Author: Franz Malten Buemann

We are thrilled to announce that Software Advice, an established software review and recommendation engine featured SALESmanago in its “Top 5 Marketing Automation Tools To Boost Lead Conversions” report! 

This is yet another great honorable mention after G2 Crowd awarded us with a “Users Love Us” badge earlier this year. 

The Software Advice report features some of the top marketing automation tools that assist modern marketers with setting up and running digital marketing campaigns smoothly and efficiently. Through hard work, passion, and dedication to what we do, we’ve been able to reach the top when it comes to helping our clients automate their marketing.

Over 100 reviewers have rated us 5-STARS on Software Advice and 90% of our reviewers are ready to recommend us to their colleagues and peers. Thanks to all our esteemed users who love our product so much.

Check out what our user has to say about us:

“We started using it for automated E-Mails and are beginning to dive deeper into customer segmentation and automated workflows. So far all our expectations were met and if we came up with custom ideas/problems the support team was very accommodating and always quick to find a solution.”

“It’s very easy to use and it’s giving a lot of useful data about products, clients and website. I’m very happy that we decided to implement this solution in our company.”

“We had a serious delivery issue with our previous email sending service, and we had to clean our database due to years of improper handling. With the help of customer service and automatic segmentation feature, we managed to reactivate about 25-30%(!) of our emails, after that we remove the useless, dead emails. The result was remarkable in the boost of email revenue. If you want an easy-to-use, feature-rich service with reasonable price, SalesManago is your system.”

Thank you Software Advice for recognition, and most of all, thank you to our clients who have trust in our company! 

Attracting customers’ attention in today’s busy world becomes harder by the day. But what if, instead of chasing customers, they welcome you in their inbox?
With opt-in email marketing, you get permission to land in the customer’s inbox and share the right message at the right time with the right people. 
Relying on social media algorithms can often feel like fighting with the windmills. Instead, you should focus on building an email marketing list that can be a true gold mine. 
Digital-native companies continue to double down on email marketing as it’s one of the most effective marketing assets in their toolbox. 
What is opt-in email marketing?
Opt-in email marketing is a permission-based collection of email addresses of potential customers willing to exchange their information for a certain incentive. 
By filling in an opt-in form to receive a discount, lead magnet, or another incentive, your recipients agree to receive emails, newsletters, or other forms of digital communication from you.
Due to strict laws regarding data protection, companies often employ double opt-in for growing their email list. A double opt-in means that after filling in an opt-in form, each new subscriber will receive an email with a confirmation link as verification that they want to be added to the email list.

 
Source: Campaign Monitor
Why signup forms obtain quality contacts
There are numerous ways to grow your email list in today’s digital-first world, but using signup forms is one of the most effective. Instead of collecting random email addresses with signup forms, you’re collecting quality signups.
Opt-in email lists are much more common after anti-spam laws in the 2000s took a hard stance against unsolicited email marketing. Today, it’s a best practice for marketers to have subscribers opt-in, that is, to give permission for companies to communicate via email.
The question is: How come signup forms are so critical to getting quality contacts?
Well, first, only interested subscribers sign up.
When someone fills out an email signup form, you know they are interested in your product or service. There’s a lot of value in that. This isn’t some random contact with little to no interest in what you do; it’s a subscriber who sought you out.
And signup forms are familiar to subscribers.
Subscribers see signup forms as a no-hassle way to interact with a business they care about. Because it’s familiar, subscribers don’t see it as intrusive and actually seek out signup forms to sign up with brands they like and want to hear from.
Benefits of opt-in email marketing
Email marketing is still one of the most effective ways to reach your audience, as there are 3.9 billion active email users. Getting a green light to send people email updates can bring significant benefits to your business. Let’s look at a few.
1. Encourage new business
Keeping fresh, ready-to-buy customers coming in the door is the key to growth for every business. By continually adding to your email list, you’re constantly cultivating new relationships. This ongoing outreach is vital because you never know which new customer will become a loyal one down the road.
2. Build personal relationships
Today’s companies are constantly trying to cut through the noise to reach their audience. Unfortunately, many businesses underestimate the power of personalization. Data shows that personalization increases open rates by 26%. Moreover, targeted email sends pay off. In fact, marketers have found a 760% increase in email revenue from segmented campaigns. With email platforms like Campaign Monitor, you can use data you have about your subscribers to send personalized messages to the right subscriber at the right time. 
Gusto Italian is committed to delivering a premium dining experience. When you sign up to their mailing list, you add personal information such as name, date of birth, and even your preferred Gusto restaurant. With this information, Gusto can create a personalized experience for their subscribers.

Source: Gusto Italian
 
3. Promote visits to your site
You can promote visits to a variety of sites through email marketing. You can direct subscribers to your homepage, to a specific blog article, a promotional landing page—the options are endless. Anytime you can motivate subscribers to interact with your brand on the digital front is a solid investment.
The more you grow your list with quality subscribers, the more visitors you can direct to the sites and pages of your choice.
The Swiss performance running shoes and clothing retailer On is revolutionizing the running shoe space with new technologies. They use email marketing with product recommendations to remind and encourage the audience to visit their online store. 

Source: On
4. Send cost-effective campaigns
Email marketing is one of marketers’ favorite tools. That’s no surprise, as it’s among the most cost-effective channels — for every $1 spent, email marketing generates $38 in ROI. Unlike traditional campaigns, building an opt-in email marketing list allows companies to reach the right audience at the right time at a very low cost. Besides, email marketing campaigns can be prepared in a short period, compared to traditional campaigns such as direct or print that take much more time for preparation and execution.   
5. Create your own communication channel
One of the biggest advantages of having an opt-in email list is the fact that you own that resource, and it can serve as a significant pillar for future success. No matter how many followers you have on social media, in the end, the algorithm determines how many people will see your content. Building an email list means taking control over your communication channels. The most successful companies will tell you that their email list is one of their most significant assets. The sooner you build your opt-in email list, the better results you can expect later on.  
6. Collect feedback from your audience
The only way to improve your performance is by asking for feedback and listening to your audience. Email can be a great way to check your customers’ pulse and adjust your strategy based on the responses you get. 
Customer satisfaction surveys will give you all the answers you need to improve your customer experience. Creating different email lists based on different buyer personas allows companies to tailor the questions they send to specific audiences.
The fashion retailer Rebecca Minkoff uses email marketing to send surveys to its subscribers to measure customer satisfaction and rewards participants with a coupon code for 20% off full-price items.

Source: Rebecca Minkoff
 
7. Future-proof your business 
Looking at social media platforms is like gazing into the night sky — there are so many out there. In the past decade, we witnessed an influx of social media sites, and yet, email marketing is still one of the most effective ways to reach your potential customers.
With opt-in email marketing, you can create and grow your list of subscribers, which can be your most powerful weapon in the future. There’s fierce competition brewing in the digital space, so having a solid email list can be the ace up your sleeve. 
Grow your list with Campaign Monitor
Growing your email list has never been easier. With Campaign Monitor, you can choose to create a signup form for your website or let us host the form for you. From there, you decide exactly which fields you want to capture (e.g., name, email, location, gender, etc.), and it seamlessly integrates into your brand’s style. Any email addresses entered into the signup form are automatically added to your selected email list in Campaign Monitor.
The best part: you can create a signup form with no coding experience.

Wrap up
Intrusive and invasive marketing turns off consumers. Instead of relying on aggressive tactics that can easily backfire, you should focus on permission-based marketing. 
With opt-in email marketing, you reach out to people that want to hear from you. Building a channel that allows you to communicate with a broader audience through hyper-targeted email marketing campaigns that deliver additional ROI is the key to business growth. 
Ready to start building your email marketing list today? Don’t worry, we have your back! Learn how to create a seamless experience with custom email signup forms.
The post 7 Benefits of Opt-In Email Marketing appeared first on Campaign Monitor.

Search engine optimization (SEO) may seem like a straightforward concept.
You pick keywords related to your business, create content with those keywords, and you’re set to watch your site grow — a simple three-step process, right? Nope.
While those are fundamental elements of SEO, it can actually be quite challenging to create a strategy that helps you drive traffic and enough of it to meet your overall business goals.
It can be difficult to get your feet off the ground. Thankfully, there are various tools specifically designed to help you with SEO, build domain authority, and achieve high ROI. In this post, we’ll hear inspiring stories from HubSpot clients that have used our SEO tools to achieve business success.

5 SEO Success Stories To Inspire Your 2021 Strategy
1. Ironpaper
Ironpaper is a digital marketing agency that helps their B2B clients grow. They worked with one of their clients, Goddard, to achieve significant success using HubSpot’s SEO tools.
Jonathan Franchell, CEO and Founder of Ironpaper, says, “While Goddard fills a real need for their customers by designing medical devices, historically they’ve struggled to find quality leads that could use their services. Instead, their website attracted a lot of spam and unqualified contacts.” Ironpaper began making critical SEO updates with HubSpot tools on Goddard’s site, focusing on internal linking, content strategy with business-relevant keywords, and technical SEO issues like broken links and meta tags.
Over an eight-month campaign, Ironpaper helped Goddard gain 2,361 Google positions across various keywords relevant to their offerings. Franchell says, “Because we created targeted content centered on strategic keywords, Goddard’s Google rankings increased even throughout a dip in traffic.”
The company also now ranks in the top 100 for 50 strategically targeted terms and can use HubSpot’s insights reports and dashboards to monitor their progress to ensure that their future marketing efforts are hyper-targeted for the audience they’ve worked hard to develop.
2. Apptega
Apptega is a cybersecurity and compliance platform. As they grew their business, they knew they would need an optimized website that generated leads. They also recognized that their existing WordPress site wouldn’t be enough for them to reach their goals.
Joelle Palmer, Apptega’s Digital Marketing Manager, says, “We had built a Frankenstein monster in WordPress. Our dev team would constantly have to drop what they were doing and fix our website.” Apptega then decided to migrate its existing site into CMS Hub.
Apptega saw almost immediate success with HubSpot’s SEO tools: “We saw one of our core pages move from a number100+ ranking on Google to position number three in two weeks. SEO usually takes three to six months to work…that was truly amazing for us as a company to experience.”
Some of the tools Apptega used within Marketing Hub to achieve their growth are the on-page SEO recommendations that direct users to pages that need attention and additional ways to optimize content.
3. Beacon Digital Marketing
Beacon Digital Marketing specializes in driving results for FinTech, SaaS, and B2B businesses.
As HubSpot Platinum Partners, they understand how to use and implement HubSpot tools to drive growth and success. While they typically assist other businesses, they took an internal look in August 2020 and decided to implement an SEO overhaul of a post on their blog that they believed could perform better than it already was.
They focused on a few critical areas for improvement: updating metadata, optimizing for a featured snippet, and re-targeting original keywords. The HubSpot content mapping tool helped them create a strategic pillar-cluster plan, and the on-page SEO recommendations provided them with helpful tips. After implementing their new strategy, they noticed an almost immediate 50% increase in page views: July 2020 showed 991 organic search traffic views, and August 2020 had 1,552.
Their optimization allowed them to draw more traffic to an existing blog post, and they have also seen an increase in organic traffic to additional pages on their website. This goes to show that a well-rounded SEO strategy can impact all areas of your business, as an increase in traffic leads to curious customers eager to learn more about what you have to offer.
4. Take Note
Take Note is a UK-based business that provides a range of audio and video transcription services, captions, and on-site note-taking. When demand for their business grew, they struggled with balancing disconnected tools to support their needs and obtain consistent growth. Thomas Carter, Director of Marketing at Take Note, said, “I think for us, SEO is the way to grow within such a competitive market.”
The business officially signed on to HubSpot in 2018 and has since increased its website traffic by 22%. At the same time, their customer base and revenue have grown by 16-22%. They’ve also seen an increase in leads. Carter adds, “Long term, we want to continue to focus on ensuring the quality of our services remains exceptionally high while using technology such as HubSpot to automate and optimize behind the scenes.”
5. Revenue River
Revenue River is a digital sales and marketing agency that helps companies scale and become competitive in their industry. One of their clients, Kofinas Fertility Group, saw their site traffic significantly impacted by COVID-19. Eric Pratt, the Managing Partner at Revenue River, says, “The site saw declines from mid-February all the way through May.”
The business got to work and conducted competitive analysis and keyword research to identify areas of opportunity for growth. They decided that the best course of action was to create pillar content and supporting content clusters, which would help them establish their domain as a source of authority in their industry.
Since implementing the new strategy in November of 2020, the site has nearly doubled its organic traffic. Between March and June of 2020, they saw 86K impressions, and January-March 2021 saw 1.1M.
Pratt says this success “Came about because of a combination of SEO strategy planning for research, topic clustering, and on-site/page optimization features to enrich the SEO appeal of the content we’re producing and publishing through HubSpot.”
Improving Your SEO Doesn’t Have To Be A Challenge.
The success stories we’ve highlighted in this post show that SEO doesn’t have to be a challenge, especially with the help of a high-powered SEO tool. Learn from these clients and create a strategy that works for your business.
 

As the world continues to move in a remote-first direction, it’s important to consider how to make your company’s in-person events remote-friendly.
Even if you don’t always do remote events, the remote option is great for anytime your team is spread around the world.

But, a virtual offsite meeting? Sounds oxymoronic. How can you have an offsite, that doesn’t feel like work, virtually?
In this post, we’ll take a deep dive into how these brands thought about virtual offsites in a creative way. And didn’t just ask everyone to be on Zoom for 8 hours.

1. Loom VR Virtual Offsite
At the end of 2020, Loom decided to host a virtual offsite. What made this different than attending an 8-hour Zoom meeting?
Well, first, the company sent VR headsets to their team to allow employees to feel like they were leaving their homes for a large company meeting they used to travel for.

We just announced our @loom offsite being done in VR and us shipping everyone an Oculus headset. The smiles. 🙂 — Vinay Hiremath (@vhmth)
December 10, 2020

According to Loom, “with virtual reality, we were able to send everyone an Oculus Quest 2 headset to bring the virtual world to them. Plus, we were able to limit Zoom content to only two hours per day to keep the content engaging.”
Once they got started with virtual reality, they had to find virtual reality apps to host their events. But they also included their employees in the planning process. The company sent a Google Form to employees to share any ideas for activities and sessions they could do during the virtual offsite.
Loom worked with a partner to create a virtual reality island where team members could go for watercooler conversations, ice breakers, and happy hour.
Interestingly, the virtual reality component was not mandatory. Any events that were VR exclusives were optional. And the VR island they created was also accessible via desktop, so everyone could participate.
It’s important to remember that when you’re creating a virtual offsite experience, you want everyone to be able to show up. Hopefully, the tools you use will be available on several devices or you can make those events not mandatory if it takes a special device.
The team also created unstructured time during their day so that people working from home could still do their normal work and activities.
2. First Round Review Interactive Virtual Offsite
Another company thinking about virtual offsites creatively is First Round Review.
First Round Review held a virtual offsite and had activities including group meals, cooking competitions, self-reflection exercises, group presentations, unconference events, and more.
The company knew that they wanted to use all different kinds of formats for their activities so that they could keep people’s attention.
Before they planned the event, they wrote down their objectives, breaking them into task- and team-focused outcomes. Then, they came up with ideas to achieve those outcomes.
Again, First Round Review knew they didn’t want to spend all day on Zoom. A few things they did to make their virtual offsite interactive and successful were:

Send an interactive surprise: The team sent everyone a kit that they were instructed not to open beforehand. The kit included candy, a chalkboard to write on, coffee, and a kombucha starter kit. This was a fun way to kick off the virtual offsite.
Get in costume: The team was all sent special hats and everyone showed up to the meeting wearing their merch.
Cooking challenge: Groups were split into breakout rooms so each group could cook together live. Then, everyone presented their meals together and people voted on creativity and presentation.
Unstructured time: This is huge. Don’t make people spend all day on the computer. Include unstructured time and breaks.
Playtime: Include team bonding events such as trivia or virtual escape rooms. First Round Review even hired a magician to join them for a group dinner.
Show gratitude: First Round Review spent an entire meeting having everyone write out gratitude for every team member and then emailed everyone their list of comments from their coworkers. For each teammate, they had everyone spend one minute answering by writing a line or two in response to the following questions: What’s something you admire about this individual? What’s something this person did recently that you appreciate? Why are you grateful to count this person as a teammate? Answers are anonymous. After they’re all in, the meeting owner will round up the lines for each individual and share them in a private email.

One of the biggest takeaways from this virtual offsite is that you can have several formats, different sessions, interactive and engaging content, and still get work done in strategy sessions.
3. Wikimedia Product Team Virtual Offsite
The Wikimedia Foundation Product team also had productive virtual strategy sessions and meaningful team bonding in a remote environment across various time zones.
To achieve this, a lot of planning went into it. The team first decided what story they wanted to tell during their offsite. To ensure this was discussed throughout the virtual offsite, they revisited their product roadmap to understand where the team had been and where they’re going. On the first day, they held a retrospective to accomplish this.
Ultimately, the creative way that the company thought about this offsite was in the agenda and planning.
If there was a presentation or low energy session, they wanted to make sure it was followed up by a high engagement interactive session.
Additionally, the timing was important. They decided that instead of having 8-hour Zoom meetings, they’d have four hours of virtual sessions a day, broken into 2-hour blocks with a break in between of about 1.5-2 hours.
The offsite included low energy sessions including a Q&A with the Chief Product Officer, where they prepared questions ahead of time and used a thirty-minute window to go through their questions. But followed up those sessions with interactive activities.
One session even had team members create a homepage for newcomers based on previous features built by the product team. This had the team actively working in the tool so they could see what features stand out.
They also had a session with a specialist that was a step-by-step process of the Wikipedia editing process so employees understand the user experience.
Other fun sessions included friendly games online.
When planning a virtual offsite, it’s important to consider the timing and energy levels of the event. Spending all day on a video conferencing tool isn’t going to be effective for most people.
Hosting a virtual offsite doesn’t need to be an overly complicated process. And it doesn’t need to be a boring, 8-hour long Zoom meeting. You can host interactive sessions, presentations, and truly engage with your employees.

We’ve covered email marketing trends for 2021, but that’s just one piece of the marketing strategy puzzle. It’s never a bad idea to have a firm grasp on the bigger picture by tapping into various marketing trends that are likely to dominate in the months to come. And with how unpredictable 2020 was, having an…
The post 5 Marketing Strategies You Should Adopt in 2021 appeared first on Benchmarkemail.

Salesforce Summer’21 Release Quick Summary Continue reading →
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