Kartra
The All In One Marketing Platform
Quality email automation software is a must-have for any small business owner. Automated email sequences help you maintain client relationships and improve conversion rates while juggling a full schedule. But not all email automation programs are equally helpful for entrepreneurs. Some software providers build their program for enterprise-level organizations, as reflected in the price tag, while others lack crucial features for effective email marketing automation. Read on to learn about the most important features your email automation software should provide for your online business.
Automated Tags, Lists, and Sequences
Integrated Opt-in Forms and Landing Pages
How does email automation software work with my website?
Email automation software integrates with website platforms such as WordPress using API integrations through plugins or third-party apps. And if you run an eCommerce store, you can also integrate email software with platforms like Woocommerce, which is particularly important for transactional email sequences. All in one marketing software allows for easier integration than email-only platforms because it consolidates the number of necessary plugins or third-party apps.
Email and SMS Communications
Two of the most important marketing automation tools are multi-step email and SMS communications that can be prescheduled and optimized for conversions. Omnichannel marketing is a powerful way to regularly engage with your clients across various devices and preferred communication methods. Some clients may enjoy the longer format of an email, while others appreciate the convenience of push notifications.
And while you may see “email automation” listed as a feature of a particular marketing automation software, make sure this functionality goes beyond a standard autoresponder. You will want an intuitive email editor for creating valuable email content, such as email newsletters, and implementing email funnels like strategic welcome series that drive conversions. Quality email automation software will accommodate static drip campaigns as well as highly personalized email sequences with dynamic content that appeals to individual audience segments.
Behavior-Based Automation
The purpose of automated email sequences is to make sure the right recipients get the right message at the right time to build brand rapport or encourage a conversion. But not every customer journey looks the same. Conditional, behavior-based automation allows you to set up email sequences that guide contacts down different paths depending on key user actions. For example, you might send an additional follow-up email to a contact who didn’t open your original email, while giving contacts who did open your email more information on the products they clicked on.
Unlimited Trigger Rules
After you’ve developed an important email sequence or strategic email funnel, you need to be able to assign as many trigger rules as are necessary to make sure your intended audience receives your messages. For example, your carefully crafted welcome email series may need to cross-apply to leads who filled out an opt-in form, downloaded a lead magnet, or bought a product. Some software programs will limit the number of triggers you can apply to a particular workflow, but it’s smart to pick a software that will allow as many entry paths as you find helpful. This functionality will save you time as you create email sequences and make edits to optimize them.
Automated Tags, Lists, and Sequences
Automated sequences start off simply, as you send a prescheduled, predesigned series of emails to a particular audience segment. But as customers and leads interact with your brand, the process becomes more complex. You will need the ability to subscribe, unsubscribe, and move leads across different lists, sequences, or tags as they progress through your email communications.
For example, a lead for an e-commerce business will eventually need to be tagged as a paying customer after they make a purchase, so they can receive important cross-sell sequences with product recommendations. Your email automation software should take the manual work out of assigning tags and moving contacts between email lists, while you rest assured the right people are receiving the right messages.
Professional Email Templates
Some marketers may enjoy designing email templates from scratch, but this process is time-consuming and frustrating for many small business owners who need to configure and implement email campaigns quickly. Email automation software that includes a user-friendly email builder will save you time and the costs of outsourcing, while guaranteeing the quality of the end result. And with drag-and-drop editors, you can easily customize the template to fit your content and brand design.
Automated Funnel Templates
Email funnels are critical components of any email marketing strategy, acting as micro sales funnels that move leads forward in the customer journey. If you’ve ever received abandoned cart reminders in your inbox, this is due to a triggered email funnel strategically designed to encourage a purchase. Email funnels should be adapted to fit your business model and your client base, and automated email funnel templates are fantastic resources for getting started. Done-for-you campaigns let you jump into the world of email marketing – adapting, optimizing, and learning as you go.
Lead Management
Every email automation software relies on contact lists that contain key information about your audience and audience segments. However, it quickly becomes complicated to get a holistic picture of where your leads are in the buyer journey if the email program has to be integrated with a third-party lead management system. Native lead management is an extremely helpful feature for making sure no one falls through the cracks. Similar to a CRM, a lead management system gives you a clear understanding of how contacts progress through the buyer journey. It also allows you to create custom tags and implement lead scoring for advanced audience segmentation.
Advanced Analytics
Similar to lead management, many email automation programs require manual or third-party integration with analytics dashboards. Reconciling user behavior data between various marketing channels is a time-consuming task likely to result in gaps in information. Email automation software with all in one marketing capabilities natively integrates real-time email analytics with other key insights – such as website engagement, purchase history, support tickets, and other data. These smart analytics allow you to make better decisions, having a clearer picture of the customer journey beyond a contact’s interaction with emails.
A/B Testing
Also known as split-testing, A/B testing is a necessary feature for optimizing email campaigns. A/B tests present two different versions of an email to equal portions of your audience, so you can observe which campaign performs better. This process allows you to identify which variables impact open rates, conversion rates, and other important indicators of campaign success.
Email automation software ensures higher-quality test results by randomly dividing your campaigns between even numbers of users, so the data is accurate and unbiased. Some email software programs restrict which email components can be split-tested, limiting you to basic elements such as subject lines. Comprehensive A/B testing that applies to any email variable will allow for higher quality test results and let you make extensive optimization decisions.
Learn more about how to run successful split tests in our guide: Email A/B Testing: What It Is, and Why Should You Do It
Integrated Opt-in Forms and Landing Pages
An intuitive page builder and form builder are uniquely helpful email marketing tools. Using pre-designed templates, these features allow business owners without coding experience to build the online assets they need to grow their contact list and urge leads to make conversion actions. And if you do have custom HTML code you’d like to use, a good landing page builder will also give you the freedom to bypass pre-designed elements.
Opt-in Forms
Opt-in forms are the lifeblood of email marketing campaigns. Embedded in lead magnets, designated landing pages, pop-ups, and other places throughout your marketing channels, these forms pair with lead generation tactics to bring new subscribers to your email list. Email automation software that natively integrates with opt-in forms gives you control over how users sign up for emails.
Instead of relaying your ideas to a web developer or trying to integrate multiple platforms, email software with native opt-in forms lets you customize, edit, and embed opt-in forms wherever you need them. You can create custom fields to get the exact information needed from subscribers, enable auto-fill for a better customer experience, and even have custom tags assigned to leads based on the information they provide in the sign-up form.
Landing Pages
Email marketing campaigns have significant cross-over with landing pages, and not just because of embedded opt-in forms that encourage new subscribers. Automated email sequences will inevitably guide readers toward other company assets – whether pricing pages, referral programs, limited-time offers, or any other important content that needs a designated landing page.
Using an email automation program with integrated landing page capabilities lets you design and optimize landing pages without paying for another software subscription or an outsourced web development team. Whether you prefer to create your landing page from scratch or work from a professionally designed template, email software with an integrated landing page builder stands to save you valuable time and money.
Why are native features important?
Every email platform has its limitations, requiring integrations to stand in the gap. Marketing solutions such as Zapier attempt to solve this problem, creating automated workflows by connecting various apps and services. But after a while, this stack of software becomes hard to manage.
It soon becomes clear that marketing automation software with extensive native capabilities will save time and money. Native features give you more control over your marketing efforts, streamline subscriptions, and reduce the need for outsourced help.
How Email Marketing Software Plans Work
To present businesses with the most relevant email automation tools for their specific marketing efforts, email marketing services usually come in a variety of paid plans with tiered pricing. These options range from a free plan or starter plan to pro plans with advanced features like unlimited contacts or unlimited emails. Make the most use of your marketing budget by taking advantage of free trials, talking with customer support, and analyzing which plans give you the features you need the most.
In addition to the major functionalities mentioned earlier, make sure the software plan you choose provides:
- Features that align well with your marketing budget
- The right number of contacts for your audience size
- The right number of email sends per month
- High deliverability to avoid spam filters
- Ease of use when designing emails, email funnels, landing pages, and forms
- Simple integration with other marketing channels and platforms, or all in one capabilities
Advantages of All in One Software
Similar to an email automation platform, a quality all in one marketing platform has all the automation features you need to run successful email campaigns. But unlike email-focused software, all in one software comes with a significant range of native features that apply to other digital marketing channels. For example, you can coordinate video marketing efforts, such as live webinars, from the same platform that allows you to send onboarding and welcome email sequences – without having to switch applications or juggle numerous integrations.
A comprehensive marketing platform reduces the number of integrations and separate applications necessary for automated workflows, ultimately saving you time and money. It costs a lot to maintain numerous software programs, each with extra automation features you don’t use, and even some that overlap with each other. An all in one platform could revolutionize your email marketing efforts, while making your overall marketing plan as efficient as possible.
What’s different about Kartra’s all in one marketing platform?
Here at Kartra, we’re confident you will find all the automated tools you need to implement a successful marketing strategy with our all in one platform. Compared with full-service marketing platforms like Hubspot, Kartra’s pricing and feature selection are better suited for the needs of business owners. But unlike email-focused platforms such as ActiveCampaign, MailerLite, or Mailchimp, Kartra allows you to streamline marketing tools, subscriptions, and integrations into one capable platform instead of adding yet another one to the stack.
Kartra’s all in one marketing software includes a full slate of powerful email automation tools.
About Kartra
This blog is brought to you by Kartra, the all-in-one online business platform that gives you every essential marketing and sales tool you need to grow your business profitably – from sales pages and product carts to membership sites, help desks, affiliate management and more. To learn how you can quickly and easily leverage Kartra to boost your bottom-line, please visit kartra.com.
Create Meaningful Audience Segments
Align Strategic Email Sequences with Each Stage of the Customer Journey
Refine Messages with Email Automation Tools
Email funnels are the bedrock of an effective email marketing strategy. These strategic automated sequences guide email subscribers through successive stages of the customer journey, adding value to their experience with your online brand and persuading them to purchase.
A good email funnel targets a specific audience segment, provides quality content that resonates with the contacts’ values and pain points, and ultimately convinces them to progress to the next stage in the buying process. Think of email funnels as mini sales funnels. Starting with the first time a lead provides their email address through an opt-in form, customer interactions with your online brand should trigger email sequences intended to ultimately result in conversion actions.
Create Meaningful Audience Segments
Audience segmentation is a crucial stage in building email marketing sales funnels. Because email funnels aim to accomplish specific goals – nurturing leads into clients, and clients into advocates – they must be tailored to fit their reader’s values, pain points, and other purchase factors. Different types of audiences experience different buyer journeys and can’t be expected to resonate with the same messaging.
By creating audience segments based on lead source, for example, business owners can build email funnels that align with specific interests. The lead magnet opt-in form, landing page, or pop-up that convinced a lead to become an email subscriber gives you an indication of their values and interests. Now your business can engage them with highly targeted email funnels without overloading other contacts with irrelevant messages. Additional audience segmentation ideas include location, job title, device type, purchase history, engagement level, and stage of the buyer journey.
Audience segments won’t perfectly divide your email list, and it takes time to discover what factors make the most sense to focus on. But it’s worth the effort to avoid one-size-fits-all email funnels – instead developing highly targeted email messages that drive up conversion rates.
Align Strategic Email Sequences with Each Stage of the Customer Journey
Email funnels are distinct from other types of company emails, functioning as mini funnels within sales funnel stages that drive conversions. The number of emails in a given funnel – and the total number of email funnels you set up – will depend on the complexity of the typical buyer journey, and the complexity of your product offerings. Small to mid-size businesses will find they don’t need nearly as many separate email funnels and email funnel triggers as larger businesses managing a vast range of different products and services.
The important thing is to clearly understand where your email funnel fits into the overall buyer journey, and to create open loops at the end of each email series that leave room for your prospect to progress to the next stage.
Email Funnels in the Awareness Stage
Awareness is a “top of the funnel” stage of the buyer journey. In other words, these contacts are the farthest away from a purchase decision – having only basic knowledge of your brand. Email funnels in the awareness stage should focus on building trust with new subscribers, providing them with valuable content. Instead of steering new leads toward a purchase decision right away, these initial funnels should guide readers toward the next intuitive step in the buyer journey, such as a free consultation.
Welcome Series
Email #1: Give lead the information they were looking for (e.g. provide the checklist offered in a lead magnet)
Email #2: Introduce your brand
Email #3: Leave an open door (e.g. let the contact know about a free demo)
For example, an email funnel in the awareness stage might be triggered by a lead magnet, such as a checklist or whitepaper download. This type of user is likely to be in the research or consideration stage of their journey, and may appreciate a welcome email followed by a series of emails with relevant content about your brand. Ending the welcome series with a helpful offer helps keep the loop open, encouraging the prospect to engage further with your brand.
Email Funnels in the Activation Stage
The activation or conversion stage of the sales process is where a lead is persuaded to take action – such as making an order or signing up for a service. Email sequences in the activation stage prompt leads to make a purchase decision. These emails could be sent at the end of a patient series of educational content, or triggered by a user action that identifies potential customers interested in purchasing.
Activation-focused email funnels include incentives to convince the hesitant buyer to become a paying customer – whether through abandoned cart reminders, upsell or cross-sell sequences, or free offerings such as a free demo or limited-time free trial.
Sales Series
Email #1: Make an offer for your product or service
Email #2: Remind contact of abandoned cart or expiring offer
Email #3: Begin post-purchase cross-sell or upsell emails
Just remember to tailor your message to your audience, giving them a call to action and sales pitch that aligns with their reason for buying. Some prospects will be motivated by financial incentives like discounted pricing, while others may need social proof such as case studies, testimonials, or customer reviews to be persuaded of the benefits of your product or service.
Email Funnels in the Retention Stage
The goal of email marketing is not just to prompt specific purchases, but to build a loyal customer base. This means email funnels apply to every stage of the buyer journey, even after a lead becomes a customer. Retention email sequences focus on adding value to existing customers’ experiences through thank-you messages, onboarding emails, product tips, surveys, or other types of informative email content.
Retention email funnels also encourage future conversion actions, prompting customers to purchase again. Product-led businesses, such as eCommerce companies, can use email campaigns to cross-sell products based on what items a customer purchased in the past. Upsell sequences are key email marketing campaigns for SaaS companies, showing customers the value in premium subscriptions. And if you have customers whose brand engagement has declined, evidenced by a lapsed subscription or a drop in open rates, incorporate re-engagement emails that periodically follow up and prompt a new purchase.
Cross-Sell or Upsell Series
Email #1: Thank customer for recent purchase
Email #2: Recommend related product (cross-sell) or upgrade (upsell)
Email #3: Make an offer (e.g. a limited-time discount or free trial)
While it’s easy to focus on obtaining new customers, email funnels that focus on client retention are important for creating a positive brand experience. Retention funnels can even drive down business expenses because it typically costs a business more to acquire customers than it does to keep them.
Learn more in our guide to Upselling vs Cross-Selling: How to Choose the Best Tactic in Your Digital Marketing
Email Funnels in the Referral Stage
The final stage of a sales cycle isn’t simply about retaining a client’s business, but encouraging brand advocacy. Email marketing funnels in the referral stage might offer referral incentives, remind about referral programs, or simply encourage clients to share their experience with their network. Test a variety of referral marketing strategies to determine how to best convince your customers to become brand advocates.
Referral Request Series
Email #1: Inform customer of referral incentive and referral process
Email #2: Remind contact of referral offer
Email #3: Provide promised incentive and thank client after successful referral
Refine Messages with Email Automation Tools
Email marketing automation tools save business owners a significant amount of time, but they also allow for more highly personalized email funnels that are backed by user behavior metrics. Automated tagging, unlimited trigger rules, and A/B testing are three of the most important functionalities that email automation software offers for developing highly targeted email messages.
Automated Tags and Lists
Many audience segments are fluid – contacts in your email list don’t always stay in the same client category. For example, a contact initially tagged as a lead would become a client after they make a purchase and should no longer receive email sequences intended for hesitant prospects. Manually adjusting audience tags would be an incredibly time-consuming task, but a quality email software can automatically assign tags, moving contacts between email lists based on key actions.
Unlimited Trigger Rules
Not every email funnel needs a separate trigger action. In fact, dividing email funnels too sharply between categories of users may result in contact lists too short to be effective. Email marketing software can send the same email sequence to leads based on a variety of possible trigger actions. For example, you may have multiple lead magnets with different content that attract users in a similar buying stage. Assigning multiple triggers to an email sequence means you can create the emails once, and cross-apply the sequence wherever it fits.
A/B Testing
The most successful email funnels for your business will be ones you have tested to perfection – and ones you are willing to adapt to align with changes in your target audience and brand. A/B testing, or split-testing, is one of the most important email marketing tools for email funnel optimization.
You can A/B test nearly every element of an email funnel as long as the sample size is statistically significant, you test one variable at a time, and you have a clear goal in mind – such as improving conversions or click-through rates. Use A/B tests to optimize the number of emails in a sequence, the most effective CTA, the most appealing template design, and any other factor you have reason to believe has an impact on campaign performance.
Business owners need quality email automation software to build effective email funnels that convert leads. Learn what other features your email marketing platform should offer!
About Kartra
This blog is brought to you by Kartra, the all-in-one online business platform that gives you every essential marketing and sales tool you need to grow your business profitably – from sales pages and product carts to membership sites, help desks, affiliate management and more. To learn how you can quickly and easily leverage Kartra to boost your bottom-line, please visit kartra.com.
A/B testing — also called split testing — compares two different variations of the same marketing campaign to see which version is the most successful. Unlike multivariate testing, split tests only compare one variable at a time. A/B tests are indispensable for the data-driven marketer, allowing you to make decisions based on real-time user behavior. Read on for seven A/B testing examples — as well as information on how to run an A/B test and how to use split testing effectively!
A/B Testing Examples
Split testing is a straightforward process that can be used in any number of marketing efforts. These are some of the most common applications for A/B tests that almost any business owner or marketer can employ with the campaigns they are already running!
#1: Email Marketing
Your email list is an owned asset and one of the most regularly used marketing channels in every type of industry. Many companies have established email campaigns with a long history of helpful data analytics and plenty of content to work with.
Any type of email campaign can be A/B tested, including newsletters, announcements, promotions, and lead nurturing sequences. Examples of email elements to A/B test include:
- Email subject line
- Preview text
- Send time
- Send frequency
- Design and images
- Call to action
- Email length
It may be overwhelming to see just how many variables can be A/B tested. Prioritize your list based on the most meaningful elements of your email campaign and focus your efforts on those.
Want to know more about how to A/B test an email? Find details in our guide on split testing email campaigns.
#2: Landing Pages
Your website is one of your most important sales and marketing channels because it’s the primary means of getting in front of online customers. Buyers in the digital age expect to be able to search for your company and learn all they need to know even before contacting you.
Web pages such as your homepage, checkout page, or services pages are crucial for getting the attention of website visitors and moving them forward in your sales funnel. A/B testing helps you discover which messages and design elements resonate most with your target audience, allowing you to optimize conversion rates and keep customers engaged with your online brand. Consider A/B testing elements like the following:
- Header
- Page length
- Visual design
- Navigation
- Call to action
- Testimonials
Tip: If you’re stuck figuring out which parts of your website are worth testing, use heatmap software to identify which sections get the most (or least) interest.
#3: Paid Advertisements
Pay-per-click (PPC) ads on social media or search engines can drive up lead acquisition costs if they are not optimized to perform as efficiently as possible. Split testing helps businesses zero in on exactly the right message and ad placement to bring in qualified leads. There are a wide variety of ad elements that can be tested and refined, such as:
- Ad copy
- Ad landing page
- Audience segments
- Keyword match types (search ads)
- Campaign goals
- Time of day
- Call to action
#4: Social Media Posts
If your business has a substantial social media following, it may be a smart idea to A/B test aspects of your organic posts. Developing high-quality social media content takes significant time and effort, and you want to be sure all that hard work is giving you the best results possible. Here are some ideas for what to split test on your social media posts:
- Posting schedule
- Brand tone
- Design elements
- Images or videos
- Content length
- Preview text
- Call to action
Remember — A/B tests are not multivariate tests. Split tests are only accurate when you test one variable at a time. For example, if you’re testing two images, don’t change the caption, call to action, or any other element of the posts besides the images. Otherwise, you won’t know which change made the difference!
#5: Lead Capture Forms
A lead capture form is essential for every online sales funnel. But it’s not just a practical necessity for getting contact information — it’s also part of your lead generation strategy. To effectively grow your email list, lead capture forms need to be persuasive, easy to use, and tailored to the right audience. Here are a few variables of lead capture forms that may benefit from A/B tests:
- Call to action
- Form design
- Placement on website
- Placement on page
- Form fields
#6: Pricing Display
Pricing is an important part of brand perception. The way you present the cost of your products or services needs to be both informative and persuasive. Consider how you can use A/B tests to improve your pricing page and more powerfully convey the value of your offering. Many elements of your pricing display could be tested, including:
- Page design
- Calls to action
- Use of testimonials
- Cost breakdown (annual vs. monthly)
- Discount display (percentage vs. dollar amount)
- Recommended plans (for tiered pricing)
#7: Checkout Flow
The checkout process is an important touchpoint in the customer journey. If it’s confusing or difficult to purchase from your brand, potential customers may move on to a competitor. And even if your checkout flow creates a great customer experience, you may not be leveraging it to your advantage. Here are some ideas for checkout improvements that can be split tested:
- Upsell or cross-sell offers
- Last-minute downsells
- Discounts or giveaways
- Shopping cart design
- Call to action
How Do You Run an A/B Test?
A/B tests are like scientific experiments, with data-driven results that are easily compromised by human error. These are the six guidelines we recommend to obtain usable test results.
Develop a Hypothesis
If you don’t lay the proper groundwork for your A/B test, you might end up with two campaigns that perform differently, but you don’t know what’s driving the divergence or how to interpret the results.
The only way A/B testing works is if you start with a hypothesis — a theory that changing a particular variable (such as a CTA button) will improve a particular outcome (increased clicks). The best A/B tests are built on researched hypotheses with clear goals that have a measurable impact on your marketing plan.
Select a Measurable Goal
The difference between a true split test and a mere comparison is having a specific, measurable goal for your test. Choosing a measurable goal requires working with an existing campaign and having access to metrics that track the results. Key performance indicators (KPIs) of an A/B test might include:
- Higher conversion rates
- Increased open rates
- Click-through rate improvement
- Additional landing page traffic
- Lower bounce rates
Carefully Design the Control and Test Campaigns
An A/B test consists of a control campaign and a test campaign. The control campaign is your existing piece — it shouldn’t be changed in any way. The test campaign is the new version containing one experimental variable and no other changes.
Be careful to conduct your control and test campaigns in the exact same way except for the element being tested. Incorporating too many changes is a common A/B testing mistake that will compromise your results. You won’t know which modifications are affecting campaign performance!
Set a Strategic Timeline
A/B tests are run simultaneously to achieve the most accurate results. Email, website, and advertising platforms – for example – make it simple to deliver the two different versions to equal portions of your audience. But be careful that your test doesn’t overlap with a holiday, busy season, or any other time that could skew the results, unless those distinct time frames are part of your test.
How long to run your test depends on what length of time allows you to detect true behavior patterns. This number will vary by campaign. A statistically significant timeline is one that gives you enough data to draw accurate conclusions.
For example, an advertisement may need to run for a week or more before you start comparing results — while a once-a-month email newsletter may only need 48 hours before you can detect differences between your new campaign and baseline engagement. Observe campaign histories to understand how long it usually takes your audience to interact with content, then you’ll know when to assess results.
Statistical Significance in A/B Tests
Statistical significance in A/B testing means you can prove a direct link between the change that you made and improved campaign performance. Human error or chance are major factors in any user behavior experiment, and your test will need to draw conclusions only from the results you can confidently trace back to a specific variable.
Experiment with a Meaningful Sample Size
To achieve statistically significant results, your campaign must have enough engagement that the test results are indicative of true patterns in user behavior. If your sample size is too small, you won’t know if performance differences are due to your variant or to chance. The larger your sample size is, the more meaningful the changes in performance metrics become.
A good rule of thumb for email marketing is to wait until your list reaches at least 1,000 subscribers before testing changes. A lower number may not give you an accurate picture of your target audience.
You’ll also need to consider the quantity of data you’re working with beyond the size of the audience. For example, if you are testing a website page for the purpose of conversion rate optimization (CRO), keep in mind both the number of visitors to your website as well as current conversion rates. If the landing page isn’t optimized to convert traffic, you won’t have enough existing conversion data to make an A/B test worthwhile. The page might need an overhaul to align with its purpose before benefitting from A/B tests.
Avoid These Common A/B Testing Mistakes
A/B tests only give meaningful insights when they’re carried out with precision and forethought. Of course, not every test will give you positive results. Sometimes a hypothesis just isn’t true, or a variable isn’t as impactful as you thought it was. That’s just a part of the process!
However, there are a few A/B testing mistakes that will definitely skew the results. Steer clear of these common errors, and you’ll help ensure that your A/B testing efforts pay off.
- Testing too many variables at once
- Basing conclusions on a small sample size
- Testing during an off-cycle
- Not having a clear hypothesis
- Testing incomplete campaigns
- Running one-off tests
How Do You Use A/B Testing?
At the most basic level, A/B tests determine the superior version of a given marketing campaign by experimenting with changes to content or design. Split tests can compare seemingly minuscule elements of a marketing piece, such as a CTA button color, or larger variables such as the right time of day to send company emails.
Additionally, A/B test results can influence product positioning and other high-level components of your brand strategy when used correctly. Follow the principles below to get the most out of your A/B tests.
1. Conduct A/B Tests Regularly
For A/B tests to reveal deeper insights about your audience and company strategy, you’ll have to run tests consistently. Being “data-driven” is an ongoing process where businesses continually identify areas of improvement, test hypotheses, and optimize campaigns based on user behavior.
One-off tests may help to solve specific problems for a short period of time, but testing won’t be a driving force behind your marketing strategy until it is part of your regular data-gathering efforts. It’s also important to remember that A/B test results are finite. Testing does not lead to one-and-done solutions, since markets and customer needs shift over time.
2. Cross-Apply A/B Test Results Within Your Strategy
Rather than thinking of A/B testing in a vacuum, maximize the benefits of your findings by cross-applying results. Consider how test insights can help you hone your marketing strategy and improve other marketing campaigns.
For example, a business might discover through a series of A/B tests that email subject lines with a casual tone have a higher open rate than subject lines with their usual, formal tone. While this is a helpful insight for future email marketing campaigns, it also says something about this company’s audience. The business might benefit from a more approachable brand voice across the board, not just in emails. Now they have a new hypothesis to test!
A/B Testing Requires High-Quality Automation
Marketing software makes data-driven testing accessible to business owners and ensures far more accurate results than manual tests ever could. Automated A/B tests randomly divide your campaigns between even numbers of users so the data is accurate and unbiased.
Split testing is so integral to digital marketing efforts that you’re likely to see this feature in most marketing tools. Email marketing platforms and landing page software let brands run automated tests on their assets, and many digital advertising platforms include native A/B testing tools.
Kartra is the Best Software for Data-Driven Marketing
Kartra’s all-in-one marketing software makes the A/B testing process even more effective by consolidating marketing tools into one platform:
- Email marketing software
- Landing page and form builder
- Automated sales funnels
- Shopping cart software
- Cross-channel marketing analytics
With an all-in-one tool like Kartra, you could run tests on website pages by adjusting no-code templates — no need to coordinate with a web designer. And you’ll get access to data analytics from all of your marketing channels in one place. Having a birds’ eye view of the user experience means you won’t need to cross-apply data between independent dashboards. An all-in-one platform saves time and the cost of multiple subscriptions — and it gives you more control over your marketing strategy!
Kartra’s all in one marketing software has everything you need to run powerful A/B tests
About Kartra
This blog is brought to you by Kartra, the all-in-one online business platform that gives you every essential marketing and sales tool you need to grow your business profitably – from sales pages and product carts to membership sites, help desks, affiliate management and more. To learn how you can quickly and easily leverage Kartra to boost your bottom-line, please visit kartra.com.
Value Consistency and Frequency
Identify the Most Effective User Behavior Triggers
Create Strategic Audience Segments
Tailor Your Message to Specific Audiences
A/B Test Email Variants
Integrate Email with Your Broader Marketing Strategy
Automated emails include series of emails planned out in a timed sequence, as well as one-off, interruptive communications like new product announcements. Both types of email campaigns help to build your brand, keeping your audience engaged with your products and services without taking you away from daily responsibilities. To see results from automated email marketing, you will need to develop valuable content that matters to your audience and build trust by staying consistent.
Email Sequences & Your Sales Funnel
Email sequences need to correspond with strategic points along your sales funnel to be effective. Determining what messages, offers, and content will resonate with your contact given their stage in the buyer journey – and having a clear purpose for each email – will help you develop a successful email campaign.
For example, email sequences that intend to move someone from an acquired lead to an activated customer may focus on first-time buyer deals or educational content that builds trust. Automated emails geared toward client retention will feature more personalized messages, such as tips on how to use a previously purchased product or service.
Value Consistency and Frequency, Not Perfection
One of the basic features of any email marketing software is scheduling – the ability to plan exactly when a contact receives an email, down to the minute. The precision of this feature is helpful, but it’s easy to get lost in the weeds of finding the perfect moment. It’s much more beneficial for your brand to focus on consistent, substantive communication with your audience – building customer relationships by valuing frequency over perfection. Sporadic email communications will likely have a net-zero impact, and can even be detrimental to list-building by driving up unsubscribe rates.
Plan Blocks of Content
A major way to improve email consistency is through planning out the year in blocks. Schedule email communications in advance to prevent overloading subscribers during certain times of the year and then scrambling to create content during quieter seasons. Having a bird’s eye view of email communications will also give you a better picture of customers’ experiences, allowing you to create a more holistic email marketing strategy.
Start with Core Sequences
Start by automating core sequences that ensure no contacts fall through the cracks. These standard communications could include emails such as:
- Welcome emails for new subscribers
- Onboarding sequences for new customers
- Abandoned cart emails to encourage purchases
- Purchase confirmation emails and feedback requests
- Educational lead nurturing sequences sent to potential customers
- Follow-up emails to re-engage customers with lapsed subscriptions
Also known as “drip campaigns,” regular automated emails are an effective way to stay top-of-mind and remind your audience why they value your product or service. Once you establish core email marketing campaigns, you can then choose when to vary the content your subscribers receive to maintain their interest over time. For example, send promotional emails with limited-time offers such as discount codes or reduced pricing, or run seasonal campaigns that correspond with relevant holidays or events.
Identify the Most Effective User Behavior Triggers
Automated emails are most often triggered by specific actions users take on your website. But not every action warrants a triggered email, so you will need to be careful that your audience isn’t getting repeat emails or an overwhelming number of messages. As you experiment with email automation, narrow down the actions that warrant additional correspondence. Track open rates, unsubscribe rates, number of clicks, and other relevant KPIs to identify the most effective triggers.
Create Strategic Audience Segments
Most businesses already have an email list, even if they haven’t implemented email automation yet. This list may come from an email sign-up form on your website, or simply be compiled from years of doing business with a variety of contacts. Existing email lists allow businesses to get started right away with email automation, and it’s important to create audience segments first.
Tag Contacts Throughout the Customer Journey
Dividing your audience into smaller groups based on meaningful, shared characteristics helps you reach the right people with the right message. You can’t rely on one message to resonate with every audience member in the same way. Email automation software makes segmentation easy, automatically tagging contacts based on certain criteria (such as location or purchase history) and allowing you to create manual tags as needed.
Keep in mind that your contacts may lose or gain tags as they progress in the customer journey. Audience segmentation can’t perfectly divide your contacts into distinct groups, but it allows for significantly better personalization than a master mailing list that doesn’t account for the many different types of contacts who interact with your business.
Tailor Your Message to Specific Audiences
Once your contact list is divided into relevant segments, be sure to adapt the messages you send to these different audiences. Each email sequence should be crafted to resonate with your audience’s specific values, pain points, purchase patterns, and other factors that influence how someone engages with your brand.
Automate Workflows to Create Messages Your Subscribers Value
For example, the best emails for a personal trainer to send to their new clients will be very different depending on what services those clients signed up for and why they purchased. One person may be looking for community and accountability as they develop healthy habits, while another person is training for a particular sport or event. These individuals will likely value very different offers, educational information, training tips, and so on. The more your email messages are tailored to the audience receiving them, the more likely it is your subscribers will value hearing from your business on a regular basis.
Product-led businesses in particular, such as eCommerce companies, can take advantage of automated workflows to upsell and cross sell products as they detect patterns in purchase behaviors across different audiences. Instead of relying on assumptions, businesses using automated email marketing tools have access to real-time customer analytics that are able to refine the messages which resonate with specific audiences.
A/B Test Email Variants to Improve on Your Success
Testing plays a significant role in developing successful automated email sequences. Most email automation software comes with native A/B testing tools, allowing you to present different versions of your email campaign to equal portions of your audience – so you can see which version performs better and optimize future campaigns for higher conversion rates. Split tests are a straightforward method for continually making improvements to your email campaigns while learning key insights about your audience.
Just remember to run A/B tests when your sample size is large enough to detect patterns in user behavior (usually around 1,000 email subscribers), and only test one variable at a time. Running tests with multiple changes will muddle the results as you won’t be sure which change made a difference.
Want more details on A/B testing emails? Read our guide to Email A/B Testing: What It Is, and Why Should You Do It
Integrate Email Marketing with Your Broader Marketing Strategy
Successful email marketing doesn’t happen in a vacuum, isolated from your marketing strategy and other marketing efforts. The messages customers receive from you should be part of a holistic marketing strategy that continually presents your target audience with a compelling, cohesive message about your brand. Email automation tools make consistent email correspondence possible for small business owners by automating audience segmentation, A/B testing, and even providing templates.
But keep in mind that email automation software requires integration with landing pages, lead magnets, lead management software, and other key components of your marketing plan. All in one marketing software removes the need for coordination between many separate applications, consolidating email and other marketing channels in the same platform.
It’s easy to lose sight of your overall marketing plan when the information you need is scattered between multiple applications. All in one marketing software takes email marketing to the next level, simplifying internal processes and helping you send your audience a powerful, consistent message from the first email they open.
About Kartra
This blog is brought to you by Kartra, the all-in-one online business platform that gives you every essential marketing and sales tool you need to grow your business profitably – from sales pages and product carts to membership sites, help desks, affiliate management and more. To learn how you can quickly and easily leverage Kartra to boost your bottom-line, please visit kartra.com.
A strong sales pipeline that consistently generates leads is the foundational building block of business growth. Lead generation marketing is designed to kindle awareness of your brand and acquire contacts for you to nurture through a strategic sales funnel into paying clients.
The core components of a lead acquisition strategy are:
- Top-of-funnel content
- Gated content or offers to capture contact information
- Email nurturing sequences
- Advertising and retargeting
Check out these ideas to kickstart your growth marketing funnel.
Share Your Industry Expertise through Quality Content
There is no replacement for high-quality expert content in a digital marketing strategy. While some companies may feel hesitant to give away industry knowledge, being generous with your experience builds interest and trust with potential clients before they are even in the market for your product or service. Publishing high-quality content that reflects your expertise is an organic way to gain leads, differentiate from competitors, and get on your future clients’ shortlist.
Map out your ideal customer’s research and purchasing journey, then develop content for every stage of the process.
Developing the perfect content to generate interest in your brand will take time and testing, but here are a few specific ideas to help get you started:
Product Guides
Example of an in-depth product comparison guide on Benjamin Moore Paint
Product guides are a content type uniquely geared toward readers who are in the research stage of the buying process. They can take several different forms, including in-depth product reviews, product comparisons, and product recommendation roundups.
A product review provides information that is far more specific than a services page or product description. This content piece builds trust with your potential buyer and persuades them that your product is the right fit for exactly what they need. Product guides need to be written from an expert point of view, demonstrating your authority on the subject matter and offering an original perspective.
Example of a product roundup guide on tree climbing harnesses
A product comparison is a type of product guide that contrasts multiple options, differentiating your company from a competitor or directing your reader to the right choice among your products. When writing a product comparison, establish clear evaluation criteria, choosing the factors that matter most to your audience and comparing the product options fairly. Infographics are particularly helpful in this endeavor, giving readers a visual side-by-side comparison that is easy to skim and easy to remember.
How to Get the Best Results from Content SEO
Nearly half of all product searches begin on Google. This means that content search engine optimization (SEO) is a vital method for capturing your audience’s attention by showing up in search results for relevant queries. Content that’s been strategically optimized for search engines draws new traffic to your website by giving searchers helpful information that is also relevant to your company.
Content SEO is a long-term strategy for lead generation, as it requires consistency and high-value content to prove to search engines that your content is worth ranking – especially if your business has not published content in the past. It also requires a data-backed keyword strategy that targets the right topics and addresses them thoroughly. Businesses will likely find it most profitable to enlist the help of an SEO expert. SEO professionals implement long-term plans and also take care of technical tasks to improve website health behind the scenes.
Educational Videos
Video is a form of content that consumers increasingly use in their research and purchasing decisions. Videos can capture interest in search results, social media, or email marketing. Or, start conversations around your brand as your website users and social media followers engage with your industry insights. Share industry tips or announcements in short clips, or record a longer video educating your potential leads on a relevant topic.
Industry Newsletters
As your website traffic and social media followers grow, it’s essential to provide opportunities for visitors to join an email list. Newsletters are one simple but effective way to capture leads who find value in your content.
Brainstorm industry news, tips, or announcements your potential customers care about – and begin developing content that informs and helps them on a regular basis.If you’re not sure where to start, survey your current clients to gain a better understanding of their interests, questions, and pain points relevant to the solution you provide in your industry. Customer insights can also provide direction on content that will convince website visitors to opt-in to a newsletter – whether or not they’re ready to purchase from you yet.
Be sure to periodically promote your newsletter online through your social media accounts and encourage readers to share content they find helpful with their network.
Use Lead Magnets to Build Your Customer List
Each piece of content your company develops – landing pages, emails, videos – should all align with a strategic sales funnel that moves your leads from general interest in your company toward a purchase decision. Lead magnets are the lifeblood of lead generation strategies, because they help bridge an important gap in this process – the gap between brand awareness and lead acquisition.
Successful lead magnets transition website visitors to qualified leads by trading helpful resources in return for helpful contact information. Here are three high-converting types of lead magnets to get you started:
Webinars & Video Courses
Webinars (online seminars) are an increasingly popular B2B lead generation tool. Webinars give potential clients high-value information in an accessible, online format that doesn’t require travel or a significant time commitment. Live seminars are particularly effective at attracting an engaged audience, and marketers can test a variety of seminar formats to see what best fits the subject matter and the interests of their viewers.
Boss Babe Influencer Masterclass: https://go.bossbabe.com/influencermasterclass
Webinar formats to choose from include: a speaker presenting from a slide deck, an expert interview, a product demonstration, or a panel discussion featuring industry leaders.
eBooks or Whitepapers
Downloadable content – such as a free eBook or a whitepaper – helps build your contact list by giving leads an immediate resource in exchange for basic information such as their email and job title. These long-form content types are ideal for B2B professionals to thoroughly develop niche topics that would be difficult to address in a blog post or even a seminar.
Grant Cardone “Real Estate Wealth” Free eBook: https://cardonecapital.com/free/
With website and form templates, sign-up fields for an eBook or whitepaper can easily be embedded into key landing pages.
Free Trials or Samples
Consider offering deals that let your audience test your product or service in return for the contact information you need to run follow-up sequences for higher value sales. Product-led businesses can gain leads through free sample sign-ups, while SaaS and service-led businesses can offer free trials or demos in exchange for key contact information and other important details about their leads.
BQE Free Trial/Free Demo: https://info.bqe.com/freetrial; https://www.bqe.com/request-demo
Free offerings are effective lead magnets due to the monetary incentive, as well as a sense of urgency for limited-time deals. Experiment with the timing and placement of this lead magnet to find what gives you the highest lead conversion rates. You might embed a sign-up form on your pricing page, or try incorporating a pop-up during product demos. Once you have your leads’ contact information, consider how you can improve their experience with the free offering through helpful lead nurturing sequences before asking them to buy.
Read our guide on Creating & Promoting High-Converting Lead Magnets for more details and ideas
Run Targeted Ads Optimized for Lead Capture
Ads can be extremely helpful for businesses who need new leads quickly and have the budget to pay for them. PPC (pay-per-click) ads like Google Ads or LinkedIn Ads are particularly popular for getting your company noticed in search results and on relevant websites like YouTube or social media platforms. To keep your customer acquisition costs reasonable, your ad campaign will need to be both highly targeted and optimized for lead generation.
Audience Targeting
Effective lead generation ads need to be tailored to a specific audience so they accomplish more than general brand awareness. For each ad campaign, narrow your audience to the people most likely to benefit from the specific offer based on what you know about your current client base, and use A/B testing to adapt your ad copy based on what drives the best results. Retargeting tools even let you strategically place ads in front of people who have already interacted with your brand online.
It’s tempting to want your ad to appear to as many people as possible, but be careful to not advertise too generally. A broad approach to advertising quickly drives up costs – wasting budget on low-quality leads and watering down your message by trying to appeal to too many people at once.
Landing Page Optimization
To optimize your ad for lead capture, you will need to funnel your target audience toward a landing page with a clear purpose and CTA (call to action) that moves them forward in your sales funnel. A general ad that directs users toward a homepage or broad services page can turn into an expensive campaign that doesn’t translate into leads or new customers.
One of the most important principles to keep in mind when optimizing a landing page is to give your users exactly what they expect from your ad copy so your website visitors don’t feel misled or tricked into engaging with your ad. If ads are geared toward a particular service your company offers, customize a landing page that goes in-depth on that specific service instead of directing users toward a homepage or a purchase page.
Your landing page also needs to feature a clear next step you want your user to accomplish – and one that corresponds to their stage in the buying process. An ad landing page geared toward lead generation shouldn’t expect the user to be ready to buy just yet. Build trust on your landing page by featuring social proof such as testimonials or case studies, and funnel your user toward a lead magnet that will keep them interacting with your brand.
Don’t Bank Everything on Paid Ads
Ads are an appealing lead generation tool because they give companies a level of control over lead generation – investing a designated amount of money to receive a predictable number of potential clients. However, you will need to pair your ads with a quality website and diversified marketing tactics to avoid becoming overly reliant on an asset that you do not own. Advertising platforms are owned by third parties that can come and go in popularity and the marketplace of advertising means your ad success will always be influenced by competitors and their ad budgets.
Partner with Influencers to Gain Traction on Social Media
Influencer marketing refers to paying an individual with a significant social following to promote your product or service. This strategy could involve a collaboration, guest posting, sponsored content, or other methods that associate your brand with the influencer’s lifestyle. This lead gen tactic helps businesses reach the extensive networks built by influencers as well as specific audiences that they may have been struggling to resonate with before.
As with all advertising methods, marketers need to establish a clear goal for their influencer marketing campaign: Should people use a limited-time discount code? Sign up for a helpful resource? Order a free sample? The more specific your goal, the better you can track your lead generation campaign’s success. And you’ll build a list of high-quality leads instead of driving general brand awareness.
Be selective with your choice of influencer to make sure your company sends the right message to the right people. Because influencer marketing is a very personal form of promotion – it aligns your brand with another individual’s reputation and lifestyle – businesses will need to be careful to choose an influencer with compatible values. Unlike a true word-of-mouth campaign that runs on referrals, influencer marketing is a paid promotion, but it should still be as authentic as possible. Viewers want to know that there is a real alignment of values and interests between the brand and the influencer.
Promote Your Brand Through a Network of Affiliates
Labor costs make up a significant portion of any business’s budget, and small businesses in particular may not find it feasible to hire a sales department to do full-time cold calling and outreach. Affiliate marketing solves this problem by essentially providing companies with a commission-based sales team only compensated for the leads they successfully bring in for your brand. With the right affiliate management software, small businesses or startups can easily hire, manage, and pay brand affiliates – without needing to hire full-time sales personnel.
Test Lead Generation Tactics with Kartra’s All in One Software
Unlike conventional marketing tactics that rely heavily on assumptions about your industry and your audience, growth marketing is built on data. The most successful lead generation strategies for your business will be discovered through testing and adaptation. This can be a painstaking and expensive process if marketers have to coordinate numerous third-party vendors or software programs to make changes to their lead generation process.
All in one marketing software simplifies lead generation by integrating website pages, email automation, lead management, and other marketing tools into the same platform. Marketers or business owners stand to benefit greatly from quickly and affordably testing lead generation tactics to find what works best.
Kartra’s all in one marketing software has the marketing tools and data integration you need to grow your list of high-quality leads.
About Kartra
This blog is brought to you by Kartra, the all-in-one online business platform that gives you every essential marketing and sales tool you need to grow your business profitably – from sales pages and product carts to membership sites, help desks, affiliate management and more. To learn how you can quickly and easily leverage Kartra to boost your bottom-line, please visit kartra.com.
Contents:
Just Ask! (Using These Tips & Templates)
Time Your Referral Requests Right
Build Regular Referral Opportunities
Disrupt Standard Communications
Incentivize Clients with Financial Compensation
Evaluate Earlier Funnel Stages
Referrals are the lifeblood of many small businesses, especially when they first start out. In the early stages, word-of-mouth marketing can even happen naturally as clients are satisfied with the products or services they purchase from you. But as a business grows, it becomes necessary to implement a thorough referral marketing strategy in order to see consistent traffic and sales from referrals.
Use the following ten referral marketing strategies to build your customer base and optimize sales funnels for long-term client satisfaction.
Just Ask! (Using These Tips & Templates)
It is natural for business owners and marketing teams to feel uncomfortable asking for referrals because it can feel like an added burden on your clients. This instinct is helpful when considering the right timing and message for referral requests. However, businesses easily forget that loyal, satisfied clients are often happy to leverage their network for someone they trust or a brand that has helped them. Sometimes you just need to ask – and likely more than once.
Depending on the industry, your existing customers may not even be aware that you are accepting new clients. Or clients may not realize how much you stand to gain from their advocacy. Referral requests can help to personalize your company and remind clients of the hardworking people behind your brand.
Here are some tips and templates to help you begin.
Start with the Most Loyal Clients
Clients with a high lifetime value, long-standing accounts, or positive testimonials will be the most likely to enthusiastically recommend your company to others. Tailor your referral request around your history with these high-quality clients, whether that means referencing years of partnership with them or thanking them for a recent review.
Here is an email template you can start with when interacting with loyal customers:
Requesting a Referral from a Loyal Client
Hi [Name],
We are so thankful for your continued loyalty to [name of company], and are glad our [insert name of service] has been a help to you.
Would you be willing to connect us with someone in your network who would also benefit from [type of service]? We would love to meet more like-minded people to see if we could be a valuable partner for them as well.
[call to action]
Thank you for considering!
Ask the Right Person on the Team
Once you identify your happiest and most valuable customers to ask for referrals, make sure you select the right contact on their team for your request. Consider who you have interacted with the most, so you can choose the person who will be able to most accurately and enthusiastically describe your business to their network. Also take into consideration your contact’s level of influence and ability to speak with someone who is likely to have relevant connections within their industry.
Customize the Referral Request
You don’t need a long-standing relationship with a client to personalize your referral request. Setting up email sequences triggered by user actions (such as a purchase) is one way to customize a referral request to align with a client’s stage in the customer journey.
Here is an email template to use when asking a new customer for a referral:
Requesting a Referral from a New Client
Hi [Name],
Thank you for your recent purchase of [name of product/service]. We appreciate your business!
Recommendations from our happy customers are the #1 way our business grows. If you have friends or family who would benefit from [name of product/service] too, please send them our way!
[call to action]
Time the Referral Requests for Optimal Engagement
One reason businesses are hesitant to ask for referrals is that they fear being perceived by their clients as bothersome or desperate. This concern is largely avoided by timing your referral requests well.
Sending constant emails asking for referrals is a quick way to frustrate your clients who may have otherwise been happy to refer your business when convenient for them. On the other hand, if you wait too long after a purchase to ask for a referral, clients may be too far removed from their experience to feel motivated to promote your brand. Test variations in frequency to discover the perfect balance that will motivate your clients without overwhelming them.
You will also need to test which stages in the buyer journey result in the most positive engagement and the best referrals. Examples of when to send a referral request to a client include: post-purchase, after leaving a positive review, upon reaching a certain account age, after upgrading a subscription, or even after changing jobs. Avoid sending referral requests soon after negative customer experiences, such as a recently closed customer support ticket.
Be sure to take into consideration any knowledge you have about your client’s schedule or personal life. For example, a realtor may need to wait until their client is happily settled into their home before asking them for a referral. Referral requests that coincide with other life events, such as holidays and vacations, are also likely to get lost in the shuffle. For the best results, pick a time when you know your client won’t be buried in other tasks.
Build Regular Referral Opportunities into Your Sales Funnel
Don’t treat referral requests as an after-thought in your sales cycle. Instead, incorporate plenty of natural referral opportunities into the buyer journey. This is helpful when you want to frequently – but respectfully – remind your clients about referrals without overloading them with separate requests.
For example, referral requests can be built into purchase pages, purchase confirmation emails, surveys, newsletters, and even email signatures – all regular company communications that your clients expect to receive anyway.
Disrupt Standard Company Communications for Quick Boosts
While ongoing referral reminders are a great way to incorporate referrals into the life of your business, don’t forget the power of disrupting usual communications to boost referral numbers. If clients are only exposed to the same types of referral requests as they interact with your brand, they may become immune to your request.
Break out of automated sequences by sending highly personalized emails from a company leader to a key client, making personal phone calls, adding pop-ups to key website pages, or creating limited-time incentives. You can also take this opportunity to get creative and incorporate humor or engaging content types (such as video) to connect with your target audience. These tactics interrupt regular communications and draw extra attention to referrals.
Incentivize Clients with Financial Compensation
Businesses often incentivize their clients to bring in referrals by offering monetary compensation. This is a way of respecting clients’ time and effort so that they feel appreciated and motivating them with tangible rewards.
Note that referral marketing differs from affiliate marketing, even though both programs involve financial compensation. Referral marketing ultimately relies on customer loyalty, while affiliate programs involve paid influencers or hired third-party promoters.
The extent of compensation your company offers for referrals will depend on what makes financial and structural sense for your business and may change as the company grows.
Structured Referral Programs
Consider using a customer referral program to incorporate word-of-mouth traffic and regular financial compensation into your business model. This strategy can include regular discounts (as opposed to a limited-time referral incentive), tiered pricing that corresponds to a number of successful referrals, or paying your client a percentage of the deal they helped you to close if it is a significant referral.
Remember that a referral marketing program should offer incentives that align with clients’ needs. The compensation needs to make it worth your clients’ time to go through with referrals, and make it clear you value their efforts. This requires testing different types of reward programs to confirm what resonates with your audience.
Limited-Time Financial Incentives
An established referral program may not make sense for small businesses and start-ups. These companies can build up to a more robust program with limited-time or limited-use offers.
For example, many ecommerce or retail companies use social media to run promotions that encourage brand followers to tag the company page in their personal posts in return for a giveaway entry. This is a low-cost way to motivate your network to promote your brand in return for free products. Limited-use coupons and one-time discounts based on a referred customer’s first purchase are additional ways to provide referral incentives without high costs.
These limited referral rewards don’t just apply to industries that sell physical products. Saas companies or service-led businesses might offer free upgrades or adjusted pricing to current customers who successfully bring in referred clients.
Create Shareable Content That Encourages Organic Brand Advocacy
Word-of-mouth referrals are not limited to structured programs or even direct conversations between your customers and their network. Businesses stand to gain significant brand exposure through online discussions surrounding their brand. One strategy businesses can employ to gain referrals is creating content designed for social sharing.
For this strategy, focus on content that contributes to the conversations happening in your industry and community. This encourages interactions outside of your immediate network. Types of content could include relevant industry newsletters that are easily forwarded or short educational videos shared on social media.
Remember that your clients are trying to build their own networks. It’s a win-win to create content that educates or entertains both your customers and their connections.
Network to Build Genuine Relationships
The emotional and relational nature of referral marketing requires genuine personal connection to build trust. Referral marketing works because people trust their colleagues, friends, or family members’ opinions, and in turn refer others because they form a personal connection to a brand.
Investing in personal relationships is a crucial strategy for finding brand advocates and expanding your network. Not only does it give your clients a better customer experience, but it also opens the door to honest conversations about how your connections can help you.
To network successfully, company leaders need to move beyond conversations centered around sales, instead getting to know the people in their industry and community – whether they become clients or not. This requires taking a genuine interest in others’ well being and adding value to their lives apart from the product or service you sell. Growth marketing strategies take the long view of what it means to succeed as a company, and referral marketing is no exception.
Digital marketing channels like social media have opened a new world of online networking – particularly through professional sites like LinkedIn. But don’t forget that old-school methods like in-person meetings, phone calls, and events are still valuable channels for demonstrating your willingness to give of your time and resources to help others.
Evaluate Earlier Funnel Stages to Identify Gaps in Your Referral Strategy
Referrals require an active marketing strategy and are not just a passive result from satisfied customers. However, a referral marketing strategy will always be difficult to achieve if earlier stages of the customer journey are not optimized for client satisfaction. Every stage of the growth marketing funnel is interdependent, so it is important to remember that referral marketing cannot be implemented in a vacuum.
Pay close attention to each funnel stage and its success alongside your referral strategy. This will help ensure your referral process is not compromised by issues with customer satisfaction or acquisition.
Retention
A lack of referrals could be due to a breakdown between customer activation and customer retention. In other words, low client satisfaction or market misalignment is resulting in low retention rates – and few long-term clients who are willing to make referrals.
Need ideas for improving your customer retention rate? Read our guide on retention strategies for your growth marketing plan.
Acquisition
Another funnel stage closely tied to referral marketing is the brand awareness and customer acquisition stage. If conversion rates are low, you might be getting referrals, but the potential customers look into your company without being convinced to take action.
Nurture Sequences
A customer may not be able or willing to refer you to their network when asked, but they can still be a valuable contact in the future. Perhaps a willing customer’s influence is limited due to their current position within their company, or a client is hesitant to go through with a referral because they lack experience with your product or service. These factors make it crucial to keep in touch with clients over long periods of time.
Email marketing tools such as automated sequences are crucial for keeping tabs on current and past clients. Try sending regular newsletters, or scheduling communications that check in on subscribers periodically to see how they are doing and if your product or services are helping them. Use nurture sequences to make sure no one falls through the cracks, and you might end up with more brand advocates than you thought you had.
Use All in One Software to Get the Best ROI from Referral Marketing
For referral marketing to be profitable, companies will need access to quality data and the ability to integrate their marketing efforts under a consistent growth marketing strategy. All in one marketing software gives marketing teams the ability to set up automated sequences, A/B test messaging and timing, create website landing pages, and develop other necessary components of a referral marketing strategy – without having to pay for individual software subscriptions.
All in one marketing software also helps to integrate data across marketing channels for better decision making. Use data to identify happy customers who will be the best candidates for referral requests and to track the results of experiments and initiatives. A holistic data-gathering process helps to ensure you build successful referral programs and referral marketing campaigns that give you best ROI from your efforts.
About Kartra
This blog is brought to you by Kartra, the all-in-one online business platform that gives you every essential marketing and sales tool you need to grow your business profitably – from sales pages and product carts to membership sites, help desks, affiliate management and more. To learn how you can quickly and easily leverage Kartra to boost your bottom-line, please visit kartra.com.
Hello and welcome to an exciting new chapter for lawyers—growth marketing!
Are you a lawyer who’s been practicing for a while and you want to know how the internet can multiply your practice’s success? This guide was made just for you.
Let’s explore why growth marketing could be a game-changer for your practice.
What Is Growth Marketing?
So, what exactly is growth marketing? It’s different from regular marketing because it looks at the bigger picture. Imagine you’re trying to get people to visit your lemonade stand.
Regular marketing is like putting up a sign saying, “Fresh Lemonade Here!” Growth marketing is like also handing out loyalty cards and collecting emails so people come back with their friends.
See the difference?
Regular marketing is about making a quick sale. Growth marketing aims to build long-lasting relationships with your clients.
Why Lawyers Should Try Growth Marketing
For law practices like yours, growth marketing can be really helpful. It allows you to build trust and keep clients for a long time. There are many online tools to help you, like Kartra, an all-in-one marketing platform. It helps you stay connected with your clients in a personalized way while saving you a lot of time.
What Makes Your Practice Special?
Before we talk about digital tools, let’s think about why people should choose you instead of another lawyer. Maybe you have tons of experience or offer free first meetings. That’s your special advantage or “value proposition.”
Growth marketing tools can help you share your value proposition through online ads, blogs, or emails.
Who Are Your Clients?
Before you start marketing online, it’s important to know who your clients are. For example, a small business owner and a family looking for estate planning need different things. Growth marketing shines at targeting different groups and making your messages more personalized and effective.
Benefits Of An All-In-One Marketing Platform
An all-in-one marketing platform like Kartra makes growth marketing easier for busy lawyers, by offering many tools in one place. Here are just a few:
Email Marketing
Automated emails save you time and keep clients up to date.
Benefits:
- Set it up once and it runs by itself.
- Send useful emails that help turn potential clients into clients.
- Keep your clients in the loop and engaged.
Webinars
Webinars are online seminars where you can share your expertise.
Benefits:
- Record it once and use it for different people.
- Quickly show that you know your stuff, which can get clients faster.
- Help your current clients understand complicated legal stuff.
Done-For-You Funnels & Campaigns
These ready-to-use assets will help you guide visitors to become clients.
Benefits:
- Easy-to-use templates.
- Quickly turn visitors into clients.
- Keep providing helpful information at every step.
Kartra, the all-in-one marketing platform, helps lawyers like you make the most of your time by streamlining your online practice. This way, you can get new clients and offer better service more efficiently.
Track Your Success
One great thing about growth marketing is that you can easily track how well you’re doing with tools like Kartra. This means you can fine-tune your strategies to get the best results.
Why Growth Marketing Is a Must for Lawyers
The world is changing and so should your practice. Growth marketing focuses on long-term relationships and is driven by useful data. It could be the key to growing your practice to new heights.
About Kartra
This blog is brought to you by Kartra, the all-in-one online business platform that gives you every essential marketing and sales tool you need to grow your business profitably – from sales pages and product carts to membership sites, help desks, affiliate management and more. To learn how you can quickly and easily leverage Kartra to boost your bottom-line, please visit kartra.com.
Table of Contents
Streamline Purchases with a Buyer-Centric Website
Increase Landing Page Conversion Rates with Meaningful Calls to Action
Demonstrate Tangible Brand Value with Targeted Giveaways
Time Your Automated Sequences to Optimize for Conversions
Use Customer Insights for Persuasive Messaging
Customize your Message with Retargeting Campaigns
Integrate Your Marketing Channels for Better Conversion Data
If you’re pursuing a growth marketing strategy, you are playing the long game — building trust with your audience and truly working to meet their needs. But now that your lead generation strategies have brought you an interested audience, you need to “activate” those prospects to become loyal customers. Activation is the a-ha moment in the sales cycle where your leads connect the dots between their needs and your products or services — and they take action.
These seven lead conversion strategies are a starting point to help you hone in on the tactics and messaging that resonate best with your audience. Test and adapt them to create a frictionless process that activates your prospects to become new customers.
Streamline Conversions with a Buyer-Centric Website
Many buyers today expect to be able to conduct their own research on products and services without having to contact a business directly, so easy online access to relevant information (such as pricing or services pages) is an important part of purchasing decisions. You’ve done a lot of work to get potential customers to your website. But if they can’t quickly find the information they need to know before purchasing or signing up, you risk losing them out of frustration.
Pay close attention to the questions your customers ask in support tickets or over the phone, so you can resolve any points of confusion for the next visitor who comes to your site. You can also use heatmaps to observe users’ behavior patterns. This data provides the details you need to remove points of friction and streamline the conversion process as much as possible.
Increase Landing Page Conversion Rates with Meaningful Calls to Action
Optimize your website for conversions with clear, easy-to-follow action steps that encourage prospective customers to move forward in the sales process. Once your website visitors have all the information they need to purchase, they should be provided with a clear call to action that corresponds to their need. If this action step is hard to find or unclear, the added friction can easily lower lead conversion rates.
For example, many companies make the mistake of featuring too many different calls to action, or presenting vague next steps. For example, “Contact Us” is a popular CTA choice, but its broad language lacks persuasiveness and clarity. Try narrowing down next steps to the precise action you want your leads to take on each landing page: Should they book an appointment with your sales rep? Sign up for a free consultation? Register for a membership?
Ultimately, there are no right or wrong CTAs. The best choices will be the ones you have tested and adapted based on user behavior and high quality conversions.
Demonstrate Tangible Brand Value with Freebies
Potential clients may have a hard time envisioning your brand’s value if they don’t have a way of experiencing your products or services before committing to a purchase. Free samples are a practical way of introducing your interested leads to the product or service you know they’ll love once they try it.
Sampling isn’t limited to physical products, either. SaaS companies can offer software demos, service-based businesses can offer free consultations, and membership sites may offer free trials to encourage leads to purchase.
Take advantage of marketing tools that track conversions to measure the ROI on each initiative and ensure you’re investing resources in the leads who are most likely to convert. For example, audience segmentation allows you to target specific prospects based on user behavior or customized tags, while A/B testing can help you narrow down the right time to offer a free sample and the best message for convincing your lead to try it out.
Transitioning your business to a growth marketing approach? Visit our guide on 8 Foundational Strategies to Establish Your Growth Marketing Machine for more ideas!
Time Your Automated Sequences to Optimize for Conversions
Timing is one of the most common obstacles keeping leads from becoming customers. You may have nailed your message and perfected your customer profile, but you also need to make sure your customer activation campaigns are timed for conversion rate optimization.
Overly-frequent communications might make recipients feel bombarded. On the other hand, they may be confused about a sales pitch they receive long after they last interacted with your brand.
You should also be testing which event triggers catch your leads at the best time in the buying process to drive conversions. Does an abandoned-cart sequence perform higher than an upsell sequence? Offers that create a sense of urgency, like limited enrollment periods or last-minute deals, are particularly time-sensitive and need to capture your audience’s attention right when they need the additional incentive.
Use Customer Insights for Persuasive Messaging
Pay close attention to the language your customers use to describe their pain points as well as how your products or services help them. Support tickets, client interviews, and surveys of existing customers can be gold mines for finding the right language to convert leads. You may find that this information challenges your assumptions about who your audience is and what they find valuable about your brand.
Incorporate customer insights into your brand messaging through the language you use in your brand copy and the testimonials you choose to feature. And remember that these values will likely change over time as your business grows, so build regular customer feedback loops into your customer activation strategy.
Customize your Message with Retargeting Campaigns
What convinces one type of lead to convert may not work for another. To improve conversion rates, run retargeting campaigns with messaging geared toward distinct groups of leads. For example, segmenting email marketing subscribers based on past engagement lets you send curated follow-up content based on their specific interests and behaviors.
You will need to test different user segments to determine which factors influence conversion rates enough to benefit from customized messaging. These could include user behavior, lead source, and even device type.
Highly customized follow-up communications are great conversion opportunities because you can speak more specifically to your prospects’ needs rather than relying on a broad message to reach users who are in varying stages of the buyer journey.
Integrate Your Marketing Channels for Better Conversion Data
Every stage of a growth marketing plan is data-driven, but it’s particularly easy to see why data matters so much to successful customer activation. Activation focuses on what moves your audience from interested-but-undecided to eager-to-buy. This requires a clear picture of the non-linear buyer journey and sophisticated analysis.
For example, a lead may hear about your company thanks to a customer referral. Your services sound like the right fit for them, so they visit your website. Then they happily subscribe to your newsletter so they can get helpful information from you. Finally, they book an appointment after receiving relevant content that addresses their pain points. What caused the conversion? It’s hard to say, if you don’t have the whole picture.
Conventional marketing tactics rely on standard conversion metrics, such as purchases made from a promotional email or sales that occurred after users clicked on an ad. Businesses are encouraged to focus on these metrics for decision-making and invest in the channels with the most immediate performance. These numbers don’t tell the whole story, however, because they isolate the value of each independently-operated marketing channel.
All-in-one marketing software integrates marketing efforts into one platform so marketing teams can better observe how each channel, campaign, and message impacts the business’s long term conversions and growth plan.
About Kartra
This blog is brought to you by Kartra, the all-in-one online business platform that gives you every essential marketing and sales tool you need to grow your business profitably – from sales pages and product carts to membership sites, help desks, affiliate management and more. To learn how you can quickly and easily leverage Kartra to boost your bottom-line, please visit kartra.com.
Table of Contents:
Set Marketing Objectives Based on Customer Retention Data
Educate Your Client Base to Add Value to Their Experience
Use Entertaining Content to Boost Brand Engagement
Personalize Follow-Up Messages to Stay Top Of Mind
Create Customer Loyalty Programs that Reward Longevity
Use Technology to Facilitate Quality Customer Support
Use Customer Feedback to Refine Your Product
Create a Holistic Customer Experience with an All-In-One Marketing Platform
Conventional marketing strategies place significant emphasis on acquiring new customers, but buyer-centric growth marketing demands equal attention to customer retention. Long-term customers drive sustained revenue and accelerate company growth through referrals, valuable feedback, and repeat purchases. Your customer retention rate also indicates whether your marketing strategy truly resonates with your audience and adapts to their needs.
You know retention is important, so how do you go above and beyond to gain traction compared with your competitors? Businesses who prioritize retention need to build actionable data streams and long-term customer relationships. Read on to learn about specific retention marketing tactics for keeping customers happy.
Set Marketing Objectives Based on Customer Retention Data
A data-driven growth marketing strategy requires consistent assessment of customer satisfaction metrics over time. Prior to launching retention marketing campaigns, businesses should measure two foundational metrics: Customer Lifetime Value (“CLV” or “LTV”) and churn rate.
- Expressed as a dollar amount, CLV is a calculation of the total revenue a customer brings to your business over the lifespan of their relationship with it. Comparing your CLV to the cost of acquisition will help you understand the profitability of each new client and the ROI you can expect from client retention marketing. Customer acquisition costs are usually higher than the costs of marketing to existing customers. Retention marketing strategies can help increase CLV.
- Churn rate is a measure of the percentage of customers who choose to leave your business within a certain time frame (e.g. quarterly, annually, etc.). A low churn rate means you have a high customer retention rate. Calculating and understanding your churn rate is essential to defining your retention strategy.
Your CLV and churn rate provide baseline figures you can use to set concrete retention goals and establish priorities for specific customer retention strategies.
Calculating CLV & Churn Rate
CUSTOMER LIFETIME VALUE
Value of Purchase x Purchase Frequency x Customer Lifespan = ($$)
Example:
$100 x 3x per year x 2 years = $600 CLV
CHURN RATE
Lost Customers (during a specific time frame) ÷ Total Customers (at the start of the time frame) x 100 = (%)
Example:
10 customers lost in 2022 ÷ 100 customers in January 2022 x 100 = 10% churn rate in 2022
Keep in mind that revenue from repeat purchases is only the beginning of the value you get from a high customer retention rate. A loyal customer base will naturally drive brand awareness and referral traffic through word-of-mouth promotion. Purchase frequency doesn’t necessarily reveal how much total growth comes from a happy customer!
Educate Your Client Base to Add Value to Their Experience
Expand your company’s communication beyond content that is obviously intended to drive sales. Educational content reminds customers why your company is worth buying from – without directly asking them to purchase.
Consider creating newsletters, videos, social media posts, or webinars that highlight how your brand meets their needs. Also use this content to increase customer awareness of additional features or products that your business offers, indirectly encouraging them to buy from you again.
Use Entertaining Content to Boost Brand Engagement
Incorporating well-placed humor or other entertainment value in your company messaging can go a long way in building an emotional connection with your audience and boosting customer engagement. Consider ways you can relate to your customers, speak to their experiences, and remind them of the real people behind your brand.
Email campaigns and social media posts offer opportunities to interact with your customers less formally. Conventional marketing models treat clients in a far more transactional way than growth marketing, which encourages businesses to build a loyal following. That could mean breaking the mold in your industry and finding creative ways to entertain your audience!
Personalize Follow-Up Messages to Stay Top Of Mind
Improve client satisfaction and keep your brand top of mind by sending highly personalized followup messages, such as thank-you’s, surveys, or additional resources. These low-pressure communications tell your clients you care about their experience – not just their purchase. For example, a follow-up email sequence triggered by a purchase could include tips for how to use the product or a survey asking if the customer is satisfied with their purchase.
Automated marketing tools give today’s marketers the ability to segment users based on their behavior and send highly customized content that resonates with their needs and values.
Create Customer Loyalty Programs that Reward Longevity
Many companies provide onboarding incentives and offer deals to first-time buyers. While these are effective means for obtaining clients, consider how you can reduce your customer churn rate and drive revenue by rewarding existing clients.
Prove to your clients that you value their ongoing loyalty, not just their first purchase. Points-per-purchase, referral programs, exclusive memberships, and discounts on related services are popular ways to incentivize clients to consistently buy from you instead of a competitor. Be creative within your niche to develop incentives that fit your business model.
Use Technology to Facilitate Quality Customer Support
At some point, your customers will inevitably run into problems with your products, services, or user interface. Make it easy for them to reach your support team and find answers to their questions. Quality customer support leaves a long-lasting impression in the minds of your customers, who have likely had many negative experiences with other businesses’ long wait times or ineffective solutions to their problems.
Implementing support ticketing systems, for example, lets clients submit support requests after-hours and gives you the ability to efficiently view and manage all open requests so no one is left waiting.
Your retention marketing strategy needs to include ways to proactively anticipate potential hurdles and develop effective means for helping customers resolve their questions.
Use Customer Feedback to Refine Your Product
Customer feedback is an indispensable way to use the feedback loop to improve your product and your processes. Ratings, surveys, and interviews are helpful information- gathering methods. Hearing from your customers serves a dual purpose.
First, it provides unique customer insights that wouldn’t show up in website or email metrics. This data will develop a more holistic picture of your audience that should inform your marketing efforts at every level from acquisition to retention. Use this valuable customer data to understand what products or services resonate with your audience and why. The more you tailor your products to your audience, the better you can establish your business as an indispensable part of their lives.
Secondly, giving your customers genuine opportunities to share their thoughts (and see results from it) improves customer satisfaction by proving you care about their experiences. Customer feedback systems build brand loyalty and encourage future customer engagement once your clients see that their opinions matter.
Transitioning your business to a growth marketing approach? Visit our guide on 8 Foundational Strategies to Establish Your Growth Marketing Machine
Create a Holistic Customer Experience with an All-In-One Marketing Platform
Growth marketing requires you to think holistically about your marketing efforts, and retention marketing is an important component of your plan. The specific retention tactics you choose must be integrated into a long-term strategy that begins with client onboarding and extends to long after your customers become loyal brand advocates.
An all-in-one marketing solution makes this possible by integrating fragmented marketing operations into one platform, so nothing falls through the cracks. Businesses who use all-in-one marketing software can easily manage key parts of a customer’s experience—payment pages, support ticketing systems, automated sequences—and then analyze user behavior from a consolidated analytics dashboard.
About Kartra
This blog is brought to you by Kartra, the all-in-one online business platform that gives you every essential marketing and sales tool you need to grow your business profitably – from sales pages and product carts to membership sites, help desks, affiliate management and more. To learn how you can quickly and easily leverage Kartra to boost your bottom-line, please visit kartra.com.