Author: Franz Malten Buemann

In practically any discipline, it’s a good idea to have others evaluate your work with fresh eyes, and this is especially true in user experience and web design. Otherwise, your partiality for your own work can skew your perception of it. Learning directly from the people that your work is actually for — your users — is what enables you to craft the best user experience possible.

UX and design professionals leverage usability testing to get user feedback on their product or website’s user experience all the time. In this post, you’ll learn:
What usability testing is

Its purpose and goals
Scenarios where it can work
Real-life examples and case studies
How to conduct one of your own
Scripted questions you can use along the way

What is usability testing?
Usability testing is a method of evaluating a product or website’s user experience. By testing the usability of their product or website with a representative group of their users or customers, UX researchers can determine if their actual users can easily and intuitively use their product or website.

UX researchers will usually conduct usability studies on each iteration of their product from its early development to its release.
During a usability study, the moderator asks participants in their individual user session to complete a series of tasks while the rest of the team observes and takes notes. By watching their actual users navigate their product or website and listening to their praises and concerns about it, they can see when the participants can quickly and successfully complete tasks and where they’re enjoying the user experience, encountering problems, and experiencing confusion.
After conducting their study, they’ll analyze the results and report any interesting insights to the project lead.

What is the purpose of usability testing?
Usability testing allows researchers to uncover any problems with their product’s user experience, decide how to fix these problems, and ultimately determine if the product is usable enough.
Identifying and fixing these early issues saves the company both time and money: Developers don’t have to overhaul the code of a poorly designed product that’s already built, and the product team is more likely to release it on schedule.
Benefits of Usability Testing
Usability testing has five major advantages over the other methods of examining a product’s user experience (such as questionnaires or surveys):

Usability testing provides an unbiased, accurate, and direct examination of your product or website’s user experience. By testing its usability on a sample of actual users who are detached from the amount of emotional investment your team has put into creating and designing the product or website, their feedback can resolve most of your team’s internal debates.
Usability testing is convenient. To conduct your study, all you have to do is find a quiet room and bring in portable recording equipment. If you don’t have recording equipment, someone on your team can just take notes.
Usability testing can tell you what your users do on your site or product and why they take these actions.
Usability testing lets you address your product’s or website’s issues before you spend a ton of money creating something that ends up having a poor design.
For your business, intuitive design boosts customer usage and their results, driving demand for your product.

Usability Testing Scenario Examples
Usability testing sounds great in theory, but what value does it provide in practice? Here’s what it can do to actually make a difference for your product:
1. Identify points of friction in the usability of your product.
As Brian Halligan said at INBOUND 2019, “Dollars flow where friction is low.” This just as true in UX as it is in sales or customer service. The more friction your product has, the more reason your users will have to find something that’s easier to use.
Usability testing can uncover points of friction from customer feedback.
For example: “My process begins in Google Drive. I keep switching between windows and making multiple clicks just to copy and paste from Drive into this interface.”
Even though the product team may have had that task in mind when they created the tool, seeing it in action and hearing the user’s frustration uncovered a use case that the tool didn’t compensate for. It might lead the team to solve for this problem by creating an easy import feature or way to access Drive within the interface to reduce the number of clicks the user needs to make to accomplish their task.
2. Stress test across many environments and use cases.
Our products don’t exist in a vacuum, and sometimes development environments are unable to compensate for all the variables. Getting the product out and tested by users can uncover bugs that you may not have noticed while testing internally.
For example: “The check boxes disappear when I click on them.”
Let’s say that the team investigates why this might be, and they discover that the user is on a browser that’s not commonly used (or a browser version that’s outdated).
If the developers only tested across the browsers used in-house, they may have missed this bug, and it could have resulted in customer frustration.
3. Provide diverse perspectives from your user base.
While individuals in our customer bases have a lot in common (in particular, the things that led them to need and use our products), each individual is unique and brings a different perspective to the table. These perspectives are invaluable in uncovering issues that may not have occurred to your team.
For example: “I can’t find where I’m supposed to click.”
Upon further investigation, it’s possible that this feedback came from a user who is color blind, leading your team to realize that the color choices did not create enough contrast for this user to navigate properly.
Insights from diverse perspectives can lead to design, architectural, copy, and accessibility improvements.
4. Give you clear insights into your product’s strengths and weaknesses.
You likely have competitors in your industry whose products are better than yours in some areas and worse than yours in others. These variations in the market lead to competitive differences and opportunities. User feedback can help you close the gap on critical issues and identify what positioning is working.
For example: “This interface is so much easier to use and more attractive than [competitor product]. I just wish that I could also do [task] with it.”
Two scenarios are possible based on that feedback:

Your product can already accomplish the task the user wants. You just have to make it clear that the feature exists by improving copy or navigation.
You have a really good opportunity to incorporate such a feature in future iterations of the product.

5. Inspire you with potential future additions or enhancements.
Speaking of future iterations, that comes to the next example of how usability testing can make a difference for your product: The feedback that you gather can inspire future improvements to your tool.
It’s not just about rooting out issues but also envisioning where you can go next that will make the most difference for your customers. And who best to ask but your prospective and current customers themselves?

Usability Testing Examples & Case Studies
Now that you have an idea of the scenarios in which usability testing can help, here are some real-life examples of it in action:
1. User Fountain + Satchel

Satchel is a developer of education software, and their goal was to improve the experience of the site for their users. Consulting agency User Fountain conducted a usability test focusing on one question: “If you were interested in Satchel’s product, how would you progress with getting more information about the product and its pricing?”
During the test, User Fountain noted significant frustration as users attempted to complete the task, particularly when it came to locating pricing information. Only 80% of users were successful.

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This led User Fountain to create the hypothesis that a “Get Pricing” link would make the process clearer for users. From there, they tested a new variation with such a link against a control version. The variant won, resulting in a 34% increase in demo requests.
By testing a hypothesis based on real feedback, friction was eliminated for the user, bringing real value to Satchel.
2. Kylie.Design + Digi-Key

Ecommerce site Digi-Key approached consultant Kylie.Design to uncover which site interactions had the highest success rates and what features those interactions had in common.
They conducted more than 120 tests and recorded:

Click paths from each user
Which actions were most common
The success rates for each

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This as well as the written and verbal feedback provided by participants informed the new design, which resulted in increasing purchaser success rates from 68.2% to 83.3%.
In essence, Digi-Key was able to identify their most successful features and double-down on them, improving the experience and their bottom line.
3. Sparkbox + An Academic Medical Center

An academic medical center in the midwest partnered with consulting agency Sparkbox to improve the patient experience on their homepage, where some features were suffering from low engagement.
Sparkbox conducted a usability study to determine what users wanted from the homepage and what didn’t meet their expectations. From there, they were able to propose solutions to increase engagement.

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For example, one key action was the ability to access electronic medical records. The new design based on user feedback increased the success rate from 45% to 94%.
This is a great example of putting the user’s pains and desires front-and-center in a design.

The 9 Phases of a Usability Study
1. Decide which part of your product or website you want to test.
Do you have any pressing questions about how your users will interact with certain parts of your design, like a particular interaction or workflow? Or are you wondering what users will do first when they land on your product page? Gather your thoughts about your product or website’s pros, cons, and areas of improvement, so you can create a solid hypothesis for your study.
2. Pick your study’s tasks.
Your participants’ tasks should be your user’s most common goals when they interact with your product or website, like making a purchase.
3. Set a standard for success.
Once you know what to test and how to test it, make sure to set clear criteria to determine success for each task. For instance, when I was in a usability study for HubSpot’s Content Strategy tool, I had to add a blog post to a cluster and report exactly what I did. Setting a threshold of success and failure for each task lets you determine if your product’s user experience is intuitive enough or not.
4. Write a study plan and script.
At the beginning of your script, you should include the purpose of the study, if you’ll be recording, some background on the product or website, questions to learn about the participants’ current knowledge of the product or website, and, finally, their tasks. To make your study consistent, unbiased, and scientific, moderators should follow the same script in each user session.
5. Delegate roles.
During your usability study, the moderator has to remain neutral, carefully guiding the participants through the tasks while strictly following the script. Whoever on your team is best at staying neutral, not giving into social pressure, and making participants feel comfortable while pushing them to complete the tasks should be your moderator
Note-taking during the study is also just as important. If there’s no recorded data, you can’t extract any insights that’ll prove or disprove your hypothesis. Your team’s most attentive listener should be your note-taker during the study.
6. Find your participants.
Screening and recruiting the right participants is the hardest part of usability testing. Most usability experts suggest you should only test five participants during each study, but your participants should also closely resemble your actual user base. With such a small sample size, it’s hard to replicate your actual user base in your study.
To recruit the ideal participants for your study, create the most detailed and specific persona as you possibly can and incentivize them to participate with a gift card or another monetary reward.
Recruiting colleagues from other departments who would potentially use your product is also another option. But you don’t want any of your team members to know the participants because their personal relationship can create bias — since they want to be nice to each other, the researcher might help a user complete a task or the user might not want to constructively criticize the researcher’s product design.
7. Conduct the study.
During the actual study, you should ask your participants to complete one task at a time, without your help or guidance. If the participant asks you how to do something, don’t say anything. You want to see how long it takes users to figure out your interface.
Asking participants to “think out loud” is also an effective tactic — you’ll know what’s going through a user’s head when they interact with your product or website.
After they complete each task, ask for their feedback, like if they expected to see what they just saw, if they would’ve completed the task if it wasn’t a test, if they would recommend your product to a friend, and what they would change about it. This qualitative data can pinpoint more pros and cons of your design.
8. Analyze your data.
You’ll collect a ton of qualitative data after your study. Analyzing it will help you discover patterns of problems, gauge the severity of each usability issue, and provide design recommendations to the engineering team.
When you analyze your data, make sure to pay attention to both the users’ performance and their feelings about the product. It’s not unusual for a participant to quickly and successfully achieve your goal but still feel negatively about the product experience.
9. Report your findings.
After extracting insights from your data, report the main takeaways and lay out the next steps for improving your product or website’s design and the enhancements you expect to see during the next round of testing.
The 3 Most Common Types of Usability Tests
1. Hallway/Guerilla Usability Testing
This is where you set up your study somewhere with a lot of foot traffic. It allows you to ask randomly-selected people who have most likely never even heard of your product or website — like passers-by — to evaluate its user-experience.
2. Remote/Unmoderated Usability Testing
Remote/unmoderated usability testing has two main advantages: it uses third-party software to recruit target participants for your study, so you can spend less time recruiting and more time researching. It also allows your participants to interact with your interface by themselves and in their natural environment — the software can record video and audio of your user completing tasks.
Letting participants interact with your design in their natural environment with no one breathing down their neck can give you more realistic, objective feedback. When you’re in the same room as your participants, it can prompt them to put more effort into completing your tasks since they don’t want to seem incompetent around an expert. Your perceived expertise can also lead to them to please you instead of being honest when you ask for their opinion, skewing your user experience’s reactions and feedback.
3. Moderated Usability Testing
Moderated usability testing also has two main advantages: interacting with participants in person or through a video a call lets you ask them to elaborate on their comments if you don’t understand them, which is impossible to do in an unmoderated usability study. You’ll also be able to help your users understand the task and keep them on track if your instructions don’t initially register with them.

Usability Testing Script & Questions
Following one script or even a template of questions for every one of your usability studies wouldn’t make any sense — each study’s subject matter is different. You’ll need to tailor your questions to the things you want to learn, but most importantly, you’ll need to know how to ask good questions.
1. When you [action], what’s the first thing you do to [goal]?
Questions such as this one give insight into how users are inclined to interact with the tool and what their natural behavior is.
Julie Fischer, one of HubSpot’s Senior UX researchers, gives this advice: “Don’t ask leading questions that insert your own bias or opinion into the participants’ mind. They’ll end up doing what you want them to do instead of what they would do by themselves.”
For example, “Find [x]” is a better than “Are you able to easily find [x]?” The latter inserts connotation that may affect how they use the product or answer the question.
2. How satisfied are you with the [attribute] of [feature]?
Avoid leading the participants by asking questions like “Is this feature too complicated?” Instead, gauge their satisfaction on a Likert scale that provides a number range from highly unsatisfied to highly satisfied. This will provide a less biased result than leading them to a negative answer they may not otherwise have had.
3. How do you use [feature]?
There may be multiple ways to achieve the same goal or utilize the same feature. This question will help uncover how users interact with a specific aspect of the product and what they find valuable.
4. What parts of [the product] do you use the most? Why?
This question is meant to help you understand the strengths of the product and what about it creates raving fans. This will indicate what you should absolutely keep and perhaps even lead to insights into what you can improve for other features.
5. What parts of [the product] do you use the least? Why?
This question is meant to uncover the weaknesses of the product or the friction in its use. That way, you can rectify any issues or plan future improvements to close the gap between user expectations and reality.
6. If you could change one thing about [feature] what would it be?
Because it’s so similar to #5, you may get some of the same answers. However, you’d be surprised about the aspirational things that your users might say here.
7. What do you expect [action/feature] to do?
Here’s another tip from Julie Fischer:
“When participants ask ‘What will this do?’ it’s best to reply with the question ‘What do you expect it do?’ rather than telling them the answer.”
Doing this can uncover user expectation as well as clarity issues with the copy.
Your Work Could Always Use a Fresh Perspective
Letting another person review and possibly criticize your work takes courage — no one wants a bruised ego. But most of the time, when you allow people to constructively criticize or even rip apart your article or product design, especially when your work is intended to help these people, your final result will be better than you could’ve ever imagined.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in August 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

As an organization gets larger, it becomes more and more difficult for different departments, and different employees within the same department, to communicate. Unfortunately, this can lead to a “left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing” scenario.
It’s bad when the communication failure occurs internally, but it’s considerably worse when potential or existing customers are privy to the breakdown.
From a sales standpoint, you may have sent a sales email to a prospect, only to be met with a reply of, “I’m already working with John” or “I’ve been a customer for five years … and no one has gotten back to me from my last question. Can you check into that?”
This is precious time that the salesperson and the organization can never get back. The salesperson could have spent that time emailing actual prospects. Instead, they’re now tracking down the person in charge of that account or someone who can fix the customer’s problem. Plus, they’ve wasted the customer’s time (and potentially irritated them).
If this has become an issue inside your organization, and you’d like your salesforce to do what they were hired to do — bring in more business — it may be time to consider Lead to Account Matching tools.
What is lead to account matching?
Lead to Account Matching is connecting leads to the appropriate accounts through an automated process. When this is enabled, a new lead that comes in will be automatically attached to the organization they belong to, and if that organization is already represented by a sales or account rep from your company, they’ll be connected to their record.
Why is lead to account matching important for your business?
Time is money, no matter what industry or space you exist in, and keeping your customers happy is the only way to create ongoing revenue and a healthy pipeline. If too much time is spent chasing the wrong lead, you may miss out on a quality lead that’s now buying elsewhere. Thankfully, Lead to Account Matching can help you make the most out of the leads you receive and:
Minimize Wasted Time
Any time that sales people spend not making phone calls, not sending emails, and not prospecting for new customers or checking in with their current customers, is wasted time. That means any running around they have to do to find answers to questions or work with other salespeople on that person’s existing customer, is a waste of time and a loss of revenue.
Lead to Account Matching ensures that the right person is notified when a lead comes in and then your salespeople can spend more time bringing in actual sales for your organization.
In addition, massive database cleanups can take days if not weeks to complete. Rather than wasting manpower on a project of this magnitude, allow the program to be consistently working.
Minimize Customer Annoyance and Loss of Trust
Put yourself in your customer’s shoes for a moment. Your inbox is about to burst. You’ve got sales emails coming out of your ears, and you just got one more. The worst part is that now, you’re being introduced to a company and a product that you already use.
It’s not only infuriating and a waste of time, but it also degrades your trust in the company. After all, if one person doesn’t know what another one is doing, how are they handling your actual business?
Salespeople need to instill trust in the company, the product, and the service … not degrade it. Lead to Account Matching can help you avoid this embarrassing and detrimental snafu.
Increase Efficiency
Paying for leads, or acquiring them through other means, is absolutely useless if you don’t treat them properly. If your sales team is spending time on the wrong leads, that’s money down the drain. A Lead to Account Matching tool helps them to set and follow a good lead flow so potential and existing customers are handled quickly and efficiently for maximum return on investment.  
Measure Smarter
A murky database filled with duplicates and expired contacts will never produce the true data that can help you evaluate your sales performance to improve your processes and provide training where necessary. A clean database, on the other hand, will allow you to gather the data you need to make necessary changes.  
How does lead to account matching work?
Depending on which Lead to Account Matching technology you use, there are different features available to you. However, every tool works off of one basic concept. It will scan your leads for specific characteristics and then match those leads to the correct account. It does this using different fields in your lead record.
For example, this software can associate a contact with a company by matching the domain in a contact’s email field to the company’s domain name field. That means that Bob@thebestcompanyever.com will be associated with www.bestcompanyever.com. Let’s say that another salesperson in your organization is working with another employee at Best Company Ever when Bob’s lead comes in. That lead will be assigned to that salesperson.
Sure, you could do this manually, but why waste your most valuable asset on clerical work that could be handled more efficiently using technology. Products like Leadangel will do this automatically, integrating with your existing CRM and bridging the gap between marketing automation and your CRM.
If you’re using a full suite CRM like HubSpot, this tool is built into the system and ready to work for you. In order to enable this function in your HubSpot account:
1. Go to the settings icon from the main navigation bar.
2. Navigate to Objects > Companies on the left sidebar menu.
3. From the Automation Section, select the checkbox to Create and associate companies with contacts.
4. To allow HubSpot to create new company records and associations based on your existing contacts’ email addresses, click Yes.
This will not only associate new contacts with company records based on their email addresses, it will also go through your database to update existing records.
Lead to Account Matching technology is not only helpful for your business, it’s essential. Why waste time and money contacting people who are already engaged with your company and working with another member of your sales team? Turn your sales department into an efficient, money-making machine and see more sales and happier customers.  

Market segmentation is a powerful process because it separates your audience into groups so you can effectively target them based on traits such as the challenges they’re facing and/or how they’ll respond to certain marketing efforts.
The most effective way to determine which traits you’ll use to group your audience is by using segmentation bases.

In this blog post, we’ll cover the definition of segmentation bases, how to apply them at your company, and how you can use multiple segmentation bases at once.
Before we dive into the five segmentation bases, let’s cover the basics.
Segmentation Bases in Marketing
Marketing segmentation assumes all of your customers are unique and can be categorized based on common defining characteristics or traits that you establish. Those characteristics or traits almost always fit within the five segmentation bases, which we’ll review below.
Benefits of Using Segmentation Based in Marketing
By using segmentation bases in marketing, you’ll unlock opportunities that will help you:

Improve the customer experience.
Effectively market your products.
Develop targeted marketing and sales enablement materials.
Identify areas for product development.
Show your target audience how you can resolve their challenges.

Segmentation Bases in Marketing Operations
Marketing operations is defined as the, “… people, processes, and technology that power a business’s overall marketing strategy and increase chances of success.”
While working on marketing, data strategy, implementation, and reporting, the marketing ops team can associate leads and contacts with your segmentation bases. That means they can surface strategies to effectively target those customer segments as well as reports, relevant dashboards, and metrics to track your success at marketing to those audience members.
As a result, your greater marketing team will have access to more organized marketing segments, contact data, reports, and relevant metrics. That means better customer experiences that convert more audience members.
Now, let’s look at the five segmentation bases and their defintions.

1. Psychographic Segmentation
Psychographic segmentation refers to someone’s psychological traits. This includes your audiences’ lifestyle preferences and patterns, and why they think the way they do. It also covers their typical activities, interests, and opinions.

2. Demographic Segmentation
Demographic segmentation refers to the statistical description and socioeconomic traits of your audience. This includes age, education, and gender, birth rates, gender, marriage status, income, and employment status.
3. Geographic Segmentation
Geographic segmentation refers to the location in which your audience resides and/ or works. You can go as broad or as granular as you want with geographic segmentation — for instance, you may group your audience by continent, country, state/ city, town, neighborhood, and so on.
4. Firmographic Segmentation
Firmographic segmentation refers to a company’s attributes and is helpful for B2B companies that are developing their segmentation bases. This includes but is not limited to their size, industry, and location.
(You might think of firmographic segmentation as demographic segmentation but for a business.)
5. Behavioral Segmentation
Behavioral segmentation refers to an audience group’s actions, habits, and interactions. If you’re thinking this sounds a bit like demographic segmentation, you’re not wrong. But it goes deeper into one’s buying habits than demographic segmentation does.
For instance, behavioral segmentation provides insight into the benefits that one gets from buying and using a certain product as well as how ready (or not ready) they are to convert into a customer.
Pro Tip: Use HubSpot’s Behavioral Targeting tool to personalize marketing outreach at scale while also making every interaction feel unique.

Other relevant features you’ll have access to with HubSpot’s Behavioral Targeting tool are:

Insights about the way your audience interacts with your site/ content.
Active lists for advanced segmentation, targeting, and audience building.
Event-based triggers for sending audience members messages at the right time.

Using Multiple Segmentation Bases
You don’t have to just use one or two segmentation bases — you can use all five, or a mix of them.
And once you select the segmentation bases you’re doing to move forward with, you aren’t stuck with them forever. As your business evolves, so do your customer base and target audience. That means you’ll naturally want to review, update, add to, and remove from your list of segmentation bases over time.
The key is using the segmentation bases that matter to your business accurately and applying them in a way that allows you to effectively target and reach the audience members within them.
Before we provide some tips on how to use multiple segmentation bases, let’s take a moment to cover why you’d want to use multiple segmentation bases.
Why Use Multiple Segmentation Bases
Businesses use multiple segmentation bases — a process that’s also known as multi-segment marketing — because the product or service that they sell applies to target audience members in different ways.
For instance, a business that sells tennis skirts may sell skirts to customers who play a lot of tennis, and to other customers who don’t play tennis but want a workout skirt for other forms of activity (e.g. running, walking, etc.).
Multiple segmentation bases are also commonly used if your business sells more than one product or service. For instance, the company that sells tennis skirts may also sell tennis rackets and tennis shoes. The customers who need a skirt versus a tennis racket or shoes will need to be targeted differently. Especially if those tennis items are for both men, women, and kids.
How to Use Multiple Segmentation Bases
By using multiple segmentation bases, you’ll get a better understanding of the people who complete your target audience — as a result, you’ll be able to more effectively target them, meet (and exceed) their needs and expectations, and convert more of them into customers.
Here are some tips to remember while using multiple segmentation bases:

Determine which segmentation bases you want to establish for your unique audience and how granular you want to go within those segments.
Collaborate internally across marketing (and even sales) while identifying and defining your customer segments to ensure they’re as accurate and helpful as possible.
Review and update your segmentation bases if and when needed (e.g. take a look at them quarterly to ensure they evolve alongside your business).
Get feedback from your team members (you can do this across marketing and sales) about the way your segments are organized. You can also survey (and incentivize) your current customers, or those who recently converted in some way, to ask for their feedback around your marketing content and targeting efforts.

Use Segmentation Bases to Grow Better
Using segmentation bases has a number of benefits. You can better understand your audience, target your leads and prospects more effectively, create and offer marketing and sales materials that better meet their needs, identify product development and marketing opportunities, and more. Begin working on your business’s segmentation bases to grow better.

 

 

Even if it sounds like another redundant invention, Marketing Automation increases sales for 80% of marketers (Business2Community). eCommerce is facing various challenges, and Marketing Automation is a solution for them. Your executives may be reluctant to innovate, but this article will prepare you to perfectly present MA to your CEO.

 

The biggest challenges faced by today’s eCommerce

 

Running an eCommerce business these days is not a simple task. Customers are more and more demanding, and the competition does not slow down and responds to people’s expectations immediately. With full awareness of the daily challenges faced by marketers, Marketing Automation is a solution to most of them:

 

Differentiating yourself

 

Identical campaigns will not arouse the interest of customers. Especially not at a time when their e-mail boxes and social media are full of promotional content. Email content that a client is not interested in often leads to unsubscribing.

 

Marketing Automation provides audience targeted options, and personalized 1-to-1 offers that will keep your customers interested, and often budge them to make a purchase.

 

Nurturing customer loyalty

 

If a customer visited your site once, it would be a mistake not to make every effort to make them stay, especially while your competition is constantly lurking for your clients. However, if a client must spend a lot of time on your website to search for items they are interested in, they will get discouraged and leave.

 

Thanks to Marketing Automation you will be able to adjust your offer in real time. AI engine predicts customers desires and keeps their attention by social proof and popups.

 

Shopping cart abandonment

 

Regardless of the size of the business, every eCommerce suffers from abandoned shopping carts. eCommerce brands lose $18 billion in sales revenue each year because of cart abandonment. [Sleeknote]

 

Reminding your customers of viewed products is essential to lower your abandoned carts percentage. For this purpose Marketing Automation uses numerous communication channels, such as email, web push, or Facebook ads to make them reconsider their choices. 

 

Providing omnichannel experience

 

Customers expect quick and easy access to your brand through various unified touchpoints, such as website, phone, email, and social media. It is you who must try to reach them, not the other way around.

 

If you want to improve your total sales, and average order size, value, and frequency, Omnichannel is crucial. Integration of all touchpoints and communication channels allows you to plan where and when your content will be displayed, and Marketing Automation allows you that.

 

How to present the benefits of MA to your CEO

 

Implementing a new system into the company is always the decision of the executives, and they are not always positively disposed towards innovation. They also will not like the idea of wasting their time on talking to you. They will probably put you off and say they don’t have time, but if you manage to talk to them eventually, you need to know what to say. Here are 8 sentences, that might help you:

 

Our competitors use it.

 

One of the aspects that is constantly on your CEO’s mind is how to be better than their competition. That is why you should provide them with the list of brands from your industry that use Marketing Automation. 

 

We can improve our current operations.

 

Present your CEO the list of already existing marketing actions with an explanation of why they are not as effective as they could be after the implementation of Marketing Automation. Maybe you send standard, identical emails to your customers, when you could be sending personalized offers? 

 

This is an investment.

 

Your CEO won’t spend money on anything without having a clear proof that this money won’t go down the drain. Collect data that proves it is truly beneficial, e.g. after implementing Marketing Automation New Balance made a 200% increase in OR and CTR which translates to real financial results. 

 

This is the solution to our problems.

 

Consider the issues that bothers your company the most. It could be the lack of customers’ loyalty or high percentage of abandoned carts. Whatever it is, make your CEO aware of how Marketing Automation can solve this problem. 

 

This is a method of enhancing Customer’s Experience.

 

A memorable and smooth experience is crucial for building a loyal customer base. However, this requires considering that your webstore must be adjusted to not only desktop, but also mobile users. To provide the best digital experience Marketing Automation uses an omnichannel method. 

 

Our priorities are growth, productivity, innovation, and competition.

 

Surely your CEO will appreciate that you take into account the priorities of the entire team. Fortunately, Marketing Automation positively influences all of the mentioned fields. 

 

We will take more care of our loyal customers and gain new ones more efficiently. 

 

To have a successful business you need both – loyal and new customers. Every executive is aware of this fact and I am sure that a solution that will keep those two groups satisfied is something that your CEO cannot ignore. 

 

We can get more done, faster and with fewer resources.

 

All the repetitive, manual tasks that were previously done by the staff, now can be automated, which means that the system allows employees to focus on other activities that will streamline your marketing.

 

Our plans could be based on the data we need, not on intuition. 

 

Marketing Automation system allows you to analyze the client’s entire journey. This data gives you the ability to focus more on the areas where your marketing still needs an improvement to be able to reach potential clients. You won’t waste time and money on ineffective marketing actions.

 

A brief summary

 

The current market is not indulgent towards eCommerce businesses. The competition is fierce and each individual customer is at a premium. Every day marketers struggle to stand out from the crowd, keep customers for longer, convert abandoned carts into completed transactions, and reach customers through different touchpoints.

 

Marketing Automation turns out to be the solution to this struggle, but convincing your CEO to implement innovations can turn out to be a tedious process. Remember that you need to show above-average patience to be successful. Proper preparation and the selection of relevant arguments are the basis in an interview with the CEO. Support your arguments with evidence, mention your competition, focus on how Marketing Automation will positively affect your company, and it is very likely that you will meet a positive response. 

 

Marketing Automation is crucial in eCommerce. After the implementation of this system your company will meet the requirements of even the most demanding customers without unnecessary effort. You just need to make your CEO aware of this.

 

If you have any questions, set up a 1-to-1 webinar with our specialist.

2021 has a special significance for email – it’s been 50 years since email began! Who would have thought that it would revolutionize the world and business, as it has? In honor of this momentous birthday, let’s learn how to strategically use email to take your business to the next level. But first, some fun…
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There’s no denying that content creation is time-consuming. You have to think of what to post, create a graphic, write a caption, choose hashtags, post the content, and engage with your audience in the comments—and then do it all again, and again, and again.
While the challenges of social media content creation may feel daunting, showing up consistently has big benefits for your business. By posting valuable content consistently, you can:

Grow your audience
Increase brand awareness
Build authority in your industry
Improve engagement

If you are looking to achieve any of the benefits listed above, it is worth figuring out a sustainable strategy for saving time planning and creating social media content. The key to achieving this is twofold—planning in advance and batch working content creation.
@stilclassicsMultitasking—A Cautionary Tale
Let’s take a moment to talk about something we all do—multitasking. Multitasking often feels productive because you are doing “all the things”, but in reality, multitasking is one of the least productive things you can do.
It has been estimated that only 2% of the population is actually proficient at multitasking. When you switch from task to task, it actually takes 50% longer to accomplish a task. (John Medina, Brain Rules).
“Only 2% of the population is actually proficient at multitasking.”
So what are the 98% of us that are not proficient multitaskers supposed to do? The answer—when it comes to social media content creation—is creating a system and batch working. Below is a process that you can repeat each month to save time planning and creating your social media content.
Content Planning Process
Each month, set aside time to map out your social media content for the following month. By outlining the content topics you want to cover for the entire month, you can look at your content from a higher level and be more strategic about your content plan. Plan on spending 1-2 hours each month mapping out your content for the following month.
Plan on spending 1-2 hours each month mapping out your content
Things to include in your content plan:

Number of posts. How often do you post (or want to post) each week? Keep in mind that quality and consistency are more important than the number of posts. Stick to a schedule and frequency you can sustain long-term.

Goals. What are your overall business goals for the month? How can your content support those goals?

Any important dates. Do you have a new product or service launching, or an event? Plug those into your plan first, so you can fill in supporting content around them.

Social media holidays you want to “celebrate”. Are there relevant social media holidays you want to celebrate on your social platforms? This list has a good roundup of these types of holidays, or you can always research those that are specific to your industry.

With this content roadmap, you can confidently go into the month knowing what content needs to be created each week (more on that later).
What Types of Social Media Content Should You Create?
One of the biggest challenges when it comes to social media content is knowing what to post. When creating content for social media, it is important to share a variety of types of content. Your content should educate, entertain, or sell.
Below are a few examples of businesses balancing content that educates, entertains, and sells.
Bulletproof (@bulletproof)
Bulletproof balances entertainment, education, and sales very well in their content. They highlight their products, share recipes and answer FAQS, and create funny, relatable GIFs.
Screenshot of Bulletproof’s Instagram profile.Shopify (@shopify)
Shopify shares inspiring personal stories of their customers, encourages conversation and engagement by asking questions, and sharing video content with “how” and “why” motivating life hacks.
Screenshot of Shopify’s Instagram profile.Flodesk (@flodesk)
Flodsesk highlights new features, shares tips and best practices for email marketing, and encourages engagement from their audience by asking “this or that” and “would you rather?” questions.
Screenshot of Flodesk’s Instagram profile.Another advantage of planning your content for the entire month is that you can better distribute and plan the types of content you will be sharing. Rather than scrambling to come up with something to post and potentially posting too many sales-focused posts or too many funny memes, planning in advance allows you to be more intentional and strategic with what you post. That ensures you are hitting all the marks building the know, like, and trust factor with your audience, serving them, and ultimately converting them.
Let’s say you want to share four posts per week. To balance your content types, you could share two educational posts, one sales-focused post, and one entertaining post each week. As you plan your month of content, you can start to plug in your content ideas according to that cadence and flow.
Bonus tip: This step of the process does not need to be high-tech. Simply use a monthly calendar (you can print one at Print-a-Calendar.com if you don’t have one) and grab some sticky notes and a pen and start jotting down your content topics. This process allows you to move things around as needed to better balance and distribute your content. Alternatively, you can plan in digital form on a Google calendar or in software like Asana, Trello, or Cickup. Choose the tool that works best for you so that you are more likely to use it.
When planning content, it is important to remember that content doesn’t have to be overly complicated. Really anything can be content if it is valuable to your ideal audience. Share your knowledge, take your audience behind the scenes, introduce your team, share customer testimonials or reviews, answer frequently asked questions. Know that you have insight that your audience craves—they told you that when they chose to follow you.
Streamline Content Creation With Batchworking
Let’s circle back to batch working and how to apply the tactic to content planning.
What Is Batch working?
Batch working is a highly focused, topic-specific form of working. When batch working, you divide your work into different hours/days and focus on only one thing at a time. Batch working can be applied to all areas of your life and work, but here we will focus on how to utilize it for content creation.
The idea is that by focusing on one task at a time, you can get into a flow state which is when your productivity and creativity truly flourish. The end result is better quality content in less time. A win-win!
Step 1: Plan a Month of Content
As outlined above, the first step in planning and creating social media content is to map out the entire month on content.
Assuming you have your monthly content plan and roadmap ready to go, each week you should follow the steps below to streamline the content creation piece of the puzzle.
Photo by @stilclassics.Step 2: Create All Visual Content
With your content roadmap, decide what visuals need to be created for the week. Write a list of everything you need from stock photos, custom graphics, videos, Reels, cover images, etc.
Once you have the list, it’s time to start creating. For custom branded graphics, you can use a tool like Canva. Create (or purchase) a library of templates you can easily customize with different content each week. This keeps your branding consistent and also saves you time as opposed to starting designs from scratch each week.
Photo by Canva.Step 3: Write All Captions
Captions do not have to take a long time to create. By batching captions and following a caption formula, you can quickly write captions that convert your audience. A good caption should include:

Hook: Grab their attention right off the bat. Think of the first 7-14 words of your caption like an email subject line. You have to inspire your audience to click “read more”.

Value: Deliver on what you promised in your hook and share content that educates, entertains, or sells.

Call to Action: Tell your audience what you want them to do next (i.e. share, like, comment, click, buy, sign up, tag, etc.). Keep your calls to action simple and fun to increase the likelihood that your audience will follow through.

Photo: Luke Southern via Unsplash
Step 4: Schedule Posts
Now that you have your visuals and captions, it’s time to schedule your posts according to your content calendar. Using Buffer’s Publishing tool, go to Settings and set your posting schedule.
Then navigate to your queue, drag and drop images and copy/paste captions and click “Schedule Post” or “Add to Queue”. Depending on the type of post, your post will either automatically publish at the scheduled time, or you will receive a push notification at the scheduled time to post yourself.
Step 5: Add Hashtags (if posting to Instagram)
If you are posting to Instagram, when you schedule your post, you also have the option to add up to 30 hashtags to the first comment of your post. Buffer’s hashtag manager allows you to save hashtag groups right in the platform. This makes it easy to choose the right hashtag group(s) to add to your post. When used thoughtfully and strategically, hashtags are a great way to extend the reach of your content.

Enjoy The Benefits of Planning & Scheduling Your Content in Advance
Imagine not having to constantly be wondering, “What should I post?”. As you get into the habit of planning and scheduling content in advance, you will start to see your efforts pay off. Not only will your content strategy benefit you, but you will also save yourself time and reduce stress around social media content. Instead of “posting just to post”, adopting a content batching routine allows you to create high-quality content when you are in your “content zone” and schedule it according to your social media strategy.
When you plan content in advance, your content can better support your overall business goals. If you have a product or service that you want to promote, an event or a company milestone, planning in advance lets you work backward to create strategic social media content that supports those goals.
Finally, by freeing up time and energy in the content creation process, you allow yourself to spend more time in other areas of your business. That extra time can be spent building connections and relationships with your social media community, or in other areas of your business like sales, admin tasks, networking or growing your team, or even on self-care. Think about what you would spend those extra hours on each month, and use that as motivation for sticking with your new content process.
Social media is a powerful tool for businesses. By planning in advance, you can leverage social media strategically and thoughtfully.

Big Idea or Enduring Question: Provide a wizard that allows your Inside Sales Team, Telemarketers to add Lead to multiple Campaigns. 6 years ago I wrote an article (Add Record to Multiple Chatter Groups – Parsing Multi-Select Picklist fields) to parse Multi-Select Picklist or Checkbox Group in Salesforce Flow. Not
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