As we get prepped for an even more exciting Q2–can’t say too much but we’re pumped–we wanted to take a moment and reflect. 

We’ve launched tons of exceptional new features designed to help marketers overcome the challenges they’re facing now and will face in the future. 

Without further ado, let’s run through the greatest hits over the last few months! 

• Supercharge your Meta Ads with Restore
• Customer Journey Tracking
• Klaviyo Revenue Tracking
• Email Deliverability Scoring
• Direct Integration with Sendlane
• Direct Integration with HighLevel

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Supercharge your Meta Ads with Restore

It’s been a difficult few years for digital advertisers (to say the least). Sometimes it seemed like you couldn’t open your email without learning that one tool or another was going to stop working how it used to. 

These already choppy waves are going to get even choppier in the coming months and years. 

Signal Degradation is a major challenge. But companies that overcome major challenges thrive while their competitors falter. And that’s why we’re so excited to have launched our Restore tool. 

Retargeting is a rock-solid marketing concept: reach out to the people who are already interested in you. Those people are 2-3x more likely to convert! 

The problem wasn’t the strategy, but that the data had gotten so much less accurate and reliable. 

Restore takes care of that! Our Website Visitor ID X-Ray pixel identifies the name and contact info of 20% or more of your visitors. 

Our direct integration with Facebook means that, once you connect your accounts, you can port these retargeting audiences over in a snap. 

More About Restore:

• How to Use Restore by Customers.ai to Boost Your Ad Campaigns
• Maximizing ROI with Advanced Facebook Ad Strategies
• Facebook Retargeting Isn’t Dead. It Just Needs a Jump Start

Customer Journey Tracking

We would never pick a favorite of our new features but if we did have to choose, our Customer Journey feature might take the cake. 

Why? Because of how it opens up so many different avenues for marketers of all types. 

Huge companies like Amazon, Wal-Mart, and Target have had an edge on their smaller competitors for years because they have access to both a higher volume of data and more accurate, reliable data. 

They put that data to work for targeted and personalized ads. This reaped huge benefits! 

And now, with Customer Journey, you can reap those benefits too. 

The contacts you generate with our Website Visitor ID X-Ray pixel come with a full picture of how that customer has interacted with your site! 

What does this mean in practice? Your ability to target and personalize marketing outreach is only limited by your creativity! 

With our abundant integrations, you’ve got the ability to smoothly nurture leads into sales no matter how your organization is set up. 

Effectively segmenting your audience is fundamental to long-term sustainable marketing success and Customer Journey empowers you to do that like never before. 

This information is easy to find in your My Leads tab within your account. Build audiences based on whatever makers are relevant to your business and market away! 

More About Customer Journey Tracking:

• Customer Journey Tracking Overview
• Customer Journey & Segmentation are Key to Enhancing Engagement
• How to Use Website Visitor Data in Your Client Campaigns

Klaviyo Revenue Tracking

Attribution is a strangely tough part of marketing. 

Your goal isn’t to make one sale, it’s to make tons of sales. So understanding how each sale happened is crucial. You’ve got to know what works so that you know what to keep doing. And you’ve definitely got to know what doesn’t work so you can stop wasting money. 

That’s why we were so excited to launch a new tool within our Klaviyo integration: 

You can now track how much revenue the contacts identified by our Website Visitor ID X-Ray pixel are generating through Klaviyo right in your Integrations tab. 

More About Klaviyo:

• Klaviyo Integration Overview
• Maximize Klaviyo Performance with Website Visitor Identification

Email Deliverability Scoring

Maintaining strong email deliverability has always been crucial but it’s only gotten more important in the first few months of 2024. 

Google announced that large senders who don’t abide by a strict set of guidelines will have their emails blocked before they can even reach the spam folder. 

That’s very bad news (if you’re unprepared). Thanks to this new feature, our customers weren’t unprepared: an email deliverability score right in the product. 

All you’ve got to do is connect your work email and within a day or so you’ll receive an assessment of your email deliverability! 

This score–which customers can constantly update–is a critical insight into your performance. Keeping an eye on it empowers you to take action the moment a negative signal appears and take care of it before small problems turn into massive ones. 

Email Deliverability Hacks:

Unlocking Inboxes

HOSTED BY

Larry Kim

Founder and CEO, Customers.ai

Free Webinar: Watch Now

More About Email Deliverability:

• Email Deliverability Audit Overview
• The Evolution of Email Deliverability: From Basics to AI-Driven Insights
• Boosting Email Deliverability: 5 Strategies for DTC Marketers

Sendlane Integration

Sendlane is a really innovative, exciting marketing automation platform and launching our direct integration with their platform was a highlight of our first quarter. 

Setting it up takes only a few simple steps: 

Just drop in your API key, pick which audiences you want to send, and where you want them to go! 

Check out this conversation between our Founder & CEO, Larry Kim, and Sendlane’s Founder & CEO, Jimmy Kim on how to Maximize eCommerce ROI to get valuable insights: 

More About Our Sendlane Integration:

• Sendlane Integration Overview
• How to Overcome Ecommerce Challenges with Customers.ai and Sendlane

HighLevel Integration

Another integration we’re thrilled about is our new partnership with HighLevel. Nearly every marketing agency already knows and loves HighLevel for how easy they make white-labeling a sprawling marketing suite in one user-friendly interface. 

Now they can love HighLevel even more because leads generated for your clients by Customers.ai can go straight to them. Clients will love the engaged new contacts, agencies love the pricing and simplicity. A win-win-win. 

Hop into your Integrations tab and click “Add a HighLevel Account” to link your platforms. 

And then check out this Spotlight Session our Founder & CEO Larry Kim did with HighLevel! 

More About Our HighLevel Integration:

• HighLevel Integration Overview
• Elevate Your Lead Generation with Customers.ai and HighLevel Integration
• Dynamic Duo: Customers.ai and HighLevel

Wrapping Up the Quarter

Whew! It was a big quarter and the feedback from our customers has been amazing.

The most energizing thing about all we accomplished in Q1?

That we’re just getting started!

We have even more coming in Q1 and we hope you come along for the ride!

Convert Website Visitors into Real Contacts!

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Important Next Steps

• See what targeted outbound marketing is all about. Capture and engage your first 500 website visitor leads with Customers.ai X-Ray website visitor identification for free.
• Talk and learn about sales outreach automation with other growth enthusiasts. Join Customers.ai Island, our Facebook group of 40K marketers and entrepreneurs who are ready to support you.
• Advance your marketing performance with Sales Outreach School, a free tutorial and training area for sales pros and marketers.

The post Catching Up with Customers.ai: What’s New in Q1 appeared first on Customers.ai.

The thing is, top of the funnel marketing is the first step in driving those sales. It’s the first step in turning strangers into customers and focusing on awareness and engagement rather than direct sales. 

Top of the funnel marketing is all about casting a wide net to attract as many potential leads as possible through valuable content, intriguing campaigns, and strategic outreach. 

For marketers, mastering this stage means understanding the right mix of channels, tools, and tactics to capture attention in a crowded marketplace. 

To help you better understand how to capture that top of the funnel traffic, we are going to dive deep into what top of the funnel marketing entails, breaking down its essential components, effective channels, and looking at the tools that can supercharge your efforts to reach a wider audience. 

Let’s explore how to make your brand stand out and draw in those crucial initial engagements.

• What is top-of-funnel marketing?
• What are the parts of a marketing funnel?
• Why is the top of the funnel important?
• What are top-of-funnel channels?
• What are the best top-of-funnel marketing tools?
• How do you increase top-of-funnel prospects?

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Understanding Top of the Funnel Marketing

Understanding top of the funnel marketing is essential for crafting strategies that effectively catch the eye of potential customers and initiate the journey toward brand loyalty and conversion.

Let’s get more familiar with what it is, how it fits into the marketing funnel as a whole, and discuss its importance.

What is top of funnel marketing?

Top of funnel marketing is a strategy aimed at creating awareness and attracting potential customers by engaging them at the earliest stage of their buying journey.

Top of funnel marketing often refers to the strategies, channels, and campaigns that target prospects who have just started their customer journey.

When you market to the top of the funnel, your objective is awareness. In the awareness stage, you need campaigns and creatives that capture attention and engage prospects.

Content that’s educational or entertaining without being overly detailed or salesy usually works best to increase awareness of brands, products, and services.

What are the parts of a marketing funnel?

A complete marketing funnel has three stages: top, middle, and bottom. You might see them abbreviated as TOFU (top of the funnel), MOFU (middle of the funnel), and BOFU (bottom of the funnel).

Each stage has a unique objective, and all three work together to move prospects toward the end goal: a conversion. Here’s a quick breakdown:

• TOFU: Focuses on introducing prospects to a brand, product, or service and familiarizing them with basic features and benefits.
• MOFU: Encourages prospects to consider a brand’s solutions seriously by providing in-depth resources like original research and competitive reports.
• BOFU: Inspires prospects to convert (i.e., book a call or make a purchase) with tactics like making special offers and sharing product demos.

Why is the top of the funnel marketing important?

When your priority is finding qualified leads for your sales team, it’s easy to ignore the top of the funnel. Yet every stage is important for a healthy marketing funnel—including the top.

The top is the widest part of the funnel—and it’s the stage that attracts the most prospects. For your funnel to work efficiently, it should draw in as many people as possible who fit your ideal customer profile.

As prospects move through their buyer’s journey and get closer to making a purchase decision, some of them will naturally exit your funnel.

If you have a successful top-of-funnel marketing strategy, you can continue to increase awareness among your target audience and guide qualified prospects toward the bottom of the funnel.

What are top of funnel marketing channels?

To capture prospects’ attention and get them to engage with your content, you need top-of-funnel content like:

• Blog posts: Blog posts educate and entertain your audience while introducing them to your brand, products, and services

• Landing pages: Landing pages encourage your target audience to download TOFU offers like case studies or getting-started guides

• Social media: Posts boost awareness by entertaining followers or educating them about your products and services

• Display ads: Ads get your ideal customer familiar with your brand as they browse blogs, news, and other websites

• Video marketing: Take prospects behind the scenes of your business or show them how your products and services work

• Influencer marketing: Provide social proof and introduces prospects to your brand through a trusted voice

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What are the best top of funnel marketing tools?

The best top of the funnel (TOFU) marketing tools vary depending on your goals, audience, and content strategy, but some widely recognized and effective ones include:

• Content Management Systems (CMS) like WordPress or HubSpot, which allow you to create, manage, and track engaging content that attracts potential customers.

• SEO Tools such as SEMrush or Ahrefs, essential for optimizing your website and content to rank higher in search engine results, increasing visibility to potential leads.

• Social Media Platforms like LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook, coupled with management tools such as Hootsuite or Buffer, to share content widely and engage with your audience.

• Email Marketing Software such as Sendlane or Mailchimp, which can be used to distribute content directly to subscribers, nurturing leads at the initial stages.

• Analytics Tools like Google Analytics, providing insights into website traffic and user behavior, helping you understand how visitors interact with your content.

• Advertising Platforms such as Google Ads or Facebook Ads, to run targeted campaigns that increase brand awareness and drive traffic to your site.

• Video Hosting Platforms like YouTube or Vimeo, where engaging video content can be shared to attract and inform potential customers.

• Lead Generation Tools like LeadPages or Unbounce, which help in creating landing pages that capture lead information effectively.

• Website Visitor Identification platforms like Customers.ai, which not only tell you who has visited your site but allows you to remarket to them easily.

Top of the funnel marketing can include a lot of things but creating awesome top-of-funnel content for these variousmarketing channels is only the first step. 

To get more value from your marketing content, you also need a process in place for capturing and converting your top-of-funnel leads.

Without one, you’ll invest a ton of resources into improving your search engine optimization (SEO), building your social media profiles, or running ads—but end up capturing an average of just 2-4% of leads.

With Customers.ai Website Visitor ID X-Ray pixel, you can essentially 10x those results and capture 30% of your top-of-funnel prospects as persistent leads who receive your SMS updates, email newsletter, and sales outreach.

Using the Customers.ai automation features, you can take the top-of-funnel efforts from your blog, social channels, and ads—and use them to remarket to prospects, develop relationships, and fill your sales funnel automatically.

How do you increase top-of-funnel prospects?

To increase top-of-funnel prospects, focus on strategies that expand your reach and engage a broader audience. 

1. Start by creating high-quality, informative content tailored to the interests and pain points of your target audience, including blog posts, videos, infographics, and podcasts. 

2. Optimize this content for search engines to improve visibility and leverage social media platforms to share it widely and engage in conversations with potential customers. 

3. Implement targeted advertising campaigns on platforms like Google Ads and social media to attract users who are likely searching for solutions you offer. 

4. Networking at industry events and leveraging influencer partnerships can also broaden your exposure. 

5. Finally, analyze your efforts with analytics tools to understand what works best for your audience, allowing you to refine your strategies and continuously grow your pool of top-of-funnel prospects.

Once you have built a way to get those top of the funnel prospects to your site, the next step is creating an automated system to nurture them.

How to Automate Your Top of Funnel Strategy

Automating your top-of-the-funnel strategy with tools like website visitor identification, CRM systems, email marketing platforms, and social media schedulers can significantly enhance efficiency, ensuring consistent engagement with prospects at scale. 

Let’s break it down here:

Step #1: Create top of funnel content

To get prospects interested in your business and into your funnel, you need great content. For example, you might write a helpful blog post or publish a series of helpful videos or Instagram posts.

Make sure the content you create is packed with value. After all, you want to give prospects something genuinely useful—and leave them with a good impression of your business.

Not sure where to start? Think about your target audience’s pain points. For example, they may need help navigating a challenging process or finding the right tool for a task.

Step #2: Capture and identify top of funnel leads

If your content resonates with your target audience, it should generate a lot of engagement on social media or drive visitors to your website.

The problem most people have with top of the funnel content is that they don’t know who these people are or how to put them into the lead funnel.

Not anymore.

With the Customers.ai X-Ray pixel, you can identify who is visiting your site and put them directly into your lead funnel. Problem solved!

To install the Website Visitor ID X-Ray Pixel, sign up (for FREE!), go to your dashboard, and navigate to My Automations. 

Select + New Automation and get your pixel. We have easy install options for Google Tag Manager, WordPress, and Shopify, or you can install the pixel manually.

Customers.ai gives you names, emails, domains, LinkedIn profiles, and so much more about your site visitors. 

More importantly, it gives you data you can actually do something with!

And that something is re-engagement. 

Step #3: Re-engage your top of funnel leads

It’s important to remember that top of the funnel visitors are just that – top of the funnel.

That means they don’t want you emailing them or calling them just yet.

Yes, Customers.ai does integrate with systems like Klaviyo, allowing you to add visitors directly into automations but that is better for mid-to-bottom of the funnel prospects. The people who visited your pricing page or abandoned their cart.

For these top of the funnel visitors who simply came to your site after reading that blog post you wrote? They aren’t ready for that. 

What they are ready for is retargeting. 

Customers.ai integrates directly with ad platforms to help you reach that top of the funnel audience and take them through the buyer journey. 

With website visitor identification software, you can take your top of the funnel strategy to a whole new level!

Automate Your Top of Funnel Marketing and Accelerate the Buyer Journey

With the automated strategy we just outlined, you’ve avoided letting 96-98% of your top-of-funnel prospects slip away—and instead built relationships with a little help from automated re-engagement campaigns.

With targeted remarketing and outreach, you can continue to guide leads toward a conversion and help them make a smart buying decision.

Curious how X-Ray can work for your top-of-funnel marketing? We’ve got a free Customers.ai trial with your name on it. Give it a try!

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Important Next Steps

• See what targeted outbound marketing is all about. Capture and engage your first 500 website visitor leads with Customers.ai X-Ray website visitor identification for free.
• Talk and learn about sales outreach automation with other growth enthusiasts. Join Customers.ai Island, our Facebook group of 40K marketers and entrepreneurs who are ready to support you.
• Advance your marketing performance with Sales Outreach School, a free tutorial and training area for sales pros and marketers.

Top of Funnel Marketing FAQs

Q. What is top of funnel marketing?

Top of funnel marketing focuses on creating awareness and engaging potential customers at the earliest stage of their buying journey.

Q. Why is top of funnel marketing important?

It is crucial for building brand awareness and starting the customer journey, which is essential for nurturing leads into conversions.

Q. How does top of funnel marketing work?

It attracts potential customers through engaging, informative content and interactions that pique their interest and awareness about a brand or product.

Q. What are the key objectives of top of funnel marketing?

The key objectives include increasing brand awareness, engaging with a broad audience, and generating interest among potential customers.

Q. What channels are used in top of funnel marketing?

Common channels include social media, blogs, email marketing, SEO, and paid advertising.

Q. How do you measure the success of top of funnel marketing?

Success is measured by metrics such as website traffic, social media engagement, email open rates, and lead generation rates.

Q. What types of content work best for top of funnel marketing?

Effective content types include blog posts, infographics, videos, podcasts, and social media posts.

Q. How can SEO enhance top of funnel marketing?

SEO improves visibility in search engine results, attracting more organic traffic to your content and increasing brand awareness.

Q. What role does social media play in top of funnel marketing?

Social media expands reach and engagement, allowing brands to connect with a larger audience through shareable content.

Q. How does content marketing fit into top of funnel marketing?

Content marketing drives top of funnel activities by providing valuable, relevant content that attracts and engages potential customers.

Q. Can email marketing be effective at the top of the funnel?

Yes, by distributing engaging content and offers, email marketing can nurture early-stage leads and increase brand awareness.

Q. What are the benefits of using video in top of funnel marketing?

Video content can significantly increase engagement, convey information effectively, and improve brand recall among potential customers.

Q. How do paid ads contribute to top of funnel marketing?

Paid ads target potential customers based on their interests and behaviors, driving awareness and traffic to your content.

Q. What is the difference between top and bottom of the funnel marketing?

Top of the funnel focuses on awareness and engagement, while bottom of the funnel aims at conversion and sales.

Q. How can analytics tools improve top of funnel marketing?

Analytics tools provide insights into audience behavior and campaign performance, helping to refine strategies and improve engagement.

Q. What are the best practices for top of funnel marketing?

Best practices include creating valuable content, optimizing for SEO, engaging on social media, and analyzing performance data to refine tactics.

Q. How do you target the right audience in top of funnel marketing?

Identify your target audience’s interests, pain points, and behavior to create tailored content and campaigns that resonate with them.

Q. What is the role of storytelling in top of funnel marketing?

Storytelling captivates audiences, making your brand more memorable and encouraging engagement with your content.

Q. How can influencers impact top of funnel marketing?

Influencers can extend your reach and credibility by introducing your brand to their followers, generating awareness and interest.

Q. How do webinars fit into top of funnel marketing?

Webinars attract interested attendees, providing an opportunity to engage with content and the brand in a deeper, more interactive way.

Q. What is the importance of a call-to-action in top of funnel content?

A clear call-to-action encourages engagement, guiding potential customers to the next step in their journey with your brand.

Q. How can landing pages enhance top of funnel marketing efforts?

Custom landing pages can effectively capture lead information, offering tailored content that meets the interests of potential customers.

Q. What is the impact of customer testimonials in top of funnel marketing?

Customer testimonials build trust and credibility, showcasing real-life success stories to engage potential leads.

Q. How do you automate top of funnel marketing activities?

Automate repetitive tasks such as email campaigns, social media posting, and lead capture to increase efficiency and scale your efforts.

Q. What are the challenges of top of funnel marketing?

Challenges include capturing attention in a crowded market, creating high-quality content consistently, and measuring the impact on revenue.

Q. How do you personalize top of funnel marketing?

Use data insights to tailor content and campaigns to the interests and needs of your target audience, enhancing engagement.

Q. What role does customer feedback play in top of funnel marketing?

Feedback helps to refine marketing strategies, ensuring content and campaigns are aligned with audience expectations and interests.

Q. How can A/B testing improve top of funnel marketing?

A/B testing allows marketers to compare different approaches, optimizing content, and campaigns for better engagement and results.

Q. What trends are shaping top of funnel marketing today?

Trends include the increasing use of AI and machine learning for personalization, the growth of video content, and the importance of authenticity in brand messaging.

Q. How does top of funnel marketing influence customer loyalty?

By building awareness and engagement early on, it sets the stage for ongoing relationships, turning first-time visitors into loyal customers.

The post Top of Funnel Marketing: How Can Marketers Build Successful TOFU Strategies appeared first on Customers.ai.

Email is one of the prominent, universal ways of staying in touch and today we’re bringing you a guide to help you write the best email opening lines for all your email tasks to be done.

Whether you want to address an existing customer, a new lead, employees, a new boss, or a business correspondence, emails are a fantastic re-engagement communication channel, alongside other re-engagement channels like text messaging. 

Don’t forget, now that generative AI like ChatGPT has entered the marketing scene, there’s a new AI email marketing copywriter on your team. We’ll get more into that later.

When we talk about the best email opening lines, we’re talking about email opening lines and subject lines that:

• Get more opens
• Get more responses
• Drive positive outcomes toward your business goals

Here’s the good news. You DO NOT have to have any formal education in the field.

This guide is here to help you with some tried-and-true email opening lines.

Get crafty when writing an email and see the power it holds! You can also make use of email marketing tools to supercharge your campaign.

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How Do You Start Off A Professional Email? 

Searching for some of the “Best Email Opening Lines at Work?” You owe it to yourself to come up with something better than “hope you’re well”, and we’ve got you covered.

If you have ever been on the receiving end of such emails, we are sure you know what we mean.

Thus, we bring a bag of goodies for you!

The Best Email Opening Lines If You Are Following Up

1. As per our telephone conversation…
2. I’m just checking in about…
3. To get a follow up on our conversation…
4. As discussed, …
5. Would you be so kind as to provide an update on…
6. I am getting back to you regarding…
7. I wanted to circle back around to…
8. I wanted to float this back to the top of your inbox…

The Best Email Opening Lines If You Are In A Formal Mood

1. Good morning…
2. Good afternoon…
3. Good evening…
4. I hope the pandemic hasn’t been too harsh on you…
5. I hope you are well in these interesting times…
6. I hope the week is going great so far…
7. Allow me to introduce myself…
8. I hope your day so far has been pleasant…
9. I’m extending a hand for friendship…
10. I hope your weekend was excellent…
11.  I hope your week started out well…

The Best Email Opening Lines For A More Relaxed Greeting

1. Thank you for your help…
2. Thanks for the prompt response…
3. It’s great to hear back…
4. Your kind words have made my day…
5. Your quick response is much appreciated…
6. Thank you for getting in touch…
7. Thanks for reaching out…
8. I could use your advice…

The Best Email Opening Lines If You Want To Lift Spirits At Work

1. We hope the week was only mildly boring…
2. Hello from the other side…
3. Hello! Hello! <mic testing>…
4. I hope you have already had your morning cup of coffee…
5. Yup! Me again!…
6. I promise this mail isn’t as long as the last one…
7. I hope you weren’t waiting for someone else’s message!…
8. A ha! Another mail!…
9. Happy ‘Not Monday’…
10. Hold tight. The weekend is just around the corner!…

Offices have become synonymous with words like boring, life-sucking, parasitic, soulless, and many more superlatives of horrible.

Be the elusive “cool office” (or over-glorified cafe with free wifi?). 

Even if you’re on a WFH setup, stand out and have your team brimming with laughter and smiles as you add on these best email opening lines to send to your growing email list to keep their mood groovy at all times. 

After all, a happy employee = better performance!

Top Email Opening Lines We Are Okay With You Stealing To Drive Mad Engagement

If you think only the subject line holds importance in driving engagement and not the opening line, you are delusional!

The opening line is what truly enchants your receiver to read further than the subject line. 

Here are some of the best email opening lines to help you drive MAD engagement!

1. Congratulations on… (pique their interest)
2. Hello fellow… (shared interest)
3. Dear (name)… (be personal)
4. Did you know?… (ask a question)
5. I saw your post on… (who…me?!)
6. I noticed how well you… (who…me?!)
7. I noticed that [company name] is [mention news about their company] (show that you’ve done your research)
8. I saw that you are [activity inferred based on research, ie: “marketing your business on Facebook”]. How’s that going? (show that you’ve done your research, and value their experience)
9. Your views on (X) are so similar to mine… (create a shared interest)
10. I’m sure you will be glad to know… (offer them value)
11. Quick question! (open a curiosity gap)
12. Can you do me a favor? (open a curiosity gap)
13. I hope you will lend your thoughts on…(value their input)

And the list goes on….

Best Email Opening Lines according to ChatGPT

We mentioned that AI is in your corner when it comes to generating engagement through email opening lines.

Here are opening lines for your next email straight from the AI copywriting brains at ChatGPT:

• “Hello [Name], I couldn’t resist reaching out to you because…”
• “I hope this email finds you in good spirits and ready for…”
• “It’s a pleasure to connect with you regarding…”
• “I wanted to personally congratulate you on…”
• “I hope you’re having a productive week so far. I wanted to discuss…”
• “As a fellow [industry/profession] enthusiast, I couldn’t help but notice…”
• “Thank you for your interest in [product/service/event]. I wanted to provide you with more details about…”
• “I hope this email brings a smile to your face, just like…”
• “You’re probably wondering why I’m reaching out, but I have a feeling you’ll be intrigued by…”
• “I wanted to share some exciting news with you that could greatly benefit your [business/project/goals].”

Why is AI so great for crafting email content?

Generative AI has quickly earned a name as an email copywriting tool for a few reasons:

• Language Generation: AI models have been trained on vast amounts of text data from the internet, enabling them to understand and generate human-like language. This allows AI to create well-written and coherent email copy.
• Pattern Recognition: AI can analyze patterns in successful email campaigns by studying large datasets. By identifying common structures, phrases, and tones that resonate with recipients, AI can generate copy that aligns with proven strategies.
• Personalization: Effective email copy often requires personalization to engage the reader. AI can tailor messages based on recipient data, such as name, location, or past interactions, making the content feel more relevant and compelling. Personalization cuts through noisy inboxes. This is major.
• A/B Testing: AI-powered email copywriting tools can conduct A/B tests on different versions of email copy to determine which performs better. Through automated testing and analysis, AI can optimize copy based on metrics like open rates, click-through rates, and conversions.
• Efficiency and Scalability: AI can rapidly generate multiple variations of email copy, allowing marketers to test different approaches and find the most effective ones. Additionally, AI can handle large volumes of copywriting tasks, saving time and effort for marketing teams.

Have you used Customers.ai’s AI email marketing tools? Try Customers.ai for free to start sending hyper-personalized, high-converting automated emails from your business to your prospects.

While AI excels at generating copy, it can fall short on the emotional nuances and deep understanding that human copywriters possess. Think of AI as a tool at your disposal that can speed up and get you to the heart of human creativity and expertise faster, resulting in even more powerful email campaigns.

We hope you are no longer drawing a blank on how to write the best email opening lines.

Don’t waste another moment, go ahead and use the lines we have mentioned here.

Customer retention rate and engagement rates are sure to boost when you invest your time writing the best opening lines for your emails.

And fear not, this post is forever here to help you swim to shore in case you find yourself lost in the ocean of words, which are many!

Clever and intentional marketing is directly proportional to increased sales, higher ROI, and better numbers in the business altogether.

And if you are a small business, you should try all the best marketing tools for success. 

So, keep writing, keep revising, and take advantage of the plethora of digital marketing apps available that can enhance your copywriting (and revenue!). 

Bonus Moves To Extend The Power Of Your Email Opening Lines

Chat and messaging is the preferred communication channel for B2C companies and customers, with open rates 10X to 80X higher than other reengagement channels.

When you’ve mastered your email opening lines, you’ll find that they may translate to your chat openings as well.

Chat for marketing (lead generation, qualification, reengagement and retention) as well as sales support and customer service, starts with an ice breaker — opening a conversation to start a customer relationship.

Sound familiar?

Here are tips for the best opening lines for your customer communication, regardless of the channel. These are especially relevant for cold emailing and for breaking the ice to start a chat conversations.

• Be personal. Use everything you know about someone to personalize your message. Examples for custom greetings (ice breakers) in chat:
  • Would you like help in finding the right-size bicycle for your kid?
  • Are you looking for a rental apartment, buying a home or condo, or selling your property?
  • Would you like help to find out if you have COVID-19?
  • Would you mind taking a brief survey about your customer experience today?
• Customize your presentation. Tailor the experience based on the page the chat visitor is on, content they’ve interacted with, or other things you know about them.

Sign up for a free account or log into your existing account. 

Customers.ai’s outbound email platform lets you create messaging flows and automations for many of the popular messaging apps your customers already use to stay in touch.

You can capture emails in chat and send those emails into your marketing tech stack automatically!

Important Next Steps

• See what targeted outbound marketing is all about. Capture and engage your first 500 website visitor leads with Customers.ai X-Ray website visitor identification for free.
• Talk and learn about sales outreach automation with other growth enthusiasts. Join Customers.ai Island, our Facebook group of 40K marketers and entrepreneurs who are ready to support you.
• Advance your marketing performance with Sales Outreach School, a free tutorial and training area for sales pros and marketers.

Frequently Asked Questions on how to write the best email opening line

Q: What is opening line in email?

A: An opening line in email is the first few words or sentences in an email. The best email opening line is a sentence that captures the reader’s attention and makes them want to read more. Some good examples of email opening lines include:

• I hope you’re having a great day.
• I noticed that you’re interested in (topic).
• Do you have any questions about (topic)?
• Welcome to my company!
• Thank you for your purchase!

Q: How do you greet in an email?

A: The best way to start an email is to personalize it (use their first name if you can), tailor the experience based on what you know about the reader, and make sure the message is relevant to them. 

Another scenario is using an icebreaker or a custom greeting.

Q: How do I start a friendly professional email?

A: The best way to begin a professional email depends on the situation and the relationship between the sender and recipient. 

However, some good opening lines for professional emails include introducing oneself, thanking the recipient for their time, or asking a question to get the conversation started.

You can also take a look at our article above as we’ve outlined different ways to start an email based on if it is a reply, an intro email, etc.

Q: What is the best way to start a conversation with a prospective customer?

A: The best way to start a conversation with current customers may vary based on the relationship between the customer and business. However, some good ice breaker questions to ask current customers include asking how they are, thanking them for their loyalty, providing them with information that is relevant or direct potential customers to a landing page or offer them a free consultation.

Q: What is the best way to start an email to a customer who has made a purchase?

A: A thank you message is always a good way to start an email to a customer who has made a purchase. 

Include information about how to use the product they purchased or provide them with support information. 

Additionally, you can offer them a discount on their next purchase or invite them to join your loyalty program.

Q: What is the best way to start an email to a customer who has unsubscribed?

A: The best way to start an email to a customer who has unsubscribed is usually with an apology. 

You can also ask them why they unsubscribed and see if there is anything you can do to change their mind. It may be helpful to your future efforts to understand why they unsubscribed and if it is something you may want to address.

Q: What should you avoid in your opening line?

A: You should avoid using generic messages, messages that are too salesy or pushy, and messages that are not relevant to the reader. 

Avoid sending multiple messages in a row without a response from the reader as well.

A/B test opening lines to get an understanding of what types of opening lines work for your audience, and view email campaign analytics to see what opening lines or content is causing unsubscribes.

Q: What can you do if your opening line is not getting a response?

A: If your opening line is not getting a response try sending a different message, a new angle, or rephrasing the original message. 

But also you should try a different approach, such as sending an offer or a request for feedback. 

Further, you can reach out to the reader on social media or try emailing them at a different time.

There are many ways to improve your email copywriting knowledge and practice as well, including online copywriting courses which often include email templates that you can use and customize.

Q: What is a warm greeting?

A: A warm greeting is a personalized message that uses the recipient’s name or a term of endearment. 

It is a way to start an email with a more personal tone and can make the reader feel that the message sent to them will deliver value.

Q: What is the best way to start an email to multiple recipients?

A: The best way to start an email to multiple recipients depends on the relationship between the recipients. 

However, some good opening lines for emails to multiple recipients include addressing them all by name, providing a brief update, or asking a question. 

Don’t forget to use a friendly opening line to make the recipients feel comfortable.

Q: What are good email subject lines?

A: Some good email subject lines include asking a question, providing a brief update, or including a call to action. 

Use a subject line that is relevant to the recipient’s interests. Additionally, you should try to avoid using vague or generic subject lines.

Stand out with funny subject lines, or use emojis. Most importantly, we know that personalization works best.

Q: What are some good ice breaker questions to start an email?

A: Some good ice breaker questions to ask a potential customer include asking about their business, what their pain points are, or what they are looking for in a product or service. 

Ask the recipient to share a little bit about themselves or direct potential customers to a landing page or offer them a free consultation.

Q: What should you avoid in your email to a customer who has made a purchase?

A: I don’t recommend using generic messages or messages that are too salesy or pushy. This customer has made a purchase. 

Connect with them and build your 1:1 relationship with them and personalize the conversation. Try to avoid sending multiple messages in a row without a response from the reader.

Q: How do I increase my open rate with the opening line of an email?

A: You can increase your open rate with the opening line of an email by personalizing the message, using a friendly opening line, or including a subject line that is relevant to the recipient’s interests. 

Q: How can I improve my email click-through rate with a compelling opening line?

A: Use a call to action in the opening line. If your email features a listicle style approach, include only a few of the list items, and ask the reader to click to get the full list.

Q: What should I do if my email recipient doesn’t open my email?

A: You should always schedule another email 24 hours after your original email to send to those who did not open the original email, with a new catchy subject line.

There are many things to consider when writing the perfect email opening line. By following these tips, you can create an opening line that will grab your reader’s attention and encourage them to continue reading.

Personalization is key, so always try to find a way to connect with the recipient on a personal level.

And finally, always remember to schedule a follow-up email for those who do not open the original email.

The post Best Email Opening Lines for 2023: Over 50 Examples — & AI Email Super Hacks! appeared first on Customers.ai.

Did you know that most CEOs read approximately 60 books a year? That’s about 4-5 books a month. Yet, according to the Pew Research Center, the average person in the United States reads 12 books a year. 

Why are leaders and executives reading exponentially more? 

Because they’re the ones who are spearheading the path for their organizations. Reading not only inspires and enlightens people from all walks of life, but also provides a foundation for innovation by learning from other cultures, societies, and perspectives on a myriad of issues and industries.

Become a life-long learner, and you’re not only keeping your brain active to stave off cognitive decline but also advancing your skills for any market. 

With fast-changing markets and the latest technologies in AI and automation, it’s critical to stay on top of what’s new in your industry. 

Read a few books on using AI and automation for marketing to give yourself a competitive edge.

Now, are there that many digital marketing books to read out there? Oh yes. Prepare yourself for the ultimate list of the best marketing books for entrepreneurs and beginners, and a few for free!  

There are a lot of resources out there for getting started with marketing as a beginner: online courses, webinars, professional development certifications, podcast interviews – here’s a list of the 50 best marketing books for beginners in 2021 to focus your efforts and get the most ROI for your time.

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In this article we break down the best marketing books as follows:

• Digital Marketing Books For Beginners: Growth Marketing Formulas
• Lead Generation Strategies for B2B & B2C
• Marketing Automation and Artificial Intelligence
• Marketing Strategy: Client Retention & the Psychology of Human Behavior
• The Key to Best Content Marketing
• Best Marketing Books for Beginners Free!

Digital Marketing Books For Beginners: Growth Marketing Formulas

In 2019, Customers.ai hosted a free virtual summit focused on advanced lead generation strategies for B2B and B2C industries. 

One of the speakers was Andy Crestodina, Chief Marketing Officer and Co-Founder of Orbit Media Studios, Inc, who wrote the first book on this list of best marketing books for beginners:

#1. Content Chemistry: An Illustrated Handbook for Content Marketing – by Andor Crestodina

After hosting thousands of conversations about web marketing, Content Chemistry compiles the most useful lessons and advice about search engine optimization, social media, and email marketing. Initially published in 2012, the book is now in its 5th edition.

#2. Likeable Social Media – by Dave Kerpen

Now in its 3rd edition, Likeable Social media dives into the fact that over 3 billion people are now on social media (1.3 billion active monthly users on Facebook Messenger alone! As of November 2020).

For your business to be successful, you need to have a smart social media strategy. Yet, with so many dawning platforms, how do you know how to navigate each one? And how many do you have to have? This book explores what makes customers “like” and engage with your content.

#3. Digital Marketing for Dummies – by Ryan Deiss and Russ Henneberry

It doesn’t get any more friendly and approachable than this guide. With proven tactics and strategies to help expand your brand’s reach, increase engagement, and generate more sales (from SEM and SEO best practices to effective content marketing techniques and influencer marketing). Digital Marketing for Dummies is a great place to start.

#4. Get Online: 6 Simple Steps to Launching a Digital Marketing Strategy for the Non-Tech Savvy – by Stacey Kehoe

Especially created for beginners, you’ll discover six easy steps to implement your first digital marketing strategy and what pitfalls to navigate. Discover common myths about online and social media marketing, too. 

And, if you’re just beginning on your business’ quest to achieve Unicorn status, get a free Customers.ai account to build upon what you learn in this book. 

Keep learning and always be looking out for new online marketing strategies that may produce better results. For example, Click-to-Messenger Ads outperform other ads 2X-10X! Check out some messenger ads examples that have ridiculous ROI and 100% conversion rate for collecting leads and contact info.

#5. Growth Hacker Marketing – by Ryan Holiday

For stratospheric growth, you’ll need to create a narrative of success around your brand before it begins to grow. 

Find out how Dropbox, Airbnb, and Facebook used these methods to build their empires. While you are at it, study what the 8 trending digital marketing tools were in 2020 to see how you can apply growth hacker marketing for 2021.

#6. Avoiding Critical Marketing Errors: How to Go From Dumb to Smart Marketing – by Richard D. Czerniawski

You want to do the right things as much as you want to avoid the wrong ones. If you’re ignoring proven principles, best practices, and quality processes, especially when building the foundation of your marketing campaigns, you’ll slow your growth and potentially do even more damage.

#7. Good to Great – by Jim Collins

Some brands are terrible. Some are okay. And, some are great. How do you get to that last rung? 

This book is full of Collins’ best concepts and strategies. Find out what Jim says you can do right and wrong to grow your business.

#8. Contagious: Why Things Catch On – by Jonah Berger

Written by a marketing professor at Wharton, Jonah Berger shares how social influence shapes the decisions we make and the factors that help things go viral: 1) Social Currency, 2) Triggers, 3) Emotion, 4) Public, 5) Practical Value, and 6) Stories.

#9. The 1-Page Marketing Plan: Get New Customers, Make More Money, And Stand Out From The Crowd – by Allan Dib

Who doesn’t like the sounds of a 1-page plan? This is a great primer to figure out your target market and craft the right messaging.

Also, you’ll learn how to nurture leads, increase lifetime customer value, and create a process for referrals. 

There are different ways to increase sales with chatbots, or become an affiliate reseller.

#10. Marketing 4.0: Moving From Traditional to Digital – by Philip Kotler

Next-generation marketing tactics start here. You’ll learn about the market’s shifting power dynamics, the inconsistencies impacted by connectivity, and the sub-culture rupture.

Get the attention of today’s customer! They are changing everyday, and technology is changing with them at turbo charged speeds. 

Lead Generation Strategies for B2B & B2C

How do you talk to your prospects about what you’re selling? Whether it’s a good or a service?

Start turning prospects into clients with these best beginner marketing books for 2021 that cover everything from built-in Facebook Messenger tools to opt-ins and more.

#1. The Ultimate Sales Machine: Turbocharge Your Business with Relentless Focus on 12 Key Strategies – by Chet Holmes

Trying to do everything at once? Holmes argues that to succeed, you need to focus on a few essential skill areas that will substantially make a difference to your level of success.

#2. Fanocracy – by David Meerman Scott and Reiko Scott

No matter how digital our world becomes, your customers can become your biggest advocates and referral business sources. 

Reiko is a millennial neuroscientist who takes her scientific background and applies it to marketing and PR rules for your benefit.

#3. Talk Triggers – by Jay Baer

Almost 20% of sales come from word-of-mouth, while up to 90% of sales have been influenced by what your audience says about you. 

For actionable tips on how to get your customers to talk and become part of your marketing team, Talk Triggers is full of ways that you can apply to your own business.

#4. Dotcom Secrets: The Underground Playbook for Growing Your Company Online – by Russell Brunson

From traffic, conversions, and sales funnels to the importance of creating compelling messaging to cultivate a loyal and engaged following. Dotcom Secrets is highly regarded as one of the best digital business strategy books. 

Brunson started his first online company while he was wrestling in college; within a year of graduation, he had sold over a million dollars of his products and services from his basement.

Join Brunson’s “Two Comma Club” for multi-millionaire business owners that use Dotcom Secrets techniques. 

There are so many different ways to grow your marketing agency to six and seven figures, per month! Customers.ai is one of the tools experts use to break through ceilings.

#5. The Conversion Code – by Chris Smith

Ready to increase your sales in the digital world? This book details how to capture more leads, convert them, and ultimately close more deals. 

You will learn modern tactics for attracting new leads, such as through blogging, live chat software, and more.

#6. Lead Generation: How to Generate Leads and Sales to Grow Your Business Without Spending Tons of Money – by Larry Billson

Author Larry Billson provides you with lead generation strategies and winning factors that drive ROI improvements. 

Also, you’ll discover common lead generation mistakes and how to avoid them. 

With the vast amount of innovative lead generation tools available, you can grow your contacts lists for email or Messenger marketing at insane speed. 

We have a few of our own tricks up our sleeves on how to grow your email list fast, check out the Customers.ai blog!

#7. The Zen of Social Media Marketing: An Easier Way to Build Credibility, Generate Buzz, and Increase Revenue – by Shama Kabani

Ready to attract more leads via social media? Shama Kabani is here to help! Learn how to use this medium to convert followers into clients successfully.

The first version was a global hit, and this updated version keeps up with the fast pace of change for social media platforms in 2020 and 2021.

#8. Purple Cow: Transform Your Business By Being Remarkable – by Seth Godin

Yes, Godin appears twice in this list, but for a good reason. 

He’s a digital marketing expert extraordinaire for beginners and professionals. 

The title gives you a clue what this is about, standing out – being unique. 

Discover how brands you easily recognize are creating remarkable and unique marketing to grab consumer and client’s attention.

#9. The 10X Rule: The Only Difference Between Success and Failure by Grant Cordone

Massive action starts with the 10x Rule, where you can truly defy mediocrity. 

“Turn it up to 10” applies to everything right? 

If you’re ready to move from risk-aversion to achieving your dreams, Cordone lays out some actionable ways to go above and beyond, step by step.

Speaking of going above and beyond, when it comes to customer service, the 10X way to stay ahead of competition is to utilize 24/7 conversational chatbots with a Facebook Messenger drip campaign and live agent takeover. 

#10. UnCloned Marketing: How to Challenge the Norms with Profitable Marketing Campaigns – by Audria Richmond

Looking for a bulletproof brand that audiences love? This book delivers a comprehensive blueprint for creating cash-generating marketing campaigns. 

The fourth book for Marketing and Launch Strategist Audria Richmond reveals her marketing firm’s exact proven framework. 

Learn how she drives sales, establishes authority, and creates offers that your audience can’t wait to buy.

Join Today’s Webinar with Larry Kim!

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Marketing Automation and Artificial Intelligence

As customers become more informed consumers and technology continues to advance at hyperspeed, you’ll need to keep a finger on the pulse of marketing trends. 

These books will help!

#1. AI for Marketers – by Christopher Penn

If you’re curious about the latest machine learning trends and how marketers are using emerging technologies, this book focuses on how artificial intelligence and machine learning are transforming EVERYTHING. 

If you’d like to start dabbling in AI marketing, check out how it’s effectively used via chatbots for business.

#2. Future Marketing: Winning in the Prosumer Age – by Jon Wuebben

Are you planning your marketing moves for the future? 

Wuebben shares what to expect and how to embrace the future of online marketing. 

A “prosumer” is someone who both consumes and produces. In other words, someone who buys a product, uses it, and spreads the word about it. 

A single prosumer can greatly affect your brand!

#3. The Age of Influence: The Power of Influencers to Elevate Your Brand – by Neal Schaffer

While you might not think of influencers as a “marketing technology,” they should be utilized as if they are if you’d like your brand to succeed. 

Influencers aren’t a trend, they are simply popular PR magnets or niche/SME celebrities. It would be unwise to dismiss this in your marketing strategy.

Social media has democratized authority and influence, so information is being consumed in ever-evolving ways. 

Get this essential guide for business owners who want to create a successful and sustainable influencer marketing plan.

#4. The End of Marketing: Humanizing Your Brand in the Age of Social Media and AI – by Carlos Gil

Shortlisted for the Business Book Awards 2020, Carlos Gil talks about how to use new features and platforms that immediately engage with your customers — all through a humanistic approach. 

Customers.ai is one of those tools that immediately engage with customers. Utilize a Facebook Messenger autoresponder and craft a humanistic dialogue or use our templates. 

You can also set keyword triggers for a live agent takeover for the perfect balance of AI and human in your marketing.

#5. The Art of Social Media: Power Tips for Power Users by Guy Kawasaki and Peg Fitzpatrick

This is great for a beginner, as you’ll learn how to get the most out of the time, money, and effort you spend on social media. 

Go through the steps of how to build a solid foundation, acquire digital assets, attract followers, and easily integrate social media and content marketing, such as blogging.

Here are nine social media to-do’s to get you started.

#6. Trust Me I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator – by Ryan Holiday

Want to know how media truly works? 

The first half of this book explains how blogs drive news — and how somebody can manipulate them. 

The second demonstrates that if the sole focus of marketing is attention and profit, only the brands win while readers lose. 

As a thought leader, Holiday is a former marketing director of American Apparel and wanted to help the public understand how things really work.

#7. Understanding Digital Marketing: Marketing Strategies for Engaging the Digital Generation – by Damian Ryan

Everything moves phenomenally fast in digital marketing. 

If you’re looking to figure out how to manage continually evolving technology, here’s a practical, no-nonsense guide. 

Learn the rules of new media marketing and a new generation of consumers. But don’t forget, sometimes it’s good to break them!

#8. HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Strategic Marketing – by Clayton M. Christensen

If you read nothing else on how to create a competitive edge, these ten articles from the Harvard Business Review will help you get a bird’s eye view of your brand’s strengths and weaknesses.

It’s a great way to self-audit and reassess your brand’s marketing strategy, from a trusted source.

Marketing Strategy: Client Retention & the Psychology of Human Behavior

Marketing isn’t purely science — it’s also very much art. 

If you’re looking for the right psychology, strategies, and practices for the generation ahead, these beginner marketing books will help guide you to where you want to go and show you the right client retention tactics to grow your business.

#1. Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal

The “Hook Model” is a four-step process embedded into the products of many successful companies that subtly encourages customer behaviors. 

These products reach their ultimate goal of bringing users back again and again without relying upon heavy advertising. 

After years of research, consulting, and practical experience, Hooked delivers a how-to guide for marketers on creating user habits that stick.

#2. Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition – by W. Chan Kim and Renee A. Maugborgne

Tired of fighting with cutthroat competition to gain a small foothold? 

Discover the tools and principles to find an untapped market – a blue ocean – with this masterclass on marketing strategy.

And something you may not find in this book, but is a vast ocean of untapped leads and conversions is the expected growth of Facebook Messenger to 2.4 billion users by 2021. 

We have the ultimate fishing rod and power bait for modern marketers: Facebook Messenger chatbot combined with explosive lead generating Click-to-Messenger ads for a 100% conversion rate and ROI that is bananas!

#3. Winning at Social Customer Care – by Dan Gingiss

For eight steps on how to engage with your customers on social media, including how to get your audience talking positively about your brand on social media, this is the book for you. 

For the ten best customer support chat tools to enable superior service and satisfaction, Customers.ai can get you started. 

#4. The Choice Factory: 25 Behavioral Biases That Influence What We Buy – by Richard Shotton

Gain insight into the shortcuts people use to make the big and small decisions in life, a.k.a. cognitive biases.

The Choice Factory explores how to use this research to create marketing and sales success.

#5. Digital Marketers Sound Off – by Matt Chiera

101 accomplished digital marketing specialists come together to dive into every aspect of digital marketing.

Learn from the best or die like the rest! In the digital marketing community, you’ve got to adapt and be agile, and that means keeping an ear to the ground for big changes. 

Most experts are usually on top of these things and happily share news and info to be a valuable resource.

#6. Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions – by Dan Ariely

Facts tell, emotions sell. 

To be an effective marketer, you need to understand that your customer often buys based on how they’re feeling, then justifies their purchase decision afterward. 

Discover an intro to behavioral economics from Dan Ariely, a psychology professor.

#7. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion – by Robert B. Cialdini

Why do people say yes? 

How can you apply this ethically to your sales and business? 

Dr. Robert B. Ciadini walks you through six universal principles of influence: 

1) Reciprocation 

2) Commitment and Consistency

3) Social Proof

4) Liking

5) Authority

6) Scarcity. 

Backed by over 35 years of scientific research, Influence helps you learn how to amplify your ability to change others’ behavior.

#8. The Science of Selling: Proven Strategies to Make Your Pitch, Influence Decisions, and Close the Deal – by David Hoffeld

Learn about your buyers’ emotions. If you haven’t figured it out yet, marketing it all about tapping into emotions and drawing out emotional reactions. 

You don’t have to craft cathartic theater with your marketing, but it’s good to ask the right questions that line up with how the brain processes information. 

Discover the underlying causes of objections and how to neutralize them.

#9. Think Like a Marketer: How a Shift in Mindset Can Change Everything for Your Business – by Kate Colbert

Acclaimed marketing expert, Kate Colbert, shares insights on how to accelerate your business success. 

Learn how to think like a marketer to shift everything for your brand! 

Build on what you learn with 25 expert marketer’s tips and genius marketing strategies.

#10. What Got You Here Won’t Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful – by Marshall Goldsmith

Learn the 20 habits commonly found in successful corporate environments. 

Then, utilize these habits to take a systematic approach to helping you achieve a positive behavior change to achieve a higher level of success.

The Key to Best Content Marketing

With every multi-channel approach to marketing, it’s rooted in the right content that will speak to your target audience. 

Get content marketing tips that build the essential know-like-trust factor for your brand!

#1. Building a StoryBrand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen – by Donald Miller

If you’re feeling challenged about how to talk about who you are, what you do, and the unique value you bring to your customers, Donald Miller’s StoryBrand process is a revolutionary method for creating the ultimate competitive advantage. 

You’ll learn the seven universal story points all humans respond to, the real reason customers make purchases, and how to simplify a brand message so your audience understands it.

Then, translate all of this content into your online marketing channels.

#2. Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook – by Gary Vaynerchuk

Social media expert and New York Times bestselling author, “Gary V” shows that communication AND context are essential. 

You’ll learn how to develop quality content that can be adapted to mobile and different platforms.

There will also be an enjoyable amount of cussing. 

#3. The Power of Visual Storytelling: How to Use Visuals, Videos, and Social Media to Market Your Brand – by Ekaterina Walter

Our brains have trouble separating trivial information from important info, and all this information processing – over 5x as much as we did daily in 1986 – is tiring. 

If you’re looking for how your brand can stand out from all the noise, this book features strategies to truly connect with your audience in a meaningful way. 

Why do you need visual content marketing? Without it, you will not be heard or seen and will effectively be missing the enormous digital marketing boat. 

#4. Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content – by Ann Handley

Do you have a website? You’re a writer. 

Are you on social media? You’re a writer. 

Did you know that writing matters even more, these days? 

Marketing veteran Ann Handley gives expert guidance and insight into the process and strategy of content creation, including production and publishing. 

Whether you’re writing your homepage, email newsletters, blogs, or social media, you’ll discover how to write better, how to tailor grammar for marketing purposes, how to tell authentic stories, and finally, how to thrive in a digital world.

#5. Content Marketing for PR: How to Build Brand Visibility, Influence and Trust in Today’s Social Age – by Trevor Young

Your audience doesn’t want meaningless ads, pitches, and promotional messages. 

They won’t care about your business until you give them a reason to. 

Here are tips on how to get noticed for companies big or small.

#6. Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action – by Simon Sinek

Sinek created the third most popular TEDTalk of all time — he asks, “Why are some people and organizations more innovative, more influential, and more profitable than others? Why do some command greater loyalty than customers and employees alike?” It starts with your WHY. 

Learn about Sinek’s Golden Circle and how it provides a framework upon which organizations build upon.

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Best Marketing Books for Beginners – Free!

If you’re not yet ready to invest in an arsenal of marketing books for beginners, check out these free resources to start:

#1. Big Book of Digital Marketing – by Digital Firefly Marketing

You’ll learn about SEO, Content Marketing, Website Redesign, Social Media Marketing, and Pinterest. 

Remember, it pays to give out free tools and be a resource — like Digital Firefly Marketing is doing here!

#2. Understanding Digital Marketing: Basics and Actions – by Teresa Pineiro-Otero and Xabier Martinez-Rolan

Super short, you’ll be able to give this PDF a quick glance if you’re looking to simply dip your toe into figuring out what questions to ask.

#3. The Essential Guide to Marketing in a Digital World – by Rob Stokes

Structured in four parts – Think, Create, Engage, Optimize – this book helps you create a marketing campaign from start to finish, including analysis.

#4. SEO Book: A New Chapter Every Day – by Aaron Matthew Wall

If you’re unsure where to get started with search engine optimization, this e-book will guide you through SEO tools, analytics, and case studies.

BONUS: Best Marketing Books for Entrepreneurs to Create Successful Mindset Shifts

To become the kind of marketer your business needs requires the right mindset. 

The world’s most successful marketers do similar things — and it often begins with how they think! 

Improve your mindset with these beginner marketing books:

#1. Leading with Character: 10 Minutes a Day to a Brilliant Legacy – by Dr. Jim Loehr

World-renowned performance psychologist Dr. Jim Loehr shares how to strengthen your moral and ethical character for outstanding leadership. 

If you’re looking to create a purposeful and lasting impact with the work you’re doing and the business you’re building, Leading with Character is for you.

#2. The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur – by John Jantsch

Trying to do #allthethings? It can be challenging as an overworked entrepreneur to focus on what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. 

The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur features a collection of inspirational reflections and quotes – one for every day of the year! – to ensure that you’re meeting your emotional needs.

#3. Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World – by David Epstein

For generations, we’ve been told we need to specialize. 

We need to niche down. 

We need to become experts at one specific thing. 

This book demonstrates that a person with a “range” and expansive diversity in experience, knowledge, and toolkits can best address marketing needs. 

Growth marketing is about finding unique solutions, so knowing how to pull the resources you need will help you thrive.

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Important Next Steps

The post 50 Best Marketing Books for Beginners and Life-Long Learners Alike to Level-Up in 2021 appeared first on Customers.ai.

A marketing bot is software used by a business to carry out certain marketing activities automatically.

And that’s where everything starts.

With the right marketing bot, your business can scale to new heights.

Chatbot marketing is a special kind of marketing, where a chat conversation is the end user interface.

Here we’re not just going to tell you about the benefits of marketing chatbots. We’re going to tell you exactly how to put chatbots to work in your business.

You’ll discover exactly how to do the following:

1. Place a Facebook Messenger chat widget on your website to automatically answer marketing questions, secure new contacts, and deploy ultra-targeted marketing campaigns.
2. Launch a Facebook Messenger Ad to secure high-value contacts, lower ad spend, and improve conversion rates.
3. Qualify any audience down to only the users who are likely convert on your audience.
4. Create an ultra-compelling drip campaign to bring contacts through your marketing funnel, closing in a sale or conversion.

And Larry’s 15-minute training video of how to build a marketing bot to grow a list, promote products and services, and drive traffic to a website is a helpful primer in what businesses can do with marketing bots.

What is a Marketing Bot? 3 Things To Understand

To get ready for the tactical how-to of marketing bots, there are three things you should understand about marketing chatbots.

It’s important to note:

• A marketing bot carries out marketing tasks automatically.
• A marketing bot uses conversational interaction to carry out these marketing tasks.
• To create a marketing bot, a marketer doesn’t need to write code; they can use a visual chatbot builder.

That’s right. Chatbot development used to require writing complex code. But today, a chatbot builder like Customers.ai opens the gates to any businesses, marketing agency, entrepreneur, or freelancer to use Facebook Messenger marketing bots.

With Customers.ai’s robust chatbot builder:

• Chatbots require no coding
• The cost is free
• The process of building a chatbot is simple

Marketing bots are an emerging technology. As such, there is a lot of untapped potential in the technology itself. It’s imperative that marketing bots not only function from a marketing standpoint but also undergo thorough functional testing to ensure that every feature works flawlessly.

Apart from the technology, however, very few businesses are tapping into the power of marketing bots. This gives you first-mover’s advantage as you learn and embrace marketing bots.

Customers.ai is especially powerful for marketing agencies. With a strategic pricing structure and unparalleled features, agencies can massively scale by selling marketing bot services to new and existing customers.

Now that the why and who are established …

How do you use marketing bots?

To get the greatest value from the guide below, first sign up for Customers.ai. It takes just two minutes and it’s free.

Then come back here, and learn these powerful marketing bot tactics.

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Marketing Bots for Drip Campaign Success: How to Develop an Irresistible Drip Campaign on Messenger

Let’s start with a fixture of marketing — the drip campaign.

Drip marketing takes users through a cycle of messages that lead up to a conversion action.

Drip campaigns can have added layers of complexity depending on what action the recipient takes.

For the most part, drip campaigns are synonymous with email marketing.

And that’s unfortunate.

Because email is a dreadful way to carry out a drip campaign.

Delivery rates are stunted. Open rates are low. Clickthrough rates are lower still, and the entire campaign can take days or even weeks to complete.

The open and read rate on Messenger campaigns sent by Customers.ai is astronomically higher than email.

To put it plainly, Facebook Messenger drip campaigns are far superior to email marketing drip campaigns.

Here’s exactly how to create a marketing bot that rus a drip campaign.

For this marketing bot tactic to work, you’ll need to create dialogues — the “conversation” that takes place between the customer and the chatbot.

You will build and save these dialogues in the bot builder → dialogue creator.

These dialogues form the building blocks of so many different types of marketing activities — from drip campaigns to sponsored messages.

Once you create your drip marketing messages, you can construct the drip campaign itself.

Go to Marketing Automation, and then click on drip campaigns.

This opens up the drip campaign creator.

Most drip campaigns are promotional in nature, which means that they will need to comply with Facebook’s regulations surrounding promotional messages.

From the drip campaign creator, you will title your campaign, define your audience, and then set time requirements.

After that, you will assemble the various messages that constitute the campaign.

Once you’re ready, you’ll launch the campaign and benefit from the results.

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Marketing Bots for Converting New Customers: How to Create a Compelling Facebook Messenger Ad Campaign

Facebook Messenger ads are one of the hottest methods of bringing in new leads.

Why? Because Facebook Messenger ads are comparatively inexpensive, intrinsically engaging, and ultra-powerful.

Messenger ads require chatbot integration. In Customers.ai, go to Advertising → Messenger Ads.

The Messenger Ad creator makes the process of assembling your ad really simple — from selecting your content to syncing it to a campaign.

You will, of course, need to create the ad in Facebook Ads Manager in order to set it up and launch it successfully.

The chatbot builder walks you through the entire process. If you’re just getting started with Facebook ads, you’ll understand exactly what to do.

The power of Facebook Messenger ads is in the targeting. So when you’re developing your audience and placements, be sure to get the in-depth intel on how to structure your ad for maximum success.

What differentiates a ho-hum Messenger ad from an explosive one?

It’s all about post-click engagement.

Your goal is not only to get contacts to click on the ad. That’s the starting point, of course, but then what?

Then you set up this new audience with a drip campaign.

In this way, you’re connecting the intrinsic appeal of a Messenger ad with the compelling nature of a drip campaign — win and win!

Marketing Bots for Customer Support: How to Place a Facebook Messenger Widget on Your Website to Add New Contacts

Think about all the people who visit your website every day and then leave.

You have no idea who they are. You have no idea if they got what they wanted. You have no idea if they had questions you could have answered.

You just don’t know.

What if that could change?

By adding a Messenger widget to your website, your website transforms from a sieve into a contact-collecting bucket.

Users will land on your website. Then, instead of passing through like ghosts, you can capture the information of the ones who really are interested and engage with them in a conversational way.

This too-good-to-be-true scenario is accomplished with a Facebook Messenger widget.

You’ve probably seen them before, a little chat widget somewhere on a website that allows you to ping customer service with questions.

Okay, great, but so what?

Most of these widgets allow people to chat and then leave. It’s the same issue — those potential leads are gone and you have no way of interacting with them again.

Another problem is that there are too few humans to answer too many questions, meaning that a potential customer is chatting into empty space until someone has the time to respond.

A Facebook Messenger chatbot widget solves these problems.

Here’s how to add a chat widget to your website.

1. Install the WP-Chatbot plugin onto your WordPress site.
2. Connect the chatbot to Customers.ai.
3. Set up a chatbot to respond to people who open up a chat on your website.

The sheer quantity of leads that this widget brings in is astonishing.

The chat widget not only functions as a service to interested website visitors. It also allows you to retarget those customers with promotional chats in the first 24 hours (plus one additional promotional chat outside of the 24-hour window).

Here’s an overview of how the chat widget works.

Adding a chat widget to your website is one of the quickest, easiest, effective and most direct ways to employ the power of a marketing bot on your website.

Marketing Bots for Qualifying the Right Customers: How to Automatically Segment Your Contacts to Isolate the Hot Leads

Many businesses and agencies face a common problem — not enough leads!

When you turn on the power of Facebook Messenger marketing with chatbots, you might have a different problem: too many leads.

This is, of course, a good problem to have.

But how do you solve it?

Not every lead will turn into a customer. So you’ll need to sort out the tire-kickers from the real McCoys.

You can do this using a chatbot.

When assembled correctly, a chatbot can manage first contact to final qualification without you doing a thing.

To show you how this works, we’ll use the example of Cat Howell, who used this process in her agency. Howell’s agency provided Facebook marketing services for events and speakers.

Her funnel started with a Facebook ad and finalized in a call booking.

In order to make sure that every lead who booked a call was prepared to become a client, she created the following qualification parameters using a chatbot.

This way, a potential customer would answer a few questions — for example, how much revenue per month are you looking to generate?

Some users provided responses that predicted a paying client. Other users did not.

The chatbot automatically funneled high-potential users into a call booking. And those who did not qualify were provided resources and placed in a Facebook group for nurturing until they eventually became clients.

All of this happened automatically with no time-wasting activities by sales personnel, account reps, or agency team members.

Genius.

Best of all, true to the conversational nature of chatbots, the entire process feels natural and interactive.

If you’d like to use this marketing bot for your business, go to the templates section of Customers.ai and view the templates library.

From the templates library, choose Cat Howell’s Agency Bot.

You can clone the marketing bot and customize it to your exact needs.

What is a Marketing Bot? All of This & More

So, what is a marketing bot?

A marketing bot is a form of marketing automation that business use to get more customers and support existing customers with time-saving automation.

Marketing bots on Facebook Messenger use the powerful form of conversation to improve engagement and to bring users closer to conversion.

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Here’s what to do next:

The post What is a Marketing Bot? 5 Ways to Revolutionize Your Marketing with Bots appeared first on Customers.ai.

So whether you’re trying to work out how efficient your sales and marketing strategies are, or to determine how profitable your customer base is, it’s vital to keep a pulse on the health of your business. Thankfully, there’s a performance metric that does both.

Everything you need to know about customer acquisition cost (CAC):

• What is customer acquisition cost (CAC)?
• How to calculate Customer Acquisition Cost?
• Why is customer acquisition cost important?
• What is a good customer acquisition cost?
• What is the average customer acquisition cost by industry?
• 5 ways to reduce customer acquisition costs

What is Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)?

Customer Acquisition Cost is the amount of money it takes to win a new customer. Another way to put it would be that CAC is the amount of money you need to spend in order to have someone purchase your product or service. 

With CAC, any company can determine how much they’re spending on acquiring each customer.

Customer acquisition cost is an important economic unit, or KPI (key performance indicator). And CAC is often related to, or even confused with another important marketing metric called Customer Lifetime Value, also referred to as either CLV or LTV.

So, let’s start with the most commonly asked CAC question: How do you calculate customer acquisition cost? 

Calculating CAC should be relatively easy for your average SaaS company, but can be a bit more complicated for a retail store.

And you’re about to find out why.

How to Calculate Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

What’s included in customer acquisition costs? 

Well, for most B2B SaaS businesses, for example the costs of acquiring a new customer are determined by two factors:

1. The costs of generating a lead.
2. The costs of converting that lead into a customer.

Typically, the easiest way to arrive at the cost of securing a new customer is to combine the total sales and marketing expenses in a given time period (period t), and divide it by the total number of new customers. Consider that working with a B2B SaaS content marketing agency can help achieve desired results more professionally and effectively when it comes to content marketing.

What is the customer acquisition cost (CAC) formula?

Great, we’ve spelled out how to calculate CAC. However, when making calculations, most people want a simple mathematical equation, right?

Customer acquisition cost formula: 

CAC(t) = Total Sales & Marketing Costs(t) / # New Customers(t) 

So, let’s say a company spent $500 on marketing and $500 on sales over the course of a month. And in that same month, they acquired 50 new customers. In this case, their CAC would be $20.

($500 + $500) / 50 = $20

Why is Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) Important?

So why is CAC important to your business? As I’m sure you’ve already realized, if your cost to acquire a new customer outweighs the average revenue generated per customer, you have a problem. Because by definition, that means you’re spending more money than you’re making.

Knowing your company’s exact CAC figures is extremely important, because you need to ensure that you and your sales teams are generating sufficient income to cover the costs of running the business.

What is a Good Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)?

The best way to determine whether or not you have a good customer acquisition cost is two fold:

1. Factor in CLTV (customer lifetime value) and compare it to your CAC.
2. See how you stack up against the competition in your industry

Businesses use an CLTV to CAC ratio (CLTV:CAC) to guide spending habits for marketing, sales, and customer service.

LTV:CAC shows a brief snapshot of how much customers are worth compared to how much the business is spending to attain them.

Companies should aim to find the right balance for this ratio to ensure they’re getting the most out of their financial investments. Ideally, it should take roughly one year to recoup the cost of customer acquisition, and your LTV:CAC should be 3:1 — in other words, the value of your customers should be three times the cost of acquiring them.

If it’s closer to 1:1 that means you’re spending just as much money on attaining customers as they’re spending on your products. If it’s higher than 3:1, like 5:1 for example, that means you’re not spending enough on sales and marketing and could be missing out on opportunities to attract new leads.

At this point, you may be wondering what a good CAC looks like? Well, that may vary depending on your industry. To give your team a better idea of what to strive for, the next section breaks down average customer acquisition costs for different industries.

What is the average customer acquisition cost by industry?

Knowing whether or not you have a good CAC is much easier if you compare it to others in your industry. Here are some customer acquisition benchmarks for many of the largest industries, according to Propeller.

• Technology (Software): $395
• Telecom: $315
• Banking/Insurance: $303
• Real Estate: $213
• Technology (Hardware): $182
• Financial: $175
• Marketing Agency: $141
• Transportation: $98
• Manufacturing: $83
• Consumer Goods: $22
• Retail: $10
• Travel: $7

How to Reduce Customer Acquisition Costs

Here are 5 ways to reduce customer acquisition costs:

How to reduce CAC #1: Retargeting

One of the easiest ways to bring users back into the funnel and have an optimal CAC is by utilizing retargeting (called remarketing in the Google Ads platform). You can leverage the Google Ads display network or Facebook Ads to do this.

Using a combination of these two channels ensures that you’re reaching your remarketing audience at every step of the funnel, increasing the likelihood that they will convert.

How to reduce CAC #2: Conversion rate optimization (CRO)

Improve on-site conversion metrics: One may set up goals on Google Analytics and perform A/B split testing with new checkout systems in order to reduce shopping cart abandonment rate and improve the landing page, site speed, mobile optimization, and other factors to enhance overall site performance.

Use these 14 conversion rate optimization tools to dramatically increase your ROI in 2021

How to reduce CAC #3: Customer relationship management

Implement customer relationship management (CRM): Nearly all successful companies that have repeat buyers implement some form of CRM.

This may be a complex sales team using a cloud-based sales tracking system, automated email lists, blogs, loyalty programs, and/or other techniques that capture customer loyalty.

How to reduce CAV #4: Improve your ad copy

One version of your ad copy could give you good results, but you can always make those results better by optimizing your copy. 

Look at the click-through rates to identify your best-performing ads and see how they differ from ads that don’t perform as well. Pause your low-performing ads and write variations that are similar in style and language to the stronger ads. 

Constantly improving and optimizing aspects of your paid media strategy is imperative for reducing CAC in the long term.

Here are 10 Facebook ad examples that should have you reducing your CAC in no time!

How to reduce CAC #5: Marketing automation

Using marketing automation tools, such as chatbots with automated lead nurture and email drip campaigns, can also help reduce your CAC. A good example is promoting a free trial or white paper through your paid media efforts, and then using the emails you’ve acquired in a lead nurture.

Think about the value you can offer to these leads. They’re already in your pipeline. Having a strong lead nurture workflow can help convert those leads into paying customers.

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Important Next Steps

The post Why Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) is an Important Marketing Metric & How To Reduce It appeared first on Customers.ai.

Unfortunately, just a few bad reviews on Google can mean nightmarish consequences for your business. Which is crystal clear if you consider the following stats:

• 90% of customers say they read reviews before visiting a business.
• 72% of customers say positive reviews make them trust a local business more.
• 31% of customers say they’ll spend more with a local business with excellent reviews.

On the other hand, it’s completely normal to have a few bad reviews. And having a few bad reviews is actually a good thing as long as the number of positive reviews far outweighs the number of negative reviews. 

So, be sure to understand how to get more 5-Star reviews for your business.

Seeing as there are two main reasons you may be seeking how to delete a review on Google, this article has two sections:

1. How to delete a Google review written by yourself
2. How to delete a negative review of your business on Google

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How To Delete a Google Review

Here’s the short version of how to delete a Google review:

• Step #1: On your desktop, open Google Maps.
• Step #2: In the top left, click the Menu icon.
• Step #3: Click Your contributions and then choose the Reviews tab.
• Step #4: Next to the review you wish to edit or delete, click the More icon (ellipsis – three dots).
• Step #5: Choose Delete review and follow the instructions.

Step #1: On your desktop, open Google Maps

Using your web browser, go to Google Maps – maps.google.com

Or, using your favorite search engine, search for “Google Maps”.

Step #2: In the top left, click the Menu icon (three stacked horizontal lines)

Once you’ve arrived on your Google Maps homepage, be sure that you are logged in to the Gmail or Google Business account associated with the review you wish to delete.

If you’re not logged in, you can find the blue Sign In button at the upper-right corner of the page.

Once you’re logged in, in the top left corner of the page, click the Menu icon.  

The Menu Icon is represented by three vertically stacked lines, which are pointed to in the following screenshot.

Step #3: Click “Your contributions” and then choose the Reviews tab

After opening the Menu bar on the left-hand side of the page, find the option titled Your contributions.

Click on Your contributions.

After selecting Your contributions, find the Reviews tab.

Click on the Reviews tab.

Step #4: Next to the review you wish to edit or delete, click the More icon (vertical ellipsis – three dots)

After you’ve opened the Reviews tab, you should see a list of all the reviews you’ve ever written on Google.

Find the review that you wish to delete.

Once you’ve found the review you wish to delete, click on the More icon, which is represented by a vertical ellipsis (three vertically aligned dots).

After clicking on the vertical ellipsis, select the Delete review option by clicking on it.

Move onto Step #5 below. 

Step #5: Choose Delete review and follow the instructions.

You’re now ready to officially delete your review. 

Be sure you’ve selected the correct review because once deleted you will not be able to recover the review again.

If you’re sure you have the review you wish to delete, click the DELETE button.

Congratulations! You’ve officially removed your Google review!

How To Delete Bad Reviews on Google

It’s easy to delete one of your personally contributed Google reviews. However, what if there’s a nasty review of your business online and you desperately want it removed?

Now, before trying to remove every single bad review of your business, consider the following.

If you think about it if you were looking at reviews of a restaurant and 100% of the reviews were 5-Star reviews, would you be skeptical that they were all “real”? Or, would you assume that the restaurant incentivized people to write positive reviews for them, pretending to be actual patrons of the restaurant?

The point is, you actually want a handful of bad reviews because it eliminates skepticism regarding the sincerity 

Unfortunately, you won’t find a Delete button for the reviews of your business that are written by customers.

But there are multiple courses of action you can take to have the most destructive reviews of your business removed. 

Here are the most effective ways for companies to delete bad reviews on Google:

Ask customers to edit or remove their negative review

The most effective strategy by far involves winning over the customer after the fact. 

Simply reach out to the customer who wrote the bad review and do whatever it takes (that’s not illegal) to get them to remove it.

Here’s how you could go about this strategy:

Respond to the review 

Simply reaching out to the customer by responding to their review, addressing their concerns, and offering a way to make it right will go a long way. 

Try offering a discount on their next purchase or to refund the customer for their unpleasant experience. 

The objective is to show that you care and that you want to remedy the situation.

Reach out and ask them a few questions 

If you have a customer’s contact information, have the business owner or high-ranking individual reach out directly to the customer. 

Ask a few questions and see what you could do to turn a bad review into a positive one.

Ask the customer to edit or delete their Google review

If you feel like the chances are good a customer will remove their review, simply by asking them to do so, give it a try. 

The best way to do this is to provide the instructions from the first section of this article, showing them exactly how to remove the negative Google review.

How to remove fake negative reviews from Google

What if a special individual decides to write a fake negative review of your business? 

Unfortunately, this happens all the time. Fortunately, however, Google knows that it happens all of the time.

So here’s how to handle it if you need to remove a fake negative review from Google:

Flag the review

If you’re sure that its contents violate review policies, make attempts to delete the Google review by flagging it:

• Sign in to Google My Business.
• Choose your business location and click Reviews from the menu.
• Find the review you’d like to flag, click the 3-dot menu, then click Flag as inappropriate. 

Respond to the fake review

Even if a review is fake, responding is always the right thing to do. And that’s because when other people are reading Google reviews of your business, they see your responses.

When people see that your business actively works to make disgruntled customers happy, it’s always a positive. People want to know that you care about what your customers think.

Additionally, your response is an opportunity to clear up anything about the review that’s inaccurate. Especially when it comes to fake reviews, clarifying something that isn’t true, and correcting false statements will prove to be important.

Expedite the fake review removal process

Other than flagging reviews from your Google My Business dashboard, you can also expedite the process of deleting a Google review by requesting callback, requesting a chat, or emailing Google My Business support. 

Here’s how:

• On Google My Business, click Menu, scroll down, and look for Support.
• A popup will appear, look for Contact Us, and click Need More Help.
• Choose Customer Reviews and Photos > Manage Customer Reviews.
• Choose from any of the three contact options: request callback, request chat, or email support.

Drown out negative reviews by getting more 5-Star reviews with a bot

Did you know that you can automate the process to get more positive reviews by using a chatbot? 

This exact system is proven to generate tens and hundreds of 5-star reviews in a matter of hours or days.

If you have 30 minutes, you can set up this exact system to unlock a steady-flow of 5-star reviews for your business. 

And it’s totally free to build and launch.

Here’s an example of how to get more product reviews that you can try out for yourself here.

Check out this step-by-step guide to get more reviews by using a bot!

You should be able to make your review generating chatbot in roughly 30min using the Customers.ai chatbot builder.

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Are You Marketing on Facebook?

If you’re a digital marketer, chances are that one of your main channels is Facebook.

Did you know that you can use Facebook Messenger for business? Whether you answered “Yes” or “No” doesn’t matter. What matters is that more than 1.5 billion people actively use Facebook Messenger chat.

However, less than 1% of businesses are engaging with their audience on this proven channel.

Therefore, Messenger presents a rare opportunity to engage with consumers on an untapped and highly engaging marketing channel.

Here’s what to do next:

The post How To Delete a Google Review + Remove Bad Reviews of Your Business appeared first on Customers.ai.

Long story short, Larry wasn’t segmenting the audience receiving his Facebook Messenger updates. So people were receiving irrelevant messages and reporting his Page as spam.

Facebook responded with the ban-hammer.

Larry’s story is a worst-case-scenario of what can happen when marketers overlook audience segmentation and customer experience personalization. Audiences respond to segmentation gaffes with lower engagement and depressed marketing ROI.

On the flip side, audience segmentation can be the key to 3X better marketing engagement, open rates, reach and conversions.

In this article we’re going to cover how to segment an audience and essential ways to do audience segmentation in actionable detail.

We’ll start with the basics like what and why, do a step-by-step how-to, and end with 5 advanced tips for how to do audience segmentation you may be missing.

We include a case study showing how audience segmentation leads to higher return on your marketing investment.

How to Segment an Audience Table of Contents

• What is audience segmentation?
• What does it mean to segment an audience?
• What is the purpose of audience segmentation?
• Step-by-step process for marketers: How to do audience segmentation
• What are some common ways to segment an audience?
• Game-changer: Why you no longer have to make assumptions about who your audience are
• How to segment an audience inside Customers.ai
• Customers.ai audience segmentation case study
• 5 advanced segmentation hacks you can do in Customers.ai to increase engagement

What is audience segmentation?

Audience segmentation means using customer data to create meaningful audience segments. The objective of audience segmentation is to deliver marketing messaging that are relevant to the person reading it.

For example:

• Maternity wear is marketed to an audience of pregnant women. The audience can be further segmented into trimester of pregnancy or region where they live so that clothing promotions match what they want to buy now.
• Lawn care services are marketed to home owners. Creating segments based on location will help match messaging to local service providers, and help the business offer location-specific or relevant seasonal services.
• Accounting software may be designed for business owners. The audience could be segmented by size of company or industry so that marketing messages reflect the solutions and advantages that help the individual reader.

What does it mean to segment an audience?

When a business segments an audience, they use customer data to divide a larger audience into smaller groups with things in common in order to personalize the messaging and offers. Rudimentary data masking used to protect the privacy of your customers can destroy the details of your data. Synthetic data generation can give you both privacy and granular level insights on segments.

Marketing and advertising platforms like Customers.ai, Facebook Ads, Google Ads, HubSpot, MailChimp and others, are used by marketers to filter audiences based on segmentation criteria.

For example, a nutritional supplements company may segment it’s large customer database of athletes into defined audience segments based on:

• Their sport or activity
• Their age
• Their income
• Their history of purchasing vitamins and supplements
• Their indicated preference for certain ingredients or preparations
• Their past interactions with the company

Segmenting an audience allows marketers to tailor messages to who the customer is to speak to solutions they want and need.

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What is the purpose of audience segmentation?

The purpose of audience segmentation is to divide the larger audience into groups with common interests so that marketing campaigns reach and resonate with the target audience segment.

The more a business can speak to the personal needs of their prospect or customer, the more effective their marketing and customer communication will be.

In turn, the more effective their marketing, the more products or services the business can sell.

Notably, marketers usually have more than one type of customer they want to address.

Typically each type of customer has its own motivations, needs, and lingo. Often, some audience segments won’t identify with the same messages, benefits and channels that resonate with others.

Why do audience segmentation?

Audience segmentation results marketing campaigns with better engagement and more loyal customers. Audience segmentation generates leads more effectively than non-targeted messaging.

By knowing their customers, marketers can send messages and promotions that address the unique needs of their various customer segments. This leads to higher brand affinity and engagement.

And businesses can focus on marketing to audience segments that are most likely to purchase or can be expected to generate higher average order values.

How to do audience segmentation: Step-by-step process for marketers

Here’s the process break-down of how to segment an audience:

• Step 1: Define your target customer personas. 
• Step 2: Identify criteria that differentiate personas. 
• Step 3: Analyze the available customer data. Collect additional data as needed using surveys or customer feedback.
• Step 4: Ensure the customer data used as segmentation criteria is available in the platform you will use to send messages.
• Step 5: Segment the audience using the chosen criteria.

Now you’re ready to create campaigns targeted to your audience segment.

What are some common ways to segment an audience?

There are many types of audience segmentation in digital marketing.

Common ways to segment an audience include segments based on criteria like:

• Demographics – age, race, location, gender, language
• Behaviors – such as job, purchase behavior, search behavior
• Interests – likes, pursuits, fandom
• Psychographics – personality, values, opinions, attitudes, and lifestyle
• Audience size – large, small, broad, narrow

How to segment an audience using Facebook user data

Personalization has become a very important trend in marketing for the last few years and technology is making that more and more accessible for marketers in the everyday with the platforms that they’re already using.

We got really used to segmentation in and the ability to hyper-target our customers using advertising platforms like Facebook.

Facebook Ads Manager offers incredibly detailed demographic and psychographic audience targeting from interests and behaviors to job titles and locations.

Now with all of our marketing automation platforms, we can create awesome audience segments that help boost our performance because we’re speaking more directly to the user persona or even the user themselves.

Personalization can be as simple as messaging a user with their first name. This allows us to greet them with a lot of familiarity. Even basic personalization like using a first name can help a message stand out in a sea of messaging.

Take it a step further and start asking the audience questions to get to know who they are. This is especially easy using website chatbots and click-to-Messenger ads with automated message sales funnels.

The importance of using our contact segmentation tools can’t be underestimated in modern marketing, as higher engagement rates result it higher organic reach and higher conversion rates.

Game-changer: Why you no longer have to make assumptions about who your audience are

You no longer have to make assumptions about who your audience are, making guesses about who your user is and how they got there. This is especially prevalent with traditional landing pages versus clean landing pages.

With chatbots, we can ask our users questions directly. And we can engage with them and serve them exactly the kind of tailored content they need. This helps help them in their journey, solving some of the problems that they’re facing.

The more we find out about our users, the more we’re able to discover the sort of content that they’re really interested in, content that would enrich their lives.

Chatbots enable you to converse in a story-like manner with your audience, and if it’s done right, your user feels like the story has been crafted personally for them.

How to segment an audience by building audience segmentation categories through a chatbot

When people start talking to the Customers.ai chatbot, they will immediately be asked the question, “can we chat with you today?” This provides an opt-in conversation.

After we receive an affirmative response we might say: “We would love to show you all the ways that chatbots can help you. Would you like to start with the case studies, some business use cases or some hands-on tactics?”

Depending on the user’s place in the buyer’s journey and their background and experience, this will inform us what they’re looking to learn more about and how we can engage with them deeper.

What content are your users interested in?

If we know that they’re really interested in case studies for example (n.b. check out our chatbot marketing case studies), we tag that user as somebody who’s interested in case studies, and learn about their industry segment based upon the case studies that they’re viewing. This lets us build audience segmentation categories directly through the chatbot.

If the user asks for more information about business use cases for chatbots for example, we’re then able to tag them as somebody who’s in a certain industry for that particular use case. This methodology could be utilized just as easily with Facebook lead generation or for an eCommerce use case.

Enriching audiences with tags and attributes in addition to Facebook default contact info

We tag our users and we save all of these rich and growing user profiles to allow us to create some really valuable segments, allowing us to deliver follow-up content marketing that results in meaningful engagement.

It’s really simple to set up audience segmentations in Customers.ai in order to send follow-up messaging, whether it’s automated drip campaigns or one-off mass message blasts to those segments.

We also get a lot of default information about users automatically if we’re talking about chatbots in the Facebook system.

For example, when somebody messages your Facebook page, Facebook automatically gives the business information including first and last name as well as their location, gender and profile photo.

You can make some educated assumptions about who people are based on the default data that Facebook provides. This provides a great starting point to your own audience segmentation efforts.

How to Segment an Audience Using Customers.ai Chat Marketing Tools

Let’s take a look at how easy it is to segment an audience inside Customers.ai…

This is a game-changer when you want it to send really specific content, just the right users. Click here to demo the bot we build together in the following step-by-step audience segmentation tutorial.

How to establish the service that’s the best fit for each user

In the screenshot above we take a look at the example of a conversation where we’re going to ask people what service they’re really interested in. (This is in the Advanced Bot Builder section of Customers.ai).

In this particular dialogue, we ask people: “what service are you interested in?” We’re giving the user 3 options here: “social media”, “copywriting” or “bot building”. And we save their response to their customer profile.

Let’s create an audience just of the social media group. In order to create the audience segment of people who have responded that they’re interested in social media services, we create a new audience.

Let’s name this audience “Social Media Inquiries”. We’ll go ahead and add a filter of people who have responded to that product type as “social media”.

Quickly, we’ve been able to apply three different kinds of filters to our audience and it’s just as easy for you to do something similar.

The difference between attributes and tags

Note: If you ask a question that has multiple answers, then you would apply an “attribute” to each answer. In our example we said: “what service are you interested in?” “Social media”, “copywriting” or “bot building?”

We’re going to be applying an attribute to each of those three values, saved to the user profile.

A tag would be used if there’s only one option. For example, if someone clicks on a button or a link, then you can apply a tag.

Applying the attribute filter to create an audience segment

In this example we’re going to hit the “attribute filter” and we’re going to have a drop-down menu of options where we can select the attribute type that we’re going to use.

We know this one is called “product type”. We select “product type” from our drop-down menu and then you have further options such as “equals”, or “does not equal”.  In this instance, we know that we want “equals”.

We can see in the above screenshot that people have only answered “social media” and “bot building” when they’ve responded to this question because in the dropdown it’ll give us the options that our audience have selected.

Let’s create this “social media” audience and save it.

That’s how easy it is to create an audience segment based on any of the information that we have on our users, whether we’ve received this as a default from having that initial conversation through Facebook; or through the conversations and questions that we’ve asked of contacts as follow-ups.

Demo this audience segmentation bot

What to test out the bot we just reviewed and created? Check it out! Click here to see our bot in action.

Customers.ai Audience Segmentation Case Study & Key Insight to Increase Engagement

Let’s go back to Larry Kim’s story. Remember, he was sending subscription Facebook messages to all subscribers.

However, those messages weren’t getting the greatest engagement metrics, and was the reason Larry’s bot got blocked by a lot of people!

Performance was really falling by sending Messenger marketing campaigns to the full contact list.

A simple list segmentation made all the difference. Compare the stats of message engagement to a campaign sent to an audience of All Contacts vs. an audience of only English speaking contacts:

Open rate nearly tripled as a result of audience segmentation. Response rate (people interacting with the message by clicking and replying to the bot) jumped up too!

Key segmentation insight: Segment your audience so you don’t annoy users and you don’t annoy Facebook

One of the segments that you can easily create using default information from Facebook is to segment your audience based upon the language that’s spoken.

Larry found by adding a simple segmentation for people who spoke English, because his messages were written in English, it instantly improved our engagement and lowered the block rate because the audience was receiving the message in their native language.

This demonstrates the power of segmentation using one of the simple, out-of-the-box filters that Facebook provides.

The more segmentation you do, the more confident you can be that the message you’re sending is going to be appropriate and likely to resonate with whoever’s receiving your messages.

The last thing that you want to do is send loads of messages to an audience that is just not in the mood or just not right for that particular message. It’s the quickest way to annoy audience!

Also, you want to keep your reputation as good as possible with Facebook, meaning that Facebook is confident that your audience want to hear from you.

Don’t go overboard with audience segmenting

However, with so many options on the table, you shouldn’t segment just for the sake of it.

Only segment as much as it makes sense for your business as well as who your audience is.

You can segment all day long, but you have to think also about the best use of your time and the best value for your business.

Focus on your obvious audience segmentation wins first

There are certain things that you can figure out that are real obvious wins such as the ones that we’ve already hit upon in this article.

I’m sure that, as you learn more about who your users are, you’ll be able to create these larger buckets and personas that align with the content that you’re making.

This will be a good fit for balancing between the value to the business and the time it takes to create your segments and content.

Don’t spend too much time on this. Look at the areas in your business that are likely to result in the most positive financial impact as a result of that segmentation.

Test segmentation, especially when it comes to paid traffic

A friend of ours at here at Customers.ai, Isaac Rudansky, put together one of our first chatbot marketing courses.

While he was doing so, he did some tests around segmenting by gender and matching ad creative and offers. They found that audience segmentation was really effective.

If you’re putting some ad spend behind a campaign, you’re going to be able to create test environments and you’ll want to see which campaigns are performing better.

Isaac found data that supported the fact that that segmenting by gender and then speaking in language that really reflected the target gender was a big performance booster.

Use your time wisely but test when it’s appropriate to do so. You might be surprised in the importance of audience segmentation to your future business growth!

5 Advanced Hacks for How to Segment an Audience You Can Do Using Customers.ai

Advanced audience segmentation tip #1: Tag your audience based upon their actions

Tag your audience based upon their actions, allowing you to deliver them more targeted messaging in the future, as well as knowing when not to send them messages.

This is especially useful when utilizing Customers.ai’s OmniChat, allowing you to send campaigns to audience segments that cross messaging platforms.

(E.g. a drip campaign to Facebook Messenger AND SMS contacts that meet the criteria of brand new contact.)

This doubles the value of your segmentation efforts and saves you time building campaigns.

Advanced audience segmentation tip #2: Ask your audience to self-select what they’re interested in

An attribute is like a self-selected category that your users belong to.

Building attribute segments can help you identify what products your audience members are interested in and who’s ready to buy right now.

Advanced audience segmentation tip #3: Make use of the default data that Facebook provides you with

Don’t forget to make sure of the default user data that Facebook automatically supplies you with in your segmentation – remember the example that we shared on how to improve engagement by ensuring that the messaging you send is in the language that your user prefers.

Advanced audience segmentation tip #4: Split-test segments

Remember that not all segments are obvious.

Our last example showed that you may improve your engagement and conversion rates by tailoring your message to a male or female audience.

Make sure that you continually run split-tests to your audience segments, whether in your click-to-Messenger ads, Sponsored Message ads or SMS and Facebook Messenger chat blasts. The results may surprise you.

Advanced audience segmentation tip #5: Only segment when it makes sense for you

Don’t segment unless it makes sense for your business and resources.

Segmentation requires effort and resources. It takes time to properly segment audiences, staff time to create separate messages and creative, and budget to spend on additional channels. Often, resources won’t allow for infinite audience segments so it’s important to identify the most valuable audience segment to focus on.

Segment your audience based upon your products and your services and increasing your ability to encourage users to engage with what you do and the content that you produce.

We hope that you enjoyed this episode of the Chat Marketing Train! How are you currently segmenting your audience? What unexpected audience segmentation criteria resulted in remarkable lift in your marketing KPIs?

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How to Segment an Audience: Important Next Steps

The post How to Segment an Audience — 5 Overlooked Tactics & How to Do Audience Segmentation to Triple Marketing Engagement appeared first on Customers.ai.

We packed pages full of surprisingly effective Facebook advertising hacks, critical marketing lessons (some learned the hard way), digital agency growth strategies, major marketing industry news updates, and tactical tips to take advantage of a shifting growth marketing landscape.

As we swing into 2020’s bright and exciting new lead generation tactics, we’re saying “thank you, next” to the stories that the top blog posts of last year tell; reminding ourselves what’s in the rear view to plot a smart course ahead.

This list of Customers.ai’s top blog posts of 2019 were all voted on by you, by your page views, and are served up in order of most views this year. 

Naturally, they’re quasi-chronologically ordered; posts published earlier in the year got more eyes by the end of the year. So here are the top 10 posts of 2019, with a splash of bonus posts too good to leave out.

Let’s get to it.

1. Why Facebook Messenger Banned My Page & What I’m Doing About It

Customers.ai founder and CEO Larry Kim is a mad-scientist marketer of unicorn proportions, testing theories from fake news on Facebook to unexpected ad targeting.

But when Larry’s Messenger bot was banned by Facebook? That was a new one for all of us on Customers.ai’s marketing team.

While Larry could have brushed that incident under the rug to keep it out of the public eye, he put it out there for the whole Facebook and chat marketing community to read: a cautionary tale of what can happen when your Facebook Messenger block rate falls outside the range of Facebook’s tolerance. 

Most importantly, Larry turns a donkey situation into unicorn learning moment with actionable analysis of what caused the Facebook Messenger marketing faux pas and how to assess and maintain your own low block rate while building chatbots.

These lessons become especially important when, later this year, the writing was on the wall for Facebook marketers, a perfect segue to post #2 of the year…

2. OFFICIAL: Facebook News Feed is Dead

Facebook shuffled the deck with a big reorganization in early 2019. At the heart of the leadership changes?

A focus on Facebook’s private messaging platforms.

From the News Feed algorithm demoting content from brands, to major organizational changes, and the official stamp of Zuckerberg’s F8 2019 talk — Facebook made a massive shift in the direction of privacy and messaging in 2019.

3. Facebook Announces It’s Merging Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram

January 2019, New York Times broke the story that Facebook was planning to integrate its three messaging services: WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger.

As it was told to NYT sources involved with the project, the three messaging apps would still work individually, but WhatsApp users could message Instagram users who could message Messenger users and so on — something that’s not currently possible

Facebook later confirmed the news, saying it was early days but an important step for both encryption and privacy (ding ding ding, there’s that magic word again!) and for Facebook’s ability to catch up to online sales marketplaces like eBay.

What the Facebook message app integration means for businesses and marketers is a streamlined ability to reach a huge majority of chat app users from one management platform like Customers.ai! 

Believe us, we can’t wait to hear more updates as this story unfolds in 2020.

4. 27 Facebook Messenger Statistics That Will Change the Way You Think About Marketing

Statistics are key when planning a data-backed marketing strategy.

At the top of Customers.ai’s 2019 charts is a powerful roundup of Facebook Messenger marketing statistics to inform smart 2020 strategy.

Don’t miss these Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger stats that will help you evolve your customer communication, reduce your cost per lead, and execute high ROI campaigns in 2020.

5. 12 Magnetic Ways to Generate Leads with Your Facebook Bot

Is growing leads at the top of your list of marketing goals in 2020?

*Raises hand.*

One tactical shift could drive +25% higher leads YoY or even QoQ.

There are more than 8 built-in lead magnet tools in Customers.ai’s chat marketing platform. This post outlines how to use each, strategically.

By moving your traffic-driving efforts from your website landing pages to your Messenger lead magnets, you’ll see what instant lead capture and automated lead qualification, lead notification and lead nurturing can do for your marketing metrics.

6. How to Create a Facebook Messenger Funnel That Drives Conversions [VIDEO]

Where post #5 drives top-of-funnel leads to your Messenger bot, this popular post of 2019 covers how to nurture those leads to conversions, aka paying customers.

Use the step-by-step marketing funnels here — taught by none other than Facebook Messenger’s own Albert Rios — to go from first hello to happy customer.

And don’t forget to re-engage customers to repeat customer and upsells!

7. How to Start a Chatbot Agency: The 5-Step Process for Launching a Successful Chatbot Marketing Agency

I’m going to go ahead and call it: 2019 was the year of the chatbot marketing agency.

There was a blossoming of training, community, and support of chat marketing agencies.

Established marketing agencies expanded and differentiated with chatbot services. New agencies were born out of the opportunity to launch and grow offerings in the new technical marketing space.

In fact, Customers.ai hosted an 8-session live virtual summit on strategies for accelerating marketing agency growth.

And this post, “How to Start a Chatbot Agency”, gave a step-by-step process for ramping up high-margin chatbot services, answering many of the questions agency owners will face along the way.

8. 18 Chatbot Marketing Tactics That Will Drive Sales in Any Industry

If you’re just getting started with chat and messaging as a marketing channel, get these battle-tested, industry-specific playbooks for chatbot marketing.

• Marketing agencies
• Lead generation
• Automotive
• Beauty, health and wellness
• Community
• Contests
• Dental
• Gyms and trainers
• Real estate

… and a whole lot more.

9. How to Use a Messenger Chatbot for a Facebook Group

We discovered a load of searches are happening every day asking how to mass message members of a Facebook Group in Facebook Messenger.

We hear it asked a lot from our Customers.ai Island Facebook Group community, too.

That’s why we documented the best way to use a Messenger chatbot to stay in touch with your Facebook Group.

10. 25 WordPress Digital Marketing Plugins Every Marketer Needs

Rounding out the top 10 most read posts on the Customers.ai blog in 2019 is this exceptionally handy roundup of the very best digital marketing plugins for WordPress.

With more than 50,000 thousand publicly available WordPress plugins, a tip or two will help you make the right choice when you’re equipping your site with marketing features and functions.

11. How to Leverage Instagram for Business in 2020

One of the marketing channels that had Larry bullish in 2019 was Instagram.

Not only are users flocking to Instagram in exponential droves, but they’re also super engaged with purchasing power. In fact, 83% of Instagram’s billion monthly active users say that they discover new products or services on the platform.

Time to update playbooks for leveraging Instagram for business in the new year. 

This 9-chapter guide to Instagram for business covers everything from an optimal bio to bots, IG Stories and IGTV, influencers and advertising on the second most popular social network.

2020: The Year of the Unicorn!

Hope your 2019 was as action-packed as ours. If not, well, 2020, here we come.

Thanks for being one of our cherished chatbot blog readers. Liked this post? Subscribe to the blog for updates in your inbox! 

Cheers to learning, sharing, creating, and blowing marketing metrics out of the park in 2020!

Important Next Steps

• Want to talk to other chatbot enthusiasts about chatbot marketing? Join Customers.ai Island on Facebook!  
• Check out Customers.ai’s free Chatbot University to learn more about chatbots and Facebook Messenger marketing.
• Don’t forget to sign up for Customers.ai’s OmniChat free chatbot builder to create lead generating campaigns in 2020!

The post Reader’s Choice Best of 2019: Top 10 Blog Posts & What They Tell Us About Marketing in 2020 appeared first on Customers.ai.

But a few things have stayed the same, and one of them is the mindset characteristics of great marketers.

World-class marketers have something in common. They all share these eight thought patterns. The reason these people are at the top of their game is because of these.

1. They aren’t afraid to try new or crazy stuff

A surefire way to be ho-hum is to do whatever everyone else is doing. Because if you do what everyone else is doing, then you’ll achieve what everyone else is achieving—which is ho-hum.

I am not a fan of ho-hum.

When I founded WordStream, some people might have thought me to be a nutcase.

Oh, I had ideas. Were they good ideas or bad ideas?

I don’t know, because I don’t assess ideas qualitatively. I assess them quantitatively. Some ideas worked really well.

Ideas—the new, the crazy, the shocking, the unorthodox, the off-the-wall, the anything—are marketing fodder. You just have to go forth and try them.

How do you come up with these ideas?

The fact is, they just happen. But you have to be open to them.

Here’s where I’ve come up with some of my ideas:

• In the middle of a 14-hour workday when my brain is totally fried
• While playing with my kids in the backyard
• In my Uber on the way to the office
• While sleeping

What matters is your brain’s willingness to accept the zany and try it out.

Which brings us to another thing great marketers do.

2. They cultivate a testing mindset

Want to know how to waste a whole lot of time and money?

Do marketing without testing the results of your marketing.

I can think of nothing more foolish and wasteful than marketing without testing.

There’s a reason that entire careers are focused on data and testing in marketing. There’s a reason why WordStream employs data analysts and I hire data scientists.

When you come up with your marketing idea, immediately put it into motion. And then measure the results.

I repeat: Measure the results.

I cringe when I hear the reasons why marketers aren’t testing.

Or how infrequently marketers are testing.

Or how shoddy some of their testing is.

If testing sounds intimidating, let me try to make it a bit more palatable.

You don’t need a data scientist with advanced degrees, a multi-armed bandit testing platform, or anything complicated.

All you need to do is look at your numbers, whether that’s Google Analytics or some other platform.

For example, some of the simplest “testing” that I’ve done is just to look at the success rate of a drip campaign.

If it has an especially high read rate or response rate, I’m happy. I’m generally looking for outliers, stuff that is 2-3x better than average.

3. They use the skills they have and borrow the skills they don’t

Marketing is a really big universe.

In the universe of marketing, there are roles as diverse as a social media manager and front-end developer.

• One marketer is spending her days making bid adjustments for an RLSAcampaign.
• Another marketer is researching a blue ocean strategy.
• Another marketer is conducting usability eye tracking studies.
• Some other marketer is writing an article about the best food for your pet hedgehog.

You see how many different things “marketing” can encompass?

My point is this. To be a successful marketer, you can’t successfully do everything that marketing entails. Instead, you have to borrow the brains, skills, and strategies of others.

It’s a matter of knowing your weaknesses,  so you can hire or outsource social media management to supplement your own best marketing strengths.

4.  They are early adopters

You’ve heard of first-mover advantage (FMA), right?

It’s the concept that if you’re early to a market, concept, resources, or technology, then you have an advantage over your competitors.

A parallel concept of first-mover advantage is the early adopter advantage.

The best marketers are early adopters.

If you were an early adopter on Twitter, then you probably nabbed a great Twitter handle, started building a loyal tribe, and established yourself as more authoritative than the 321 million users who joined after you.

If you were an early adopter of content marketing, then you were able to benefit from the traffic, brand signal building, and SEO power of links early on.

When you see something promising in the marketing world, jump on it.

You can bail if you need to, but at least try that thing out!

5.  They quit—fast

There’s no shame whatsoever in quitting.

The minute something stops working, stop doing it.

I say this, of course, with the assumption that you’re testing that tactic, concept, practice, or channel.

Make your decision to quit based on data, rather than disgust or impatience.

Disclaimer: Some channels just take time to gain steam. For example, doing SEO linkbuilding requires months of work. Building Reddit karma requires time.

In the introduction to this article, I used the term “changed” three times to drive the point that marketing has…well, changed.

If I were doing today some of the marketing hacks that I was using in 2003, you would laugh in my face. And I would deserve it.

Take SEO, for example. Remember link wheels?

Looks cool and quantum-theorish, but it’s not a thing anymore.

You must change with the changes in marketing.

Throw stuff away when it’s not working. Quit when you need to.

6. They’re T-shaped, or M-shaped, or whatever letter of the alphabet you choose

A few years ago, it was vogue to talk about the T-shaped marketer.

Some people made an even fatter T-shaped marketer.

Then someone thought they would improve on it with the m-shaped marketer.

Others decided to go all Greek and made a pi-shaped marketer.

Even I jumped on the bandwagon and came up with a unicorn-shaped marketer!

Look, the letter, language, or animal isn’t the point.

The point is this. Any marketer should be good at several different things.

The reason to diversify is not just to have an additional marketable skill, even though that’s great.

Another reason is to improve and expand your variety of marketing ideas.

If you do PPC all day, every day, all the time, everywhere, good. You’re one heck of a PPC marketer.

But if you supplement this skill with knowledge in Facebook marketing, video marketing, SEO, and Instagram, then you have a recipe for an even better PPC marketer.

7.  They shamelessly steal great ideas

You’ve probably heard the phrase “good artists copy, great artists steal.”

Some people claim that Pablo Picasso said it first.

Maybe he did. Maybe he didn’t.

But it’s a good concept, especially when applied to marketing.

Some marketers are great, not because they invented something brand new, but because they stole something that was working somewhere else.

The “stealing” I’m talking about is not, of course, nefarious or criminal. The point is that you should learn and replicate killer marketing ideas.

It’s no secret that Facebook swiped Snapchat’s stories feature.

Some people cried foul, but others shrugged with a sense of gratitude for how the world evolves through innovation.

Even the concept behind WordStream’s award-winning Google Ads Grader was inspired by the HubSpot Website Grader. We borrow stuff, we create stuff, we are inspired by stuff.

If you see a really good marketing idea, copy it, steal it, borrow it, extend it, do it.

8. They judge marketing efforts based on results and act accordingly

Marketing becomes really simple when you get this concept.

The best marketing tactics are the tactics that work—the tactics that get results.

What are “results?” Typically, results are measured in terms of CTR, conversions, and sometimes revenue. Your KPIs may vary.

Some marketers like to measure input to make their judgment calls.

An input-conscious marketer might ask questions like “What was the word count? How long did it take to write it?”

An outcome-conscious marketer is looking at the data to find out, “What article had the most traffic in the last six months?

For example, years ago, we looked at the traffic to more than 1,000 articles on the WordStream blog and discovered that a handful of those articles drove nearly half the traffic to the site!

I dubbed this the Unicorn Marketing Power Law.

You might call it the 80/20 rule, the Pareto Principle, the law of the vital few, or the principle of factor sparsity.

The principle states that most of your results come from a small number of your efforts.

The results may not be strictly 80/20, but the principle still holds true—most results come from a few efforts.

Examples:

• 75% of website pageviews come from 14% of the total pages on the site.
• 90% of your sales come from 5% of your customers.
• 60% of your support staff’s time is taken by the same 3% of customers

When you identify those top-performing channels, tactics, articles, audiences, platforms, etc., then it’s time to make the most of it!

• Boost the high-performing organic Facebook post.
• Blast it on Messenger.
• Cross-promote it on email.
• Turn it into a blog article.
• Test results.
• Do it again.

World-class marketers chase down the top performing tactics and then make the most of them.

You can do the same. Prioritize your marketing activities based on what is getting the best results.

Originally published in the Wordstream Blog

The post The World’s Most Successful Marketers Are Doing These 8 Things appeared first on Customers.ai.

The start of the year is the perfect opportunity to take stock of the last twelve months.

We learn so much by identifying what worked, what didn’t, and using that knowledge to build an action plan for growth and success throughout the next twelve months.

There’s a tremendous amount to learn from others, as well.

Here, more than 25 digital marketing experts (all undisputed unicorn-level leaders) share their top tips for the coming year.

From capitalizing on Facebook Messenger marketing to simplifying your content marketing strategy, you’ll find genius tactics to add to your own action plan for 2019.

I’ll kick it off with one of the strategies I personally focus on: mixing up your channel strategy.

1. Larry Kim | CEO/Founder at Customers.ai

Mix up your channel strategy.

Want to increase your engagement?

Then say goodbye to traditional strategies, especially when it comes to the Facebook News Feed.

The engagement is poor, the competition is high, and the cost of ads continues to climb.

The unicorns among us are using other channels to connect with their customers.

Facebook Messenger, for example, delivers open rates as high as 80 percent!

With free software like Customers.ai, you can easily create chatbots to automate and scale communications on Facebook Messenger.

(Building chatbots is easy and doesn’t require writing any code — if you can use Mailchimp, you can use Customers.ai!)

There’s a golden era for every channel, and we’re currently in the golden age of Facebook Messenger marketing. Check out my latest on interview on SocialChamp where I’ve discussed more about Unicorn Marketing.

2. Andrew Pickering and Pete Gartland | YouTubers and Co-founders of Andrew and Pete

Start following the 90/10 rule.

It’s getting harder and harder to stand out online.

If all you’re doing is trying new strategies and reaching for every platform though, you’re going to spread yourself too thin.

That’s why we advocate for the 90/10 rule.

Spend 90% of your marketing efforts doing something remarkably well and 10% experimenting.

By putting your efforts into one thing and doing it well, you’ll grow much faster than you would have before.

3. Scott Brinker | Vice President of Platform Ecosystem at Hubspot

Rationalize your martech stack.

Start by collecting inventory of all the different tools you’re using in marketing and sales.

By doing this, you’ll be able to figure out which are most important and those you can filter out.

Then, analyze the utilization of each tool — could you be getting more out of it?

If you’re paying for it, be sure to get your money’s worth!

4. Jeff Sauer | Founder of Data Driven U

Perfect measuring your businesses analytics.

Don’t do marketing for the sake of marketing.

Do marketing to achieve some kind of objective.

Take a step away from Google Analytics and go as low tech as possible; use a whiteboard or Excel to write down your objectives.

This will allow you to understand and improve your businesses’ analytics.

From there, you can find tools to help you achieve your goals and compare your estimates.

5. Steven van Vessum | Vice President of Content at ContentKing

Automate boring work.

Whether you realize it or not, there are many things in your business that can be automated.

If you set up alerts for essential checks in Google Analytics, you’ll be able to track revenue, conversion and traffic fluctuation without wasting any time.

Then, you can focus on improving areas of your business that must be done manually, such as writing quality content.

6. Bas van den Beld | Marketing and Speaking Coach

Quality over quantity.

There’s a lot of content on the web that serves no purpose simply because companies set KPIs geared towards getting the most views and likes.

That doesn’t work anymore.

While businesses thought this would increase exposure, in actuality, it has led people to be more selective of their content.

Analyze your current content to see what gets attention and, most importantly, follow-up from users.

From this, you can change your marketing strategy and produce better content.

7. Brad Geddes | Co-founder of AdAlysis

Learn how to work with the machines.

For so long, it has been human versus machine.

Instead of having this mindset, we should apply our critical thinking abilities to the data given to us.

By doing this, we can find ways to measure the outcomes of specific data-driven engines and prioritize which ones help our businesses succeed.

8. Emeric Ernoult | Co-founder and CEO of AgoraPulse

Focus on monetization, retention and acquisition.

Companies that focus on these key factors grow three times faster than those working solely on acquisition.

While acquisition is important and seems easier, it isn’t the driving factor of growth for most businesses.

By spreading your energy across retention and monetization, you can reap the full benefits from current customers.

9. Jason Barnard | SEO Speaker and Author

Use Google to build your business.

If you established your on-page SEO in 2018, move onto Google to create your dynamic search ads.

This search engine can choose headlines, the search query and landing page — all you have to do is write descriptions of the extensions and Google will do the rest.

You can also feed Google past pages that were successful and, after a few hours, see how it interprets your SEO.

After analyzing the results, you can continue to improve your SEO and boost traffic.

By following this cycle, you can increase company profits and perfect your overall SEO.

10. Evan Carmichael | YouTuber and Entrepreneur

Create more content!

If you’re a thought leader and an expert, your voice needs to be heard more frequently.

Many people are not putting out enough content to:

1. Get good at the skill of creating content.
2. Build momentum necessary to stand out in your space.

When just starting out though, expect to suck at the beginning — it’s okay!

Eventually, the quantity will lead to the quality and the more you do, the better you’ll get.

11. Patrick Cutliffe | Trainer and Speaker for Google Digital Initiatives

Start using the See, Think, Do, Care framework around your customers.

Create a table with the four column heads: See, Think, Do and Care.

• The “See” column is anyone who could potentially buy your products.
• The “Think” column is the same individuals, only including those who are thinking about your brand.
• The “Do” column are people hot to buy your products.
• The “Care” column includes customers who have bought from you more than twice.

After breaking down your audiences, think about which signals your customers provide during their digital touch points in their journey — this can include keyword searches, page views and visual content clicks.

Record these signals within the columns and analyze how you’re assisting customers in their journey!

12. Julia Bramble | Social Media Strategist for BrambleBuzz

Act more like a friend on social media.

In the world of social media, we have lost people’s attention.

But who do we look out for on social media?

Our friends.

Businesses must begin to share the tips and information that our friends need.

That means sharing a funny story, asking questions, being empathetic, following up and raising a smile.

The more businesses can go out there and emulate being a friend on social media, the better their results are going to be.

13. Zach Johnson | Entrepreneur

Focus on your own brand and expertise.

Make sure that you’re an expert within your niche and your opinion is getting to the right audiences.

This can be done through being interviewed on podcasts, doing guest bloggings or running expert roundups on your own website.

Ultimately, it’s about creating content, providing value and taking the time to promote that to audiences.

14. iEva Zelca | CMO at AccuRanker

Experiment with new techniques.

Experimenting with strategies can help strengthen the weak areas within your business, as long as you create actionable goals and record the new method’s impact over time.

It’s important that you measure your results because, then, you’ll learn more about what works for you and what doesn’t.

15. Sarah-Jayne Gratton | Technology Futurist

Keep an eye on artificial intelligence.

Marketers need to be aware of how predictive analytics can understand and see the behavior in retail, or any aspect of business.

If you look at the way Amazon can determine what customers are going to buy or how Netflix can make assumptions on behavior, it’s clearly a key factor in digital marketing.

Consumers enjoy the digital conversation we are having and it’s important to further incorporate that next year.

16. Joe Griffin | Co-founder and CEO of Clear Voice

Quit worrying about content strategy.

Many people get hung up on not having a detailed content plan and end up delaying production for months.

Instead of having some complicated strategy, create a simple plan, commit to that and iterate.

17. Ashley Ward | Digital Marketing Strategist at SEMrush

Refocus content to appease the mobile user first.

For a long time, we’ve been creating content solely for the desktop, which generally meant long form content.

Going into 2019, we have to put the mobile user first.

The types of queries mobile users are looking for are fast, trendy and actionable.

At the start of next year, ask yourself, “is your content satisfying those requirements?”

18. Alex Rynne | Content Marketing Manager at LinkedIn

Do fewer things better.

There isn’t a prize for hitting publish and it’s unrealistic to think that, just because we publish something once, it means your entire audience has seen it.

Your audience is diverse and has a variety of different content consumption preferences.

I would recommend spending 20% of your time creating content and 80% distributing it.

Don’t forget to go back and measure results before you begin the next thing!

19. Arianne Donoghue | Strategy Director at Epiphany Search

Look at how automation can save time.

We are entering a phase in digital marketing where we have more platforms to manage, but less time and money.

Tools like Google Data Studio can free up time in three areas: reporting, bidding and analysis.

Investing in such tools will allow us to focus on more important work.

20. Sam Mallikarjunan | Head of Marketing at BirdEye

Stop trying to do everything yourself.

Ask your customers if they are satisfied with your services.

If they have a great story about how your product impacted their life or work, use that for your marketing.

This is a great strategy for small businesses or start-ups because you don’t have to have a huge team.

21. Yann Ilunga | Podcaster

There are three things your company should focus on in 2019: systems, automation and centralization.

Create a system for the different moving parts of your business, like your content creation process.

From this, figure out steps within this process you can automate.

Lastly, whenever possible, avoid jumping from different tools and merge all of your data into a single dashboard (Cyfe is a great tool for this).

22. Nick Wilsdon | Lead Technical SEO at Vodafone

Focus on making information services accessible on new technology.

At the moment, Google and Amazon are releasing chipsets for new devices.

This is will increase the number of items that have smart technology and, by 2020, 75% of U.S. households will have smart devices.

Because of this, it’s important for brands to slowly shift their marketing from Google SEO to thinking about how they will be discovered in new technological environments.

23. Jo Juliana Turnbull | Organizer of Search London

Keep your skills up to date and invest in your knowledge.

There’s so much going on in the world of online marketing, so it’s important to keep up with everything.

On your days off, take Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager courses (they’re free!).

For those that aren’t able to do upskill online, attend a meet up and learn tips firsthand from people in the industry.

24. Ian Cleary | Tech Marketer and Consultant for RazorSocial

Get more from your existing content.

Audit your content — this will drive more traffic to your existing material.

If a piece isn’t producing the desired results and doesn’t have any value, delete it.

Redirecting pages or adding links will help push content that should be promoted.

For pieces that are driving content successfully, expand and re-release it.

25. Tom Treanor | Director of Content Marketing at Arm Treasure Data

Understand how your competitors work.

It’s important to create content that will be found.

To do this, go to the website alexa.com and use the competitor keyword matrix.

This will show you a gap analysis against other businesses and help you create a content calendar for the upcoming months.

26. Kevan Lee | Director of Marketing at Buffer

Stop thinking of marketing like a funnel.

Rather, marketing should be seen as a loop.

To do this, identify the ways you attract, engage and delight customers.

Then, analyze your company’s programs to ensure everything serves your customers’ needs.

If it doesn’t, identify your points of friction, what can be automated and addressed by sharing goals with other teams.

This cycle will essentially will lay out your action plan for 2019.

This article originally appeared in Inc.com on Dec. 20, 2018.

Important Next Steps

• Get Customers.ai, Facebook Messenger marketing platform and chatbot builder, for FREE.
• Sign up for occasional chatbot marketing and Facebook Messenger news updates via Facebook Messenger.
• Get your free ticket to the Facebook Ads Virtual Summit on Jan .24, 2019 and learn genius ad hacks for the new year!

The post 25+ Marketing Experts Share Genius Tips for 2019 appeared first on Customers.ai.

I recently extolled the virtues of cold emailing, a powerful tool for making valuable connections with other professionals and unicorn investors. But, to be successful, that means you need the email addresses of the people you would like to contact.

Sure, you could reach out over social media, but that isn’t always the most effective approach. Sending a personalized email (not a generic marketing email) that helps you build a connection really is the way to go.

If you are trying to find customer email address, here are 10 ways that you can accomplish that goal for free.

1. Head to the Company Website

While this may seem obvious, it’s one of the best places to start. Many companies provide contact information for certain staff members, so don’t neglect this resource just because it seems simple.

Once you arrive at the site, head over to the About Us page to see if they provide details for executives or other employees. The News section is another great destination, as PR contact email addresses are often included in articles.

Sometimes the Contact Us page will yield results, but more often than not you are greeted by a form (and your message gets dumped into a customer service bucket somewhere), so don’t be surprised if this doesn’t work.

2. Google It

There is a lot of information floating around online, and unicorn Google‘s search feature can be the key to accessing it.

You might be able to find someone’s email address just be searching their name and the word “email” or “contact.” Yes, it can be that simple.

Alternatively, try other combinations, like the person’s name and the company name or title. It only takes a few minutes to run through these options, and it otherwise doesn’t cost you a dime.

3. Extrapolate Based on Known Email Addresses

Almost every company uses a standard format for the emails (like [first name].[last name]@[company].[com]).

If you find even a single email address to someone in the company, it isn’t hard to crack the code once you see the formatting.

Now, this only works if you have the person’s name, can be trickier for people with common names (think “John Smith”) where there could easily be more than one person with the same name at the company, or for names with multiple potential variations (Robert, Bob, Rob).

However, even if you connect with the wrong person, you may be able to get your target’s email address if the case of mistaken identity results in a reply (or if the “wrong” recipient forwards your message to the “right” one). As long as you aren’t divulging anything that shouldn’t be seen by someone else, or won’t be viewed as a possible phishing attempt, it’s worth a try.

4. Dig In with Advanced Google Search

If you want to check whether your guess at an email address is correct, try an Advanced Google Search.

Put the mail address you think it right into the search bar with quotes on either side, like this: “firstname.lastname@company.com”

If you’re right, you may see it come up in the search results. If nothing comes up, try other variants until you find the unicorn email address among the donkeys.

5. Join ZoomInfo

If you add the ZoomInfo plugin to your Outlook, in exchange for giving them access to your contacts, you get 10 free contacts from their database each month. Millions (upon millions) of people are listed in ZoomInfo, along with 6+ million company profiles, so their database is extensive.

6. Connect with an Admin

If you can find a phone number of the person’s department at their company, see if you can talk to their admin.

Now, you don’t want to just ask for an email address simply because you don’t have it. You need to be a bit crafty to get this to work.

After a warm greeting, ask the admin if they can give you some help (people often like to be helpful, so this statement sets the stage). Ask if they can confirm the person’s email address and then proceed to give them your best guess of what that email should be.

Usually, they will stop you once you make (what they perceive to be) a mistake and will give you the right address in return.

7. Check Their Social Media Page

Sometimes, people list their email addresses on social media. Yes, this isn’t common, but it only takes a few seconds to look, so check personal and company pages to see if any tidbits are available.

8. Look for Personal Websites and Blogs

The sheer number of personal websites and blogs out there is staggering, and many professionals and executives maintain one to help establish their personal brand.

If you aren’t having any luck with company website-related searches, delve into personal ones.

Most people link back to their personal site on their social media profiles, particularly on LinkedIn and Twitter, so see if you can find their website there and use that information to run additional searches.

You may end up with the person’s personal email this way, but that can be just as effective as reaching out to their company one.

9. People Search Sites

Some people search sites actually allow you to receive results for free, though this is becoming less common. However, it doesn’t hurt to give this approach a try.

Bear in mind that the information you find may also be out-of-date, so your mileage may vary, but giving this a whirl doesn’t cost you anything anyway.

10. Jigsaw.com

While Jigsaw.com does have paid search options, you can look up some information for “free.” They use a model where, if you provide one contact, they’ll let you have one without an additional charge.

It is important to note that all of the information is user provided, so that means there is no guarantee it is accurate. Plus, it is possible the person you want to connect with isn’t in there at all.

If these free options don’t produce the results you need, there are a wide range of paid services out there as well. Or, you can simply reach out in a direct message on social media and see if you can establish a connection there.

Be a Unicorn in a Sea of Donkeys

Get my very best Unicorn marketing & entrepreneurship growth hacks:

1. Sign up to have them sent to your email directly
2. Sign up for occasional Facebook Messenger Marketing news & tips via Facebook Messenger.

Originally posted on Inc.com

The post Learn How to Quickly Find a Customer’s Email Address for Free appeared first on Customers.ai.

But competition is insane–over 200,000 restaurant locations across the country vie for a greater share of the fast-food revenue pie. Major brands like McDonald’s, Yum Brands, and Wendy’s dominate, with McDonald’s alone cornering a massive 21.7 percent of the market. Chick-fil-A sits at No. 8 in the national fast-food revenue rankings.

Chick-fil-A wants to steal away a bit more of that fast-food revenue with an unusual strategy that marks a departure from their heavy emphasis on quality over speed.

With $5.8 billion in 2014 sales, Chick-fil-A is no slouch. It’s already generating more revenue than every pizza brand in the U.S.

But fast-food restaurants are battling increasing food costs–the rising prices of corn, wheat, and livestock have seriously damaged margins over the past year. Until now, Chick-fil-A’s strategy has been a hardcore focus on “great tasting, high quality” food–on fresh ingredients, and on eschewing fillers and additives in their food products.

It’s an entirely different strategy from say, McDonald’s, which has focused on introducing new product lines, like McCafé coffees, and speeding up service for an ever-demanding crowd of time-constrained customers.

Chick-fil-A, in its quest to steal a bit of business away from McDonald’s, has launched a new service to make their offerings more attractive for moms, particularly Millennial moms between the ages of 18 and 35.

David Farmer, Chick-fil-A’s vice president of menu strategy and development, told Business Insider that the idea took root when the restaurant’s management noticed how hectic ordering could be for parents of young children.

The solution? Mom’s Valet.

Now, parents can pull into the drive-thru to order their meal, then come inside to their prepared table. With their order already in, service is a snap, and kids spend less time in the restaurant–meaning parents can spend less time wrangling their impatient kids inside the restaurant.

It’s the first time a major restaurant brand has offered a service like this.

In a story published on the Chick-fil-A website, one North Carolina mom wrote, “Our local Chick-fil-A does Mom’s Valet and they know us by name now!”

While other restaurant chains are focusing on creating efficiencies, even where it may mean a lesser service or experience for customers, Chick-fil-A wants to make life easier for moms and, in doing so, win them over from restaurants better known for their lightning-quick service.

It’s the latest in a series of steps the brand has taken to make its service faster and more efficient for customers. Late in 2014, it launched mobile payments and began piloting mobile ordering, in which customers could place an order from the Chick-fil-A app and check in to start the order-making process once they reached the physical location.

They also removed coleslaw, a staple menu item since 1946, from the menu, replacing it with a healthier kale salad as an alternative to French fries. In fact, Chick-fil-A has made eight major changes over the last year in an effort to compete with brands like KFC and McDonald’s.

Will its willingness to reinvent itself pay off? Time will tell, but time and again, companies have had to look beyond what everyone else in the market is doing–to get super creative–to really stand out and make the kinds of gains that have the potential to fell giants.

Chick-fil-A may not steal McDonald’s crown, but they’re sure going to try. And they’re going to do it their way.

Be a Unicorn in a Sea of Donkeys

Get my very best Unicorn marketing & entrepreneurship growth hacks:

1. Sign up to have them sent to your email directly
2. Sign up for occasional Facebook Messenger Marketing news & tips via Facebook Messenger.

Originally posted on Inc.com

Featured Image Credit: DeviantArt

The post Chick-fil-A’s Amazing Millennial Marketing Campaign for Attracting Mothers appeared first on Customers.ai.

Facebook is making the news feed harsher for publishers, CPCs in AdWords are becoming less worth their increasing costs, and there’s a looming threat of artificial intelligence taking over all of marketing. You’re going to need every bit of help you can get.

Don’t despair. Marketing Optimization Week is upon us!

It’s four days of in-depth strategic advice, all for FREE from February 20-23. You and your team can apply what you learn right away to boost your results from your existing channels. Some of the biggest players in marketing will be there to cover everything—PPC, marketing automation, AI and marketing strategy tracks. Get the full agenda here.

Below are the ones you should definitely attend:

“Get Clear on How to Prep for AI” by Purna Virji of Microsoft

Wednesday, February 21, 2018. 11:00am PST | 2:00pm EST | 1:00pm CST

It’s undeniable that artificial intelligence is in our future. Microsoft’s Senior Manager of Global Engagement thinks so as well, and she’s eager to discuss how AI is set to change the industry for good, as well as how you can best prepare yourself for it.

With over 15 years of search experience, Purna Virji’s SEO expertise—as well as Bing and voice search—will leave you with three critical steps for AI success.

“Secure 10X Results Across Channels” by Larry Kim of Mobile Monkey

Friday, February 23, 2018. 9:00am PST | 12:00pm EST | 11:00am CST

That’s right. I will be there to show you all how to create magic with a unicorn campaign—campaigns so effective, they reach the top 1–3%.

I have unorthodox yet powerful methods for getting 10-100x more value out of your paid ad campaigns on Facebook, Twitter, Taboola and other networks. I will show your the secret to driving exponentially more traffic to your content and effectively convert clicks into sales.

Larry Kim is so obsessed with unicorns, he wants you to become one as well.

“Improve Your AdWords Quality Score” by Jeff Baum and Diane Anselmo of Hanapin

Thursday, February 22, 2018. 9:00am PST | 12:00pm EST | 11:00am CST

Improving your quality score requires making significant improvements, and it can be rather intimidating at the start. Hanapin PPC experts Jeff Baum and Diane Anselmo are familiar with the whole process, and they will guide you through changing your landing pages to boost your quality score right away.

There’s Something for Everyone on Your Team

The four aforementioned sessions are just some of what you can look forward to during this four-day marathon of carefully curated content. Register now and you’ll gain access to:

• The Google Ventures Sprint process by Alexa Hubley of Unbounce
• How to have your best year of email ever by Karen Gragg of Emma
• How to get more out of your marketing tools via integrations by Sean Kennedy of Zapier
• And a whole lot more.

We’ll see you there at the Marketing Optimization Week kickoff on February 20th.

The post Learn the Ways of the Unicorn at Marketing Optimization Week appeared first on Customers.ai.

What’s a marketing unicorn, you ask? It’s one of those online marketing strategies that’s so effective it performs in the top 1-3% of all marketing campaigns.

Marketing unicorns are so special that, even though they’re rare, they end up delivering almost half of the value of your overall marketing efforts. For example, here on the WordStream blog, our top 50 articles drive as much traffic as thousands of others (the marketing donkeys) combined. I call it the Unicorn Marketing Power Law.

This is why it’s so key, as a marketer or business owner, to find your own unicorns and make the most of them. There are unicorns in every corner of the online marketing world – unicorn ads, unicorn blog posts, unicorn webinars, unicorn emails. These are the campaigns with exceptional click-through rates, conversion rates, open rates, and engagement rates.

So if you find a unicorn, CLONE IT! An idea or piece of creative that does well in one online marketing channel is bound to do well in your other marketing channels as well. As I’m always fond of saying, you have to go all in on your unicorns.

I’ve spent a lot of time experimenting with different online marketing strategies this year. Below you’ll find the best of the best – my top 10 favorite online marketing strategies that create and exploit unicorns to give you the best possible bang for your buck.

Check it out and share – I’ll provide a little more detail into each of the 10 strategies, which include strategies for SEO, PPC, content marketing, social media marketing, remarketing, and more, below.

My 10 Most Unicorn-Worthy Online Marketing Strategies

#1. Aim for super-high organic click-through rates

Does organic CTR matter? YES! Now more than ever! If you want to compete in the new SEO reality, you’ve got to raise your click-through rates and other engagement factors. Here’s our process:

• Find content with average or below-expected CTR for its rank
• Ditch boring titles and test emotional, relatable headlines that promise value
• Improve intent match to reduce bounce rate and pogo-sticking
• Bonus: Data indicates raising CTR can move up your rank!
• 

#2. Aim for super-high ad click-through rates

CTR isn’t just important for SEO (duh). It’s also incredibly important for paid ads, because ads with high engagement rates get better placements at a lower cost per click on Google AdWords, Facebook Ads, Twitter Ads and pretty much every platform. Here’s what you need to know about raising your ad CTR:

• Tactics like Dynamic Keyword Insertion are boring and don’t create unicorn ads
• Ads with the highest CTR focus on four key emotions: anger, disgust, affirmation, and fear
• Bonus: High CTR ads usually have high conversion rates too!

#3. Forget everything you know about conversion rate optimization

Sorry to burst your CRO bubble, but the classic A/B test is a fairy tale – too often, we get super excited about early leads, but they tend to disappear over time. Either the test hadn’t reached statistical significance, or people were responding to novelty, but the effect didn’t last.

Here are a few more CRO truth bombs for you:

• Aggressive CRO often increases lead quantity but reduces lead quality
• To really move the needle, change your offer to something truly irresistible
• Brand familiarity has a massive effect on conversions – so try remarketing!

#4. Remarketing is great … but try Super Remarketing!

Maybe you’ve noticed (ha) that in the current online marketing landscape, it’s harder and harder to get your content noticed. The competition is insanely fierce! That means everyone’s attention is spread thin. But all hope is not lost, aspiring unicorns!

• With a smart social ad strategy you can promote your content to the perfect audience for pennies
• Use social media remarketing to increase engagement by 2X to 3X
• Then step it up with Super Remarketing: the awesome combination of remarketing, demographics, behaviors, and high-engagement content

#5. Hack RLSA for a Unicorn Surge of Leads

Regular old, plain-flavor RLSA is kind of a shell game: You’re basically cherry-picking your cheapest leads from a larger pool. Yes, you save money, but your lead volume is greatly reduced! Most people don’t want that, right? We want more leads AND lower costs.

Here’s how to use RLSA to get both, AKA Operation Unicorn Surge:

• To reduce cost per lead AND increase volume in competitive markets, try Super RLSA!
• Bias people toward your brand by using social ads to dramatically increase the size of your cookie pool

#6. Get your Facebook organic reach back

Newsflash, Facebook organic reach sucks. In fact, we recently discovered it’s even worse than we thought!!

The good news is, you can recover your reach! Here’s how:

• Use preferred audience targeting to target organic posts like ads
• Use Larry’s Unicorn Detector Pyramid Scheme
• Invite people who like your content to follow your page
• Post video content for way higher engagement rates – the key to organic reach

#7. Outsmart your competition!

Try these brilliant competitive advertising strategies:

• Target users whose interests include your competitors
• Disrupt your competitors’ videos with YouTube ads
• Use your competitors’ brand names to keyword target your Gmail Ads
• Download and target your competitors’ Twitter followers

#8. Use social ads to make an impression on influencers

Not a big name yet? No problem!

Here are some crazy awesome ways to use social ads to fool people into thinking you’re a big deal:

• Build awareness of your personal brand by targeting ads at specific employees and specific companies
• Write an awesome guest post for an influencer, then promote and amplify so it makes a splash
• Tag your fave influencer and do an engagement campaign
• Become a trending story on LinkedIn Pulse

#9. Learn how to REALLY run a Twitter lead generation campaign

Forget Twitter’s advice for running lead gen campaigns – it’s totally wrong! Do this instead:

• Twitter Lead Generation Cards look too much like ads and charge you for useless engagements
• Never use automatic bidding – it’s a trap
• Instead, use funny images, emoji, advanced targeting options and don’t forget conversion tracking!

#10. Master the art of Medium publishing

There are insanely good reasons to republish your content on Medium – like reaching a much bigger audience with minimal effort. Here’s how to make the most of the Medium platform:

• Don’t just republish your post – make it go hot! Include a powerful image immediately after the headline

• Promote your post – if you get 200 hearts in a day, your article will trend and pageviews will skyrocket
• Follow people who engage with your content to build your audience

That’s it – my absolute favorite online marketing strategies of the year, all of which I’m going to keep using next year too.

Now go and find your own unicorns!

Top 10 Online Marketing Strategies [Summary]:

1. Improve organic click through rate for more search traffic AND better rankings.
2. Improve your ad CTR in paid search to dramatically lower costs.
3. Forget about traditional conversion rate “truths”: Instead, offer something irresistible and improve brand familiarity with remarketing.
4. Use social remarketing in combination with demographic and behavior data and high-engagement content.
5. Leverage Google RLSA – Remarketing Lists for Search Ads.
6. Hack your Facebook strategy to improve your organic reach.
7. Rise above the competition with brilliant competitive advertising strategies.
8. Use social ads to make an impression on influencers.
9. Ignore Twitter’s advice and learn the best way to drive leads through Twitter ads.
10. Republish your existing content on Medium for much more exposure.

Originally posted in: medium.com

The post The 10 Best Online Marketing Strategies to Make You a Unicorn appeared first on Customers.ai.