Starting A Business – The Best Email Marketing Tools To Consider
When starting a business, you’re going to want to get going with a mailing list as soon as possible. Repeat customers are an important part of your revenue stream. Without them, you can find customer acquisition costs higher and your profits lower.
Plus, the strain of finding loads of new customers can be challenging and stressful.
The added benefit of starting a mailing list is that you can build anticipation for products/services before you start. This can mean that as soon as you launch, you can start selling.
However, if you’re looking to start a business with a mailing list, you’re going to need some top email marketing tools. Here is a selection of the best tools on the market.
1. Email Marketing Software
Using sites like Fluttermail can help you start your business’ email marketing list. It gives you a place to collect your contacts, either manually, or via an additional software program, and send campaigns to your audience.
Email marketing services can help you navigate around several legal aspects. For instance, not breaking GDPR and anti-spam legislation across the world. They can also enable you to produce aesthetically pleasing designs that can help you convert your audience into buyers.
Finally, email marketing software is really good for statistics. They have the technology to properly track subscriber actions whether it’s by opening an email or clicking on a link.
2. Spreadsheet Software
While it might seem outdated to use spreadsheet software, it is a really useful tool. For one, it allows you to keep statistics within one simple page for campaigns over a period of time. In a spreadsheet you can start to manipulate the data to show trends within campaigns and with audiences which can help you plan your next series of campaigns.
While there are some manual operations with this, it can be a great way to push your business forward.
3. Signup Software
If you want to use email marketing to promote your website, services and products: you need to subscribe people to your marketing list. If you’re using a CMS, like WordPress or Shopify, then you can use a plugin to add this functionality to your website. Some plugins are free, but some of the best are premium and require you to pay either an up-front or subscription fee.
However, most tools can automatically add subscribers to your list. And you can segregate the lists to make them more effective in the long-term. Segregation can be based on the audience’s behaviour or demographics. But you need to match these to a certain type of customer and then send customised campaigns to different segregations.
4. Grammar Software
One of the biggest failures in marketing isn’t getting the message to the audience. It’s getting the message in a clear format to the audience. And the largest barrier to this is grammar and spelling. Many marketers, new business owners and others, send content out with simple grammatical errors in the content.
While the odd mistake is to be expected (no-one is perfect); that doesn’t mean you can relaxed about your content.
You should check all content to ensure that is free from errors. You can use grammar checkers like Scribens and Grammarly to check your work. Both have free options that can help. However, always double check their recommendations as they aren’t perfect solutions.
5. Image Software
Images (and videos) are an important aspect of marketing. Research has shown that conversions are higher when you use images and video in content. Therefore, ensure that you have image (video) editing software as part of your email marketing tool box.
You can then add special effects to images and videos to make them look more professional and improve the quality of the results.
Conclusion
When starting a new business, you’ll want to begin with building a mailing list. Ideally, this should be done first, before the launch, but even if you have launched, the same tools are needed. Use the list above to collect a tool box for your email marketing campaigns that will help you sell your products and services.
What tools do you use? Have we missed something off?
Let us know in the comments below.
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The Integrations Mailchimp Recommend
What apps could you use to improve your business
Running a business can be challenging. There are so many tasks to keep up with and it might seem that you are ‘chasing your tail’ at times. The simple answer to this is to automate and use software to help you manage simple tasks and free-up your time.
MailChimp has a list of integrations that it recommends using on your website or within your organisation to help you manage your business. Here’s a list of the programs the site recommends; they will make your life around the office a lot easier.
1. Envoy
Do you have lots of visitors to your office? These visitors are a potential customer, and their long-term value can be greatly enhanced if you are able to capture their details as they enter your office.
Envoy is the perfect app for this purpose. The visitor registration app integrates perfectly with email marketing software, so you can capture who has arrived and when, and their contact details. You can even segregate visitors based on the reason for their visit (i.e. lead, customer, partner, etc.).
The sign-in details can be taken on an iPad or another mobile device at the entrance, and their details are automatically saved – no need to manually add them later. Then, once they’ve left, you can send them follow-up emails or another automation series to help convert the lead.
This system might even work in shops if you offer customers a chance to register.
2. Planyo
If you attend meetings, then you need to be organised. Your time is precious, and you can’t be wasting time booking in meetings manually, or accidentally double booking yourself or a member of your team. Planyo is a reservation software app which can help with organisation and save you time.
Once a booking has been made, Planyo will sync the data to that on your marketing list. You can then have a series of automated reminders sent to you, relevant team members, and those who have arranged the meeting.
The advantage of this program is that it can automatically tell relevant people about the meeting, so they can prepare. Perhaps your reception team can be prewarned, so they have refreshments ready and have a briefing of who’s arriving – it does make a great impression.
3. Typeform by Zapier
If you want your business to be a success then you will need to collect feedback from clients, opinions from your staff, and information from your partners. This information can form the basis of your business improvement initiatives, so you can develop and improve.
Typeform is a simple application that helps you collect this information for your business. The application uses attractive looking contact forms, questionnaires, and other forms, to glean this information from your target audience.
The application can be integrated with your business’ marketing list, so you don’t have to manually collect details; it can be done automatically so you can just analyse the results.
4. Google Analytics
Do you know how to improve your business’ web performance? Track the behaviours of visitors and learn what is generating sales and what is preventing them. You can then replicate success and remove failing pages from your site to improve conversion rates.
One of the best applications for this is Google Analytics. There’s a wealth of information available for free that can tell you where, when and what a visitor is doing on your website. You can track their behaviour to see which pages a visitor views and where they exit your site.
An essential integration for any business owner with a website.
Conclusion
There’s a lot of potential power in these applications, and although MailChimp recommends them, it isn’t just MailChimp that these can integrate with. Many websites can integrate these apps too, and you can immediately build and improve your business’ current performance with them.
What integrations do you use with your marketing list? How much time could you save using these integrations?
Let us know in the comments below.
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Boost Office Productivity With These 5 Hacks
Eat healthily to help your productivity
When business leaders look to increase profits, they often consider making more sales. While this can be necessary, it can also sometimes mean you need to hire more staff to cater for the new clients. Therefore, the returns on additional clients and work can be smaller than expected.
If your business were to take on new work and use the same resources, your profit margins would be much better. This technique relies on you increasing productivity within your office and ensuring staff are doing more work within the same amount of time.
This is often a challenge for small businesses. However, there are simple tricks you can utilise that can help you improve your office productivity. Here are five of the best productivity hacks for your office.
1. Schedule Your Daily Activities In Advance
Don’t wait until the morning to schedule your day. At the very least, you need to be scheduling and organising your day the night before, if not much further in advance. Using a to-do list, which includes the must-do tasks, is a motivator boost. When you cross off items on the list, you’ll feel great about it.
2. Track And Limit The Time You’re Spending On Tasks
Only about 17% of people can accurately estimate the passage of time. Most people think that they are spending less time on activities than they actually are. This can cause serious time management challenges. Therefore, ensure you are setting appropriate timescales for tasks and monitor the passing time carefully.
3. Don’t Multitask
This is an important one. We are used to being told how the ability to effectively multitask is an important attribute in today’s modern workplace. However, research has shown that the brain can’t effectively switch between tasks. It is best when we concentrate on one problem, or task, at a time. When we do switch tasks, we waste time that could have been put to better use.
Further research has also shown that when we are multitasking, our retention rates drop and this can have serious implications for productivity; by either having to redo work or by adding in more checks.
4. Healthy Diets, Healthy Mind
Everything you eat gets converted into glucose that fuels your body. When you run low on glucose, you’ll find it difficult to concentrate and operate effectively. However, not everything is consumed by our bodies the same way. Foods like pasta, bread and cereals provide a quick glucose boost but then end in a slump. High-fat foods, like cheeseburgers or BLTs, provide longer lasting energy but require more oxygen to digest which can make you groggy.
Try to snack continuously throughout the day, as this will prevent spikes and slumps in your productivity by maintaining a consistent glucose level in your body. Also, try to snack on foods like fruit, nuts and protein bars – these will provide the best boost to your glucose levels and productivity.
5. Be Distraction Free
You can’t eliminate distractions from your working day. There will always be the unexpected call from a salesperson, customer or the interruption from a colleague, manager or employee looking for information. However, you should try to minimise your interruptions as much as possible. Here are some suggestions:
- Don’t have your email inbox open. Emails pinging into your box are a big distraction.
- Close the office door.
- Don’t have social media notifications turned on your phone, tablet or computer.
- Keep your desk tidy – too much mess is a big distraction.
Productivity To Business Success
As you become more productive, you’ll find that you can generate more revenue without increasing hours or payment. Therefore, your profit margins increase and you can spend more time on activities that can also increase your lead generation or sales.
What productivity hacks do you have? What have you tried to do on the list above?
Let us know in the comments below.
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