A Simple "Thanks" Goes A Long Way

Ever wonder what is the best way to sign an email? I am sure it is not something that keeps you up at night, but I bet every once in a while, when you are nearing the end of a painstakingly crafted email of great importance, you might take more than a minute or two thinking about the best way to sign off.

The good folks at Boomerang, a company that says it “helps its customers focus on email that matters, when it matters” through tools that “allow for reading and responding to messages faster and more decisively than before”, were also wondering the same thing, so they analyzed over 350,000 email threads to discover the closings that yield the best response rates.

Boomerang discovered that we should all end all of our emails with one simple word whenever in doubt: thanks. Of all the emails Boomerang analyzed, those that signed off with some form of “Thanks” received a response 62% of the time. Emails without some form of “Thanks” received a response only 48% of the time.

In fact, “Thanks in advance” received the overall best response rate with 65.7%. And of all the closings that Boomerang analyzed, “Best” was actually the worst with the lowest average response rate of 51.2%.

Closing with gratitude, especially thanking someone in advance for their response or further action requested in the email, seems genuine, and of course, appreciative.

So, as with all advice, take it with a grain of salt and don’t simply start signing off every single email with “Thanks”, but when in doubt, remember that just about any form of genuine thankfulness seems to get the best response rates. 

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Mind Your Ands

We are always told to mind our Ps and Qs, but what about our ands? Shouldn’t we also be minding those as well?

It sure seems like many of today’s writers and content creators set out to cram every possible thought into a single paragraph-length sentence. But, this can easily confuse readers and force them to reread sentences over and over to determine which of the writer’s thoughts are joined by which and.

Why do they force so many words into each sentence? I was recently reading a report that got me thinking about this subject when I came across a sentence very similar to the one below:

We reviewed the infrastructure and networks that made up the wireless guest networks and the filtering and segmentation between the wireless guest networks and the wired corporate network and the encryption and authentication in use on both networks.

Look at all those ands in one sentence! Six ands!

When you are writing, be sure to count the number of times you use ‘and’ in each sentence. You should rarely have more than one or two, though in the right context, three ands can still make sense. But, once you approach the fourth, fifth, sixth (or even more) and in a single sentence, it is time to split that sentence up into multiple sentences and perhaps use some other conjunction or phrase.

As an example, see what I have done to our ‘six-and’ sentence example:

We reviewed the infrastructure and networks that made up the wireless guest networks, as well as the filtering and segmentation between the wireless guest networks and the wired corporate network. We also reviewed the encryption and authentication in use on both networks. 

You can see by changing one of the ands to ‘as well as’, and splitting the sentence into two sentences, I’ve essentially removed two of the ands. Also, neither sentence has more than three ands. The paragraph is now much easier to read.

So, when you are writing, please remember to limit the use of ‘and’ to no more than three instances per sentence. Your readers will thank you!

Graphic by William L. Savastano

Post-Sale Drip Campaigns

According to Pricing for Profitability: Activity-Based Pricing for Competitive Advantage by John L. Daly, conventional business wisdom contends that it costs 10 times as much to obtain a new customer than it does to retain an existing customer.

If you spend any time researching the actual statistics available out there that show the cost of acquiring a new customer vs. the cost of keeping an existing customer, you will find results that point to it being anywhere from three to 20 times costlier to obtain a new customer. While the numbers vary by industry, location, and product type, one thing becomes clear; almost every study concludes businesses are far more cost-effective when they can retain existing customers.

One of the best ways to ensure a customer who has purchased a product or service from your enterprise remains a happy customer is to consistently engage with them post-purchase. Businesses can easily accomplish this through an instrument that is usually reserved for pre-sale engagement, the email drip campaign.

For those who may not know, an email drip campaign is a pre-programmed periodic sending of emails to prospective customers that provides them with valuable industry and product information without seeming to be an attempt to sell your products or services. When done right, drip campaigns keep your products and services top of mind for prospects, leading them down the sales funnel, and providing the right combination of product and service information as well as useful general industry knowledge.

Unfortunately, a lot of times, once a prospect is converted to a customer, businesses turn off that drip campaign, not realizing they are stopping what actually is also a very important post-sale engagement tool. Instead of completely turning off the drip campaign once a prospect becomes a customer, businesses should simply shift the content the new customer receives.

Businesses should stop sending new customers anything that seems irrelevant such as special offers on products or services they have already purchased and anything that does not refer to them as a customer.

Businesses should send new customers:
• Any relevant company or industry news, including press releases and blog posts
• Tips on using products or services they have already purchased
• Information on other products and services they have yet to purchase
• A steady stream of announcements about new products, features, and services

In many cases, enterprises may find that a good amount of their pre-sale drip campaign content is still very useful in a post-sale drip campaign. Two areas of particular note for inclusion in post-sale drip campaigns should be press releases and blog posts, especially if your blog is heavy on providing industry news and thought leadership content. Press releases, especially those on big customer wins, awards received, or new partnerships, will reinforce with the customer the idea that your business is strong, and that they have made the right choice in going with your products and services. Blog posts that speak to industry events, industry knowledge, and breaking news will ensure that customers view your business as a leader in the industry and view you as someone with whom they should continue doing business.

It is important to remember that while an email drip campaign can be very effective at landing new customers, it can also be very effective in retaining existing customers.

Artwork by Gerd Altmann via Pixabay

The 5 Items You Should Actually Capitalize

I know You might Think the Capitalization in this Sentence is a Little Off, but I can Tell you that I See sentences Just Like this every Single Day.

I believe the cause of most of this unnecessary capitalization stems from the fact that a lot of content creators use capitalization for emphasis when they are writing. But that doesn’t mean those content creators are correct. In fact, I would argue littering a piece with all that erroneous capitalization actually draws emphasis away from its overall message.

Before you capitalize a word, ask yourself why you are capitalizing it. Is the word at the beginning of a sentence? Then go right ahead and capitalize that word.

Is the word a proper noun? If it truly is, then go ahead and capitalize the word or words that make up that proper noun. If you are uncertain if something is a proper noun or not, you can conduct a Google search with the word or words both capitalized and not capitalized, and you’ll most likely quickly find your answer.

Is the word part of a headline or subhead? If so, and it is not one of the words that should not be capitalized in title case, then capitalize that word. A quick search on ‘title capitalization’ should yield some great tools that can help guide you with proper title case. 

And, of course, don’t forget to capitalize the pronoun ‘I’ and the days of the week, months, and holidays.

But if a word is none of these five things – at the beginning of a sentence, a proper noun, part of a headline or subhead, I, or one of the date-related items we capitalize – then it should not be capitalized. It really is that simple.

In addition to capitalizing for emphasis, another common error content creators make is to capitalize concepts like ‘business analysis’ or services like ‘report editing for enterprises’. Many of these same content creators will also capitalize industries like finance, education, and manufacturing, as well as business areas like human resources, sales, or marketing. But, none of these things need to be capitalized.

Before you capitalize any of these terms, consider whether they should really be capitalized, or if they are simply a company term, an industry term, or just a term you wish to call out in your content. Do not capitalize that word, or group of words, unless they fall under one of the five capitalization rules above.

Remember, you have tools like making words bold or italicized to create emphasis – or putting the words inside a sentence separator like this – but do not capitalize these words just to give them emphasis or to call out your company or industry terms.

Content creators should try hard not to break these capitalization rules. But, if you must break the rules and capitalize words that you really shouldn’t, at least capitalize consistently. If you capitalize Marketing as a concept or a department in the first sentence of a paragraph, then you should capitalize it as a concept or department in the fourth sentence of the paragraph, and when used throughout the rest of your article or document.

Content creators should also be mindful that if they capitalize subheads, table content, figure content, or any other items in an article or document, those items should be capitalized consistently. Special care should also be given to using consistent title case as well. Create a list of title case words that should be capitalized and apply it consistently as well. You can do a Google search to find these terms and also customize it for your particular style, company, and industry.

By simply applying capitalization consistently and only in the five necessary instances above, you can declutter your pieces and save your editorial staff hours of unnecessary de-capitalization.

Photo by Tom Eversley via ISO Republic 

Why You Need Industry Pages On Your Website

There are two schools of thought when it comes to whether or not you should have separate website pages for the industries your enterprise serves.

One camp believes if you list out the industries you serve on your website, visitors who do not see their industry will assume you do not do work in their field and move on.

The other camp feels if you do not provide industry-specific pages, you are missing out on an opportunity to provide more in-depth information to potential customers that is geared specifically to them.

I think both sides make a great point, but I tend to feel there is a solution that renders both arguments mute. I propose there is a way to list industries on your site, but still provide an impression that if a visitor’s industry is not listed out specifically, you’re still equipped to handle their business. This can easily be accomplished through a link to an “Other Industries” page at the bottom of your industry list.

Go ahead and create an industry page for up to seven main industries, but then list out some of the work you’ve done in other industries on your “Other Industries” page. If you craft your message properly, in just a few sentences, you can show visitors you are equipped to handle either their specific type of business, or better yet, any new type of business that comes along.

Let me walk you through the process. First, let’s address the industries you should actually list out on your site. Spend some time researching which industries drive the most revenue for your company and which industries you anticipate will drive revenue in the future. Once you have a clear picture of which industries they are, generate a list of the top seven. Then, proceed to develop copy, images and other content that speaks specifically to the people in those industries. If you have done your research properly, this should cover a significantly large portion of your existing and future customer base. This should all be pretty easy to accomplish and most likely something you’ve done numerous times before in some capacity.

Now, let’s create your “Other Industries” page. Don’t simply put up a list of additional industries beyond the seven you’ve already listed, but instead, provide a clear and concise message about your experience in other industries and let your audience know you are confident you can translate your success to their challenges, too. Just remember to keep your messaging customer-focused and speak to learning more about their specific industry’s challenges once you have discussed their specific needs.

If possible, try to get some quotes from customers who are not in your seven main industries that can demonstrate how you helped them overcome some very specific challenges. Be sure to feature those quotes on your “Other Industries” page. If you can obtain some quotes that speak to how quickly you learned customers’ industry-specific challenges, even better. Be sure to develop content based on your individual company’s products, services and experience.

By following these simple content creation steps, you can have a robust industry-focused section of your website that not only highlights the main industries your company serves, but also lets prospects whose enterprises do not fall into those industries know you are more than capable of helping them solve their specific challenges.

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Does Your Marketing Content Focus On Your Customers?

Do you think pro golfers with a spare Sunday relax by hitting the links? Think a professional racecar driver can’t wait to jump in his car and head down the coast? Think a content creator spends some of his spare time reviewing mass quantities of other people’s content and collateral material? Guilty as charged.

But when you love what you do like I do, you tend to find yourself doing it in your spare time. These spare time activities have provided me with great insight into the vast amounts of marketing content out there, and as an avid researcher, I have discovered an epidemic plaguing the marketing content of most American companies, especially smaller businesses that really can’t afford or are not yet ready for a large marketing team. To put it bluntly, American enterprises, so much of your marketing content is not focused on your customers…it’s focused on you!

Now, don’t get me wrong, you have a role to play in your marketing story, and you definitely want to tell your customers about you, but you have to remember that when a customer is searching for a product or service, they are mostly interested in how you can address the challenges they are facing. 

I want you to do me a favor and pull out your most widely used piece of marketing content, then read it while keeping these key questions in mind:

• Is your customer the star of that piece, or are you?
• Does the first sentence of the piece start with your company name?
• Do a lot of the rest of the sentences in the piece also start with your company name?
• Do the main points of the piece talk first about how you do something and what you know, then address how you can solve a customer’s challenge only after you’ve talked about yourself first?
• Does the piece tell your customer which of their challenges you can help them solve and how you will do so, or does it tell them all about your company, your team, what your team knows, and how great it will be for the customer if they choose to work with you?
• Is your content riddled with all of the fancy product, team and department names you’ve so cleverly come up with over the years?

See, if I’m your customer, what I care about is how you can solve my challenges and how quickly, effectively and reasonably priced you can do that. I don’t care what you call your product, teams and departments, how many degrees your executives have, or where they worked before joining your team. I don’t care how many offices you have, that you can trace your company’s roots back to the 1960’s, or how much fun your employees have working there. All I want to see is content that tells me what you can do for me. 

So, if you read your marketing content and find your customer and how you can solve their challenges is not the true meat of the story you are telling, it might be time to re-write that content so it focuses on your customer and their needs, not you and your story. Put yourself in your customers’ shoes as they read your marketing content and ask, “Why should I care?” 

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The Failed Promise Of Social Media

Social media platforms have not lived up to the promise or the hype when it comes to connecting enterprises with their customers. Remember when we were told social media was going to replace email, and we were going to be able to easily reach our customers through their feed by posting to our own social media pages and feeds? That sure seems laughable now!

I recently read a sponsored content piece in which the author was touting his ability to quickly and easily obtain 20,000 Facebook likes for any enterprise or individual for less than a nickel each. What a great service if they were quality likes from actual potential customers, but even if they were, post something to your Facebook business page and less than 5% of your new 20,000 devout Facebook Likers will see that message.

That is, of course, unless you click on the link from Facebook that allows you to promote your post by paying them some of your advertising budget. But, that is not what social media originally promised us, is it? We were supposed to be able to connect with customers in a wide-open forum of engagement and friendly conversation, but instead, we find ourselves in a pay-to-play, hope-they-see-my-post-somehow world where we are all questioning the benefits of actually maintaining a Facebook company page, especially for smaller businesses. Clearly, the promise of using social media to easily and cheaply connect with customers was never delivered.

So here we are, in 2016, living in a time warp like it’s 2005, or 2001 for that matter, and the only way we can guarantee our message even stands a chance of getting through to our customers is via email or direct message. If you’ve got some extra time and are looking for a new hobby, maintain that Facebook page for fun, but if you want to actually reach your customers, keep turning to your email platform and any type of direct messaging you can find that yields actual customer responses.

It’s time for businesses to get back to the basics of creating engaging email campaigns that provide messaging and content geared towards their customers and the challenges they face. It’s time to connect with customers, colleagues and partners on LinkedIn and use the platform’s great direct messaging feature to stay in touch. It’s time to stop posting to social media and hoping our message gets seen and instead, return to more traditional methods of contact so we can actually get our message in front of the people we’re trying to reach. 

Screen capture by William L. Savastano

Do We Really Need Swear Words In Business Headlines?

Now, don’t get me wrong  - I swear all the time – especially when I’m driving, as I am sure a lot of my fellow Southern Californians do, but I recently found myself put off by the use of a certain four letter word used to describe excrement. Why? It was in a slide presentation featured in an email from Slideview that claimed to be able to show me how to build better marketing content.

Being an avid content marketer, I am definitely interested in any presentation that claims to be able to show me how to build better content. But, there I was, on the third slide of the presentation, and sure enough, there in the headline was the word “shit” where you might have just as easily found a more appropriate word.

Again, not opposed to swearing, but when you are about to teach me how to build better content, the last thing I think you should show me is that you lack the creativity or vocabulary to grab my attention without using an expletive. I can’t be the first to notice this trend of trying to shock-jock business readers with the words “shit” and “fuck” to get their attention. To all of you business writers and content creators out there, I ask, is this really necessary? Is this really where we want to go?

I get that we’re not in the schoolyard anymore and can hear some of you referencing big boy panties in your rebuttal, but again, I would argue it is not that these words offend me, it is simply that I believe they do not, and should not, have a place in our business writing because I also believe we can do better than trying to grab attention with words that would make children gasp, point and giggle.

As business writers, it is our job to take the time to create messaging that actually garners attention on its merit, not on its juvenile showmanship. We should take the time to do the job right and earn our clients’ or employer’s money with solid messaging, not simply by putting a swear word in the title and calling it a day.

Getting Sales To Use Marketing Collateral

It's the age-old challenge for marketers...how to ensure the collateral your team creates actually gets used by the sales team. In this guide, I show you the secret to solving that challenge.

Click here to read Getting Sales To Use Marketing Collateral.

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Using The Industry Articles You Read To Stay In Touch With Prospects

You’ve called and emailed a prospect as often as reasonable and you’ve done everything to show them the value of the product or service you’re selling. We’ve all been there – we know exactly when it is time to let the prospect go and move on to the next one.

But, what if instead of completely letting go, you kept that prospect on a drip campaign that did nothing but provide them with some bellwether industry information and the latest industry news from time to time? Or, better yet, sent them a personalized email at some seemingly random times that provided them with this content.

This is the age of content marketing. And while not a new concept, today’s sales and marketing professionals need to keep in mind that simply providing a prospect with information about your product and all of its bells and whistles simply does not cut it anymore. Prospects want to buy from people they know are thought leaders and who have a close eye on the market’s pulse, not just someone who scanned their badge or bought their name on a list.

It is going to take multiple touches to make a sale these days, and if you simply continue to prod people with nothing but facts about your company and its products or services, you are going to lose their interest pretty quickly.

Chances are, you spend at least a small part of your day reading up on the latest trends and news about the industry in which you work. If not, and you’re in sales and marketing, trust me when I tell you that you should be.

When you come across a particularly interesting article, spend a few moments thinking about whom on your prospect list might also be interested in that article. Shoot them a hand-typed, text only email with a link to the article. Don’t explain how the article relates to your product or service or tell them about a discount promotion you’re running, simply, send them a quick message briefly explaining how you just finished reading an article you feel they might find interesting.

I’ve seen this relatively easy method for creating a touch point bring a cold prospect back to the table and even into the win column. You will find that over time, your prospects are not only going to see you as an industry thought leader, but also come to feel that you genuinely care about the well being of their business.

When you are out making sales and someone tells you that they actually feel you care more about their business than they do, you know you’re doing some good out there. If you’ve never heard that before, then it sounds like it’s time for you to build and strengthen some relationships. One of the best ways to do that, especially when a prospect has given you every indication they are simply not interested in your product, is to start reaching out to them about their industry and showing them that you care about their business. A simple and easy way to do that is to start sending them links in a personal message to some of the articles that you have recently read.

Give it a try and let me know what you think.

Screen capture by William L. Savastano

ASP vs. SaaS vs. Cloud

We’ve all heard the cliché about how the only constant in technology is change, but during a recent product launch planning session, a small group of us who, if for no other reason than the years under out belts, consider ourselves to have been around the block a few times, were laughing a little bit about the semantics of “The Cloud” and how it resembles two other big buzzwords we’d marketed in the past, ASP and SaaS.

This got me thinking about the similarities and differences between these technologies and while I have, in fact, marketed all three over the years, I had never really taken the time to compare and contrast them. So, just for fun – if you can consider researching software platforms fun – I decided to take a closer look and then put together a little write up on what I discovered.

Click here to read ASP vs. SaaS vs. Cloud.

The Agile Marketing Method

For the past eight years, I have spent my life marketing software. When you market software, you end up learning more than just a little bit about the software development process, its benefits and its challenges. You also learn, like many others before me, that occasionally, the principles of software development can lend themselves to other areas of business, including marketing.

The term “agile marketing” is starting to get a lot more ink these days so I feel it is time for me to release a little something I originally put notes together on across a few evenings a couple years ago and refined over more than a few evenings over the past couple months – a guide on a little something I call “The Agile Marketing Method.”

In this guide, I give marketers insight into how they can apply one software development method – Agile – to their marketing projects. I explain a little bit about the history of software development methodologies that led to the creation of Agile, the principles of Agile, as well as how marketers can use some of Agile’s principles and processes to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of their marketing efforts.

Read The Agile Marketing Method.

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Combatting Content Lengthiness: Why I Take My 15-Minute Walks

If you work with me, you’ve probably noticed that I disappear for 15 minutes a couple times a day. Sometimes I am just taking a break and stretching my legs, but most of the time, I am out giving one of my content pieces a length test.

We all know that content is king when it comes to marketing these days, but I also feel that much too often, I find myself nodding off due to the length of some of the pieces that find their way to my inbox.

It is my belief that 15 minutes is long enough for us content marketers to clearly and concisely get our point across, no matter what our message might be. If it takes our audience longer than 15 minutes to read and understand a piece of content, it is either too long, covers too many topics, or is just too plain wordy.

Hence, you can find me a couple times a day, out on a 15-minute walk with a piece content in my hand, ensuring that my reading doesn’t outlast my walking.

My goal is to make sure that I can read the piece completely and thoroughly and understand each word in the time it takes to walk my 15-minute-long route. But if by chance, I am back from my walk and find myself still reading, it is a clear signal that I either need to do some serious editing or break the piece down into smaller chunks.

Not that you need instructions on how to walk, but if you’re thinking of following in my footsteps to give your own content pieces a length test, here’s what I did:

First, I timed myself on a walk near the office that not only provides quiet, but is also safe enough to traverse while really only partly paying attention to the actual act of walking.

I found a mostly level route with some cover for those too-sunny or too-rainy days, though I will readily admit you will see me out there with an umbrella on rainy days because as they say in the marketing biz, the content must go on.

I also made sure my route did not cross any stoplights or intersections that cause me to stop and wait because that would throw off my time and impact my results.

Once I had my route planned and timed, confirming it was 15 minutes from start to finish, I printed out my piece of content, grabbed my pen and went on my first length-test walk. I have repeated as necessary for many months now.

If you are thinking of giving my length-test method a try, please do. You can choose to review your piece electronically, pick a route with no cover at all, or modify my guide as you wish, as long as you ensure that your route is exactly 15 minutes and that you are done reading your piece by the time your walk is done.

Just think, if every content creator out there adheres to this inexpensive, easy-to-set-up, easily repeatable length test, all of the content in our inboxes will be so much better! 

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