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

"...How That CAN Work For Me."

You’re reading the latest article by your favorite life coach, business coach, or some other expert. You believe this person has the expertise in a subject you want to learn more about. You plug through the intro and are feeling great about what you are reading. Either you already know this person knows their stuff, or you’re coming to know that fact quickly as you read.

Then, it happens. You’ve finished reading the part in the piece that provides the instructions you should follow and it’s time for you to take action and implement the expert’s advice in your own life. You trust the person knows what they are talking about and you know their method has worked for them, but as soon as that guru tells you to try the same exact thing, your mind instantly drifts to “Well, that worked for you, but there is no way that will work for me.”

It’s hard not to think that someone’s advice based on his or her own experience with the subject will never work for you, so you are not alone. Especially if you have tried similar things in the past, but did not achieve the promised results. And while you’ll soon see that I make this statement with tongue in cheek, I am here to tell you that you are 100% correct! In most cases, the same exact thing this expert did WILL NOT work out exactly the same for you. That is because you are a different person (each of us is unique, right?) and your circumstances, while possibly similar, are not exactly the same as their circumstances.

That being said, the point of this piece is not to discourage you by telling you that you are right in thinking someone’s exact advice will not work exactly the same way for you, but to tell you that you can still heed the advice, but first, must modify that advice just enough so that it becomes practical for your own personal scenario. Don’t just throw your hands up in the air and say “Well, that will never work for me!” but instead, pause for a moment and say, “Let me see how that CAN work for me!”

The shortest route from point A to point B is a straight line, and while that may be true, when you are driving, the route that takes the least amount of time from point A to point B can change based on the driver, the type of car they are driving, their personal driving style (and speed at which they are comfortable driving), traffic patterns at that time of day as well as the influence on the route by other drivers, such as the impact caused by an accident. And just like driving from point A to point B, you should keep in mind there is more than one way to get where you need to go in life, and the shortest amount of time to traverse life’s journey can boil down to the individual making the trek.

So, instead of immediately stomping your feet and saying there is no way the route that person took will ever work for you, keep an open mind, observe, contemplate, and then apply what you already know about the subject and yourself. Factor all of this together with the knowledge their exact route to success will not work exactly the same for you, but then apply their advice to your own situation, again by thinking, “Let me see how that CAN work for me.”

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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?” 

Photo by Karolina via Pexels

Why You Should Develop Department-Specific Recruiting Content For Your Website

As the job market hopefully continues to recover, it is imperative each enterprise do all it can to attract the best talent. One of the ways this can be accomplished is through a top-notch careers page on your website.

A careers page populated with the right content shows candidates your company offers a great work environment, fantastic benefits, and above all, a fun culture that fosters innovation and advancement. Testimonials from employees, a strong list of benefits, and pictures of company events can all be very impressive to the right candidates – especially the ones you are really hoping to bring onboard before they accept a competing offer.

If you have the means to create them, videos of employees talking about your company’s culture and videos of past company events like holiday parties or company outings can help seal the deal with the best candidates. But, I bet I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know, and hopefully, have already implemented.

So, how do you set your company’s career page apart if everyone already knows to include all of the items I’ve discussed above? I have a pretty simple solution, though it is going to take collaboration between H.R., Marketing and some of your other departments as well as the expenditure of some resources – both human and capital. But, in the end, I feel you will be really glad you took this extra step.

I say it’s time for businesses to stop having just a single careers page and single recruiting video that acts as a catchall for every candidate. It’s time to start developing recruiting content specific for different areas of the business. It’s time for enterprises to not only have an overview page in their careers section, but a careers page for every one of their major departments such as sales, marketing, product development, etc.

Let me explain the benefit of these specialized careers pages through an example. Your candidate is a seasoned marketing veteran and she’s decided this time around, she is going to take however long it takes to find the perfect opportunity. She goes to your site and sees the generic company video that has the CEO and the CFO talking about how great the place is and all the benefits of working there. She sees the product demo video that explains what you sell. She reads a little about the culture and a little about the executives. You feel your careers page stands out because it even has some pictures and videos from a couple of last year’s employee-focused events.

Then, she goes to your main competitor’s site and in their Careers section, she finds links to department-specific pages like Marketing Careers, Sales Careers, Developer Careers and Finance Careers. She clicks on Marketing Careers and there she finds a video of the CMO talking about the overall marketing strategy and vision, and what it is like working in their fast-paced, highly-appreciated marketing department where the CEO is still closely involved in the company’s day-to-day marketing operations. She reads testimonials from Marketing Managers, Graphic Designers and even a Marketing Coordinator, all touting the company’s innovative work and fabulous culture, and explaining how much they love working in your competitor’s marketing department.

When it comes time to accept an offer letter, which company do you think this industry-leading marketing veteran is going to choose? The company that threw up a general careers page, or the company that took the time to explain to her what it is going to be like working and thriving in their marketing department?

I know it might seem like some extra work and you might be at a point where you are trying hard to reduce costs, but the enterprises that really want to attract top talent are going to need to put forth that extra effort and expenditure when it comes to building out the careers section of their website.

Photo via Negative Space

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 Live Chat To Increase Conversions

I did a little research a few months back on live chat after meeting some great folks at a solid startup that is revving up to make live chat a strong part of the customer service and support experience.

Live chat can help online retailers and other businesses who are seeing great traffic numbers but low conversion rates. It offers a very personalized experience at a time when the online customer experience can be very generic. Live chat can also help your site rise above the competition and meet customers' real-time expectations.

Click here to read Using Live Chat to Increase Conversions.

Image by Dean Morris via Pixabay

Always Be Straightforward With Your Customers

We all make mistakes – nobody is perfect, right? Well, I recently read an article about a bit of a blunder from a startup I wanted to share with you, not to highlight the company’s mistake, but to share a great lesson for enterprises. This story really got me thinking about the importance of transparency and honestly when it comes to our customers.

As reported to Medium, the former customers of a cleaning service called Homejoy that had gone out of business received an email from a company called Fly Maids, stating they were Homejoy’s new “partner” service and inviting them to give their services a try. Seems harmless enough thus far, right?

Well, the invite took a turn for the worst when these former Homejoy customers visited the Fly Maids website and found their name, address and credit card information pre-loaded into the site. To make matters worse, many customers found the Fly Maids website so similar to a competing cleaning service’s site they began to think the entire thing was a huge scam and suspect their credit card information had been compromised.

Turns out that behind the scenes, one of the co-founders of Homejoy had acquired the company’s domain and customer data then founded Fly Maids to continue to service Homejoy’s customers. The problem? He decided not to tell these facts to the Homejoy customers he was prospecting as not to influence their decisions to engage Fly Maids for their cleaning services based on their previous experience with Homejoy. First off, I’m not really sure why you wouldn’t want to take advantage of a customer’s previous experience with you…unless, of course, it was a bad experience. And secondly, how could you not expect to freak someone out by pre-loading his or her credit card information to your website? And thirdly, which is a topic for another article, how scary is it that someone can purchase your credit card information from a company that has gone out of business?!

The backlash was so bad that Fly Maids has taken down their site and assured former Homejoy customers the company has deleted all of their credit card information. So, what is the lesson here? I believe this is a great lesson in transparency and honesty for enterprises.

When you are about to launch a campaign or are planning your sales and marketing strategy, be mindful if you are ever at a point where you are about to, maliciously or not, take a step in which you are going to try to keep your customers from finding out about something. If there is one thing that customers don’t want from you, it’s a surprise. If you are about to do something sneaky, think twice. As I always say, just be square with people, no matter what. Make sure that you are always the one who is above board, straightforward and never working behind the scenes. Your customers will always appreciate your honesty.