Category: Marketing Automation

Hello, I’ve been in digital/content marketing for about two years now and am looking to gain some more niche skills. I’ve really enjoyed working on email drip campaigns for my company and would like to purse marketing automation as a career path. Any suggestions of courses/ basic skills that would help make this transition? Any advice would be much appreciated. Thanks!
submitted by /u/reneemh19x [link] [comments]

From blog titles to URL slugs, you might not realize how frequently you use SEO stop words. But, to be fair, if Google doesn’t pay much attention to them, why should you?
Research shows that 25% of blog posts are made up of stop words. However, these words have little to no relevance to the topic of the post. These are words that help you compose sentences and connect ideas together, and they don’t have much impact on Google’s search results.
But, excessive use of stop words can impact your brand in the long run. They make content harder for search engines to process which can end up negatively affecting how they index your pages.
In this post, we’ll walk you through exactly what SEO stop words are, how they can hurt — or help — your online presence, and which words are considered stop words by Google and other search engines.
What Are Stop Words in SEO?
We use stop words all the time, whether we’re online or in our everyday lives. These are the articles, prepositions, and phrases that connect keywords together and help us form complete, coherent sentences.
Common words like its, an, the, for, and that, are all considered stop words. While they’re important for communicating verbally, stop words typically carry little importance to SEO and are often ignored by search engines.
Let’s review some of the most common stop words in the section below.
Common SEO Stop Words
The most common SEO stop words are pronouns, articles, prepositions, and conjunctions. This includes words like a, an, the, and, it, for, or, but, in, my, your, our, and their.
When people search for something online, search engines like Google omit these words in their results because they don’t relate to the keywords in the search. So, rather than looking up content that’s related to these words, Google removes them altogether and prioritizes the keywords.
So, the next time you’re trying to hit a word count when writing a blog post, try filling that open space with keywords rather than filler copy that doesn’t improve your SEO.
While it would be great to load up your content with only meaningful keywords, the reality is that stop words are needed for every type of copy. After all, even if you rank highly on Google, it won’t mean much if your content is incomprehensible or doesn’t resonate with your audience.
Are Stop Words Beneficial for SEO?
There’s a time and place for SEO stop words. First and foremost, stop words help the reader understand the content. It can be confusing to read titles and subheaders without stop words.
You also might find instances where stop words help you differentiate between two topics. For example, you can search ‘flamingos’ and you’ll see information about beautiful, bright pink birds. Add ‘the’ to the front, and you’ll be directed to YouTube to listen to the band, The Flamingos. This tiny, three-letter stop word makes a world of a difference in this case.
In the next section, let’s look at some other times when you should be paying attention to stop words to optimize your content’s search ranking.
Removing Stop Words
Should you be removing stop words from all of your content?
Like anything else, it depends on how you’re using them. If your titles, headings, URL slugs, and keywords make sense without them, then it can be beneficial to remove them.
SEO Stop Words in Titles
If your titles don’t make sense when you take out those articles or prepositions, then it’s best to leave them be. After all, you want your audience to actually click and read your content. If the most prominent parts — including the title — don’t make sense, the website could come off as unprofessional or even spammy.
It usually makes the most sense to leave stop words in titles and headings, as these are wayfinding elements for users navigating your content. Just keep in mind that the optimal character count for titles is 50-60 characters, as search engines cut off longer titles, which could omit important information for the visitor. If you have lengthy stop words in your title, consider rewriting them to balance brevity and clarity.
Stop Words in URL Slugs
When it comes to URL slugs, stop words typically don’t have much significance in SEO. They’re relevant, however, if they make your URL slug particularly long. Google ranks URLs based on their length, and longer URLs typically rank lower than shorter ones — as outlined by the chart below.

Image Source
Stop Words as Keywords
As we touched on in the last section, there are some times when stop words are crucial to keywording because they differentiate a proper noun from something else. For example, if you searched “Jets New York” you’d probably get a list of flights coming in and out of New York City. But, if you searched, “The New York Jets,” you would get content about the professional football team instead.
Now that we’re familiar with what stop words are and when we should use them, let’s look at a broader list of stopwords that you should be aware of when creating and optimizing content.
75 Stop Words in SEO
There are many, many more stop words out there, but here’s a list of some of the most common stop words to be mindful of when creating content online.

A About Actually Almost Also Although Always Am An And Any Are As At Be Became Become But By Can Could Did Do Does Each Either Else For From Had Has Have Hence How I If In IS IT ITS
JUST MAY MAYBE Me Might Mine Must My Mine Must My Neither Nor Not Of Oh Ok When Where Whereas Wherever Whenever Whether Which While Who Whom Whoever Whose Why Will With Within Without Would Yes Yet You Your

 
Using SEO Stop Words
SEO stop words are important if you want to create a strong SEO strategy and rank highly on search engines like Google. Overusing them can hinder your ranking, but avoiding them altogether will make your content confusing and unclear. By understanding what stop words are and which words qualify as stop words, you can craft content that works to your brand’s advantage.
For more ways to rank higher on search engines, read these SEO tips.

 

 

It’s been proven that pop-ups, if used wisely, may improve the conversion even by 44%. One of their advantages in comparison to, for example, emails, is that they can’t be ignored. They can also be widely customized. Our feature, Custom Modal Designer, is here to help you create innovative pop-ups that will grow your audience and engage them instead of irritating them.

 

This very useful tool allows for the creation of highly customizable and personalized pop-ups. It makes it possible for selected user groups to view pop-ups containing exclusive offers based on their website activity and CRM data. Thanks to an easy-to-use, intuitive designer, you can monitor where, when, by whom, and what offer is to be seen. Moreover, if you know some tricks, you can actually spice it up a bit and get better results.

 

Limit your Input Fields and adjust them thanks to our progressive forms

 

If your pop-up aims at gathering email addresses and subscribers’ data, it is vital to adjust the number of fields. The more fields you use, the smaller your conversion would be. The research shows that pop-ups with five fields have the lowest conversion rate of 0.81%. It also proves that using only two fields brings better results than using three fields with a crushing difference of over 206%. With Custom Modal Designer it is possible to create progressive forms in order to gather more data at a later stage. However, if the form is aimed at building up a new customer base, the higher conversion is, the better.

 

Custom Modal Designer allows for the creation of pop-ups including not only graphics and forms individually but also both of them combined, all in one program. Remember, that the pop-up that is visually attractive and not overwhelming creates more interest and makes it easier for its viewers to input the needed data.

 

 

As shown in the above examples, it is possible to modify the size of the fields, shorten them, and insert them wherever they are needed.

 

Use columns to show more information in a neat form

 

Not only form fields’ sizes can be adjusted by the columns. It is also possible to set the precise arrangement of your pop-up’s content and modify every widget this way. The column function allows for the placement of any widget in a fixed place. Graphics, texts, buttons, forms – adjust all of them freely, building up a highly customized and original pop-up.

Moreover, you can use one of the available column arrangements to add an additional background of a chosen color or graphics, set up desired margins, or shorten certain fields if needed. Thanks to the column settings, you can also add several widgets in one row by dragging them to the field of the selected column. Obviously, later on, you can adjust all of them individually.

 

Create a “Thank you” page that will speed up your conversion

 

A Thank you Page shows up to the viewers after they opted in for some addition at your website. It can include a simple confirmation of the taken action, such as subscription but it can also be used more creatively.

 

In your Thank You Page, you can ask a newly acquired contact for a referral or a social share. You can also offer a new-joiner discount or show some authority by providing additional knowledge about your offer containing a link to your most popular products or content. It is also a perfect place to conduct a survey and learn some more about the contact.  Lastly, it can be used as an information that email with the confirmation has just been sent to the customer with a small surprise inside of it, such as a new-joiner discount. As simple as that!As you can see, Thank You Page hides a lot of potential that can significantly grow your conversion if you get it right. Custom Modal Designer allows for the addition of the Thank you Page on the condition that a form is being used earlier. All its settings are analogous to the pop-up widget ones, allowing for the column view segmentation, adding links and buttons, and working around your graphics and tests.

 

Have an eye for detail – adjust your pop-up, add graphics and animation

 

One of the best characteristics of our Custom Modal Designer is how adjustable it is. Earlier we have already discussed the usage of column placement for general aesthetics. Did you know that pop-ups with images convert better than the ones without them by over 83 percent? 

 

Don’t be shy with the usage of graphics and animation in your pop-ups. It is also possible to tune almost every small detail of your pop-ups such as background and the level of its transparency, the frames, fonts, colors, and sizes of each widget.  You can easily transfer the style of your already existing website straight into your pop-up. Attention to detail and the constant sense of design will ensure your customers about your stability and professionalism.

 

 

 

 

No matter how your pop-up looks on a computer screen, you can always moderate separately the way it is displayed on the phone.

 

 

Know your target and act in a perfect timing

 

SALESmanago allows for scheduling of the display of a given pop-up for a set date and time or for when the customer behaves in a specific way – for example, leaving his cart behind or keeping coming back to certain products. Thanks to the Website Automation function, you can choose which of the previously prepared pop-ups to display in order to better adapt the content of the message to what we have already learned about the user based on their activity.

 

With Custom Modal Designer it is possible to schedule the display of the pop-up more precisely than ever before. The pop-up may be planned for the scheduled time zone, day, and time. It may be visible only for monitored contacts, anonymous visitors, contacts with opt-in status, or the ones which have a certain tag, such as for example “REGULAR_CUSTOMER” as shown on the below screenshot. In addition, CMD introduced a completely new feature allowing for the set up of the Display Pause Time. The function allows for the pop up not to be displayed ever again if the user clicks either the close button, the overlay, or a linked element.

 

Thanks to the aforementioned Website Automation Rule it is possible to combine the possibilities of the Custom Modal Designer with the automation processes. For example, you can prepare a discount offering pop-up that will be displayed only for contacts with the “REGULAR_CUSTOMER” tag, just as we already set it up in Custom Modal Designer in the earlier screenshot. Then, you can add an Automation Rule allowing for the display of this pop up only after a second visit.

marketing automation

marketing automation

You get out of social media marketing what you put into it. And to know how far your efforts are taking you, you need to be tracking your metrics. We get it: posting on social consistently is already a massive effort, and tracking your analytics along the way can seem like an even larger one.…
The post 6 Social Media Metrics That Matter appeared first on Benchmarkemail.

Last Updated on November 24, 2020 by Rakesh GuptaTo understand how to solve the same business use case using Process Builder and Lightning Flow. Check out this article Getting Started with Process Builder – Part 8 (Auto Sync Accepted Quote … Continue reading →

What do you do when you have a great message, an audience hungry for your content, a unique perspective…and a scalability challenge?
For sports publisher The GIST, the solution was simple yet elegant. The women-led media brand aims to make the world of sports more accessible and inclusive to all and challenge the status quo of a male-dominated sports and media industry.
The startup has seen meteoric growth since its launch in 2017, expanding to cover new markets and quickly nurturing a loyal subscriber base in Canada and the United States. But fast growth comes with growing pains, and the publisher’s small team needed a way to scale up and maintain their momentum. 
Campaign Monitor’s flexible platform and dynamic content capabilities were the perfect solutions to help The GIST sustain its growth and continue its mission.
The results:

Segmented campaigns developed in 25% of the time

Double the industry average open rate

Grew mailing list from 30,000 to 100,000 since joining Campaign Monitor, 233% increase

Scaling and growing with dynamic content
The GIST’s approachable, digestible spin on sports news and commentary has been a huge hit. 
But as email marketers in the media and publishing space know, reaching more and more people comes with its own challenges, especially as you push into new geographic markets. Sports is often an incredibly local experience, meaning each new market needs distinct, relevant content served to it.
The GIST succeeds through the quality, thought, and care it puts in to each of its newsletters. But scaling that amount of time, effort, and resources into a new email for each new market was unsustainable. 
“The permutations and combinations of all the different newsletters would be insane,” said co-founder Roslyn McLarty. “We’re in so many cities now compared to where we were before Campaign Monitor, and even that was getting out of hand.”
Thanks to clever use of Campaign Monitor’s dynamic content capabilities, the team developed a solution that served its growing community and media buyers. Dynamic content elements built into the newsletter can easily be adjusted to show content and stories relevant to the individual subscriber. The platform automates the menial manual work of building a new email for each segment, reducing the resources needed to send a newsletter down to 25% of what it would be otherwise.
“The dynamic content is super helpful because there’s some content that’s important to everyone, some stories that are important on a national level, and there are some city-specific pieces. It’s important not just for our subscribers but our advertisers that we can swap out content to be more relevant to different audiences,” said McClarty.

As automatic as Serena Williams
It’s one thing to acquire a new subscriber, and another to keep them coming back for more. Making a big first impression and nurturing a new relationship into loyalty is paramount to keeping engagement rates up and advertisers happy.
The GIST’s solution is a thoughtful automated email journey delivered to new signups. Campaign Monitor’s automated email journey capabilities make it easy to segment subscribers for the most welcoming and relevant possible experience.
Each journey is highly customized based on a variety of factors, including the location of the subscriber source and their sign up source (organic search, cross-promotion, referral, etc.). It includes a welcome email, an introduction to The GIST’s story and mission, a reminder about the referral program, and a survey email asking for feedback and input.
Testing the way to gold-medal results
Sports is not a new topic for a publisher to focus on. But The GIST had a new perspective and a goal to target an audience that previously has not been heavily engaged by sports media. The newsletter’s founders had to find out what their audience wanted and responded to on their own.
Campaign Monitor’s A/B testing feature was the perfect tool to gather data-backed insights and make incremental improvements in their email KPIs. It’s a large component of what’s helped them increase their average open rate an additional 5% since partnering with Campaign Monitor.

“Our open rates are very dependent upon the subject line and preview text,” McLarty explained. “The ability to A/B test is big. We’re moving into A/B testing for content as well to optimize getting people to share our newsletter, as a way to grow; testing buttons and copy options to optimize our referral funnel. And obviously, with ads, we’re trying to optimize the engagement we get for our brand partners so that we’re able to monetize better.”
Growing with Campaign Monitor
The GIST was using a different platform when first launching its newsletter program. But as they added new markets and expanded subscriber lists, they began to outgrow their email solution.
McLarty said several factors played into the choice to move to Campaign Monitor. 

The time-saving and scalability potential of dynamic content capabilities

The existing community of high-quality brands in Campaign Monitor’s email publishing space.

Superior email deliverability compared to the competition

A user-friendly, intuitive tool

“When we’re putting together the newsletters, it’s very user friendly for us,” she said. “We can just insert a section and determine which segments will get it. It gave us the flexibility to put together the email and set it up to go out to all our markets the way we need it to.”
Wrapping up
We love working with Roslyn and her team. And of course, we love The GIST! If you’re in need of a sports fix with an irreverent, fun, and female voice, subscribe to their newsletter (and tell them we sent you).
Are you a publisher looking to grow and scale your email program without the mess? Let us know!

 
The post Dynamic email content fuels dynamic growth for The GIST appeared first on Campaign Monitor.

Last Updated on November 24, 2020 by Rakesh GuptaTo understand how to solve the same business use case using Process Builder and Lightning Flow. Check out this article Getting Started with Process Builder – Part 8 (Auto Sync Accepted Quote … Continue reading →

Success on social media can often feel like a secret science. Something that only the few can achieve. But creating a successful social media strategy is a skill that can be learned. Mastered, even.
And you don’t need a flashy brand or a big budget.
What you need is a deep understanding of what your audience cares about, and how to get your content in front of them in the right places at the right times.
That’s why analytics are so important. Analytics help you to make better decisions and get better results. And today, I’m excited to announce our latest feature:
Analytics for LinkedIn Pages!
Together with our Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter integrations, this makes Buffer’s analytics an all-in-one solution for these four popular social networks for businesses.
Want to see what’s new and why 3,000 customers use our analytics to boost their social media strategy?
Let’s take a look.

Buffer’s social media analytics and reporting solution
If you have been using Buffer for your social media planning and scheduling but not measurement and reporting, I think you’ll be thrilled to try our analytics. The analytics in Buffer lets you track your performance, analyze your posts, and report your results. Ultimately, we want to give you more data and help you get better results.
Let’s talk about the new feature first.
How to analyze and report your LinkedIn performance
We intentionally designed our analytics to be simple so that you can easily get what you need and create reports in a few clicks. For this feature, we managed to work with the LinkedIn team as we built it.
“I’m excited about this new feature by Buffer because we have seen many small businesses leverage their LinkedIn Page to build thought leadership and recruit new teammates. This new feature will help them understand what’s working so that they can get better results on LinkedIn,” said Ting Ba, the Group Product Marketing Manager of LinkedIn Pages.
Here’s a quick 2-min video walkthrough of using Buffer to analyze your LinkedIn posts and showcase your results. If you prefer a more in-depth explanation, feel free to read on.
This new feature will help [small businesses] understand what’s working so that they can get better results on LinkedIn. – Ting Ba, Group Product Marketing Manager, LinkedIn Pages
1. Know what’s working to optimize your LinkedIn strategy
If you know what content resonates with your followers, you can create more of those content to engage your followers and grow your following.
But how do you know what’s connecting with your followers?
Buffer allows you to easily see your top-performing posts sorted by your most important metric: impressions, likes, comments, shares, or engagement rate.
I like to sort my posts by engagement rate because it tells me how often people engaged with a post after seeing it. To me, a high engagement rate is a sign that the content resonated with my followers. But you can also sort your posts by other metrics, depending on the goals of your strategy. There is no one-size-fits-all answer here.
Once you have sorted your posts, you can immediately see which posts have performed the best (according to your chosen metric). Next, analyze the top posts to see if there’s a clear recipe for success. Think about:

What’s special about these posts?
Is there a post type (e.g. video, image, article, text) that my audience seems to prefer?
Is there a topic that my audience seems to like?
When were the posts published? Is there a trend?

To make things even easier for you, Buffer analyzes your posts for you to tell you which day, post type, and posting frequency gave you the highest engagement rate. This lets you experiment with different posting strategies without the hassle of analyzing your posts yourself.
2. Understand your LinkedIn growth and results
After you have analyzed your posts and come up with more content, you would also want to know if the new posts are bringing in better results.

Are we getting more followers?
Is the number of impressions growing month-on-month?
Or simply, did all the metrics increase?

There are several ways to do this in Buffer, depending on what you want to achieve:
First, if you want a quick overview of your LinkedIn Page performance, you can this at a glance under the Overview tab. This is a summary of your Page’s key metrics and how they have changed compared with the previous period.
Second, if you want to see how these metrics have changed over time, you can look at the metrics insights chart under the Overview tab. This is one of our customers’ favorites because they can visually see the growth of the metrics. It is also a great chart to show others in your reports.
Finally, if you want to see how your posts have performed on aggregate, you can look at the post summary table under the Posts tab. It tells you the number of impressions, likes, etc. received by your posts and how those metrics have changed compared with the previous period.
3. Showcase the value of your work
After all your hard work, you would also want to put together monthly reports to share your results with your team, your manager, or your clients. It is also a great way to show that you understand your numbers.
Every table and chart can be easily added to a social media report in a few clicks.
First, click on the plus button in the upper-right corner of the table or chart.
Then, if you want to create a new report, enter the title of the report. If you want to add the chart to an existing report, select the respective report.
And there you have it—your social media report! (And not a spreadsheet in sight.)
To make your report more comprehensive, I recommend adding a description of the report and notes for the charts in your report. This will help people who view your report make sense of the data and understand your work.
Once the report is ready, you can export it as a PDF file and share it.
Here’s a pro tip: Instead of creating new reports every month, you can simply change the date period of your report to get the updated data.
Everything that I have described above is also available for your Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter channels. You can create multi-channel reports by adding charts from various social channels into the same report. You no longer have to go to each social network to download the data and compile them in a spreadsheet!

A recap of our latest analytics features and improvements
Besides analytics for LinkedIn Pages, we have also added several other analytics features this year, which I thought you might be interested in:
Campaigns
Social media is not just about posting X times a day. Top brands plan campaigns that span multiple social networks. You can now plan your social media campaigns and get automated campaign reports in Buffer.
Boosted post insights
If you boost your Facebook and Instagram posts, you would want to know how they are performing. How does it compare with your organic results? You can do this comparison right inside Buffer.
Best time to post on Instagram
The age-old question: when is the best time to post? Our team developed an in-house statistical model to predict your reach potential on Instagram according to your previous posts and your follower activity. This is personalized to your brand specifically. To save you time, we also suggest the top three dates and times to maximize your reach on Instagram.
Hashtag analytics for first comments
While we had hashtag analytics for Instagram posts for a long time, we were not able to analyze the hashtags in the comments. Many customers put their hashtags in the first comment to keep the caption tidy. To ensure that they can also benefit from the hashtag analytics, we made it possible to track and analyze hashtags in the comments.
New date period options for faster reporting
Here’s a small improvement that saves lots of time. Previously, the date period options available were “Last 7 days”, “Last 28 days”, “Last 30 days”, and “Last 90 days”. We realized they were not that helpful because what customers really wanted was to look at their data for the week or the month. So we updated the options to “This month”, “Last month”, “This week”, and “Last week”. This has made weekly reviews and monthly reporting much simpler.
Get more data. Make better decisions.
Doing social media without analytics is like running with your eyes closed. You will get somewhere but probably not where you want to go. We want to equip you with the data you need in a simple and accessible way so that you can make better decisions. Better decisions on what content to post to grow your reach and engagement.
If you already have analytics in your Buffer subscription, the new LinkedIn integration is already available to you.
Otherwise, feel free to grab a 14-day trial of Buffer and start making better decisions.

FAQs
Where can I find the analytics in my Buffer account?
If you already have the analytics in your Buffer subscription, click on “Analyze” in the upper-left corner to see your analytics.
I have a Buffer subscription but why do I not have access to the analytics?
It might be because you do not have the analytics in your Buffer subscription. You can try the analytics for free for 14 days before you decide whether you want to keep it.
Can I connect my LinkedIn personal profiles?
It’s currently not possible to connect your LinkedIn personal profiles to Buffer’s analytics. If you need this, would you be up for sharing your feedback with us?

Once you have the chance to try this feature and Buffer’s analytics, we’d love to know what you think!

Say hello to our latest feature: Analytics for LinkedIn Pages! 👋 💼📈📊Together with our Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter integrations, this makes Buffer’s analytics an all-in-one solution for the four popular social networks for businesses. https://t.co/x1QDGIa8HZ— Buffer (@buffer) November 24, 2020

All humans — including your customers — are emotional creatures.
That’s why it’s so important to make sure every interaction customers have with your company a memorable one — so memorable that they’ll want to recommend your business to a friend, family member, or colleague.

That connection between your business and customers is exactly what customer experience is all about — providing the support that your customers seek throughout all stages of the buyer’s journey.
You can think of the whole customer journey as a (very important) and complete transaction between your brand and customer, — what happens throughout that transaction and the way your customers feel define the customer experience.
For instance, you visit your local ice cream shop; the waitress welcomes you with your name and immediately asks if you’d like your regular treat, a chocolate sundae with extra chocolate chips, or if you’d prefer to look at a menu.
Wouldn’t this personalized and positive experience make you want to continue returning to that ice cream shop? Sometimes it hardly matters how the food tastes — the unique and delightful customer experience is what keeps you going back.
This doesn’t just apply to brick-and-mortar stores either. For example, when a prospect visits your website, why would they want to stick around to learn about your products or what your brand stands for if they don’t feel valued, understood, and heard? In this case, it won’t matter how beautiful your site isor how well you’ve optimized your site — what matters is CX.
Understanding Customer Experience (CX): How to See the World Through Your Customer’s Eyes
There are a number of ways a customer may interact with your business. For example, when they visit your website, engage with your social posts, click on your ads, purchase your product or service, or provide feedback. Customer experience includes all of these interactions and more.
A recent study by Oracle reveals maximizing customer satisfaction across the buyer journey increases total customer satisfaction by 20%, and drives revenue growth by up to 15%.
You need to see the world through customer-colored glasses. Understand their challenges and needs. They want to be heard and expect quick responses and speedy reactions from your team members.
Focus on client-centricity — put your customers first by searching for opportunities to create products and services that resolve the challenges of your customers. You can also identify your best customers with smart segmentation. There are a lot of benefits of customer segmentation including a better understanding of your customer’s behaviors, interests, and pain points.
Here are some great examples of how brands are enhancing their customer experience.

When Tony started Zappos (now a billion-dollar brand), he rewarded his team for spending long hours over the phone to create a splendid customer experience.

Apple added a human element to their customer interaction by installing experts at the Genius bar.

FedEx ensured a better customer experience by answering every customer support call on the first ring.

Now that you know what CX is, let’s take a moment to review what it is not.
Customer experience is not user experience (UX).
Customer experience and user experience are separate strategies businesses deploy to help them grow.
User experience is a subset of customer experience. It revolves around your products. It’s all about how your customers interact with your products and what experience they have with them. User experience is a blend of design and architecture, usability, functionality, user-hierarchy, and understanding.
Whereas customer experience is a summary of the complete customer journey map. It starts when a visitor hears about you and exists throughout every interaction with Sales,Marketing, Customer Service, as well as with the product you sell.
Next, let’s review the ways in which CX impacts your conversions and why you may not be seeing the impact you’re hoping for on your bottom line just yet — and don’t worry, we’ll work through some ways to resolve those challenges too.
5 Reasons Why Your Customer Experience is Not Converting Prospects (Yet)

You don’t know your customers well.

The first reason for the low conversion rates is you don’t know who you are targeting. When you are not aware of your target audience, how would you guarantee their conversions?
How to fix it?

Determine what your customers want, where their interests lie, what they like, and other common characteristics — everything that helps you reach your audience. (Make buyer personas to help you with this.)
Run customer surveys and polls; they are the best way to collect customer information. The feedback you receive from there is filtered and gives you a quick view of your user requirements.
Analyze your customers’ behavior with marketing analytics with HubSpot CRM.

Source

Segment your buyers based on their buying frequency, recency, and monetary metrics (RFM segmentation).
Filter your best customers by separating them into categories with HubSpot’s Smart Lists, and send personalized emails to them.

2. Your products are not grabbing your user’s attention.
It’s an age-old saying that the first impression is the last impression. It’s very critical that the visitor’s first impression on viewing your products and your website as a whole is a pleasant one.
The buying decision of the vast majority of your website visitors is impacted by this first impression. If your products are visually appealing, the visitor is bound to take more interest and there is a good chance of conversion.
How to fix it?
When it comes to your eCommerce store, it’s important to keep in mind that your customers are buying products without necessarily ever having the ability to test them out and/or feel them first. So, you need to create an environment where they can make easy purchasing decisions that are virtual from start to finish.
There are a variety of ways through which you can enhance the customer experience and boost conversions.

Use high-quality photographs and captivating videos to showcase your product and tell stories about your brand and product or service.
Keep your products organized on your website and implement easy-to-use navigation.
Leading fashion brands like L’oreal and Rayban allow users to try virtual makeover tools and provide a 360-degree view of their products. Such innovative leaps in presenting online products help these brands to stand out from others and attract huge audiences.

Source

Use augmented reality (AR) — this is a popular trend in the beauty and fashion industries because customers can try your products on virtually (e.g. a pair of sunglasses).
Create an omnichannel experience for your online shoppers by augmenting product visualization.
Be clear about your pricing strategy. According to Quicksprout, 56% of shoppers abandon their carts at checkout because of unexpected costs.

3. Your website isn’t ready for shoppers.
Did you know that 38% of people will stop engaging with a website if the content or layout is unattractive?
Also, 75% of consumers admit to making judgements on a company’s credibility based on the company’s website design.
If you are experiencing a solid amount of traffic but few conversions and a high bounce rate, your website design likely has issues.
How to fix it?

If your website is suffering from low traffic, that may be because your audience isn’t getting what they are looking for. Make sure you are keeping everything on your website accessible for your users.
Secondly, when a user visits your website, try to enhance the hero section (the header part) as beautiful, clean, and direct as possible. This section can contain your product, service, and offers too.
Add clear call-to-actions (CTAs) throughout your webpage. Add a “view cart” option as well to heighten the chances of successful checkouts.
Keep your website design conversion-focused. Put your menu bars (in the header and footer) organized. This will allow your users to navigate to find their goals quickly.

Statista says there will be a total of 4.78 billion smartphone users in 2020. So if your website isn’t mobile-optimized, then you may lose conversions.
Capitalize on your social media — use it to help you boost your top-performing content such as blog posts, customer reviews, and testimonials. Respond to feedback and answer customer questions through social media, too.

4. You’re unable to win your customer’s trust.
One reason for lower conversion rates is that you are incapable of winning your customer’s trust.
81% of online shoppers feel concerned when shopping on a website with which they are not familiar. Trust cannot be forced; let’s see how you can win your customers’ trust naturally without a push.
How to fix it?

Choose the right trust seal to improve security on your websites. Trust seals verify your website to be legal and lawful.
Add customer reviews to your website to increase the chances of conversions and enhance your customer experience. According to BrightLocal, the average consumer reads 10 reviews before feeling able to trust a business.
Be socially active, entertain, communicate, engage, educate, and run campaigns around your brand. Be real and stick to your niche and brand values.
Engage your customers and earn their trust by establishing excellent communication practices.
Add high-converting and relevant CTAs to your website above the fold. Use phrases and words like Learn More, Shop Now, Download, Sign-up, and Book Now.

5. You have not planned your customer onboarding.
Remember, there are two kinds of customer onboarding: on-site, and off-site. The fundamental difference between on-site and off-site onboarding is that, when a shopper lands on your website, it means they’re looking for your products or services. In off-site, the customer has already been introduced to your products and services, before he/she needs them.
How to fix it?

Offer a real-time product demo for your audience to help them explore your product and it’s features quickly. According to Wyzowl, 84% of people say that they’ve been convinced to buy a product or service by watching a brand’s video. Video demos impact purchasing decisions significantly and boost engagement as well.
For a frictionless customer experience, it is crucial how you handle users who leave your website or intend to leave it.

Use an immediate exit-intent pop-up.
Set up an email marketing campaign and select time-slots to send interactive abandoned cart emails to lost users.
Keep your cart visible to users.

Use retargeting or remarketing ads to target users who have visited your website before.
Be different — offer a dynamic free trial period for your products and services. Then, a user can extend the trial period and if they choose to. This provides a sense of flexibility and freedom for users.

Wrapping Up
Remember: Customers are humans, not your contact to close in the CRM.
Customer experience brings your customers closer to your brand. Humanize your brand and design, and analyze your customer journey map.
Light up your brand with a customer-centric approach and capture your shopper’s attention using the strategies mentioned above. For more information, check out the latest customer experience statistics & trends 2020 here.
Author Bio: Himanshu Rauthan is an entrepreneur and co-founder at MakeWebBetter, an eCommerce digital marketing agency, HubSpot Premier Integration and Gold Solutions Partner. He is a digital marketing and inbound expert, passionate about building and scaling eCommerce customer experiences.
HubSpot marketing teams reserves the right to use guest blog author’s likeness across our content as we see fit, including but not limited to HubSpot’s social media channels.

Traffic matters. The more traffic your website generates, the greater your chances of capturing visitor interest, encouraging user action and generating sales.
So it’s no surprise that traffic remains a top priority no matter what kind of site you run. As noted by a recent Forbes piece, everything from specific search engine optimization (SEO) strategies to contextually-relevant content can help boost traffic volumes and increase key metrics, while more technical traffic attractions such as reducing page load delays and improving user experience on mobile devices can also enhance your website impact.
The potential downside? These traffic-boosting tactics aren’t quick fixes. They require time and effort to deliver ongoing results — and they’re not guaranteed.
Website traffic exchange sites offer a supposedly speedy solution to deliver increased impressions and help your click-throughs climb the charts, but as noted by Google, they also come with significant risk “because they may lead to invalid clicks or impressions and result in your account being disabled.”
Here’s what you need to know about website traffic exchange sites, how they work — and the red flags that make them a non-starter for sustained traffic over time.
What is a Website Traffic Exchange?
The idea behind a website traffic exchange is simple: Quid pro quo — you do something, and you get something in return.
In this case, what you’re doing is visiting other business owners’ websites, and they’re visiting yours in return. The theory holds that with enough visits your site will start to climb relevant search rankings and eventually drive more organic traffic your way.
At face value, this doesn’t seem like a bad idea: Since website owners all want the same thing — traffic — why not band together and use the power of the Web at large for collective gain?
But problems crop up as traffic trends away from the organic views and user engagements that search engines are now built to detect. Since you’re visiting sites as quickly as possible to generate their traffic and get the same in return, your website impressions are feather-light and fleeting; there’s no engagement with content and no context for the visit.
As search engines become more sophisticated, meanwhile they can detect this lack of legitimacy — and penalize your site for it.
Understanding Website Traffic Exchange Sites
The most common form factor for these traffic exchange options is as traffic exchange websites. Do a quick Google search and dozens will pop up, all offering high-volume, low-risk services.
These websites are simply groups of website owners who all agree to visit the other sites on the list and in return have their own sites visited. Some are free to join and have hundreds or thousands of sites listed; others come with a fee and may support millions of sites worldwide.
While smaller sites typically operate on a one-for-one model — you visit one website and get a visit in return — larger operations may impose a site-viewing ratio, especially if your site is just starting. For example, if your ratio is 0.5 you must visit two sites before getting one visit in return.
To help smaller companies boost their profile more quickly, many of these website traffic exchange sites now offer for-pay options that promise to deliver a certain quantity of digital visitors in a specific time frame. They may also run contests or promotions that group members can enter (for free or for pay) which will boost their traffic multiplier and supposedly get them closer to the top of relevant, front-page searches.
Red Flags: Why You Shouldn’t Use Traffic Exchange Services
So far, these traffic exchange sites don’t sound like a terrible idea: You get traffic for free or for pay and provide traffic for other sites.
But here’s the problem: As noted by Google, their AdSense program specifically prohibits any artificial means of generating impressions or clicks — if your website is found to be using these methods, your AdSense profile may be suspended and your search ranking will drop. Although website traffic exchange sites use a slightly different model to deliver click-throughs and visitor impressions, they may create similar red flags for popular search engines in turn causing your site’s search ranking to crash.
There’s also the larger problem of organic and contextual traffic. Your ultimate goal is to attract visitors with relevant website content that drives specific action — such as signing up for a newsletter, filling out a contact form or making a purchase. Achieving this goal requires two things: Organic searches that return your website as a top result and contextual, value-driven content that creates consumer engagement
Traffic exchange sites provide the first part of this equation, since group members may be given specific keywords to enter which return your site and boost search rankings. But they fall short on the second half, since these aren’t real visitors but other group members clicking through and then bouncing away while waiting for you to return the favor. This creates an issue for intelligent search engine algorithms that notice your traffic increase — and commensurate lack of engagement, in turn red-flagging your site and potentially damaging your search ranking.
Green-light Options for Increasing Your Website Traffic
If website traffic exchange services are a non-starter, what can site owners do to increase traffic, drive more leads and deliver ROI?
Some of the most effective options include:

Creating relevant content
Buying targeted ads
Writing guest posts
Capturing better backlinks
Repurposing old assets

Curated, context-aware content matters to improve traffic metrics. This means creating website layouts and resources that are relevant to your target audience and provide actionable information about your products, unique market position or pricing.
Free press is great, but it’s not always easy to find. As a result, it’s worth doing your research and purchasing targeted ad space on the social platforms preferred by your buyer personas. For example, if you find significant group numbers of Facebook dedicated to discussions of products or services in your industry, it’s worth considering some targeted ad spend to attract specific user interest.
Many website owners are experts in their field, making them ideal authors for guest posts on more popular blogs or sites. Start by reaching out to site admins about writing a guest post with the caveat that they’ll include a link to your site. This lets you capitalize on larger traffic pools without paying for traffic exchange sites.
Speaking of backlinks, it’s worth trying to generate as many great backlinks as possible. Start with a quick search of your brand, product and service names — if you see them mentioned in search results but unlinked, reach out to the author and ask for a backlink. It’s also worth checking the most-searched terms in your market vertical; if you can capture these searches with on-site content, there’s potential to secure backlinks on popular “best of” articles and listicles.
You’ve got content you’re no longer using, but that doesn’t mean it’s useless. While simply reposting it won’t generate new traffic, you can repurpose popular resources into something else. For example, a well-performing blog post could be turned into a video or serve as the jumping-off point for a discussion, while a whitepaper could see new life as an infographic with updated statistics.
The bottom line? More traffic means better search rankings and improved user engagement on your website.
But not all traffic is created equal. While traffic exchange websites promise high volume and velocity, the value of this tactic comes with risk — and can’t compare to value-driven, user-focused traffic building that steadily boosts your search ranking and helps turn first-page curiosity into a functional sales conversion.