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Will 2022 be the year that you level up your social media strategy? Marketing trends come and go, but social media serving as a major determining factor of success definitely isn’t going anywhere any time soon. There are 4.55 billion active social media users around the globe, representing 57.6% of all people on the planet.…
The post 6 Best Social Media Tools for Your 2022 Strategy appeared first on Benchmark Email.

Last week I mentioned that the key now is to simplify the mobile setup of my site and reduce eye noise for users.
Some of these users have given feedback that the search bar on the home page has no use. Previously, the search bar included a general search, a tools search, a community search, and a search within the site. Now, I simply delete the search bar function on my phone. On the computer, only the tool search function is retained. Do you guys think the tool search function also needs to be deleted?
https://postimg.cc/tsD0gqWn https://postimg.cc/B8tzQxJR
“Your website looks confusing, with too many things laid out on the home page.” There were many comments like this, so I decided to change the theme of my website on cell phone. Before I directly placed various e-commerce tools on the homepage, allowing people to directly click and read the tool introduction. Now, I put these e-commerce tools into several different folders according to categories first, and clicked on the folders before I could start to understand the tools.
https://postimg.cc/p9cKyFP1 Although there are more steps for the user to take than before, after this change, I found that the home page is much shorter and looks more simple and easy to understand. Do you think this theme is more suitable for my website?(After all, my website is a tool directory for e-commerce sellers.
And the most important point, the mobile version of the site originally had a navigation bar setting, but after the change, it seems to be incompatible with the current theme. Have you guys encountered any problems like this? How was it solved?
https://postimg.cc/PpT2vYHt https://postimg.cc/TpV1Cbv8 Or do you guys have any better suggestions about the whole website layout? Anyway, Happy New Year to all you guys sincerely~
submitted by /u/Sixeven2021 [link] [comments]

submitted by /u/beautyaal [link] [comments]

What’s the largest unread count you’ve seen in someone’s inbox? Whether you’re a proponent of inbox zero or an “I’ll get to it when I get to it” email accumulator, know high unread counts aren’t uncommon. A recent consumer survey found 20% of respondents had 1,000 or more unread emails in their inboxes.
Given the vast amount of emails sent out daily (over 300 billion each day in 2020), it’s hardly a surprise so many go unread. Consumers, overwhelmed by their inboxes, rarely have time to read everything. If your brand doesn’t make the cut, they may unsubscribe from your list. However, they might also get in the habit of deleting your emails before reading them or leaving them to get buried in an ever-growing stack of unread messages. These inactive customers aren’t just a lost opportunity. They can also affect email deliverability.
Email list churn is inevitable, but it doesn’t have to be the end of a consumer relationship. Knowing why someone stopped reading in the first place can help you figure out how to win them back. Your email reactivation campaign should start with a survey to learn why readers are churning. Armed with this data, you’ll be able to create reactivation emails that address customer worries or annoyances and give them a reason to return.
Ask subscribers why they stopped reading
All the data analysis in the world won’t give you the kind of insight you can get from a simple survey. If someone has stopped reading your emails, the easiest way to find out why is by asking them.
Of course, that’s easier said than done. Getting a churned reader to respond to an exit survey is difficult. Ironically, you may have the easiest time with those who take the time to click unsubscribe: Your confirmation page can ask why they no longer want to read your emails. For those inactive subscribers who skim past your emails after seeing the sender, the subject line is your only chance to get their attention.
This is not the time for subtlety or cleverness. If a consumer has churned, it means your marketing tactics aren’t capturing them at the moment. Your survey email (and its subject line) should feel not only personalized but also personal. Without deviating from your brand’s style guide, you may want to:

Use an individual’s name, rather than a brand name, in the from field
Write an email that reads like it’s meant for one individual rather than an entire email list
Include a sign-off or signature with a real person’s name and contact information
Use a respectful, empathetic tone and voice throughout the message

An inactive user is unlikely to give feedback if they don’t think anyone will listen. A successful win-back email must center your consumer rather than your brand.
Write an effective email list churn survey
Whether you’re writing up questions to go on the Unsubscribe page or a survey to be shared via email, it’s important to keep your request simple and short. Unengaged readers typically aren’t in love with your brand, which means they may not have much time to give. Each question you ask comes with the risk of a reader deciding they don’t have the time or energy to fill out your survey and closing the window before they complete it. Your job is to minimize customer frustration and make sure the survey is as easy to complete as possible.
Try to keep your survey to three or fewer questions. Make sure each request gathers an important data point and asks for unique information. For example, asking “Why did you stop reading our emails?” and “How do you feel about the frequency of our emails?” might give the same answer. If you used the second question to instead ask, “How often do would you like to receive emails?” the answers would provide important data you couldn’t have gathered with the first question.
Identify key reasons for email list churn
Once you’ve gathered the data, it’s time to examine it for trends. The process will vary depending on the type of answer you asked for. Checkboxes and radio buttons give clear-cut data because readers are choosing from pre-existing answers. It’s simply a matter of finding the most common response(s). If you gave respondents room to write out their thoughts, you will likely gather more nuanced answers but also have to reconcile the different ways people express the same sentiment. Many surveys have more than one question type, which means using different methods to make sense of the data from different questions.
Once you’ve collated all the answers, you may find a simple, easy explanation for email list churn — or you may find more than one reason for readers leaving. In the latter situation, ask yourself whether you can address multiple issues in the same re-engagement email campaign. If not, consider segmenting your lists and creating a different series of emails for each concern you identified. Failing to respond to consumer feedback is a fatal error with a reader who is only lukewarm on your brand.
Craft a campaign that addresses consumer needs
If you’ve gotten responses to your survey, congratulations: Your customers have told you how to win them back. The next step is to craft reactivation emails that provide what they are asking for. Though your strategy will vary depending on what you learned, each message in a reactivation campaign should be focused on re-earning a customer’s trust. Here are some tips on how to address common causes of email list churn.
Refocus on your target audience to increase relevancy
Personalizing emails by sticking someone’s name in the subject line won’t help if they’re not interested in what you have to offer. The content you are sending out must address the needs of the consumers you want to reach. Using one email newsletter to speak to multiple demographics with different needs just leaves everyone disappointed.
Many email lists run into this problem as they grow. It’s hard to keep up with the high content demands that come with personalization efforts. Unless you have the capacity to create multiple articles to speak to each group, your email blasts for different audiences may look 90% the same. In this situation, it’s probably more effective to focus on one group, even if it means a smaller list.
Part of refocusing on your target audience might mean letting some email subscribers go because they aren’t the right fit. This doesn’t feel good if you’re trying to decrease subscriber churn, but it provides important data about what doesn’t work.
Segment lists for less frequent readers
One of the top reasons for email list attrition is too many emails. It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking the best way to compete with the deluge of other emails is by sending so many you always end up near the top of someone’s inbox. This approach can backfire, cementing you in a consumer’s mind as one of the big drivers of an email overwhelm problem.
You don’t need to drown others out to get people in the habit of reading your emails. You do need to give your audience a reason to keep coming back. Instead of sending out every bit of content immediately, create a list for those who only want to hear from you one or two times a week. Still send your best content — just in fewer emails. Depending on what you learn, you may even find you can scale back email frequency for everyone without losing subscribers or engagement.
Double down on quality content to make customers feel understood
If your emails read as too sales-y or dishonest, they’re more than likely going to go straight into the trash. A surprising number of marketers still send out clickbait or other meaningless content. Getting high open rates or link clicks doesn’t matter if your reader closes the page two seconds later; in fact, it’s more likely to sour them on your brand in the long run.
Providing quality content means understanding your readers and what they want, then following through with answers they can’t find elsewhere. Use the customer pain points and questions identified in your survey as prompts for future email topics.
Use the data to improve your email marketing strategy
Email churn is inevitable, which means re-engagement campaigns need to be part of your repertoire. However, there’s no reason to wait until someone is leaving to make changes. Use the data you gather from churning readers to refine existing email marketing campaigns so you can hook new customers and increase retention. You may even want to go a step further and survey happy readers to see what they want more (and less) of.
Consumers will likely continue to struggle with email management. By 2024, the world will send (and receive) over 360 billion emails a day. That means email opens will be harder to win. If you haven’t yet mastered re-engagement emails, it’s time to get started.
The post How to Craft Reactivation Emails That Win Back Subscribers appeared first on Campaign Monitor.

SMS marketing campaigns can bring 6x-8x times higher engagement than email marketing alone. But how can you make sure your campaign is a successful one? Read now to find out!

What’s better — 1,000 Instagram followers who engage with your brand, or 1 million followers who don’t?
Ultimately, the goal of social media is to generate revenue. If your followers don’t engage with your posts, they won’t engage with your business.

Communities are critical because they promote engagement. They’re incubators for brand awareness, loyalty, and trust. But they’re also a dime a dozen, so marketers need to refine their approach to building and leveraging them correctly.
Let’s explore more about social media communities, their benefits and challenges, and where brands will invest their resources in 2022.
Are Brands Investing in Social Media Communities?
The Hubspot Blog surveyed 1,067 global marketing professionals working in B2B and B2C companies to determine which trends they leverage, the channels they use, and their plans for 2022. Here’s what we found:
Social Media Community Trends

64% of marketers plan to invest in social media communities in 2022.
More than half of respondents (51%) plan to build more social media communities in 2022.
The biggest challenge marketers face with social media communities is actively managing members.

Facebook

89% of marketers who leverage Facebook plan to increase their investment in 2022.
83% of marketers plan to increase their investment in Facebook Live Audio in 2022.
44% of marketers plan to leverage Facebook Stories for the first time in 2022.

Instagram

More than half of marketers (58%) plan to increase their investment in Instagram Reels in 2022, closely followed by Instagram Live (57%).
Almost half of respondents (49%) plan to leverage Instagram Reels for the first time in 2022.
73% of respondents rank Instagram as the best platform for influencer marketing.

Twitter

79% of respondents plan to increase their investment in Twitter Spaces in 2022.
65% of respondents report live audio chat rooms, like Twitter Space, as one of the most effective formats on social media.

YouTube

44% of marketers plan to leverage YouTube for the first time in 2022.
83% plan to increase their investment in YouTube Shorts in 2022.

TikTok

66% of marketers report TikTok as the most effective social media platform for video.
More than half of respondents (52%) plan to increase their investment in TikTok in 2022.
85% of marketers rank short-form videos, like those on TikTok, as the most effective type of social media content.

Social Media Community Benefits
As I mentioned, it’s not enough to have a large social media following — you also need an engaged community. Here are a few reasons why:
1. They are vehicles for personal recommendations.
In a sense, every member of a social media community is a micro-influencer, sharing real experiences and opinions that can influence other members. This is worth mentioning since nearly nine out of ten consumers read reviews before buying a product.
Customers who love your brand want to talk about it. They want to share reviews and pass on advice, and communities give them a place to do that.
But what about bad reviews? As an active participant in your community, you have a great opportunity to resolve any issues or complaints. And since members are already invested in your brand, they’re more apt to find solutions with you.
2. They can cut costs.
Active, self-sustaining communities can become hubs for customers to ask and answer questions, which alleviates pressure on customer support teams. They can also reduce support costs — one study found it was 72% cheaper to answer a question via a community than to submit a ticket to a support team.
Communities can also reduce your ad spending. Here’s a crazy stat — in 2022, ad spending in the US will likely cross the $200 billion mark. Brands with active communities can spend less on social media advertising because they can reach customers in an owned space for free.
3. They create active participation with your brand.
We’ve all heard the statistic — it’s cheaper (and arguably easier) to retain customers than to convert new ones. This is why brand advocacy and retention are critical to any marketing strategy.
Brands can strengthen relationships with members in their communities by encouraging active participation — with polls, surveys, contests, and user-generated content, to name a few. In essence, what was once a transactional relationship is now an active conversation. And every active engagement brings customers closer to your brand.
4. They offer insight into your consumers.
The most productive communities are strategically designed to spark conversations. You can take full advantage of these conversations by tracking common complaints, ideas for improvement, and unique ways they’re using your products to solve problems.
When you make a change based on member feedback, remember to let your community know. People love to know you’re listening and taking their suggestions seriously.
Building a Social Media Community
You’re probably familiar with the adage, “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” The same is true of social media communities. 
Here are a few tips for building a thriving community:
1. Remember that communication = community.
If you want to build a thriving community, you can’t expect your customers to always start the conversation. You have to do the heavy legwork to post content, ask questions, respond to comments, and keep communication lines open.
While you don’t need to be the center of the conversation, your members should know you’re there.
2. Focus on the audience first, brand second.
Social media communities are valuable tools for self-promotion — but if that’s all you’re using them for, you’ll eventually drive customers away.
Effective communities provide value. They educate, entertain, and solve problems for the audience. In other words, if you want to build a real sense of community, you need to provide value with the content you create or share.
Check out how Glow Recipe, a skincare brand, provides value by offering tips for healthy skin while subtly promoting their products:

(Image source)
4. Feature user-generated content.
A great way to boost engagement within a community is to encourage user-generated content. This is any content — like text, videos, or reviews — that your members create, which you can then share across your social communities.
Peloton does an excellent job featuring user-generated content by highlighting customer stories and fitness milestones. Not only does this give the audience a voice, but it also encourages members to share their stories and testimonials — effectively fueling word-of-mouth marketing.

4. Make your community findable.
It’s hard — almost impossible — to build a community if people aren’t aware it exists. Here are a few ways to spread the word:

Embed social icons on your website
Invite family, friends, and colleagues to follow and share your community
Use hashtags to expose your content to new audiences
Cross-promote your community on different channels
Run exclusive giveaways or discounts for community members

5. Don’t let your community collect dust.
Consistency is an important ingredient in successful social media communities. If you let your accounts collect dust, members will abandon ship. When planning ahead, it’s a good idea to create a content calendar and publishing schedule. And if your brand is juggling a variety of different platforms, check out HubSpot’s social media management tools.
Challenges of Building a Social Media Community
Running a social media community is similar to hosting a party — you’re in charge of the entertainment, creating a pleasant atmosphere, and keeping conversations friendly. That’s a lot of responsibility. Luckily, you’re also in control of the guest list.
When it comes to managing your members, start by establishing clear rules and guidelines for your community. This deters any troublemakers from joining and helps prevent future conflict.
For example, Facebook offers a variety of customizable rules that users have to accept before joining a Facebook Group. This is one way to pre-moderate a group without doing any work. Check out the rules below:

The next step is to follow through. When you see members veering from community guidelines, take appropriate action — whether that’s sending a private message to a user or removing them altogether. This alerts other members that you care about the culture in your group.
To help with this process, you may want to designate someone on your team to moderator your community. Or, hire a community manager or online moderation partner such as Hive Moderation or SupportNinja.
Another challenge is measuring the ROI from your community. In other words, are your community-building efforts paying off? For instance, you may have high engagement levels in your community, but your conversion rate is stuck at 0%.
Before doing anything else, ask yourself — how do I want my community to contribute to my businesses? Is it customer engagement? Retention? Product adoption?
Next, you’ll want to identify a few metrics that you can measure your goals against. They should be community-specific and directly related to community activities — such as click-through rates, sign-up rates, or engagement rates.
You can take this one step further by tracking the same KPIs for both community members and non-members, and then comparing the performance between the two. For instance, you may discover a 30% higher product adoption among community members than non-members.
Final Thoughts
By building a social media community, you can turn transactional relationships into meaningful ones, and offer a place for customers to share, collaborate, learn, and provide feedback. But building one is no easy feat, so determine your goals, develop a strategy, and get ready to start the conversation.

Good leadership is vital for the long-term success of your organization.
Consider, for instance, how there’s a 56% reduction in burnout and 845% greater odds of employee engagement when leaders connect people to purpose, accomplishment, or each other.
Good leaders inspire and motivate their employees.
But it’s easier said than done. There are many ways to be a good leader, and it isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach.
If you’re unsure how to become a good leader, you’re in luck. Here, we’ll explore research-backed or expert-backed tips for becoming a better leader at work. Let’s dive in.

What does it mean to be a good leader?
While the term “good leader” can be difficult to define, it’s easy to spot in practice.
A good leader should have the following qualities:

Resiliency
Optimism
Flexibility
Integrity
Accountability
Empathy
Humility
Vision

Additionally, when we surveyed 300 people across the U.S., 44% respondents marked “Ability to communicate” as the most important trait/skill of a good leader. Strong communication skills came ahead of resiliency, creativity, humility, and even self-awareness.

Ultimately, a good leader is meant to inspire, motivate, and challenge each team member to hit their goals, impact the business’ bottom-line, and reach their fullest potential.

In his TedTalk “Why good leaders make you feel safe”, Management theorist Simon Sinek says a good leader is someone who makes their employees feel safe and secure.
Learn more about what makes an effective leader — according to experts at HubSpot, Google, LinkedIn, and Monday.com — in this post on developing leadership skills.
Fortunately, leadership isn’t a trait that you’re either born with or you’re not. Instead, good leadership skills can be learned. Let’s explore how to become a better leader, next.
How to Be a Better Leader at Work
1. Take a leadership assessment.
The first step towards becoming a better leader is assessing your personal strengths and weaknesses to understand areas for improvement.
Start by taking a leadership style quiz to determine which of the 8 leadership styles fits how you lead. Understanding your leadership style can help you determine how your direct reports view you, as well as the gaps that might exist in your current style.
For instance, let’s say you determine you’re an autocratic leader. An autocratic leader doesn’t ask for input from any team members before making a final decision — which can be ineffective, since it inhibits the leader from hearing different perspectives, and doesn’t empower his or her employees.
Once you’ve determined this is your leadership style, you can work to actively request input from team members —  which enables employees to feel heard and empowered, while also helping you ensure you have all the information necessary before making a decision.
2. Be transparent and create open dialogue.
Ultimately, transparency and honesty leads to a higher level of trust between team members and leaders, so remaining transparent with your direct reports is critical.
Your direct reports want to know what’s happening with the organization at-large, so taking the time to have direct, honest conversations with them about the company’s goals is key.
For instance, if your department is going through a re-org, take the time to explain to each direct report why the re-org is taking place, and make space for each employee to express their concerns.
Being transparent and honest also encourages your direct reports to do the same. If they feel you hide information from them or aren’t forthcoming, they’ll act similarly — which can lead to confusion and an increased risk of miscommunication.  
Good leaders are also excellent communicators. As Vice President of Blue Frog, Kelsey Halverson, told me, “Good managers teach, great managers listen. A manager becomes a great teacher when he or she has a genuine desire to hear the organizations goals, challenges, and vision.”
Halverson adds, “It’s not the role of a manager to tell the organization what to do — Instead, it’s to listen and guide the team into actionable strategy that will empower innovation and drive results.”

Taking the time to tailor your communication style for each direct report goes a long way towards establishing strong relationships with them. To do this, ask each direct report to complete a DiSC assessment, which will help you better understand each team member’s personality, how they respond to challenges, and how they prefer to communicate.
3. Foster deeper relationships with your team members.
Taking the time to learn who each of your team members are outside of work is vital for fostering a deeper relationship with them and establishing trust and understanding.  
Consider using icebreaker questions during team meetings, or creating opportunities for the team to bond outside of work. Additionally, ask your direct reports about their preferred way to work — including communication styles, how they like to receive feedback, and what their professional goals are.
Finally, building rapport is about taking the time to get to know each direct report. In 1:1s, rather than jumping right into your meeting’s agenda, consider beginning the conversation more naturally by asking about your direct report’s weekend plans, or what she enjoys doing outside of work, all of which helps you both relate on a more human-to-human level. 
4. Encourage professional development.
According to LinkedIn’s 2019 Workforce Learning Report, 94% of employees say they would stay at a company longer if it simply invested in helping them learn.
Providing your team members with learning and development opportunities can help you reduce turnover rates and increase employee engagement.
Being a good leader is all about seeking out learning and development opportunities for your direct reports, encouraging them to learn, grow, and face new challenges.
Additionally, it will help you make your team more successful in the long-run if you can help team members up-skill in certain areas, or nurture their own leadership skills as your team expands.
5. Show appreciation for a job well done.
Feeling recognized for a job well done can help boost an employee’s morale, engagement, and productivity.
For instance, consider the last time your boss gave you specific and positive feedback, such as, “You did a great job on your presentation on Tuesday. You gave fantastic context into the problem we’re trying to solve on the team, and you were clear and articulate about your proposed solutions.”
Not only would that make you feel great, but I’m willing to bet it would encourage you to work just as hard on your next presentation for more of that positive reinforcement.
Research has shown positive reinforcement is incredibly effective at ensuring people’s behaviors are repeated. So, if your employees do a good job, you’ll want to praise or reward them for their efforts to ensure your team continues to stay engaged and motivated.
6. Remain creative and open-minded.
Good leaders are innovative, creative, and open-minded to new ideas or processes. Rather than adhering to the status quo, a good leader constantly looks for ways to streamline processes, create new opportunities for their team, and increase impact on the bottom-line.
Good leadership includes taking a big-picture vision or strategy, and assigning specific tasks to individual team members to inspire, motivate, and challenge your team.
For instance, last year my manager recognized we needed a new process when it came to working with guest contributors. Once she’d recognized this big-picture challenge, she assigned the project to me. I was excited to own the creative process of brainstorming a new strategy, which kept me engaged and motivated at work.

How to Be a Positive Leader
People with positive moods have been proven to be more creative and collaborative, so if you’re able to spark positivity among your team, you’ll see a real impact on results.
Positivity is contagious, so being a positive leader can go a long way towards instilling confidence, pride, and happiness in your team members.
To be a positive leader, you’ll want to:

Focus on an employee’s strengths and provide positive feedback in 1:1s
Cultivate positive relationships with your team members
Ignite hope by painting a picture of an exciting vision for the future, and consistently reminding employees of why their work matters

However, it’s important to note: You don’t want to prioritize positivity over reality.
As Senior Manager of HubSpot Blog Program’s Karla Hesterberg told me, “I think the best leaders balance realism and optimism really well. You want to keep your team feeling positive about the direction you’re headed, but you can’t gloss over challenges — you have to acknowledge when things are tough and give your team space to feel those things.”

Hesterberg says, “You can’t try too hard to put a positive spin on everything or you’ll end up minimizing real challenges.”

Hesterberg adds, “The best leaders I’ve worked with are really skilled at acknowledging the tough things but then convincing everyone to stay on the train anyway because where you’re all headed is great.”

Good leadership doesn’t happen overnight, and a good leader is humble enough to admit they’re not always going to get it right. There are setbacks in any leadership position.
Being self-aware, open to feedback, and flexible in your approach will set you up for more success in the long-run, particularly as your team grows, or your business’ needs change.