Author: Franz Malten Buemann

When it comes to web traffic, the more, the merrier. Part of your job as a marketer is to come up with new and inventive ways to drive more eyes to your site. This has a couple of big benefits for any business, including ramping up brand awareness and sales as well as growing your…
The post 35 Unique Ways to Increase Your Website Traffic appeared first on Benchmark Email.

Hello folks! I am currently trying to develop a way to see my whole funnel in one big picture simultaneously People come from every different sources, and they get tagged via Active Campaign and/or UTMs, and I want to combine those infos in one single chart to see which steps are more profitable for the business, you see? I am currently trying to combine Active Campaign + Google Sheets + Data Studio to get to something similar to this sketch: ​ (only a sketch, no data behind it) As you see, many different front-end funnels are source to my back-end big funnel, and I want to see which channels converts the most (proportionally) in one big picture I tried using “Venn Diagram” on Data Studio, but so far, no much have been accomplished ​ Do you think I am going too far and trying something impossible? Do you know a way to see the logic between sources on my funnel as a whole? This is really bugging me out as I want to know where to focus for the long term! ​ Hope someone can share some experience that enlightens this issue ​ Thank you guys.
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As with the rest of the Buffer team, our Advocacy team was thrilled when we first experimented with a four-day work week in May 2020. Unique to this team, though, was a bit of wariness around the success of a four-day work week for a customer-facing team.
As a company, Buffer has always had a high bar for customer support. We aim to provide fast, personal, and informed customer support responses 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We also assign one Advocate to every ticket so that each customer gets a sense of continuity with us. The thing about Advocacy is that even if we are working one less day per week, the incoming ticket volume remains mostly unchanged.
So how do we aim to set the bar high when we’re working four-day work weeks?
We’ve tried several different setups and are quite happy with where we’ve landed. Here’s exactly the system we currently use to make a four-day work week work for our Customer Advocacy team, along with a transparent look at our team goals and metrics from the last year of working a four-day work week.
How Advocacy is set up for a 4-day work week

Over the years, the Advocacy team has done a few different rounds of summer Fridays, where our teammates took half-days on Fridays for a month in the summer. We learned quite a lot from those, so we already had a framework for what the challenges and opportunities would be as we entered into the four-day work week.
In general, a shorter work week is a great opportunity for the Advocacy team to learn and grow in several areas:

Communication: With a four-day work week, we have to have excellent communication with a key focus on asynchronous communication.

Knowledge management: We already put a lot of effort into how we share knowledge and document our processes, and this is another chance to improve how we do so.

Experimenting with time management: It’s a chance to explore how we can work more efficiently each day, and how we can better manage our energy.

Setting individual goals: This was a great opportunity to rethink individual goals and give the team clear objectives to work towards.

Where we started with the four-day work week

When the whole Buffer team first started working four-day work weeks, we gave each team at Buffer the freedom to choose the day of the week to take off. The whole company mostly fell into two camps: Wednesdays or Fridays.
We already knew that choosing a consistent day each week wouldn’t work for us on the Advocacy team because we need to be available seven days a week for our customers. Any day that we have no Advocates working, ticket volume builds up, and customers don’t get responses. There’s also a chance we miss a bug or issue with the Buffer product that comes through the inbox.
From the get-go, we knew we would need a variety of days off for different team members. Initially, we rotated days off, so teammates were off on a different day every week, but there were always some teammates online. We did this for the first month, and it wasn’t a popular option. First, there was far too much admin work involved to set up this schedule; second, it was tricky for Advocates to plan anything when the day they were offline was continually rotating.

The system that works for our team

The schedule we have now is the schedule we landed on in July 2020, three months into us adopting the four-day work week. We asked team members for their preferences for a day off, and we try to follow that as much as possible. Most folks opted to have Friday off, some prefer Monday off, and a smaller group takes off Wednesdays. Now, it’s consistent every week, so we know exactly who will be online each day of the week.

Timezone
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday 

Number of teammates working

13

16

15

15

8
1
2

An important part of this system for us was building it to optimize for most folks on the team to be able to take three days off in a row.  This work structure — four days on, three days off — can be really replenishing, and we wanted that for our team members.  
Also, it can get tricky to have an ongoing conversation with a customer if you’re off one random day in the middle of the week. We built the schedule with that in mind, though we have a few team members who find value in taking Wednesdays off and we support that. For the majority of the team, though, it’s Monday or Friday off.

How we manage weekends

As you can see in the above chart, we have customer support coverage on the weekends as well. That’s something we’ve done since the early days of Buffer, and we hire a few people specifically for weekend shifts. By default, they work one of the weekend days and not both, so they have one weekend day off. The exception is that one teammate prefers to work Friday to Monday and have Tuesday to Thursday off.
For those taking weekend shifts, we still optimize for having three days off in a row to maintain the benefits of that added rest and maintaining flows for communicating with customers.
Goals and metrics and the 4-day work week

In general, we set goals and measure our incoming volume across seven days instead of the four that each teammate is working. The challenge for us is making sure that, collectively, we are as productive across those seven days with this new schedule. Honestly, we struggled in the first six months with this; we did the best that we could, but we didn’t have clear goals and we weren’t able to have clear expectations for increased productivity.
This year, we’ve been much more clear with our goals, specifically around ticket-number targets to hit within four days. That clarity means that teammates can hit our response time goals and continue to work a four-day work week. As with other teams at Buffer, Advocates also have the option to work a partial or full fifth day of the week if they feel they haven’t been able to achieve what they set out to do in a given week. We call that fifth day an “overflow day.”

A look at our goals and how they’ve evolved

Our two main goals for the Advocacy team have always been our response time to customers and individual ticket goals (how many tickets an Advocate gets through in a day). These goals were based on what we thought were realistic targets for the team and for the level of each individual.
In Q1 of 2020 (before we were working a four-day work week), our goal was to respond to customer emails within six hours. We also had individual ticket goals that were based on daily volume. When we moved to four-day work weeks in Q2 of 2020, we implemented new targets for tickets per day, but we didn’t tie these to the customer experience we wanted to provide or set these based on achieving the same output in four days instead of five.
We ended up evolving our business hours for offering customer support. At the beginning of our 4-day work week experiment, our business hours were Mondays at 3 am ET through Fridays at 8 pm ET — i.e. 24 hours a day during the work week. To create more consistent expectations for our customers, we changed our hours to be 6 am to 8 pm ET each day, Monday through Friday.
Now in 2021, we’ve set ambitious company and team-level OKRs (objectives and key results) around customer response times and overall service experience. It’s important to us that we don’t sacrifice customer experience for efficiency. We’ve aimed for a two-hour first response time, and subsequent replies sent within seven hours (for email tickets).

A few results so far in Q1 2021:

Our customer satisfaction score went from 92.3% in Q4 2020 to 94% this quarter.
We hit our goal of a two-hour first response time, with a median of 1.6 hours during business hours.
Our team sent 71% of second responses within seven hours (our goal was 90%).

We have also standardized our team targets for ticket replies sent per week (148-170 tickets) and ticket quality we expect from each individual. These goals ensure a level of output we need to achieve our objectives while being able to take that fifth day off.

Parting thoughts

We are proud that we’ve been able to improve our customer response times and experience in 2021 while working a four-day work week. Even with that, we know there is still room to evolve what a four-day work week looks like for our team.
The reduction of hours available across a global team means we’re at times a bit short of hands when we’re impacted by external factors such as third-party downtime or issues with APIs. Whilst we might be able to get the same amount of tickets done in four days as five, there is always going to be value in being available on specific days and times within the world of customer support.
As a team, we’re continuing to discuss how we can embrace a bit more flexibility around coverage in our strategy for the future.
Do you work on a customer support team that has four-day work weeks? Or do you have more questions about how we approach a four-day work week? Drop us a tweet! You may just hear from one of our Customer Advocates.

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

Do I really want to spend my entire life DM’ing strangers, pretending to be interested, asking them awkward & intrusive questions… Following trends, tactics & strategies that are Limiting my Reach, limiting my value, and limiting my Impact (and overall happiness)? I’ve used direct message to create clients. No doubt it “works”. (I believe it is an incredibly powerful tool when done well…) But what I started to feel was that the whole market trend towards a “strategy first approach” limited who I wanted to BE…as a person & as a business owner. Here’s my story… (Full video in Heart Method) My State of Mind (early 2021): I wasn’t creating DM convos out of excitement to connect with someone. Rather, I was going into my business like it was a “job”. What was once an exciting thing: meeting someone new, connecting with them, booking a call… Now felt like a tedious chore. So I made the scary decision (early 2021) to find a more aligned way to build my brand & my business. I was going to focus on alignment, authenticity and attraction over numbers, tactics and processes. I guess it was time for me to grow up out of the DMs. There were many factors influencing my decision… I won’t be able to go into all of them (if you join me in you FB group I might be able to go deeper) Here’s what I based my decision on: Let’s look at what’s happening in today’s Coaching/Consulting Space: The market is more saturated than ever. More and more coaches are targeting the same group of people with the same message, strategy, and approach. ​
Lack of Differentiation. Everyone using the same scripts {DM, start a convo, book a sales call} is the primary strategy being taught…Buyers are well aware of this, which makes this a less and less likely strategy to succeed in the long run.
What impact this has on the Coaching Market: ​
Puts down downward pressure on all market participants. Coaches suffer because they have to send more messages, come up with better systems, scripts etc. because their strategy is the same as the other 100… Focus moves away from the ‘main thing’ to the strategy & system… This dilutes the Message & Brand (and fun) Increased Operational costs: because so much effort is being put into optimizing tactics & strategy the focus moves away from value creation towards strategy and competition. this dilutes profits, client results, delivery and Quality suffers. Good coaches get mixed in with the OK ones and as a result whoever does the most outreach wins… Not the one with the best product, skillset or transformation. Lots of Coaches, few options. With everyone teaching the same strategies it dilutes the market, making only the “biggest players” richer. Without creating options for the buyer, the buyer will naturally gravitate to the most established strategy provider instead of taking a risk with a new entrant.
(DMs can be a great place to start. But staying there too long creates market distorting forces…Which is bad for everyone. Essentially it becomes a race to the bottom and a copy-cat crowd….because no one is willing to innovate) What this means for you: As a coach who has a market-proven offer you must innovate and come up with a truly unique message & product (that attracts a new, excited & enthusiastic crowd). Must think outside the traditional niche mentality and shift focus back to your Vision. Must look outside the industry walls for inspiration & insight vs. staying in the prison walls of a stagnating industry/culture. Identify who is truly innovating vs. who is parroting & copy-catting. (Upward vs. Sideways Innovation) The old way of directly DMing someone works, but it is slowly going to become obsolete, very very competitive and very unscalable. Vision-based marketing: A platform independent, strategy agnostic approach to creating clients seamlessly… Resulting in: Lower operational costs, decreased organizational complexity, lower marketing cost, higher client satisfaction… And an overall better experience (for everyone) How? The simplest solution to this ever-growing problem is to focus on The Attraction Element: Your Unique Identity. Ask Yourself: ​
What do people come to me to solve? (Why?) What is the most valuable problem I have solved for my clients? (Look beyond industry norms and define it in your unique way) What topcis/ideas/subjects have resonated with my audience? (Again, think beyond the wall of industry norms) What underrepresented skill have I overlooked (that my clients highly value) ? What inspires me that seems irrelevant to my business? (Again, think beyond the norms of your niche)
By focusing on these aspects you are identifying the Unique Identity of your business…The thing that makes your business YOURS. BTW, Most businesses rarely take the time to identify this… they spend enormous effort on marketing, outreach, sales teams, and grunt work…dissecting their business into operations, process and parts…unable to see the whole (picture). By simplifying the process of business to one Unique Element (your Identity) you eliminate costly startup errors while massively increasing your efficiency all across the board. Our Unique focus at Sotapanna is Building & Scaling Amazing Offers by starting work with IDENTITY as the platform… Your personal identity, your business identity, your social identity, and your spiritual identity…. We help you to identify, re-evaluate & refine your offer using your Unique Identity… and create it faster so that everything across your business becomes easier.
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Covid had a big impact on sending emails in 2020 and as businesses adjust to consumer changes post-vaccine rollout in 2021, it’s important to take a moment and assess your email marketing strategy. 
While we understand the need and urgency for marketers to communicate with their audience, it’s also important to be mindful of the impact these emails have not only on your sender reputation, but also the experience of the person receiving them. 
As your trusted email service provider, the deliverability of your emails and protecting your (and our) sender reputation is top priority for us! We’ve listed some key factors to consider before sending your next email.
Permission to send emails is not evergreen
Permission to send emails can expire quickly as people forget where and how they signed up to your email list. This is especially true if you haven’t been in regular email contact with your subscribers in the last 12 months. People who shopped, dined, interacted with you 1-5 years ago are unlikely to remember who you are, how you collected their email address, and will wonder why they’re suddenly receiving your emails.
Sending emails to an unengaged list with many inactive addresses will cause engagement and delivery issues like low open rates, high bounce and unsubscribe rates, and potentially high spam complaint rates. These metrics are used by mailbox providers (Gmail, Yahoo, Microsoft, B2B domains) to determine your sender reputation and how to treat your emails. 
A good sender reputation means your emails will be delivered to the inbox and a poor sender reputation will result in your emails being blocked or filtered as spam. 
Audit and segment your database by subscriber activity
Before you send your next campaign we highly recommend auditing your database and segmenting your list based on user activity and engagement. This helps you to determine:

Your most engaged subscribers who have opened an email or clicked a link in the last 12 months
Your most recent subscribers who have opted in for your emails in the last 12 months
Contacts with online activity in the last 12 months, such as online purchases, website visits, account activity, active paid subscriptions
Your most inactive and unengaged subscribers who do not meet the above criteria for the last 12 months

If you’ve been in regular contact with your list over the last 12 months you can continue sending emails as usual to your engaged subscribers, and you may consider sending a re-engagement email to your inactive or unengaged users. However, if you haven’t regularly emailed your list—sending at least 1 or 2 emails every 6 months—then you will need to carefully ramp-up sending emails to your full list. 
Any subscriber who has shown no activity or engagement in over 12 months should be removed from your list, as sending to these “ghost” contacts will only harm your sender reputation. You also risk emailing spam traps and landing on an anti-spam blocklist.
Ramping-up emails to your full list
Your sender reputation is tied to your sending domain — which is everything after the “@” in your From email address. Depending on when you last emailed your full list and the size of your list, you may need to slowly train mailbox providers that your emails are legitimate and your subscribers want to receive them.
To re-build your domain reputation, send an email to a smaller segment of your list and monitor how your subscribers respond in the next 24 hours. If you see good delivery and engagement metrics, like open rates above 10%, bounce rates under 4% and spam complaints around 0.02%, you can then double the volume for your next campaign and again review the results after 24 hours. 
It is crucial to review your results after every campaign to assess the impact the increase in email volume has on your overall results, and take steps to address any underlying engagement issues before ramping-up to your full list. 
Review your results after every campaign
Your subscribers are the best source of information on how well your emails are performing. Review your campaign reports after each campaign to see how active and engaged your audience is, and also to track any negative signals like a drop in open rate or a spike in bounces of spam complaints.
These metrics highlight any engagement and delivery issues which in turn directly impact your sender reputation and the success of your future campaigns. Campaign Monitor users can also use the Insights section in your account to easily track user engagement over time.

Campaign Monitor Insights
Email delivery and engagement issues are often a symptom of how emails are collected and managed, and reviewing both can highlight the underlying cause of these issues. Are your lists permission based where people have directly opted in for your emails? Is your online form secure from spambot attacks with a reCAPTCHA? Have you set up DKIM authentication for your sending domain? Are you re-engaging your less engaged contacts and removing dormant “ghost” contacts? 
Following these recommended deliverability practices is the best way to maximize user engagement and minimize deliverability issues. 
Wrap up
Your subscribers’ inboxes, similar to your own mailbox, may be inundated with emails right now from brands they were once connected with. Now is the time to think like a subscriber, and send relevant, wanted content to engage your audience and make your emails stand out from the crowd. 
By focusing on your most active and engaged audience, you’re building and maintaining your domain’s sender reputation, and helping your emails successfully land in the inbox. 
Remember to keep your emails personal, helpful, concise, and relevant to show respect for your subscriber’s inbox, build brand loyalty and a lasting engaging relationship. 
 
The post Demystifying Deliverability: How to Relaunch Your Email Marketing Post-Shutdown appeared first on Campaign Monitor.