Thursday, September 24, 2020

Why Email Marketing is Important for Business Leads and Conversions

Email marketing isn’t dead. Heck, it’s not even dying.

In fact, it can be one of the best marketing tools for engaging leads and converting them into customers, especially during this weird COVID time.

You’re probably thinking, “That’s a BIG statement.” It is, but it’s also a true one. And we’re prepared to prove it to you.

Email Marketing is Alive and Kicking Butt

2020 has been quite a year. And we haven’t even reached election time yet (gosh, that’s a scary thought). When COVID-19 hit, we all cringed as we watched the stock market fall. But not all was lost during that unprecedented time.

According to data collected by Mailchimp that compared email engagement during March and April of 2019 versus 2020, the averages this year were better than last year. Click rates and open rates were up, and unsubscribes were way down.

Mailchimp also found that people wanted to hear from their favorite businesses more frequently – like every week. And smaller companies saw a more dramatic increase in engagement than larger firms. How cool is that? We’re all about encouraging small businesses as much as we can right now because, let’s be honest, this year’s been ROUGH.

If you still think email is dying out, check out Adobe’s 2019 Email Usage Study. They surveyed over 1,000 people in the U.S. and found that consumers spend about five hours a day checking email. FIVE. HOURS. A DAY. They also said people prefer receiving offers via email over social media, direct mail, and other popular marketing types.

Why Email’s Still One of the Best Marketing Tools for Growing Your Business

In 2019, the average adult spent around 3½ hours using the internet on their phone. Just imagine how much that’s increased during the pandemic. I know it has for me because my iPhone sends me regular phone usage reports. Ouch.

While this can feel depressing and unhealthy in a sense, it creates a big opportunity for email marketers and online businesses. Here are six reasons email is still at the top of its game.

1. People will check their email anywhere at any time, several times a day.

Let me ask you a question. When was the last time you checked your email? Or better yet, how many times have you checked your email today so far? And where all have you checked it? LOL.

If you’re an average American, the answer is a lot and pretty much everywhere – at work, during a Zoom meeting, at the dinner table, in the bathroom, in bed, even behind the wheel. Email has become an integral part of our daily lives.

Our job, as marketers, is to be in our customers’ inboxes regularly with messages that grab their attention. Figure out the best send times (when the most people on your email list are opening and engaging), then send them content they’ll love.

2. You can build trust through authentic relationships.

Engage with your audience. Be sincere and authentic. Personalize your emails so your contacts feel valued. Spend some time allowing your audience to get to know you – your personality, your quirks, and what you care about in the world.

Later on, when it comes time to sell your product or service, you’ll have a list of loyal followers who are ready to buy from you! That’s good stuff.

3. Email is cheap and has an amazing ROI.

Seriously, the ROI is insane. For every buck you spend on email marketing, you can recoup $42. That’s a 4200% return on investment!

4. You can segment your lists.

Mailchimp found that segmented campaigns have a 14.31% higher open rate and a 100.95% higher click rate than unsegmented campaigns. Unsubscribes are 9.37% lower, and bounces are 4.65% lower, on average. Those are some pretty dope reasons to segment your lists.

When you split up large contact lists into smaller segments, you can make your emails more specific and engaging for different groups of people.

5. You can automate emails to magically send on their own.

Need to send out a “welcome series” to new subscribers? Want to remind people who abandoned their shopping carts to finish checking out? Do you have blog posts you’d like to send to a specific list regularly?

Email automation allows you to engage with contacts in your sleep. You can create a workflow that sends out a series of emails or a single email to specific people based on certain criteria. Automation has the power to save you time while increasing engagement and sales.

6. Track, analyze, test, and improve performance.

Another awesome benefit of email is the ability to track and measure results. Watch your open and click-through rates to see how you should tweak send times, subject lines, body copy, calls to action, and contact lists.

A/B testing allows you to test two versions of the same email to see which one performs better. This insight can then help inform future campaigns.

Does Your Email Marketing Need a Little TLC?

Are you frustrated, confused, or at a loss when it comes to email? You don’t have to do it alone.

If you need help with email marketing setup, strategy, or implementation, Fingerprint Marketing would be thrilled to help. Book a consultation with us today!

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Thursday, September 17, 2020

Why You Need Maintenance on a WordPress Website?

When you first create your website, everything is working and it’s all shiny and new. But then, it starts to get older, it’s not as exciting anymore, and you likely stop giving it the TLC it deserves.

Much like a car that needs regular servicing and oil changes – your website needs that too! (Well, not the oil change, but the maintenance.)

If you don’t keep up with your website maintenance, your website is going to stop working and no one wants that! Regular maintenance on your website keeps your website working and in good condition. 

Here are some things I recommend when it comes to keeping your website healthy that we do for our clients:

  1. Backup your website daily and in full.

    Many hosting companies will tell you that they back up your website in full but in truth, they only partially back it up.

    If your website goes down, you want to be able to restore it quickly and restore all of it. You don’t want to lose your blogs, images, or content – that would be such a pain to start over.

    Full backups on a daily basis are important. 
  2. Plugin Update Compatibility.

    Make sure any security updates for WordPress or any plugins for your website are playing well together. Your website is made up of different parts and functions and sometimes they work against each other when they are updated. Even though you may start out with everything being compatible, that doesn’t mean everything stays compatible.

    One example is Chrome and Explorer. When the browser is updated, it can affect your plugin’s ability to work the same as it did before the update.

    If you have a website maintenance service company like Fingerprint Marketing, one of the things they’ll do for you is test each plugin every time there is an update and make sure that your website is still functioning properly.

    It’s not uncommon to update a plugin and have it affect your website’s ability to load quickly or show all the features. Testing it beforehand and then checking that everything works well after the update – it’s going to give your website longevity. 
  3. Monitor 24/7 that your website is up and it’s working.

    You never want to be the one who discovers your website is down. Leaving it to chance can mean it’s down for a considerable amount of time unless you are clicking on it frequently (and even then ANY downtime is bad!).

    If someone goes to your website and they get an error message, that’s lost sales opportunities. People rarely return to a website that was down, they think it’s a broken link and move on. It’s beneficial to have someone keeping an eye on it 24/7 and be able to restore it quickly should anything happen (see: The High Cost of First Impressions).
    We know that many of you rely on sales from your website. Don’t neglect to make sure it’s always up and running! 
  4. Site updates.

    Make sure you add new content consistently. Google indexes websites that are active, but stops going to websites that don’t add new content. If you are not active on your website, it ultimately affects your SEO negatively.

    Think about how you can add new content in the form of blogs, podcast summaries, announcements, etc. so that you maintain your traffic.

    Many of our customers hire copywriters or appoint content creators to make sure they are consistent about adding quality, SEO-friendly content to their websites. Google rewards this!

Maintaining your website is going to pay off. 

If your site gets hacked, think of how much money it’s going to take to reproduce that content and rebuild your site if there’s no backup. It’s going to be a lot more time and money than it would be for a monthly fee to a website maintenance service company.

User experience is equally as important, keeping customer’s top of mind. You want to make sure to stay on track with what is trending. For example, when Google made the decision to push mobile-friendly websites up in the search rankings, people who weren’t staying current didn’t make any changes to their mobile experience and lost traffic. Paying attention to the trends keeps you from missing out.

Website maintenance is truly as important as the oil changes and routine service on your car. If your website is not functioning properly, if you have a broken link, or if something is missing, the person who’s looking at your website and deciding if they’re going to choose your business, is going to bounce. 

You never want a potential customer to close your website and not return. 

Make sure you have a web care process in place or hire someone who knows how to do it for you.

Book a free strategy call for a live audit of your website and how regular WordPress maintenance can help you land more customers. 

The post Why You Need Maintenance on a WordPress Website? appeared first on Fingerprint Marketing.



Repost https://fingerprintmarketing.com/why-you-need-maintenance-on-a-wordpress-website/ fingerprintmarketing</>http://fingerprintmarketing.com/