Optimize your Website for Email Lead Generation: Email Marketing 101

Optimize Your Website for Email Lead Generation: Email Marketing 101

In today's digital age, email is one of the most powerful marketing tools available to businesses. It's a direct line of communication with your customers, and it can be used to build relationships, promote products and services, and drive sales.

The best emailing services or marketing automation will not help without the basics. You cannot jump ahead to the fun part without going through the weeds and setting up the important elements first.

The Website and Email Marketing Problem

It makes me sad when companies don’t utilize their websites to the fullest.  Websites are a GREAT discovery tool. But once they are discovered, there needs to be a pull or a reminder to bring prospective clients back.

That's why it's so important for everyone (but especially e-commerce directors and B2C business owners) to capture emails on their websites. By collecting email addresses, you can build a list of potential and existing customers who you can reach out to with your marketing automations and campaign messages.

Our attention spans are short (I can't be the only goldfish, right?), and as we are pulled in different directions, there needs to be something to pull us and prospective clients and customers back in.

Email Capture and Email Marketing Should Not be an Afterthought

That’s where email communication comes in.

It’s a great channel to remind your prospective buyers of what differentiates your brand and sets you apart from the noise.

Why Capturing Emails on Your Website is Important for E-commerce Directors and B2C Business Owners

In short, you don't own any of your "lists" on platforms like Meta, TikTok or Google.

That's why it's so important for e-commerce directors and B2C business owners to capture emails on their websites. By collecting email addresses, you can build a list of potential and existing customers who you can reach out to with your marketing messages.

With that said, here are just a few of the benefits of capturing emails on your website:

• Increased sales: Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to drive sales. According to a study by McKinsey & Company, email marketing can generate up to 38% of all online sales.

• Improved customer relationships: Email marketing is a great way to build relationships with your customers. You can use email to send them updates on your products and services, share exclusive content, and offer discounts and promotions.

• Better customer insights: Email marketing can give you valuable insights into your customers' interests and preferences. This information can help you improve your products and services, and target your marketing messages more effectively.

• Increased brand awareness: Email marketing can help you increase brand awareness by keeping your company top of mind with your customers. When you send out regular emails, you're reminding your customers about your brand and what you have to offer.
  
  Annnnnd… that brings me back to email capture placement.
  
  Next time you browse your own website, think about this… can your future customers easily provide their email addresses if they want to? If not, you're missing out on a valuable opportunity to grow your business
  

Where to Place Email Capture Forms on Your Website

✅ Is it in your footer?
✅ Is it inside blog posts?
✅ Is there a dedicated signup page (with a button to reach this on all pages)?
✅ How about a popup after a set amount of pages or seconds viewed?

No matter which method you choose (feel free to utilize all), make sure your email opt-in forms are clear and easy to use. There’s no need to ask for the world. Start with the email address and first name and you can always ask for more later for those that are engaged with the email communications. (Pro tip: first names help with open rates in campaigns and marketing automations).

Here are some additional tips for capturing emails on your website:

• Simple Language: Use clear and concise language in your email opt-in forms. Tell your visitors exactly what you're offering them in exchange for their email address, and make sure the form is easy to understand.

• Explain the Why: Use a strong call to action (commonly referred to as CTA). Tell your visitors why they should sign up for your email list, and make sure the call to action is clear and easy to understand.

• Always be testing (ABT): Test different email opt-in forms to see what works best for your business. There's no one-size-fits-all approach to capturing emails on your website. Experiment with different forms and see what gets the best results.

Emails are Captured, Now What? … marketing automation

Now that you have an email address…

✅ Make sure it’s pushed into an email platform.

✅ Have a welcome series with at least 3 emails and beneficial information (not just a sales pitch). You may hear some people refer to this as email or marketing automation.

✅ Send out consistent emails (after the welcome series is complete) that continues to introduce prospects to your brand and offerings.

Don’t forget, your prospects want to learn. So make it easy.

By following these tips, you can start capturing emails on your website and growing your email list. This will give you a powerful marketing tool that you can use to drive sales, build relationships, and improve your brand awareness.

How to Use Technology to Enhance Your Digital Marketing & Promotional Strategy

How to Use Technology to Enhance Your Digital Marketing & Promotional Strategy

20 years ago I was wrapping up my final semester at Muhlenberg College. My major...

Computer science. Nerd stuff (and my mom did and still does say that I'm cool)... and my friends still call me Milhouse.

I didn't really enjoy coding and certainly wasn't at the top of the class, so it was time to find something else.

Cut to, 20 years later, I'm in marketing. 21 years ago, I thought that those two fields were on opposite ends of the spectrum.

Digital Marketing & Technology

But in reality, digital marketing and tech overlap on a Venn Diagram.

Understanding systems, UI/UX (CRO), data, reporting, analytics, ad psychology, ad platforms and the overall business are different parts of the brain (but are important to bring a business from great to better).

While I cannot walk the walk in coding at higher than a "B-" level, that's good enough for a chunk of E-commerce and Internet marketing. SQL and HTML and "languages" that I can understand, but I maybe use those twice per year. A couple of the REAL helpful "technology" tools are...

API (Application programming interface) Data Integrations in Digital Marketing

✅ Zapier: Allows for data to seamlessly transfer between platforms without programmers (simply put, it's a prebuilt API). Think of capturing prospective leads in Facebook and pushing them to an email platform for nurturing.

Website Analytics & Tracking in Digital Marketing

✅ Google Tag Manager: Allows for adding snippets of code in the <head> of any website. So useful for analytic conversion events and other "add-ons". Another great use case, adding an email capture pop-up.

And when my "B-" level isn't good enough, I can talk the talk-ish with tech teams. Translating technical requirements from marketing speak to technical speak is an art form.

In short, while I wasn't thrilled with my C.S. degree, the learnings are still shining through.

Feel free to call me a nerd or Milhouse anytime.

How Should I Spend My Marketing Budget?

How Should I Spend My Marketing Budget?

While the answer can vary between industries, I think the below can be applied to the majority of businesses, especially in the B2C eCommerce and B2B space.

70%: SEO

Search engine optimization and thought leadership content for blog posts on the website, emails, and social media posts. There is a huge Venn Diagram overlap with Demand Generation here.

While SEO doesn't directly provide new interested prospects immediately, after 6-12 months, more quality prospects will find your business. With that said, having that relevant, timely content will help support other communications strategies (like email and social media)

10%: A Quality Email Marketing Platform (like Klaviyo).

Email automation and consistent campaigns that highlight thought leadership and the benefits for prospective clients will go a long way. Bonus points for lead scoring based on email and website activities. More bonus points for segmenting your audience into Hot, Warm and Cold prospects and communicating appropriately.

The goal is to own communications with your prospects and clients and not rely solely on social media platforms.

20%: Lead generation

Paid media, like Meta/Facebook, LinkedIn, Google, and TikTok will help to distribute content and acquire new prospects.

This is the faucet that introduces prospects to your brand and services.

Plus, since paid media is almost always performance-based and revenue can be tied back to costs, the profit dollars can roll in after the foundation is set up.

In closing, focus on the fundamentals first, then move on to the shiny object.

What do you think, do you agree?

Beware of the Shiny Objects: Put Marketing Strategy, Management & Analytics First

Beware of the Shiny Objects: Put Marketing Strategy, Management & Analytics First

If you have a young child, I would bet that you’ve seen Moana more than eleven times. Or maybe you’ve seen it without a tiny human because hey, it’s a quality Disney movie with a pretty good message—unlike Frozen (but I digress). I bring Moana up because one of its villains is a giant crab named Tamatoa, who is obsessed with shiny objects. And I don’t want you to be like Tamatoa.

Shiny objects are always appealing as potential quick wins. Maybe you watched or heard about Jet.com’s hugely successful launch in 2015, Dollar Shave Club’s “Our Blades Are F***ing Great” campaign, or read that Snapchat is (was) the fastest growing social media platform (in 2016). But as a decision maker as a small to medium sized business, you should turn to your marketing strategy and analytics first before spending energy to mimic these thoughtful campaigns to drive perceived quick hits. You might not need more video content, or it could be a mistake to foray into a platform that doesn’t house your audience. (If your main audience is 50+ people, Snapchat is not going to magically turn your business around.)

Marketing Strategy First, Shiny Second

Simply put, before a company leaps into a shiny tactic, it should develop its underlying strategy.

By way of example, below is the outcome from a traffic-driving campaign and how it looks within Facebook, Google Adwords and Google Analytics. First, Google Analytics was implemented to track results. Note: If there is no process or system in place to read results, revisit your strategy and make sure that the correct marketing management is in place. Second, the traffic-driving campaign was set up within Facebook and Google as a pay-per-click (PPC) effort.

The two immediate tables below highlight the results from within the specific platform analytics. While these campaigns had respectable click-through rates and relatively low cost per clicks, this is only part of the story.

Facebook Ad Analytics

Google Adwords Analytics

Google Analytics

The above table highlights “Organic Search” traffic (mostly from Google search) in orange, with “Social” and “Paid Search” in red. The “Organic Search” website traffic is typically the best performing traffic as this is the audience that is raising their hand for your product or service. The goal is for all other channels to look as close to this as possible, even if not 100% obtainable.

Using “Organic Search” as our baseline, we see two red flags in Google Analytics:

1. High Bounce Rates: Only 1 out of 10 people in this campaign are reading past the first page. Compare this to 6 out of 10 for “Organic Search.”

2. Low Goal Conversion Rates: The rate is around 0.20% for this campaign, compared to nearly 7% for “Organic Search.”

This campaign, while driving traffic to the website, is actually driving poor quality traffic that is not converting into sales or any other goals (such as email capture). This campaign, while relatively easy to implement, was set up to fail as there was no strategy or thought behind it. If there was a strategy, the right traffic would be on the website and spending more time there. Herein lies the value in taking a step back and focusing on a sound, quality strategy that outlines:

• Key Personas: Who are our ideal buyers? What is our core audience?

• The Best Way(s) to Communicate with Them: What voice do we use, and what content can we create or serve based on buyer intent?

• Measurable Goals: What are the outcomes we want to achieve, and how will we measure them?

With these elements laid out, you can:

• Better target with several tactics (not just the popular ones) and utilize those that better fit the needs of your potential clients (e.g., people 45 – 55 years old with a household income above $100K);

• Develop an ad or campaign that will catch your audiences’ attention (e.g., maybe video is better than a static ad for your target);

• Set up a proper landing page with a Call to Action (CTA) that aligns with the campaign; and lastly

• Set measurable goals (e.g., capture 30 emails during the campaign).

Marketing Analytical Elements

DBV Marketing can help every step of the way, and more details can be found on personas and targeting the correct audience here. As a resource that has guided in the marketing management process multiple times, we will outline a couple important analytical best practices to consider, using the table below as a reference.

Watch Your Website Content in Google Analytics

The website above has 19% of traffic coming from “Organic Search,” which should make up 40 – 50% of overall traffic. If you see something similar to the above in your tracking, your current website is not working the way it should. The right content will speak to your audience and bring them to your website organically. If that’s not happening, there might be a mismatch between your audience and your content.

Another content indicator is “Bounce Rate.” Based on the numbers above, 75% of people are leaving the website before clicking to another page, which means they’re not finding what they are looking for. If you see a high bounce rate, it might mean you need to create clearer calls to action or write more engaging content for our audience.

If you see numbers like the above, it can also signal an issue with your Google Analytics setup on your website and eCommerce platform.

Marketing Optimized Google Analytics Setup

Based on the table, this website only has 3 users from email in this time span, which is vastly different from what their Email Service Provider (ESP) platform suggests. Therefore, we know the ESP (e.g., Mailchimp, HubSpot, Salesforce Marketing Cloud) isn’t communicating properly with Google Analytics. This means the analytics setup needs to be revisited before pushing forward. We can’t measure the results of a campaign if there are no results in our measuring platform.

Another indicator of a poorly implemented Google Analytics instance is a high amount of “Direct” traffic, which is usually designated as traffic that inputted a URL directly into their browser or navigated via bookmark. If you’re seeing a lot of that traffic, it can mean Google Analytics is not set up properly. This is common for companies that maintain domains (e.g., company.com) and subdomains (e.g., info.company.com). If Analytics code isn’t added correctly, Google can lose visitors’ information as they move between pages. It then falsely attributes those visitors as “Direct” visits.

Marketing Strategy & Analytics Before Temptation

Small to medium sized businesses are always looking for new ways to increase revenue, but unfortunately, there’s no surefire, universal approach. Instead, it comes down to developing a unique strategy, selecting your tactics, testing and analyzing accordingly.

Company stakeholders typically put much thought into a business plan, and a marketing plan should be no different. A thoughtful marketing strategy, while slower to implement, will save companies time, effort and resources that could otherwise be lost on the shiny tactics.

In other words, don’t be Tamatoa.

Why Your Small Business Needs Marketing

Why Your Small Business Needs Marketing

“Marketing is Just an Expense”

Many of the small businesses that I have worked with are really good at what they do. They run their operation well and provide a quality product or service to their customers; and most importantly, their customers love the widget (product or service).

But having a great widget is only part of any business. Without having a strategy or a marketing management process, no one will learn about the widget.

For many small businesses, marketing is an afterthought; a foreign concept that is perceived as an expense. When done incorrectly, that’s an accurate statement and it’s a red drain on the business bank account. But when a marketing strategy comes to life and is implemented correctly, there will be a positive ROI (return on investment).

What is Marketing?

Before diving too deep into why your small business needs a resource to guide the marketing management, it will be helpful to explore the definition of marketing…

The American Marketing Association (AMA) defines Marketing as “the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.” 

In short, Marketing is communicating and distributing the value of your widget to the correct audience. Without knowing it, you may have already implemented some small business marketing efforts. Do you have a website? If yes, that’s great, but unfortunately, marketing is more than that. A marketing strategy and the tactics that help drive new and repeat business is always evolving.

Understanding your Small Business Marketing Needs

To provide some context around the benefits of small business marketing, a few questions below (that are normally addressed during the marketing strategy & audit phase within DBV Marketing’s marketing management process) are important to understand why marketing is an ROI driven benefit and more than an expense.

• Do you know your buyers’ demographics?

  • Where do they live?

  • What’s their household income?

  • What is their job title?

• Why did your buyers initially choose your product or service?

  • Are you using this reason in how you communicate your offering?

• Do you consistently communicate with your prospects and clients now?

  • Do the touch points represent the brand accurately?

  • Are you conveying the right message at the right time (i.e. are welcome emails set up)?

• Do you have enough leads (prospects) and are enough of them converting to paying customers?

• Are you happy with your revenue and bottom line? 

If you answered more “no” than “yes”, then marketing is a good investment in your small business. When marketing is implemented properly, it helps a business grown. Waiting until there is a need means that it’s too late. 

Marketing Analytics and Insights Drive Results

As a data-driven marketer, I enjoy utilizing data and insights to support decisions and direction (most of the time, Google Analytics is my tool of choice). Unfortunately, there are not many hard statistics to support the ROI benefits of a marketing investment, but I did find one. According to Neilsen, the average marketing return on a $1 investment is $1.09. Would you like to earn $0.09 for each dollar spent after COGS and related expenses? A 9% increase to the bottom line (net earnings) is certainly a return that most investors would take.  

What to Expect from your Small Business Marketing Efforts

As a seasoned marketer, it’s my duty to inform you that there is no magical marketing bullet and that results do not happen overnight. Anyone that tells you otherwise is not the right partner for you. However, by utilizing the DBV Marketing systematic approach that consists of learnings from industry best practices, competitor insights and available data from clients and other internal sources, your small business will start to realize results in few months.

And even though all industries are different, the good news is that while your small business may not have much of a budget, there are many marketing tactics that span across industries that are low or no cost. One example is utilizing the free tools that are available to anyone, such as Google My Business. This digital tool allows for increased exposure on page one of Google search rankings, while also explaining more about your widget to potential clients. There are more examples like this that apply in the digital and offline spaces.

In the end, if you have happy clients, you can grow your business. Let DBV Marketing help you realize your potential through insight driven, and ROI focused marketing.

Intro to Google Analytics for Small & Medium Sized Businesses: Part 1

Intro to Google Analytics for Small & Medium Sized Businesses: Part 1

If you are a running small or medium-sized business, I hope there is a strong correlation between your desire to succeed and your need for insights. Without data from which to gather insights, you're asking for trouble—sort of like swimming down class-5 rapid river without a helmet or a raft.

Insights help us all make more informed decisions. Think about a helpful 1-star Google review that directs us away from a potential price-gauging mechanic. Or client feedback that guides us toward making the customer experience more meaningful. Or Google Analytics findings that help us understand the need for more organic traffic.

"Wait, did you say Google Analytics? What is that?"

If you haven't dabbled in Google Analytics, I suggest setting up an account and properly placing the tag or code on your website. Today's popular website-building tools, such as WordPress and Squarespace, make integrating your site with Google Analytics very simple, even for non-technical folks. Typically, all you need is Google Analytics Tracking Id that looks like this, “UA-XXXXXXX-X”, and is found in the property settings. Then this code needs to be placed in the tracking section within the website platform (there should be more details within those platforms on the specifics).

If you know what Google Analytics is, have it set up, but have never looked at it, shame on you! (I mean that in the most respectful way possible.) As a data guy, that only hurts slightly.

But we can fix that. Let's go over what you should be viewing in Google Analytics.

Step One: Audience Overview

After logging into your account, you'll see the main menu off to the left. Click on the “Audience” category and then “Overview.”

If you see the screen below, you’ve passed the first test.

Before diving too deep into the numbers, let’s review the glossary of terms on this screen:

• User: An individual person browsing your website (or technically, a unique browser cookie). If a person is viewing your website from their browser in incognito mode, they will not be counted.

• New Users: Same as above, but the user/prospective client has never been to your website before, within a certain date range, or cleared their browser cookies and returned. It should be noted that if someone comes to your website from their phone and computer in one day, it will be counted as two new users (unless they are logged into the same Chrome account on each device).

• Sessions: Visits to your website. If a person comes to your site twice within a 30-minute period, that is one session. If they browse once at 3:00pm and again at 4:00pm, that will count as two sessions (but still one user).

• Number of Sessions per User: Math lesson… Sessions/Users

• Pageviews: The total number of pages that have been viewed

• Pages / Session: Another math lesson… Pageviews/Sessions

• Avg. Session Duration: How long users stay on your website. The last page viewed is not included, and thus, this number is usually skewed low.

• Bounce Rate: The number of sessions with a single pageview in which the user did not go on to view more.

Next, we can talk about how to use them to benefit your organization. The two numbers I review first are:

1. “Pages / Session”

2. “Bounce Rate”

Make sure that you are viewing a substantial time frame, otherwise, you may jump to a conclusion based on one bad day. If you see that people are bouncing at a high rate (i.e., your Bounce Rate is above 70%) and/or viewing less than 2 pages, something is wrong.

Best case, Google Analytics is not set up properly on each page, and you can work on fixing that setup (If you have an ecommerce store, there could be cross-domain tracking issues). Worse, if you know your setup is correct, your website is serving the wrong content or attracting the wrong audience. If it’s one of the latter two cases, DBV Marketing recommends revisiting your brand messaging and your target audience to diagnose how to speak to your prospective clients in the right voice.

Step Two: Trends Over Time

Next, I like to look at trends over time. Below are three screen caps that highlight “Users”, “New Users” and “Pages / Session” over a six-month period.

Above are “Users” over six months. Good news! The chart is trending up. If it were sloping down, a deeper analysis would be needed to understand why (which we'll review in a future post).

Above are “New Users” over a six-month period, and again, positive news here. They are increasing. If this line was moving in the other direction, I would want to understand why. (Again, we'll explore this in a future post.)

Above are “Pages / Sessions” over a six-month time frame. It may be hard to see, so I added a line to highlight the decline in “Pages / Sessions”. While the decline is not drastic, it is certainly worth exploring.

We have avenues to explore in Google Analytics, but at a business level, we'd want to know if there were website structural changes (e.g., blog posts or pages added or removed), if audience targeting changed, or if the audience source shifted. For example, when blogs are added to a website, people tend to view fewer pages, which could be a reason for such a decline. Regarding the audience source, if more users are coming from social media (and mobile devices), they will tend to bounce at a higher rate.

There are pros and cons to all of these changes, such as...

• While blog posts may have higher bounce rates, and in turn, people viewing fewer pages, they are still visiting your website and keeping your company top of mind (and they may be incremental readers to the website). The business case for a blog is to show thought leadership and help readers understand your company's overall place in the competitive landscape. Thus, while in general, you'd like more pages/sessions, the business case might be a worthwhile trade off. This is why numbers cannot always be trusted as stand-alone values and should be considered in a broader context of your strategic goals.

• Alternatively, a change in audience source, such as an increase in paid traffic from social media, could signal a real concern. Social media users are usually viewing from mobile devices, which may not be connected to Wi-Fi networks. That means page-load times are more of a factor in their behavior. (In my experience, I also find that mobile in-app browsers like Facebook's tend to load a little slower.) If the website takes too long to load on their device, then that user will bounce (leave the website). This would be more of a cause for alarm than the addition of a blog, as paying for unproductive clicks is not a good use of funds.

Step Three: Organic Search Behavior

Let's move into a slightly more advanced Google Analytics feature. The goal here is to view how “New Users” that found your site through “Organic Search” (i.e., search engine traffic) are behaving. In almost all cases, since users that find your website through organic search are looking for you, organic traffic will be the most engaged. This makes this segment a great baseline for all other segments.

First, go to the top of the page and click on “Add Segment”.

Then scroll to find “Organic Traffic” or search for it in the “Search segments” section.

After clicking “Apply”, you will see a screen as follows.

As expected, the organic search audience is behaving better than overall traffic. They view more pages and bounce at a lower rate. The cherry on top is that this segment is increasing over time (note the orange line in the chart). In this example, this company is doing something right to attract new clients organically.

Google Analytics 101: Keep Trying

Did you learn something? Are you still overwhelmed and need help deciphering what you have? If so, give us a shout, we can dig deeper together in person or on a call. After all, don’t you want a computer science major with 10+ years of marketing experience helping with your analytics?

(Artist's Interpretation of Author)

Alternatively, I'll be digging in a little more into more advanced issues with Google Analytics in future posts. If you want to keep apprised of new blog posts, then I invite you to subscribe to our email list below.