AutoSLM

" We are a team of International automotive specialists who understand the sales process because that’s where we came from. We only work in the automotive sector, together with manufacturers, dealer groups and individual dealerships to increase vehicle sales with easy to use systems We are a team of International automotive specialists who understand the sales process because that’s where we came from. We only work in the automotive sector, together with manufacturers, dealer groups and individual dealerships to increase vehicle sales with easy to use systems"

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Direct marketing works when you approach it like this...

Below is an article we found that will help you get started (and for those already doing this, it will help improve your mindset) and approach the opportunity in the right way.

You Don’t Need 10,000 Subscribers – Here’s Why...

Email Marketing Tips

by Tom Tate 

“More subscribers, more sales.”

This is the typical New Year’s resolution for an email marketer. Every other marketing blog and guru wants to teach you how get your next 10,000 subscribers or offer “the secret technique” to quadrupling your list growth overnight. You can attend webinars, buy info products and take online courses to help you build an impressively long list of email addresses in a database. And there’s nothing wrong with that, but before you start plugging away daily growth goals in a spreadsheet and investing in high-converting plugins and widgets, take a few moments to solidify a holistic strategy focused on why you are marketing in the first place. You may not need a quarter-million subscribers to hit your goals. Don’t get me wrong. Growing your list is important, exciting and rewarding. 

Quantity is important, but it’s quality that converts. So rather than defaulting to the mindset of “more, more, more...”, consider these alternative resolutions for 2017. Bonus: Learn about the the FIVE tools and resources that I use everyday to be ultra-productive and achieve my goals. 

Resolution One: This year I will fine-tune my marketing funnel.

Let’s imagine you’re hosting a party. As the host, you want to know your guests are satisfied and that the experience is meeting their expectations. If 10 people show up, odds are you can meet their needs. If 100 people show up, it’ll be a stretch, but I bet you can work the room and provide everyone with a good experience. If 10,000 people show up… good luck. Managing your email list is no different. Even if you get 10,000 subscribers overnight, you still need to keep them engaged, "well-fed", purchasing your products and services, telling all of their friends how awesome you are and coming back again. A fine-tuned automated marketing funnel will make you feel like you have a staff of 50 and will prime your email strategy to scale up. That cramped restaurant that could only seat a handful of couples now has room to serve hundreds. So what exactly is a marketing funnel?

A marketing funnel is a simple way to visualize where your prospects, customers and advocates are in their journey. A person is unlikely to purchase your product or service without first engaging with you or your brand. This engagement can occur through various channels, like your website, social media channels, in-person or email marketing.Providing individuals with the right calls-to-action and opportunities to convert will help boost the likelihood that people will move through the funnel and invest in your business. There are five main stages in the marketing funnel: awareness, consideration, conversion, loyalty and advocacy. If you can increase the rate at which people move through each stage, you can effectively increase your revenue with the same, or even less total subscribers added to your list. Focusing solely on list growth without a strong path to purchase is a missed opportunity.

Take action:

Everyone’s funnel is different. Map out your prospect/customer buyer journey and look for areas to automate and optimize. Start with a strong and engaging automated welcome campaign

.Set a goal:

Not sure what your conversion rates are throughout the funnel? Start creating benchmarks that you can use in 2017 to improve throughout the year.

Resolution Two: This year I will focus on providing value through contextual content.

A popular adage in digital marketing is “

the money is in the list.

” This short statement might be why so many focus on list-building above all else. The money is not necessarily in the list, but more so how you engage with it. If you have 10,000 subscribers, but only provide value to a slim fraction of them, it’s unlikely that you’ll retain those subscribers or convert them into paying customers. Sending useless content will quickly lead to unsubscribes, spam complaints and decreased engagement. Gary Vaynerchuk is a marketing practitioner with plenty of snackable pieces of advice. One of the most practical bits that I’ve learned from Gary is to go deep, not wide.

Gary writes

, “A small, meaningful, intentional act will mean MUCH more than a HUGE one that lacks substance.” Sending a lousy email to 10,000 people will likely yield less results than sending a valuable email to 100 people. This is where segmentation, contextual content and personalization will help you succeed. Email segmentation allows you to create a subset of subscribers based on an action, inaction, attribute or some other piece of data. For example, sending a follow up webinar invitation to subscribers who did not open the first email can be more valuable than sending to the entire list, including those who already opted in or intently declined. Likewise, sending product promotions to customers who already purchased can clutter their inbox.Segmentation shows your subscribers that you know them. You are aware of their behaviors and interests and you are delivering content relevant to them. This content, tailored to meet a subscriber’s needs and interests, or based on their attributes or location, is called contextual content. This reference might date me a bit, but there was (a long time ago, in a galaxy far away), a popular TV show about a bar called Cheers. The sitcom’s iconic theme song declared the bar as the place 

“Where everybody knows your name”. 

That’s what made the bar so special. In most cases, you are capturing your subscribers name at the point of sign-up. This a valuable piece of data to help you personalize content. You can experiment with “First Name” in the subject line, or greeting of your email messages, but I recommend casually including this field in the actual body copy of your message. Here’s an example:

This implementation is a subtle way to make a connection with an individual subscriber without having it feel forced, automated or mail-merged. Your emails should feel like the Cheers theme song.

Take action:

Develop a segmentation plan. Jot down what you know about your current subscribers, what you want to know and how that data might be used to send better content. Take a look at your broadcast stats, such as open and click rates on specific emails, which might reveal more than you think.

Set a goal:

Benchmark your average open and click-through rates for emails sent to your entire list. Can you improve these by sending more contextual and valuable messages? Set a goal and track your progress.

Resolution Three: This year I will develop a new product or service.

This resolution might be the most challenging, but it also might be the most rewarding. (And I’m talking about revenue in your business account rewarding, not just pat-yourself-on-the-back rewarding.) If your goal in 2017 is simply to “get more sales,” challenge yourself to consider what you are selling, what you could be selling, how you are selling it and what you ultimately want to earn. 

It might seem like common sense, but the pricing of your product or service will impact how many subscribers you’ll need to meet your overall goals. If you increase the value you provide in your product and also increase the price, having a small list of highly engaged subscribers who are ready to invest is more valuable than having a huge list of subscribers who simply aren’t as interested. Pay attention to the other businesses in your niche. What products and services are they offering? How much are they charging? What can you do better? Has anyone introduced a solid subscription-based service yet? You may find that your offerings are underpriced or there’s an opportunity to go to market with a new product. A small engaged email list can help you determine what they product could look like. Your subscribers could even serve as beta testers, or advocates to help you boost sales.

Take action:

Set a revenue goal and determine what your product or service price point should be, and how many subscribers you’ll need to purchase. Knowing this, decide what product or service can you realistically create in 2017. Leverage your knowledge of competitors, the market you occupy, feedback from your subscribers, and your strengths to develop the perfect plan.

Set a goal:

Break down your product creation and launch into milestones and set measurable deadlines throughout the year. The sooner you can release, the sooner you can begin generating revenue and gathering feedback to improve. 

What will you do?

Whether you read this article and adopt a “less is more” attitude, or keep pushing towards massive list growth, the important thing is that you do something. The new year is a great time to develop plans and resolutions, but true success will come from taking action, not simply deciding to take action.

Finding your tribe

is challenging, but as many can attest, it’s emotionally, creatively and financially rewarding. To help you along the way, we’ve developed a spreadsheet to track your progress. Simply opt-in here and you’ll get immediate access. We’ll also send you a weekly round-up of our best content to keep you motivated and educated throughout the year. 

Please visit the author and original blog site here

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51 Open-Worthy Subject Line Ideas...

Are you using your AutoSLM marketing tools to mine your database and create sales??

Source

They say don’t judge an email by its subject line, but let’s be honest: We’re always keeping an eye out for the best of the best. After all, the subject line is one of the first impressions your message has on its recipients and can help you improve your opens and clicks.

That’s a lot of pressure for a seemingly short line of text.

While there is no secret to the perfect subject line, there are a few words and phrases that we turn to time and time again to get more eyes on our emails.

Create a sense of urgency

Getting people to take action from your email can be difficult. There’s a lot that goes into getting more opens and clicks. Urgency is one of those things that can have a big impact on whether or not your email gets read.

Here are some examples to get you started:

1. Back in stock, so don’t miss out

2. This is your *last chance* to shop our sale

3. Tick, tock! 30% off sale ends soon!

4. Going once, going twice!

5. Members get first dibs.

6. We couldn’t wait ‘til Friday!

7. When it’s gone, it’s gone.

8. You might want to hurry…

9. A little (limited-time-only) present

10. Available for 24 hours only

6 Types of Subject Lines That Will Improve Your Open Rates

Have a strong call-to-action

When it comes down to getting your emails opened, experiential verbs (like “celebrate” and “love”) perform better than functional verbs (like “spend” and “grab”). That’s not to say these words won’t work – it’s really all about context.

The thing that everyone can agree on is that if you don’t ask, subscribers won’t take action. So try throwing some of these high-performing words in your next subject line:

11. Celebrate with savings!

12. Act now for friends and family savings!

13. 3 DIY Frame Hacks You Need to Try Now

14. Trust me, you need this…

15. send some. get some.

16. Don’t Let These Get Away

Get personal

Personalization. When it’s done right, it’s AWesome! But when it’s done wrong? It can be borderline creepy. Here are a few examples of how to do it the right way:

17. Because you need this…

18. Join me for a marg, Olivia?

19. You deserve a treat

20. Special delivery for Olivia

21. The jeans you don’t have (yet)

Repeat yourself

Being redundant pays off, especially when it comes to your subject line. That’s because it keeps you, the sender, top-of-mind. And being top-of-mind helps build trust, which can lead to more sales. It’s a win-win!

Try including your name or your company name in the subject line, à la these brands:

22. Welcome to the Away family

23. New and exclusive to Kaufmann Mercantile

24. The Madewell essentials

25. Did somebody say new Glossier?

26. The Giant Weekly Newsletter

27. New and Exclusive to Sephora

Quick Tips Video: 6 Tricks to Help You Create an Engaging Subject Line

We don’t mean to brag, but…

Just kidding, we totally do. And that’s because adding key superlatives to your subject line can help strengthen your core message and make it more effective.

Just check out these example subject lines to see what I mean:

28. new favorite dress, hands down

29. Here’s a special treat, just for you!

30. This is big, huge, gigantic, amazing, incredible…

31. Our latest styles have just arrived

32. The PERFECT Facebook Ad

33. Best of the blog

34. A little luxury at a great price

Pose a question

A question is a great way to spark some curiosity around your email, but it’s the type of question that matters. Yes or no questions perform better than open-ended questions. And don’t forget about sentiment: Questions with a negative association (like don’t or can’t) are the worst-performers.

35. What do you think?

36. Do you like prizes?

37. Can you keep a secret?

38. How could you top this?

39. Today’s the day! Are you in?

40. Best gift ever?

41. Details, please! Did you like your purchase?

Punctuation and capitalization matter

Punctuation can completely change the tone of your subject line with one simple character. And that can impact how your subscribers respond to your message. Even the lack of punctuation can change the gist of your subject, keeping things casual.

Capitalization also has the same effect. Take notes.

42. MAJOR announcement!

43. Extra 30% off sale styles (!)

44. *permission to brag*

45. It’s giveaway time again…

46. T.G.I.SAAALE!

47. we’re melting

48. alert! today only

49. And the winner goes to…

50. N-E-W

51. Flash. Sale. Alert.

Try these out for yourself

We’re big proponents of trying out tricks and tactics to see what works best. While you can’t predict results by looking at how past subject lines performed, you can use them as a basis for future iteration.

Try adding some of these words and phrases in your next few subject lines and watch your open rates skyrocket.

Posted ByOlivia Dello Buono

Social Media Specialist

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22 Crazy Sales Tips and Hacks That Actually Work

If great sales people are anything, they are resourceful. They create unique hacks to do their job better, to get a competitive edge. They’re always looking for something that will allow them to do what everyone else is doing better.

Good sales hacks aren’t cheap shortcuts, but rather creative ways to do the work and improve the results.

I’ve seen all kinds of crazy hacks in my day and when it comes to sales tips and hacks they fall into 3 camps, crappy tips that no one should use, great tips that everyone uses and are very good and killer tips and hacks that work brilliantly because few people are using.

Understanding this, I wanted to know what some of the best sales hacks used today were, so I asked.

I went and asked 22 of the industry’s leading sales influencers what their best hacks were and boy did they deliver. The tips were amazing and unbelievably creative. None of the sales tips or hacks were the same. They were all different, covering many different aspects of the sales process.

Here are a couple of my favorites:

Mining your out of office messages.

Don’t delete them. That’s right, read them first. Do you hate getting out of office messages in your inbox, especially after you send out an email blast? Stop hating them and start mining them. I discovered that there is a lot of information in those out of office messages. Take a minute and read each one. Some of them don’t have anything in them so you can quickly delete them. But take a closer look. Here are some of the great things I have found in out of office messages.

1.      The names of other buying influences. Not only their names, but their titles, emails and phone numbers sometimes. They are telling you who to contact while they are gone and many times they are sharing the names of other decision makers, not just an admin (although admins can be very helpful). Get those names and do some research. Start interacting with them on social media (Click like, Comment and Share) then maybe connect and start building a relationship.

2.      Something interesting about them. They may be out of the office on business but they may also be on vacation and sometimes they share where. Sometimes they are out for a wedding or birth off a baby and state that. Now it’s time to use that info to send a card in the mail or even a gift if appropriate. You can often check facebook for more details (who says facebook isn’t for B2B sales).

May sound crazy but those Out of Office messages can be a fountain of useful information to help develop a relationship and move a sale forward.  — Alice Heiman

and

When offering a white paper or offer via social, invite them to DM their email vs. clicking on a link.  We A/B tested links vs. “just reply” and got a 5X increase in response.  We’re currently getting 12-15 leads PER DAY using Socedo on Twitter with this tactic — Matt Heinz

Both of these hacks leveraged an alternative approach to a common effort.  They are easy to do and can create improved results.Some of the brilliant sales influencers who also shared their personal sales hacks include;

Anthony Iannarino

Jill Konrath

Mark Hunter

David Brock

Jack Kosakowski

and more.

*source: http://www.asalesguy.com/22-crazy-sales-tips-and-hacks-that-actually-work/

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Is your email a casualty of the war on spam?

If your messages aren't getting through, it might be time to rethink your email marketing strategy. Columnist Jose Cebrian outlines some steps for developing a "good" sending reputation.

In the world of email marketing, deliverability is a core issue. It’s commonly known that when you send an email, it doesn’t always reach the intended recipient.

Between the sender and the recipient are intermediaries, namely the internet service providers (ISPs) and email service providers (ESPs), which use a mix of internal algorithms and outside filtering technologies that combine to make a decision on each message that comes into their mail servers. Their job is to protect their customers from unwanted mail, phishing attempts and other scams, which are real worldwide problems that pose serious risks, including identity theft.

These intermediaries are at war with the spammers. If incoming mail matches a pattern that’s associated with bad mailing practices, they block the mail from coming in at all or send it to junk mail (which is almost worse).

I don’t think many people consider how serious spam is, beyond being annoyed with some mail they didn’t ask for. But it’s an epidemic that ISPs and ESPs need to combat, and they have lots of hardware, software and intelligence to fight against it.

Marketing emails are important to many of us, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s just marketing email. In the context of personal correspondence and transactional/servicing emails (order confirmations, statement alerts and so on), it’s a lower priority.

So, to get through and be considered “good” email, we must take several steps to develop a positive sending reputation. Think about it. In other media, such as display and social, we wait for people to become visible, and if we are the highest bidder, we get the impression. But with email, we know the person and can send a message to them, but that message may not get through to them. The following are some ways to establish a good reputation.

Common steps to establishing a good reputation

Leverage dedicated IP addresses for your mailing. The email service providers that cater to the enterprise market all provide dedicated IP addresses for their customers. Enterprise marketers care about this because they want their reputations to be their own — and not impacted by the negative actions of other companies.

Authenticate (sub) domains that are used for mailing. This is a technical exercise where domain name system (DNS) entries are made for sender policy framework (SPF), domain keys identified mail (DKIM) and other routing information. This is necessary to pass technical checks at ISPs. If you fail a technical check, it’s much more likely you will be blocked or diverted from the inbox.

Warm new IP addresses and sending domains. That is, establish a positive sending reputation when a new IP address or sending domain is used. This is accomplished by segmenting your list based on who has opened or clicked on at least one of your emails recently, and then sending to those first. In addition, segment campaign volume by ISP to show consistency in volume or to meet preset thresholds.

Adhere to spam complaints by suppressing those people from receiving future mailings. When one hits “spam” in a major ISP, the ISP sends a notification to the sender that there was a complaint. You want to minimize these complaints because they negatively impact your sender reputations. It’s important to note that not all major ISPs have this feature available.

Cull unengaged recipients out of the mailing stream. Common rules are that if someone hasn’t opened or clicked an email in 12 months (six months for a Gmail address), we leave them out of the mailing.

What do you mean I can’t email my best prospects?

While everyday email marketers understand this dynamic, if you’re new to email marketing, not familiar with it or only do it occasionally as part of a broader program, this may be a foreign concept. As a marketer, you want to reach as many people as possible who fit your marketing criteria in a cost-effective way. In email marketing, we have to add on another layer that studies the level of engagement in the email channel specifically.

An example that illustrates this is a marketer who has a product that has a very explicit purpose. She has a list of people who qualify for the product — distinguished either by analytical insights or by self-identification.

In every other channel, she would market to these people as she sees fit. However, in email, she not only has to look at their marketing qualification, but also their past engagement history in email alone.

Essentially, if they are highly qualified but don’t engage in email, the marketer would generally not market to them, because that address has the potential to negatively impact all other mail being sent from that IP address and domain.

This is a difficult concept to grasp until you have been through a big deliverability issue, such as a prolonged block at a major ISP, a “bad” reputation rating at Gmail, or a Spamhaus blacklisting. Each of these can significantly impact your ability to get into the inbox, and in turn, tank the ROI of your email program.

Until you have been scarred by one of these roadblocks, you might think you can ignore the unwritten, industry-specific rules. Some marketers will argue that certain taboo practices are technically legal, so there should be no issue. While email marketing in the US doesn’t have a ton of legal restrictions, the practical restrictions are real.

Proportionality matters, especially when starting a new program

These issues can be exacerbated when you’re launching a new program or product and need to build a list quickly. You may leverage volume-boosting tactics like co-registration or email append as part of the mix, but they can create a proportionality issue.

In other words, because the product is new, the size of your engaged audience is too low in proportion to the audience from riskier sources. Co-registration and email appends help build lists quickly but generally perform poorly from an engagement perspective, which creates “risk” to your email program.

While you may earn positive ROI for these tactics, the audiences tend not to respond in email (open and click) at the same level as prospects captured on your own site.

Starting a program with a high proportion of risky sources dooms your reputation from the start, because a positive reputation is nearly impossible to create. No matter how qualified a recipient is for your product, if he doesn’t engage, then he can be a liability.

In limited numbers, you can “feather in” these names, but only once you have an established reputation — and if you do so, only by using portions of the risky sources at a time.

Using all the tools available, including your campaign metrics, ISP reputation dashboards, Return Path’s Sender Score, and inbox placement and monitoring services like 250ok, Return Path and eDataSource, you must watch for signals of a compromised reputation. When that happens, you need to identify the sources that are causing it and weigh the pros and cons of continuing to send to those addresses.

Email is an exciting and powerful marketing channel. But to be successful at it, you have to understand the legal constraints and consider deliverability and its impact on list selection and ROI.

To reduce deliverability issues, many companies have over-suppressed their mailings. If the list is big enough, selective reintroduction can be successful, but it needs to be thoughtful and in proportion to the rest of the list.

Starting a program with riskier names makes building a reputation more difficult. When doing so, it’s important to place as much of the initial risk as possible on the list source and to leverage the information they return to you.

If this still causes issues, email addresses can be used for direct matching as well as onboarding to cookies and device IDs, which will allow you to get messages in front of qualified individuals.

source: http://marketingland.com/casualties-war-spam-188786

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Facebook organic reach is down 52% for publishers’ Pages this year...

While on average publishers' organic reach on Facebook has fallen by 52% in 2016, video and a lower reliance on Facebook has neutralized the pain for some.

Publishers’ organic reach on Facebook continues to plummet, but some have found a parachute.

This year, the number of people seeing the average post published on a publisher’s Facebook Page has been cut in half. From January 2016 through mid-July 2016, publishers’ Facebook Pages have experienced a 52-percent decline in organic reach, according to social publishing tool SocialFlow. That stat is based on the company’s analysis of roughly 300 media companies that use its tool to manage their Facebook Pages, which include The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Condé Nast and Time Inc.

The stat shows not only how tough things are for publishers on Facebook, but also that things have gotten tougher — even before Facebook’s latest news feed algorithm tweak takes effect. The 52-percent decline is 10 percentage points more than the 42-percent organic reach decline that SocialFlow reported publishers had experienced between January 2016 and May 2016.

This isn’t that much of a shock. Facebook has been systematically cutting back Pages’ organic reach for years, most notably with brands and most recently with publishers. The reason is simple: Individuals and Pages are pushing a lot of posts into people’s news feeds, so Facebook’s news-feed algorithm has needed to get proportionally more stringent about picking out the posts that someone would most like to see and that would most likely keep them coming back to check Facebook regularly.

“[With] an increasing amount of content and a finite amount of consumer attention, arithmetically there’s no other possible outcome than each individual post on average is going to get less reach,” said SocialFlow CEO Jim Anderson.

For publishers, that will likely become even more true in the wake of Facebook’s algorithm change in late June. To recenter people’s feeds around their friends and family members, Facebook announced that it would make Pages’ organic reach more dependent on people sharing their posts than a Page post directly appearing in someone’s feed. That rollout began in late June and is pretty much complete, according to a Facebook spokesperson who declined to comment on SocialFlow’s report. It’s unclear how much impact the algorithm change would have had on SocialFlow’s data; the Facebook spokesperson said the general impact for Pages should be small.

What’s more clear is how publishers are able to adapt to, if not avoid, the decline in organic reach. When it comes to the content they post to Facebook, video appears to be something of a lifesaver. It also helps to not be overly dependent on Facebook for distribution.

Not all publishers have seen their organic reach on Facebook decline. PopSugar and Thrillist Media Group have seen their organic reach actually increase this year. A major reason why: video.

Since adding autoplay video in September 2013, Facebook has been as obvious about its love for video as Steve Urkel was about his love for Laura Winslow.

Facebook has made its news feed algorithm more mindful of video, added public view counts to make people more mindful of how popular video is on Facebook, and its execs have even predicted that Facebook “will be probably all video” in five years.

That video push has come at the expense of other post types, like links to publishers’ sites. “Organic reach on link posts is coming down, for sure,” said Thrillist Media Group president Eric Ashman. “There’s no doubt that Facebook has made a conscious decision in that respect. When we publish link posts, organic reach versus a year ago is certainly lower. It’s noticeably less.”

At the same time as link posts’ organic reach has declined, publishers like Thrillist and PopSugar are pushing out more video posts, which have not only mitigated but more than made up the link-specific reach declines.

“Our reach has gone up a ton. I do think video has been a massive part of that,” said Ashman.

“People like PopSugar are playing to the strengths of what Facebook is prioritizing. We’ve seen an increase in organic reach from January [2016] to July [2016] of about 10 percent,” said PopSugar Senior VP of Product Marketing Chris George.

These publishers are benefitting from the fact that people on Facebook appear to be more willing to share, like and comment on video posts than any other Page post type.

“Video is the type of post that performs best by far. Video comprised about one percent of posts in the data we analyzed; we take about 1.5 million posts over the course of the month. But those posts generated eight times the reach and 12 times the shares when compared to other types of posts,” Anderson said.

On average, PopSugar generated 17 percent more engagements with its Page posts per day in July than it had in January. “Video is certainly a driver of that,” George said.

When I pulled data from NewsWhip last month on publishers’ most-shared post types on Facebook, video posts eclipsed link posts and photo posts. That’s especially important in light of the June algorithm change that prioritizes share counts for organic reach.

But publishers aren’t going all-in on video and expecting that their organic reach on Facebook will climb forever upward. In addition to SocialFlow’s stat that only one percent of the examined posts were video, execs at Bustle, PopSugar and Thrillist all said that video remains a minor share of the posts they’re pushing on Facebook.

“Video has certainly grown as a share. It’s still less than a third of the posts due to the overall volume, but that share has probably doubled over the past year,” said George.

“If you look at our daily feed, probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 percent to 40 percent could be video, depending on the day,” said Ashman.

For the same reason that publishers can’t count on video alone to be their saving grace on Facebook, they can’t count on Facebook alone as a distribution stream. And the publishers who haven’t been hit as hard, or at all, when it comes to organic reach on Facebook are less reliant on the social network.

“Only about a third of our traffic comes from social distribution in the first place. About a third of our traffic onto Thrillist.com comes from search and a third of our traffic comes direct,” said Ashman.

Bustle’s organic reach on Facebook in July 2016 was 13 percent lower than its average for the year — partially skewed by record reach in January — but only a third of its traffic comes from Facebook. So the reach dip hurts, but not fatally.

“We have never really been fully dependent on Facebook,” said Francis Thai, VP of marketing and audience development at Bustle. “We do extremely well in organic search. So even if Facebook reach is down, it’s not as big of a hit.”

source: http://marketingland.com/facebook-organic-reach-drop-steepens-52-publishers-pages-187253

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Budget vs Affordability...

BUDGET VS AFFORDABILITY – THERE IS A DIFFERENCE

af.ford.a.bil.i.ty – noun — the fact of being cheap enough that people can afford to buy it or pay it

budg.et – noun — an estimate of income and expenditure for a set period of time

Notice, the definitions are not the same, but yet too many sales people treat them like they are.

It’s not uncommon for a salesperson or even the entire sales organization to accept a customer can’t afford their product or service because a customer or prospect says they don’t have the budget.  This is a HUGE mistake because not having the budget is not the same a being able to afford something.

Yes, not having the budget is tough. I get it. When an organization doesn’t have the budget, it makes the sale more difficult. You have to bring your A-game. You have to show tremendous value. Getting a buyer to exceed budget or reallocate budget to buy is legit selling, mastered by but a few truly bad ass sales people.

Making this happen requires a keen and powerful expression of the value proposition and its impact on the buyer’s organization.  Without it, buyers will wait or just not buy.  The risk or concern for exceeding the budget does not exceed the value proposition.

Let me say that again.

When a buyer doesn’t have the budget, if you want to get the sale the solution no only has to provide enough value to be worth the price, it has to provide enough value to be worth the price PLUS exceeding budget or stealing budget from another line item.

Affordability, on the other hand, has nothing to do with the budget. Affordability simply means the buyer does or doesn’t have the money.  It either exists, or it doesn’t. Affordability doesn’t address a willingness to spend money, or not. Affordability only addresses the availability of money for an organization to pay. When it comes to sales, this is a substantial differentiation.

When an organization can’t afford something, when they say they don’t have the money, move on.  The phrase you can’t get blood from a turnip applies. They can’t give what they don’t have.

When an organization doesn’t have the budget, well that’s a very different situation. When an organization says they don’t have the budget, what they are saying is the weren’t planning on spending money at this time, on this type of solution. It doesn’t mean they don’t have it.

When a customer or prospect says they don’t have the budget, that’s not the same as saying they can’t afford it.

When a customer can’t afford it. The sale is over, walk away.

When a customer doesn’t have the budget, the deal just gets more complicated.  It’s time to hone in on the value proposition and the impact to the organization. When lack of budget is present, that’s the time to show ROI calculations or address opportunity costs. This is the time to demonstrate that sticking to the budget costs MORE than sticking to the budget.  If the return is there, the budget will be found. You just have to work a little harder.

People WILL find “the budget” if the value is there.

Don’t make the mistake of assuming budget and affordability are the same. They’re NOT!!!  Thinking they are is the sign of a rookie sales person. Don’t sell like a rookie.

source: http://asalesguy.com/budget-vs-affordability-there-is-a-difference/

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The core basics of CRM and Database Growth

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Which Marketing Channels Deliver the Biggest Impact on ROI?

A new report released by eConsultancy, in collaboration with Oracle Marketing Cloud, has revealed precisely which channels marketers feel deliver the biggest impacts on their return on investment, and how they bring those priorities to light within their respective teams and companies. 

If your efforts to squeeze relevance out of marketing initiatives leaves you feeling frustrated and confused – it turns out you are not alone.  So which channels were the most worthwhile, and what efforts should you be investing more time and money into?  Let’s take a closer look:

The Big ROI Catch-22

Not surprisingly, the report noted that the biggest roadblock to bigger investments in digital marketing was, simply, budget constraints.  Staff constraints followed second, as did company culture and an inability to measure ROI. The report itself asked the question, “Is the culture of ROI stifling innovation?”

This creates an interesting catch-22 in that if you cannot accurately measure your ROI, you can’t provide the proof management wants.  And without proof, you don’t get an increased budget to work with.  So which channels deliver the kind of proof you need? Here are the results:

Marketing With Confidence

Marketers rate their confidence in measuring ROI from different types of digital channels

Looking carefully at this chart, you’ll see why there’s such a disconnect between marketing investment and marketing results:  paid search was the only channel where at least 50% of respondents noted that they felt “good” about ROI measurement. Other channels, including email marketing for acquisition, and email marketing for engagement and retention came close, but as the report notes, only a handful of companies would rate their confidence as “good” in these areas.

Note the considerable drop-off after this point – automation, analytics, even content marketing takes a notable hit here.

What’s Causing the Drop?

As much as we embrace and encourage the use of many of these marketing channels, it’s clear that marketers are struggling to take the information they collect and turn it into actionable insights that have marked results in their campaigns.  According to the report, there are three main factors contributing to such a steep decline in measuring ROI confidence:

Budget Plans

If you’re thinking budget woes stem from a tight squeeze on marketing spending (on account of a lack of provable, measurable results), that’s not quite the whole picture. Nearly 75% of respondents on both the client and supply sides expected their digital marketing technology spending to increase.

However, a little over half of those same respondents acknowledged that it was easier to get executive buy-in and support to increase those budgets. This means there’s still quite a bit of work to do to convince the board room that these efforts are simply stepping stones toward the bigger picture of measurable results that they’re seeking.

The Customer Experience

There’s a lot of talk in marketing circles about “the customer experience” – but just how much of an impact does it have on spending? As it turns out – a lot.  Making sure the customer experience is seamless across all channels is an area of significant focus for marketing, sales and customer service teams alike, and having consistent, measurable results are at the core of marketing technology investments.

Because so much is being funneled into measuring and realizing the customer experience, precious little of the budget can be afforded to try more innovative and untested strategies.  More money is going toward acquisition efforts than engagement and retention, although as other studies have shown, this may very well be an exercise in focusing too much on quantity versus quality.

Company Culture and a Focus on ROI

And with so much of a focus on only measurable strategies with quantifiable results, innovation is hurting as well.  Only 35% of those surveyed agreed that they reserved a portion of their marketing budgets for more maverick, untested strategies – a sharp downturn from the 46-37% range from previous few years.

That being said, budgets are increasing not only in customer acquisition and lead generation, but also in other areas as well – namely email engagement and retention, acquisition over social media and data management.

And speaking of year-to-year differences, if you think they don’t matter much in the long term – I have some surprising news.  There were quite a few significant changes from 2015’s ROI confidence metrics compared to now:

What a Difference a Year Makes

Marketers had a very different view of ROI confidence among specific channels in 2015

Look at the marked decrease in organic SEO.  With paid search as one of the consistent ROI confidence forerunners, it makes sense that natural search is slipping. Considering that search engine algorithms and updates become more and more complex, creating tools and platforms to accurately measure them has become harder and harder.

But also note the increases in areas such as email marketing, affiliate marketing and automation.  Our tools for measuring the “people side” (as opposed to the algorithm side) of things are becoming more intuitive.  The focus goes back to the customer experience, coming full circle in giving managers and other top level executives the measurability they crave while investing in a marketing plan built for consumers, not robots.

Getting the Proof You Need

So the question then becomes “how do we get measurable proof of ROI in campaigns if we don’t have tools to measure it?” After all, everything from investments to innovation hinges on those numbers. So even if the campaign platform itself falls short in giving you the tools you need to dig deeper, you still have a secret weapon on your side: Kissmetrics.

By using Kissmetrics, you can track multiple types of marketing campaigns and gauge their effectiveness accordingly. Kissmetrics intelligently segments customers into different channels,  which tracks visitors based on where they came from (social campaigns, pay-per-click channels, organic search and more). Not only does this show you which areas are worth your attention and spending, but also distinguishes between where traffic is coming from versus where customers are coming from – and that’s an important distinction. What’s more, you can track these same users across the customer journey – from the moment they become acquainted to your service until they complete checkout – and beyond.

This way, you get a clearer view of which type of marketing results in the greatest impact on revenues and conversion rates.  But that’s only scratching the surface. You need to know which campaigns, not just referrers, deliver the biggest bang for the buck.  By using UTM codes in your URL tracking, Kissmetrics can show you that too. You’ll be able to see, for example:

Which paid campaigns (right down to the keywords used) bright you the most sales

The LTV (lifetime value) of a customer coming from a paid campaign versus an organic search

Which products get the most shares on social media versus ones which result in sales (the two can have widely different results!)

Whether or not your PDF lead generation campaign leads to a sale (yes, UTMs can be used to track referrals that have downloaded a PDF too)

Gauging the total revenue, average revenue/customer and the lifetime value of customers from the Kissmetrics channel property dashboard

So if you’ve been struggling to wring measurable ROI out of things like social media campaigns, these kind of reports can deliver the insights you’ve been looking for, along with the concrete numbers beloved by the boardroom.

Moving Forward with Confidence

With all this talk of marketing investment, return-in-investment, budget buy-in and confidence, you could say that a great deal of stress in trying to “prove” the best outlets for spending is putting increased pressure on today’s marketing teams.  That being said, however, our focus is shifting more toward measurable results as they relate to people, not programs – paving the way for more insightful tools that help us unlock a bit more of buyer behavior as we continue to map the customer journey.

*source - https://blog.kissmetrics.com/marketing-channels-roi/

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Building a CRM culture

By building a CRM culture from its roll-out, your organisation can avoid a costly failure and keep the spreadsheets at bay.

Between 60-70% of CRM projects fail to meet expectations. Your bosses want a system that’s more reliable and accountable than spreadsheets. Your staff don’t want a CRM, but they want things that help them do their job. Your customers want you to have clear records on them, so they don’t repeat themselves.

Executives make a speedy decision to get CRM, they get something built and expect sales and efficiency to rapidly improve.

But a few weeks or months later, it doesn’t seem to be delivering the benefits. The CRM is little more than a glorified address book and staff aren’t using it.

Why?

As many IT managers, executives and CTOs have come to realise, it’s not always the software’s fault. That’s because CRM is much more than a software system. Getting it to work successfully is a way of life.

Building a CRM culture

The human element of software is probably more important than the technical side. Without encouragement from everyone across the organisation, it’s not going to be used. Essentially, you need to build new habits among your staff.

Before the roll-out stage, your staff need to be taught how a CRM benefits the business and themselves.

Why is it important that they keep accurate records? Why can’t they just keep messages in their inbox? Why should they make a note after every sales call? How can CRM help them become better salespeople?

If buying into CRM has been a top-down decision – nobody’s really committed to making it work. Staff don’t see the benefits to themselves. Before long, staff are using spreadsheets again. BUT if the IT department takes the time to answer those questions and gets buy-in from across the organisation, you can have a customer-centric culture where CRM really works.

4 tips to creating a culture that makes CRM work

1. Create a project group with a “CRM champion” from each department.

Make someone in each department responsible for their team’s adoption of CRM. Encourage them to speak up about how it’s working, and if they need help or feature changes. Getting feedback from each department means that any necessary changes to the CRM software can be made. It also means you can arrange extra training or support where necessary.This person needs to sell the benefits of CRM to each team. By getting ‘buy-in’ from each silo of your organisation, your teams have a stake in making it work.

2. Create project groups that collaborate – like marketing and sales.

Here, teams can collaborate on how to adopt modern practices like lead nurturing and lead scoring. Or maybe they can ask things like "how can we improve the lead handling process?". Likewise, a marketing/customer-service group could come together once a month to discuss how to collect more customer feedback and how to implement it. By getting business silos to come together and collaborate, everyone gets their voices heard and people are enthusiastic about using CRM.

3. Commitment to full training and support for all staff.

With a CRM system, it’s worth giving every member of staff full training. If people in your call centre miss training, they may not use all the features and they may not ask for help. It’s important that everyone learns how to use the system and is encouraged to speak to their managers about how it’s working for them.

4. Encourage your “CRM champions” to use the CRM data to help themselves.

Your CRM is likely to bring out a lot of insights. You’ll learn everything from the length of your sales cycle, common support problems and information about different customer profiles.These insights will let your teams perform better and work more efficiently. It’s a great idea to encourage your “CRM champions” to use this data for themselves.

Furthermore, it’s worth strategically arranging training to show them how to make the most of their data. This can help them increase sales, make their marketing more relevant and help solve customer problems more quickly.

The truth is: CRM isn’t just software, it’s a way of life. If you can encourage your teams to buy-in to the CRM system, they’ll eventually thank you for making their jobs easier.

(What’s more, you’ll all be glad to see the back of those spreadsheets.)

Source: https://bdaily.co.uk/advice/13-03-2015/building-a-crm-culture/

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Lifecycle marketing is driven primarily by strong email marketing campaigns. Here are some examples to get you started.

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How to Use Google Analytics: Getting Started

Do you know what data each section of Google Analytics offers?

A few important details and settings can improve your Google Analytics reporting.

In this article I’ll share the basics of navigating Google Analytics and what you need to set up now to make the most of its data.

Note: This post assumes that Google Analytics is already set up for at least one of your websites. If you have not set up Google Analytics, you can find a thorough walk-through of the setup process in the Google Analytics Help Center.

Find out how to get started with Google Analytics right now.

Google Analytics Quick Glossary

Before we begin, there a few terms you should know. You’ll see them often in your Google Analytics data, and I’ll use them throughout this post.

Dimensions—A dimension is a descriptive attribute or characteristic of an object that can be given different values. Browser, Exit Page, Screens and Session Duration are all examples of dimensions that appear by default in Google Analytics.

Metrics—Metrics are individual elements of a dimension that can be measured as a sum or a ratio. Screenviews, Pages/Session and Average Session Duration are examples of metrics in Google Analytics.

Sessions—A session is the period of time a user is actively engaged with your website, app, etc., within a date range. All usage data (Screenviews, Events, Ecommerce, etc.) is associated with a session.

Users—Users who have had at least one session within the selected date range. Includes both new and returning users.

Pageviews—Pageviews means the total number of pages viewed. Repeated views of a single page are counted.

Pages/Session—Pages/session (Average Page Depth) is the average number of pages viewed during a session. Repeated views of a single page are counted.

Avg. Session Duration—The average length of a session.

Bounce Rate—Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits (i.e., visits in which the person left your site from the entrance page without interacting with the page).

New Sessions—An estimate of the percentage of first-time visits.

Goals—Goals let you measure how often users take or complete specific actions on your website.

Conversions—Conversions are the number of times goals have been completed on your website.

Campaigns—Campaigns (also known as custom campaigns) allow you to add parameters to any URL from your website to collect more information about your referral traffic.

Acquisition—Acquisition is how you acquire users.

Behavior—Behavior data helps you improve your content.

Google Analytics Home

When you log into Google Analytics, you end up on the Home page where you cansee a list of all of the websites you have set up in your account. This list shows you some basic data right off the bat such as your number of sessions, average session duration, bounce rate and goal conversion rate.

The Google Analytics home screen.

If you have a lot of websites like I do, you can use the search box under the date range to search for a particular domain. If you only want to view the domains that are most critical to your business, you can mark them with a star and change the Show settings to list only the starred websites.

You can use the date range to see your data over any specified time period. You can also use it to compare the current time period to a previous time period to see the change in sessions, average session duration, bounce rate and goal conversion rate.

The Google Analytics date range selector lets you compare data.

Since the data for each website changes to reflect the compared timeframes, it’s easy to see which of your websites are getting more or less traffic and conversions.

Comparing basic data across your top websites.

To view more data about a particular website, just click on the corresponding link and you’ll see the Google Analytics Reporting page.

Google Analytics Reporting

The Google Analytics Reporting page shows your Audience Overview data.

At the top of the screen, you’ll see the basic Google Analytics menu bar that allows you to go back and forth between the Home page, Reporting, Customization (reports) and Admin section. Further to the right, you can switch to another website within your Google Analytics account.

Google Analytics top menu bar options.

On the left sidebar, there is a search box to help you find specific reports and a list of links to important areas of your Google Analytics.

Google Analytics left menu options.

I discuss each option below.

Dashboards

Dashboards allow you to create customized views of your Google Analytics datausing widgets. It’s a great way to see specific subsets of data without having to navigate through your standard reports.

Sample Google Analytics customized dashboard.

You can add widgets to your dashboards using the +Add Widget button or by adding widgets as you browse your standard reports using the Add to Dashboard link. You can also download ready-to-go dashboards in the Google Analytics Solutions Gallery.

Shortcuts

Shortcuts are simply that—links to your favorite Google Analytics reports.

Use Google Analytics shortcuts to quickly find data.

Whenever you’re viewing a specific piece of data in Google Analytics that you want or need to revisit often, click on the Shortcut link above it. This places it in your Shortcuts menu for future reference.

Intelligence Events

Intelligence Events are alerts you can set up within Google Analytics that email you when a specific event occurs.

Google Analytics Intelligence Events examples.

You can set up alerts for events like a dramatic change in number of sessions, goal conversions or other metrics within a daily, weekly or monthly timeframe.

Real-Time

Want to know who’s on your website right now? Real-Time data gives you access to that data instantly.

Google Analytics Real-Time Overview data.

You can see current visitors’ pageviews, active pages, locations and more.

Audience Through Conversions Reports

The meat of your Google Analytics data is found in the Audience, Acquisition, Behavior and Conversions sections. These are the in-depth reports on your users, traffic sources, content and goal completions.

Chances are, you’ve toured most of these reports in the past. I’ll be writing about the data and benefits of each of these sections in upcoming posts here at Social Media Examiner.

Google Analytics Standard Reporting Views

Each subsection of the main sidebar options offers a standard report. When you’re viewing a standard report, you will likely see the following: the report name (e.g., Language), the date selector and a standard toolbar with options that allow you to customize the view, email the report, export the report data to various spreadsheet formats or PDF, add the report to your dashboard or create a shortcut to the report.

Google Analytics standard report menu options.

When you see the graduate hat beneath the date selector in the toolbar, you canclick on it to learn more about the data within that specific report (as shown below).

Google Analytics Education within your standard reports.

Under the toolbar menu, there are two options. All Sessions shows you your data throughout Google Analytics as a whole, and +Add Segment allows you to see your data based on certain criteria, such as direct traffic, search traffic, mobile traffic and so forth.

On the +Add Segment page, you can use the +Create New Segment option to create your own criteria, such as traffic from the US or traffic that entered your website on a specific landing page.

Google Analytics segments for specific traffic data.

You can see a great post on how to use segments to track social media traffic by Eugen Oprea and download ready-to-go segments in the Google Analytics Solutions Gallery.

Looking at All Sessions, you’ll see the data specific to the report you’re viewing. Most reports start with an Explorer timeline view.

The Explorer section shows you an overview of your report data.

At the top of the Explorer view is the option to switch between Summary, Site Usage, Goal Sets, Ecommerce and AdSense.

The Summary view is the default and shows the Acquisition, Behavior and Conversions data for the data being reported. In the example below, this would be the data for visitors who speak a particular language.

Summary view of report data in Google Analytics.

If you have several goals set up for your website, use the Conversions drop-down menu to change the data to a different goal.

Use the Conversions drop-down to show a particular goal.

The Site Usage view shows you just the number of sessions, pages/session, average session duration, percent of new sessions and bounce rate for the data reported. Basically, the Site Usage view is everything from the Acquisition and Behavior portions of the table except new users.

The Goal Sets view shows you the overall goal conversion rate for goals within a set (you can have four goals per set), per-session goal value and individual goal conversion rates for each goal in a set. (We’ll talk about setting up goals toward the end of this post.)

The Ecommerce view shows you revenue, transactions, order value, ecommerce conversion rates and per-session value for the data reported. In order to receive this data, you need to have set your website up with ecommerce tracking, which you can learn about in the Google Analytics Help Center.

The AdSense view is for publishers who have Google AdSense set up on their website. This shows you data for AdSense revenue, ads clicked, page impressions, CTR and eCPM for the data reported. To receive this data, you must have yourAdSense account linked to your Analytics account.

Beneath the Explorer view options is a drop-down for Sessions vs. [Select a Metric]. Use these drop-downs to see different data comparisons within your report, such as Sessions vs. Bounce Rate.

Using the Explorer metric drop-down to compare metrics.

To the right of these drop-downs, you can change your data view to daily, weekly or monthly and change the timeline to a more detailed chart or graph view.

Additional Explorer graph and chart views.

In the table below your Explorer, there are a few more viewing options. At the top left, you’ll see drop-downs to add a secondary dimension.

For example, let’s assume you’re viewing the en-us Language report (Audience > Geo > Language > en-us) and want more detailed information about the top sources of traffic for English – United States users.

Click on Secondary Dimension, choose Acquisition from the menu and then choose Source. The table data now shows you the data you want.

Use a secondary dimension to find specific information.

At the top right of the table, you can change the view to different charts and graphs. For example, you can change to the pie chart view and see that most users come to the site via direct means (no referring website, search engine or social network) and speak English – United States.

Pie chart view of the Language report with traffic source as a secondary dimension.

You can also click on the Advanced link next to the search box to filter specific dimensions and languages within the table. For instance, you can show only users who have a Bounce Rate less than a certain percentage to find out which languages and related traffic sources have the lowest bounce rates.

Use the Advanced Filter to show sessions with a low bounce rate.

At the bottom right of the table is a drop-down to show more rows. This allows you tosee more than the default top ten reported data types within your table.

Last but not least, within the table view, be sure to click on links within your table. These allow you to drill down to particular subsets of data.

For example, if you are in the Location Report (under Audience in the left sidebar), the table shows which countries the majority of your sessions are happening in. If you click on United States, you’ll see the States breakdown of your traffic. If you click on a state, you’ll get the top cities.

The same happens if you click on links within the table under the All Referrals report. Instead of just seeing the domain that is sending you traffic, you can see the pages within the domain sending you traffic.

This is great if you contribute to other blogs, for example, as it shows you which of your posts are sending the most traffic your way.

Drill down in your reports by clicking on links.

Google Analytics Customization

The next main item in the top menu bar is Customization. The benefit of using a Custom Google Analytics report is that you can see an exact portion of your Google Analytics data and have it emailed regularly to contacts you choose.

Example of a custom report in Google Analytics.

You can create new reports on your own, organize them by category and import reports from the Google Analytics Solutions Gallery.

Google Analytics Admin

The last main menu item in the top menu bar is the Admin menu. This is where youmanage all of the settings for your website within Google Analytics. You can find a full breakdown of everything you can manage—from accounts to data filters—in the Google Analytics Help Center.

Two Features You Need to Start Using Now

Before we conclude your tour of the what’s what in Google Analytics, there are two things you should start using right now (if you aren’t already) to truly get value from your Google Analytics: Goals and Custom Campaigns.

#1: Google Analytics Goals

In the Google Analytics Admin menu under View, you have the option to set up goals for your website.

Google Analytics Admin options.

Google Analytics Goals, as mentioned earlier, help you track the data related to a user completing a specific action on your website.

The simplest goal type is the Destination goal. This type of goal allows you to say that when a user reaches a specific page on your website, a specific goal has been completed. Here are a couple of easy examples.

Example 1: If you have a mailing list, create a custom page on your website that thanks users for subscribing after they submit their information. Then set up that page as a destination goal called Mailing List (or something you will easily recognize as a mailing list conversion).

Example 2: If you have a contact form on your website that you use to capture leads for your business, create a custom page on your website that thanks users for submitting their contact information. Then set up that page as a destination goal called Contact Form (or something you will easily recognize as a contact form conversion).

Example 3: If you have a shopping cart on your website to sell products, you likely have an order confirmation or thank-you page that users land on once they’ve successfully completed an order. Set up this page as a destination called Shopping Cart (or something you will easily recognize as a shopping cart conversion).

If there are specific pages that shoppers land on throughout the shopping cart process, you can turn on the Funnel option and include those pages as well. This allows you to track which pages in your funnel get the most abandons so you can optimize your shopping cart for more sales.

To set up a destination goal, click on Goals from the Admin panel, then click on the +New Goal button.

Create a new goal via the +New Goal button.

Name your goal and choose Destination as the type, then click Next Step.

Name your goal something intuitive.

Enter your goal details. If your thank-you page is always http://domain.com/thank-you/, enter /thank-you/ as the web page URL and leave the drop-down set to Equals To.

If your thank-you page URL has appended tracking information added to it, then change the drop-down to Begins With and enter /thank-you/ as the web page URL.

Determine your destination URL.

To find out if your new goal is working, you need to submit your opt-in form, contact form or make a purchase in your shopping cart.

The two optional items in your goal details are Value and Funnel. If you know a specific value for each goal completion (e.g., the average order through your shopping cart is $10), then you can add that as a value. Otherwise, leave it blank.

If you have a shopping cart with specific pages that a user will visit throughout the process of purchasing a product, you can add them under Funnel.

Value and Funnel are optional steps in Google Analytics goal setup.

You can view your sales funnel(s) in the standard Funnel Visualization report.

Funnel Visualization report in Google Analytics.

Once you’re finished filling out the form, you can click the Verify this Goal link before saving your goal. If any users have completed the goal in the past seven days, you should get confirmation that your goal is set up correctly.

By setting up a Destination goal, you can measure ROI using your Google Analytics. You’ll be able to see which traffic sources and social networks send the most users to your website who complete a goal. You’ll be able to see which countries users who convert live in, and much more.

Aside from Destination goals, there are three other types. The Destination type is generally the easiest to set up and the most useful. You can learn about setting up the other types and their advantages in the Google Analytics Help Center.

#2: Google Analytics Custom Campaigns

Custom campaigns track visitors from specific traffic sources. Campaigns are set up using UTM parameters appended to the end of a URL a visitor would click on.

Google Analytics requires three parameters to track campaigns: the campaign medium (utm_medium), the campaign/traffic source (utm_source) and campaign name (utm_campaign).

For example, you can create a campaign to track traffic from a link shared through the Buffer app on Twitter.com, which is social media. In this case, social is your medium; twitter.com is your source; and buffer is your campaign name.

When someone clicks on a link shared by the Buffer app, they’ll see the following URL in their browser address bar:

http://iqtell.com/2014/02/are-we-managing-our-to-do-lists-all-wrong/? utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

That link tells Google Analytics that someone completed your campaign parameters. You can see the results in the first entry in the Campaigns report below.

Campaign tracking within Google Analytics.

When you click on buffer (the campaign name) in the above example, you can see the source and medium.

Campaign source and medium details within Google Analytics.

Using campaigns, you can track visitors who come from just about anywhere, right down to those who clicked the third link in an email you sent to your mailing list on May 15.

The best part about setting up these links is that you can do it easily using thecampaigns URL Builder tool from Google. You just enter your URL, the campaign source, campaign medium and campaign name.

Creating a custom campaign with the Google Analytics URL Builder.

The key to accurately tracking campaigns is to keep your parameters consistent. Capitalization, spelling, spacing and punctuation must be exactly the same to always count as the same campaign within Google Analytics.

If you want to use buffer as a campaign name, be sure that you always use buffer, not Buffer or Buffer App, as those will be considered new campaigns. Or, if you’re going to use twitter.com as a source, always use twitter.com, not Twitter or Twitter.com, as Google Analytics considers each of those new sources.

Wrapping Up

I hope this has given you a good feel for navigating around your Google Analytics data, as well as a few to-dos to make that data worthwhile. In my next posts, I’ll be diving deeper into your Audience, Acquisition, Behavior and Conversions reports to show you how to analyze and utilize the data to improve your blog or business!

What do you think? Have you used all of your Google Analytics options? Do you have goals and campaigns set up? Share your comments and questions below!

Source: http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/google-analytics-basics/

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Is your sales team effective?

Let us turn the lights on...

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Lead response times...

Author: Chris Green (pictured), sales and media director, Motoring.co.uk

"Our dependency on the internet for buying goods and services, accessing news and communicating with friends and family via social media, is increasingly growing.  As a nation, we spend an average of eight hours and 41 minutes a day on media devices - more than we do sleeping.

Shopping online is growing at a rapid pace. Earlier this year, the etailing trade association IMRG forecast growth of 17% for 2014 and estimated £107 billion will be spent online over the year. The association also estimates that 21% of retail sales now take place online. 

What is clearly emerging from this increased web usage, is a new ‘instant generation’ who  ‘want it now’ - and 24/7.

These consumers have high expectations for instant response, information and feedback. 

When they carry out shopping online at Amazon or Tesco, they are immediately given access to a huge number of products, at the touch of a button, round the clock. 

When they make a purchase, it is instantly processed and they are given a choice of delivery dates to suit them.

This instant generation expects these same levels of service and response from dealers and manufacturers and why shouldn’t they? So the big question is how can the industry respond to these changing consumer needs and wants?

This instant generation will soon become an AO generation and no, that doesn't stand for Appliances Online, even though there is much the automotive industry can learn from that business and its digital approach.  AO stands for ' Always On', which simply means consumers will never be offline and will always be connected in some way via cars, watches etc. 

A key challenge and a good starting point is for dealers to provide a quick and efficient response to enquiries at the peak time when consumers are surfing the net – between 6pm and 10pm weekday evenings and weekends. 

It is at these times consumers want to speak to someone who can help them make informed decisions around simply buying a product, or booking services that dealers provide.  We all know that you can book a service online, but what about the other questions consumers need answering, before they actually book or buy?

One interesting pilot I recently came across is a North East car dealer, Lookers Volkswagen Teesside that is spearheading an ‘open-all-hours’ approach, by opening a new late-night car servicing facility. 

The dealership in Middlesbrough is keeping its workshop open until 2am from Monday to Thursday, so it is much easier for customers to book in repairs, or routine maintenance when it suits them, and it also allows them to find out information outside of normal working hours too.

Another key challenge for dealers is response times to telephone, email or web enquiries.

Our recent research on the leads we provide to Renault UK, reveals that 29% of consumers who were contacted the same day as they made their enquiry, actually went on to purchase a vehicle - a massive conversion, whilst 57% made a purchase, having been contacted within 48 hours. 

When consumers were contacted up to a week after their original enquiry was made, just 14% purchased a vehicle.  After one week, no consumers went on to make a purchase at all, or had bought from a competitor.

Our stats also show that one in five consumers who requested a test drive, or a brochure from a dealer, received no response.

The age group most intolerant of slow response times were 18-24 year olds, with 20% saying they would test drive another make and model if they did not get a request for a test drive answered within 48 hours.

Older buyers were more tolerant, but their attitudes are also changing.  

It is clear that the more responsive dealers are to contacting consumers that want a test drive or a brochure,  the more likely they are to drive footfall and ultimately sales.  Dealers need to recognise that internet enquiries are as good as showroom enquiries and as we have proven, they are even better, because they are ready to buy.

There is much that the industry can learn from the ‘best in class’ digital retailers.  The bottom line is that if dealers and manufacturers fail to change the way they respond to this instant generation, they will lose sales and greatly inhibit aftersales revenue.

I will leave with you one thought for the future. Isn’t it time that car manufacturers and their dealers kept in touch with the owners of their brands, through the whole car owning lifecycle, because that's what the best e-commerce businesses do on a daily basis? This will simply breed much needed loyalty and retention for the future, whilst creating a better customer experience."

Source: http://www.am-online.com/news/2014/11/17/guest-opinion-instant-generation-poses-challenges-for-dealers/37284/

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Fast, Simple and Effective - Full Mail Here

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What to do when a prospect goes dark...

You’re on it. You move the call to the next stage in the pipeline, you make a note in the CRM and set a new activity. Good shit, the deal is moving along.

Fast forward two weeks. The activity reminder pops up. You call the prospect, no answer. No sweat. You schedule a call for two days later. Two days later, you call again, no answer. You leave another message. K, no worries, it’s all good. You schedule a call for two more days later and in the interim you lob over an email.  Two more days pass, no response. Now this shit is getting serious. You think to yourself, something’s wrong. The doubt creeps in, you’re freaked about how to explain it to your manager. You were counting on this deal for the quarter. You’re getting desperate, sending emails and leaving messages saying you’re just “following” up.  Ahh shit!  You’ve just become that pesky sales person who’s “just following up.” You’re fucked, you’ve lost control of the sale and in you’re desperation mode.

Two things happen when sales people find themselves in desperation mode. One, they almost always lose the deal. They’ve lost control of the sale and it spirals away from them. Two, and even more detrimental, they spend way too much time chasing the deal and it’s never going to close. In an effort to save the deal, the sales person spends valuable selling time chasing a lost prospect.

If a prospect goes dark you have to get them back and the best way to get them back into the fold is to hold them accountable and challenge them.

Here’s my favorite phrase to get a prospect jump started again;

“I’m confused, you said you . . .  (insert issues prospect said they wanted to fix, their last commitment, the impact of not changing, etc.). Has something changed?”

When a prospect goes dark the best thing you can do is put it back on the prospect. If they said they liked your solution and need to share it with the team, then you need to call them out on it and ask what happened. When a prospect says “yes,” they want to buy your solution because they are losing 1000′s of dollars in unnecessary expenses and then go dark. You need to parrot that back to them. You need to say,

I’m confused, you said you’re losing thousands of dollars in unnecessary expenses and felt our solution was perfect. We agreed to reconvene two weeks after you spoke with your team and shared it with the CEO. We have not heard from you. Has something changed?

When a prospect goes dark, something is going on behind the scenes. There could be new information, new goals, new solutions, financial set backs, new players, or it could be they are simply busy. Regardless, when a prospect goes dark, the best thing a sales person can do is go back to what their prospect originally said and committed to and hold them accountable to it.

Prospects who go dark aren’t evil or assholes just trying to fuck with you, they are just overwhelmed. There is almost always a real, legitimate reason and it’s your job to figure it out. The best way to get them to respond and figure it out is to hold them accountable to what they said and what they committed to. Anything short of that isn’t selling, it’s pussyfooting around and that’s not gonna get you the sale.

Prospects are people and for the most part, they know they owe you a call. They know they made a commitment and the longer it goes without response, the more they feel bad about it and in an odd twist, the less likely they will be to call. So, it’s your job to lay it at their feet and open the door by simply saying;

I’m confused, you said . . .

This simple phrase invites prospects to explain where they are, and more importantly address the “gap,” the gap between what they said and their actions. As people we hate inconsistencies, gaps and inaccuracies. So, when you say;  I’m confused, you said . . . the prospect is compelled to address the gap and this is exactly what you want them to do.

This entire approach rests on the premise you actually have engaged the prospect well enough early in the sales process so you understand what their problem is, why they are looking at your solution, what the next step is, where you are in the sales cycle and what they are doing in between calls. If you can’t answer those questions, nothing can save you. In that case, take the deal out of the pipeline, go get Jill Konrath’s SNAP Selling book and start over, because you’re a sales person in title only.

If you know what the customers motivation is. If you know why they are looking to buy. If you know what the next step is and it’s because they told you, good — make them own it. That’s how you get them out of the black hole.

When prospect goes dark, accountability is the light.