Author: Franz Malten Buemann

The world is speeding up. What seemed unthinkable yesterday is now commonplace. And the world of eCommerce is evolving as well — competition is escalating, as are customer demands. People are examining many more criteria before buying anything from anyone online. It’s no longer just about providing the right goods at the appropriate price, it’s…
The post Headless Commerce Vs Traditional E-Commerce. What’s The Difference? appeared first on Benchmark Email.

Learn what everyone’s favorite boss would look for if he was tasked with picking an email newsletter service.
Michael Scott, a character from the hit TV show The Office, is best known for his inappropriate (though humorous) office conduct. And while it’s probably not recommended to do most things he does, we can learn a thing or two from him. There are a lot of hard decisions to make when you run a business like Dunder Mifflin, and Scott takes on each one with a fresh and enthusiastic approach.
One of the most crucial decisions a company can make is choosing the right email newsletter service. A strong email newsletter is essential to growing your business. It is one of only a few owned media channels companies have. Email allows you to directly and consistently reach prospects and customers without the limitations of a hosting platform’s algorithm or other limitations.
Basically, your email newsletter service is a big deal. And as Scott says, when it comes to growing your business, the only time you should set the bar low is for limbo. To set the bar high for your email newsletter service, look at the core functions that contribute to a great email newsletter.
1. Collaboration
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“In the end, life and business are about human connections,” says Scott, which couldn’t be more true when it comes to email marketing campaigns. Without the ability to collaborate easily, teams will find themselves duplicating work, producing less diverse or less inspiring content, and ultimately becoming less effective.
According to Gartner, “building more synergistic relationships across the organization to better communicate digital marketing vision” was cited as marketing leaders’ greatest challenge. The ability to connect with your team and collaborate on content is essential to producing timely and impactful newsletters.
So, when choosing your email marketing service, look for one that provides easy collaboration among your team. In Campaign Monitor’s email marketing software, you can use tags to assign team members and categorize campaigns by date, type, audience segments, and more. This makes it easy for team members to find relevant email campaigns and work together on content.
2. Signup forms
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If Scott learned anything from trying to get an intern to sign up at a job fair, it’s the importance of an effective signup form. “[People] are very wary of being lured,” Scott points out. Your signup form represents your company. Its importance is equivalent to Dunder Mifflin having their signup sheet on their own quality paper — not “some Pendleton crap.” If your audience doesn’t immediately see the value of sharing their personal information with you, they’re not likely to sign up for your newsletter.
The basis of a great newsletter is an engaged subscriber list, which starts with intuitive signup forms. Intuitive signup forms are easy to navigate and integrate with multiple marketing channel platforms to draw your audience in wherever they find you. For example, maybe your newsletter sign-up is in the form of a website pop-up, or maybe it’s a branded landing page that you link to on social media.
Look for an email service provider that offers fully-customizable signup forms and landing pages that will reflect your brand image and value. Your signup form and landing page should make a promise to your audience about what they can expect from subscribing and showcase quality design and content.
3. Customization
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Scott dances to the beat of his own drum. If there’s a standard way of doing something, he will do the exact opposite. He’ll always find a way to be the center of attention. In the words of his alter-ego “date Mike,” “let me do my thang!” In email marketing, you need to be able to “do your thang” to stand out in a crowded medium by customizing your emails.
With a forecasted 333.2 billion emails sent every day, you need to compete for your audience’s attention. Being competitive in email marketing includes customizing each email message to the individual subscriber. To customize your email messages, you’ll need to use an email marketing platform that enables you to segment your subscriber list and tailor the design to your brand.
Campaign Monitor’s email builder allows you to customize your email newsletters with the customer’s name, location, gender, interests, or other custom fields. Instead of a generic greeting in yet another marketing email, your subscribers can be invited in by a subject line that features their name and content tailored to their needs and wants. And personalization can have a significant impact on consumers. In fact, according to Accenture, consumers are over 90% more likely to shop when they have an experience personalized to them.
4. Automation
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Whether it’s paper or his infamous catchphrase “that’s what she said,” Scott is always keen on delivery. Similarly, email delivery takes finesse to achieve the greatest impact. Marketing automation is the key to delivering email at the most opportune moment in your customer’s journey. Automation takes email list segmentation to the next level by personalizing the timeliness of delivery through app integrations.
For example, through e-commerce store integrations, you can automate transactional emails after a purchase is made or with CRM integrations that automate welcome emails. Automation features can send emails at the most crucial moments in the customer journey. Automation frees your team up to focus on larger initiatives like long-term retention and product offers while still maintaining the customer connection.
In addition, automation can improve email deliverability rates by enabling delivery throttling. Delivery throttling is when you send your email in small waves to avoid hitting rate limits or getting marked as spam by email service providers (ESPs). With automation, you can easily set the parameters for send times, hit play, and get back to running your business.
5. A/B Testing
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A/B testing (also called split testing) is to marketing teams what gift-giving is to Scott. It’s a litmus test for what your audience is responding to. A strong email marketing tool should give clear attribution to specific elements so you can optimize your marketing strategy accordingly. In the immortal words of Scott, “It’s like this tangible thing that you can point to and say ‘hey, man, I love you this many dollars worth.’”
Rather than making assumptions based on general email performance, A/B testing allows teams to optimize based on tangible data. It’s imperative your email newsletter service has the capability to run A/B tests, determine results, and automate optimization accordingly.
This means you should be able to send two versions of an email campaign to a portion of your subscriber list. And then, after a set period, the platform should be able to determine the best one based on whatever KPI you set. Once it determines a winner, automation should trigger the winning email to be sent to the remaining audience.
A/B testing allows you to create something your audience engages with and continually improve upon it. Just like Scott’s advice to beet-farming Dwight Shrute, “Nobody likes beets boring emails, Dwight! Why don’t you grow send something that everybody does like? You should grow candy send something that’s proven to be engaging.”
6. Real-time analytics
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The success of your email campaigns will only be as strong as your ability to track overall performance and conversions. If you can’t track this data in real time, it’s difficult to estimate the business impact of your newsletter. And if there’s one thing Scott hates, it’s being underestimated. To grow your audience and business, you need granular information about engagement and performance.
A good email service will make analyzing your email performance easy by not just measuring KPIs but surfacing actionable insights to build on. Email analytics should allow you to compare your email marketing performance to other channels so you can gain a holistic view of audience engagement. With a complete view, you can then build comprehensive strategies to increase your bottom line.
For example, when you have annual data in view, you can uncover seasonal trends in the data. Once you identify trends, you can better understand what type of content will perform the best and adjust your content calendar to optimize for conversions.
7. Email templates
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While Scott definitely has his fair share of unique ideas (i.e., fake firings, the golden ticket idea), when he needs an idea with a quick turnaround, he often will look outside himself. For example, when he needs help coming up with an idea to fulfill his lifelong dream of leaving his mark in wet cement, he asks his employees.
When it comes to delivering impactful email marketing, quick turnarounds are often the name of the game, which is where email templates come in. Rather than wasting time building every email from scratch, email templates provide proven designs you can customize on the fly.
Better yet, if you use an email marketing tool like Campaign Monitor’s custom template builder, all you have to do to get a customized template is enter your company’s URL. The tool will identify logos, brand colors, and fonts and then build a template perfectly tailored to your brand.
8. Ease of use
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Scott is not a man of nuance, and when it comes to technical explanations, he’d rather just keep it simple. Preferably the kind of simple that also helps him avoid working or thinking too hard. In Scott’s own words, “Why don’t you explain this to me like I’m five.” If he were choosing an email service provider, it would be one with a simple, easy-to-use interface.
Your email service provider should be making your life easier, not causing more headaches. If you want to customize something, you should be able to drag and drop exactly what you need without complicated HTML or CSS codes or a janky workaround. You’re a professional with too many things on your plate to be wasting time on an email service platform that doesn’t work for you.
Campaign Monitor’s drag-and-drop editor, free templates, and developer tools like our CSS inline generator make designing one-of-kind emails easy even for beginners.
9. Automated link review
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We’ve all been there: you work for days on perfecting the design and messaging of an email newsletter, do a final grammar check, and hit send. And then you get a response. Only it’s not the response you’re hoping for; it’s the dreaded “ Ummm… the link isn’t working” response. After all that effort, all you can do is shake your head in defeat with Scott and say, “I tried!”
But there’s a better way. With automated link review, your email service provider can catch those broken links before you ever hit send. So, when you do hit send, you can rest assured the only responses you’ll get are the ones saying how great your newsletter was. To which you can reply as confidently as Scott, “I am Beyonce, always.”
10. Price-conscious
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If there’s one thing Michael values, it’s a good deal. “I basically decorated my condo for free with all of my swag,” Scott brags after sharing the true definition of SWAG (Stuff We All Get). While a strong email marketing platform is invaluable, it is important to know that your investment is worth it. It’s especially important for small businesses and startups that have to be extra budget-conscious.
Campaign Monitor allows you to try its tool out with a free plan, so you can be certain it’s a good fit before making the investment. And, if you choose to move to a paid plan, pricing is based on the size of your email list, so you’re not paying for what you don’t need.
Build your brand without wasting time and energy
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If you have an inefficient email service provider, you might be “working so hard, [you] forgot what it’s like to be hardly working,” in the words of Scott. What you need is an email service provider built for busy professionals who have stuff to do. Campaign Monitor is here to make building high-converting email campaigns easy.
The post 10 Features Michael Scott Would Look for in an Email Newsletter Service appeared first on Campaign Monitor.

The evolution of chatbots responding to client inquiries is the most well-known application of artificial intelligence in digital marketing. With deeper data analysis, artificial intelligence aspires to surpass humans in spotting marketing trends. Read more submitted by /u/ridamughal110 [link] [comments]

There are several artificial intelligence in marketing examples and its success in industrial growth. Ad optimization, engagement, and high revenues are essential to compete in digital business marketing. Advertisers are employing AI in marketing to automate and improve their promotional ways. Read more submitted by /u/ridamughal110 [link] [comments]

You probably check your email every day, whether for work or personal reasons, and so do millions of other people. As a result, newsletters are an excellent vehicle for reaching an audience, whether you have a brand or you’re trying to build one. And in a day and age where almost anything can have a subscription model, there’s more opportunity for the average person to create a valuable source of income.Revue is an online publishing platform aimed at writers and publishers that Twitter acquired in 2021. Now, Twitter users have access to an integration that allows them to set up and display their newsletter on their profile quickly. Thanks to its simple interface and Twitter integration, anyone can start creating and publishing a newsletter and immediately find an audience.How to Set Up Your Twitter NewsletterStep 1: You can only set up your newsletter from the Twitter desktop app, so open that and click on More → Newsletters.Step 2: This gives you a ‘Find Out More’ screen, which takes you to RevueStep 3: Click Sign up with Twitter or Sign up with emailStep 4: Follow the instructions to set up your account and start publishing!Why use Revue?What gives Revue an edge over other online publishing platforms like Substack or Medium? Along with features like analytics and scheduling, here are some reasons to consider:Retroactive viewing: Your past issues can easily be viewed by interested subscribers, making it easy for them to revisit your older work.The Week Ahead Horoscope2. Ease of discovery: Newsletters are easily discovered and subscribed to when pinned to a Twitter profile.3. Monetization: You can set up your newsletter to receive free and paid subscribers (and Revue only takes 5 percent of your earnings, compared to Substack’s 10 percent). Another opportunity for monetization is through newsletter sponsorships – a growing option for brands looking to create targeted ads. Ghost has a great guide to getting newsletter sponsorships.4. Cross publishing: Along with publishing your newsletter, Revue also has integrations that allow users to share content on other platforms like WordPress and social media.5. Custom domains: You can get a Revue domain name or connect your custom domain. Revue beats platforms like Substack and Medium in this instance because you can make this change for free.6. Own your means of production: Because you can cross publish so easily with Revue, it’s easier to control what happens with your content. You never have to worry about censorship or losing access to your primary platform for reaching your audience.Best practices for newsletter creatorsIf you’ve landed on newsletters as your method of creation, there are some things you need to keep in mind if you want people to read your work.Figure out what you want your newsletter to cover. Newsletters come in different forms, with people sending their opinions on news to others sharing job postings. It helps your readers know what to expect, and you know what to create every week.Balance your newsletter content. Create material that is less promotional and more helpful. For example, as long as your readers didn’t subscribe to an ecommerce website, they shouldn’t receive a newsletter packed with CTAs to purchase something or the other.Set clear expectations on your Subscribe page. Get specific with potential subscribers and tell them exactly what to expect from your newsletter and how often they’ll hear from you. Matthew Cassinelli’s What’s New in Shortcuts newsletter does a great job.What’s New in Shortcuts profile pagePick one primary call to action. It can be tempting to direct your readers to a million places (and that’s still possible by linking within your content) but resist it. Instead, share one principal thing you want your readers to do (forward the email? watch a video?) and make that the focus of your CTA.Go for minimalist copy and design. Cluttered emails get me to click off, and many newsletter readers can probably relate. Use a minimal design and keep the focus on your words/content to grip and hold readers’ attention.Make it easy for people to unsubscribe. Your readers should be able to choose if they want you in their inbox or not. If needed, make the unsubscribe button more prominent and remind users that they can unsubscribe at any time.Inspiration for your Twitter newsletterIf you’re thinking of starting a newsletter through Twitter, here are some great examples we love that might inspire you.Blaze-Maximus: Astrologer Blaze Maximus shares weekly astrological transits through their newsletter “the Week Ahead Horoscope.”Linda Ikechukwu: Everything Technical Writing was created by Linda Ikechukwu to share articles and advice for aspiring technical writers.Everything Technical Writing’s profile pageCarlos Silva: Carlos shares vetted remote marketing jobs through his newsletter, Hello Remote.Sam Dickie: The Creator Club is Sam’s brainchild where he shares the latest digital products, interesting articles, and resources from online creatives.The Creator Club’s profile pageThe Writing Cooperative: In an interesting move, the creators of This Week in Writing moved from Medium to Revue. The newsletter is now cross-posted on both platforms.Beyond the more traditional newsletter formats on this list is Pieter Levels (Levelsio), who uses the newsletter feature to back up his email list.💡Check out 14 Newsletters You’ll Want in Your Inbox in 2021 for some other newsletters that could inspire yours.Why newsletters aren’t going anywhereYou may think newsletters are an oversaturated medium — as the thousands of unread emails in your inbox can attest — but they’re not going anywhere just yet. Here’s why.Creative control: Newsletters give you control. This ties into the rise of the creator economy, which refers to the increasing freedom of creators to monetize their work (think Youtubers or writers). What sets newsletters apart from other forms of creation is that you own everything – your email list, what you choose to publish, and where you choose to publish it. As a result, the power to be heard is no longer concentrated in the hands of massive publications, and it’s easier than ever to share your work. Newsletters are part of this new paradigm, with people seeing enough success that they can quit their day jobs and turn their writing side hustle into a full-time endeavor.Big news! I quit my cushy tech job and have gone all-in on writing.I’ve been making my content at night and on the weekends. Finally, after 11 months of grinding, Napkin Math is big enough for me to bet the farm. Thank you to my readers and @every for making this possible.— Evan Armstrong (@itsurboyevan) March 23, 2022

Increased mobile access: Smartphones currently account for 70 percent of the total digital media time in the US, as more and more people read things on their phones, newsletters included.Monetization opportunities: Thanks to newsletters, it’s easier to make writing a full-time job. In addition, essayists have a platform to make money other than hoping the New York Times. Platforms like Paved make it easier for companies to discover and connect with newsletter publishers. And collectives like Every have made it easier for writers to earn income from content.Falling ad performance: Newsletters are especially vital in light of data privacy issues and the increased use of ad blockers. As a result, advertisers that need to figure out alternative ways to reach targeted audiences will increasingly flock to newsletters.Should you start a newsletter?Newsletters aren’t for everyone or every type of audience. It’s a great way to achieve organic growth and gain control of your publishing, but like any type of creative endeavor, it takes time and effort. You’ll need to be consistent and have enough material to keep you and your readers’ interest. If you’re doing it for your business, you might want to research more in-depth before just starting a Twitter newsletter before putting in the work required to make such a project successful.

You may have heard the old saying “patience is a virtue,” meaning waiting for something without getting discouraged is a great quality to have. However, for most of us, that “virtue” goes out the window when we encounter slow page load time.

The faster your website’s load time is, the happier your visitors will be. In other words — when you optimize your web page’s load time, you can expect to see improvements in user experience (UX), conversion rates, and ultimately, sales revenue.
You may be questioning whether or not simply shaving a few milliseconds off of your website’s page load time really has such a major impact on customer experience and business growth.
The truth is, yes, the longer it takes for your website’s page to load, the more likely you are to lose your audience. Read on for everything you need to know about website load time and how it can impact your customers’ experience with your company.
Short on time and need to get straight to the skimmable stats? Click here.

What is website load time?
Website load time — or web page load time — refers to how long it takes for a website, or web page, to fully load and appear on screen. This includes all content on the page such as text, images, and videos. Simply, it’s how fast all content on a web page loads.
Page speed can depend on a number of factors — some examples include: Page type, user behavior, file sizes, website server/host, inefficient code, hotlinking, and too many plugins and/or widgets.
In a 2019 survey by Unbounce, nearly 70% of consumers admitted that page speed impacts their willingness to buy from an online retailer. Furthermore, of all the people surveyed, half said they’d be willing to give up animation and video for faster load times.
Additionally, it’s crucial to remember the importance of your website’s mobile loading speeds. Jillian Streit, a website strategist at Blue Frog, told HubSpot: “Page speed has been a ranking factor for many years, and with Google’s shift to mobile-first indexing, it is even more important to focus on your website’s mobile loading speeds.”
She adds, “Unfortunately, most mobile pages take much longer to load than their desktop counterparts, and mobile users expect pages to load much faster on their mobile devices. If the page takes too long to load, users will immediately bounce, causing your site to lose out on a large number of potential customers.”
Learn about what website optimization is and how to do it effectively with this free course.
What is the average page load time?
In 2018, Google Research reported the average mobile web page takes 15.3 seconds to load. The same report said the problem is due to the majority of mobile sites having too many page elements. This problem persists despite most web traffic occurring on 4G instead of 3G.
What is a good page load time?
According to a 2019 study by Portent, a 0-4 second load time is best for conversion rates, and the first five seconds of page-load time have the highest impact on conversion rates.
In fact, the highest ecommerce conversion rates occur on pages with load times between 0-2 seconds. With each additional second of load time, website conversion rates drop by an average of 4.42%, the study says.
11 Page Load Time Statistics
Here are 11 statistics that will give you a better understanding of how website load time impacts your business and, more specifically, conversion rate.
1. The first five seconds of page-load time have the highest impact on conversion rates. (Portent, 2019)

2. Website conversion rates drop by an average of 4.42% with each additional second of load time (between seconds 0-5). (Portent, 2019)

3. The average mobile web page takes 15.3 seconds to load. (Google Research, 2018)

4. Nearly 70% of consumers admit that page speed impacts their willingness to buy from an online retailer. (Unbounce, 2019)

5. Of all the people surveyed, half said they’d be willing to give up animation and video for faster load times. (Unbounce, 2019)

6. The highest ecommerce conversion rates occur on pages with load times between 0-2 seconds. (Portent, 2019)

7. Website conversion rates drop by an average of 2.11% with each additional second of load time (between seconds 0-9). (Portent, 2019)

8. The highest ecommerce conversion rates occur on pages with load times between 0-2 seconds. (Portent, 2019)

9. The optimal average request count — the number of individual pieces of content needed to display the entire web page — is fewer than 50. (Google, 2018)

10. By compressing images and text, 25% of pages could save more than 250KB and 10% can save more than 1MB (which contributes to page load times). (Google, 2018)

11. Today, even though most web traffic occurs on 4G instead of 3G, the majority of mobile sites are still slow and bloated due to too many page elements. (Google, 2018)

Page Load Time Takeaways for Marketers
Maintaining a speedy page load time is integral to boosting conversion rates and sales revenue. While a few extra seconds may not seem like a big deal, statistics show that as each second passes, the potential to lose out on prospective customers increases.
If you’re concerned your website’s page load speed could be hindering your company’s growth, there are a few solutions to decrease the time it takes for your website to load. Online tools like Pingdom Website Speed Test, GTmetrix, Google PageSpeed Insights allow you to time and test your website’s page speed. You can also cache your website or enable browser caching to speed up your page load time.
Website load times impact conversion rates and, as a result, your business as a whole. Ensuring your load time is as efficient as possible doesn’t necessarily take a long time or a significant amount of effort, but it does require some thought. So, start thinking about how you can optimize your web page speed — you’ll see an improvement in your UX, conversions, time-on-page, and revenue.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in March 2017 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.