your marketing strategy with lead generation, brand awareness, building relationships or keeping customers engaged between purchases through different types of marketing emails.

the importance of email marketing

Email is a big part of our lives as professionals, individuals, and, yes, even consumers. Think about this, how many people do you know without an email address? There’s a good chance that you can count these people on one hand.

According to Radicati Group, more than half of the world’s population uses email as of 2019. And this number is expected to increase up to more than 4.3 billion by 2023.

Data from Pew Research also shows that 92% of adults in the United States use email. And, 61% of these email users are checking and sending emails on an average day. This presents a great opportunity for businesses of all sizes to reach their target market, no matter what their audience looks like.

By adding email marketing to their list of digital marketing strategy, businesses can improve their reach and visibility. Thus, allowing them to engage and convert more leads consistently.

Not only does email marketing allow you to take advantage of the prospect of reaching a large group of people… …but this medium can also offer benefits that other digital marketing tactics can’t provide.

Email marketing allows you to personalize your messaging and tailor messages based on customer actions. You can also segment your audiences to ensure that the right leads are getting the most impactful information at the most effective times.

Perhaps one of the greatest reasons why email marketing is so important is that your competitors are using it. In fact, Marketing Land reports that of the 1.45 million emails sent per month, 1.38 million of these emails are sent by U.S. companies.

Here’s another interesting figure, 85% of Gen Z say that they prefer to use email over other modes of communication. And this percentage will definitely grow once they start having jobs. This means that if you want to remain competitive in the digital marketplace, you need to start using email marketing to reach your audience.

history of email marketing

(infographic)

how it works

Sign up for an email marketing tool

Email marketing is a process can be fully automated with the help of a good email marketing tool. If you try to use your personal account to email hundreds of people and manually keep track of the results won’t work, so your first step is to select which platform to use.

An email marketing platform will help you to:

Create an email list Add users to your list using a number of methods

Send emails to your audience

Provide you with reports on how many people open your emails and interact with them

Provide you with different options to segment your audience based on specified criteria

Create retargeting audiences on Facebook based on your email list

Automate various email marketing tasks such as sending a welcome email to your subscribers

Make sales directly from an email message

Create email funnels to redirect users to pages/products/actions you want them to take

Create an email marketing strategy

As with any type of digital marketing campaign, the first thing to do is to create a strategy.

Having an email marketing strategy in place before running any campaigns will help you to:

Decide how email marketing will be used in conjunction with the other online marketing campaigns you’ll be running Decide which email marketing platform to use and figure out your monthly costs

Decide on the strategies to use to grow your email list

Decide when to use automation and what kind of messages to send and when

Have the right reporting mechanisms in place to measure the effectiveness of your email campaigns

Build your email lists

For email marketing to work, you need to have a BIG list of active subscribers so the most important task in your strategy should be how to grow your email list.

As mentioned above, it’s not only a matter of adding random people to your list but people who manually registered to receive your emails.

Growing and maintaining an email list is tricky but with the right approach and tools, it can a valuable asset for your business.

The best ways to increase your email subscribers are:

Publish great content on your site – if your content is not what users want, whatever technique you use, it won’t help you get more subscribers.

If, on the other hand, your content provides value to users, your email list will grow faster.

Give them incentives – Free eBooks, trial offers, and other ‘gifts’ are great incentives to offer to users in return for their email address.

Make it easy to subscribe – Having the position of your signup buttons in places that users can easily spot (on both desktop and mobile), will make a difference to the number of people that can sign up for your emails.

Automate your tasks

Email marketing automation is a strategy that sees marketers send triggered or timed promotional emails to subscribers on their mailing list. It enables online marketers to send out personalized messages to both prospects and customers on a schedule or when specific conditions are met.

One of the biggest benefits of email marketing is that it’s a process that can be fully automated.

When we refer to email marketing automation, we mean sending targeted emails to your users based on the actions they take when they receive your emails or actions they perform on your site.

The most common email automation tasks are:

Welcome emails – Sending a welcome email to users as soon as they subscribe to your list

Email campaigns – Sending them a series of emails (replicating a sales funnel)

Abandon cart emails – Sending emails to website visitors that added a product to their shopping cart but did not checkout

Cross-selling / Upselling – Suggest products to customers based on their purchase history

Review/Feedback forms – requesting feedback/reviews from customers X days after they made a purchase

A final word on email marketing

Monitor and improve performance with A/B testing.

Clean up and maintain your email lists.

Email is used by 50% of the world’s population.

Resources: 

ConvertKIt  »   GetResponse  »   Aweber

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what is seo?

When learning anything for the first time it is best to start with the basics. First, what is SEO? Wikipedia defines SEO as:

“Search engine optimization is the process of improving the quality and quantity of website traffic to a website or a web page from search engines. SEO targets unpaid traffic rather than direct traffic or paid traffic.”

However, there is so much more to SEO as we will explore in this article.

more on Wikipedia here

search engine optimization

The purpose of SEO is to increase the quantity and quality of inbound traffic to your website. It is beneficial to both the consumer and business because it connects searchers with content that is most relevant to them. The goal is to rank as high as possible in a search engines index.

Rankings in SEO refers to a website’s position in the search engine results page. There are various ranking factors that influence whether a website appears higher on the SERP based on the content relevance to the search term, or the quality of backlinks pointing to the page.

The most used search engine in the world today is Google for purposes of this article we will be referencing SEO in how it relates primarily to Google Search.

As mentioned above there are many factors which impact your SEO and thus your index ranking for Google Search.

Learn SEO online at Coursea offered by UC Davis

relevant quality content

One of the most important things to keep in mind when considering SEO is the quality of your content. Is your content relevant to your audience and does it provide your readers/users with value? Make sure you are creating content with your audience in mind.

It is important to create content that appeals to the interests of your target market or answers their questions. Not all posts need to be about your product or service, but they all should be industry related. Assert yourself and your company as an expert in your industry by writing SEO-friendly content that is interesting and informative and do it better than your competition.

Learn more about creating content and content strategy through Coursea offered by Northwestern

store your content in one place

Try to keep all your content primarily in one place. In order to get the credit and traffic your website deserves it is best to keep your original content under your own domain name. That means if you have a blog opt out of hosting with WordPress or Blogger and host the blog in a subfolder on your own domain (ie: www.example.com/blog ). Any time you have an opportunity to showcase other forms of original content like videos, infographics or whitepapers, make sure to also embed them onto your website as well and share from there.

www.letsceo.com

Create eye catching headlines

Create eye-popping, attention grabbing headlines to pull your audiences in. You have a very short amount of text to make a very big impression and most studies show that the average attention span of site visitor to be approximately 7 seconds.

So, don’t underestimate the power of an effective headline!

Write headlines that are clear, interesting and make use of rich keywords. In addition to a great headline, also make sure your meta descriptions are interesting and further elaborate on the topic of your article. Keep in mind that your title and meta description are what show up in the search results, so make them count.

Keywords are critical

Try to build around keywords and longtail phrases. In order to utilize a keyword or phrase successfully you should first do some research on keywords and phrases and there are many online tools that you can use for this including Google’s keyword planner, Keywordtool IO, and Word Tracker. Use relevant, keywords and longtail phrases in your headlines as well as throughout your content to let both your readers and the search engines know what your post is about. But beware, too many keywords will not only turn off your readers but can result in search engine penalties for keyword stuffing. Use keywords thoughtfully and sparingly, sticking to a more natural feel. In addition to using keywords throughout the body of your post, take advantage blog tags by tagging a few relevant keywords for each post; most general blogs have tagging capabilities already built in.

Perform keyword research with Google here

structure your content

Structure your posts and save outlines that you create. Remember it is not only what you are saying but how you are saying it. How you deliver your content is important. The contents of your post may be great but can be easily lost in an unorganized, inefficient format. Breaking your content up into smaller paragraphs with headlines makes for an easy read that will keep your readers engaged. For the search engines, back-end organization is key too. Using proper tag hierarchy when tagging headlines is important to maintain a well-structured article. Well designed outlines can be reused and quickly deployed.

utilize photos and graphics

Be sure to use photos and infographics. This ties back in with structuring your posts and keep your audience’s attention. People are visual. Adding an image along with your blog post can make a big impression. Have a Pinterest account? In addition to promoting your blogs across your other social media channels, posts with images can also be pinned, adding another avenue for traffic to your website.

Create and utilize infographics here

promote content on social media

Promote and mirror your content through social media channels. Social media is a powerful tool that can help increase the reach of your content and promote sharing. Post each new article on social media sites and in forums, using engaging descriptions and a call-to-action. Since the power of social media lies in sharing, it’s also important to have share buttons on each of your blog posts. If you want more control of how your links appear when they’re shared, implementing Twitter Cards for Twitter or Open Graph for Facebook can give your shared links a boost, and may help your click-through rates.

build links to increase your ranking

Build links that connect back to your site. Link building has come a long way since the days of link buying and link farms, but links are still an important ranking factor for SEO. Linking to your own articles or website in your post ensures a link back to your website if your article is picked up by another site. If you get creative with other types of content like infographics and videos, adding an embed code on your site helps to promote content sharing and also adds a link back to the original source. Creating great content helps increase the shareability and the likelihood that other websites will link to it, so aim for quality and avoid “blackhat” techniques that could get your site penalized.

Learn more here

measure performance with analytics

Finally, be sure to continually track your site’s analytics. Stay on top of your SEO content by monitoring your efforts. Google Analytics is an easy and free way to track your page views and the average time spent on a page. Check things like your bounce rate and time on site to get an idea of how users interact with your website after landing on your content. If you see a high drop off in addition to a low average time spent on the page, that’s an indication that your content wasn’t relevant to what they were looking for, or worse, wasn’t interesting. Also, take a look at the number of social interactions to get an idea of the virality of your post. Just looking at these simple metrics can give you a good idea of which content pieces are well-received and liked so that you can replicate that type of content down the road.

Analyze your SEO performance