Author: Franz Malten Buemann

Editor’s Note: Spam filters have become much more sophisticated than the subject line triggers listed in this post. For a more up-to-date guide to email marketing, check out our free guide to creating email newsletters people actually read here.
Writing the subject lines for your emails can be one of the most stressful steps of email marketing. Is it engaging? Too short? Too long? Too boring? Will people click ‘delete’ because of it? Or will they open it? Will it even get to them, or will it trigger SPAM filters? It’s the last of these concerns that we’re here to help with today. 
SPAM filters can be triggered for a variety of reasons, causing your email to skip recipients’ inboxes and land straight in their SPAM box. One of easiest ways to avoid SPAM filters is by carefully choosing the words you use in your email’s subject line. Trigger words are known to cause problems and increase the chances of your email getting caught in a SPAM trap. By avoiding these words in your email subject lines, you can dramatically increase your chances of getting beyond SPAM filters.
Next time you sit down to write an email subject line, consult the exhaustive list below and make sure you aren’t using any words that will get you in trouble. In fact, you might want to bookmark this list so you can refer back to it every time you craft an email subject line. Back off, SPAM filters!
Email Spam Words to Avoid

Commerce 

As seen on
Buy
Buy direct

Buying judgments
Clearance
Order

Order status
Orders shipped by
shopper

Personal

Dig up dirt on friends 
Meet singles 
Score with babes

Employment  

Additional Income
Be your own boss
Compete for your business

Double your
Earn $
Earn extra cash

Earn per week 
Expect to earn 
Extra income

Home based
Home employment
Homebased business

Income from home
Make $
Make money

Money making
Online biz opportunity
Online degree

Opportunity 
Potential earnings 
University diplomas

While you sleep 
Work at home 
Work from home

Financial – General

$$$
Affordable
Bargain

Beneficiary
Best price
Big bucks 

Cash
Cash bonus 
Cashcashcash

Cents on the dollar 
Cheap
Check

Claims
Collect
Compare rates

Cost
Credit
Credit bureaus 

Discount
Earn
Easy terms 

F r e e
Fast cash
For just $XXX

Hidden assets 
hidden charges
Income

Incredible deal
Insurance 
Investment

Loans
Lowest price 
Million dollars

Money
Money back
Mortgage

Mortgage rates 
No cost
No fees 

One hundred percent free 
Only $ 
Pennies a day 

Price
Profits 
Pure profit

Quote
Refinance
Save $

Save big money
Save up to
Serious cash

Subject to credit
They keep your money — no refund! 
Unsecured credit

Unsecured debt
US dollars
Why pay more? 

Financial – Business

Accept Credit Cards
Cards accepted
Check or money order 

Credit card offers 
Explode your business
Full refund 

Investment decision 
No credit check 
No hidden Costs

No investment
Requires initial investment
Sent in compliance

Stock alert 
Stock disclaimer statement 
Stock pick 

Financial – Personal

Avoid bankruptcy
Calling creditors
Collect child support

Consolidate debt and credit
Consolidate your debt
Eliminate bad credit 

Eliminate debt
Financially independent
Get out of debt

Get paid 
Lower interest rate
Lower monthly payment 

Lower your mortgage rate
Lowest insurance rates
Pre-approved

Refinance home 
Social security number 
Your income

General

Acceptance
Accordingly
Avoid

Chance
Dormant
Freedom

Here
Hidden
Home

Leave
Lifetime
Lose

Maintained
Medium
Miracle

Never
Passwords
Problem

Remove
Reverses
Sample

Satisfaction
Solution
Stop

Success
Teen
Wife

Greetings

Dear [email/friend/somebody] 
Friend
Hello

Marketing

Ad
Auto email removal 
Bulk email

Click
Click below
Click here

Click to remove 
Direct email 
Direct marketing 

Email harvest 
Email marketing 
Form

Increase sales 
Increase traffic 
Increase your sales

Internet market
Internet marketing
Marketing

Marketing solutions 
Mass email 
Member

Month trial offer
More Internet Traffic
Multi level marketing

Notspam
One time mailing 
Online marketing

Open
Opt in
Performance

Removal instructions
Sale
Sales

Search engine listings
Search engines
Subscribe

The following form
This isn’t junk 
This isn’t spam 

Undisclosed recipient
Unsubscribe
Visit our website

We hate spam 
Web traffic
Will not believe your eyes 

Medical

Cures baldness 
Diagnostics
Fast Viagra delivery

Human growth hormone
Life Insurance
Lose weight

Lose weight spam 
Medicine
No medical exams

Online pharmacy 
Removes wrinkles
Reverses aging

Stop snoring 
Valium
Viagra

Vicodin
Weight loss
Xanax

Numbers

#1
100% free
100% Satisfied

4U
50% off
Billion

Billion dollars 
Join millions
Join millions of Americans 

Million
One hundred percent guaranteed 
Thousands

Offers

Being a member
Billing address 
Call

Cannot be combined with any other offer 
Confidentially on all orders 
Deal

Financial freedom 
Gift certificate
Giving away

Guarantee 
Have you been turned down? 
If only it were that easy

Important information regarding
In accordance with laws
Long distance phone offer

Mail in order form 
Message contains
Name brand 

Nigerian 
No age restrictions 
No catch 

No claim forms 
No disappointment 
No experience 

No gimmick 
No inventory 
No middleman

No obligation
No purchase necessary
No questions asked

No selling
No strings attached
No-obligation

Not intended 
Obligation
Off shore

Offer
Per day
Per week

Priority mail
Prize
Prizes

Produced and sent out 
Reserves the right
Shopping spree 

Stuff on sale
Terms and conditions
The best rates

They’re just giving it away
Trial
unlimited

Unsolicited
Vacation
Vacation offers

Warranty
We honor all 
Weekend getaway 

What are you waiting for? 
Who really wins? 
Win

Winner 
Winning 
won

You are a winner!
You have been selected 
You’re a Winner!

Calls-to-Action

Cancel at any time 
Compare
Copy accurately 

Get
Give it away
Print form signature

Print out and fax 
See for yourself
Sign up free today 

Free

Free
Free access 
Free cell phone 

Free consultation 
Free DVD 
Free gift

Free grant money
Free hosting
Free installation 

Free Instant
Free investment 
Free leads 

Free membership 
Free money 
Free offer 

Free preview 
Free priority mail 
Free quote 

Free sample 
Free trial 
Free website 

Descriptions/Adjectives

All natural
All new
Amazing 

Certified
Congratulations 
Drastically reduced 

Fantastic deal 
For free 
Guaranteed

It’s effective
Outstanding values 
Promise you

Real thing
Risk free
Satisfaction guaranteed 

Sense of Urgency

Access
Act Now!
Apply now

Apply Online 
Call free 
Call now 

Can’t live without
Do it today
Don’t delete 

Don’t hesitate
For instant access 
For Only

For you
Get it now
Get started now 

Great offer 
Info you requested
Information you requested

Instant
limited time
New customers only 

Now
Now only
Offer expires 

Once in lifetime 
One time
Only

Order now
Order today
Please read 

Special promotion 
Supplies are limited
Take action now

Time limited
Urgent
While supplies last 

Nouns

Addresses on CD
Beverage
Bonus

Brand new pager 
Cable converter 
Casino 

Celebrity
Copy DVDs 
Laser printer 

Legal
Luxury car 
New domain extensions 

Phone
Rolex
Stainless steel 

 

 

 

 

The thing that can make or break the success of a sales team, is responding to leads at the right time. As research shows, 63% of surveyed businesses were taking up their leads way too late to convert them to sales, even though being the first responder can give you 30-50% sales from the contacted leads. However, only up to 25% of your leads at any time are ready to buy. So acting fast is not enough.

 

It’s more complex than just being able to take up lead right after it was sourced from a website, ad, or in any other way, by just any of the salesmen in the team. Yes, you need to be quick but also smart about it, if you don’t want to waste your time on leads that have little chance of converting into customers. With sales alerts in SALESmanago, you can manage the number and quality of leads passed to your sales reps.

 

What is a sales alert and why is it useful?

 

Sales alert is an automatic email or SMS notification sent by the system to the selling team and supporting their work with close to real-time updates on leads’ activity. It notices them about every important event connected to a potential customer, about their website visits, downloading an ebook, or asking for pricing. That information indicates that the lead is interested in offered products or services and taking it up can result in conversion.

 

 

Sales alerts are therefore useful when you want to make sure that the selling team works as fast as possible and also gets a chance to be better prepared. Thanks to the alert being activated by a specific action on the lead’s side, you also know that the ones who are about to be contacted have potential and your team is not wasting its time on contacts that will probably not turn into opportunities.

 

What’s more, sales alerts can be generated by any leads, even those, who originally told you over the phone, that they need more time to think. When they get back to your site for more details, your sales team will know this.

 

Define the rules for lead’s sales qualification

 

Thanks to the possibility of setting the events which are supposed to trigger automatic sending of the sales alert, you can decide what makes the lead qualified. It can be an event like a form on the website being filled, a request for a demo, etc., but also, a specific monitored behavior, which will also from the beginning help you figure out what a given person is interested in. Or from the business perspective – think what actions on your website are indicators of the leads’ interest in your product and set up the right events in automation rules or Workflows to inform your reps on such actions. 

 

Let’s say a contact visits your website repeatedly, they look at a range of products or services, from which one is viewed the most. You contact them for example by email with extended information on the product, but they don’t decide on the purchase. Sometime later, they visit your website again, looking for more information. You already know what they would be willing to buy, you can see that even though they didn’t purchase anything before, they show interest again, and based on that you can assume they are ready to buy. 

 

The first visit on the product page doesn’t always mean the customer is actually interested. You can use the tag scoring feature in SALESmanago to assign points to the behavioral segments assigned for visiting different products or services, and execute sending alerts only for leads that collected a specific amount of points in the tag scoring. For example, scoring points can be assigned to a specific tag after every time contact visits a specific category on your website.

 

 

Assign leads to the reps that will provide them the right service

 

Not all prospects are equal. They want to buy different products, some already know quite much about your product, some saw it for the first time. And your reps are not equal as well – you might have more experienced workers or some of them may specialize in specific fields or situations. You can easily manage the lead routing process, by defining different sales alerts triggered with different website behavior or user data and assigning the right sales reps to take over leads generated with such alerts. To do so, insert the email address of the salesperson who should contact the lead in the automation rule’s action. The alert can be also sent to a phone number, which can make the reaction to it even faster, especially if your reps work in the field. Not all prospects are equal. They want to buy different products, some already know quite much about your product, some saw it for the first time. And your reps are not equal as well – you might have more experienced workers or some of them may specialize in specific fields or situations. You can easily manage the lead routing process, by defining different sales alerts triggered with different website behavior or user data and assigning the right sales reps to take over leads generated with such alerts. To do so, insert the email address of the salesperson who should contact the lead in the automation rule’s action. The alert can be also sent to a phone number, which can make the reaction to it even faster, especially if your reps work in the field.

 

 

Because the alerts contain key information about the contacts, including information and data about their behavior, it’ll help your salesmen to step into action prepared. They’ll know what event triggered sending the alert and relate to that while contacting the lead. The sales alert contains contact details, history of messages last sent to a lead, and the last visited URL-s on the website.

 

 

Alert your lead management software

 

As delivering alerts directly to the sales reps might not always be the most reliable idea to make sure all leads will be handled properly, you can integrate sales alerts with any CRM or Call Center software. In this case, the information on the leads’ activity won’t be sent directly to your reps but will create a new lead in the CRM software or add them to the queue in your Call Center. To make it possible, you can put an attachment into the sales alert that will contain the right script that will send the lead’s data to the web service generated in your lead management software. 

 

These alerts also might contain other information taken from the leads’ 360° profile, to indicate suggested conversation subjects or ask the lead for other products that interested them earlier. 

marketing automation

marketing automation

The Files, in Lightning Experience, consolidates all of your users’ files, documents, content, and attachments into a single system for easier management and collaboration. Files are more versatile and provide some cool features like Version Control, Collaborate on files, Sync File … Continue reading →

When Thanksgiving rolls around, there are a few questions that we don’t exactly look forward to hearing: “When are you getting married?” “When am I getting grandchildren?” “Have you been moisturizing?”
And yet, none of those oh-so-polite questions even come close to the complexity of explaining what, as an inbound marketer, you actually do for a living.
It’s not that inbound marketing requires a long, drawn-out answer — after all, it can easily be described in 44 words. But explaining it requires some fundamental knowledge of how technology, marketing, and the internet work. You know, the things that your grandparents might not fully grasp in one fell swoop.
Good news — all you really need are a few storytelling strategies. We found five ways you can explain inbound marketing to your family. And sure, some of these are useful, and some are just sarcastic. But hey, family is family, right? They’ll still love you.
5 Ways to Explain Inbound Marketing to Your Family This Thanksgiving
1. The Food Analogy

Source: Giphy
In the U.S., Thanksgiving typically consists of a few staples: turkey, mashed potatoes, and pumpkin pie, to name a few. And while it might sound strange, you can use that knowledge to your advantage by using food preparation as an analogy for different aspects of inbound marketing.
To explain lead nurturing, you can use the pumpkin pie. Sending unnurtured leads to sales is like giving an unbaked pumpkin pie to your guests. I suppose the pumpkin pie could be eaten raw, but … gross. Instead, you should bake the pumpkin pie — that ultimately makes it richer and more palatable.
Nurturing leads before sales contacts them works in the same way. It warms them up to your brand, and starts to qualify them with better information on what they might need. “Warm” leads, like the cooked pie, are already familiar with your business, and will close at a much higher rate than those that are “cold.”
Use whatever analogy you like to describe inbound marketing — it clarifies confusing issues by comparing them to something that, quite literally, is right in front of everyone.
2. The Real-Life Scenario

Source: Giphy
When I’m asked about inbound marketing, I like to use real-life examples of interruptions that they’ll likely recognize, and explain how the inbound methodology pertains to it. It usually sounds something like this:
Amanda: Hey, Dad. You know how much you hate telemarketers calling you in the middle of dinner?
Dad: Yes. Hate it. Why? Is that what you do for work?
Amanda: No, actually. Inbound marketing is the exact opposite. That’s interruptive marketing. They literally interrupt you. So annoying, right?
Dad: Yes. I’m surprised they’re not interrupting us right now.
Amanda: Well, in my job, I create marketing that doesn’t interrupt what people are doing. In fact, I create content that people are actively looking for, because it’s helpful, entertaining, or informative. Instead of a telemarketer who is calling to sell you spoons, I create stuff that someone looking for information about spoons might be searching for on the internet.
Dad: So I would find you, instead of you calling to bother me?
Amanda: Yes! I provide you with actual value from my company, which makes you more interested in what my company sells.
The keys here: 1) Identify which interruptive media your dinner guests are familiar with, and 2) play into their pain points when dealing with that media. Inbound marketing is much more logical when you explain it that way — even if your family doesn’t work in marketing or communications.
3. The Theatrics

Source: Giphy
If you’re feeling especially creative — and you have at least one Thanksgiving guest who is willing to participate — you could set up a role play. There are lots of scenarios you can act out, but a classic one would be the telemarketer/dinner guest scenario.
Let’s use the telemarketing example above — and be warned, it might require a few minutes of planning before everyone sits down to dinner. You play the role of the telemarketer, and your dinner guest can be, well, the dinner guest. First, put his or her phone’s ringer on the highest volume possible. Then, as soon as someone asks you about your job, excuse yourself and duck out to a quiet area with your own phone.
Next, call the dinner guest, and have him or her answer the call on speaker while you pretend to be a telemarketer selling something completely unnecessary at that point: Halloween costumes.
Be sure your dinner guest uses key phrases like “You’re interrupting me in the middle of Thanksgiving dinner with this irrelevant call,” or, “Don’t you think it’s a little late to be calling me about Halloween?” or, if you really want to go nuts, “I wish you had sent me a targeted, personalized email in October about those costumes — I would have bought them.”
Then, have them slam down the phone on the table. You can return from your “bathroom break” and say, “See? Telemarketing, or any type of interruptive marketing like that, is profoundly annoying. In my job, I create marketing that helps people — not annoy them.”
End scene.
Depending on the talent of your guest, you might be able to improv the entire thing. Otherwise, you might want to type a script out and email it to the guest beforehand. And if you really want to go overboard, stay in character the entire dinner. The sight of you dressed up as a skeezy telemarketer with a headset will be just too intense to forget … that is, at least until your mother requests, “Please remove your headset from the table.”
4. The Puzzle Pieces

Source: Webnode
This technique boils down to an age-old philosophical question: Is the whole greater than the sum of its parts? Aristotle thought so, but when you’re describing inbound marketing to an unfamiliar audience, it’s probably okay to explain the three ways you might apply inbound marketing specifically: attract, engage, and delight. 
Try explaining inbound marketing by breaking it up into those three aspects, and explaining each one individually.
For instance, you might say to grandma: “Attract means drawing in the right people with valuable content and conversations that establish you as a trusted advisor with whom they want to engage. Engage means presenting insights and solutions that align with their pain points and goals so they are more likely to buy from you. And delight means providing help and support to empower your customers to find success with their purchase.”
Of course, it’s easier said than done. And I’m willing to bet diving into how the inbound methodology serves as a strong foundation for the flywheel, which creates momentum and eliminates friction in your organization, is another feat entirely. 
5. The “I Write Articles on the Internet”

Source: imoviequotes
If the previous four have all failed, you can always say, “I write articles on the internet for a living.” I mean, it’s somewhat accurate — you drive real business results with inbound marketing, and you don’t just spew out nonsense blogs about your feelings to get paid — but it can get your family off your back, especially if you’re not sure they’d be interested in hearing the whole shebang. If you choose this path, be prepared to hear how easy it is to blog, and how many of your family members wish they could get paid to do it.
Then, try to switch the subject quickly to something everyone can relate to. “Hey, Uncle Eddie, I’d love to get your amazing stuffing recipe.” Trust us … It works every time.
We’re Grateful for You
Good luck out there. And remember: There are so many people who want to know what you do — which, admittedly, is why we love writing about it every day.
We always give thanks for you, our amazing readers. And to express our gratitude, we put together what we hope is a hilarious video of what our families think we do. Happy Thanksgiving!

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in November 2013 and has been updated and for freshness, accuracy, and comprehensiveness.

If you’re in business, you need to know how to create captivating presentations. Whether you’re trying to convince your boss to support a new campaign, talking with a prospect to close a deal, or building a new piece of marketing collateral, you need to know how craft a presentation that won’t put people to sleep.
The best (and easiest) way to do that? Use the right tools to create and deliver your presentation.
If you’re not sure which tools to use, look no further than this blog post. We’ve compiled our list of the top presentation tools for sales and marketing professionals. They’re listed below, in no particular order. But first …
Why You Should Use Business Presentation Templates
Using a professional presentation design ensures your content is conveyed in a clear, creative, and visually appealing way. To make it stand out further, try using HubSpot’s custom-build templates rather than utilizing one of the existing templates in in your presentation software. You can download them for free here.
Best Presentation Tools
1. Canva

Canva makes design easy — even for marketers and salespeople who feel like they’re design-challenged. The platform gives you a bunch of presentation templates to use right away, and it’s very easy to customize them to your organization and presentation objective. Plus, a variety of apps that integrate with Google Drive, Instagram, and YouTube, to name a few.
Pricing: Free; Pro, $12.95/month for up to five people; Enterprise, $30/month per person

2. Powtoon

Often, being different is what attracts prospects, and Powtoon can help you do that in your presentations. Powtoon’s animation software lets you easily create videos with props, characters, and more — which can help you differentiate your company when talking with prospects.
Pricing: Pro, $19/month; Pro+ $49/month; Agency, $89/month

3. PowerPoint

For years, PowerPoint has been the standard in presentation software, but it hasn’t remained static. PowerPoint is full of features to make sales and marketing presentations dynamic and engaging. (Here are just a few ways you can do that.)
Pricing: Business Basic, $5/user/month; Business Standard, $12.50/user/month; Business Premium, $20/user/month

4. Oomfo

A PowerPoint add-in, Oomfo helps sales and marketing pros create those oh-so-important interactive charts for presentations. Specialized charts, live charts from multiple files, data from cloud applications, interactive options, one-click conversions — it’s all possible, and more, with Oomfo.
Pricing: Free

5. Keynote

Apple’s Keynote allows users to work between their Mac and iOS devices, as well as with people who use Microsoft PowerPoint. With easy-to-use visual tools, drag and drop functionality, interactive charts, and more, Keynote is a popular choice among sales and marketing professionals.
Pricing: Free

6. Beautiful.ai

Create beautiful slides, pitches, and proposals without a team of designers. AI applies design rules in real time, and a library of free photos and icons are at your fingertips.
Pricing: Basic, $0; Pro, $12/month; Team, $38/user/month

7. Haiku Deck

Available for the web or iPad, Haiku Deck has become a favorite of sales and marketing pros. With Haiku Deck, professionals can quickly create presentations that can be “easily projected, shared, posted, embedded on a website or blog, or viewed on any web-enabled device.” Though it’s another tool that helps you create presentations from scratch, its ease-of-use sets it apart from the rest.
Pricing: Pro, $9.99 – $19.99/month; Premium, $29.99/month

8. Vyond

Vyond is an online animation software that allows you to create animated videos for marketing campaigns, sales enablement, or even human resources. Use their library of customizable templates or create your own from scratch.
Pricing: Essential, $229/year; Premium, $649/year; Professional, $999/user/year; Enterprise, contact for pricing

9. emaze

Busy sales and marketing pros choose emaze because it makes creating amazing presentations quick and easy. The options abound with emaze: Choose a professionally designed template and then create a slideshow, video presentation, or 3D presentation.
Pricing: Business Plan, contact for pricing; Executive Plan, $40/month; Pro Plan, $13/month

10. Camtasia

TechSmith’s Camtasia is an amazing tool that helps you create professional videos. You can record screen movements, import HD video from another source, customize and edit the video, and then share the completed video presentation on practically any device. 
Pricing: Individual, $249.99/user/year; Business $249.99/user/year; Education, $169.99/user/year; Government and Non-Profit, $223.99/user/year

11. SlideShare

SlideShare is a popular choice for sales and marketing professionals looking for a way to share their content publicly. Because it already has a built-in audience, you can easily distribute your presentation out to lots of people — and those people can embed your SlideShares on websites and blogs, or share them on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, etc.
Pricing: Free

12. SlideDog

Sometimes, sales and marketing professionals need to be able to move between presentation tools, but it’s not always possible because of their technical limitations. SlideDog is the solution, as it enables users to switch between PowerPoint, Prezi, PDF, web pages and others.
Pricing: Free; Pro, $99/year; Pro Event, $49 for one-time payment

13. Presentation Assistant

Presentation Assistant lives up to its name: It assists professionals by enabling them to annotate, zoom, and more during a presentation. Sales and marketing professionals can clarify and emphasize points more clearly to their audience with Presentation Assistant.
Pricing: Presentation Pointer, $29.95; Presentation Screen Master, $29.95

14. authorSTREAM

Sales and marketing pros choose authorSTREAM to make their presentations dynamic and engaging. authorSTREAM allows users to share their PowerPoint presentations publicly or privately, broadcast them, convert them to video, communicate and collaborate about them, and more.
Pricing: Free or paid plans start at $4.20/month

15. Zentation

With Zentation, salespeople and marketers combine video and slides into a simulated live experience. Presentations created with Zentation become webinars, webcasts, and virtual events for prospects and customers — all great collateral for marketing and sales.
Pricing: Free; Premium, $10 – $45/month; White-Label, contact for pricing

16. Prezi

Sales and marketing professionals love Prezi because it is cloud-based. Prezi makes creating, editing, and presenting from your browser, desktop, iPad, or iPhone possible anywhere, any time.
Pricing: Standard, $5/month; Plus, $15/month; Premium, $59/month

17. Brainshark

Sales reps and marketers often choose Brainshark, a cloud-based presentation tool, because it allows them to create and deliver presentations live or on-demand (even using their iPad or iPhone), use on-demand video content, polls, or surveys for increased engagement, and embed presentations in websites and blogs.
Pricing: Contact for pricing

18. Vcasmo

Vcasmo is a unique presentation tool — it’s a multimedia solution that enables users to synchronize a video and slideshow, side by side. Sales and marketing pros love Vcasmo because it supports playback in three forms: browser, mobile, and iPad. 
Pricing: Free; Standard, $10.99/month; Professional, $16.99/month

19. ViewletBuilder

ViewletBuilder is a different presentation tool; it captures critical screen updates and cursor position changes so sales and marketing pros can create presentations detailing how their product or sites work. With a plethora of features, ViewletBuilder allows for editing and enhancing and includes a variety of publishing and sharing options, too.
Pricing: Pro, $399; Enterprise, $599

20. Zoho Show

Zoho Show is a top pick for sales and marketing pros because it lives online, making it possible to create, access, present, and more from anywhere, any time. The simple, intuitive interface and collaboration features are just two of its beloved benefits.
Pricing: Contact for pricing
What are you waiting for? Pick a tool and start creating. Your prospects are waiting.
Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in October 2014 and has been updated for freshness and comprehensiveness.

 

Millions of dollars are poured into the Google Display Network (GDN) every day. But why? Google offers endless options for marketers to promote their products, so how is this network different?
Frankly — because it works.
When industry competitors’ congest search engines, the GDN can be a great alternative. With it, there’s less competition for inflated keyword bids, so you’re more likely to reach users actively searching for your products and services. Though the audience intent is not as strong, you get a much lower cost-per-click and many more impressions.

Here, we’re going to explore why you should use Google Display Network (GDN), how GDN differs from search ads, and how you can target your GDN ads to reach the right people in the right places.
Why Use the Google Display Network?

The value for GDN boils right down to reach and affordability. Prospecting, brand awareness, and remarketing can come with a hefty price tag when pursued for traditional search ads. GDN, by comparison, bypasses a lot of costly competition from other networks. There are also endless options for customizing your audience targeting.

Ultimately, you don’t need a fat wallet to set up a campaign through Google Display — you just need to choose the right targeting factors for your marketing goal.

With Google’s search ads, you’re essentially throwing out a wide net, which can be largely hit-or-miss, both with whom you’re targeting and with how you’re spending.
Google’s Display Network, on the other hand, allows you to define your audience in a way search engines can’t. Since you can target more than just keywords, you aren’t limited to the Google results page. Instead, GDN allows you to target websites by audience affinities, in-market segments, and custom intent keywords. You can even hand-pick website placements that fit your target audience.
The other differentiator is volume. Where do the fancy image ads appear when you market with GDN? Across millions of websites that your prospects are visiting every day.
But really — what’s the difference between GDN and a simple search ad? Let’s explore that, now.
Google Search vs. Display Network
You need a different mentality when using Google’s Display Network than when you’re using the search network and others available on Google Ads. Let’s define some use cases and expectations.

Your average conversion rate with GDN will be a minuscule 0.7%. Why? Because you’re targeting users that may not be familiar with your brand at all. The Google Display Network is first and foremost a tool for prospecting and brand awareness.
The standard CTR for this network is still under 0.5%. But, for targeting prospects outside of search engines and social networks, that’s still pretty good.

The next key differentiator is the fact that the user’s primary interest is the website content itself — the display ad has an indirect, secondary role in the website’s appeal to the viewer.
Marketers are hoping the prospective user will view their GDN ad along their journey to fulfilling another purpose. That makes the user intent different than when an ad appears at the top of a Google results page for a high-intent search phrase. It should be no surprise that the click-through rate and conversion rate for GDN are below 1%.
Unlike with search, there is a variety of targeting options outside of keywords that span across a network of millions of websites. You can access the majority of internet users through website placements. Your number-one goal with GDN is finding the right audience size with strict targeting criteria.
There are ways to approach this network with tighter, more relevant targeting. Ultimately, remarketing is limitless — but it involves audience development outside the Google Ads platform. Let’s start by exploring the default prospecting options Google provides and work our way toward opportunities customized for your brand and those who have engaged with your website.
Google Display Network Remarketing or Prospecting?
On the GDN, you can target in two ways. First, you can target prospects on the internet who may have no previous knowledge of your website, brand, products, or services. Second, you can remarket to users who have engaged with your website in some form. Option two allows you to leverage the audiences you find in Google Analytics for your website. If you don’t have any Google Analytics website audiences built, doing so is incredibly easy — simply set up an audience for a user that completes specific actions.

Some of the most common remarketing audiences include:

General website visitors
Users who have submitted a form
Users who have downloaded content
Users who have viewed specific product pages
Users who have signed up for an account or trial offer
Users who have completed a transaction or purchased a product
Users who have begun any of the above actions but abandoned the page before completing it

Remarketing and prospecting are two vastly different initiatives that you can execute through GDN. Some businesses prefer to focus only on remarketing because reaching users familiar with one’s brand drives leads and sales for the most affordable cost. However, other businesses aren’t focused on the return as much as generating awareness of their products and services. It all comes down to your company’s marketing goals.
Google Display Ad Examples
Once you know how to target, you’ll want to create the collateral that gets the attention you need from your ad placements. Here are some great examples of Google display ads: 
1. SEMrush

The copy of this ad does two things:

States the value (“skyrocket your marketing”)
Provides social proof (“like our clients did”)

It does this with large white font across an eye-catching blue background with bold oranges and pinks, making it colorful and stark enough to attract attention. 
2. Conversica

Conversica utilizes the large vertical format, which takes up a lot of real estate space on a page, enough to hopefully stir any website visitors out of “banner blindness.” Their strategy is not to promote their company but rather an offer: research on virtual assistants in sales.
3. E*TRADE

This is one of the skinnier horizontal banners, and E*TRADE uses it to make a bold statement: “$0 commissions” in large letters across the center. The call to action (open an account) is much smaller than the value proposition so that they recognize the value first before taking action on it.
Google Display Network Audience Targeting
Here’s how to achieve success with prospecting and brand awareness GDN targeting:
1. In-Market Segment Targeting
In-market segments are Google users interested in broad categories of products and services, including real estate, education, home and garden, sports and fitness, and more. Google defines these segments based on users’ historical views, clicks, and conversions on previous content. There are sub-categories for specific types of each segment, but the criteria Google uses for these aren’t public. The size of each sub-category is easily millions — and sometimes billions — of users. It’s safe to say that testing a GDN in-market segment is a good starting point.
However, layering demographic qualifiers, device targeting, and other affinities is necessary to create a focused pool of users.

An easy way to control audience size for in-market segments is by comparing with Google Analytics data. The in-market segments on Google Analytics line up perfectly with those on Google Ads. Google Analytics should show you which in-market segments on your site have the highest conversion rates.
Educated guesses for targeting on the Google Ads platform can only go so far. Google Analytics has the tools for identifying and building data-driven audiences from which Google Ads can learn and optimize. Ultimately, using Google Analytics can help ensure you’re reaching highly qualified users.
2. Affinity Audience Targeting
Like in-market segments, affinity audiences are Google users with similar interests, including cooking, fashion, beauty, gaming, music, travel, and more. These are very expansive categories of internet users, so it’s equally important to find targeting criteria to narrow down the size of any one affinity interest, or its sub-categories.

Strictly relying on the default options for in-market segments and affinity audiences within Google Ads can leave a giant dent in your budget for marketing spend. Google Analytics can be a huge help in pinpointing exactly which affinity audiences yield the highest conversion rates on your website.
Google Ads will also create a “similar” audience based on the Google Analytics’ audience created. These audiences are usually more focused in size, making them ideal for testing.

3. Custom Intent Audiences
Custom intent audiences is another valuable contextual targeting method.
How does it work? Simply put, Google can show your ads to users who are “likely to be interested” in specific keywords and website URLs. It may also show your ads to people who have recently searched for your suggested keywords.

The key difference between custom intent audiences and other targeting methods is that you aren’t targeting websites that use these exact keywords, and Google is not placing your ad exclusively on specified website URLs. Rather, Google serves your ads to users on various other websites that have some contextual connection to the website URL or keyword given to Google.
4. Placement Targeting
Google can show your ads on specific websites when provided with placement URLs. This option offers tighter, more controlled targeting because it limits display ad placements to custom websites selected by the marketer.
You could be saving money by being so specific, but you could also be missing out on mainstream websites that your target audience is more actively visiting.

Simply put, users who visit your website also visit other websites. With custom affinity (interests) and custom intent (keyword and URL) audiences, Google can target these users at other online destinations. Picture your specified website as the center of a digital spiderweb — Google uses the central URL to target the users in other URLs within the spiderweb, amplifying your reach to include websites you may not know about.
These websites may or may not have content related to your suggested keyword or URL, but Google knows that these websites are sites that users of your suggested keywords and URLs also visit.
5. Topic Targeting
Google can show your ads on web pages only about your specified topic. Some of these topics could be similar to interests or affinities, or they may fall outside the default categories that Google offers (e.g., they may be along the lines of hiking, camping, or agriculture).
This targeting is an alternative to researching and selecting website placements for one interest without knowing the impact of those placements.
Three Key Audience-Building Factors
Now that you know the basic mechanisms for targeting and creating an audience, let’s dive into three essential tips to ensure you build those audiences better. Here are some high-impact areas for tightening audience targeting where it counts.
1. Select the right devices.
When setting up a display campaign, it’s important to consider where the target audience will be using the product and how they will be signing up. If the user experience is compromised or not nearly as good on a particular device, consider excluding that device altogether.
For example, is mobile really the right platform for your landing page offer? Can your products or services be used easily on tablets and other small devices? If your company produces games or apps, mobile is ideal. But if you’re marketing business software used on desktop computers, mobile targeting could be costly and unnecessary.

2. Choose the right demographics and locations.
Google lets you customize several demographics when targeting for a display campaign. For example, age and household income are broken out into seven different ranges. If you know your audience is not within 18-24 years of age, or the top 10% of household income, you can easily exclude those users when creating ad groups.
There could also be some states in the U.S. or territories internationally to which your business prefers not to drive sales. The bids of these locations can easily be adjusted to redirect your budget to more profitable locations.

3. Mark the box for content exclusions.
Before launching a campaign on GDN, it’s easy to make the mistake of skimming past the additional settings for websites with explicit content. Some advanced content settings are available for preventing your site from appearing on parked domains, sites with sexually suggestive content, sites with sensitive social issues, and more.
Google doesn’t mark these boxes by default, so they must be manually selected to prevent your ads from appearing on undesirable sites.

Optimizing Your Google Display Network Results
Now that we’ve explored targeting methods as well as specific audience-building factors, let’s dive deeper into how you might optimize your GDN results.
1. Assess demographic performance, and then recalibrate if necessary.
Some of your audience demographics may be ideal for traditional marketing but could perform poorly in a digital setting. Even after setting up specific demographic and location targeting, it’s important to review the performance of what hasn’t been excluded. For example, there are some demographic categories (e.g., “unknown”) and ages (e.g., “65+”) that can become costly after launch.

2. Assess placement performance and use those analytics to continually improve.
Google makes it easy to review where your ads are appearing on a daily or weekly basis after campaign launch. You can find this information under “Placements -> Where Ads Showed.”

Filtering placements by unusually high spend or CTR can quickly identify websites that are more of an immediate threat to your campaign’s health. If you’re considering bulk exclusions, you may find it helpful to export web placements within the timeframe of “all time”.
Focus on blocking the duplicate placements that yield no results, since repeat offenders are a higher priority than websites that appear once with only a few impressions. After identifying duplicates, review the relevance of these sites, how much they have spent, and whether they have led to any conversions.
3. Consider which ad style and location will yield the best results.
There are two main ad types available for a GDN campaign — standard image ads and responsive ads. Standard image ads have a number of formats, including square, rectangular, skyscraper, and banner. These ads are an image-only display option. Here’s an example:

Responsive ads, on the other hand, offer a combination of text and image options that display in a variety of formats, depending on where the ad appears. The complete ad is composed of three image types, up to five short headlines, one long headline, up to five descriptions, and a business name. The short headlines and descriptions rotate to find and show the best-performing combination. Here’s an example:

If you’re limited on time, budget, or creative resources, it can be tricky to know which display ads will work best for your campaign, and you might not want to risk time testing different ones. If this is the case, it’s important to note studies have shown that 300 x 250 and 728 x 90 receive more impressions than other ad formats. Half-page ads and large rectangles receive higher CTRs than other ad formats, as well. So if you’re not sure where to begin, try out the rectangular formats and leaderboards!

Figure Out Whether Google Display Network Is The Right Choice For Your Business
You can amass a very powerful reach on the Google Display Network with the right attention to targeting. The network’s affordability, as well as the separation from the competition, makes it a viable marketing option.
This guide has covered several audience-building and optimization factors to help you hit the ground running with Google Display Network campaigns. Whether you’re just starting out or have some room for improvement, check out the custom audience capabilities to see if one might work for your next campaign.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in May 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

 

 

 

Well-working customer service is exceptionally important for businesses today and that importance is only going to increase over time. 90% of customers consider the level of customer service when deciding to do business with a company, and just last year, 49% of consumers decided to turn to competition because of poor service. Retaining customers is extremely important and profitable, and it’s only going to become both harder and more important in the future.

 

The COVID pandemic has greatly accelerated the move to online, and while that has presented numerous business opportunities in the eCommerce world, it has also forced us to face a peculiar barrier of sorts – the barrier of communication. In retail, hiring store help, or the so-called “greeters”, is cheap, efficient, and solves most issues of customer service. Online, this is not the case, things are in some respects easier and in others much harder. Due to the increased volume of customers, direct and personal communication between the company and users is more difficult, all the meanwhile companies are trying to find ways to automate as much of the communication as possible. It can be done, but it has to be done cleverly. So here, we’ll talk about how the approach to customer service needs to keep up with the changes in customer behavior, and how you can deal with it all with marketing automation.

 

The new consumer will require online shopping-specific tools and help

 

The changes in the way we conduct our daily activities mean that we approach shopping differently than we used to. Since the bulk of our shopping is happening online, the onus is now on things like being able to pick the product going purely on pictures in the gallery, choosing the appropriate payment methods, costs, and time of the product delivery. But more important is what happens after that. It’s a reality of doing business that some customers will want to return the product, or they’ll require additional explanations for using it, oftentimes they’ll need it before they make a purchase, and that’s where a lot of modern eCommerce companies fall behind.

 

Previously, it would have been possible to go to the store and brute-force your way into finding a manager to talk to about your gripes. That’s not a possibility anymore, since they’re buying online, but the gripes remain. This makes customers wary and cautious, which in turn makes it harder for you to reach them. Whereas previously a customer could have easily assumed that if something went wrong, they would have been able to go back to the store and figure it out, they’re not so sure about that anymore. But here’s the conundrum: being able to ease the mind of your customer about this is hugely beneficial in the long run. Research shows that customers spend more if they’re engaged and surveys show that, on average, they’re willing to pay 17% more to companies with good customer service.

 

Customers will require their needs to be taken care of and these needs will depend on your service. Nobody can possibly know better than you how to do it and it will be on you to communicate that to your customer.

 

Use marketing automation to help you reach the customer with answers to problems before they reach out to you

 

It is going to be virtually impossible to take the old-school approach and treat all of your customers individually. This is where automation comes into play. Starting off, you can definitely roughly estimate the potential problems your customer might have, based on the problems other customers had in the past, and put forward solutions before the problems even arise. You don’t have to drown your customer with messages, and in fact, you definitely shouldn’t, but you should consider trying to reach them after some time has passed after the purchase to establish if everything is fine by asking for opinions or filling surveys.

 

But much more important than that, you have to be responsive to communication attempts from the user. People are willing to communicate via automated channels, as 48% of customers first try to engage via email before picking up a phone to call you, but 48% is not 100%. There’s a not-insignificant portion of the customers who will demand contact with actual people, so provide them with an opportunity to leave their data so they can be contacted, you can even use automated popups for that. People don’t usually spend a lot of time on the stores’ websites, if they’re staying in your service for much longer than is required to make a purchase, they’re clearly looking for something. This is a good moment to present them with an opportunity to leave their data so that they can be contacted (for instance by using a personalized popup, or by automatically displaying them a chat window with an invitation to start asking questions about the product). 

 

All this may sound obvious, but it’s really not and is too often neglected by companies. A lot of time, thinking, and effort should go into your customer service strategy, because successful service keeps them informed, calm, and happy, and that’s the kind of customer that spends money.

 

Create and maintain a good knowledge base

 

If you can’t serve them on time, you have to give them an appropriate tool to serve themselves. Studies show that QA-style knowledge bases are the most popular kind of self-service that users opt for when they can’t get a hold of a company representative and you should keep one too.

 

Don’t neglect its design, it has to be easy to navigate and informative. It should actually help your users address the challenges they might be facing, and it has to be constantly updated. You can gauge its effectiveness by how much time your users spend there and remember that you can always ask for an opinion about using the service at the end. People are actually very likely to leave a positive opinion if they’re successful because it’s genuinely something of a nice surprise these days. The hallmark of a good customer service strategy is not waiting for your customer to have a problem, it’s giving them a wealth of solutions before it arises (part of which can be achieved with a solid new customer onboarding strategy, and you can find about how to make it better in this article).

 

Due to how important keeping a happy and loyal customer is and how much of our activities have moved online, maintaining good customer service is paramount and you’re going to have to start using more and more technologically advanced means of achieving it. The future of eCommerce is clearly delineated as technologically-savvy brands that are able to maintain a loyal following of a concrete customer base

marketing automation

marketing automation