Sigstr is excited to announce our partnership and integration with Marketo this week. By integrating Sigstr’s email signature CTA banners with the Marketo Engagement Platform, every single email your employees send suddenly becomes a powerful, targeted datapoint that can inform your smart lists, lead scoring frameworks, nurture campaigns– you name it. It’s tough to overstate how powerful adding Sigstr to your existing marketing automation efforts can be, so we’ll just let Matthew McConaughey take this part of the blog post.
(that feeling when every email your employees send becomes a datapoint for your marketing automation tool)
“We are excited to have Sigstr join the Marketo Innovate partner ecosystem to support marketers’ ABM campaigns with enhanced content targeting capabilities,” said Shai Alfandary, vice president, global head of ISVs & LaunchPoint® ecosystem, Marketo. “Sigstr’s dynamic email signature campaigns open up a new method for customer acquisition through the thousands of emails employees are already sending each day. Joint customers have already seen effective engagement with customers from Sigstr signature banners in a short amount of time.”
What, exactly, can you do when you hook up Sigstr and Marketo? So glad you asked! We’ve colorfully illustrated a few of the thousands of amazing things you can do when you connect these two in Sigstr’s Guide to Marketing Automation. One of our favorite tactics is deploying progressive ABM campaigns: What’s better than intelligent account-based targeting with your email signature marketing? Aligning those signatures to every step of the target account’s customer journey. It’s easy to do when you have your email signature banners aligned with Marketo Smartlist memberships.
Beyond the horsepower Sigstr adds to your marketing automation platform, the entire Sigstr team is thankful for Marketo’s partnership. As Sigstr’s president and founder, Dan Hanrahan, recently said in an opinion piece in our local business journal, “We are building partnerships into every facet of our business strategy because we believe that being good partners and patrons in our ecosystem is a powerful and efficient growth driver – and because the right partners add tremendous value for marketers, our customer.”
Watch the video below for an overview on the Marketo + Sigstr integration.
To that end, look forward to more partnership announcements from Sigstr in 2018. Our customers are doing inspiring things with their MarTech stack and we want to make sure that Sigstr can be an integral part to all of them.
INDIANAPOLIS — Dec. 20, 2017 — Sigstr, a SaaS platform for employee email signature marketing, has joined the Marketo Innovate partner ecosystem, providing marketers with the ability to deploy dynamic email signature campaigns that integrate seamlessly with Marketo landing pages and lists, enhancing account-based marketing (ABM) efforts.
Integrating Sigstr with the Marketo Engagement Platform introduces thousands of data points to trigger campaigns. These data points intelligently interact with the rest of a marketer’s technology stack instantly. The integration makes it seamless to connect Sigstr email signature campaigns into Marketo workflows, smart lists, landing pages and email marketing templates through a new set of easy to use, “point and click” user interfaces.
“The Sigstr integration with the Marketo Engagement Platform has made it easier for G2 Crowd to target our audience with dynamic content through every stage of the funnel and customer lifecycle,” said Michele Aymold, Director of Marketing for G2 Crowd. “Through these dynamic email signature banners, we are increasing engagement with both new and existing audience groups.”
Furthermore, the integration enables marketers to track how and when contacts interact with Sigstr content, as well as automatically creates new contacts in Marketo whenever recipients click on Sigstr campaigns, creating a powerful new acquisition channel.
“We are excited to have Sigstr join the Marketo Innovate partner ecosystem to support marketers’ ABM campaigns with enhanced content targeting capabilities,” said Shai Alfandary, vice president, global head of ISVs & LaunchPoint® ecosystem, Marketo. “Sigstr’s dynamic email signature campaigns open up a new method for customer acquisition through the thousands of emails employees are already sending each day. Joint customers have already seen effective engagement with customers from Sigstr signature banners in a short amount of time.”
“Joining Marketo Innovate will enable us to better support marketers as they build their sales pipeline through targeted messaging and content,” said Sigstr’s Vice President of Marketing, Justin Keller. “Over the past year, we’ve built an impressive lineup of integrations that allow marketers using various technology stacks to harness the power of employee email personalization, and now we’re thrilled to be a part of Marketo’s robust partner ecosystem.”
Some of the most popular brands in the world today had interesting beginnings. Facebook was initially launched as “Face Mash”, a program that pitted Harvard student’s looks against one another after Mark Zuckerberg hacked the student directory. Avon originally sold books door-to-door, not beauty supplies. Oh, and Google was originally called “Backrub”.
We know the origin stories of countless brands just like these, but do we know where perhaps the most popular brand of all time during this Christmas season originated from? I’m talking about the big man himself – Santa Claus. As we enter December, the evidence around us is overwhelming; Santa Claus is no longer just a man, he’s a full-blown brand.
Santa’s History: A Long Journey of Many Different Looks
So how then, has this Santa Claus gotten a pass all these years? After all, the man asks us to take our children to the mall to sit on his lap and stick an envelope with our names and addresses on it into a completely fraudulent mailbox in the middle of downtown. Not to mention, he also lands eight tethered wild animals onto our roofs and kisses mommy under his beard so snowy white! I mean, what do we really know about this man?
For the sake of our children, and just in case that whole “naughty and nice” list is a real thing, I thought I would dive into the history of Jolly Old St. Nick to put all of our minds at ease. However, this is not just going to be any boring history lesson. Instead, I am going to journey into the evolution of Santa Claus the brand. That way, we can all see the genesis of the man all the way up to his current form splattered on everything from M&M commercials to the label on your neighbor’s seasonal basement microbrew.
We’ll have some fun along the way, and imagine what Santa’s email signature might have looked like through each phase. After all, the email signature is an extension (and possibly the most popular touchpoint) of any brand, right?
280 A.D: “Saint Nicholas: A Start-Up NFP”
Multiple sources agree that the origin of the Santa Claus we revere today traces back to a saint named Nicholas in an area near modern-day Turkey. The brand was founded on the ideal of philanthropy as Saint Nicholas was believed to be a man of substantial wealth who helped poor women.
What this stage of the brand lacked in visuals and design, it more than made up for in organic marketing through word-of-mouth referrals as Saint Nicholas was one of the most popular saints in all of Europe. I like to refer to this marketing as “Jay-Z and Beyonce’s Twins” marketing: I’ve never seen them, but I know I like them.
Early 1800’s: “Global Rebrand: Sinter Klaas”
The 1800’s contain the first vestiges of the Santa Claus brand going global and breaking out of Europe and into the United States. Under the name Sinter Klaas (a shortened version of the Dutch form of Saint Nicholas), the Santa Claus brand we know today gained in popularity, but lost its consistency. Authors and playwrights started including the character in their works, but they all seemed to have varying opinions on his appearance. Everything from a large man with a red waistcoat and large brimmed hat to a fit and healthy man in a three-pointed blue hat, yellow stockings, and finally something having to do with “Flunkish hose”. Not to mention in European tradition Sinter Klaas lives in Spain (not the North Pole) and travels to the homes of children on a steam boat (not a sleigh).
This version of the brand, while successful in its international growth, failed to remain consistent as it engaged with different audiences. Especially while expanding, a brand’s strength is vitally contingent upon its uniformity, lest we have Santa Claus walking around in yellow tights.
1822: “A Unifying Message”
In 1822, American writer and professor Clement Clarke Moore penned a poem entitled, “A Visit From St. Nicholas.” In this poem, Moore solidifies tons of swirling bits and pieces of the Santa Claus brand into the firm character of which all of our present-day illustrations are based. Everything from the eight reindeer to the bag full of toys (spoiler: no mention of Flunkish hose).
Think about when Apple’s longtime agency partner, TBWA/Chiat/Day Los Angeles, created the poem/ad “The Crazy Ones” (which ended up being the canon for Apple’s iconic “Think Different” brand). Similarly, Moore’s poem would serve as the dogma to which all future branding of Santa Claus would be portrayed. You might recognize Moore’s work under its more common title in today’s world: “The Night Before Christmas.”
1931: “Santa Goes Mainstream”
Although commonly credited, we now know (from the above) that Coca-Cola’s 1931 advertising campaign featuring our jolly friend was not the solidifying moment in the Santa Claus brand. However, it was still a pivotal moment in the brand’s timeline. The Coca-Cola company commissioned Michigan-born illustrator Haddon Sundblom to create the image for Santa Claus for their ads in hopes of boosting soda sales during the holidays. If you’ve ever been to the office of a once-trendy start-up that went public and has a visual timeline plastered in their entryway, this Coca-Cola moment would be the framed picture of the executive team ringing the NYSE bell.
Although both were obviously around, neither TV nor Radio were doing a great job of advertising on a national level. However, a brand like Coca-Cola could be found in every department store and diner from coast to coast. So effectively, the thousands of Coca-Cola billboards, magazines ads, and bottles featuring Moore’s Santa Clause imprinted the image in the minds of Americans nationwide.
Modern Day: “Santa is Americana”
Today, the Santa Claus brand rivals that of Disney, Amazon, and Nike. As we approach 2018, the love affair with Santa is only going to get deeper. After all, we ride in cars with strangers with Uber, we stay in strangers homes with Airbnb, and we swipe right on stranger’s photos in hopes of getting a date through Tinder — why then should we not continue to let a stranger into our living rooms using the chimney as an entryway?
The Santa Claus brand is the preeminent example of longevity and has now achieved the ultimate prize: Much like Kleenex, BandAid, or ChapStick, it is no longer even seen as just a brand, rather it is fully ingrained into American culture.
How Has Your Company’s Brand Evolved?
Has your company’s brand changed or evolved since day one? Much like Santa, it probably has, which requires coordination and time from your Marketing team to ensure all brand touch points are up-to-date and consistent. The employee email signature is included in this mix, and that’s where we come in. We make it easy to centrally control email signatures across your entire organization, so you know each employee email sent is beautifully branded and consistent with your new look.
See how Mapp Digital and Sandbox used Sigstr to do just this. And let us know your favorite Santa Claus email signature by tweeting @SigstrApp.
♫Duuh DUUH da da da DUUH Duuh da da da DUUH Duuh dun-dun-dun-duuuuh ♫… It’s back! With tomorrow’s premiere of Star Wars: The Last Jedi, people around the world are anxiously waiting to find out what happens next in the galaxy far, far away. A film series that has endured for more than 4 decades, Star Wars is nothing less than a pop culture phenomenon… and we at Sigstr are not immune.
Sigstr’s favorite way to pay homage to popular fictional characters is by creating their hypothetical email signatures, and Star Wars is no exception. Below, we’ve highlighted the best characters from the original trilogy and latest installment. Admittedly, we totally ignored the prequels, but can you blame us? Buckle up, and prepare to get one with your inner geek!
Leia Organa
Princess Leia, the cool chick from Alderaan, embodies class, character, and charisma. What’s more is that she does so without the typical princess frills. Instead of playing the damsel in distress, Princess Leia is a smart and feisty hero who just happens to have amazing hair. What’s more is that unlike her male cohorts, she’s never been tempted by the dark side. Rest in peace, Carrie Fisher, you were a true feminist icon.
Luke Skywalker
Luke Skywalker has come a long way since his days living on a moisture farm on Tatooine. He has blown up the Deathstar, trained with Jedi Master Yoda, become a Jedi Knight, discovered his twin sister, battled Darth Vader, and most recently, vanished into thin air. No one knows what his character will do next, but it is sure to be entertaining.
Han Solo
Han Solo, the original Ladies Man, has one of the most interesting arcs in the film series. He starts out cynical, arrogant, and self-centered, but turns into someone who is loyal, dedicated, and brave. The one thing that stays consistent is his spunky personality. Without Han Solo’s comedic one liners, Star Wars just wouldn’t be the same. It should be said, however, that if someone ever tells you that she loves you, you should never reply, “I know.”
Kylo Ren
Kylo Ren is easy to hate. The fact that he aspires to be as powerful (read: evil) as his grandfather, Darth Vader, is justification in itself, but he also had the audacity to kill the beloved Han Solo. He is cruel, spiteful, and unexpectedly, unpolished. He gives in to temper tantrums and emotional swings which is unlike any Star Wars’ antagonist we’ve seen before. His story is far from finished.
Rey
Getting abandoned on a desert planet would be enough to make anyone cynical, but not Rey. Despite growing up as a scavenger on Jakku, Rey possess a heart full of generosity and a willingness to help others in need. Relying on a strong moral compass, she believes in the importance of the Resistance and its fight against the First Order. But what about her family? Although we know she is gifted with the powers of the Force, much of Rey’s past remains a mystery.
Finn
Next to Rey’s serious disposition, Finn is a welcome relief. Who knew that a former Storm Trooper could be so much fun? Although plagued by his fear of the First Order, Finn comes to the rescue time and time again. A reluctant hero, Finn can’t seem to shake his conscience, which leads to bravery in even the most harrowing of circumstances.
BB-8
BB-8’s affection for his master, Poe Dameron, might just make him the cutest Robot in the Galaxy. On top of that, BB-8 is courageous and daring enough to put his existence on the line to aid his Resistance comrades. What’s not to love about the roly-poly robot?
Darth Vader
Darth Vader may be dead, but his legacy carries on. As one of the most complicated characters in the Star Wars franchise, it’s hard to know how to feel about Darth Vader – or should I say Anakin? To most, Darth Vader is the definition of evil. One could argue, however, that in the end, he saved the life of his son, Luke Skywalker. Good or evil? You decide.
Chewbacca
Han Solo’s trusty co-pilot, Chewbacca, is one of the most adored Star Wars characters. Despite the fact that nobody can understand a word he says, he sure does make a lasting impact. Perhaps it’s the hair? Known for his great strength, bravery and loyalty, Chewbacca never lets us down as Solo’s right-hand man – I mean Wookiee.
Yoda
Yoda’s odd way of speaking, short stature, and expressive ears definitely make him stand out from the crowd. After spending eight centuries training and tutoring generations of Jedi, he finally passed away at the ripe age of 900. As the wisest Jedi in the galaxy, it’s unfortunate that Yoda is no longer around to lend his guidance. Rey, Finn, and the rest of the Resistance could use the help.
R2D2 & C3PO
You can’t talk about R2D2 without mentioning C3PO, so why try? The robot pair are the definition of two peas in a pod. Always polite, C3PO frequently communicates on behalf of R2D2 who in return, saves the day time and time again. Together, they are often directly involved in pivotal moments of galactic history.
What are your predictions for tomorrow’s premiere? Will Luke help the Resistance in its fight against the First Order? Will we finally gain more knowledge of Rey’s past? Tell us what you think (@SigstrApp) and let us know which email signatures were your favorites. We’ll leave you today with the following question – what’s nerdier than a tech company blogging about Star Wars?
Salesforce’s recent “2017 State of Marketing” report states that 67% of “marketing leaders” currently use a marketing automation platform like Pardot, Marketo, Hubspot, Act-On, and several others. And a couple of years ago, Marketo found that 91% of the “most successful marketers” agree that marketing automation is “very important” to the overall success of their marketing.
These best-in-class marketing teams are leveraging these platforms to create lead scoring frameworks, attribution models, and brilliant workflows. Why? To segment and engage the right audiences at the right time. However, there’s one thing many of them have overlooked. Their most precisely segmented and engaged audience isn’t in their CRM or marketing automation database. It’s actually sitting in their employees’ corporate email inboxes.
If over two-thirds of the world’s best companies are using marketing automation, it’s safe to say that 100% of them are using regular old email. Personal email has off-the-charts open rates because the sender is trusted and the content of these messages is usually extremely relevant. And, from our recent research, we know that including a call-to-action in an employee’s email signature makes that email even more engaging and visually impactful.
Connecting employee email to your marketing automation platform
So why haven’t more marketers connected corporate emails to their marketing automation platforms? To be honest, there wasn’t a good way to make corporate email play well with marketing automation platforms (until now). Sigstr has the ability to insert relevant content and calls-to-action in every employee email. This means that every email your employees send is another datapoint for your marketing automation system. The average company with 100 employees sends over one million emails every year. And with Sigstr’s marketing automation integrations, you don’t miss out on all those chances to deliver content and drive conversions.
When your marketing automation system is able to dynamically work with your entire corporate email system through Sigstr, some pretty amazing things can happen. You can hyper-intelligently target email signature content based on smart list membership, automatically capture leads through signature banner clicks, and even build progressive ABM signature campaigns.
There are thousands of amazing things you can create when you connect Sigstr to your marketing automation platform. Download our new Marketing Automation Guidebook and get some clever ideas and instructions on how to do them all.
The number of email communications sent and received per day total over 269 billion, according to The Radicati Group Email Statistics Report. And on average, each of your employees will send or receive 122 emails per day. These are both eye-opening statistics, and make a case that no other marketing channels are as effective and efficient as employee email.
But how can you take advantage of this channel in a way that drives more conversions and distributes more content for your team? Now, with eye-movement technology and analysis, there is evidence that shows the most impactful part of these email communications. The email signature.
Exactly how does the employee email signature get noticed during these interactions? Do your contacts even pay attention to it? And if they do, is there a way to actually have it work in your favor?
To answer these questions and more, Sigstr teamed up with EyeQuant, an artificial intelligence platform that helps UX, CRO, and marketing teams make faster and better design decisions. EyeQuant’s design analysis technology instantly predicts how users are going to perceive any design. The predictions achieve between 85% and 90% accuracy when compared to large-scale human studies. Analysis includes a number of different tests, including the attention map, which shows which elements capture the most attention.
Test #1: Email with a non-branded email signature
First, we started with an email that includes a non-branded email signature. Standard in length, and with the typical information you would find in a traditional email signature. The recipient is naturally attracted to the sender of the email and body text. There is some acknowledgement of the email signature, but other than that, the reader pretty much ignores it.
Test #2: Email with a branded email signature and text call-to-action
So what happens when a few simple elements are added? Just by bolding the font and adding some color, the recipient not only notices the email signature, they also engage and spend the majority of their time in that area. However, they hardly acknowledge the text call-to-action.
Test #3: Email with a branded email signature and banner call-to-action
Including a call-to-action that is more eye-catching and visually appealing makes a big difference. Not only did the recipient engage with the email signature in the example below, the attention map shows that they also focused heavily on the headline of the webinar banner and “register here” call-to-action.
Email is still the workhorse of digital marketing. Your most important contacts are engaging with employee email communications every single day and paying attention to their email signature. This piece of digital real estate is an extension of your brand – so use it to your advantage to drive conversions and distribute relevant content.
Ready to see all of the tests and learn more best practices around email signature marketing? Sigstr and EyeQuant’s new ebook includes 10+ tests with analysis on how prospects and customers interact with everyday email. Not only that, the ebook also shares what’s most effective within an email signature banner design (dimensions, color, layout, etc.). Download the “Science of Email Signatures” ebook today to see more.
In this guest post, Cory Bray talks about how he sees email signature marketing fitting into the Sales Enablement Ecosystem, a framework that he and Hilmon Sorey outline in their book, The Sales Enablement Playbook.
Cory Bray is the Co-Founder and CEO of ClozeLoop, a platform for knowledge management for sales teams.
No matter where you’re at in a sales process, there’s probably something your prospect or customer is NOT doing that you wish they would. Maybe you want them to meet with you, buy your product, provide a referral, or something else. However, simply asking someone for what you need doesn’t usually work. They want to know what’s in it for them.
Is there a way to focus on the needs of your prospect or customer while driving towards your goals at the same time? Absolutely, and that’s where I see email signature marketing fitting into the Sales Enablement Ecosystem.
Prospective Customers: Add Value While Hitting Quota
The other day I received the following email from a software vendor:
They had sent a different email before, but it wasn’t included below this one. So, I had to go back and see what they were actually talking about. As a result, they wanted me to see a demo of their product, which I had already used as part of their free trial.
It’s widely acknowledged that vendors should always focus on adding value to prospects. However, asking someone to see a demo isn’t necessarily adding value. But if a salesperson doesn’t do enough demos, they won’t hit their goals and could lose their job. Wow – what’s someone to do? What about this approach:
In the above example, the salesperson understands my buyer persona, delivers value, and is able to promote what they want to talk about with their email signature. Pretty slick if you ask me. All else equal, this approach will likely destroy the alternative of just pushing for what the sales rep wants to accomplish.
New Customers
It really grinds my gears that “sales enablement” is often exclusively focused on new-logo sales reps. Think about the following attributes of your new customers:
They Love You: They just made a commitment to your company and you’re in the honeymoon phase. If there’s ever a time to ask for a referral, it’s now.
They’re Dangerous: If end-users are not trained on your product, the relationship could rapidly sour. Ensure that people know how to use what they bought and that they’re setup for success, otherwise buyer’s remorse will quickly follow.
They’re Future Prospects: You know how people change jobs a lot? Well, anyone who leaves your customer’s company will immediately become a prospect at their new company (if they love your product).
Creative email signatures that ask for referrals and encourage end-user training can help ensure the success of current customers. Not only that, it can also develop your future sales pipeline.
Established Customers
There are three types of established customers, and using custom email signatures can keep them moving in the right direction. Think about the following:
Champions: These customers love you and are your best source of referrals. You need them engaged with your market, and at a minimum, they should all attend your user conference.
Neutral Customers: How do you make them champions? Maybe you can promote the use of your product through tips, webinars, and other educational events. Remember that your “customers” are always hiring new employees who need to be trained on your product.
At-Risk Customers: Churn is bad for all businesses, but it can be a death warrant for a venture-backed company with high-growth expectations. You not only lose the revenue from the churned customer, but they also poison your name in the market, affecting new-logo business as well.
Again, remember that the Sales Enablement Ecosystem should extend across an entire organization and not just the new-logo sales team.
Deliver at Scale
How do you create a standardized set of email signatures that act as specific calls-to-action depending on the specific goal of the recipient? Well, that’s where email signature software fits into the ecosystem. They keep sales teams (and the whole organization) educated on the most up-to-date content. That way, every team member can easily become an ambassador for the company. Staying updated with the newest and most relevant content is a critical part of the Sales Enablement Ecosystem.
G2 Crowd is changing the way decisions are made. In the past, selecting new software, technologies, or services for your business has been difficult, sometimes risky, and inherently biased. G2 Crowd helps solve this problem. Their real-time and unbiased reviews help you and your organization objectively assess what is best for you.
Using G2 Crowd reviews to help progress your pipeline
On the flip side, as a B2B organization, a large collection of quality reviews from your customers can help your sales and marketing team fill the pipeline and close deals. For example, let’s say you’re currently targeting a hot prospect that is a mid-sized healthcare software company. The sales process is moving right along, and you’re ready to move the prospect to the next stage with a proposal and terms. A review or testimonial from a customer with a similar profile could be the perfect resource to use to progress the deal.
G2 Crowd makes it easy to do just that. The Account Executive can send his/her prospect a link to a review authored by another mid-sized healthcare organization. Now, the prospect has the ability to see firsthand how your technology or service has helped another organization with a similar profile. Let your happy customers do the selling for you!
In order for this to happen, the first step is to of course make sure your customers are happy and your technology or service is bringing value to their business. The second step is to ask (and encourage) your customers to submit a G2 Crowd review/rating about their experience with your organization.
Popular ways to get more customer reviews on G2 Crowd
There are many ways to ask your customers for a review. Here are a few we recommend:
Casually mention it at the end of customer “check up” calls or after a successful implementation
Send an email out of your marketing automation platform to a shortlist of your happiest customers
Share on social (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook)
Have it ready at your booth during a conference or trade show in case any of your current customers stop by (an in-person ask is sometimes the most effective!)
Add email signature marketing to the mix
In addition to the ideas listed above, teams are also taking advantage of employee email (think Gmail or Outlook) to rack up reviews. Email signature software (now officially a category on G2 Crowd!), like Sigstr, gives you the ability to include specific campaigns (clickable call-to-action banners located under the employee’s email signature) based on the sender or recipient. Think of it as smart CTAs for your employees’ email signatures.
With this approach, there are a few different ways to get the “Leave us a review on G2 Crowd!” call-to-action in front of your customers:
1. Sender-based campaign
By organizing all of your employees into groups or teams, you can assign specific email signature campaigns to each group and promote different content simultaneously. For example, your customer success team can promote G2 Crowd reviews while your sales team promotes an upcoming webinar. Deliver content that is most relevant to the audience your employees are emailing everyday!
2. Targeted list campaign
In addition to sender-based targeting, you can also activate targeted content based on the recipient. For example, you can pair your “master customer” list with an email signature campaign that asks for a customer review. Email signature software can now recognize the email domain your employees are emailing and serve the assigned call-to-action accordingly. Bonus: easily sync your lists from Marketo, Salesforce, or HubSpot right in Sigstr.
Here’s a G2 Crowd campaign banner we use in our own email signatures.
Other email signature marketing examples
Act-On
Lessonly
Sprout Social
G2 Crowd
G2 Crowd is a powerful platform for collecting and showcasing customer reviews. Use every employee email sent as an opportunity to encourage customers to leave a review and, on the flip side, showcase these reviews with your biggest prospects. Using G2 Crowd + Sigstr together can lead to more reviews and more conversions!
Let’s say you printed out every single email that is sent in a day (on average). And, to keep things simple, let’s say it was on a regular 8.5 by 11 inch piece of paper. Sure, some emails might be longer than that and some shorter, but let’s assume they average out.
Now, take those pieces of paper and tape them end-to-end (subtle nod to our Stranger Things 2 post last week!) on their short sides. That is one long chain of paper. Long enough to reach Mars (and then some)…
274 billion emails are sent every day. Mars is 33.9 million miles away – about 179 billion feet away. So, if my math checks out, that means it would take 195 billion sheets of paper to get there. You could travel to Mars AND 40% of the way back home.
*Side note: We will send a free Sigstr t-shirt to anyone who does the math for number of daily emails sent equal to beach size (in grains of sand)
Are you taking advantage of every employee email sent?
This whole “distance to Mars with paper” thing is a little abstract though. So, to give you an idea of the crazy amount of email being sent every day, we made this handy infographic that compares email sends to other common daily online interactions. Spoiler alert: Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Spotify combined can’t touch the sheer volume of email.
How big is email at your company? Our general rule of thumb is that the average employee sends about 10,000 emails every year. If your company has 100 employees, that’s 1 million emails annually. If you’re a modern company with a large sales and marketing staff – that number jumps dramatically as they’re interacting with your clients, prospects, and partners way more frequently via email. Just imagine how many clicks and impressions you’re missing out on by not using the email signature area as a call-to-action.
The idea of marketers helping other marketers is at the core of Mapp Digital, one of the largest independent digital marketing companies in the world. With more than 450 employees across 12 countries, the international company with headquarters in San Diego focuses on helping brands stand out and reach their potential.
Mapp Digital is the result of the 2016 merging of two digital marketing powerhouses. As a new company, the marketing team had a lot to accomplish, including the promotion of their new website, their new blog, and the new Mapp brand as a whole.
Frustrated by lack of consistency across employee email and looking for ways to push their brand, Mapp’s marketing team implemented an email marketing strategy centered around Sigstr. A custom uniform email signature template created brand consistency among employees and Sigstr campaign banners introduced a new channel for marketing promotion.
The first email signature campaign promoted a marketing study on e-commerce in different regions. Veronika Feriancek, Mapp’s Digital Marketing Manager, took advantage of Sigstr Groups and assigned the appropriate campaign, in the appropriate language, to employees in each region.
Seeing the ways that Sigstr has already allowed Mapp to navigate the various difficulties and caveats of promoting content across different regions has helped them launch many other email signature campaigns. These clickable call-to-action banners help promote their webinars, regional events, large conferences, and even company awards.
Check out Mapp Digital’s full story by downloading the case study or watching the “Signature Stories” customer interview.
It’s finally here! Eleven, Mike, Lucas, Dustin, Joyce, and even Steve. The whole gang is back for season three of Stranger Things and we could not be more excited.
In honor of this week’s big premiere, we asked ourselves the age-old question, “What if Stranger Things characters had email signatures?” Here’s what we came up with…
Steve Harrington
Initially, Steve was seen as the typical popular high school troublemaker who was friends with fellow bullies Tommy and Carol. But, Steve had a change of heart throughout season one, and proved that he truly cares for Nancy. He even came to his girlfriend’s rescue during a showdown with The Monster at the Byers house (Jonathan was there too). Spiked bat in hand, Steve fought off The Monster with a few home run swings.
He uses everyday email as an opportunity to promote his new “Protect Your Girlfriend From The Monster” starter kit, which includes a spiked bat, bear trap, and lighter.
Nancy Wheeler
Nancy is the older sister of Mike and best friend to Barb. Before teaming up with Jonathan to look for Will and fight off The Monster, she was distracted by her new boyfriend, Steve, and his rambunctious pool parties. That’s where she last saw Barb, who was taken by The Monster while sitting alone at Steve’s pool.
Nancy is still shaken up by her best friend’s disappearance and passing. But, we’ll never forget Barb, as Nancy has made it a point to honor her with a memorial candlelight service (#RIPbarb).
Lucas Sinclair
Lucas is one of the best friends of Mike, Dustin, and Will. When Eleven showed up, Lucas was the most skeptical, and even fought with Mike about it until Eleven used her powers to push him away. That did not help things, and a rift grew between Lucas and the other boys.
However, they all bonded together in the end as Lucas warned his friends about the “bad men” while camping out in a tree by Hawkins National Laboratory with his binoculars. With some help from Eleven, they all pedaled their way to safety and Lucas, El, and Mike got back on good terms.
Dustin Henderson
Dustin joined the boys’ friend group after moving to Hawkins in 4th grade. Throughout season one, he often resolved conflicts within the group (especially between Mike and Lucas) and always delivered the best quotes.
During a showdown with bullies Troy and James, Dustin became the main spokesperson for Eleven’s powers, and warned the bullies by saying, “Our friend has superpowers, and she squeezed your tiny bladder with her mind!” After El scared them away, he went on to say, “You better run! She’s our friend and she’s crazy!”
Joyce Byers
Poor Joyce. Everyone thinks she’s crazy, but all she wants to do is find her son. Her other son, Jonathan, and Police Chief Hopper end up helping her along the way. However, it took some time for both to be convinced that she wasn’t delusional about telephones and christmas lights.
Will communicates with Joyce through circuited phone calls, lights, and a painted alphabet on the wall. Now, she wants to teach others how to do the same in this upcoming workshop. She’s using her email signature to get the word out and is already up to 100 registrations (even Donald registered).
Will Byers
On the night of November 6th, 1983, Will was abducted by The Monster and brought into an alternate dimension eventually named the “Upside Down.” As family and friends desperately searched for Will, he ran and hid from The Monster as he creatively communicated with Joyce through electrical devices.
He was eventually rescued by his mother and Chief Hopper and returned home, but his time in the Upside Down changed him. Now he’s opening up about it in his new documentary, “How I Survived the Upside Down.”
Mike Wheeler
Mike was a prominent character in season one as he lead his best friends in the search of Will’s disappearance. He also formed a strong relationship with Eleven, providing her food (waffles) and shelter (a pillow fort in his basement). Mike is loyal to his friends and stood up to the bullies multiple times to defend them.
He also lead the Dungeons and Dragons Campaigns, serving as the host and Dungeon Master. How do you think the boys knew when and where to be for the November 6th Campaign? Mike’s email signature for the win…
Eleven
Born with crazy psychokinetic abilities, Eleven was raised in Hawkins National Laboratory and eventually escaped through a drain pipe. Found by Mike, Lucas, and Dustin, she was brought into their friend group as she helped them search for Will and defeat The Monster.
She liked Mike a lot, so it was hard to say goodbye. But maybe they will be reunited in season two? Until then, she’s thriving in the woods and even started a bulk order waffle ecommerce business.
What are your predictions for season two? Will there be new characters (and new email signatures) to write about? Tell us what you think (@SigstrApp) and let us know which email signatures were your favorites. Now, go turn on Netflix and get ready for season two!
And check out a few of our other favorite posts the from “If [ ] Had Email Signatures” series:
Last week, Sigstr CEO Bryan Wade had the opportunity to lead a breakout session at #INBOUND17 in front of an awesome group of savvy marketers. And speaking of #INBOUND17 – what a week it was in Boston! Four days jam packed with content, tips, and tactics for inbound marketers to take home and apply to their strategies. This session (in addition to the week’s lineup of other incredible presentations) aimed to do the same by educating the audience on the power of employee email.
Did you know an average employee sends 10,000 emails a year to the people you care about most? All of these emails are opportunities for inbound marketers to distribute relevant content and drive conversions. Email is still the workhorse of digital marketing – and there are no other marketing channels that are as effective and efficient as employee email.
Bryan spoke to this point during the breakout session. He also showed the crowd how to put this owned channel to work for their inbound marketing strategies. It led to some great dialogue from the audience, as well as some examples and customer use cases.
For those of you who missed it, we wanted to make sure we had you covered! Here are four main takeaways from last week’s INBOUND17 presentation:
1. Marketers must take control of the employee email signature
As mentioned earlier, employee email is becoming an owned channel marketers can take advantage of – but how? Through the employee email signature.
Email signature marketing is a secret weapon for inbound marketers because it allows them to tailor content delivery on a human-to-human level. This boils down to two elements:
A) Signature
Let’s face it, each and every email your employees send out becomes an extension of your brand. This can lead to a positive or not so positive brand impression with your most important contacts, customers, and prospects. It’s important for the marketer to standardize this piece of real estate to ensure company-wide brand consistency. Now, marketing and brand teams have the ability to centrally control the format of the company’s email signature across the entire organization.
B) Campaign banner
Inbound marketers are also now including clickable call-to-action banners (located underneath the email signature) as a way to deliver 1:1 targeted content. These campaign banners can dynamically update based on the sender (employee groups or teams) or the recipient (specific accounts, industries, or regions).
2. Employee email can help drive more registrations for your events and webinars
We all know how much time, effort, and resources marketers pour into first-party events, regional dinners, and webinars. Why not use employee email to get the right people there?
A big bold CTA in each email sent can lead to additional impressions and clicks that will help drive more registrations, increase live stream attendance, and improve post-event follow up.
Want to see it for yourself? Check out how Terminusand Canvas are using it today for their event and webinar strategies.
3. Maximize the HubSpot platform with email signature marketing
Marketers can now easily connect their HubSpot account to Sigstr with static or smart lists, email templates, contact timelines, landing pages, and workflows. For example, pair your “INBOUND17 booth visitors” list with an email signature CTA that reads “Thanks for stopping by our booth! Learn more by scheduling a demo.” That way, when any of your employees send an email to a contact included in that list, you will know which CTA they will see in the email.
In addition to 1:1 targeting, you can also track conversions sourced from your employees’ email signatures in the landing page or sources report. This includes overall traffic, new contacts gained, and total number of customers won. For example, when people click on our newsletter campaign banner, it leads them to a HubSpot landing page and sign-up form. We can then see how many contacts have signed up for our newsletter from our employees’ email signatures.
4. This is a natural channel for account-based marketing
Need a quick and easy to get your team started with account-based marketing? Consider employee email. If you think about it, it’s the perfect channel to get the right content in front of the right people.
Assign email signature campaigns to specific contacts or accounts so they see relevant content that adds value to the relationship. Have a case study related to a specific vertical or use case? Include it in all emails sent to prospects with a similar profile. Personalized and relevant content leads to great things for sales and marketing teams!
Email is still a huge part of our lives. And every employee email sent presents an opportunity for true, authentic marketing on a 1:1 level. See how HubSpot is helping deliver on this mission or schedule a demo to learn more.
Thanks to the HubSpot team and all attendees for making this year’s #INBOUND17 event so awesome – see you all next year!
Email signature marketing platform announces all new HubSpot integration and Connect partnership
INDIANAPOLIS — September 19, 2017 — Sigstr, a cloud platform for employee email personalization, announced today the expansion of its existing HubSpot integration that includes even more functionality and features. The company is also now a certified HubSpot Connect partner.
For the first time ever, marketers can integrate 1:1 email signatures in their inbound marketing workflows. The average employee will send over 10,000 emails a year through Gmail or Outlook. The new productized integration delivers dynamic content targeted to each email recipient in their inbox. HubSpot customers can now seamlessly connect Sigstr to HubSpot workflows, smart lists, landing pages and email marketing templates through a new set of easy to use, point and click user interfaces.
“Using the Sigstr and HubSpot integration, we’ve been able to increase the impact of our inbound marketing strategy by making sure the right eyes are on the right content at the right time,” said Label Insight, Inc. Marketing Manager Stephanie Casstevens. “The dynamic aspect of Sigstr’s email signature campaigns makes targeting our existing HubSpot lists with the right campaigns nearly hands-off, while still delivering impressive engagement.”
In addition to the expanded integration, HubSpot participated in Sigstr’s $5 million Series A funding round, announced last month as their third investment, and welcomed Sigstr as a HubSpot Connect Partner.
“We couldn’t be more excited by the relationship we’ve built with HubSpot, including the new integration and their investment in our recent Series A round,” said Sigstr CEO Bryan Wade. “HubSpot and Sigstr’s partnership helps marketers better engage with their customers and accelerate their sales pipeline.”
Wade will join HubSpot at INBOUND 2017 for a breakout session on Wednesday, September 27 at 3:30 p.m. The session will focus on why it is critical for teams to personalize every email sent and turn them into impactful, revenue-driving marketing opportunities.
For more information on Sigstr and its HubSpot partnership, watch the recent webinar on the updated integration or stop by booth S5 at INBOUND.
Last week, we were able to catch up with one of our amazing customers, Stephanie Casstevens, and walk through how she uses Sigstr and HubSpot together to fuel inbound marketing success at Label Insight. We had a blast. Stephanie rocks, and our team loves her. We especially love hearing how she has been able to unlock this new owned marketing channel to drive conversions. Stephanie is very passionate about HubSpot and the impact it has had on her marketing strategy. This is great, because we are also very passionate about HubSpot. You can read a little more about why here.
We conglomerated 45 minutes of information into these three takeaways:
1. Inbound marketers care a whole heck of a lot about analytics
Inbound marketers track everything. They want to know every single statistic about every campaign they’re running to see how it delivers value on overall company goals. The Sigstr + HubSpot integration enables your team to have further visibility into how employee email impacts inbound marketing initiatives. This includes driving more traffic to your website and increasing exposure to a specific piece of content. It could even be generating more leads for a Marketing campaign. According to HubSpot’s State of Inbound Report, 63% of marketers say generating more traffic and leads is their top challenge. Furthermore, Ascend2 found that 54% of marketers say increasing engagement is their top email marketing priority. This integration helps you kill two birds with one stone.
2. Personalized and relevant content drives conversions
There is power and value in knowing that the personalized content your team is creating is getting into the hands of the right people. If you are using HubSpot, you have all of the data you need to understand your prospects and customers. You have visibility into how they are engaging with your brand and where they stand in your sales pipeline. Hopefully, you have also invested time into creating smart lists. HubSpot smart lists are dynamic lists that allow you and your team to segment contacts based on properties that change frequently over time. If you want to set up a smart list but don’t know how, HubSpot has this awesome tutorial.
The Sigstr + HubSpot integrations allows you to deliver personalized content to your specific contacts and accounts through employee email. You can even see how prospects or customers interact with your email signature banners in the contact timeline view. If you want to learn more about this new integration and how it could be impactful for you, feel free to utilize the chat function (little pop-up on your right) and send Max a message!
3. Maximize your marketing automation investment by connecting to other platforms
Inbound marketers are passionate about their marketing automation of choice. Why? Because it makes their life easier! It also helps them drive conversions and pipeline for their sales team. Marketing automation platforms, like HubSpot, become even more powerful when marketers connect them to other platforms and tools included in their marketing tech stack. Multiple tools working together towards the same goal will reach that goal much more efficiently and quickly vs. one tool working alone. In last week’s webinar, Stephanie spoke to this point when showing attendees just how easy it is to connect email signature marketing to her HubSpot account. Here’s an overview on how you can use the Sigstr and HubSpot platforms together.
“Using the Sigstr and HubSpot integration, we’ve been able to increase the impact of our inbound marketing strategy by making sure the right eyes are on the right content at the right time,” Stephanie explains. “The dynamic aspect of Sigstr’s email signature campaigns makes targeting our existing HubSpot lists with the right campaigns nearly hands-off, while still delivering impressive engagement.”
If you’d like to learn more about this new level of our integration, stop by and see us (booth S5) at #INBOUND17 next week!
Hyde Park Venture Partners and Battery Ventures invest to fuel hiring, product innovation and record sales growth
INDIANAPOLIS — August, 22 2017 — Sigstr, a cloud platform for employee email personalization, announced today it has secured $5 million in Series A funding. The round, which will be used to fuel product innovation and hiring, was led by Hyde Park Venture Partners and included participation from Battery Ventures, HubSpot, Grand Ventures and High Alpha Capital.
Sigstr customers include notable brands, such as Angie’s List, California Closets, Terminus and United Way, that use Sigstr to unlock their employee email as a new owned marketing channel. Earlier this year, Sigstr signed its 300th customer, surpassed 500 million signature impressions and grew its team to over 30 employees.
“The future of marketing is authenticity. Our vision is to unleash the power of your employees and to help marketers leverage employees to market from the inside out,” said Sigstr CEO Bryan Wade. “We’re thrilled with our recent product innovations and are eager to continue to expand our product roadmap into areas that transcend the signature.”
The Series A funding will allow Sigstr to grow its product, sales and marketing teams, as well as further develop its offerings to meet the evolving needs of marketers across a range of industries.
“Sigstr is creating a new category in marketing. Employee email is the last marketing channel that has gone untapped. Your work email is the first thing you look at when you wake up in the morning and the last thing you check before you go to bed,” said Tim Kopp, partner at Hyde Park Venture Partners. “Everyday there are billions of interactions between employees and their customers, and Sigstr helps marketers take advantage of this channel to drive real marketing ROI.”
“HubSpot customers have seen impressive returns when using HubSpot and Sigstr together,” said Brad Coffey, Chief Strategy Officer at HubSpot. “Email signature marketing is such a natural way to deliver key content to customers and prospects. We’re excited to take this next step in our partnership and help fuel Sigstr’s continued growth.”
In addition to this new round of funding, Sigstr recently launched its Sigstr for Events package, which allows event marketers to tap into employee email to drive event registrations, increase event attendance and involve speakers and sponsors to drive event awareness. The company also recently introduced its Account-Based Marketing (ABM) functionality, which allows users to target specific accounts, industries and regions with content tailored to each audience, while communicating with individual prospects or customer accounts as markets of one.
For more information or to schedule a demo, visit Sigstr.com.
We have some pretty extraordinary customers. Some of these extraordinary customers put on some pretty extraordinary conferences and events. Sigstr helps promote these events with dynamic email signature banners, but our team also attends these events to learn from other smart marketers. This was the case with the Act-On I <3 Marketing Roadshow in New York City this week.
On Tuesday, August 8th in the epicenter of Time Square, we were fortunate enough to join Act-On and a group of amazing sponsors to host a group of 125+ of Act-On’s customers. The day kicked off with sessions training attendees on how to best utilize Act-On’s marketing automation platform, followed by sessions focusing on the latest tools, trends, and best practices shaping the marketing world today. There were sessions hosted by thought leaders on the Power of Personalization and how it has impacted the way marketers do their jobs. In between these thought-provoking sessions, we were able to meet and network with dozens of likeminded marketers that were looking to learn.
It was a fantastic day that closed with a lovely cocktail reception featuring an unbelievably talented violinist that performed covers of some of today’s most popular songs.
We want to thank Act-On Software for the opportunity to attend and learn from their customers. Are you interested in the I Heart Marketing Roadshow? Let us know and we will connect you with Act-On’s marketing team. They have an event coming up in October in London!
Picture this: A top prospect opens your latest email, clicks on the Sigstr campaign in your email signature, gets taken to a landing page, and…what happens next? The answer to that question determines the success of your entire email signature marketing strategy. Not only that, it determines the success of every marketing initiative you manage that has a source (Adwords, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) and corresponding landing page.
Whether you’re using a landing page to generate leads, drive event registrations, or collect data, ensuring a high conversion rate is key. All of us at Sigstr know that a email signature campaign is only as effective as the landing page it directs to. As such, we feel it is our duty to ensure your landing pages are the best they can be. That’s why we’ve taken it upon ourselves to analyze the 5 key elements of an effective landing page.
Headline
The landing page headline is the first thing a visitor sees after he or she clicks on a Sigstr campaign, Facebook ad, etc. As such, it must be easy to read, straightforward, and intriguing. Once a visitor arrives to your landing page, it’s your headline’s job to hold the visitor’s attention and reassure him or her that they’ve come to the right place. Otherwise, the person might leave before completing the task at hand, also known as the conversion goal.
To establish continuity, you should also ensure that your landing page headline closely matches the headline in your source campaign (#1 below). The same can be said for your call-to-action (#2 below). If your Sigstr campaign promotes an upcoming conference or webinar, your landing page headline should do the same.
Page Design
If the headline is what holds a visitor’s attention, it’s the page design that focuses the visitor on the action you want he or she to take. Every design element on an effective landing page should be aligned to a conversion goal. For that reason, it is important to use minimal patterns, contrasting colors, and a prominently placed form field. Remember to be clear and concise. Clarity is often lost when marketers try to make the landing page design ultra cool or edgy.
When designing your landing page, another thing to remember is that you need to establish trust. How well does the initial above-the-fold landing page experience deliver on the promise made in the Sigstr campaign, Linkedin ad, etc.? The color palette, patterns, fonts, and general vibe of the landing page need to align to the design of the source campaign. You don’t want to surprise the visitor or make him or her think they’ve come to the wrong place. On the contrary, if the campaign and landing page compliment each other, the visitor is much more likely to stick around. Here’s a great example from our friends at Return Path.
Form Fill
There are a number of strategies you can use with a form fill. Both short and long forms have been shown to perform quite well. The method you choose depends on whether you want to generate a high number of low quality form submissions, or a smaller number of higher quality submissions. Whichever strategy you choose, consider leaving form boxes unchecked. Otherwise, you’ll risk adding a lot of low quality subscribers to your contact base which can hurt your business.
When creating a form fill, make sure every action you request of your audience leads naturally to the next step. This is especially relevant in multi-step form fills which visitors have a tendency to abandon mid-way through. If you’re implementing a multi-step form fill, consider adding a status bar so that visitors have a general idea of the form length.
Supporting Content
With supporting content, it’s important to make sure your most important information comes first and clearly presents the value you’re offering. A source campaign, like Sigstr, can only offer a limited amount of information in the banner/ad. That means that the corresponding landing page has to make up for missing context. It should compliment the copy from your ad, but also expand upon it and continue to persuade.
And speaking of persuasion, all supporting content should align to your conversion goal. You may have 10-20 goals for your homepage, but an effective landing page aligns to a single action. If you’re trying to get a prospect to download an ebook, every piece of content on your landing page should be steering the visitor toward the download.
For that reason, it may be a good idea to remove outside links and social share buttons. They divert visitors from accomplishing the main goal. The same thing can be said for testimonials, sub-headers, and bullets. They can be great tools to establish trust and credibility, but if they do not aid in persuasion or conversion, they are not appropriate.
The last thing to consider with supporting content is SEO. The added benefit of supporting content is that it gives the page an SEO boost because search engines have more content to crawl. Use the same SEO best practices you would apply to your company blog or website to your landing pages.
Imagery
It’s probably not surprising to hear that the images you use on a landing page have a huge impact on your conversion rate. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words. With that said, don’t just use images that you know garner an emotional response (i.e. cute babies). Images on an effective landing page align to the company’s brand, campaign and conversion goal. You have to strike a perfect balance between eye catching and distracting. If images are too bold then they could pull attention away from your main call-to-action which is the last thing you want. Instead, choose images that complement or even emphasize your main objective.
Another thing to keep in mind is that including people in your images can be a powerful influencer. As human beings, we have a tendency to look at faces. Not only that, if the people in an image are looking in a specific direction, our eyes have a tendency to follow. Use this kind of directional cue to your advantage when choosing a landing page image and direct your visitors attention to your call-to-action.
When creating an effective landing page, it all comes down to outcome optimization. A great source campaign strategy means nothing if your landing page does not deliver. Use these 5 key elements to your advantage and watch conversion rates go through the roof. Our team is here to help you be successful in all of your marketing endeavors!
Here at Sigstr, we’re working hard everyday to become leaders in the next frontier of email marketing: employee email. We’re excited about our recent product innovations as we continue to expand our product roadmap into areas that transcend the signature.
See below for more information on each new update. As always, we’re here to help answer any questions about the platform or talk through your email signature marketing strategy. Reach out and let us know or request a demo.
Contact Targeting
Sigstr’s ABM functionality now supports targeting and tracking to individual recipients! Customers now have the power to target email signature marketing campaigns directly to individual contacts or entire email domains.
Recipient Management
For any marketer looking to incorporate email signature marketing into their ABM strategy, this new feature now makes it easier than ever. Sigstr’s new Recipient tab allows customers to manage their contact and account lists in an effective way so personalized content can be shared with specific audiences. Contacts can be imported from Salesforce, Marketo, HubSpot, and more!
SalesLoft Cadence ABM
Using SalesLoft and Sigstr together can be a powerful combination! Email signature marketing campaigns being used in SalesLoft now include full ABM contact and account targeting, so each Cadence email sent will serve content that is most relevant to the recipient.
Campaign Scheduling
Sigstr customers now have the ability to set start and stop dates for time sensitive campaigns. The functionality is particularly useful for event marketers who have specific content to promote before an event, during, and after. The three examples below show how we used this feature for our last webinar.
Cloud Signature Deployment
Power multi-recipient personalization and analytics, from any email client, on any device. No device installs required!
Coming Soon
CRM Integrations Package
One package that lets you connect Sigstr to your Salesforce, Marketo, or HubSpot accounts. You can automatically sync campaigns, reports, contacts, and smart lists with your Sigstr ABM campaigns. Best of all, real-time analytics will be pushed back to your CRM to track engagement.
Sigstr Promotional Installers
Include your branded Sigstr signatures in the promotional mail platform of your choice. Templates will be available for Salesforce, Pardot, Marketo, SalesLoft Cadence, Outreach.io, and more!
Employee Preference Center
Give your employees a secure, frictionless way to update their email signature data in Sigstr. Launch invites from Sigstr to empower employee updates – no login required.
Email signature marketing software helps event marketers drive more registrations, increase live stream attendance and improve post-event follow up
INDIANAPOLIS — July 11, 2017 — Sigstr, a cloud platform for employee email personalization, announced today the launch of its new Sigstr for Events package. With the new package, event marketers can now tap into employee email to drive event registrations, increase event attendance and involve speakers and sponsors to drive event awareness.
Using Sigstr for Events, customers can schedule an email signature campaign aligned to pre-event, during-event and post-event call to actions. When users email recipients who have registered for an event, they see different content than those who have not registered. The Sigstr platform dynamically serves personalized content before, during and after to drive event engagement.
“Earlier this year, #FlipMyFunnel and SalesHacker partnered up and hosted Revenue Summit in San Francisco. We wanted to get the word out about this partnership and exciting new event, so we partnered with Sigstr to help us do just that,” said Terminus CMO Sangram Vajre. “Sigstr Viral was the perfect way to get all of our sponsors and customers involved. They could quickly and easily inject our registration CTA into all of their email signatures, which resulted in tens of thousands of impressions.”
Sigstr for Events also enables event marketers to ‘go viral’ by providing speakers, sponsors and exhibitors branded content to place into their email signatures. The viral feature helps expand event promotion through leveraging each stakeholder’s individual network to drive more attendance and engagement for the event.
“Employee email is a natural marketing channel for brands who put on first-party events, webinars and seminars. The Sigstr platform knows the sender, recipient and timing of your event. Because of that, we are able to target individuals based on their involvement with the event, in time with the specific timeline,” said Sigstr CEO Bryan Wade. “Delivering personalized content accelerates the sales pipeline and engages your most important customers.”
Sigstr for Events is available through its Target plan, which also includes recipient-level reporting and time-based analytics.
Wait for it…a synonym roll. *Ba-dum-tshh* I know, I know, but come on! Everyone loves a good dad joke! Plus, it is a dad’s job to embarrass his children and this weekend is all about celebrating good ol’, embarrassing dad.
And speaking of dads, there are going to be a couple of new dads in the Sigstr family. My husband and I are expecting our first child in August and my colleague, Drew Kelley, and his wife are expecting their first in December. With that being said, I thought now would be the perfect time to contribute to this blog series and whip up an email signature style or two (or six) that represent our favorite TV dads.
Phil Dunphy
Let’s be honest, you clicked on this article and knew Phil Dunphy from Modern Family was going to be number one on the list. If you don’t know who this lovable, goofy dad is, let me “phil” you in on a few of the things I admire about him. He’s funny. This is something Phil himself discovered at his 12th birthday party, but something you pick up on immediately. He loves his family. Phil’s parenting Phil-osophy is what he calls “peerenting”. This is when you talk to your child like a peer, but still act like a parent. He takes his work seriously. Don’t mistake him for a real estate agent. He’s a Realtor®, a member of a national association, and has a very eye-catching email signature style.
Homer Simpson
Homer Simpson from The Simpsons is one of the most iconic TV characters in American television history. He is lazy, drinks a lot, and at work you’ll typically find him sleeping or getting snacks from the Springfield Nuclear vending machines. Flaws aside, Homer is a good guy. He tries his best to be there for Marge and their three kids, Bart, Lisa and Maggie. He even gave his father, Abe, one of his kidneys (even though he did back out of it a couple times first).
Carl Winslow
Another TV dad with a love for donuts, Carl Winslow of Family Matters is one of Chicago’s finest. I personally can’t relate to having a dad in law enforcement, but in his son Eddie’s words, “It’s time you stopped acting like a cop and start acting like my dad!”. Despite the rumors from earlier this year, the man who played Carl, Reginald VelJohnson, is still alive and well.
Danny Tanner
While he considers himself the “raddest, baddest” dad, we know otherwise. Danny Tanner from Full House is the epitome of the “uncool” dad (especially compared to Uncle Jesse). Like my dad, he’s the father of three girls. Looking back, I don’t know how my dad survived this in real life. Unlike my dad, Danny Tanner is a clean freak. “Clean is good, dirt is bad.” Unfortunately, he can never quite get his daughters to share his passion for Lemon Pledge. But with an email signature style that promotes his new podcast, he’ll recruit others to see the power of cleaning.
Tim Taylor
Another father of three! Tim “The Toolman” Taylor of Home Improvement is the father of boys, Brad, Mark and Randy. Side note: I’d be lying if I told you I didn’t own several JTT posters growing up. Tim co-hosts the TV show, Tool Time, with his friend, Al. No matter how hard he tries, Tim can’t seem to avoid mishaps when trying to showcase his vast knowledge of all things tools. Not everything needs, “more power”, Tim. Here’s a video compilation to prove it.
Ray Barone
Last but not least, we honor Ray Barone of Everybody Loves Raymond. You may be surprised to learn that Ray is also a father of three. In this case, I’m partial to Ray’s daughter, Ally, for obvious reasons. In his words, “When I dance, people think I’m looking for my keys.” This is one of the reasons you can’t help but love Raymond (at least a little, at times). While it’s completely acceptable on a day like Father’s Day, Ray seems to always be on the couch watching sports. I’d rather watch him dance.
Which of these is your favorite email signature style? Is there a particular TV show dad we left off the list? Let us know your feedback on twitter (@SigstrApp).
Cheers to bad dad jokes and dance moves! Happy Father’s Day!
Simply put, employee email is a natural account-based marketing (ABM) channel. Today, marketers are using a channel they already own with content they already have to deliver 1:1 targeted content to specific accounts, industries and regions. But before we get too far into that, let’s first define ABM and what it means for marketing teams today.
What is ABM?
Account-based marketing provides a strategy for B2B companies who want to grow revenue by focusing on the best-fit prospects. Most marketing strategies include a broad approach to lead generation with the goal of capturing as many leads as possible. However, 65 percent of marketers still say generating traffic and leads is their top challenge. ABM is a different approach in which marketing and sales teams work together to target best-fit accounts and turn them into customers.
ABM is powerful because it can market to specific companies instead of wasting time (and money) on unqualified or unideal prospects. And believe it or not, it has a higher ROI than any other marketing activity, according to 97 percent of marketers in a survey by Alterra Group. Above all, account-based marketing is a framework of efficiency for your marketing and sales team.
Employee Email = Owned Marketing Channel
6 hours. That’s the average amount of time most American workers spend in their inbox per day. Email is the go-to channel for most professionals for business-related communications. More than 215 billion emails are sent a day. People love email, but they hate that they love email.
Employee email presents a huge opportunity for marketers to add personalized, but scalable, content resources into the billions of organic conversations that are already happening. How? The employee email signature.
Marketers invest time into the email signature because it can’t be outbid. With 200 million people worldwide using ad blocks, email signatures can be a powerful way to get your message across to the people who matter most. Marketing departments are constructing a content distribution strategy drawn from the click-through rate of an email signature banner. They’re using recipient-level data and the engagement over time to help drive marketing ROI.
A Natural Channel for ABM
Users can now assign an email signature campaign to individual recipients with account-based marketing functionality. When employees send an email to a specific recipient, the clickable call-to-action banner will dynamically update and serve personalized content. Check out the video overview below to see more.
By adding employee email to your ABM mix, marketers can increase account relevance and align email signature marketing activity with account strategies. Also, marketers increase campaign engagement and inspire customers and prospects with compelling content.
Here’s what some of our customers are saying about this new functionality:
As marketers, we’re always looking for new channels to distribute content and drive conversions. Every business in the world runs a corporate email system. Pair the content you already have with a channel you already own. ABM with employee email can become a new secret weapon for your marketing team. Request a demo here to learn more.
At Sigstr, we’re divided. Now, I know what you may be wondering…can they not agree on the product roadmap? The company vision? The rate of growth? Unfortunately, what I’m referencing is a MUCH bigger deal. Our division stems from – cue the dramatic music – our inability to agree on the best sitcom of the 90s. That’s right, I’m talking about Friends vs. Seinfeld.
It all started a few months ago when I shouted, “PIVOT!!” when helping move a file cabinet in the office. The reference resulted in laughs from some and blank stares from others. I quickly realized that we had some non-Friends fans on our hands. That led to a five-minute monologue in which I explained, in detail, that Friends was the best sitcom of the 90s.* While I was catching my breath, some Sigstr colleagues of mine had the audacity to say that Seinfeld was and is the best sitcom ever made. An argument ensued. I contended that Friends was relatable with a charismatic cast. They claimed that Seinfeld had better writing with highbrow humor. A winner was never declared.
Since that historic day, the conversation has reemerged during company outings and breaks at the snack bar. Still, the divide is clear. So, in a quest to convert Kramer fans to Chandler enthusiasts, I’ve taken it upon myself to honor my favorite 90’s sitcom characters the best way I know how – through their hypothetical and unique email signatures.
Joey Tribioni
Who doesn’t like Joey Tribioni? His huge heart makes up for his lack of intelligence and cheesy pick-up lines. For some reason, whenever you watch him, you get… hungry? Pizza, meatball subs, chocolate cake – I want it all. Whatever you do, just remember that JOEY DOESN’T SHARE FOOD.
Besides his appetite, another great Joey characteristic is his inability to hold a job. If it’s wrong to find humor in Joey’s failing acting career, I don’t want to be right.
Phoebe Buffay
Phoebe is definitely the wackiest of the group, but her undying loyalty and pre-teen hair accessories make her a crowd favorite. The other five friends are somewhat predictable, but Phoebe never ceases to surprise. Whether she’s singing an outrageous song, raising rats in a shoebox, or unveiling an evil twin sister, she always keeps you guessing.
Rachel Green
It has been a few decades since throngs of young women were inspired to cut their hair into bouncy, square layered bobs. Rachel Green, however, is still an icon. What’s surprising is that in the pilot episode, Rachael is the least likable character. She’s selfish, spoiled, and superficial. Over the course of the 10 seasons, Rachel develops into a kind, humorous, career-driven woman. Every Friends fan ends up wanting to be a little bit more like Rachel.
Ross Geller
Before Big Bang Theory and all the other nerds of the 21st century, there was Ross Geller. What makes him so great is the fact that he’s undeterred by the fact that his friends share none of his interests. His obscure references to science, dinosaurs, and “unagi” never wane.
With three divorces under his belt, Ross’s love life is a bit of a rollercoaster. You’ve got to admit, however, that he and Rachel’s back and forth relationship is what keeps you coming back for more. But seriously, that one time? They were definitely on a break.
Monica Geller
Who knew that a neurotic, controlling, hyper-competitive clean freak could be so much fun? Monica may have the strongest personality of the bunch, but she’s also the glue that keeps the group together. Not only is Monica a wonderful friend, she’s also an accomplished chef, a loving wife and mother, and the world’s best house keeper. I’m still trying to figure out her eleven categories of hand towels.
Chandler Bing
I saved Chandler for last because, well, he’s everyone’s favorite. His steady supply of one liners and sarcastic comments are what make the show. Between his ex-girlfriend Janice, college flashbacks, estranged parents, commitment issues, and bad first impressions, Chandler keeps us laughing. Despite Chandler’s frequent self-sabotage, he ends up a happy father of twins – cue the tears.
If their unique email signatures aren’t enough to convince you of the genius that is Friends, perhaps a Netflix marathon is needed. You’ll come to agree with me one way or another. On the other hand, my colleagues may never admit defeat. It’s almost guaranteed that my declaration that Friends is better than Seinfeld will be met by another email signature blog dedicated to Jerry and Elaine. To that I answer, bring it on.
*I am aware that Seinfeld premiered in 1989 and Friends extended well into the 2000s. That is an inconvenient and inconsequential fact that bares no relevance in this argument.
It’s tempting – after you’ve invested hours upon hours into crafting the “perfect” email marketing message – to imagine your subscribers hanging on every word you’ve written.
Surely, you think, they read closely, picking up on every nuance and every clever twist of language you’ve employed.
Of course, your own email consumption behaviors likely disprove this theory right off the bat. If you even open a message – and that’s a big if – data suggests that you’re much more likely to skim its contents than to give it a close read. Here’s what the numbers say:
More than 20% of marketing emails never make it to a subscriber’s inbox.
Of the nearly 200 billion emails sent every day worldwide, 84% are considered spam. A full 55% of all email users admit that they don’t open and read messages regularly – whether business or personal.
According to a recent GetResponse study, 41% of all emails are now opened on a mobile device, and 42% of users delete emails that don’t display correctly on their mobile phones.
Only 11% of email campaigns use responsive design to optimize their email layout.
So what, in light of these trends, should marketers do? Interestingly, we may find answers and suggested recourse by understanding the way people consume content on the web at large.
In it, Slate contributor Farhad Manjoo and Chartbeat analyzed the way the digital magazine’s readers engaged with its content, finding that 38% of visitors bounced immediately, while a smaller number never once scrolled below the fold. Of those that stayed, only 50% scrolled more than a few hundred words into the text.
Over time, marketers have developed engagement strategies designed to encourage people to remain on-site longer.
“Readers are very likely to skim, so you want them to find what they need quickly. Use bullet points, numbered lists, or bold headlines for this purpose.”
“Fonts like Arial and Times New Roman (especially for headings) are staples because they are easy to read.”
“You will want complementary font and background color, with the font being many shades darker. Also, try to remember which colors clash and the psychological effects that different colors have on readers.”
If these suggestions seem familiar, it’s likely because so many websites adopt these standards. Email marketing messages, on the other hand, haven’t universally caught up.
What This Means for Your Email
Implementing the best practices above helps improve engagement with your email marketing messages, as well as your blog posts.
Think about the way you consume blog and email content. We skim not because we’re lazy, but because we aren’t sure whether or not the content we’re currently consuming will be helpful. Understanding this inherent challenge enables marketers to craft content that resolves this conflict as quickly as possible.
Your subject line is important in terms of your message’s engagement. So, you won’t be surprised to hear that 64% of subscribers say they are likely to read your email because of who it’s from. 47% of email recipients open an email based on the subject line.
There are different schools of thought when it comes to who the specific sender of your messages should be. Some marketers suggest attributing messages to the name of a specific person within your company. Others argue that placing your company’s name in the “From” field gives it an air of greater authenticity.
Ultimately, you’ll need to test different options to see which one drives the best results.
The question of subject line content can be answered a bit more definitively, according to the following data points:
A report by Retention Science found that subject lines with 6 to 10 words deliver the highest open rate, making 8 words an ideal number for a subject line.
According to research by Adestra, subject lines 70 characters and up tested to be most beneficial to engage readers in clicking through to the content.
Take, for example, the brief three-character subject line from one of President Barack Obama’s fundraising messages:
It’s quick. It’s to-the-point. And it’s effective.
Putting this all together, Copyhacker’s Joanna Wiebe offers a series of concrete suggestions for making email subject lines as engaging as possible:
Lead with an action word
Include your brand name
Avoid spam-trigger words, exclamation points and odd punctuation
Avoid being cutesy or clever
Again, testing is your friend. The suggestions above can be considered starting point guidelines. However, there’s no real replacement for data based on your own audience’s behaviors and activities.
Your Images
The days where email messages were composed entirely of text are long gone. Now, images and even embedded video files are being used more frequently, as they’re useful from both an engagement and information retention perspective.
Data shared by John Medina of Brain Rules suggests that, “When people hear information, they’re likely to remember only 10% of that information three days later. However, if a relevant image is paired with that same information, people retained 65% of the information three days later.”
In addition, images can engage people long enough to decide whether or not your message is worth a closer look.
In an article written for the QuickSprout blog, marketer Neil Patel shares data generated by PRWeb’s Director of Product Management. Thousands of press releases were examined to see whether or not including an image affected average time on page. What he found was that readers stuck around nearly 30 seconds longer when the press release incorporated at least one multimedia asset.
Yes, the data above pertains to web content, but its impact likely extends to email messages as well. Choose good images (read: not clip art or stock imagery) and you may see the same impact of greater attention.
Your First Sentence
According to Aaron Orendorff, writing for Fast Company:
“Your first line of text, following your recipient’s name, is often as far as the reader gets. If the message is short, not packed with nonessential junk, you’re more likely to get that reader to venture further.”
The way you do this will be different in different types of messages. For example, you might get people to stick around by asking a probing question subscribers will want to hear the answer to. In other cases, your first sentence might promise a discount, coupon code or free product, while requiring subscribers to read of for more details on how to claim it.
The only thing your first sentence shouldn’t do is bore readers. Review every message on this basis and do your best to punch up any opening lines that seem lacking.
Your Bullets
In an article on Wired, Paolo Gaudiano shared research from speed-reading company, Spritz:
“The folks at Spritz realized that, when we read, only about 20% of the time is spent processing content, while the remaining 80% is spent moving your eyes around to scan the text.”
Scanning behavior, it seems, is as common to email marketing as it is web reading. Here’s an example of AdAge.com’s Daily News email message, with a heat map to indicate where visitors’ attention was drawn:
“…the average time allocated to a newsletter after opening it was only 51 seconds. ‘Reading’ is not even the right word, since participants fully read only 19% of newsletters. The predominant user behavior was scanning. Often, users didn’t even scan the entire newsletter: 35% of the time, participants only skimmed a small part of the newsletter or glanced at the content.”
Bullets – along with other scanning, readability features – are your friend. Whether that be in your blog content, your email messages or both. Include them to help your subscribers get the most out of your email content.
Your P.S.
Finally, there’s the question of the post-script. It once reigned in popularity, but many marketers question whether it’s still relevant. Or, if past abuse has rendered it ineffective.
Marketer Richard Hayes may have the answer, based on a past experiment he carried out:
“I ran an email split test where 1,500 recipients received an email without a postscript note and another 1,500 received the exact same email but with a P.S. note in the footer of the email reminding them of the offer, which read:”
At the end of the experiment, Hayes experienced a nearly 13% click-through boost that could be attributed to his use of the P.S.
Split testing your messages will determine whether or not these guidelines apply to your audience. Times change, readers’ needs differ – and you won’t know what the right combination of elements and copy is for your audience without your own data.
Use these principles as a starting point only as you look for the most effective format for your own email marketing messages.
Do you have another data point to add to this compilation? Do your own experiences disprove these recommendations? Tweet @sujanpatel and @SigstrApp and let us know your thoughts.
SiriusDecisions helps marketers and sales leaders (wait for it…) make serious decisions by utilizing data to help drive intelligent growth for their B2B organizations. The Summit is four days, packed with data-driven best practices. It’s centered around discovering and unveiling new innovations across the B2B spaces, and even includes some killer networking opportunities.
The event opened with Jewel serenading all the attendees. A Counting Crows concert is also on tap, and live music from Rhett Price and the Jones Band. Needless to say, this event rocks.
Must-Attend Sessions
Account-Based Marketing: The Content Audit
Presenter: John Grozier, Practice Director of SiriusDecisions
More B2B organizations are adopting account-based marketing. ABM is a strategic approach that aligns demand creation and customer relationship programs and messaging against a set of defined accounts and goals. This is done in a way that is relevant and valuable to those accounts (and to the sales team). To demonstrate maximum relevance at an account-based level, these organizations require pinpointed content that truly resonates with buyers. This session is centered around how to conduct a content inventory and audit using the SiriusDecisions Content Inventory Tool.
Engagement Economy: Understanding ROI from Field Marketing Events to Large Conferences
Presenter: Dane Risley of Cvent and Brad Gillespie of Octiv
Curious about optimizing the attendee journey and capturing actionable insights? Marketers can increase engagement by fostering human connections and integrating event and marketing suite technologies to maximize ROI.
Is Your Organization as Good at Demand Creation as You Think?
Presenters: Monica Behncke, VP and Group Director of Demand Services at SiriusDecisions; Gil Canare, Sr. Research Director of Demand Creation Strategies at SiriusDecisions
When it comes to B2B demand creation, marketing teams often think they’ve done enough for their drip nurture programs or website. But the work isn’t done if you want to keep a competitive advantage. This session teaches marketers how to create a roadmap for continued evolution of a company’s demand engine.
Did someone say account-based marketing?
Again, all of the aforementioned sessions address a topic that is pertinent to our team. With the recent launch of ABM for employee email, account-based marketing is especially top of mind for Sigstr and our marketing team. Check out the overview video if you haven’t already.
In addition to the summit, the Sigstr team hosted a group of attendees at LAVO at the Palazzo. We had a blast, learned a ton from sales and marketing leaders, and also discussed ABM tactics. Thank you to all of our guests who took time out of their schedule to hang out with us – we appreciate it!
This spring season closes out on a high note, and we can’t wait to get back into the action at Content Marketing World and HubSpot’s INBOUND later this year. We’re always grateful for the opportunity to spend time with smart digital marketers and learn from them. These last few months did not disappoint. See you at the next one!
The Sigstr team is in the last leg of what has been a very eventful conference season. This has included the SaaStr event in San Francisco, the B2B Marketing Exchange show in Scottsdale, SalesLoft’s Rainmaker Conference in Atlanta, Revenue Summit (back to San Francisco), DOMOPALOOZA in Salt Lake City and Marketo Summit (back to San Francisco again). The busy season is wrapping up with the MarTech Conference this week and SiriusDecision’s Summit in Las Vegas next week.
By and large, MarTech is an industry expert on all things marketing technology. It’s the world Sigstr lives in, so it only makes sense for our team to congregate with the biggest and brightest brains in this realm and rub elbows for 48 hours. The MarTech Conference organizes its agenda based on five different talk tracks: Executive, Data & Analytics, Adtech & Social, Digital Transformations and Solutions.
Must-attend sessions
“How Pandora Leveraged Marketing Analytics to Make Real-Time Decisions that Drive Results”
Speakers: Mike Driscoll, CEO & Founder of Metamarkets; Lisa Sullivan-Cross, CMO at Art.com
“Delivering Business Results with Marketing Technology”
Speakers: Jennifer Chick, VP Marketing Execution & Operations at Hilton Worldwide; Scott Harris, Senior Director of Enterprise Marketing at Adobe; Liam O’Connor, Principal at Lenati; Praveen Palepu, Director for the Microsoft USA Central Marketing Organization at Microsoft
“Orchestrating an ABM Campaign with Advertising, Content & Direct Mail”
Speakers: Nate Hurst, Manager of Account-Based Marketing at DOMO; Sangram Vajre, CMO & Co-Founder of Terminus
Moderator: Travis Wright, Chief Marketing Technologist at CCP Digital
In fact, each one of these sessions focuses on a key element for Sigstr’s marketing team. While we make a vast majority of our decisions based upon analytics, it’s also great to understand how other marketers weigh the importance of different data points in their decision-making process. On the other hand, it’s awesome to see how large organizations like Microsoft and Adobe utilize their marketing tech stack to deliver results.
Wining and dining
The Sigstr team also hosted a dinner this week at Local Kitchen & Wine Merchant so that we could spend time with MarTech Conference attendees in a more intimate setting. We were lucky to have such an outstanding group join us and we learned a ton about what’s most important for marketers this year. Thank you to our customers and also friends (old and new) for hanging out!
Also, the first day of the MarTech Conference marks the release of MarTech’s Digital Marketing Landscape. The 2017 landscape has been dubbed the “MarTech 5000” as it now includes over 5,000 companies.
If you zoom in further, you can find Sigstr in the Email Marketing category!
All of these conferences and events have equally been beneficial for our entire team. Catch the Sigstr team on the road again next week at the Sirius Decisions Summit!
More than 82 percent of U.S. business executives have called corporate communications and employee engagement a top priority, according to a 2015 TalentKeepers survey. For good reason, too. This strategy directly links to improved company productivity, profitability and also engagement. Employees who feel connected to their workplace are more innovative and productive.
How are corporate communications teams getting the word out about company initiatives? For the most part, this includes social media, company-wide emails and sometimes even postings on the kitchen thumbtack board.
What about email signature marketing? ESM already helps teams distribute Marketing content and drive conversions, and is now used to share internal announcements. Clickable call-to-action banners, located within the employee email signature, dynamically update based on the sender or recipient (internal vs. external email domain). These campaigns can promote open enrollment, company awards or product release notes, while simultaneously promoting external content.
As a result, email signature marketing has become a secret weapon for Marketers and HR professionals. Here are four other ways it can help with corporate communications:
Sales enablement
According to SiriusDecisions, research shows that sales doesn’t even use 60 to 70% of Marketing content. Consequently, this means Marketing’s resources and time are going to waste. If your Sales and Marketing teams can relate to this statistic, making content easier to access (and find) can help turn this around.
By injecting it into the employee email signature, it gives Sales team members a quick and easy way to dig deeper. Use corporate communications to the advantage of your Marketing team. Keep every team member (not just Sales) informed on each new piece of content.
Employee engagement
Create employee advocates with recognition or awards programs. It’s important to celebrate team members that are making progress (and reward them). Include all employees in the voting and make it a friendly competition!
Company mandates
A focus on learning, quality, and teamwork can help large or small organizations succeed. This is driven by the way things get done and how they treat their employees. Company mandates and security protocol require buy-in from all departments and effective communication is key. This usually includes a company-wide email from your IT admin when things like phishing scams happen.
However, that email may or may not be read by all employees. Instead of drafting up an email as fast as possible, launching an internal email signature campaign can help get the word out quickly. Link it to a security best practices doc or more information about the threat, so now your employees are informed and equipped with the right knowledge to protect the well-being of the company.
Company news
Have an event coming up? What about open enrollment or a company-wide fundraiser? Give your employees the heads up on these announcements while keeping the dates top-of-mind with every email sent. When employees are more informed, they’re more likely to take action (and eat pizza).
Make it happen with Dynamic Campaigns
Dynamic Campaigns by Sigstr sends content based on your end-recipient, without any extra work from you. (And without any extra emails hitting the inbox!) It allows you to show internal corporate communications while, at the same time, sending targeted Marketing content to contacts outside of your email domain. Request access to this feature or learn more by watching the video below.
Email professionals can’t hop from planet to planet. They aren’t technologically-enhanced. Nor do they possess nigh-invincibility, augmented super human strength or precognition. (Though, I really wish we did.) They’re simple regular people, like you and me.
But in a cyber-world, chock-full of spammers, filters and phishers, brands across the galaxy are relying on these email professionals to improve and optimize their company email signatures and branded messaging. They’re calling for tailored content, cool calls-to-action, recipient-level insights and measurability in every send.
This year alone, business and consumer emails exchanged daily will reach over 269 billion. And that number is only expect to grow, reaching 319.6 billion daily exchanges by the end of 2021, according to the Email Statistics Report 2017-2021 out of The Radicati Group.
Email, and company email signatures, are more important in your corporate marketing plan than ever. According to Salesforce’s 2016 State of Marketing Report, some 80 percent of marketers say email is a foundational piece of their business strategy.
Email is harder today than ever
Email pros are tasked with reaching the right audience, at the right time, with the right content for every stage of the buying cycle – a mission marketing has never accomplished with email. Until now. By using company email signatures, your marketing message is in the +10,000 emails each of your employees send. For a company of 500, that’s 5 million new impressions on your content.
The Guardian working to tailor your company email signatures strategy should be agile, willing to adjust in a single moment. They should have superhuman resilience and laser focus the recipient. By understanding who’s receiving the email, they should strategically align content that dynamically updates based on recipient domain.
So as you work to bolster your company email signatures strategy, which Guardian would you hire to run your program?
After you take the quiz (a few times), check out our latest resource:
Marketing is hard. Audiences are finicky. Bosses are panicky. And our sales folks are all hungry (for leads). And increasingly, account-based marketing has brought sanity to our marketing department and success back to our lead gen universe.
Account-based marketing, and its success is rooted in an alignment between marketing and sales. And while the number of companies deploying account-based marketing programs has increased by a steep 21 percent, only 60 percent of companies say they’re somewhat aligned with sales.
Why should you care about account-based marketing?
In traditional b2b marketing, we use segmentation and personas, and then we target to find the right prospects that might be interested in our stows. It’s like putting out a specific variety of bird seed in your backyard because cardinals like that type of seed, and if you’re going to watch birds, they might as well be cardinals.
Here, your content marketing and targeting strategies are the seed and your prospects are the cardinals.
But in account-based marketing, you’re not trying to attract any cardinals in the vicinity that are fired up about your free buffet of seeds. Instead you focus on specific birds (some cardinals, others robins and still more are blue jays) that all hang out in the same stand of trees.
In other words, account-based marketing targets companies, not personas.
As technology expands and high-stakes deals happen more regularly, and in more departments, more people are involved in the decision-making process. In fact, 34 percent of b2b buyers have increased the number of stakeholders involved in the purchase process. For any given sale, anywhere between seven and twenty people are involved in the decision. And, the more people involved, the less likely a purchase will be made.
That’s where account-based marketing comes into play. Certainly, account-based marketing is powerful because it can market to specific companies instead of wasting time (and money) on unqualified or unideal prospects. (Seriously, how often do people request an ebook or register for a webinar, even though there is absolutely no way they’ll ever buy? All. The. Time.) Account-based marketing lets you nix some of that inefficiency.
Your four-step guide to account-based marketing:
Step 1: Know your whales
This minute you can probably rattle off a list of your top performing accounts, and then another full of your dream accounts you’ve set your sights on. That’s great! Hold tight to that list! But take a look at your data and make sure you’ve honed in on the right prospects. Dig deeper into your customer data to figure out exactly which attributes should be used to determine your target accounts.
This process should be a collaboration between sales and marketing, as it calls for data from both departments. Take a look at the firmographic data – which includes things like industry, company size, location and annual revenue.
Also dig into the digital behavior and strategic factors like market influence, likelihood of repeated purchase and expected profit margin.
Step 2: Research, research, research and research a little more
Once you’ve figured out your targeted accounts, then it’s time to research and strategize. Your goal is to treat these companies like big, organization-level personas. You should already have your personas for an ideal buyer, so remember that’s not what you’re doing here. Think bigger; broader. But use your buyer personas to build your company profiles.
Become familiar with all the elements of the company structure and who the key players are. Knowing the details can dictate how you market your wares – especially if you’ve already identified your signers and your champions. Sometimes this information is already available in-house. Maybe someone on your team previously researched this target but didn’t complete the account-based marketing process.
If the information isn’t readily available, however, prepare to dust off your old Nancy Drew skills with a little detective work. Unfortunately, much of this process is manual. So block off a significant chunk of time to dedicate to researching your whale. LinkedIn is an easy way to unearth gen on your target, but there are other technologies that can help prospect, too.
Step 3: Create kickass content targeted to your whale
By now you know your top accounts (backed up by data) and you’re familiar with the names of the key players inside each account. Next, it’s time to think about the content you need to create to attract your targeted accounts, the content you already have, and the gaps that exist so you can build a holistic content strategy. This content should serve up very specific solutions to the company’s unique pain points. Try using a content matrix to map what message you’ll use to reach your targeted accounts through the buying journey. Here’s an example from Marketo, published in the ebook, A Recipe for Lean ABM:
Now it’s time to create some personalized content. Before you get overwhelmed, realize that some of the content you’ll need for each stage of the journey doesn’t need to be created from scratch. Repurpose your existing content helps create personalization at scale. Circle back to your content library, and then figure out what can be tweaked to resonate with your whales. Then begin crafting inimitable content that’s tailored to your key accounts – and the key players in them.
Step 4: Choose your channels
You can have the best content in the galaxy, but it won’t do you a lick of good if no one sees it. It’s important to find the right channels to distribute your content based on what’s most effective for them and where they are in the sales journey.
Figure out where your prospects and the key players live online. According to the Pew Research Center’s 2017 Social Media Fact Sheet, seven-in-ten Americans use social media. Facebook is still the most popular channel, but other channels, like LinkedIn and Twitter are relevant for your marketing.
The Fact Sheet also gives a rundown of the user profiles, laying out statistics based on age, race, gender, income, community type and education.
Beyond social, owned media, like email signature marketing, can inject your content into your email signature, dynamically update to provide the recipient with tailored content and delivers a more personal experience in the most intimate channel.
Don’t forget to measure your results based on content type and distribution method. Test, optimize and repeat for best results.
Marketers are obsessed with numbers. How many views did we see on that blog post? What was the click-through rate with that CTA? How well did our campaign perform? No matter what type of marketer you are, we’re all curious about the numbers.
A popular resource for all marketers (and sometimes their main go-to for “the numbers”) is Google Analytics. From page views to conversions, we can see the full picture on how a specific channel is performing.
Just like LinkedIn or Facebook, you can use Google Analytics to see traffic and conversions sourced from employee email. Your employee’s corporate email signature can help distribute the right content (to the right people) and drive conversions. Sigstr and Google Analytics make it easy to track your success and compare your results with other channels.
Below is a step-by-step guide on how to set this up. But before we jump in, a few things will need to be in place. This includes:
1. One or more corporate email signature campaigns running in your Sigstr account (if you aren’t a Sigstr customer yet, let’s talk). Make sure they point to a page that is associated with your Google Analytics account and is collecting data. If you’re unsure about either of these, check out this Analytics Help article.
2. Based on the conversions that matter most to your business, you will need to create one or more goal conversions. This Analytics Help article can help you get there. Goal conversions aren’t required, and without them, marketers can still see how many sessions or views are generated from a specific source. However, if you’d like to see how your traffic is converting, setting up a goal conversion is necessary.
Step 1
Log into your Google Analytics account and shift your attention to the left navigation bar. In this case, let’s focus on the Acquisition dropdown, All Traffic, then Source/Medium.
Step 2
Pick your preferred time range (in the top right). A list of top sources/mediums will then populate. Look for “Email_Signature / Sigstr” as this will tell you the number of sessions and new users that have been generated from your employees’ email signatures. It can also show how this traffic has translated to conversions. This is all possible because the Sigstr platform automatically appends UTM parameters to your corporate email signature campaigns.
In this case, “Request a demo” is the conversion goal and “Goal 1 Value” is associated with a dollar amount. Our fictional company being used for this example (Klowd) assumes that for every four demos requested and scheduled, they can expect one new closed/won deal. Their current average contract value is $10,000, so each new deal won results in $10,000 ACV.
Step 3
The view above shows us how much we much we can attribute to employee email as a channel. If you’re curious about the success of each Sigstr campaign within this channel, click on “Email Signature / Sigstr” and go to the “Secondary dimension” drop down (pictured below).
After clicking on “Campaign” (use the search bar if needed), you now see a view that breaks down each Sigstr campaign. The title of your campaign in Sigstr (“New website launch” for example) will show up as the campaign label in Google Analytics.
Klowd’s “Request a demo and schedule a time” campaign generated 120 sessions to their website, which resulted in 9 goal completions and a goal value of $20,000. Coupled with Sigstr’s analytics around number of impressions, clicks and click-through rate, a marketer now has a top-to-bottom view on their corporate email signature campaign.
Step 4
Step back and analyze the data. Recognize what’s working and what can be improved. Map back to the campaign design and determine which of those performed the best. Is there a specific resource or call-to-action that resonates most with your audience?
By using Sigstr and Google Analytics together to recognize trends (and how they lead to conversions), marketers can learn as they launch each new campaign. Our world has never been noisier, so we need to be creative with the production of our content and how we deliver it to the right audience.
Employee email is a channel that can be used to reach the right people at the right time. With the corporate email signature and Sigstr’s platform, marketers have a secret weapon to deliver their content and track the results.
Today’s tech-enabled world thrives on content, digested through social, digital and mobile channels. One-time fads have either evolved into mainstays or disappeared into the abyss. And as the mainstays continue to evolve, they spur trends of their own. Some are a natural evolution, a continued emergence of staples in traditional marketing. While other underscore the changing scene of B2B marketing and the continued emergence of new and advanced content marketing and distribution methodologies.
Here are a few trends in content marketing (and distribution) that will extend your marketing reach:
Trend 1: Embrace visual storytelling
Telling a digital marketer today that video is important is like telling a blogger 10 years ago, “Words can be really helpful.” Thank you, Captain Obvious.
When execution is on point, video engages consumers. It brings tangible results and quantifiable ROI. Snackable videos – like livestreams, video blogs and client testimonials, are preferred by consumers as much as four times more than text content. Video is the most thoroughly consumed content format today.
But as this digital marketing trend becomes a focal point to our strategy, we need to look at the “why” of which we’re engaging people.
Enter storytelling.
Good nonfiction storytelling in the business arena has the power to make your audience crave to believe in your brand. It creates an insatiable desire to be in your squad.
In a Carnegies Medal acceptance speech, Philip Pullman once said, “We need stories so much that we’re even willing to read bad books to get them, if the good books won’t supply them. We all need stories, but children are more frank about it.”
But our stories must be lifted off the pages of our strategy. We must bring the stories that embody our brand to life. Don’t get me wrong, writing is still a foundational piece of your content marketing strategy. But video stories and visual engagement will boost conversions.
Trend 2: Start obsessing over your customer
No company sells to another company. Not really anyway. We sell to a specific person who works in another company, and who can benefit from your product or service. So get specific in both your content marketing and distribution, and market to that person.
We’ve hit a point in digital marketing where we’re not being swallowed up by wave after wave of big data. We can actually use the information we’ve collected! We can turn our data into actionable, meaningful interactions. (Wahoo!)
Digital marketers who put insanely personalized campaigns into motion this year will drive better results. The benefits of personalization are mighty: Higher responses, better conversion rates, brand loyalty, repeat customers, amplified reach and boosted relevance, to name a few. And by targeting our content marketing and distribution based on segments, or even as granular as individual recipients will reap higher results.
Trend 3: Content distribution needs to be intentional
Our audience’s attention span is a finite resource. And it’s pushed to the limit every minute of every day. Just take a peek at the crazy infographic from our friends over at Domo. More than 216,000 pictures are shared every minute on Facebook Messenger. Almost 10,000 emoji-filled tweets are sent, and Siri answers 99,200 questions – every minute! That’s a lot of content marketing and distribution, and somehow you must find a way to stand out.
Marketing teams are tapping into every resource they can to have the time, energy, brainpower and budget to create new and engaging content. But great content has to find its audience. Consumers are littered with mountains of mediocre content tangling the interwebs, making it almost laughable some marketers still just put their work into the world with hopes of getting it seen.
The way we distribute our content needs to be more strategic. We need to get smarter if we want people to see through the clutter of everything-ness, to realize what we have to offer. Sure, we’ll keep hitting up the usual activities. We’ll share to our social platforms and send out an email campaign to our already-collected list of loyal followers. Then we’ll encourage our employees to share. But what about new visitors?
We need to look at new channels, like email signature marketing. The idea is to put your content inside of your email signature so it can reach your most important contacts through human email at any stage of the funnel. The average worker sends around 40 business emails a day, according to a study from The Radicati Group. For a company of 500, that’s five million emails which can deliver branded content, tailored to who’s going to see it.
Trend 4: Go native
Native ads are the hipsters of advertising. In other words, they’re the “I’m not an ad,” of advertising. They look and feel natural in their environment but subtly position branded messaging internally. And they’re favored by consumers over the in-your-face hard sell tactics. In fact, a study from Sharethrough showed people respond 53 percent better to native ads than to traditional display ads. Ad blockers and a general foul flavor left in the mouths of our consumers after years of too many pop-ups and display ads have made it tough to reach customers with a hard sell. Push advertising is fading. Traditional digital marketing will soon be completely replaced by native advertising.
Native advertising is unobtrusive and delivers content (yes, real, valuable content) that could almost be mistaken for an organic post, yet are clearly marked by brands as sponsored. Consumers love ‘em because they’re not an annoyance or distraction in their daily lives. Instead the ads provide real value, be it education, entertainment or otherwise. Digital marketers are going nuts over them because they fit almost anywhere. And they’re more digestible.
Though advertorials in journalism have always been a popular mend between valuable content and advertising, brands like The Onion and BuzzFeed are paving the way for sponsored content in the modern marketing landscape. BuzzFeed’s primary business model is native advertising. They make money by selling posts, videos, quizzes and other kinds of content that match the tone of its editorial content. My favorite right now is this Mother’s Day gift guide disguised as a quiz, sponsored by Nordstrom.
Trend 5: Sales enablement needs a seat at the marketers’ table
A staggering 61 percent of enterprise buyers say the sales people they work with add no value to the buying process, as reported by research from Forrester’s sales enablement group. Now more than ever, sales reps need to rely on the right content, sent at the right time, to support their sales conversations. Low value sales reps aren’t going to be invited back in second calls. They’ll fail to gain trust and learn the pain points. And they won’t lock in the sale.
But one in every three sales reps say they struggle daily to find the right collateral to close a deal, according to a study from Brainshark. They’re weeding through hundreds (sometimes thousands) of posts to find something, anything, applicable. And when they finally find a piece, they lack the confidence to know it really is the right material for their particular situation.
We need to invite sales to the marketer’s lunch table and together craft stronger enablement to have cohesive messaging and positioning through sales, your business development team and through customer success. Every department needs to be on the same page and marketing needs to lead the charge.
Using corporate email for content marketing and distribution
Email has died a million deaths. It’s the internet’s read-headed stepchild, neglected and taken for granted. And yet, it’s still an integral part of how we communicate. Last year, more than 215.3 billion emails were exchanged each day. And research predicts we’ll be exchanging 257.7 billion emails a day by 2020.
Nearly three-quarters of adults say they prefer to communicate with companies via email, while 91 percent say they enjoy the promotional emails from companies they do business with. In the B2B space, 73 percent of companies agree email marketing is a core piece of their marketing strategy. And about a fourth of them rate email as their top channel in terms of ROI.
Not to mention, most business professionals in the U.S. spend around 6.3 hours a day in their email, according to The Huffington Post, based on research from Adobe Systems Inc. That’s about 31.5 hours a week or 1638 hours a year. Collectively, workers spend about 4.2 trillion (trillion!) hours in email each year, summed from statistics culled through the U.S. Bureau of Labor, McKinsey Global Institute and The Radicati Group, Inc. That’s an impressive number of hours spent shuffling a depressing amount of email.
There are no other channels that are as effective and efficient as email.
But are we using it well or only well enough for content marketing and distribution? Sure, you shoot out your latest or greatest content through a campaign or newsletter once a week, but is that really enough? Can’t we do better?
Employee email lets you distribute content to your coworkers for education and enablement. And it allows you to pass it on to your network of customers, prospects and leads.
Like it or not, you’re being judged. Every day, the people you work with – whether it’s your colleagues, managers, clients, prospects or stakeholders – are silently judging. They’ve each formed (or are forming) an opinion of you, and it’s largely based on how you communicate. Your email etiquette matters.
As business evolves through technology, the need to meet in person has become less and less important. It comes as no surprise that most of our interactions happen via email.
But the onslaught of social media has brought about a different type of prose to professional correspondence than business communications of years past. We’ve started importing abbreviated language of text and tweets, gotten a tad too liberal with our use of the exclamation point and some have even used emoticons – in professional emails. (Seriously, why?!)
The way you write in your email says more about you than you may realize. It’s worth understanding the impact of the words you write, as how you’re perceived, based on these contacts, can either build your reputation or kill it.
Here are 13 ways to perfect to your email etiquette to avoid sloppy sends:
Sure, proper sentence structure may sound overrated – better suited for formal essays in freshman English. But, think about it: After someone reads our email, do we want them to focus in on the message or the way we misused (or overused) an ellipsis? Here are 13 very specific lessons focused only on your punctuation and grammar in email.
Punctuation
1. Ellipses
An ellipsis is totally cool to use in your email to show a pause or break in your train of thought, according to several style guides. But just because it’s allowable doesn’t mean it’s always good email etiquette. Most people who use ellipses in email tend to overdo it – a lot. It shouldn’t replace normal punctuation. To quote the Grammar girl, Mignon Fogarty, “You should not allow the sweet lure of ellipses to muddle your ability to write a complete sentence.”
2. Parentheses
Parentheses are used to clarify a thought or as a side note. Periods and commas typically go on the outside of the parentheses, expect for when the parenthetical sentence stands alone. For instance: “Check out the report (you’ll be shocked)!” and “Check out the report. (You’ll be amazed!)” Also, commas are much more likely to follow parentheses than precede them.
3. Exclamation Points
Using an exclamation point can convey excitement, but overusing them can make you look cheap. Adding exclamation points too liberally is like putting lipstick on your prose. It’s cheap, fast and everyone knows it isn’t real. Instead, try to use a more vivid language and tone to get your point across.
4. Emoticons
As social media grows (and character count shrinks) these little pictorial representations of feelings are playing a pretty hefty role in communication. If your brand is using them in your social media that’s great! But the verdict is still out on if they meet email etiquette standards. If your brand is a little more casual, feel free to use them sparingly. Science shows no one really seems to mind. In fact, it may even strengthen their perception of you.
5. Colons
A colon can connect two independent sentences or statements, but should not be used as a substitute for a comma. Both the sentence leading into the colon and the one following should be capitalized in Sentence case. For instance: “She got what she deserved: She really earned that raise.” Note that you should never use more than one colon in a sentence, though you can tag in a semicolon and keep your Email Etiquette Master status.
6. Semicolons
Semicolons separate things. They break apart two main clauses that are closely related to each other, that could stand on their own as sentences if you wanted them to. Basically, they nix the pause between two statements without using words like “and,” “but,” “nor,” or “yet.”
7. Dashes
Like colons, dashes can be used to introduce the next part of a sentence, although they also have other uses. But a dash is stronger and more informal than a colon. A dash interrupts the flow of a sentence and tells your reader to get ready for some important or dramatic statement. It’s the Barney “Wait-for-it” Stinson of punctuation. A dash also brings extra or defining information into play, though it’s a rather dramatic marking, and should be used as such for proper email etiquette.
8. Commas
They’re everywhere – they’re rampant! And they’re so often wrong. Commas are like people on the subway: Just when you think you know them, they turn around and startle you with their complexity. Because they have so many different uses and those uses can differ depending on which style guide you’re writing from, comma rules are tough to pin down. Conventional wisdom has (wrongly) advised that we should add commas wherever our readers should pause. But that’s just bad advice. If you have a main clause – something that can stand alone as a sentence – put a comma after it. What comes after that comma, though, should not be able to also stand alone as its own sentence. If you want to join two independent, but related, clauses, try using a semicolon instead.
Grammar
9. Acronyms & Abbreviations
OMG! LOL! Btw… In our text-speak language of acronyms, we’ve become a touch lazy and let proper grammar fall to the wayside. As a rule for proper email etiquette, don’t use acronyms when you’re emailing external contacts or, say, your CEO. But, there are a number of acronyms and abbreviations that are A-Okay to use in the office. Those are: FYI, JK, EOD, EOW, ASAP, OOO.
10. Their, There, They’re (and other homophones)
Homophones are words that sound the same, despite their meaning or spelling. The most common offenders are: their, there, they’re; your, you’re; two, to, too; its, it’s; let’s & lets; peak, peek and pique; alot, a lot and allot. Here’s the difference between them:
Their: Describes something that’s owned by a group
There: A place away from here.
They’re: A contraction of the words “they are.”
Your: Describes something that belongs to you.
You’re: A contraction of the words “you are.”
To: Typically describes a destination, recipient or action
Too: Also.
Two: A number (2).
Its: The possessive of “it.”
It’s: A contraction of the words “it is.”
Let’s: A contraction of the words “let us.”
Lets: To allow or permit
Peak: A sharp point, like the peak of a mountain.
Peek: A quick look.
Pique: To stimulate or provoke – you know, like your interest.
Alot: A non-word that makes you look like an email etiquette fool.
A lot: A vast quantity.
Allot: Set a certain quantity (say, of money) aside.
11. Incomplete comparisons
One of my greatest pet peeves, incomplete comparisons drive me absolutely mad. When I see it in the wild, I immediately assume the person emailing me is incompetent. Sure, they may just have poor email etiquette, but I’m judging you when I see it. Can you see what’s wrong here?
Our product is bigger, faster and smarter!
Bigger, faster and smarter …than what? Your last model? Other products? A competitor? If you’re asserting a comparison, make sure you always clarify what you’re comparing to.
12. Me & I
Though most of your email etiquette should focus on your reader – therefore not necessitating the use of “me” or “I,” sometimes it’s simply unavoidable to mention yourself. But you should be careful how you do it. For instance:
When you get a chance, can you send the new deck to Michelle and I?
But that’s wrong. As a rule of thumb, I always try removing the other person and saying the sentence to see how it sounds. That’d be:
When you get a chance, can you send the new deck to I?
Doesn’t work. Here “I” is the object of the sentence, and “I” should never be used in objects. Instead use “me.”
13. Referring to your brand as “They”
I’ll admit, I’m guilty of this. I make this mistake all the time. And it’s wrong. So I need to work on my email etiquette. But a business is not plural, so the business is not they. It’s “it.” We don’t identify our brands as “he” or “she,” so “they” feels right. But it’s inaccurate. Our brand is singular and inanimate. It’s an it.
The Dalai Lama once said: “Our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can’t help them, at least don’t hurt them with bad email signatures.”
Just kidding, he never said that. But if he had, he wouldn’t have been wrong.
Email signatures, like those who create them, come in many shapes and sizes. Some are sharp and professional – bordering on brusque. Others are quirky, bringing in fuchsia-colored fonts and motivational prosaicisms. And still too many are overdone, an explosion of links, websites, social profiles, images and, callously, fax numbers. These bad email signatures hurt more than the eyes of your recipients. They can have some seriously negative impact on your brand, too.
More than 205 billion emails were sent and received per day in 2015, according to a study by The Radicati Group. That number is only expected to grow – with experts predicting it’ll reach more than 246 billion in the next two years. And the average worker receives more than 50 emails each day, while a quarter of us have more than 100 hit our inbox in a day, according to a 2012 study by Varonis Systems.
Many first impressions are made via email. And your email signature is your chance to shape that impression. A professional email signature is both visually appealing while it conveys your skills, experiences and contact details, while bad email signatures leave your recipients wondering what’s wrong with you.
Like any form of art (and yes, crafting email signatures is an art form) there’s a level of subjectivity involved. There’s also a bit of technical skill. Fortunately, when it comes to style and implementation, there’s a fairly short list of what’s acceptable – and no need to push the envelope too far to present a refined and professional email signature.
Here’s a list of the 15 worst blunders that make bad email signatures:
1. Comic Sans
Comic Sans was originally made for the little comic book-style help speech bubbles in Microsoft programs designed primarily for youngsters. Using it in your email signatures could damage your credibility as a serious professional.
2. Inspirational Quotes
Inspirational quotes belong on Pinterest and Tumbler, not in your email signature.
3. +10 Social Media Icons
People aren’t going to click every single media icon you have. So if this is you:
Stop. The more options you offer, the less likely any of them will be clicked – it’s a phenomenon called the Paradox of Choice. Instead, try focusing on the few accounts that matter the most to growing your business or building your personal brand. And limit your signature to include no more than three.
4. Fax Numbers
Most people don’t fax anymore. The technology is dated and has been widely removed from the office. Instead, people can simply scan a document and pop it into their reply.
5. “Sent from my iPhone”
Please read as: “So sorry for not proofreading. I’m completely capable of grammar and spell check, but I’m on my iPhone, so that means rules don’t apply to me.
“Oh and if I call you jerk instead of Jack, yeah, that’s totally autocorrect. Totally.”
6. Blank Signature
The only thing worse than including everything in your email signature is including nothing. You want to be professional and helpful in your email, so include the relevant information – like your name, your phone number and a call-to-action. Oh, and if you work with international clients, don’t forget the prefix for your country’s code on your phone number!
7. Too Many Font Colors
Okay this one’s a little more subjective. But the issue with adding in an abundance of color is that there are many more opportunities to get it wrong – using clashing colors, visual imbalance, over-complication and crowding your information. If you’re in a more creative field, feel free to use a few colors to add style and personality to your professional sign-off, but use the general rules of design.
8. Awkward Avatar Photos
People tend to remember visuals better than text. And according to a study from MIT neuroscientists, images that contain people are the most memorable. So leave a good impression with a quality avatar photo – one that shows your strengths, not your lazy eye.
9. Lengthy Disclaimers
Disclaimers like, “This email was intended for the recipients only,” or “Our company accepts no liability for this email’s content,” aren’t just annoying – they probably hold no legal weight either. Not to mention, they’re usually at the end of an email – after you’ve already read what you “weren’t supposed to read.” And often they take up way too much room in your company’s bad email signatures.
If you really must have a non-disclosure or legal disclaimer, it’s better to send that information via secure channels in an encrypted format.
10. Outdated CTA
Make your contacts happier, have better support, create meaningful conversations – whatever it is you’re trying to do in your company, there’s a piece of content that can help you do it better. So, including a CTA to the content is highly recommended (we can help). But make sure your content is relevant and current. Sending someone to a page that hasn’t been updated in months could send the message you’re not serious
11. Alma Mater
Oh wow! You’re a Mountain Goat class of ’12? By adding your alma mater and graduation year, you’re essentially telling your contacts that you’re just not to be taken seriously. Keep this information to your LinkedIn profile, not your bad email signatures.
12. Including Your Email Address
Imagine introducing yourself at a party, then reintroducing yourself when the conversation is over. Awkward, right?
13. Times New Roman
The seemingly innocuous (and often default) Times New Roman is a serious and formal font. It’s also insanely boring. Using it in your email signature is like emailing and saying that you didn’t put any thought into what you just sent – it’s like wearing sweatpants to the office. (Unless you’re in a home office, alone, in which case, I fully support sweatpants. Still have qualms with Times New Roman, though.)
14. Too Many Titles
Too many titles, or even titles you’ve just simply made up are maddening. Adding in every professional title looks cluttered and can come across a bit arrogant if it’s irrelevant to your current position.
Do you have a specialized degree or certification that’s relevant to your current position? Feel free to add it in – just don’t go overboard.
15. Excessive Awards
The information in your email signature should be relevant to your title, company, skills and contact details – you’re not sending out your resume via your bad email signatures. Excess text and logos are distracting and unnecessary.
Good writing is the foundation of good content that gets noticed, no matter what form that content ultimately takes. But the rules of marketing have changed considerably in the last decade – and maybe even more dramatically over the last few years. Google practically dictates how brands are found online, and so we must have a comprehensive b2b content marketing plan that prioritizes creation and distribution that directly, and routinely, engages with your targeted audience.
It’s time to wage war on mediocre content and be heard. Here are nine unconventional ways to get your b2b content marketing noticed.
1. Know your audience
Get out and actually talk with your customers and prospects. Too many times, marketing feels compelled to stay within the four walls of the office – very often, only customer success or sales talks to the customers. So, get out and ask customers what they think. Watch how they behave. Look for patterns.
I like to use social media to drive conversations. Twitter is a great listening tool, but so many companies only use it to listen for sales leads or (worse) they only use it to broadcast their own messaging.
Pay attention to context, too. Avoid grouping customers in an artificial setting like a focus group or cohort. Instead meet them in their natural habitat so you can get a more realistic perception of how they interact with your content.
2. Simplify your message
No one will ever complain you said something too simply. Find your point and make it. The key is to understand the one thing you’re trying to say. It should only be one thing! You shouldn’t have four or five calls-to-action, and you definitely shouldn’t have more than one idea you’re conveying.
Every piece of content you write should have just one key point. Boil your message down, not only to an elevator speech, but literally a tweet. I like to put the key idea of anything I’m writing in bold at the top of my draft. That way I can check back and I have a constant reminder to stay on topic. Once you have a clear idea about what it is you’re trying to say, figuring out the data, stories and messaging around it and not wasting the reader’s time is much easier.
3. Obsess over your first line
The first line in your content either makes people want to keep reading or stop dead in their tracks. And remember, readers are looking for reasons not to read your content.
Entice your reader by putting them into the story. Ask questions. Share a resource. Be surprisingly helpful. Dish out some crazy data tidbit. Tell an unusual story or anecdote. Whatever you do, make it interesting and absurdly authentic.
4. Appeal to primitive instincts
We are hardwired to look out for danger and problems. Just take a glance at your local newspaper – they’re selling sex and fear because that’s what people respond to. I like to think we’re so engrossed with danger because we’re constantly on the looking to learn how to react in situations. Maybe not.
Whatever the reason, we love hearing about problems – and learning the fixes. So an unconventional way to get your b2b content marketing noticed shifts messaging into a warning. Or highlights a problem in the industry that you may be facing (or might in the future) or emphasize the dangers. For instance, this article from Sigstr founder Dan Hanrahan on MarketingProfs is a warning on how to send your emails into your customer’s trash. He gives standard problems and mistakes people make when sending email and how to fix them.
5. Use keywords in your headlines
SEO and content marketing are BFFs. SEO seeks to create content that attracts love from search engines, where b2b content marketing aims to create content that humans love – or find useful, valuable, surprising or entertaining.
Key in to keywords, search engines and humans will love. But it’s not all about creating content that lets you get found online via search. Instead we all have an imperative to create content worth sharing.
The human brain is constantly on the lookout for keywords or phrases that intrigue us. Skip the overly clever headlines, and instead key into the words people are actually looking for – not just in searches, but while scanning the headlines.
6. Make your reader feel good – appeal to their ego
Good content serves the reader. It’s not self-indulgent. People love content that plays into their own self-interest. And this isn’t some crazy new idea. Publilius Syrus – a Latin writer circa 42 BC – said we’re just more interested in people who are interested in us.
So, swap places with your reader. Ask, “So what?” about each and every piece of content you create. Why does your content matter to your customer? What’s the point? Why should they care?
In Everybody Writes, Ann Handley said in writing, and in business, we tend to put ourselves first. We place our own agenda over the interests of those we’re creating for – and that’s a huge mistake! “Relentlessly, unremittingly, obstinately think of things from your readers’ point of view, with empathy for the experience you are giving them.”
Remember, no one has to read, watch or absorb the content you create. Ask (and answer) what’s in it for them and forge the trek to pathological empathy for your reader.
7. Find the right channels for distribution
Consumer behavior has changed. Customers are online looking for you. The question is, though, will they find you? And if they do, will they be inspired to do business with you?
Good content is only noticed if sharing is a key part of your b2b content marketing strategy. You can’t expect Google to do all the work for you – you’ve got to actively share and engage your audience. But where?
Social media must be a part of your distribution strategy. But no longer can you simply spam your Twitter feed and LinkedIn company page with your own content headlines. The algorithms hide your content from people who don’t regularly interact with your brand. Make sharing, and engaging, and building relationships with your communities, central to your b2b content marketing program.
Email signature marketing is another new(ish) place to put your content to get it noticed. The average American worker sends at least 28 emails a day (give or take a few). That’s more than 10,000 emails in a year, per worker. Which means, your company of 500 employees is sending 5,110,000 emails a year. And every single one of those emails has an email signature – usually clad with some sort of ridiculous disclaimer, made popular when faxes were still a thing, or inspirational quote. So nix the clutter and slide in your content that can provide real value to your recipient – and spread your message to a targeted audience organically.
8. Repackage your content
Reimagine your content. Don’t limit yourself to just one medium. Creating really good content is hard, so squeeze every drop of juice out of whatever you’re creating. Reimagine your content – don’t just recycle it. C.C. Chapman, who co-penned Content Rules with Ann Handley, said to treat each piece of content you create as a piece of a broader strategy. “Recycling is an afterthought; good content is intentionally reimagined, as its inception for various platforms,” he said. “Create content that comes to life in various formats, across many different platforms and that can address multiple audiences.”
In the planning stages, conceptualize all the pieces of content you plan to create as a part of a single, bigger idea. Or, alternatively, if you’re creating a large project, think about how you can create smaller chunks of digest-able content from that single asset. Have a new ebook? Break the sections down into a blog. Have some stellar stats inside of it? Design an infographic. Use the information you already have in a podcast or webinar – you get the idea. Repurpose your content into whichever package is required to reach a larger segment of your targeted audience in the space they live.
9. Go viral
If only it were that easy.
But you can help up the viral effect. Get your content into the hands of your colleagues, contacts, customers, prospects and friends. These are your seeders and sneezers – they’re the folks who’ll start the viral process. Ask people to share, email or retweet out your message. And then tell them why it’s important to share and exactly what they need to do. Make it as easy as possible. Remove barriers like opt-ins and logins and just give them the content and tools they’ll need to share it.
Several years ago, I led the promotions department of a radio conglomeration. I was in charge of finding the most efficient way to give people free stuff. What I learned was people want free stuff, they just don’t want to work for it. If a contest had more than three steps, people would disengage and I’d be left with a drawer full of unused concert tickets, jewelry gift cards and vacation vouchers. So, when we’re trying to give our content away to people who want to get better at what we’re helping with, make it as few steps as possible – one click is best. And make the benefits of sharing obvious. Your readers will take care of the rest.
In the age of Netflix and DVD (or BluRay) boxed sets, TV shows just don’t die like they used to, which is why it’s ridiculously hard to believe it’s been over 12 years since The Office first premiered. The dry humor paired with the realistic monotony of a traditional office pays nod to the British mockumentary of the same name. And today it becomes a piece of Sigstr history as it joins Game of Thrones, Parks & Rec, Harry Potter and a few Marvel Superheroes in sharing their would-be email content.
Apart from being nominated for a plethora of Emmy Awards and Golden Globes, it is a love story for the ages. The anticipation and development of romance in the first two seasons with Jim and Pam got you hooked, too? Nope? Just me? Okay, I admit it, I’m a romantic at heart. Apart from that, it hits home to everyone who has an office dynamic, no matter if you work for a paper company or an awesome martech company, like Sigstr.
So don’t be a Toby, kick back, grab a beet or two from Schrute farms and enjoy the read.
Dwight Schrute
Dwight Schrute is assistant to the regional manager, despite a lack in social skills and common sense. He’s a fascist nerd with a deep and abiding love for the system. He lives on his family’s 60-acre beet farm – the most successful beet farm in Pennsylvania – with his cousin Mose in a nine-bedroom farmhouse. The pair run the home as a bed-and-breakfast and sell their beets. His email content campaign is promoting his latest ebook, Benefits of Buying Local Produce.
Michael Scott
Michael Scott is the boss, which means he can get away with anything – and he does. He’s best known for his child-like humor and affinity for making people totally uncomfortable through song parodies (like “Beers in Heaven” or “Goodbye, Toby”), derogatory comments and admitting to hating his co-workers (well, just Toby). His email content reflects his love for the arts with his “Magic Tricks Webinar.” (Spoiler Alert: He doesn’t teach you how to do them.)
Creed
A former homeless man, hippie and deviant, Creed is, apparently, a quality assurance director. But even he forgets what his title is, as he never actually does any work. He’s oddly informed about drug culture and has been quoted saying, “I’ve been in a number of cults, both as a leader and a follower.” He’s just weird enough to be likable. We can expect that a majority of his externally-faced email content is used for his lucrative Face ID business.
Jim Halpert
Slim Jim is the resident “cool guy” in the Scranton Dunder Mifflin office. He’s well-liked, and respected, by pretty much everyone. When he puts the effort in, Jim can really move some paper. But Jim’s pride and joy at the office is not actually in his work at all. Instead it’s in his ongoing prank war with Dwight. His email content is a “Top Dwight Pranks Workshop” for other employees looking to prank their coworkers.
Kevin Malone
Kevin has a huge heart – and an even bigger stomach. Among his many talents, he plays in a band, Scrantonicity, as lead vocalist and drummer. He’s also surprisingly talented at shooting hoops, catching footballs and putting copious amounts of M&Ms in his mouth. Kevin’s most important CTA comes from his biggest accomplishment: Winning the World Series of Poker – Deuce-Seven Triple Draw Tournament in 2002. His email content campaign shows a case study on “How to Win the WSOP.”
Angela (Martin) Schrute
Angela is the worst! Honestly, she’s cold, heartless and judgmental. However, she does have a few fascinating interests and responsibilities. She loves her cats to the point of obsession, posters of infants dressed like adults and she’s the head of the party planning committee – a role she takes insanely serious. Right now, Angela is running a campaign to get folks to come to her cat, Bandit’s, birthday party.
Andy Bernard
The “Nard Dog,” and infamous singer in “Here Comes Treble,” Andy is the conniving, obnoxious, desperate for attention middle manager. He’s a corporate suck-up with a bit of an anger management issue. On the other hand, he wears his heart on his sleeve and has an enormous capacity to love. Overall, Andy is a glorious, vulnerable fool who just wants to be valued. He has a vast compendium of talents to appreciate as well, such as his musical aptitude for stringed instrument and vocals. Then there’s his overly-dramatic theatrical performances and a few calming techniques he picked up in anger management. His campaign offers you the chance to book him for acting gigs in his “Book a Meeting,” campaign.
Pam (Beesly) Halpert
Pam is the sweetheart of the show. Timid and friendly, she has an adoration for Jim and all things art. She’s Michael Scott’s biggest supporter, often letting him practice “trial run” performances with her before customer meetings – and sometimes dates. She also had the tenacity to leave Dunder Mifflin Scranton to join Michael’s company – the Michael Scott Paper Company – before returning and essentially promoting herself to office administrator. Pam’s campaign proudly promotes her most recent honor – the “Whitest Sneaker Dundie Award.”
In 2010, Birchbox launched their first shipped-to-your-door box of beauty product samples and became an overnight sensation. Seven years and a million subscribers later, the company has grown from a two-person shop to a beast with offices in five countries. Others, like ModCloth and Trunk Club, have also added to their roster, creating a need for consistent training and HR content, no matter where employees clock in.
So, they all turned to Lessonly.
Lessonly, a modern team learning software, lets teams translate important work knowledge into lessons to accelerate productivity. With the right training, most employees (69 percent) say they’ll stay put for at least three years. The platform has helped more than 500,000 learners at companies likeBirchbox and Trunk Club to effectively train and track their learners’ progress.
Hundreds of other companies are using Lessonly’s online training software (including us!) to onboard new employees and offer continued education to more-seasoned team members. And their clients love them – which has been made obvious by their top rank award on G2Crowd.
To let their prospects and customers know about the honor, the Lessonly crew added the HR content to their Sigstr campaign.
What We Love:
We’ve been obsessed with the Lessonly crew’s graphic design for months! Late last year, our marketing team went to a one-day seminar and I wound up sitting right next to their design lead, Jenny Tod. Jenny is the sweetest bad-ass designer (complete with a beautiful sleeve tattoo) you’ll ever meet. And she’s the mastermind behind Ollie the Llama, the Lessonly mascot. She finished the first draft of Ollie before she even started! That sort of proactivity with a side of quark is the standard for the Lessonly team.
And, of course, we’re huge fans of how they brought their campaign design to life outside of the rectangle. Not to mention, the clean typography keeps the HR content easy to read at a glance – which is just about the same amount of time they had to get their recipients’ attention at the end of their emails.
But what we really love is how they’re using the campaign.
By using their email signature space to announce their top rank on G2Crowd gave the folks at Lessonly a way to show connections how thrilled their clients are with the platform. And, they could inject the HR content into their emails subtly, without bragging.
The campaign had nearly 30,000 views in three weeks. And it brought in 100 additional clicks to the post on their blog detailing the honor.
What (else) We Love:
By sharing the news of their top ranking, the folks at Lessonly also brought awareness to the LMS category listing on G2Crowd. They made it easy for readers to make the leap to leave a review, while avoiding an actual ask. And for contacts who are still prospects, the HR content gave them an easy way to see what other people are saying about the platform, without being pushy.
What’s Next:
Lessonly typically rotates their Sigstr campaigns every three to four weeks. After the G2Crowd campaign ran, they launched a banner promoting HR content around the launch of their Salesforce integration. So far, the campaign has brought in around 40,000 views.
Other campaigns, like their 2016-17 Learning Trends Ebook and their Definitive Guide to Democratized Learning saw +74,000 and +45,000 views respectively.
Sigstr Shout-Out is a series that features the insanely talented and creatively driven Sigstr customer campaigns so you can see simple email signature best practices in action – and who’s nailing them.
An employee advocate can improve your brand reach, authenticity and trustworthiness.
Businesses pour colossal amounts of resources into creating positive chatter around their brand online. And while the sales teams may see a boost in return, marketing is stuck spending the time and money trying to identify the “what” and “how” to get people talking. Should we create an ebook? Maybe a video? Would this fit on the blog? Or maybe we should distribute it on social? Through email? Ads in the yellow pages? (Just kidding on that last one.)
While we’re scratching our heads, we’re totally overlooking our most powerful channel to get our content noticed – our employees! These are the people who know the company better than anyone else.
The human conduit refers to the notion that information conveyed by real people is way more believable than what companies say as a brand. In other words, employees are more credible than the corporate message. And, on average, your employees have about 10 times the connections than your brand has alone, according to a study from Social Chorus. That means, your company with 250 employees on payroll can easily reach some 2,500 more people than your marketing department alone.
But an employee advocate is born from culture, not technology
Companies today are impatient. The explosion of technology has allowed us to work faster. Companies expect results faster. Marketing faster. Sales deals to close faster. We’ve forgone the mindset of gaining our customers’ trust in exchange for gaining the customer, period. Now. We need to shift into a sales tour guide role – giving our audience what they need, when they need it. And that shift is rooted in company culture.
At the root of culture lies engagement. Employee engagement creates advocates. And an employee advocate then becomes an evangelist. They crave the chance to scream your message across their many networks online. And when they do, they’re spreading your marketing reach to all their friends, family, neighbors, business acquaintances, and so on.
If your employee isn’t your biggest advocate, your brand has bigger issues. It’s hard to make a culture shift. Not to mention, it’s tough to convince senior leadership to change “the way it’s always been.” And then if they do agree to change, it usually happens over a period of several years, so some of your best workers will have already left. If the C-suite sees employees fleeing, that might persuade them to embrace a more social business culture, but not always. On the other hand, though, if they see customers fleeing, that’s a whole lot more convincing.
Companies that are good places to work are good at creating employee advocates. People who love what they do will want to share their hard work with the people in their network because they’re proud of it.
An employee advocate gives your brand authenticity
The thing is, though, marketing has to relinquish some control over messaging. Your people have to actually be genuine and authentic when they post and share branded content. Marketing, in general, tends to get so excited about a new idea or tactic, so we push it really hard. Then we push it again. And we push it a little more. Leaving our employees to feel trapped into sending the exact message we send to their network, when we say to send it – or they just don’t do it at all.
To paraphrase Shakespeare, too much of a good thing is too much of a good thing. Instead, we must allow our employee advocate to feel empowered to share the content they like. With a message that actually sounds like something they’d say. Can we give them the tools to make it easy? Absolutely. And we should! But we can’t force them into participating. After all, if we coerce advocacy, is it really advocacy? (Hint: No. No, it’s not.)
As our friend Jay Baer said on the Social Business podcast, “Employee advocacy needs to be voluntary with guidelines, training and support. No good social media gets created at bayonet point.”
People trust your workers more than they trust you
Consumers want to buy from people they like and trust. And the people they like and trust sit in the cubical next to you. Employees are, by and large, the most credible voices you have regarding the company’s work environment and integrity. Content shared by employees creates a level of trust between prospects or customers and your brand. An employee advocate humanizes the company. And if a customer feels they’re talking to a real person, not a marketing bot, they’ll have a faster track to loyalty in your brand.
Today, an employee advocate is trusted twice as much as a CEO. Gone are the days of a CEO promoting their own brand. Instead, they want to hear from the people who work at the company. If the employees are happy, it’s obvious in their posts. And the brand becomes more trusted and more credible.
Social advocacy isn’t enough
The reality is, if you’re only using social to power all your employee advocacy efforts, you’re simply not maximizing the opportunity you have to use your employees’ connections and trust advantage to get your content consumed.
Not every employee on your payroll is on social – you know, it’s becoming trendy to go sans right now. And something I’ve struggled with, it mixes business with personal life. I love sharing my content with my friends and family on Facebook and Twitter, but if I share only work content all day, every day, they’re going to start tuning out. Or worse, they’ll unfollow me. They’re not going to trust that I’m sharing for their interest and instead they’ll think I’m only out to make a buck.
Instead, tap into the network you already own. Use corporate email signatures to share your branded content.
Email is to your marketing department as Belle is to finding the Beast’s castle. It’s always been there, you’ve just been overlooking it as an advocacy channel. Your team is sending a LOT of email every day, to people who are actually interested in what you have to say. On average, each employee sends more than 10,000 emails a year. For that company of 250, that’s 2.5 million unique views on your content.
Want more on empowering your employee advocates? Check out our new ebook, co-authored with Jay Baer.
Which content marketing tools help you create your best work?
I used to think tools alone were kind of numinous.
When I was in grade school, I was afraid to turn on the family computer without parental supervision. It was big and loud. And very expensive. And my little fingers had a tendency to break things. So, I skipped out.
That was, at least, until my mom bought me my first iMac.
Maybe she realized my love of storytelling through a pen and journal was causing juvenile arthritis in my hand. Or possibly she understood the world I was living in was rooted in technology and I was going to need a swift kick in the ass and get comfortable if I was going to be successful as a writer.
Today, content marketing tools are the life blood of marketing success. Some 88 percent of b2b marketers using content marketing right now as their overall strategy. And 62 percent of them have reported they were more successful with their strategy last year than in 2015. That’s a shift from the year prior, where a slim 30 percent of marketers said their content marketing was effective.
We’re producing more content, at a faster pace than ever. Tools help generate ideas, enhance performance and optimize delivery. So, what are the frictionless tools my team uses for content marketing? What do we use every, single day?
While skimming the depths of the interwebs, have you ever run across an interesting article or helpful video that’d be super handy … eventually? Pocket is a virtual pocket for collecting those treasures and saving them for later. At the click of a button, I can collect piece I want to research or reference later in a post, infographic or video. I used to email myself links, but I’d never actually get around to reading them because I’d lose track of what they were. Or where they were.
With Pocket, though, I can tag items so it’s easy to search a single topic, like social selling or interactive content. And, it gives a quick visual of the post, which helps jog my memory as to why I saved it.
Trello is the project management tool that has replaced the Post-It Notes that once lined my monitor and the scraps of paper in my Moleskine agenda. And it’s transparent, so the whole team can communicate on each step and move projects forward, together.
Blog posts, infographics, animations, ebooks, podcasts, microsites, webinars and pictographic ideas move from fuzzy notions through fruition on our Content board. Each is added to a card titled “Ideas” or (wait for it…) “Serious Ideas.” (The originality is poignant, I know.) And then the card travels the course to “Published.” From there, we can see where it’s scheduled to post, when and where it’ll be promoted.
I’m having a not-so-secret love affair with the Hemingway App. And I admittedly verge on the line of dependency.
Now don’t get me wrong, a human editor is essential for creating seriously amazing content. But for a first pass after writing, it’s a helpful content marketing tool to make any quick fixes. The algorithm picks up weak construction and passive voice to help building up your piece.
And, it assigns a readability level which has been insanely helpful while writing targeted content. Back when I was a newspaper reporter, rule of thumb was to write to a fifth-grade level. Now in the b2b content playground, I shoot for right around the middle of high school to keep language simple, but not simplistic.
CoSchedule is a content marketing tool that brings the entire marketing team together. Most days, we have someone writing, someone else editing video, another creating graphics, and still another writing up our social posts.
We used to coordinate all of this through physical meetings and Google Docs, which was okay, but cumbersome. And my biggest complaint was that working on a Google Doc had a huge passive barrier – my team had to proactively open the doc to figure out what was on their check list, and what everyone else was doing. And because many times one project is dependent on another, it led to a ton of confusion about who had to do what and when.
Then we met with Garrett Moon, the co-founder at CoSchedule. After an hour-long conversation, I’d already started envisioning my life on CoSchedule. It has templates and workflows. Tasks, metrics, automation, curation, built-in and email notifications, and it links to WordPress. It makes life beautiful – we even have time to plan ahead (gasp)!
The best search engine optimization plugin for WordPress I’ve found so far, Yoast helps bolster your website, and its content, to its fullest potential with all the major search engines. It makes it easy, with a simple stoplight-like guide to show you how the content ranks. And it gives you tips on post length, keyword density, keyword focus and readability scores. Yoast sits at the intersection of engaging the reader and making Google happy (or at least happy enough to rank you).
To be clear, no plugin in the world can magically rank your site, but Yoast helps you see where you can buff and shine your content to engage your reader and the search engines.
There are a plethora of content marketing tools at your disposal, but Google Analytics is still indispensable.
L’Oreal, for instance, used Analytics 360 to grow their Tokyo makeup brand, Shu Uemura. The marketing team used Analytics 360 to find and engage with makeup enthusiasts who share interests, from travel to yoga.
While our friends over at Marketo used Google Analytics to tailor remarketing ads for a 10X higher conversion rate with Marketo Real Time Personalization.
I live in the space to figure out what content resonates best with our audience, then craft more pieces around the same topic. And then to max out our search traffic, we’ve been working to study landing pages, search queries and geographical summary.
This is our own content distribution tool. Sigstr tailors content to your targeted audience by putting a clickable call-to-action banner into your email signature. Email is critical to engage your customers. But sharing the right content to the right person, at the right time can be hard.
Because it’s centrally managed, our marketing team can put a case study into the sales team’s signature or content on a new product release in the customer success’s email sign-off. We created it because in the ~10,000 emails each employee (on average in the US) sends in a year, there was a space that was either too crowded with ugly links, too many attachments or completely naked. It’s been a really successful, and unique, way to get our content noticed.
Until about a year ago, I was one of the 76 percent of Americans who didn’t listen to podcasts. I wanted to. And all of my friends did. And I knew the marketing inspiration gained could be substantial. But I just couldn’t find the time in my day to dedicate to listening. Then, last summer, while I was out to lunch with a few coworkers we got into a discussion about the Strange Brews podcast. They were investigating the real story behind Small Town Brewery’s Not Your Father’s Root Beer. One thing led to another, and we decided to grab a six-pack after work and listen to the 20-minute episode, then discuss our opinions.
Outside of my key takeaway that two of the hard root brews are more than enough to leave me with a substantial hangover, the experience also opened my eyes to the wealth of knowledge podcasts can bring. And in such a short amount of time.
Podcasts are like a sweet secret sauce to digestable knowledge, served up in bite sized bits. And, seemingly more people are getting in on the clandestine, too. According to the Infinite Dial 2016 report from Edison Research, podcast listening grew 23 percent between 2015 and 2016. The research also suggests a notable rise in bingeable content, like Netflix and podcasts. Meaning it’s totally normal to listen to 12 episodes in a series, just to catch up. Now, I download and listen on my morning commute to work to fuel my workday.
Here are 16 of my favorite marketing podcasts (in no particular order). Each offers actionable advice and real marketing inspiration you can put to use right away!
With guests like Richard Branson and Kate and Andy Spade (yeah, I mean that Kate Spade), How I Built This is a podcast about innovators and entrepreneurs, and the stories behind the brands they built. Each episode is told by a founder, and talks about the journey of pursuing a passion – triumphs and failures alike.
The NPR podcast hasn’t been around long, only hitting the airwaves last September. But host Guy Raz has brought some seriously awesome names in. My favorite episode talked with Beto Perez, an aerobics teacher from Columbia who mistakenly brought the wrong music to class. He just rolled with it and improvised a cardio-intense dance routine for his students, and they loved it! After the wild success that day, he began teaching it on the regular, and accidentally created Zumba.
Get tips and advice on starting a side hustle in less time than it takes to get your Starbucks. Chris Guillebeau hosts these daily 10-minute-or-less podcasts for people who want to start income-earning side projects. Each episode tells a story of a successful side hustler, and then breaks down the takeaways of why their work was effective. It’s quick and snackable – perfect to listen to on the walk from your parking garage, or yes, while you wait for your coffee.
Speaking of coffee: Marketing Over Coffee is a super chill chat between a couple friends geeking out over all things marketing. John Wall and Christopher Penn are marketing nerds in the best sense, talking about the latest marketing news with a focus on technology, analytics and data-centric hacks.
Fast – each episode lasts around 20 minutes – and to the point, Wall and Penn pack in a ton of information in a short amount of time. But it never feels rushed or overwhelming. And their tactics bring real, tangible results.
Easily one of my favorite marketing podcasts, John Jantsch brings his down-to-earth wit and straight-forward questions to some of the world’s brightest thought leaders. He’s talked to marketing juggernauts like Neil Patel and Guy Kawasaki to inspire his listeners to think harder, read more, try more, fail more and succeed more.
Episodes are quick, usually somewhere between 20 and 30 minutes, but they’re insanely insightful. And as a fly on the wall during a chat between the industry’s smartest marketers, you’re bound to pick up a tip or two.
The truth is, we no longer live in a world of six degrees of separation. Instead, we’re now down to about six pixels of separation – which changes everything we know about marketing and business development. In Mitch Joel’s long-running podcast, he chats with the experts in digital marketing, social marketing, personal branding, entrepreneurship, augmented reality, machine learning and predictive platforms.
Episodes are a bit hefty, usually running an hour or so, each week, which is an awesome way to dig really deep with the top thought leaders like Google’s Avinash Kaushik and ad legend Alex Bogusky.
Co-hosted by Salesforce’s Adam Brown and our very dear friend Jay Baer, Social Pros is all about the multifaceted and, at times, nebulous world of social media, and the people who shape it. Jay brings his signature fervent flare to the conversation while the guys chat with veteran strategists from Ford and IBM to Garmin and Kellogg. They explore what the experts are doing right – and what’s been a total bomb.
The brainchild of host Marcus Sheridan, the Mad Marketing podcasts is made to feel like an intimate conversation with your marketing mentor over coffee. His personable and conversational approach addresses the real challenges he’s faced, and how he’s overcome them. It’s more reflective than analytical, rarely interviewing other people. Instead he takes questions, answers them transparently and then talks about the takeaways.
Eric Siu and Neil Patel keep their lessons short, around 10-minutes, and offer up the Cliff Notes of each episode on the Single Grain site. Each daily episode brings actionable, valuable marketing tips you can apply immediately. Most of the time, they concentrate on just one marketing question.
And their unconventional brand of marketing gives you confidence to take a few risks while letting go of a few dated strategies that just aren’t the most effective anymore.
Tim Feriss is the author of “The Four Hour Work Week,” and his show is seemingly always rated the top business podcasts hitting the airwaves. He talks to big-name celebs with unique experiences to discuss unconventional success. Guests like Jamie Foxx, Maria Popova, Whitney Cummings, Arnold Schwarzenegger talk time-management, exercise habits, favorite books and, of course, positive and actionable tips to think a little different about your workday and marketing success.
Our friends at Unbounce host this fave. These folks are insanely focused on conversion optimization, so it makes sense their podcast is the same. Through candid interviews with digital marketing experts, they break down the “art and science of our craft.” And all the while, they’re giving you strategies to test and results from the experiments they’ve conducted. My favorite so far? “Why Dungeons and Dragons Can Make You A Better Marketer.”
As the content marketing manager for a SaaS company, I was drawn to the simplicity of User Magnet’s show. Every couple of weeks, host Pawel Grabowski talks to SaaS founders, CEOs, marketers and thought leaders to uncover the unique challenges content developers face. It’s a good one if you’re looking to enhance (or create – gasp!) your content marketing strategy.
I’ve had a content crush on Jason Miller since reading “Welcome to the Funnel.” So when I found out he hosted a bi-weekly podcast, I was on it like white on rice. Miller’s signature rock ’n’ roll flavor sets a vigorous pace for discussion, covering everything from storytelling in B2B to effective time management strategies.
From venture capital firm Andreessen-Horowitz, a16z podcasts are refreshingly genuine. While many VCs or investment firms offer promotional podcasts, they often tend to come across as scripted and overly corporate. In contrast, the a16z episodes are real human-to-human conversations. They often feature a portfolio company, which the hosts are not shy about mentioning. But they talk with marketing heavy-weights too. It’s pretty remarkable, for instance, to listen to Marc Andreessen talk about the cloud with Salesforce founder Marc Benioff.
The marketing inspiration lets thinkers from around the world listen in to the trends, tech and culture in the future.
Funny thing about marketing is that it isn’t always all about marketing. In fact, marketing inspiration can come from the buyer, or through tips out of customer success. And sometimes, you need to have a few sales tricks up your sleeves to really leave your mark. The Art of Charm hits everything from career to confidence, lifestyle and love from experts like Seth Godin, Gary Vaynerchuk, Tim Ferriss, Ramit Sethi and Olivia Fox. My favorite episode featured Dr. Carol Dweck on growing talents, intelligence and breaking out of your comfort zone.
Heike Young is a genius content marketer. And paired with Joel Book, who leads marketing insights at Salesforce Marketing Cloud, the Salesforce podcast is dynamic and actionable. Each episode focuses on real-talk marketing inspiration, trends, tactics, technologies, troubles and solutions. Their guests range from the big-league names to the up-and-comers. (Including our founder and principal Dan Hanrahan.)
B2B Nation is the TechnologyAdvice podcast for sales and marketing pros in the b2b industry. Hosted by Chris Klinefelter, the goal is to bring marketing inspiration to evolve our strategies from been-there-won-that pros. Hubspot’s Emma Snider talks about experimenting. While Joe Pulizzi talks about Nick Offerman as the ultimate content marketer. It’s a fresh take on blending old tactics with new marketing.
Last year, my colleagues at Sigstr started writing about their favorite TV shows. And more specifically, they detailed what it might look like if the characters from those shows had professional email signatures. The trend spiraled after a coworker’s obsession for Game of Thrones got the best of her. Shortly after, our senior marketing manager dove in with his own version, with a post about his favorite show, Parks and Recreation.
And then there’s me. I’ve loved every minute of reading my colleagues’ nerdy obsessions (which I share). I can’t even begin to tell you how excited my dad and I are for season 7 of GOT. Or how I’ve recognized Andy Dwyer is my spirit animal. Either way, this content has inspired my conversations with my own prospects. It’s given unique (albeit, pretend) use cases that can be translated into real campaigns that drive actual ROI. And, it spurred me to keep the trend moving with my own nerdy obsession: comic book superheroes.
To give a bit of an origin story, comic books based on heroic people with extraordinary or superhuman abilities rose to prominence in the 1940s. During that time, Marvel and DC dominated the market. Through the years, superheroes from these publishers have become iconic figures of optimism, showing up on lunch boxes, backpacks, t-shirts and some pretty spectacular movies.
Each superhero has their own set of values and individualized purpose. (Sort of like how Sigstr is out to save the world, one email signature at a time!) Seeing how I have a Deadpool Bobblehead and my own Baby Groot piggybank on my desk, it was really only a matter of time before I wrote about my favorite Marvel superheroes using email signatures to distribute targeted content for their latest adventures.
Iron Man
When Stark isn’t flying around the world in one of his indestructible suits of armor, he jets around as a self-proclaimed “Genius, Billionaire, Playboy, Philanthropist.” As the CEO of Stark Industries, it’s important for our favorite Playboy superhero to continue building the future of his late father’s name stake company, while saving the world and constructing the Iron Man brand. His flashy campaign banner in his professional email signatures is meant to drive event registrations from the “best and brightest men and women of nations and corporations the world over.”
Wolverine
Wolverine was notorious for his tough guy attitude, constant loner status and, of course, perfectly-manicured retractable claws. In recent years, his old adamantium bones aren’t as strong as they once were. And so, he’s welcomed retirement in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He spends his days watching his favorite college football team and fulfills his lifelong dream of owning and running an upscale nail salon. His campaign banner embodies the beauty and simplicity of a proper manicure, but I’d avoid booking an appointment during Michigan football games. He gets a little rowdy when his team’s losing.
The Incredible Hulk
Bruce Banner is a brilliant scientist, with an introverted personality but an overall pleasant disposition. But he has a real anger management issue. Make this guy mad and he turns into a giant green rage monster with a particularly limited vocabulary and an insatiable appetite for destruction. And, unfortunately for our ginormous green friend, being a scientist-turned-superhero can be quite stressful. Luckily, Bruce has found a productive outlet for the bellicosity. He’s started up his own demolition company. His simple campaign banner relays the perfect message to anyone who needs an entire town leveled to the ground, or an old skyscraper that needs to instantly be turned into a pile of rubble. Just don’t make him angry. You won’t like him when he’s angry.
Captain Marvel
The seventh Captain Marvel, Carol Danvers, has recently shown interest in retiring from a life of crime-fighting. Apply now, through this clickable call-to-action banner for the chance to be the next Captain Marvel. Benefits include: superhuman strength, endurance, stamina, flight, physical durability, a limited precognitive “seventh sense” and resistance to most toxins and poisons. Preferred experience includes: espionage, pilot training, hand-to-hand combat and marksmanship.
Deadpool
Seriously, what’s not to love about Wade Wilson? He’s notorious for breaking the fourth wall. He has a hilariously-dark sense of humor. And there was a comic book series where he killed every Marvel superhero, just because he felt like it. This anti-hero’s campaign is driving views to his newest ebook, in which he claims has a “Fourth wall-break inside of a fourth wall-break. That’s like – 16 walls!”
Captain America
Our country’s favorite son, Captain America was first introduced by Marvel on December 20, 1940. For reference, that was a year before the attack on Pearl Harbor, but a full year into WWII. The cover showed our patriotic pal punching Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. It sold nearly a million copies. Lately though, Steve Rogers is taking his talents to Broadway. He’s hitting the stage as the lead in the USO’s propaganda production, “Star Spangled Man with a Plan.” His red, white and blue campaign banner is sure to drive ticket sales from anyone who’s ready to save the American Way.
Star Lord
The half-human, half-alien leader of the Guardians of the Galaxy, spends a lot of his downtime flying around in his spaceship, The Milano. (Named after the 80’s actress, of course.) Seeing how the 80’s pop culture seems to be his only connection with Earth, Peter Quill (err, Star Lord) has decided to broadcast his love for the decade with weekly webinars showing aliens across the galaxy how to dance like it’s 1988. When his friends asked why he was doing it, he started rambling on and on about some legend from Earth called, “Footloose,” and some great hero named Kevin Bacon who apparently taught an entire city that dancing is the greatest thing there is in life. Ever heard of him? Me neither. People from Earth are weird.
Storm
Marvel’s weather witch has decided to take her weather-manipulating talents to the technology industry. As CEO of a new start-up SaaS company, she’s been taking the world by storm, quite literally. Her new on-demand weather app is putting her powers into the consumers’ hands. Her campaign has boosted downloads of her app, with the slogan, “If you don’t like the weather, wait 10 minutes!” We’ll see how successful her start-up becomes – consumers are requesting different weather for the same location.
Professor X at Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters
This unconventional institute is always accepting new and gifted students to enter its curriculum. So, to boost enrollment, Professor X has upped his marketing game by using his faculty’s outbound emails. This campaign banner is designed to attract scholarly mutants from across the globe to join the X-men. (And maybe learn a thing or two along the way.)
S.H.I.E.L.D.
The Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division (what a mouthful!), is a counter-terrorism organization that defends Earth against superhuman threats. When this agency isn’t aiding the Avengers with catastrophic threats, it’s running campaigns to drive awareness for what the civilians should do if they’re smack-dab in the middle of some super villain who’s trying to destroy the world. Most recently, the group is highlighting an survival guide ebook, written by Colonel Nick Fury. The long-form content piece, “Excuse Me, Did We Come to Your Planet & Blow Stuff Up?” provides 11 survival tips for an alien invasion.
The “just checking in” sales email is ineffective and totally self-serving.
Sales reps who send this type of email simply aren’t offering any value to their prospects. In fact, they’re interrupting a prospect’s path to purchase. They’re selfishly attempting to convince buyers into replying to their messaging and, eventually, purchasing, all on the rep’s timeline rather than their own.
But sales isn’t about the rep, is it? We’re here to be a real and useful resource to provide meaningful value to a customer through their journey. Buyers want to purchase from people they like and trust.
Today’s most successful reps are committed to building trusting relationships with their prospects. They know it’s important prospects see just as much return on their time invested in the sales journey as they will in the product or service. They understand empathy is at the heart of trust.
The more trust you can create, the more a prospect will share.
With trust, prospects will let you in on their pain points, their hopes and their needs. And when you know their needs, you can realistically evaluate if your product or service is, in fact, a good fit. When you’re honest enough to turn down a potential sale because it’s not in their best interest, you create an unbreakable trust. And you build a customer for life. They’ll still refer you. They’ll want to want your product. And they’ll make all their friends and colleagues want your product or service.
The first step to building trust is to allow your customer to see you as a valuable resource. To show them you understand them on an emotional level and that you’re able to provide answers before questions are asked.
The easiest way to provide consistent and meaningful value to a buyer in a sales email is to include helpful content. But sending too many sales emails to share content can get annoying. Instead, these seven companies used email signature marketing to subtly inject content into every single email, no matter what the subject matter was. Take a look! And for more information, check out our ebook for 28 total use cases on email signature marketing.
If companies want to be successful in navigating today’s corporate terrain, we need more from our employees. We need more imagination, more drive, more innovation. But how do we get employees, who are creating good work as it is, to do more and offer great work? How do we get more, without spending more? And then, how do we make sure our workers feel like their making a difference in the company mission? And how can employee advocacy tools help?
We engage our employees.
Employees who feel connected to their workplace are more innovative and productive. They want to do great work because they’re proud of what they do. And, they’re excited by who they’re doing it with. Business and engagement strategies should be intimately connected. The best companies build and sustain a culture of engagement. They’re led by CEOs who understand employee engagement isn’t just a “nice-to-have,” but instead is the foundation to success.
But technology has changed human behavior. Too many brands have written off employee engagement, leaving it for the social team to “manage.” Social teams have been built too much like the organizational charts that were created around the same time as the US railroad system and expected to operate all communication efforts for the brand in a decentralized modern 21st century culture.
It hasn’t worked.
Brands have pivoted into using these outreach channels as an extension of their advertising campaigns. It’s left these platforms riddled with ads and branded content. And it’s left little room for people to engage with other people – dehumanizing the essence of what connects people in a global manner in the mobile era we live in.
Because brands have abused the channels they’ve lived on, treating them like an ad network rather than a connection platform, companies have been left scratching their heads why they’re not seeing engagement.
Geoffrey Colon, who wrote Disruptive Marketing said, brand will continue to be ignored while the influencers you pay are starting to run into the same issues of all paid endorsements. It’s time to pay attention to your employees who can be the most transparent, authentic and trustworthy advocates for your brand.
Your employees have, on average, around 10 times more connections on social media than your brand has alone, according to a study from Social Chorus. That means your company of 500 employees on payroll can easily reach some 5,000 more people than your marketing department alone by creating engaged brand advocates.
If advocacy is part of your content strategy, here are five seriously helpful employee advocacy tools you may (or may not) know to get you started.
1. Oktopost
Our friends at Oktopost own the B2B social media management realm with lead scoring and nurturing programs, social data and marketing automation. And now they’ve added an employee advocacy arm. Teams that already run on Oktopost for social media marketing, adding in the advocacy piece is a cinch. And because the platform integrates with Salesforce, HubSpot and Marketing, they support closed-loop reporting.
In collaboration with other types of employee advocacy tools (ahem, like email signature marketing), social employee advocacy can boost your reach by 800 percent. Check out this 20-minute webinar we co-hosted with the group last month.
2. DynamicSignal
DynamicSignal is one of those employee advocacy tools out to change the world. And they’re actually doing it. How? They’re helping companies connect with their employees using creating a more personalized message. In other words, they let enterprise-level companies connect like real people, to the real people in the organization. This kind of real-talk helps employees actually want to use it. Their user dashboards tailor content to individual roles, locations, seniority levels and interests. And, team leaders can add internal-only content for more customization.
3. Structural
Using Structural, every employee can build and maintain a profile that details their professional accomplishments and personality. So, if you’re a kickass writer with several industry awards under your belt, but also hate being the center of attention, your coworkers (and superiors) can still see your accomplishments. While leaders can find and nurture talent within the organization to use your current systems to create new value.
And, the employee advocacy tools help companies get to know their people better, lets employees create deeper connections (read: loyalty) and maximize your team’s effectiveness. Coworkers can find common interests and feelings about the company and culture. And, managers can deliver questions to employees to get their feedback on the important issues that shape your foundation.
By creating a deeper connection with your employees, they’re more likely to pay attention to your content, sharing it with their network through email and social media. Building loyalty within your brand builds advocates, and advocates amplify.
4. Hootsuite Amplify
Data from the +10 million users on Hootsuite show an 8x jump on engagement when employees share social content and 24x more re-shares. Furthermore, some 92 percent of employees’ followers are new to your brand. Which means with every post they share, someone in their network discovers your brand. And employee advocacy tools and technology, like this one,
Hootsuite Amplify gives your employees options of content to share to their networks. And brands use the platform to optimize your content creation strategy because you can see which content is shared and engaged with most. You can also check out who’s sharing the most to track results, so recognizing high-achievers is easy.
5. Easy Advocacy
Easy Advocacy is one of the most user-friendly employee advocacy tools on the market. And it’s free! Although the tool is from Agorapulse, you don’t need an Agorapulse subscription. Simply log in with your LinkedIn profile and enter your distribution list. Then, create your campaign and send it on its way to your distribution list. As an admin, you’ll get stats on click-throughs and your most productive employees. It’s currently available in English and French. Double your advocacy pleasure!
My eyes welled up with tears this morning. Literally, a grown man, driving to work, and balling his eyes out. It happened three times this morning. It’s hard to explain, but that’s why Sigstr is green.
You see, it’s the greatest day of the year in the Hanrahan family. Not because of St. Patrick’s Day, per se, but because of what it represents. For me, it’s more than the Irish culture, it’s about our family and our roots – wherever those may be planted.
Family comes first.
My dad is 100 percent Irish. And because we were so rooted in the culture as a family, we always grew up celebrating together. And for the Sigstr team, family comes first. It certainly does for me.
Today, my daughter Bridget (named after the female patron saint of Ireland, though she spelled it Brigid) is in the St. Pat’s Parade with her first-grade class. My mom and dad, kids and wife will all be in tow to watch. We’ll have lunch together, and then listen to Irish music. And then my dad and I will head to the Golden Ace – the greatest Irish pub in the world – for more Irish tunes and a pint (or two) of Guinness. After, I’ll join the Sigstr team and a group of High Alpha friends for an amazing afternoon.
Family comes first – always. To take care of our families, we pour our hearts, minds and resources into building an incredible product and company to delight our customers.
We care.
We care about the time we spend with our family, with our friends and, yes, the time we spend in the office. Sigstr is about being genuine, passionate and the right mix of pride in what we’re building paired with humility that we need to continue learning and growing. But most of all, it’s about being optimistic and having a willingness to work to make the good happen. To spread the good.
To be Irish, or to work at Sigstr, or in digital marketing at all, you must be optimistic. The Irish endured centuries of hardships (the English, the potato famine, immigrating to the states). By focusing on family, craic, music and an unwavering belief in a benevolent higher power, we persevered. And, the same brand of optimism is required to join a scale-up stage tech company, or to believe you can make an impact in the digital world.
A quick aside, our customer, CoreHR is an amazing HR tech company, based in Dublin. Thanks for believing in Sigstr and for inspiring a piece of our culture.
We are green.
We have a team from all kinds of backgrounds and beliefs, but Sigstr green represents our roots. For me, that’s Ireland. And it’s a reason to wear all my green more than just one day a year. For all of us, it’s a reminder of where we came from, why we’re here and what we’re working for.
So, listening to Irish tunes, at full blast, on my way into the office may have spurred the tears to roll into my eyes. The music flooded my mind with memories of all the St. Pat’s Days past, and how my dad would dye the toilet water green (please don’t tell my kids that it’s dye rather than a visiting leprechaun using the facilities in our home!). The tears come thinking of the fiddle player in an Irish village. And realizing our optimism, our relationships and, ultimately, the good in people.
The below poem sums it up. Have a read and enjoy your family, your friends, your co-workers and, most of all, your day. Slainte!
About the Irish
What shall I say about the Irish?
The utterly impractical, never predictable
Something irascible, quite inexplicable Irish.
Strange blend of shyness, pride and conceit,
And stubborn refusal to bow in defeat.
He’s spoiling and ready to argue and fight,
Yet the smile of a child fills his soul with delight.
His eyes are the quickest to well up in tears,
Yet his strength is the strongest to banish your fears.
His faith is as fierce as his devotion is grand,
And there’s no middle ground on which he will stand.
He’s wild and he’s gentle.
He’s good and he’s bad.
He’s proud and he’s humble.
He’s happy and he’s sad.
He’s in love with the ocean, the earth and the skies.
He’s enamored with beauty wherever it lies.
He’s victor and victim, a star and a clod,
But mostly he’s Irish in love with his God.
ABM is a buzzword. Admit it. But are real companies thinking as much about their ABM strategy as the thought leaders, social influencers and vendors who are making all the noise?
Absolutely.
ABM provides a strategy for B2B companies who want to grow revenue by focusing on the best-fit prospects. The key metric shifts from the traditional lead generation to real revenue. And, it takes into account that most B2B buying decisions aren’t made by a single person, but rather a collective group within a company. If you’re only looking at one person, you’re totally missing half the picture.
Not to mention, ABM helps get your sales and marketing on the same page, which staves off lost productivity and lost opportunities, according to MarketingProfs. They found organizations with tightly aligned sales and marketing functions experience 36 percent higher customer retention rates and 38 percent higher sales win rates.
Around 90 percent of marketers see the value in ABM, according to a study from Sirius Decisions. But only 20 percent of companies have a full ABM program in place. The gap is mostly due to a lack of knowledge and total misunderstandings.
Here are seven misunderstandings and total myths about your ABM strategy blown out of the water.
Myth 1: Account based marketing is totally new
Actually, it’s not.
In its purest form, ABM has been around forever. History’s most predominate agencies, like Ogilvy & Mather, Leo Burnett and Young & Rubicam, have depended on an ABM strategy to close their whales for decades.
In the 60s, courting and keeping big accounts was a delicate affair. Copywriters, art directors, designers and account executives huddled to map out key stakeholders for each account. Personalized proposals were painstakingly crafted over several days – or even weeks. Then campaigns were run against targeted lists for each account.
There was no sophistication. Everything was done by feel, without any guarantee that accounts would stay loyal. Everything depended on keeping the accounts extremely happy.
Today, advertising has given way to marketing, but it’s the same old game. While it’s easier than ever to attract and close one-off clients, our whale accounts are still our lifeblood. And so we make sure they feel special using targeted content, tailored campaigns and focused outreach.
To paraphrase our friend Matt Heinz, ABM is shifting from fishing with nets to fishing with spears. We’re doing what we’re already doing, but more efficiently. ABM is tagging the prospects you want to do business with, and marketing very precisely and narrowly to them, directly.
“I think we have a renewed interest in ABM now, because there’s an advancement in tools and technology that make it a little easier to execute,” Matt said. “But the idea of doing target account selling and target account marketing is not new.”
Myth 2: I can’t focus on an Inbound and ABM Strategy
The modern B2B marketing-sphere makes it almost impossible to not take an account-based mindset. But what hurts marketers most is this antiquated philosophy of inbound versus outbound and the idea that somehow ABM is only an outbound strategy to go “fishing with spears.”
And yeah, the outbound piece is a huge aspect of ABM, but if we ignore inbound marketing, we’re missing at least half the value of our ABM strategy.
It’s not an “either/or” situation.
Most inbound marketing tactics will likewise apply to your ABM strategy. That means they can run in tandem. (And they should.) While ABM tends to be highly personalized and targeted several of the same content or offers will also attract potential customers to come to you.
Try reverse-engineering your content. Create pieces based on what your accounts are saying to your sales team on the phone. What you hear in the ABM strategy guides your content and inbound strategy. And then, that will reinforce and tighten the circle for reps to pursue their targeted accounts. The two strategies tend to work together holistically.
Myth 3: ABM is too hard
Any effective lead generation strategy faces challenges when a copy grows. ABM is no different. It’s hard! But marketing is hard.
ABM focuses company efforts. But even so, we’re still struggling with the challenge of gaining – and maintaining – insight on their buyers at scale. The more contacts you accrue, the harder it becomes to focus on targeting the right leads, or even figuring out who they are to begin with.
At first, it’s completely realistic to manually keep tabs on a small pool of contacts. And the information you don’t know about them can, in large part, be gleaned by scouring the web.
But have you ever tried Facebook stalking a mid-market business’ entire database?
In the past, there have been two things that have kept ABM from catching on. First, the widely-accepted notion that ABM is only something you do for really big accounts, where you have plenty of resources to work with. Treating each account as a completely custom go-to-market activity is expensive, and it’s hard to scale.
The second thing that makes people think ABM is too hard is that the technologies and systems marketers are using haven’t supported it. Marketers have been dealing with this infrastructure problem that made it too hard to align platforms.
But over the last few years, technology has improved to the point where some of those limitations have been eliminated. People are realizing there are different approaches to ABM that apply more broadly and can serve several companies and use cases.
Myth 4: ABM is the end-all be-all. It’s the only solution and it’ll solve all our marketing woos
It’s marketing, not magic.
ABM does have the potential to magnify pretty much any strategic issues your company faces. And 97 percent of marketers say ABM proves a higher ROI than any other marketing activity, according to the Alterra Group. But it’s not the only solution.
Let your ABM strategy work as a bridge with your inbound and outbound tactics. ABM is not interruption marketing. It uses the principles of inbound – offering something of value and creating an incentive to buy – but focuses them through outbound methods tailored to individual accounts.
Your success in ABM is more controlled than inbound marketing, because it’s so highly targeted. Because of the intense focus, you’re not going to see the “out-of-the-blue” wins that you’d get with inbound. Instead, your success is entirely dependent on how well you researched, tracked, connected and engaged with a very specific target.
Myth 5: ABM only applies to your marketing department
ABM is so smart, but the thing I hate about it is that it’s account-based marketing. It gives off the illusion that it’s for marketing, when, in reality, it requires the alignment of marketing and sales. By excluding sales, there’s a danger that they, and other departments, may be out of sight, out of mind.
Interdepartmental alignment is crucial to the success of an account-based strategy. The term “account-based everything” has gained some traction to stifle the one-sided marketing vantage. But not enough to surpass the buzzworthy status of ABM. (ABE just doesn’t have the same kind of ring to it, does it?) Even still, the idea of account-based everything – marketing, sales, customer success, product and the like, offers a practical lens on the needs for an effective ABM strategy. The goal is to establish priorities for leaders who are allocating resources and designing account-based workflows.
Myth 6: ABM is a neat tool
ABM is neat. It plays to the feel-good psychology that makes a prospect feel special. And when your prospect feels special, they feel more connected. They’re more trusting and, ultimately, more loyal to your company.
The thing is, though, ABM is not a tool. It’s a strategy.
B2B marketing, and particularly for our high-value, high-consideration deals, usually means we’re connecting with multiple stakeholders, influencers and decision makers. Which is great, because you can get more buy-in. But it also leads to dealing with several different viewpoints, concerns and approaches inside each account. So, an ABM strategy needs to look at individual accounts as entities that are just as complex and multi-dimensional as your traditional markets.
Now, there are several tools out there that can help your strategy. But, this should only be explored after you’ve determined what your goals are and how your current tools can be used to get started.
Myth 7: When we say ABM, we mean only the few high-valued accounts in the pipeline.
While you may be able to create very specific campaigns and collateral for each major deal you’re targeting, that’s just one way to use an ABM strategy. If you don’t have the bandwidth to target an individual company, or if you have a broader number of targets, try revamping your persona strategy. Then use a specific persona as your account.
Maybe you’ll run targeted nurture tracks or you could host a webinar for a specific buyer type or industry. You could even launch a microsite tailored to the preferences of your targeted persona. The key is to be as relevant as possible as you develop your ABM strategy.
How do you get started with your ABM Strategy?
I thought you’d never ask! Get rolling with your ABM strategy in six steps.
1. Identify your target
Finding and defining your target, high-value accounts should be a collaboration between marketing and sales. It requires information from both department, like firmographic data, which holds the notes on things like industry, company size, location and annual revenue. And, it’ll require strategic factors, like market influence, predictive index, expected profit margin and the like.
2. Research your internal players
Once you identify who your targets are, figure out how the accounts are structured. Research how decisions are made and who makes them – and who influences them. Remember, we’re not developing personas for individual people here. Though it can be helpful to have that sort of detailed information and representation of your ideal customer available.
3. Create your content and messaging
Now that you know the names of the key players inside each account, it’s time to start making content tailored to them. That content should speak to the pain points of the specific business. Connect the dots for your prospects to show how your product or service will address their challenges.
4. Choose your channels
Reach your targets where they live. You can have the best content in the world, but it won’t do a smidge of good if they don’t see it. Email signature marketing is one way, but there are others to use in conjunction. Use the Pew Research Center Demographics of Social Media Users to get a look at who’s using the five major social platforms – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Instagram. And, it gives a look at how they consume the content you’re creating for each of them.
5. Get started
You’ve found your targets, you’ve built out the specifics of their unique compositions, you’ve created killer content and you’ve picked the channels you’ll use to promote it. It’s go time! Well, sort of.
Coordinate your campaigns across the channels and align your marketing and sales team to ensure continuity. You don’t want to send different signals to the same persona within a target account.
6. Measure, learn and optimize
After you’re rolling it’s time to start testing, measuring and optimizing. Some of the questions to ask are:
1. Are you growing your contact list within the target account? Are you getting more names and more profiles of personas?
2. What’s changing in the way the accounts are engaging with your brand and its content?
3. How much revenue have we secured?
Look at the results of individual campaigns and trends at the account level and in the aggregate to get a more holistic view of how your ABM strategy is working.
We came. We learned. We scored a ton of free swag. This year’s Rainmaker conference was another runaway success, packed with insanely helpful sales development and engagement insights, deep dives into B2B Account Based Marketing and an even greater appreciation for our team back home.
Now that it’s over, we’ve rounded up the best and brightest ideas from the smart marketers and sales professionals we listened to. These are ideas you can apply to your sales development strategy today, and we’re pumped up to put it into practice!
Modern sales teams need more than the right technology. Today they need to know more, connect more, want more. And that’s just scratching the surface. Here are the best gems from Rainmaker 2017.
1. B2B Account Based Marketing is everything.
We live in a world where marketers are being inundated with cold outreach. The batch and blast approach has returned some effectiveness, but overall, it’s leaving too much to be desired. The quality of demos you’re booking simply isn’t the same as a targeted campaign. And, more importantly, trying to navigate an organization with a generic message in hopes of connecting with decision makers will, most likely, send your emails straight to the trash.
When reaching out, especially for the first time, a message should resonate with your reader. Personalize the content by tagging in content your prospect has written. Or try skimming through their Twitter or LinkedIn page to add a personalized touch. And it should be relevant. How can you (a real person) relate to the prospect, (another real, live human) and their needs within the organization?
Lastly, your message should include a product pitch and call-to-action. By doing this, you’ll acknowledge their needs and expand on how you can help. Then, work to engage them through as many channels as possible to gain trust and loyalty, and eventually advocacy, of your product.
2. Your team and your people are your most important asset.
Product is important, but your people and your service make your brand. We live in a world of perpetually growing and fascinating technology. That means, though, marketers simply expect products that allow us to work smarter and help customers in a more meaningful way. So, we need to listen to our customers, and move in a way that will help. Take, for instance, our friends at Salesloft. I spend hours upon hours in my Salesloft every day. They’ve helped me cadence, track and measure my outreach.
But (and this is a big ‘but’), the people at Salesloft are the assets that take the company from great to a rocket ship. (A phenomenal term borrowed from our founder Dan Hanrahan.) The Sigstr team owes a big thanks to Kyle Porter, Tami Mcqueen and the entire Salesloft team, for reminding us that every interaction is a brand impression. And every impression matters. Another quick shout out to my friends at Everstring, who live this, too.
3. To be more than great, you must constantly push yourself to learn and change.
It’s easy to do your job good enough. But conferences, like Rainmaker, shed light into what it takes to be more than good, and more than great. Success, at least in my opinion, isn’t the pursuit of perfection, but rather a constant improvement. To be successful as marketers and sales pros, we must continue to learn. There’s just way too much content and information living among us to stay stagnant.
On a more personal note, I’m lucky to live and work in a culture that promotes constant improvement. While I’m prospecting potential Sigstr clients, I use my email signature as an actionable, trackable, CTA that relates to the people I’m reaching out to. We have an amazing crew that I’m incredibly proud of. Our people are truly some of the best out there. Lastly, we’re all constantly learning. We’re absorbing what our customers are saying to better our product and better our sales approach. We’re learning from each other, and pushing one another to be better than we were yesterday.
And now I’m counting down the days until Rainmaker 18!
By all accounts, Sigstr had an incredible year in 2016. Revenue grew 5x, and we tripled the team to 25 amazing people. So the team was a bit surprised when I shared that Sigstr was bringing in a new CEO! As if unwrapping a present, the looks of surprise quickly shifted to expressions of sheer excitement as they learned who we had hired and also that I would remain fully engaged at Sigstr.
A driving force behind the new leader is the rare market opportunity Sigstr has. We can serve every company in the world. Every employee using email becomes more productive with Sigstr.
Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Nothing great was ever accomplished without enthusiasm.” I would add that enthusiasm is the critical first step to attract others to our mission. Truly remarkable opportunities are rarely realized by individuals. The enthusiasm Sigstr has generated to date has attracted a world class leader who will propel Sigstr to the next level!
A little history
Let me take you back to when the idea began to take shape. As 2016 was ending, I started thinking about how to accelerate Sigstr even more quickly. I am a builder and I love taking things from 0-60. I’m sales-driven. Given the massive market opportunity, I became certain we could go even faster with a product-driven CEO. Someone whose skills were complementary to mine and who could cover my blind spots while allowing me to focus where I am best. Someone with deep email expertise and experience scaling a product for a massive market opportunity.
I presented the idea of hiring a product-driven CEO to the board late last year. After a lot of conversation and questions, we agreed to explore the idea and consider options.
At critical junctures in my career, the perfect person has walked through my door at exactly the right time. When Bryan Wade expressed interest in Sigstr, I knew immediately that this was a one-in-a-million opportunity for Sigstr.
I am so thrilled to announce that Bryan is joining as the Sigstr CEO!
Bryan is the ideal blend of product, go-to-market and vision. He’s been where we are going, having been a key leader for two wildly successful SaaS companies, ExactTarget and then Salesforce. Bryan is an email evangelist. He’s the perfect leader to elevate this new channel. Enterprise marketers know and trust Bryan. He immediately lifts our brand, and most importantly, he’s a good person who I trust with Sigstr.
I love the team and culture we have built and feel a deep connection to what we’ve started. Bryan and I are complementary, and I get to serve Sigstr in a full-time role as a Founder, President. I get to focus on levers for growth in our go-to-market strategy and will always help Bryan grow the team and culture.
This has been an enlightening exercise in self-awareness. I am so much happier and more productive when I get to do what I am best at doing: testing new ideas, finding what works and building early teams around the biggest opportunities. At the same time, I don’t have first-hand experience in scaling a company and a product for thousands of customers. With Bryan, I know we have an incredible leader for where we are headed, and I get to do what I love. And I can’t wait!
A core value for us at Sigstr is Believe Big. We added an absolute all-star to the team to turn our beliefs into facts.Thank you to all the Sigstars; the entire Sigstr family of our team, our customers, partners, investors and advisors who have helped Sigstr along the way. You placed your trust in me to make the right decisions for Sigstr, and this adventure just got a lot more exciting. Please join me in welcoming Bryan to the team!
Today, I am so excited to announce my new position as Chief Executive Officer at Sigstr.
Last week I decided to walk away from one of the greatest software companies in the world with an opportunity to create something totally new. You see, over the last 12 years, Ive been blessed to have had the chance to build the rocket ship of email at ExactTarget. After which I joined the mothership at Salesforce. Ive built and led teams in sales, services and, most recently, in the product organization, as Chief Product Officer of Salesforce Marketing Cloud.
Ive watched, listened and learned from industry-leading CEOs like Marc Benioff and Scott Dorsey. Theyve created big visions for their companies, and for the entire SaaS industry. I’m inspired by Parker Harris and Scott McCorkle. These are some of the smartest product leaders in SaaS. These brilliant minds have worked with customers to build products that have a great market fit. And theyve created products that scale, products that actually fit what their customers, particularly at the enterprise level, need and want.
My next step is to build a product that creates the next frontier of email marketing. And, equally as significant, to provide career opportunities for young SaaS professionals, much like those that I had when I joined ExactTarget in 2005. It’s also a priority for meto build something in Indianapolis. Indy is becoming a major hub for software innovation.
I continue to be impressed by the team at Sigstr, the power of the technology and the way in which their customers are seeing real ROI (and how fast its recognized). Takea look intowhy I’m so pumpedabout this company.
Sigstr is an opportunity I couldnt pass up. Here area few of the reasons why.
Every business in the world runs a corporate email system
Every business in the world runs a corporate email system, but very few marketers are taking advantage of the channel in a big way to market to their customers.
The average employee sends more than 10,000 emails each year. Companies of just a few hundred are having millions upon millions of business interactions with prospects, customers, partners and employees. And Sigstr can personalize each and every one of those interactions. Each can drive sales, brand compliance and even employee behavior if, for instance, HR runs a campaign for open enrollment registration.
And because every company already has a corporate email system, marketers can be live in minutes. All it takes is a few configuration changes on the platforms youre already in, like Gmail, Outlook, Lotus Notes, Thunderbird, among others.
Sigstr is positioned to dominate a new category in marketing technology
Sigstr opens a new marketing channel that allows marketers to drive personalized content in one-to-one, corporate email. Today, personalization software is running on websites, in promotional email and in advertising. At its core, Sigstr helps marketers connect campaigns and a brands voice inside the corporate email. Theres significant potential to use corporate email to personalize content and drive a new level of marketing ROI.
Corporate email systems are moving the cloud with Gmail and Office 365. But personalization within the employee email just isnt done well today. Account-based customization and tailored email content still, for the most part, calls for manual copy-and-paste or legacy desktop solutions.But Sigstr has uniquely positioned themselves to take advantage of the the trends in cloud and personalization to open an entirely new channel for marketers.
Sigstr customers, a strong partnership ecosystem and talented employees
Sigstr is fortunate to work with innovative marketers at leading brands like Angies List, Return Path, Invocaand hundreds of others. These marketers use Sigstr because they want to create a seamless customer experience across channels. And they’re doing so by including the channel in their everyday use.
Part of driving a tangible ROI is providing the ability to plug email conversations into the technologies marketers already use. Sigstr has built a variety of partnerships and native integrations, like HubSpot, Salesloft, Terminus, Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Marketing Cloud. Sigstr allows marketers to gain additional value in and around the investments theyve already made. The softwareintegrates within theCRM and Marketing Automation platforms you’re already using. This sort of ecosystem is integral for growth. And Sigstr has a phenomenal set of partners helping make their customers successful.
Last, but not least, behind every growing startup is a group of talented and dedicated employees. Ive had the chance to work with many of the executives running Sigstr in the past. And now I’m meeting many new people who play big roles in the company. One thing is for sure, they have a talented group of software executives and employees. I have so much confidence in the Sigstr team and look forward to working closely with all of them.
If youre an existing Sigstr customer, thank you for your support! I look forward to meeting each and every one of you!
Interested in learning more about how employee email can strengthen your brand and boost your marketing results? Let’s chat!For more information on today’s announcement, view the full press release here.
Three things that put a marketer on edge: One, tagging personas; two, tailoring content to those personas; three, pressing send on an email campaign.
On the surface, email seems pretty straightforward, not least because the people you’re sending to have actually asked to receive your messages. You’re interacting with someone, by invitation, in the relatively intimate setting of your contact’s inbox. All you need to do is create a compelling message and boom – you’re done, right?
Or maybe not.
The cutthroat standard of your customer’s inbox roils with mixed marketing messages asking them to take action, giving them a new resource or pleading with them to respond. It’s congested with scores of attention-seeking previews and competitive subject lines. All the while, the delete response remains merciless.
A typical buyer gets around 100 emails hitting their inbox every day, give or take a couple. But, according to a study from our friends at Tellwise, they only open 23 percent of them. And that enrapturing buyer you’re trying so hard to woo with your hot content is only clicking on a measly 2 percent of the emails that hit their inbox.
Creating a compelling message for your email is only scratching the surface to get noticed in the noxious beast that is the inbox. There are a ton of moving parts in your email strategy. Get one wrong, and you might just jam up the whole apparatus.
Let’s be real
Your subscribers are your most loyal audience. They’ve invited you into their inbox because they want to hear what’s happening in your world. But the most compelling prose and an enticing offer isn’t going to do you a lick of good if you send it at a time that’ll leave it buried under the 99 other emails hitting their desktop today.
So what is the best time to send emails?
With wave after big wave of data crashing into the swash of studies that try to decode the magic send time and finally provide a real answer to when to send, the general consensus is: It depends. Now I realize that answer isn’t particularly helpful, but hang with me here for a minute. Because while the reality is you’re eventually going to have to bite the bullet and A/B test it to hone in on the exact best time to send emails for your list, it’s helpful to have an informed place to start.
What’s the best day to send an email?
Research from our pals at HubSpot analyzed the number of emails that were opened on each day of the week. They saw Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday had the highest volume of opens. Tuesday, in general, came out on top, with 20 percent more opens than average. Monday and Wednesday tied for silver, each logging 18 percent more opens than average.
Another study from MailChimp took a look at the aggregate patterns of more than 4 million users and several billion recipients logged by their internal send time optimization system. Their data shows Thursdays have the highest open rate, with a second peak on Tuesdays. GetResponse and Wordstream also suggest Thursdays, followed by Tuesdays, are the best days to send emails.
But the best time to send emails can shift depending on what type of content you’re sending. The type of content, after all, is usually a good indicator of who your subscribers are, and what their habits might look like.
According to Customer.io and MailChimp, stick with your Tuesday sends for informative emails or educational newsletters. Studies have found we experience the most professional and emotional stress on Tuesdays, when the “reality of work” sets in. And so, people tend to avoid making actionable decisions early in the week.
On the other hand, if your email has an impetus to act, shift your schedule to send on Friday. The weekend is when people finally have enough time to sit down and read their messages. So, they tend to read emails more thoroughly. And, the weekend sees the lowest volume of messages stock into the inbox, so you have less competition.
Your takeaways:
The general consensus among all the research shows most activity happens during the middle of the week with only minor outliers. Tuesdays and Thursdays are, by far the best days to send. Wednesdays didn’t rank first one a single study, but was mentioned several times. While Friday sends were a surprising addition to an actionable strategy. Personal preference puts Tuesday ahead because it gives recipients more time to share your content during the week before it becomes obsolete into the weekend abyss.
What’s the best time to send emails?
Mid-day, between 10 and noon, is the best time to send emails according to MailChimp’s research. It looks like there’s a peak just after 10 a.m. HubSpot backs this up with research tagging 11 a.m. as the hot time for email opens on every day of the week, except Sunday. Sundays saw a 35 percent higher open rate at 9 p.m. You know, right when people start getting ready for the week ahead.
Smart Insights suggests a later mid-day range, between noon and 4 p.m. for the prime open potential. The sweet spot between lunch and that mid-afternoon lull is the best chance to send if your goal is simply to receive the most opens. This, they say, is because your recipient is receiving a moderately low number of emails and has time to open and read the incoming messages.
If you’re out to get a response, though, send your email when they have time to care. That is, somewhere in the morning before they get to the office or in the evening after the kids are in bed. More specifically, between 6 and 8 a.m. or 8 p.m. and mid-night. If you send your message when they’re receiving the lowest number of messages, they’ll have all the time in the world to read their mail.
Your takeaways:
Late-morning send times are the most popular in general, with several studies indicating 10 a.m. (or just after) is the ideal send time. I typically find a net positive response in opens and engagement if I send a campaign just after 10 a.m. – say 10:05 a.m.
What’ve we learned?
If you send more than one email out a week, send them on both Tuesdays and Thursdays. If you’re calling for your recipient to take action, be it a response or a buy, send those emails on Friday when they can take the weekend to mull it over.
The best time, in general is mid-day, I favor the 10 a.m. hour, based on the research.
So that’s the advice. Now ignore it.
Okay, don’t completely ignore it. But don’t be led blindly. The research gives you a really great starting point, but you still need to test. Figure out what works in your market, for your recipients.
And think about how people are consuming your message. Traditional best time to send emails” statistics are being thrown to the wind as user habits shift across devices. The standard mid-week, mid-day send makes a ton of sense for desktop users who are opening their emails at work. While mobile users, like me, tend to check email in the weight room after work, in the sauna, after the kids are in bed and as I climb between the sheets myself. In other words, the way people absorb email has changed, and is likely to continue changing. So continued testing will always be needed to optimize when to send your emails.
Getting your content in front of the right people at the right time is hard. You have to be relevant and relatable, scalable and persistent without crossing the line to become annoying.
Jillian Wohlfarth, who heads up content at SendGrid, said in a conversation on B2B Nation, the TechnologyAdvice podcast, we need to be deliberate. We need to develop strategy around email and look to it as a set of meaningful customer touchpoints. We need to take care to send it at the right time, with the right message and to the right person.
“It’s really important to send the right message, to the right person, at the right time, with the right frequency,” she said. “This is a motto that was created by our VP of delivery, and he was really inspired by Seth Godin and (his) theory on permission marketing. That says getting into your customer’s inbox is really a privilege and not a right.”
So how do we create this really valuable experience and communication with our customers without adding to the insanity that lies within their inbox? And how does that experience, that content, help in your account-based marketing strategy?
How email helps your ABM strategy
Email is the channel preferred by most professionals for business-related communications. More than 215 billion emails are sent a day. People love email. But they hate that they love email. Because, most American workers spending an average of 6.3 hours a day in their inbox, and the productivity lost inside is substantial.
And because you’re already emailing your customers, clients and leads daily, you’re afraid of cluttering their space. (Which not only is annoying, but can actually discredit your hard work to date.) The problem is, though, you know the content you have will help them. It’ll provide a real and valuable resource. It’ll open the door to the utopia of upsells (or retention, or sale) – so long as you avoid aggravating them with yet another email.
Instead, use your signature to share the content. Email signature marketing is this enormous opportunity to add personalized, but scalable, content resources into the billions of organic conversations that are already happening.
Our friends at Salesforce said email signatures add an easy win for any marketing organization. We’re already spending so much time in our email, let’s make it count.
Savvy organizations are scaling targeted content in every employee email to give their accounts a unified message that’s both unique and highly valuable. They’re optimizing the channel by using technology so they’re making decisions based on the data, rather than on a whim. Marketing departments are crafting a distribution strategy drawn from the click-through rate of a signature banner. They’re looking at the recipient-level data and the engagement over time.
Marketers invest time into the email signature because it can’t be outbid. It’s owned. You have no other competition in the space. And it’s organic – you’re already engaging in daily email exchanges with these accounts. But the juiciest part is because it’s targeted.
Using technology to scale your ABM Strategy
Just like any marketing and sales best practice, relevant and targeted messaging is important for your ABM strategy. But without technology, being targeted is almost impossible to scale.
Paired up with though leaders in the #FlipMyFunnel community, founder Sangram Vajre has created a visual explanation to better understand the components of ABM. Vajre literally took the traditional sales funnel and flipped it upside down. Instead of fishing for leads, this inverted funnel allows you to pull your long-bow back and shoot for your whales.
Email Signature marketing makes a dent in the “Engage” section. Most interactions with targeted accounts will be in either Gmail or Outlook, and it’ll happen in the conversations you’re already having. You’re now allowing each exchange from your domain to have powerful email signatures that are relevant, specifically, to the individual accounts you’re talking to.
Marketers across the globe are already implementing dynamic email signatures – you know, the ones that change automatically, based on who’s receiving the email. Here are a few examples how email signature marketing is complementing the ABM funnel. (But if you want more examples check out our ebook, 28 Creative Ways to Use Email Signature Marketing.)
Webinars
Distribute webinar CTAs to increase registrants by specific industry or product offering
Engage accounts with latest product features, thought leadership or resources with your creativity and personal touch
Content has a purpose. Some pieces are tailored help your sales development team engage a lead into having a discovery call. Other pieces are customized to your account executive team, who are measured on filling pipeline and need to have multi-touch campaigns to introduce ways to meet, learn and understand. Still more content is used to help your customer success team share useful best practices, relevant to the account they’re emailing.
In another example, our friends at Invoca used email signature marketing to increase registrations for their Call Intelligence Summit.
With this CTA banner, they generated more than 260 clicks. All of the amplified engagement stemmed from a channel that wasn’t even measured before email signature marketing.
Want to learn more? Check out Revenue Summit 2017 and #FlipMyFunnel. Industry influencers like Bassem Hamdy, Julia Stead, Avi Bhatnagar and Megan Eisberg are leading a session called Building an ABM Playbook: Lessons Learned from the School of Hard Knocks. And I can bet it’s not one you’re going to want to miss.
Tis the season of love, and we’re spreading it around by sharing our very favorite digital marketing tools we’re crushing on right now.
Now sure, we realize people aren’t really capable of loving a brand – not really, I mean, if we’re going to define love as a timeless, permanent state of emotion, connection and devotion. But it’s definitely possible for people to crush on a brand. And a crush can get a brand pretty far.
Crushes are defined as an intense (and usually passing) infatuation. For these digital marketing tools, though, it’s important they stay relevant and crush-worthy as trends change.
Here are 13 brands we’re totally crushing on right now:
Litmus lives where we want to go. Their brand is clean and their value is unmatched. Let’s start with the blog – which talks about everything email. They’re one of the most reliable digital marketing tools to see statistics, quality information and entertaining content. Their website is user friendly and easy to navigate. And their platform helps to test, optimize, simplify and amplify your email marketing.
Interactivity served up with a side of simplicity, Asana is the total package. Clean aesthetics and intuitive design make this digital marketing tool a total stud in our eyes.
Design aside, we’re in love with what we’re able to do with the platform. We can see the whole team and work off the same platform. We can create separate boards, and see day-to-day tasks. We’re able to tag each other and customize how we work – so I can organize my tasks different than my teammate, but we’re still able to work together.
MailChimp’s model is to actually help their customers – and keep them by providing stellar service. As you’re building your email list, MailChimp isn’t going to charge you – in fact, the service is free if you have 2000 names or less. After the 2000th subscriber, the price bumps to about $15 a month. And the platform integrates with social media, showing it plays well with others. They’re totally under the impression email is a piece of your marketing strategy, not your entire marketing strategy, and they’re there to support your mission in totality.
Your custom analytics give a detailed look at how many emails were opened, what links were clicked, is your email working – and help you optimize it to work harder for you. Then several times a year MailChimp shoots out reports that show the best times to send, best ways to engage and overall email best practices based off the data you’re collecting.
We’re crushing on their writing team so hard. They’re so fun! The content is not only informational, but actually valuable. They produce the content we want to see and they do it so it’s fun to read, watch, see, listen to, etc. Even their prospecting emails are on point with helpful content that is sure to give readers a smile.
This digital marketing tool has a friendly user interface that uses simplicity as the ultimate sophistication. The illustrations in their design are fun and engaging, while functionality is equally as basic to help the user steer their own path.
Box’s design is informative, intuitive and pretty – for instance, the very slick gifs that slide in on the home page. On first look at their website, there is no question what they do. And they really want to make sure you understand their product. And then get to know you to make sure your user experience is simple and personal.
Another thing they do well that we love is on the pricing page. They segment by a user’s buyer persona by offering three options at the top: “Individual Plans,” “Business Plans,” and “Platform Plans.” Making it a personal experience for the user – after all, if you’re thinking about buying Box for yourself, there’s really no reason you’d need to see the business plans (and vice versa).
Touting a client list of Uber, Slack, Square, Facebook, Yahoo, Warby Parker, Airbnb, Lyft and about a bazillion others, the crew at Sandwich Video delivers an authentic personalized experience we’re obsessed with. The first step in working with Sandwich Video is shooting them an email. Give them all the details on your project and why it’s the next big thing. Then you wait for their response – which is from another human, usually within an hour. When they message back, they’ll ask you a ton of questions to really get to know you and your brand. As they say, they’re fans of “real talk.”
The full-service creative agency out of Los Angeles is so intent on getting to know you and your brand. They’re interacting with a single goal in mind, and it has nothing to do with their bottom line. In fact, on the contrary, it’s all about your bottom line, and helping you become successful. We love brands who build others up!
Built on laser-focused targeting and personalized messaging, BBDO is the group responsible for Snapchat-centric Lowe’s campaign, Snicker’s “You’re not you when you’re hungry,” which extended into the snacks packaging; haunting anti-texting, “It can wait” efforts for AT&T and the liberating “Imaging the Possibilities” campaign that helped reverse a three-year decline for Barbie, raising the sales by double-digit percentages, according to Ad Age.
In the business since 1891, BBDO has spent more than a century learning to embrace data strategically, without sacrificing their core creativity. As Omnicom’s largest portfolio, the agency has expanded to 289 offices in 80 countries.
Square is on a mission to make life easier – and that starts on their homepage. Starting at the top, navigation is sleek and the headline is interactive. They want to make the experience as personal as possible, which helps give users a customized journey through their website.
And their product is just cool. It’s something that actually helps people start selling faster. My salon uses Square, my neighbors at the Farmers Market uses Square, my favorite boutique uses Square. It’s a real product, that helps real people, with a real solution.
The home services industry is not a particularly sexy topic to market, but Nest has glammed it up. Starting with the awesome product, it’s a little piece of cool hanging on the wall – not just a beige box that gets overlooked. Because it’s more art-meets-functionality rather than a product you don’t pay attention to, consumers are often more aware of the energy they’re using, which is good for the environment and their pocket book.
And for the digital marketing tools inspiration, the design of the website is almost as sleek and simple as the product’s interface. The design is clean with stark contrasts. Oh and as a little bonus, the screwdriver comes in the box, so you don’t have to worry about finding the right size.
Rocking the product world in pink – Pendo, the analytics platform that helps your product development folks track user behavior to build more engaging software, does SaaS with style. Originally just an accent color in the product, the pink was so well received, the marketing department snagged it right up and made it their trademark. And it’s impossible to miss.
Add in their unique sense of humor – they brought a 6-foot dinosaur to SaaStr 17 this year – and obvious talent and we’re hooked.
What kind of Martech writer would I be if I failed to mention the king of digital marketing tools on our crush list? But why do we love them like Ross loves Rachel? Our reasons go far beyond the (drool-worthy) design. Apple understands consistency – no matter what platform you’re on, you know what kind of user experience to expect. And speaking of user experience, Apple knows good usability. It’s easy. It’s quick. And it creates trends, knowing what users are going to want next before they know they want it.
Every company, in every industry, should do customer service like Zappos. The world would be a happier place. The company (which is now a unit of Amazon) has been called “insane” and “fanatical” for the lengths they go to deliver happiness. Like that time sent flowers to a lady who ordered six different pairs of shoes because her feet were damaged by harsh medical treatment, or when they overnighted a free pair of shoes to a best man who had arrived at a wedding without his shoes (oops!).
They take personalized service to new levels by delivering consistent, user-friendly experiences 365 days a year. (Yes, even on Christmas.)
We love literally everything HubSpot does. The number one reason? Because it works. It works every time. It’s so stupid simple, the whole marketing team is able to use it. HubSpot drives real results and helps keep us on task and accountable. Not to mention, their team of a cool 1,000 (ish) employees are constantly working to improve their product. HubSpot didn’t just create a product, but it pioneered a movement to inbound marketing. And it’s leading by example.
And then, if you’re in a smaller agency or new to marketing, there’s a really great chance you learned the ins and outs of the marketing industry through reading their (auh-mazing) content.
Canvas increases webinar registrations by 48 percent in seven days using Sigstr
OPPORTUNITY
The buyer’s journey is changing. With mountains of high-quality information swirling across the internet, immediately available to prospects, many decision-makers delegate the buying process to someone else. And a new decision-maker enters the fray in the last 5 – 10 percent of the buying experience. Often, this person needs to be engaged, educated and sold from scratch, according to a study from TOPO. And as customers change their habits, marketers are left trying to find new ways to resonate.
For Canvas, that meant crafting tailored content and a strategy that targets the right people at the right time. Whether they’re top-of-funnel prospects or current customers looking to renew.
Canvas has been tagged one of the fastest growing mobile app services in the world. They’ve automated millions of manual tasks and replaced more than 30 tons of paper in business.
When Digital Marketing Specialist Keith Bateman was tasked to set up a year-end webinar featuring the major releases of 2016, he was met with some hesitation. The company had tried webinars before – most saw only a handful of registrants. They’d just never been worth the effort. But customer success insisted, saying a properly-run webinar would provide a real resource to customers and help gauge account health.
“We send thousands of emails every year and we have this big, blank space that we should be taking advantage of. But until Sigstr, it’s just been ignored. It’s there, ready to be used – people read our emails, and the space is on every single one. Just empty.”
– Keith Bateman, Digital Marketing Specialist
SOLUTION
Bateman was given the assignment in the second week of November. You know, right before Thanksgiving. Everyone was running around like crazy to wrap up the year before the holidays. So he developed an email and sent it to a few thousand of the company’s existing accounts, starting the webinar promotion.
That email saw about 70 clicks-to-register convert. But Bateman wanted more. He sent out another email, and returned a 1.39 percent click rate and saw a few more signups.
The week before the event, during the webinar promotion, a member of the sales team sent out an email to his accounts. The messaging was simple: “See what you might have missed this year. Just click my signature below and sign up for the Year in Review webinar.”
The targeted messaging matched with a tailored audience returned a 4.04 percent click rate – and a collective 1.24 percent across the board – which turned into real registrations. That week’s webinar promotion through Sigstr pushed the total up past 150 registrants. Even better, 64 percent of registrants attended the webinar, a percentage higher than any other Canvas webinar to date.
The right language in the email, the ease of use for the customers (and the sales team), and the clean design made it easy for the right clients to sign up. And the 4.04 percent click rate, Bateman added, killed every other channel of webinar promotion.
CAMPAIGN RESULTS
VISION
Because of the wide and targeted audience during the webinar promotion, the engagement was through the roof. With dozens of questions flowing in, the team was able to see what kind of educational material they should send out throughout the year. And with the targeted audience participation, they’ve since been able to tailor their content – even the website – to better answer key questions.
And, it opened the door for upsell conversations. The webinar brought in eight potential upsells sans the hard sell from customer success.
In the future, Bateman said the Canvas team will use tailored campaigns with Sigstr to promote and distribute other quarterly content initiatives.. And the company has started using internal campaigns to help with sales enablement. Bateman assigns tailored content to the sales team to ensure they’re seeing the right content at the right time, too, so they can provide the highest value to their customers and prospects.
“Our sales team is great, they’re all really awesome at what they do. But they’re busy. So we’ve been trying to figure out how we can use our content for our team more efficiently. And Sigstr is the perfect way for them to get education and the content pieces they need. And they’re able to have it without having to check Slack or having to remember to check the content library. It’s a subtle reminder every day that’s in their email.”
– Keith Bateman, Digital Marketing Specialist
OTHER CAMPAIGN DESIGNS
To view the full printable PDF version of this case study, click below!
Disclaimer: This post was written with Selective Jet Lag Disorder (SJLD). A disorder which affects those traveling west, but whose internal clock is set to EST. West coast by night, east coast by morning. While taxing to the patient, this schedule can be maintained for 72 hours. Lucky for me, that’s how long I’m in San Francisco for SaaStr before heading back to Indianapolis.
What Sujan Patel and Mark Roberge taught me:
A Quick Note: In digital marketing, anytime someone has their full name as their Twitter handle, they inherently command instant respect. (They’re not forced to put a number after their name à la @danhanrahan8. I couldn’t even be number two? But I digress.) When someone like Sujan (@sujanpatel) or Mark (@markroberge) gives me advice on Sigstr, you bet I’m taking notes.
Short time to value + High viral factor = Huge freemium potential
Sigstr has prioritized enterprise functionality to serve the largest companies in the world. We’ve kept the UX clean and intuitive, so the SMB marketer can quickly launch and see value. However, we have not prioritized the first-time, self-service experience.
Before we get too far, let’s detour for a quick rundown on the viral/value/freemium opportunities with Sigstr. Our platform lets marketers centrally control employee email signatures. It ensures every send closes with an on-brand signature and a crisp, dynamic call-to-action. Here are a few examples from SaaStr sponsors.
The average employee sends 10,000 emails each year. And, each email is looked at around two-and-a-half times. So for a company with just 100 employees, Sigstr is seen 2.5 million times! We include a simple watermark that displays in those signatures and it’s our single largest lead source. The viral component is absolutely unparalleled.
In SaaS, we do things that don’t scale in the early days. Often this involves high-touch service – basically, we do all the heavy lifting for you. We want you live as fast as humanly possible with a branded signature and compelling CTAs for every team. Email signature marketing is a new channel. And we know how to make it work. So we do it for our customers so they can see it work, too.
And while we do have about 10 percent of our Annual Recurring Revenue driven from self-service folks, it’s simply not as intentional as it should be.
But there is zero reason not to focus on the self-service model with the ideal free product. Because for us every user promotes our product 10,000 times / year!
One last thing I picked up from Sujan: Freemium does not necessarily mean you’ll only attract small businesses. If an enterprise signs up for the freemium product, you drop everything and engage that person just as you would any other inbound enterprise lead.
What I learned from Lauren Vaccerello, VP Marketing at Box
How to Market to Customers, Small, Medium, Large, Extra-Large: All at the Same Time from the Same Budget
Lauren has the same problem we have at Sigstr: Every company, of every size and in every vertical can be a potential customer. At the same time, every employee in a company gets value from the product. Box has 69k customers, including 60 percent of the Fortune 500.
So how the heck do you market without becoming generic and vanilla? It all starts by aligning your sales team on segments. And then crafting a strategy for each of those segments. Then, automation and the right technology tools can drive massive scale. Some notable recommendations from Lauren were Demandbase, Radius, 6Sense, Marketo and Optimizely.
Let’s review:
Step 1: Build segments with sales
S2: Measure everything to understand your segments
S3: Apply the right technology tools to automate relevant marketing
I learned so much on day one at SaaStr. I’ve met some incredible people and can’t wait for the next 48 hours. Sleep is overrated.
As marketers continue the search for new ways to get their information in front of their most important contacts, companies like Mimeo are paving the way for the future.
Mimeo is a B2B tech company that brings content to life through print and digital products. They were the first company to offer online printing and overnight delivery of complex documents like manuals, booklets, newsletters or posters. Training departments, for example, rely on Mimeo to distribute materials, whether they need digital training modules or three-ring binders.
The company started as a startup in the 90s with a mission to disrupt the print industry. They’ve since grown into a global company with more than 800 employees serving customers in 140 countries around the world. Their corporate HQ is in New York City. And they have offices in Memphis, Newark, Boston, and Seattle in addition to a growing international presence in the United Kingdom, Germany, India, and China.
From their roots, they’ve become the experts in content distribution for enterprise organizations. They reinvented the print industry and now aim to give customers a more efficient way to work.
We talked with Robert Byrne, content marketing manager at Mimeo on how content distribution – and specifically using email signature marketing – is boosting his content strategy this year.
Question 1: What are some of the biggest initiatives Mimeo takes on in a year?
Mimeo enables the transfer of knowledge across the world. What I mean is, we help organizations connect with their audience. Whether it’s a meeting with the executive board, or a training session for a new product launch, we produce the complex documents they need to be successful. Because we’re a cloud-based platform, we can be easily scaled. So our Fortune 500 customers share the same, effortless experience when building and distributing content for a global investor relations meeting as a small business owner would ordering a dozen training manuals.
(Platform Sigstr Banner, used by Mimeo’s Marketing and Sales Teams.)
Here’s a look at some of our platforms:
Mimeo Print – Build, proof and distribute on-demand print materials.
Mimeo Marketplace – Customizable storefront for audiences to access print, digital and non-print materials.
Mimeo Digital – Enterprise digital content distribution, streamlining users and admins ability to communicate and collaborate.
Mimeo HubCast – Centralized network of Print Service Providers (PSPs) for global marketers to produce and deliver print materials in-region.
Q2: What was most attractive to you about turning your professional email signature into a content distribution channel? And why Sigstr?
Our communication with customers is a core part of our business. This communication needs to go beyond simply supporting them; it needs to ensure that our customers are successful. Sigstr lets our team contribute to customer success by delivering relevant, targeted content in a tasteful manner.
We have customers in every industry, of every size. With email signature marketing, we’re able to share relevant and targeted information with each of them. As we continue to rollout new technology and product offerings that save them even more time, Sigstr gives us a channel to quickly, subtly share.
And we can do it in a conversation we’re already having with them – rather than sending more emails and risking being overlooked, or worse, ignored.
I think many organizations make the mistake of sending out generic content that only resonates with a fraction of its recipients, ultimately wasting their time. Since our mission is to give customers back their time through an effortless experience, I want to make sure our messaging doesn’t add clutter, but instead adds value.
The ability to group teams into various unique campaigns helps segment what we put in front of customers and prospects. It ensures that the content will resonate and add value that supports their business objectives. The dashboard lets me assess the effectiveness of a campaign immediately and make adjustments accordingly. Sigstr has helped us to achieve our goals in an efficient and simple way.
Q3: How are you using Sigstr?
We have many customers in the restaurant industry, and often these franchises need to distribute printed content to all of their locations for employee training or marketing. These customers use Mimeo Print because we let them send their materials to hundreds of locations in a few minutes, all by placing a single order.
(Mimeo Tracking: Used by Mimeo’s Retail & Hospitality Sales Team)
Recently, we released Mimeo Tracking. It’s a new feature of Mimeo Print that lets our customers track the hundreds of shipments all on one screen. It eliminates the need to check tracking numbers and instead provides a single visual representation of all of their shipments.
Mimeo Tracking has given our customers back a massive amount of time in their day. It’s something we’re just as excited about it as our customers are. We used Sigstr to tell them about the new release when it was added to all Mimeo Print accounts.
Mimeo’s story is an incredible one to tell. And with Sigstr, we’re given a channel that strengthens our narrative. There are more exciting developments on the way, and I’m looking forward to layering in Sigstr campaigns to our content strategy.
Here are a few more professional email signature designs we’ve created so far with Sigstr:
There is no such thing as instant gratification in b2b content marketing.
We’ve created an always-on, fast-paced, agile world where, as content consumers, we want to see everything we can, and then a little that we can’t, and we want it now. We want it on every device and we want it engaging enough to hold our attention until the next big whatever-it-is comes along in our newsfeed – in about eight seconds.
The speed at which the internet moves content through its search engines has become so fast – making the piece you poured your blood, sweat and tears into obsolete almost the instant you hit publish. (Cue more tears.) Brands are forced to keep a feverish pace just in an effort to keep up with their b2b content marketing competitors and the rising demands of our consumers. Not to mention covering, in great detail, all the trending topics that span across the Twittersphere.
We’ve conditioned consumers to anticipate the short-term gains as we push to deliver content on-demand. And in the process, we’ve come to crave the instant wins that give us an immediate sense of ROI. But we’re not getting them. Not really, anyway. Instead we bask in a false high, released when we achieve mediocre success with our b2b content marketing.
Of course, some nominal returns can be seen quickly, but the real payoff comes when we slow down – when we stay fixed in stronger returns for a long-term campaign. If your only goal is to increase top-line revenue more efficiently with b2b content marketing (read: a cheaper investment) than through the traditional advertising, then you’re missing out on the greater benefits content can offer. Slowing down allows us to achieve real results – faster.
We are impatient.
Modern technology and instant-communication social media platforms have conditioned content consumers to expect results instantaneously. My internet was down for 2 minutes while writing this post (gasp!) and my anxiety peaked. People – our readers, watchers, prospects, consumers, even ourselves – have lost the ability to wait. Tweets, Facebook, texting require no patience and they provide users with immediate gratification. And people have come to expect the same from the companies they buy from.
It’s no longer enough to give customers amazing service and competitive price points. Now they want all of that, but they want it yesterday.
We broke content by being good at it.
We’ve been insanely successful in making the case for content. Around 90 percent of companies are creating at least some form of content, according to Demand Metric. And 78 percent of CMOs have tagged custom content as the way of the future. Content engineers, signed on with a Near-Faustian promise of “More budget = More leads,” have actually made some pretty significant strides in ROI.
But the gain we made in the early days of content programs can be deceptive. In many cases these blog posts, ebooks, whitepapers and videos mark the first time our brands have delivered valuable content to our easiest-to-reach audiences.
As content powers ahead at the speed of Snapchat, we’re left still scratching our heads to figure out where it fits in the customer journey. Consumers are littered with mountains of mediocre content of everything that’s ever been published (ever!) tangling the interwebs. And some people still think it’s enough to just put their work up on a blog and hope for the best – bless their hearts.
Audiences are becoming harder to reach and connect with. They’re more demanding – and more discerning – as to what content they consider valuable. And as the content marketing operation matures, we’re having a harder time figuring out new ways to up the impact while keeping up with the increasing demand for higher high-quality content.
Turn off the instant gratification switch.
Human nature tends to take the path of least resistance. In other words, people are lazy. And slowing down isn’t for the faint of heart. It’s hard! Being strategic and intentional in your b2b content marketing strategy takes time, effort, resources and a whole lot of work.
We need to dig deep into purpose. And we need to figure out if we’re going to ground our marketing and content in something substantive so our strategies can find a place within the context of what our customers actually care about. When we slow down, and create items of value for our customers – consistently holding them at the center of everything we do – we’re left with more social shares, more engagement and, ultimately, more leads.
We’ve become so intent on finding the goal for our brand, we’ve lost touch as to why we’re creating in the first place. It’s not about us. Our attention needs to become intently focused on becoming a resource for our consumers. We need to make our conversations a two-way street. And becoming a trusted resource takes time. It’s a strategy of marginal gains that, if made daily, can result in a significant impact over time.
So what steps should you take to manage a content slow down? Here are four:
4 steps to slow(er) b2b content marketing
1. Figure out the “why”
Why are you making what you’re making? Specifically, are you looking to increase lead generation? Brand awareness? Brand authority? Are you working to shorten your customer sales journey? What’s the point? Step one is to figure out your company goal. And then set those goals aside.
Next, figure out why your reader will care about your content. Remember, no one has to read what you write, no one has to watch what you produce. So if you align your reasons for content creation to their priorities, you’ll gain more authority (and more leads). Before you even begin to make whatever it is you’re making, figure out why your piece matters, and how it’ll help you reach your ultimate goal.
2. Think about who cares
ID who your reader actually is – and know what their focus is. What stuff will resonate with them? Which resources will help them to be more successful in their roles? Align the customer experience to the journey they’re embarking on to get there.
Deliver an experience that your prospects and customers want to be a part of. And surprise and delight them along the way – and afterward, too.
Skip the corporate speak that focuses on what your brand does, how you do it and just how awesome you really are – even if you are, in fact, an awesome corporate player. Instead, focus on the reader. Be a real and helpful resource. Turn them into the hero of their own story and you’ll gain their trust – and ultimately win their business.
3. Don’t be afraid to experiment
Content creation is scary. It takes creativity served up with a side of nerve and a bit of grit. So don’t be afraid to get it wrong. Create content that doesn’t sound like everyone else. Market in a way that doesn’t feel like marketing.
Write. Play. Experiment.
Take time to create bigger, braver pieces of content. Write stories that resonate with a unique tone. Make stuff that’s actually engaging for your customers – not just your CMO. Be creative and embrace the uncomfortable. Don’t worry, you’ve got this.
4. Train for a marathon
B2B content marketing is a marathon, not a sprint. So train for it. Literally! Pace out your creation schedule like a marathon runner, in a three-day cycle. Each stress day is then separated by two easier days. For a runner, this pattern is used to challenge endurance, strength and speed.
For content, the cycle looks a little like this:
Day 1: Heavy writing – write multiple blog posts in one day or work on a large chunk of an ebook.
D2: Easy writing – write just one post or do client engagement on social.
D3: Easy writing – again, take it easy, but be productive. Maybe today is a research and outlining day.
D4: Heavy video – work on the mass of your next video project
D5: Easy video – brainstorm and edit
D6: Easy video – post-production edits and rendering
Of course you can play with this model to fit what you’re creating – post writing, video production, graphics, newsletters, webinars, podcasts, infographics, event promotion. Just use the pattern as a guide and then pace your schedule.
Content is a game changer. But, to paraphrase Hemingway, change happens gradually, and then all at once. In other words, slow marketing will lead to rapid results.
But in a marketing landscape as ephemeral as Snapchat, one where 140 characters qualifies as fully-formed thought processes, how can we possibly keep up with the shape-shifting terrain in marketing channels to distribute our content?
Of course, marketing needs agility. It requires a nimble combination of strategy served up with a side of creativity. But no one brain can be a conversion optimizer, detailed designer, content mastermind with time to test, measure and repeat, all at once. Instead, we look to the talents and skill sets of our peers. We follow the paths of marketers who have tackled the same customer journey challenges before us.
In the spirit of education, we’re shedding light on our distribution course. We’re bringing focus to our multichannel strategy, which highlights the need to prioritize and strategize each of your relevant marketing channels.
In the last year, we’ve implemented social media marketing through paid LinkedIn advertising, search engine marketing through Google AdWords and email signature marketing through our own platform here at Sigstr.
Let’s get real for a minute.
Now, we know the value of Sigstr, but just like any marketer – we wanted to prove it. So we ran an experiment using our own data. We wanted to know what $5,000 could buy us on these marketing channels in comparison to email signature marketing. We looked at the number of impressions and clicks. And then we measured the average click-through rate. Next, we tracked the cost per 1000 impressions and per click.
This isn’t someone else’s data. This is the data we collected in 2016, based on our campaigns for each of the digital marketing channels. We optimized each channel’s content for the highest performance possible. We are in marketing after all, and we want our content to be seen, clicked, read or watched. Here’s what we found:
Number of Impressions
Winner: Sigstr
The $5,000 budget is enough to implement 83 users at $5 a user per month for the whole year, so that’s definitely noteworthy when comparing the digital marketing channels. In comparison, the same budget paid for 4 weeks on LinkedIn and 8 weeks on Google AdWords. Using Sigstr, our content was seen 1,955,234 times in 2016. On LinkedIn we were able to garner 174,386 impressions and on Google AdWords our content was seen 46,250 times.
A couple things to note, though: With AdWords, we were seen just 46,000 times but the content was delivered to a targeted, and interested audience. That kind of targeted impression helped our click-through rates on AdWords, as you’ll see below. However, it did take a bit of time to tweak our campaigns to get the most benefit from the digital marketing channel. We were in it for about 30 to 60 minutes a day.
We were able to do some targeting on LinkedIn, but not at the same level. On the other hand, with Sigstr, the campaign is centrally managed, so our marketing department could set relevant, unique content for each department in the company. And it was delivered to a hand-picked audience through email.
Number of Clicks
Winner: Sigstr
This likely goes back to the fact we were able to run the Sigstr campaign for 52 weeks for the same budget we ran the 4- and 8-week campaigns on social and search media. Because the campaigns through email signature marketing were seen more often, by a more targeted audience, people engaged.
It was interesting to see the clicks did not correlate with impressions for the other channels. LinkedIn raked in more than 174,000 views but only grabbed 641 clicks. And Google AdWords, which had the lowest number of impressions, targeted 2,640 clicks.
Average Click-Through Rate
Winner: Google AdWords
Google AdWords came out on top of the CTR category with an impressive rate of 5.71 percent. By having a targeted, engaged audience, we could reach more of the people we actually wanted to reach. Sigstr had an average CTR of 0.46 percent and LinkedIn had a rate of 0.368 percent.
CPM
Winner: Sigstr
If we charged per 1000 impressions, Sigstr’s CPM would be $2.56. We don’t – but it’s a good, relatable metric that helps even the playing field for social and search media marketing. In comparison, LinkedIn’s CPM rate sits at $26 while Google AdWords is a whopping $108 based on the results of our use on the digital marketing channels.
CPC
Winner: Sigstr
Another metric simply to make the marketing channels comparable – Sigstr’s CPC sits at $0.56. We had almost 9,000 clicks on our $5000 worth of email signature campaigns last year. That’s in comparison to LinkedIn’s 641 clicks, at a CPC of $7.80 and Google AdWords’ 2,640 clicks at a cost of $1.89 per click.
So what does all of this data mean?
The bottom line is that your company will have natural growth levers – but it’s helpful to optimize when to pull and where to squeeze. A well-formed content distribution strategy is going to look at as many targeted marketing channels as possible. And then add new channels, like email signature marketing (<<shameless plug) to differentiate your brand and reach a high concentration of targeted contacts.
In today’s marketing landscape, an effective content distribution channel has become just as important as content creation. Some 88 percent of B2B marketers in North America already rely on some form of content marketing, and audiences have been struck by a sort of content shock. They’ve become numb to the mountains of mediocre content that corners them at every click. People today are more empowered than ever to simply ignore the pieces they have no interest in.
Content quality is, of course, the foundation of earning your audience’s attention. But even if you’ve created the Mona Lisa of ebooks, no one is going to care if they can’t find it. If you don’t know how to distribute it, your content isn’t going to be seen, clicked, read, watched or shared. That’s why an intelligent content distribution channel is so important. And that’s why a record number of users signed on to use Sigstr in 2016.
Last year was a record-smashing year for the Sigstr team. We grew our user base by a staggering 470 percent. And we powered more than 100 million signature impressions across our customer base with our email signature marketing platform.
This kind of new targeted connectivity through the employee email signature has promoted campaigns like HubSpot’s INBOUND 2016 event and became a foundation in creating unique partnerships with companies, like HubSpot.
The team at Bounce Exchange, Inc. 500s fastest growing software company, is using email signature marketing for content distribution to attract and recruit more talent. And NBA teams, like the Indiana Pacers are putting tangible benefits to corporate sponsorships using the owned marketing channel.
Why do we care so much about your content distribution channel?
Because simply creating good content isn’t enough anymore. Sure, your SEO strategy and best practices will help drive relevant traffic to your content, but it shouldn’t be the only tool in your content toolbox. You can’t build a house with just a hammer, can you?
Paid channels, like LinkedIn or Google AdWords can give you a boost if you’re willing to shell out the time and money for it. But 90 percent of all social clicks go to organic content. And on Google, organic content commands 80 percent of the clicks.
The people who find your content through organic search will likely be an audience to find your content helpful. (Whether or not they’re an ideal buyer is left totally up in the air, though.) But the chance of them returning to your content or sharing it after seeing the information they needed is probably slim.
How we’re targeting your audience
Marketers are looking to decentralize content, according to HubSpot’s State of Inbound 2016 Report. More of our peers are looking to target audiences intentionally and strategically. And that’s where we come in.
By injecting your content into your email signature, you’re hand picking an audience designed for your content. Have a new blog? Maybe it’s an event registration, or ebook you’re promoting. Perhaps you’d like to draw attention to a new product microsite. HubSpot, Bounce Exchange and the Pacers are all using email signature marketing for an efficient content distribution channel. And then they’re able to measure it to see which content resonates and what doesn’t. That kind of insight lets them optimize their content strategy based on data.
You’re distributing content without having to fight for your reader’s attention, because it’s in your email signature. You already own that channel. And you know your contact is a targeted persona. What’s more is, then you’re able to attract your customers to you. And you can educate them along the way. Especially if your product is particularly complex, with a complex set of features, or you have direct competitors who share similar features. It’s a great way to differentiate yourself.
To learn more about our growth news, read our press release here.
In an age of post-truth and fake news, wouldn’t it be great to have insight into marketing masterminds’ thoughts on what trends will take hold in 2017? Lucky for us, we’re in no shortage of guesstimations of marketing trends for the year ahead.
The problem is, with prediction after prediction (after prediction) made by some of the smartest people in our industry, how do you know which one to trust? We almost never look back to forecasts made years ago, so in most cases, you choose an authority on an educated whim.
To help you untangle the prediction webs, we’ve looked at three major marketing blogs: Hubspot, MarketingProfs and Content Marketing Institute. They’re the sources we look to all year for advice, inspiration and guidance, and so it only makes sense to see how their predictions faired last year. Who predicted 2016 best?
But here’s the deal, this analysis is completely arbitrary. We took a look at each prediction and decided whether we thought it came true or maybe not so much. There is absolutely no scientific value to it whatsoever. It’s just our own evaluation.
A note: The horseshoe category
You know how they say almost only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades? Well, I like to think almost fits in a few more gray areas. Not every prediction made was black or white. The almost-trends of 2016 have laid a foundation for this year. They got half way (or more) to becoming the next dernier cri of marketing, then shifted – either falling flat or taking on new, but different than predicted, life.
Nailed It
Here are the predictions that hit the mark square on the head in 2016:
Relationship marketing, Hubspot
Hubspot predicted an influx of personalized, data-driven marketing. All solid relationships, they said, are built on trust. And adding another layer of transparency between customer and brand has proven both popular and profitable.
Invest in content, MarketingProfs
Companies earmarked an average of 28 percent of total marketing spending for content marketing in 2016, according to the Content Marketing Institute. The most successful brands are allocating 42 percent of their budget, up from 37 percent last year. And while MarketingProfs was right on their prediction that content will hit the mainstream, more than half of B2B marketers still think we’re investing too little in content.
Broad-picture marketing, Content Marketing Institute
Brands want to enhance the entire audience experience, so they’ve prioritized user experiences online. This year, we’ve spent more time and resources to study the metadata and taxonomies and we’ve found our voice – making a consistent and cohesive tone and brand across all mediums.
Content distribution, MarketingProfs
Marketers spent 2016 finding new ways to get their content noticed. We can have the greatest piece of work in the world, but no one will care unless they can find it. With an influx of paid and earned media already on the terrain, owned channels, like email signature marketing, have come into focus as a differentiator. (<<shameless plug, but it’s true!)
Native advertising, Content Marketing Institute
CMI predicted native advertising would be trendy, but hard. And that’s exactly what happened in 2016. Every brand wants to try it, but few are really making a splash with it yet.
Organizational structure, MarketingProfs
More companies invested in content marketing in 2016 than ever before. Teams with valuable managers have been implemented in the most successful B2B brands. And they’re investing time and resources to strategize and produce. Businesses have seen content marketing’s cost is around 62 percent less than outbound marketing, but it generates more than 3X as many leads, so it’s finally getting the respect it deserves (<<says the content marketing manager).
Missed It
These predictions fell a little short:
Digital overload, Content Marketing Institute
CMI, we love you, but people just aren’t sick of digital yet. While a disconnect is appreciated every now and then, we’ve been trained to want what we want and want it yesterday. We need to work faster than ever. And we need to use the plethora of resources available in digital format to get the job done. Sure successful brands have cut their social presence to focus on creating only the best content to be distributed on their most important channels. But it’s because there’s so much information out there, we need to put more effort into making sure ours stands out. We do love your optimism for an uptick in publishing, though!
Search beyond search engines, Hubspot
The prediction of a 2016 shift into an all-in-one platform on social media is a step too far. Hubspot claimed advanced search would bring a more integrated social experience, but we’re just not there yet. We’re getting there, sure, but it didn’t take hold in 2016. Internet users still prefer to use Google, Bing and Yahoo – in that order – to find what they’re looking for.
Horseshoes
Here are the predictions that became our almost-trends of 2016:
Ephemeral Marketing, Hubspot
Snapchat is now the second most powerful social platform in the United States. It has more users than Twitter – and grew as much in one year as the Twitter did over the last 4. Yeesh! More than that, a whooping 10 percent of the entire nation’s population of social media-using 12-24 year olds have moved away from Facebook and onto Snapchat as their platform of choice. There is absolutely no doubt the ephemeral movement is real. But marketers are still trying to figure out how to use it. Some brands tried it in 2016, few succeeded. Maybe this year.
Slow marketing, Content Marketing Institute
Marketers have been so excited about the content marketing movement that we’ve jumped right in. We made all the content but put little thought into the strategy behind it. Content Marketing Institute said last year the brands who continued on this path would crash and burn. And while some have, most haven’t. But that’s not going to last much longer. With so much content flooding our industry, we need to think first, then produce. Strategize and be patient. Take time to create authentic, valuable content.
Internet of Things, Hubspot
Internet of Things has been couched as a tool for personalization. Marketers are saying it’ll be a platform for engagement and a way to create a new customer experience. And as much as this trend started to take hold in 2016, the foundation has only just been laid.
Measurement and ROI, MarketingProfs
So much of me wishes this were a trend right now, and we’re almost there. But 2016 was not the year of ROI. It was a year to learn how to measure, setting the groundwork for 2017 to be the year we use the data we’ve collected.
Virtual reality, Hubspot
Hubspot said virtual reality would undoubtedly cause some kind of shift in marketing ideology in 2016. VR is all about delivering an experience. From the second you slip on a VR headset, you’re immersed in the virtual experience. It has the potential to disrupt the entire marketing landscape. But that didn’t happen in 2016. Instead, augmented reality took strong hold with apps like Pokemon Go blending virtual experiences into the real world.
So who do we entrust as our trend-master in 2017? We’ll just have to wait and see.
In this guest post, Cory Bray talks about how he sees email signature marketing fitting into the Sales Enablement Ecosystem, a framework that he and Hilmon Sorey outline in their book, 
Creed
Email is to your marketing department as Belle is to finding the Beast’s castle. It’s always been there, you’ve just been overlooking it as an advocacy channel. Your team is sending a LOT of email every day, to people who are actually interested in what you have to say. On average, each employee sends more than 10,000 emails a year. For that company of 250, that’s 2.5 million unique views on your content.
2. 
