Author: Franz Malten Buemann

Welcome emails are a simple, easy, and effective way to give each new subscriber to your email list a warm, personal welcome. Here are some amazing welcome email examples to inspire your own.
You never get a second chance to make a first impression.
That’s true of just about anything, but it’s particularly true in the world of email marketing. In a time when people are being bombarded with more marketing messages than ever, it’s important that your brand stands out. Otherwise, you risk becoming completely forgettable.
Welcome emails are a great opportunity for a first impression. However, just the act of sending one isn’t going to guarantee anything. Most marketers are using marketing automation like welcome email campaigns nowadays, so if you want to stand out, the key is to be memorable. 
We’ve hashed out the what and how of welcome emails before, but in this post, we’ll go over why welcome emails can be so effective, tips for how to make a memorable one, and then look at 11 incredible welcome email examples.
Why welcome emails are such an effective email marketing tool
As a marketer, the moment when someone gives you their email address is pivotal. Whether they signed up for a free trial, a special offer, or created an account for your service, they’re clearly interested in your product or brand at that moment. And it’s up to you to make the most of it.
By sending an automated welcome email, it gives you the chance to interact with this person in a friendly, personal way. It also gives you the chance to guide their experience with your brand. Rather than hoping they find the right page on your website, or your best-selling product, you have the chance to deliver it directly to their inbox.
It’s the timing of it all that makes the welcome email so pivotal, and it’s important for marketers to capitalize on it.
Welcome email best practices
We’ve gone pretty in-depth on this topic before, so we won’t rehash everything we know (for more you can check out this post). But here are some quick, easy tips to keep in mind before looking at the welcome email examples below.
#1: Be timely
Like we mentioned, time is of the essence here. With that in mind, you want to make sure that your welcome email arrives shortly after they sign up for your list. A welcome automation will be useful here, and we’d recommend you send the email within a few minutes of the person signing up.
Note: we just launched a new pre-built welcome journey recipe inside of Campaign Monitor, making it incredibly easy to get your automation up and running. Log in or sign up to get started.
#2: Have a goal in mind
The worst thing you could do with your welcome email is send a confusing message. Think about what action you want this person to take after opening your email, and start building around that.
 If you’re working for a software company, your goal might be to get the person using your product. If you’re an eCommerce brand, you might want to guide a customer toward their first purchase. Whatever the goal is, make it easy for your subscriber to take that next step.
#3: Use a friendly greeting
If you asked for your subscriber’s name or other information when they signed up, now is the time to use it. Greeting your subscriber by name sets a more personal tone.
And whether you use their name or not, it’s always nice to simply welcome new subscribers. Spend some time thinking of some friendly, clever copy to start the email and make sure that you send a welcome message right from the start.
#4: Make sure to craft a great subject line
Email subject lines are an important part of the success of your campaign. A well-crafted subject line will leave a good impression on the reader, and likely increase your email’s open rate. For welcome emails, average open rates are usually around 50%.
You’ll want to make your subject lines clever, topical, and relatively short (about 7 words or 41 characters is ideal!). And don’t be afraid to add emojis, as they can help boost open rates.
For more on subject lines, be sure to check out this post for best practices, and this one for welcome email subject line examples.
11 of the Best Welcome Email Examples
Now that you have the why and the how, let’s take a look at these amazing welcome email examples.
#1: British Tennis

Image source: Really Good Emails
This email from British Tennis stands out for its cleverness. If you’ve ever watched a tennis match on tv before, you’ll recognize that the image at the top of this welcome email is meant to replicate the replay process when a shot is being reviewed in tennis.
This is effective in that it’s instantly recognizable by tennis fans, and it further boosts their perception as an insider — someone who gets tennis.
They also have a clear CTA button at the bottom, so you know exactly what to click next.
#2: Loom

Image source: Really Good Emails
If you’re not familiar with Loom, it’s a software tool that lets you easily record quick videos of your computer screen and/or yourself. It’s particularly useful in a remote/hybrid work setting, when you need to communicate with coworkers via video, but might not have time to jump in a meeting together.
Their first email does a handful of things really well, but the thing that stands out is their use of the product in the email. By including a video recorded with Loom in the email, they’re showing you the product in action, making it easy to imagine how you’d use it for yourself.
They also give quick, actionable steps for getting started, which we’d highly advise for any welcome email geared toward product adoption.
#3: Mollusk Surf Shop

Image source: Really Good Emails
Mollusk is a surf-inspired clothing brand based out of San Francisco, CA. Sustainability and comfort-minded, their brand is centered around creating high-quality, laid-back clothing that’s in it for the long haul. They also have a big focus on working with local vendors, which brings us to what they do well here.
Mollusk does a great job of telling their brand story in this email. They quickly get to the point of letting you know they’re not a fast-fashion company. They work with their “friends and neighbors” and create with “comfort and durability in mind.”
While it’s easy for brands to get carried away with their brand stories and have a tendency to talk too much about themselves, Mollusk strikes the balance well here. Tell your story, but in a way that’s engaging and communicates value to your audience.
Their coupon for 15% off is also likely to help boost conversion rates.
#4: Bombas

Image source: Really Good Emails
Sticking with the retail space, let’s take a look at this beautiful welcome email from Bombas, a clothing company designed around building simple, comfortable essential clothing products.
This email starts with some striking imagery of the products organized neatly, then offers new customers 20% off their first order, which is a great way to get people in the door and try your product.
Mollusk did that in their email above, but what Bombas does to make theirs even more effective is add a number of clickable elements that make shopping easy. Right under the discount code, there are links to their products. Making it easy to redeem the code is likely to increase click-through rates and conversion rates.
Want to build your own stunning welcome email, but don’t have a designer’s help? Try one of our pre-made welcome email templates!
#5: Asana

Image source: Really Good Emails
Shifting gears to the B2B world, let’s look at this wonderful welcome email from Asana, a project management tool.
Typically, if you’re composing a B2B welcome email, you have two main goals:

Greet your new user in a warm, friendly way
Make sure they have first steps to take in using your product

The first time this new user is interacting with your product is hugely important. At this point, they’re still deciding to commit to using your product or choosing another solution. So, guiding them toward how to get started is key.
Asana does both of these wonderfully with some warm, welcoming copy, and three easy action items to get the user started using their product. 
And bonus points for the lovely gif of an item being checked off the list. Who doesn’t love that feeling?
#6: The New Yorker

Image source: Really Good Emails
This welcome email from the New Yorker to subscribers who sign up for their daily email newsletter, The Daily, is a great one for publishers and media companies to look to for inspiration.
The two things this one does really well are:

Sets expectations. You’ll notice up at the top of the email, they tell you how often you’ll receive their newsletter, and what kinds of content to expect. This helps get users excited for what they just opted into, and anticipating your next newsletter.

Cross-promotes other New Yorker content. Odds are, if they signed up for the Daily, they’ll be interested in other New Yorker content as well. This is a great place to cross-promote content and include a CTA for a subscription in a way that sounds helpful, not disingenuous.

Pair all of that with the New Yorker’s signature visual style, and you have all of the ingredients for a great welcome email.
#7: Help Scout

Image source: Really Good Emails
Help Scout is a customer support software tool for small to mid-sized businesses, and they are obsessed with providing excellent customer experiences.
Their welcome is an excellent case study on showing, not telling. How many times have you read We value customer service or The customer is always right on a company’s values page? And how many times have you actually believed it?
Rather than telling about their award-winning support, Help Scout implies it in a handful of ways. With the “We’re here to help!” line, the email directly at the bottom, and the smiling faces, you get the sense that Help Scout would love to answer any of your questions. 
While this email could benefit from some action steps (like Asana’s), it does enforce Help Scout’s core brand message very well. And who knows, maybe future emails in their email sequence include onboarding steps!
#8: Zapier

Image source: Really Good Emails
Zapier has a very interesting challenge on their hands in the sense that, unless you’ve used Zapier before, you might have no clue what they do. 
Zapier is an automation tool that moves information across different apps automatically, taking the busy work out of a lot of day-to-day tasks. They’re one of the first products like that in their space, and when you have a category-defining product like that, one of your biggest marketing challenges is going to be educating potential customers on what, exactly, your product even is.
This email tackles that challenge head-on, and it does so rather effectively. With the lead header of What’s a Zap? they start to answer exactly what a potential customer needs to know. Then, they go on to give them visual examples of what, exactly, you can do with Zapier. They also include a video introducing the product. 
This is a masterclass in product education, and there’s no doubt his email campaign has served the Zapier team well.
#9: Redfin

Image source: Really Good Emails
A rule of thumb I have for any marketing email I’ve ever sent is to make sure I have a reason to be in their inbox. Emails that are sent for the sake of sending emails are just annoying. But emails that are helpful and provide value are the ones that stand out, and this one from Redfin does exactly that.
One of the first questions anyone thinks about when buying a home is “What can I afford?”, and Redfin helps email subscribers answer that question immediately. 
The home buying process can be confusing. Redfin knows that, and by positioning themselves as a helpful recourse, they build trust with their subscribers right from the get-go. 
Plus, by sending five different helpful resources, they’re likely to increase the engagement rates of this email.
#10: Harry’s

Image source: Really Good Emails
Harry’s is the DTC men’s razor company out to make shaving cool. Clever, cool, and minimal are essential to Harry’s brand, and they check every single one of those boxes in this short, simple email.
They’re not pushing for a purchase right away (which would be uncool), they give you an interesting (clever), clever fact, and it’s all packaged in a clean, minimalistic welcome email design.
It comes off as cool but not approachable-y cool, and piques your curiosity about the brand just enough to want to know more. That’s a hard line to walk, but Harry’s does it really well here.
#11: The Sill

Source: The Sill
The Sill is an online plant shop that makes buying plants (and learning how to keep them alive) really easy and approachable. By educating you on how easy or hard a plant is to keep alive — and even letting you sort that way while shopping — the Sill is a great solution for someone who just wants to not kill their plants (it’s me, I’m that person ).
I don’t always advocate for having more than one CTA in an email because things can start to feel crowded and unclear. But the Sill includes three equally important CTA’s in this one without losing clarity.
Their goals are clear — to get someone to shop online, to get someone to a store, or to get someone to read their plant-related content. Though they have multiple CTA’s, the email content is clear and they make it easy to do any/all of those things.
And hey, if they can teach me how not to kill plants, it makes sense that they can craft a stylish, informative welcome email, too.
Wrap up
Welcome emails are an important part of email marketing. Rarely will your subscribers ever be more engaged or interested than they are when they give you their email address, and it’s up to you to make the most of it.
And hopefully, after looking at these stunning, informative, and effective welcome email examples, you feel equipped to do just that.
The post 11 Incredible Welcome Email Examples (and Why They Work) appeared first on Campaign Monitor.

Marketing in 2021 is all about providing the best customer experience possible. With so much competition out there, providing a first-class experience is the only point of differentiation for brands. A clear eCommerce journey map helps you achieve this. The results of creating a great eCommerce journey map are plain to see, as they lead…
The post 6 Ways to Perfect Your eCommerce Journey Map to Create a Memorable Customer Experience appeared first on Benchmark Email.

Last Updated on November 3, 2021 by Rakesh GuptaTo understand how to solve the same business use case using Process Builder. Check out this article Getting Started with Process Builder – Part 10 (Auto forward Records to a Connection). Big Idea or Enduring Question: Salesforce-to-Salesforce is a natively supported feature
The post Getting Started with Salesforce Flow – Part 78 (Auto Forward Records to a Connection) appeared first on Automation Champion.

Marketing is an umbrella term for a wide variety of methods and strategies meant to benefit your business. Your business has different needs that will require different types of marketing efforts. For instance, engaging with your audience and improving sales are related, but still separate goals, so you can’t apply the exact same strategy for both. And if your need is to connect your business and product to other businesses, it will require business-to-business (B2B) marketing.
Growing and expanding your business will require a strong marketing plan. Running a business doesn’t require the exact same skillset as marketing a business. Many marketing professionals will specialize their focus on a specific sector, such as B2B marketing. These consultants or agencies utilize their specialization to help businesses improve their marketing strategies.

The Benefits of Hiring a Consultant
Focusing on a specialty has a lot of benefits compared to having surface-level knowledge of a general topic. Hiring a consultant will give you more time to focus on your business while they build you an effective marketing strategy. A consultant will also bring a fresh perspective and a new angle to your marketing. As well, they only have one role that they can dedicate their full time to. It’s also easier to teach one person your business needs and style versus a group.
How much does B2B consulting cost?
According to ZipRecruiter, the national average pay for a marketing consultant is $26 per hour. That may be a good starting point for you to configure your budget. Figuring out your budget will determine how much you can spend on a B2B consultant or agency. These marketing professionals may charge a fixed fee, invoice their materials and time spent later, or request a base fee with an added risk/reward element based on the achieved outcomes. For a longer project, they may ask for a monthly or annual retainer that guarantees them a fixed fee.

The Benefits of Hiring an Agency
Consultants may only offer strategy, planning, or execution, while an agency can accomplish all three. An agency may also be able to give you more individualized attention because they have more (wo)manpower. Hiring a marketing agency is especially necessary for businesses that don’t have a large in-house marketing division. Outsourcing the entirety of your B2B marketing efforts will take the burden off of you and your employees.

Choosing the right agency or consultant for your business will take some searching. Hiring the wrong marketing help could end up being a waste of resources and your budget if they end up not making progress toward any of your goals. Follow these steps to hire the best one for your business.
1. Define the outcomes you want to achieve.
There’s a reason why you’re seeking the help of a consultant or agency for your B2B marketing. Pinpoint what you want to be improved, whether that is improving something specific within your current marketing strategy or developing a brand new strategy. These goals should be structured in a way that allows them to be tracked so that you can monitor progress toward achieving them.
2. Decide whether you want an agency or a consultant.
The outcomes you previously defined will help determine whether you need an agency or a consultant. If you have a smaller budget and a more specific need, then a consultant would be a good choice. If you have a larger budget and a more broad need, you may do better with a consultant.
3. Choose a budget and stick to it.
When configuring a budget for your marketing efforts, don’t forget to weigh the risk versus the reward. If the reward that you stand to gain is substantial, then it may be fair to advocate a bit more of the budget to your B2B marketing efforts. Then, search for agencies or consultants within your budget.
4. Establish what specialties your hire should have.
Narrow the list even further by focusing on the professionals that have experience in your industry, ideally with exact B2B marketing experience in your industry. Use your desired outcomes to choose what work history and skill set your top candidates should have.
5. Create a shortlist.
Once you’ve found some candidates within your budget that have a skill set that aligns with your goals, you can start naming some to a shortlist. Choose candidates that you believe are worth interviewing that might be a good fit for the role.
6. Pick 10 insightful interview questions.
What do you really want to know about a potential B2B consultant or agency? Have they accomplished your specific needs for another organization in the past? Do they have creative ideas? Ask them about how they handled certain situations or what strategies they’ve developed with other businesses in the past.
7. Begin the partnership!
The most exciting part comes when you see one agency or consultant stand out among the rest and you can confidently choose them as your top pick. Get the paperwork written up and start the process! Confirm the goals of this partnership with your new hire and start working on your new B2B marketing plan.
Hire a B2B Marketing Consultant or Agency
Before you hire your B2B marketing agency or consultant, you should have set clear goals to accomplish with their help. After the decided strategy is implemented, continue tracking progress toward the desired outcomes. This will help you see how valuable or effective the help of the consultant or agency ended up being for your business. As well, ensure that any strategies or methods that were implemented for the long-term continue to be maintained if they are working well.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in February 2009 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Connecting with your audience on social media might seem as simple as a post and a follow, but it’s actually a lot more complex. Twitter as a marketing tool can apply to PR, thought leadership, brand building, and lead generation. Selling on Twitter takes some skill and practice, but it’s a viable platform for growing your business that is definitely worth the effort.

What can I sell on Twitter?
The short answer is: Anything! The great thing about social media marketing is that it can be used to sell such a wide variety of products. There’s a lot of business to be done on the internet across many channels. There is a niche somewhere on the web for anything you may have to sell. To tap into your niche and sell on Twitter like the pros do, follow these best practices.

The internet can be unpredictable, but there are some specific actions you can take to make sure you get a positive ROI from using Twitter. No sale is guaranteed, but utilizing some of these best practices will help you get the most out of Twitter as a tool for sales.
1. Interact with your audience.
Social media was created for people to be social, so don’t be shy! Respond to your mentions and retweets, do Q&A sessions, and be active with not just your followers but other relevant people in your industry. This helps build interest and trust that will encourage your audience to participate in the conversation, too.
2. Share things your market is interested in
Your stream of tweets shouldn’t only be about what you are selling. Users will be more likely to follow you if they see that you are sharing content they want to see and posts they can relate to. And the more eyes you can get on your profile, the more potential leads you’ll have.
3. Monitor your company’s reputation.
Keep track of what users are saying about your business online with routine social listening. Anytime you or your product is mentioned, check out what is being said so that you’re aware of how people are discussing it. Analyze the information for any helpful insight to improve what might be preventing leads from becoming customers.
4. Be consistent.
The Twitter algorithm favors users who tweet frequently and consistently. To help you do this, there are a lot of social media management tools that allow you to schedule posts in advance. This way, you don’t feel pressured to open the app everyday and think of something new and insightful to say. A scheduling app can keep your Tweets consistent, which means your leads will stay consistent, too.
5. Take feedback.
Don’t just watch what users are saying about your business or your product, actually listen. Customers who have had a negative or positive experience may voice their opinion on Twitter. Take the free feedback you would usually need to pay a focus group for and apply changes that can improve your sales.
6. Stay updated on industry news.
Stay on top of big (or small) changes in your industry by checking Twitter frequently. For example, if you heard that your competitor made a big announcement but you don’t know the details, search on Twitter for the competitor’s name to find out the latest news and what people have to say about it. Twitter’s real-time updates are great for getting wind of big news before it’s even published across the web. This upper hand will inform you of ways to gain more sales over the competition.

Social media has grown immensely as a business tool which means you will always be behind the competition if you’re not using it. In fact, Twitter’s monetizable daily active users (mDAU) amounts to 206 million people. That’s a ton of opportunities to sell on the platform. Some of those users could fall within your target audience. Unfortunately, a large following alone doesn’t guarantee sales, so use these tips to best take advantage of the platform for business revenue.
Using Twitter as a platform for selling your product can be really effective if you do it right. It’s not just about building a big following or promoting the most content. Focus on the following tips to improve your sales through Twitter.
1. Have a plan.
Don’t dive into selling on Twitter blindly. Create a strategy for Twitter marketing that works for you and your product and then execute it.
2. Determine which trends and hashtags will benefit you.
You don’t need to go viral in order to be seen, but you do need to put yourself in a position to be found. Following relevant popular trends and using hashtags will put your profile in front of the users that are seeking your content.
3. Build a great profile.
It’s easy to completely customize your Twitter profile with adjustments that fit your product. Even your “handle” doesn’t necessarily have to simply be the name of your business, it could be related to your product or your branding. And this also includes having a special pinned tweet that you want to call attention to as part of your profile.
4. Establish a personality.
Are your tweets going to be humorous? Serious? Lighthearted? Memes? Decide what you want users to see from your brand and how you want your Twitter profile to express it.
5. Connect with influencers or relevant followers.
Find people who are changemakers in your industry and keep up with them. Continuously check on what they are saying and decide what collaborations could benefit your business. For example, co-branding partnerships are a mutually beneficial offer you could make to another successful brand that you connect with on Twitter.
6. Mind your following to follower ratio.
Believe it or not, the myth that users care about your follow-back ratio is actually true. It’s a signal of the success of your account, so be more selective about which users you choose to follow.
7. Don’t be afraid of promotions.
Twitter ads are an awesome tool that you should take advantage of. They are a smart way to promote your brand and your product once you target the correct audience.
Use Twitter Effectively as a Selling Tool
Different social media platforms require different strategies to be effective. For instance, Twitter is focused on text while Instagram is focused on media. Consider the unique aspects of Twitter as a platform and use them to your advantage as you’re developing a strategy. Social media is an important tool for selling your product that can’t be ignored as you continue to grow your business.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in October 2009 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Website traffic represents the volume of users visiting your site. Higher is better because more people visiting your site means more opportunities for advertising, engagement, and eventual conversion.
Ideally, you want to steadily increase website traffic, or at least keep it stable over time. But what happens if your traffic starts to drop? Whether it’s slow or sudden, the results are the same: A smaller pool of users who are seeing your content and potentially generating revenue for your brand. Even more worrisome for site admins is that traffic drops may not have an obvious cause. With multiple traffic sources and factors that influence your site ranking and accessibility, even small drops may be the result of several independent or codependent conditions.
While there’s no quick fix for these drops, we’ve got you covered with actionable tips to pinpoint, diagnose and address falling traffic.

Why is my website traffic down?
To boost traffic levels, site owners must first discover why traffic is down. With multiple traffic sources such as email, social media, organic, and referral, it’s not enough to simply know that traffic is falling — you need to identify the source of the drop itself and then take steps to specifically address the problem.
There are several ways to determine which traffic source is driving your numbers down. Let’s take a look at those next.
How To Identify the Source of Traffic Drops
HubSpot Sources
If you’re using HubSpot’s CMS, you can leverage HubSpot Sources to determine where your traffic is coming from. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to do this.
Step 1: First, you need to install the HubSpot tracking code on your site. Head to your HubSpot account and click the Settings icon in the main navigation bar.

Step 2: Next, head to Tracking & Analytics and then Tracking Code on the left sidebar.
Step 3: Now you should see the tracking code.

Copy the code and then paste it before the </body> tag in the HTML code on each page of your site you want to track.
Step 4: Once that’s done, head to the Reports section of your account and then Analytics Tools.

Step 5: Next, select Traffic Analytics.

Here, you’ll see the Sources tab, which displays total sessions as a line chart broken out into different colors by traffic type including referrals, social media, email marketing and direct traffic.This gives you a visual representation of where your traffic is coming from and how it’s changed over a specific period of time.

Google Analytics Acquisition Channels
You can also identify traffic sources using Google Analytics.
Step 1: Start by logging into your Google Analytics account and selecting the Acquisition tab.

Step 2: Then, select All Traffic followed by Source/Medium.
This will provide you with a list of traffic sources to your website along with the number of users they’ve brought.

Diagnosing Traffic Drops
Once you’ve determined the source of your traffic drops, you need to diagnose the problem in-depth: What conditions or actions are causing traffic to fall?
Let’s take a look at some common traffic categories and some questions you can ask to determine what’s going on.
Organic Traffic
Organic traffic refers to visitors who land on your site after conducting a web search and clicking on links from the search engine results page (SERP). It’s called “organic” traffic because it doesn’t come from paid advertising or marketing but instead occurs naturally — or organically — as a result of search queries.
If you notice that your organic traffic is down, ask yourself:
Where is my site in the search rankings?
The higher you rank on the SERP, the more likely you’ll earn organic traffic. Do a quick search for your site’s primary keyword and see what comes up. If you’re not on the first page of the search results, then your site is struggling to get visibility in the SERP.
How is my SEO?
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing your website so search engines will find it and rank it highly against similar sites. If each of your webpages isn’t strategically targeting keywords related to your business, you could be missing opportunities to bring traffic to your site.
Direct Traffic
Direct traffic arrives at your site after typing in the name of your site directly, navigating to it through a bookmark or clicking on a direct email link. If you see direct traffic taking a dive, consider:
What do my URLs look like?
Your URLs should be as simple, clean and concise as possible. If you have pages with long and convoluted URLs, users may be attempting to reach your page but find a 404 error instead because they typed your website address into the web browser incorrectly.
Have I recently updated pages?
If you’re recently updated webpages, look for any changes in URLs. If you’ve made changes without properly redirecting the old links to the new ones, visitors may be seeing error pages which will result in traffic drops.
Referral Traffic
Referral traffic typically comes from other sources such as site lists or blogs. This type of traffic is often part of link building campaigns. For example, you might draft and submit a guest blog to a popular website and include a link back to your site at the end.
If you suddenly see a dropoff in previously consistent referral traffic, ask yourself:
Are backlink sites ranking well?
Blogs and site lists can drive referral traffic, but only if they’re getting visitors as well. If you’re seeing a drop, search for your referral sites and see how they rank.
Do my links point to the right page?
Just like the in direct traffic example above, make sure your links are pointing visitors to the right page. If you’ve made recent URL updates, contact blog or site list owners to have them amended.
Paid Search Traffic
Paid search traffic is exactly what it sounds like: Paid ads within the search engines that display advertisements for your website in search results. The more you spend, the more often your ad will appear and the closer it will be to the top of search results.
If you see paid traffic stalling, ask yourself:
Are my ads in the right place?
Ads only work if they’re targeting the right audience. If you own a window-washing company, then it’s not a good idea to display ads on fashion advice blogs because the quantity and quality of traffic probably won’t match your expectations.
Email Traffic
Email traffic comes from links in emails you send to current and prospective customers. These might be newsletters, sales flyers, or targeted advertisements based on customer preferences. If your email traffic starts to decline, consider these questions:
Do I have the right market?
Effective email campaigns target the right market. You need to know who your customers are, how they prefer to interact with brands, and how much they’re willing to spend to create effective emails. If your target market is loosely defined — or absent — start with email marketing tools to help identify your ideal customers.
Are current emails effective?
Not all emails are created equal. Information alone isn’t enough to capture consumer interest — brands must also include actionable next steps that encourage users to click through. To help boost email efficacy consider A/B testing: Create two versions of a marketing email and see which one produces better results, then repeat the process to refine as necessary.
Social Media Traffic
Social media traffic comes from sites like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram when customers click through on one of your posts and arrive at your website. If your social traffic starts sliding, ask yourself:
Do my social media posts drive action?
Social media posts need to do more than get users to stop scrolling — they must provide enough information to get users interested but leave enough left unsaid to prompt action. In practice, this means creating optimized social posts that convince customers to click through and see what you have to offer.
Am I using the right platform?
Image-driven platforms such as Instagram are great for brands that use images to highlight popular products. Service-based brands, on the other hand, often see better performance from sites such as Facebook. Drilling down to see which platforms are driving your traffic can help pinpoint ideal marketing channels.

While there’s no single way to fix traffic drops, there are general steps that site owners can take to help remedy these issues:
1. Run traffic reports to identify recent changes.
In most cases, traffic drops are the result of multiple factors that combine to lower the number of unique visitors that arrive on your site. Your best bet in this situation is to look at any recent changes to your website, linking strategy or advertising goals.
For example, if you’ve just done a site-wide update to improve the overall design and user experience (UX) and traffic has dropped as a result, run reports to see where your traffic is coming from and if there are specific sources and mediums that have seen a sudden drop. If you notice that direct and referral traffic are down, this may be an indication that URLs are no longer pointing to the right pages.
In order to keep your traffic up, you’ll want to make sound decisions on this data. If you notice one source or medium, in particular, is contributing to the drop, take a look at your processes and workflows there for any gaps that are causing your site to perform poorly.
2. Be better than the competition.
Sometimes it’s not your site that’s the issue. If your competition has managed to corner the SEO market for your industry or have changed their marketing techniques to better target shared customer segments, you may see a drop in traffic.
To determine if this is the case, start by searching for your site’s primary keywords across popular search engines and see what comes up. If you notice competitor sites have pushed yours down the list, they may be outperforming your search optimization. It’s also worth checking your sources to see if social media traffic is down — if so, your competition may be doing a better job driving organic interest across social platforms
To fix this problem, you’ll need to write content and design webpages that are better than every website ranking above yours. This means targeting a specific buyer persona with each page and having clear calls to action.
3. Keep your site healthy.
Site conditions have an impact on how your website is indexed and ranked by search engines. If you see traffic sliding, take a look at current conditions and how they may impact users.
For example, if your site is slow to load because of large image or video files, users won’t stick around and search engines will penalize your ranking. Issues around layout and functionality are also problematic. Broken links or content that’s all fluff and no function may be increasing the number of users who arrive at your site and immediately leave, in turn dropping your site in search rankings.
Using a content delivery network (CDN) can help videos and images load faster while a tool like Ahrefs’ SEO toolbar can spot broken links on a page so you can fix them quickly.
For even more tips on how to boost traffic to your site, check out HubSpot’s free website optimization course.
Tackling Traffic Slowdowns
Traffic drops may be slow-and-steady or sudden and substantive. In either case, however, they have the same result: Fewer visitors on your site and fewer opportunities for customer conversion.
To address these traffic issues, start by identifying the likely source, then consider potential issues tied to specific traffic mediums. Finally, take action to address common traffic concerns — with any luck, you’ll soon be back up to speed.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in January 2011 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.