7 Emails Your E-commerce Store Needs to Be Able to Send Out on an Automated Basis

With all the hype surrounding social media in recent years, it’s easy to forget that email remains the most potent channel for driving business today.

Why?

Because people prefer to receive emails from companies – more than any other form of communication. It sounds counter-intuitive, but it’s true. A study last year from MarketingSherpa found that 72% of US adults prefer to communicate with companies via email – that’s more than social media, text messages and phone calls combined.

More people are on email than social at any given moment, too. Radicati estimates the global email user base today to be 2.6 billion, while Facebook has about two-thirds of that. And Adobe recently found that we’re spending 17% more time in our inboxes this year than we did last year.

Email remains a flexible and almost universal messaging medium. It transcends the walled digital gardens that are the social networks. It is direct and simple in its approach, and it continues to adapt amid an evolving marketplace.

Email marketing allows us to send longer, targeted messages to our leads and customers, no matter where they are situated in the buying lifecycle.

And, when marketers write about how much love they have for the new generation of marketing automation tools, we’re almost always referring specifically to sophisticated functionality that allows us to send personalized, segmented and triggered emails.

When it comes to making sure that the right people see the right content at the right moment, email wins. Among companies that adopt email automation, conversions have a 77% chance of rising, according to Venture Beat.

Automated emails and email drip campaigns deserve a central spot in every marketing strategy. When your e-commerce business nurtures leads via triggered messaging, your average order value and conversion rates are likely to spike.

Let’s take a look at seven automated email flows that every e-commerce store needs to set up and optimize, so as to keep audience members engaged and advancing along the sales funnel.

1. Welcome Series

Because it’s become a nearly universal aspect of the e-commerce shopping experience, people have come to expect welcome emails in their inboxes as soon as they either subscribe to a new list or make a purchase from a given website for the first time. Your welcome email may be the very first point of contact between you and a new and/or potential customer, so the right messaging flow can make or break your relationship with this audience member.

More specifically, the welcome message can determine the likelihood or frequency that they’ll open your subsequent emails, so it’s important to get it right. Don’t fall prey to the classic e-commerce trap of turning people off with hard sell messaging in the wrong context. Your welcome email is primarily transactional – it’s meant to confirm that the audience member did indeed opt in and that you can indeed reach him or her via the inbox. Beyond that, it’s an excellent opportunity to cultivate patterns of engagement.

This welcome email from NordicTrack strikes the right tone. It covers the basics without too much fuss – it confirms that the account has been successfully opened, provides some ways to get in touch and invites the recipient to engage with the brand on social media.

This one from Marcs Insight does a great job of encouraging the recipient to get started using the brand’s rewards program. In essence, it’s a sales pitch, but the message is positioned as the next steps in a transaction that’s already underway.

Here we see an example of an omnichannel e-commerce welcome email from Office Depot. The customer has made an in-store purchase, which the brand is using as a springboard for more types of transactions and engagement. The tone is simple and welcoming, even if the offers for discounts, free shipping and fast in-store pickup are a bit aggressive.

Many businesses will use a welcome email series, which sends multiple messages, instead of just a single email. The first email, for example, will thank audience members for subscribing, ask them to confirm having subscribed by clicking on a link (this is what makes an email list “double opt-in,” the gold standard for lists), and set expectations for the rest of the emails headed their way in the series.

Once they confirm having subscribed, they’ll get a second email thanking them again. This email may have an offer, a brief brand overview, links to especially spectacular evergreen content, or an invitation to contact the brand with questions. This builds familiarity early on, which increases the likelihood that they’ll not only open your future emails, but also that they’ll continue engaging.

Tips for crafting an especially strong welcome series campaign include:

• Offer a discount or free trial as an incentive to subscribe, which can increase immediate conversions, also increasing the likelihood they’ll open the rest of your emails.
• Make sure your provider sends the autoresponder email immediately after a new user subscribes – while they’re still interested and your brand is top-of-mind.
• Include CTAs to follow you on social media or to check out your blog, so as to help build familiarity and cross-channel engagement.
• Avoid spam trigger words, which can instantly get your message and domain flagged by leading email clients.

2. Abandoned Cart Reminders

Have you ever added products to your shopping cart and then clicked away from the site, either because you were unsure about converting or you got distracted? Most of us have, and an abandoned cart reminder keeps that almost-purchase fresh in our minds. Since adding something to our carts meant we were entertaining the idea of purchasing, that gentle nudge may be all that’s needed to get someone to hit the checkout button.

Email automation software like GetResponse and MailChimp are ideal for ensuring that your autoresponders are sent out at optimized times. This high-value tool even has a built-in feature for the purpose of sending abandoned cart emails.

Kissmetrics Campaigns: Send triggered emails to users to nudge them toward engagement. Learn more about the soon-to-be-released Kissmetrics Campaigns.

Here’s a straightforward abandoned cart reminder prompt from Williams Sonoma. The layout is clean, the message is clear, and the call-to-action button is eye-catching. There’s even a hint of urgency in the note that the recipient’s cart will only be recoverable for the next month, a smart move on the brand’s part, designed to trigger those fears of missing out.

Below, we see TripAdvisor taking the abandonment concept to new levels, with a reminder to come back and book a hotel room for which the prospect never even demonstrated intent. Note that the emails says the hotel is one that the recipient “originally looked at.”

Finally, here’s a classic abandoned cart email from Vistaprint. It tells the interested e-commerce shopper exactly what the details of the order are and sweetens the deal by offering a generous 25% discount.

To maximize conversions with your abandoned cart reminders, you can:

• Offer discounts for the product in the reminder message.
• Use a curiosity-piquing subject line like “Did you forget something?”
• Let users know that supply is low or that the amount of time they’ll hold your item is running out
• Add an authentic, positive user review

3. Post-Purchase Follow Up

Following up is a timeless sales technique, which lets the customer know that you appreciate their business and shows them that you still care about their satisfaction, even though you’ve already received their payment.

In today’s digital world, it’s a great way to both make sure you stay relevant and increase your client reviews, which are essential selling tools.

Here’s a post-purchase email from upscale women’s fashion brand White House Black Market that focuses on one thing: inspiring verified buyers to review the products they’ve recently received. The design has plenty of white space, and the headline is emotionally evocative.

Great post-purchase follow up emails may include these elements:

• Ask for a review outright, and make it easy to leave one. A UGC marketing tool can be a major help with this.
• At the bottom of the email, display a few products that are similar to the ones purchased, or products that go well with them.
• Thank your customer once again for their purchase.
• Include information like product care, product use cases, or a product FAQ.

4. Re-engagement Prompts

Most e-commerce businesses have large swaths of their email lists that have fallen into the “disengaged audience” category. These are audience members who haven’t purchased from you, visited your site, or even opened your emails in several months.

All hope isn’t lost, however – these are still people who are already familiar with your brand, so they’re a “warmer” audience than strangers. You just have to use re-engagement prompts to get them back on your site and purchasing.

Automated re-engagement prompt messages often feature some sort of too-good-to-pass-up offer showcased in the subject or main title. Whether it’s a free product, a discount, or a chance to win something, you want to feature the incentive prominently.

You can also go for a more relationship-focused approach, favoring phrases like “We Miss You!” to remind subscribers that they haven’t engaged with you in a while.

Some more tips to create effective re-engagement autoresponders:

• Use easy-to-obtain incentives that even inactive users can redeem with minimal friction – offers like, “Come back, and we’ll automatically give you a 10% discount off your next purchase!” can be major motivators.
• Split test multiple re-engagement offers and tones to see what people respond to best.
• Send re-engagement offers based on recipient’s personal purchase history, which can improve results.

5. Upsell Offers

Getting customers to spend more by sending them upsell offers is a great way to increase revenue and establish powerful patterns of repeat purchases. Using automation and triggers to inform the content helps to maximize the relevance of your offer.

Penzeys Spices gets people to spend more by offering free products to customers whose transactions hit specified minimums. Here’s an example where the qualifying shopping cart threshold is just $5, which can be a powerful offer for people already used to buying from this seller on a regular basis.

This next example, from a B2B company offering a cloud storage product, combines educational content (more on that in our next email type) with an upsell offer that promotes free premium support. Depending on your business model, offering temporarily free service upgrades may be an effective promotional strategy, because it reinforces the pattern of opt-in after opt-in, eventually getting people ready for the big ask.

Going back to Williams Sonoma, in this example, the personalization aspect of the message is what stands out most prominently. There’s also a coupon code for free shipping, which can help tip the scales towards conversion.

This type of personalized offer is easier to implement than you might think. The best email automation apps allow you to easily segment your audience into different sub-lists. You can use segmented lists of past purchase history or webpages viewed to send targeted messages to different groups of audience members. The more personalized, the better.

If you want to upsell via autoresponders, you can:

• Feature several products that complement customers’ past purchases, and advertise the product bundle as a “set.”
• Showcase only a handful of products. Don’t offer so many that it becomes overwhelming.
• Show products in an appropriate price range. If a customer has only purchased $25 products from you, you’re probably best off skipping that offer for a $300 product.

6. Educational Content

Educational content offers value to your customers while building rapport – it helps cultivate the feeling that you’re invested in their success and enjoyment, as opposed to just trying to make a quick buck.

This type of content, when centered around your brand, can help empower your customers to get the most out of their purchases. Product use ideas, maintenance best practices, or even less actionable information like the back stories that went into their invention or production can all make a positive impression.

This type of email can be distributed based on customer interest and purchase history, which can give them more relevant messages that apply directly to them. In some situations, sending these emails as a series can be a highly effective lead nurturing and customer retention tool.

Here’s an email that moon-inspired lamp company Luna sends to its Amazon customers, with basic FAQ support content to help people get started with enjoying their new lamps.

Below is a webinar invitation email from royalty-free image provider, iStock. Knowing that the lion’s share of its audience members need help picking out the best photos to use with their own branded content, iStock empowers people with a free presentation on the importance of branding with color.

One of the most powerful entertainment brands in the world, Marvel is known for its rabid fan community. When Marvel unveiled plans for a new line of comic books this past fall, they released a print magazine full of preview content, explaining to fans what to expect in the following months. This is educational marketing at its best, because it builds anticipation for future product rollouts using a free product in a similar format.

Some great ways to maximize results of educational content series include:

• Send emails that provide customers with product information that they might not have thought of already on their own.
• Offer value instead of trying to just sell, although you can also feature relevant complementary products sparingly.
• Use different triggered educational messages to connect with users at all stages of the buying cycle.

7. Relevant Updates and Information

The most common reasons people subscribe to your e-commerce store’s email list are to stay informed about promotions or sales and new product updates.

That being said, people only want information that’s relevant to them. If they get too many messages that they aren’t interested in, they may stop opening your emails or unsubscribe. Therefore, using your segmented lists to only send announcements to relevant audience subsets is key.

In the below example from ECCO shoes, which announces the rollout of their fall line, several opportunities for segmented targeting pop out. By syncing their list with purchase history data, it should be simple enough to send this message out to people who have purchased leather products in the past year, or people who bought boots two years ago and are therefore maybe ready for a new pair.

Aside from careful targeting, the best ways to send relevant updates and announcements to your customers include:

• Use phrases like “New Line!” and “Flash Sale” in the subject to grab people’s attention.
• Let subscribers know why they’ll want to read the email as soon as they see it.
• Include a clearly placed CTA like “Learn More” or “Shop Now” in a prominent location to increase clickthrough rates.

Final Thoughts

Automated emails can take an enormous burden off of you. When combined with segmented email lists, triggered emails can ensure that highly targeted messages are being delivered to your leads and customers at the best possible moment to get results.

Whether you’re welcoming them to your email list or sending them offers to increase their purchase value, automated email series can drive major conversions that would otherwise have been left behind.

About the Author: Nadav is a veteran online marketer and the Founder & CEO of InboundJunction, an Israel-based content marketing company. Nadav helps well-known brands in boosting their online visibility through PR, SEO and Social Media.

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How-To Maximize Your First Impressions With Video Thumbnails

They say don’t judge a book by it’s cover – but people put a lot of effort into making book covers, so they must matter, right? It’s someone’s job to get you to pick up the book and at least flip through the pages. In this same vein, first impressions can be the most important ones, especially for a sales professional.

And when that first impression is an email, the deck is already stacked against you. Your prospects are being bombarded with messaging from every angle, and standing out against the crowd is harder than ever.

That’s why video is a game changer for sales. It’s easy to include in your emails, and it’s compelling to click on – but only if you get it right. And with that in mind, today I want to talk about video thumbnails. Think of them as the book cover for your video:

The thumbnail is the static image that your prospects will see when they open your email. Much like a book cover, it has to be enticing enough to get someone to click ‘play’ and start watching. But not all thumbnails are created equal, so let’s dive into what makes a great one!

Video Thumbnails for Prospecting Emails 101

Setting up a thumbnail is like setting up a family photo. Here are the key elements you need to help you get started:

1. Project Confidence – To project confidence, have a genuine smile. Smiling shows that you enjoy what you’re doing, and that you are a more approachable person. It’s not about your looks, it’s about presenting yourself confidently.
2. Choose your Environment – Where you are recording the video will affect how people perceive you. If you have a vibrant and open office space, showcase that in your thumbnail to enhance your message. Or find a quiet space to keep the focus on you. Let your surroundings do some of the work for you.
   
3. Personalization – Personalized video thumbnails have significantly higher click-through rates than generic ones. In fact, personalizing your thumbnail can increase click-through rates by up to 5x! A simple solution for personalization is to use a small whiteboard. Get creative and put your CTAs on the whiteboard (eg. First name and “Click Me”). Or, on special occasions, dress up and have fun with it!
4. Lighting – You don’t need any fancy lighting equipment. Just make sure to keep the light source in front of you, and don’t have your back to the window. Ultimately you want the lighting to highlight the important things about the thumbnail (eg. your smile and the text on the whiteboard). Here are examples of good and bad lighting in thumbnails:
5. Sizing – When you’re ready to add the thumbnail to your email, make sure you have the sizing right. Too big, and you run the risk of overpowering the text. Too small, and you run the risk of having your fancy personalization be unreadable. In fact, the text on your whiteboard is probably your best metric for success – if you can read it, then it’s probably the right size.

Examples of Good and Bad Thumbnails

Check out some other examples of good and bad thumbnails below.

Winning smile, good lighting, clean background, good use of prop.

Movement in the thumbnail leads to a blurry and unprofessional picture.

The smile, good lightning, and showcasing company culture are some of the things that make this a great thumbnail.

Looking down, no smile, and “sensitive” company info make this a bad non-enticing thumbnail.

Don’t Forget the Play Button

This may seem like a no-brainer, but if you’re using a static image in your email to link to your video, make sure you have the play button in the image! This is important because it lets your prospects know that it’s a video they’re seeing and not just a cute picture with their name on it.

But before you grab a screenshot of that thumbnail and include it in your email, make sure that the thumbnail you’ve chosen makes sense with a play button involved. Sometimes the play button will block your personalization, or otherwise cut out an important part of what makes the thumbnail enticing to click on, so you may need to do some work to ensure everything fits.

Final Thoughts

Most video platforms allow you to set your own thumbnail. YouTube does, and Vidyard does as well. But if you’re looking to create video quickly, and include these personalization elements, I would recommend a tool like ViewedIt. With this free recording tool for Chrome, you’re given a three second countdown to set up your thumbnail image, and as long as you follow the above recommendations you should be good to go. As a bonus, you can always re-record quickly if you find the lighting, scene, or tone is off.

With all of these things in mind, the most important thing is to have fun with it. Thumbnails are the book covers that entice people to hear your story. Stand out in the crowd, make some noise, and let your personality shine through. People like to engage with people who are excited, happy, and enjoying what they’re doing. It is your virtual first impression. Make it count!

The post How-To Maximize Your First Impressions With Video Thumbnails appeared first on Vidyard.

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2 Awesome Twitter Search Tools That Give You What Twitter Lacks

I love Twitter. That was almost love at the first sight. It’s a great idea which became awesome thanks to all the apps that completed it.

Here are two absolutely fantastic tools that have some really basic functionality Twitter still lacks:

Snapbird: Better search

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Snapbird is a freemium tool giving you some cool searching options you probably didn’t know you actually needed a lot! In fact, its functionality is so cool that I am surprised Twitter doesn’t offer anything like that:

Search your or anyone’s favorites likes

There are lots of ways to use Twitter likes. Most use them to “thank” for the mention. Some people use them to bookmark ideas for later reference. Others favorite Twitter testimonials to easier curate them

In any of those cases, the ability to search your own or someone else’s likes for a keyword or a hashtag is priceless…

You can investigate what others favorite, look back into your own Twitter bookmarks or even find who you “thanked” in the past!

Search for DMs you sent or received

Why Twitter doesn’t allow to search within your Twitter inbox is beyond me. Sometimes I have to scroll and scroll until I find the conversation I need. Am I probably missing something here?

I can get it that some people don’t use Twitter DMs that much but many of us still do! I am keeping my Twitter private inbox very clean and to the point; yet there’s no built-in solution to search it.

Snapbird solves that problem allowing you to search for DMs you sent or received.

Twiangulate: How we are connected?

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I mentioned Twiangulate a few times in the past but they have changed the functionality a bit, so time to take a look at it again. Right now it’s a great connection discovery tool that gives you way to find how you are connected to someone else on Twitter (Build relationships!)

I love their “Keywords” tab allowing for some great Twitter bio search functionality. You can search by any keyword in a bio and you can even limit your search to someone’s friends. For example:

• Find experts and insiders. Discover which accounts are followed by key people in a gossip empire, etc.
• Understand clout. Determine which influencers and celebrities follow an account using the “reach” search.
• Reveal a group’s favorites. Which accounts are most followed by members of a group, for example, the US Congress, Ontario’s MPPs or NYTimes journalists?
  

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There are plenty of ways to play with the search tool for blogger and influencer outreach, relationship building, and more!

Find who these two Twitter accounts have in common

Give two Twitter accounts and find who the both follow (as well as who follows both of them:):

Find most powerful accounts that follow both Twitter users (and how they overlap):

Which Twitter search tools are you using and why? Please let us know in the comments!

The post 2 Awesome Twitter Search Tools That Give You What Twitter Lacks appeared first on Internet Marketing Ninjas Blog.

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5 Data-Driven Strategies to Earn Sales in a Saturated Market

You’re not alone.

In a saturated market, your ecommerce business is constantly competing to distinguish itself from other companies. It’s especially difficult when these businesses offer the same promotions to similar audiences.

You may sell the same types of products like your competitors. Your ecommerce store may even have identical pricing with others in the marketplace. So, it’s a challenge for your business to attract visitors and clinch the sale.

However, despite all these obstacles, there’s an opportunity for your company to stand out from the crowd of retailers. Whether it’s offering more value or finding new marketing channels, your team can still earn sales in a saturated market.

To generate more sales, start with what you know: the data. Here are five strategies to optimize your growth strategy.

1. Compete on Value, Not Price

By now, it may sound like a broken record: compete on value, not price. But it still rings true for most companies.

It’s hard to remain profitable if your team is constantly changing prices. You’re also training your customers to expect lower prices from your products. As a result, you earn less revenue and your store’s brand perception declines.

With a focus on value, you can offer customers a worthwhile experience, like one-click ordering, free shipping, or surprise bonuses. It’s all about what matters to them.

“Customers are getting used to advanced technology and expect a seamless shopping experience from online retailers. They want more options to pay for their order and expect more automation in the process. By working on these areas, you can certainly attract customers to your online store,” writes Manish Bhalla, founder and CEO of FATbit Technologies.

You can learn what to offer your audience through customer conversations. This qualitative data provides unique insight on what attracts people and keeps loyal consumers sticking with your brand.

For Target, their customers value multiple shipping choices. In the image below, you’ll notice a standard option and a ship to store option.

Differentiation doesn’t start with price. Instead, discover how to offer your audience value in other ways.

2. Carve Out a New Submarket

For some ecommerce stores, creating more value won’t be enough to gain buyers. Your business may decide to etch out a new submarket.

Tackling another audience segment doesn’t mean selling new products or changing your brand image to fit a different consumer base. Sometimes, it’s just tweaking who you sell to.

For instance, your online store currently sells high-end, scented candles to middle-aged women who enjoy your product during bath time. But based on customer inquiries and social media data, your team members learn that a few event planners are using your candles as decorative centerpieces.

With that information, your team might decide to add a new candle section dedicated to event planners. You also can develop content that shows them how others are using your product.

Yes, it’s not as easy as it sounds. It will take lots of ingenuity from your team. Angela Stringfellow, chief ideation officer at CODA Concepts, LLC., offers her thoughts:

“Whether that means reinventing industry standards, taking a new approach to the business model or offering something customers can’t refuse, carving a niche in the most saturated market is possible with commitment and creativity.”

The goal is to niche down and serve new populations. You want new audiences to start buying your products.

3. Connect Content Marketing to the Sales Pipeline

Businesses continue to use content marketing to attract and engage their consumers. It’s a chance to share information about monthly updates, new products, and highlight customers.

Yet, it’s common for most ecommerce brands to not associate content marketing with sales. Teams aren’t using their content to directly generate revenue. What they normally do is blast messages that only bring brand awareness.

If earning more revenue is important to you, it’s time to integrate your sales and content marketing strategies. You want to find ways to streamline the path from content to the checkout process.

Start by tracking your website activity to learn where your best customers come from. Is it from social? Referral sites? Your analytics dashboard can give you these details.

Then, create compelling content that entices the reader to purchase your products. And don’t limit yourself to a long-form blog post. You want to experiment with all types of content, including images, GIFS, and video.

The next step is to remove friction in the checkout process. What will turn potential buyers away? What can you do to stop them from abandoning their cart?

Pura Vida Bracelets promotes their content on Facebook. To get engaged fans to purchase, they offer an exclusive, time-sensitive discount on their fan page.

Content marketing isn’t always about branding. You can use it as a tool to move people down the sales funnel, too.

4. Explore Alternative Marketing Channels

While your market may be saturated, it’s possible that your business isn’t reaching all your ideal customers. You want to know where your audience eats, lives, and breathes.

A misconception amongst ecommerce store owners is that setting up a website and driving traffic through social media can sustain their business. But like everything in life, you can’t expect one channel to be your only source of revenue.

To help market your products, you can build strategic partnerships with other brands. Of course, this strategy takes many shapes and forms.

For example, you may try co-marketing opportunities with businesses with dissimilar products. Or you may begin an affiliate program where your best customers spread the word about your brand in exchange for a percentage of the sale.

By analyzing the psychographics of current customers, you’ll understand where to find alternative marketing channels. You can require customers to tell you their interests, favorite brands, and popular hangouts via a short survey. Then, use that data to find out how to connect with more potential customers.

Relying on one or even two ways to get buyers to your website isn’t sufficient. You can expand your reach by learning more about your customers and collaborating with partners.

5. Reward Existing Customers for Their Loyalty

When it comes to earning more sales, online stores are quick to devise plans to acquire new customers. You already know that customer acquisition can be costly. It takes money and your team’s time to bring in new buyers.

The other alternative is to build loyalty within your brand and sell to your existing customers. They’ve already purchased from your business and feel comfortable with your sales process.

You can start with a simple seasonal promotion or even prompt your customers to take action before receiving a cool bonus.

“Offer a referral bonus or reward for recruiting new customers. You don’t have to give a huge bonus to make a positive impact and increase referrals. Try providing a small discount or some company swag to show your appreciation,” states Ali Hyatt, marketing and product for Upward Labs.

Segment your audience to offer discounts to your most loyal consumers, like people who purchase two times per month. Also, be strategic about when you offer promotions; every reward doesn’t warrant a coupon.

Canada’s leading bookstore Indigo has built customer loyalty into their business. Their audience receives rewards through a point system. Participants can access all upcoming promotions and product launches via a mobile app.

Avoid neglecting your core customer base in a saturated market. They can bring in recurring revenue for your business.

More Sales Despite Saturation

A saturated market isn’t an excuse to abandon your ecommerce business. Opportunity still exists despite a sea of competitors in your industry.

Your team can develop a strategy to focus on value, rather than lowering your prices. You also can streamline the process from relevant content to sales. And of course, rewarding loyal customers can help boost your revenue.

Don’t get lost in the crowd. Earn more sales in a saturated market.

About the Author: Shayla Price lives at the intersection of digital marketing, technology and social responsibility. Connect with her on Twitter @shaylaprice.

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3 Tips for Building Confidence in Front of the Camera

Stepping in front of a camera for the first time can be intimidating. Add in the pressure of making a good first impression, and you’ve got a recipe for some pretty serious butterflies in your stomach. For most sales reps that are getting started with video in their prospecting or marketers speaking about a new product launch, this is what they’re up against – and the first video is usually the hardest.

So we reached out to Meaghan Corson, Brand & Video Marketing Expert at Flash22 Productions to get her tips on making successful video, and feeling good about it.

Lights, camera, and backdrop are all important, but the most important part of the video is you – so focus on that first! Preparation is the key to feeling great when you step in front of the camera. Let’s dive into Meaghan’s recommendations for your look, your sound, and your expressions for the more impactful, professional production.

 

3 Tips for a Professional On-Camera Performance

 

1. Your Look

Your hair, clothes, and any other personal details make a big impression. Wearing jewel tones helps you stand out against the background, but if you don’t have any of those, at least avoid wearing all black and all white. These tones can leave you washed out as the camera looks for the darkest darks, and the lightest lights.

2. Your Sound

You want to set your voice up for success by drinking water or tea before filming to help make it as clear as possible. A quick tip for building authority in your content is lowering the tone of your voice to add a more serious tone to your videos. When you’re conveying an excited tone, avoid going too high-pitched as it can be distracting. To keep things engaging, vary the volume, pacing, and tonality of your voice. An easy way to add some pacing to your videos is to pause after a sentence – this helps build in a bit of drama.

3. Your Expressions

Everyone always wonders, what should they do with their hands? You’ll want to move your hands and face to gesture to keep the tone conversational. Look directly into the camera if you’re addressing the viewer, as you can build a sense of connectivity. Envision the person you’re looking at behind the camera.

When it comes to your hands and arms, you’ll want to move naturally so you don’t look stiff. But you don’t want to move your arms all over the place, as this can be distracting. Move your hands and arms with purpose, and gesture at the camera to pull viewers into what you are saying.

Cool as a Cucumber

By focusing on your look, your sound, and your expressions and gestures, you’ll not only feel more confident on camera, but project it too! Are there any secret tips and tricks that you use to prepare for your videos? Let us know in the comments!

The post 3 Tips for Building Confidence in Front of the Camera appeared first on Vidyard.

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How to Manufacture Urgency to Blow through Conversion Roadblocks

We don’t need things.

We might need a six-dollar, almond milk, sea salt caramel mocha (no whip) when it gets a little chilly outside.

But we don’t need-need.

The lights are on. Roof over our head. Heating or AC blasting in the background.

That applies to most things you’re trying to sell.

Doesn’t matter if we’re talkin’ ‘bout that shiny new app you deployed or the fancy new eComm product. People don’t need it.

Which makes your life tough. How are you going to move the needle, get more subscribers, and scale revenue, when the vast majority of the people you’re speaking to have zero actual need to buy your widget?

You need urgency. Or more specifically, you need to manufacture urgency out of thin air.

Here’s how a few of the web’s top converting sites create urgency out of thin air to get visitors to finally commit once and for all.

Why Urgency Works

People don’t need your stuff. But it gets worse. Because people also resist change at the same time.

So you’ve got two problems. You need to shake people out of their inertia. And then somehow get them to act.

Thankfully, the solution’s no secret. There’s a book on it. Along with countless studies.

For example, ConversionXL explains one account where just a little bit of urgency sprinkled onto a product page lifted revenue by over 27% for Bob & Lush.

They came up with the idea to that “clarity of deliver time on a product page would push more customers to convert.”

Sound familiar? It’s what some of the best in the business, from Amazon all the way down to the QVC have gone to great lengths to employ.

So they made one relatively small tweak to their product pages.

The new variant included a little simple text box that highlighted when someone would receive their product if they ordered within a short time frame.

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Not only did revenue jump (27.1%), but the the number of purchases (9.5%) and checkout visits (10.1%) did, too.

Of course, the inclusion of this delivery date estimate wasn’t just a hunch. An epiphany. Or a ‘growth hack’ some growth hacker wrote about in their Bible to Growth Hacking on GrowthHackers.com

Instead, the hypothesis came from a place that good ideas always flow. But few rarely tend to go.

Consumer Research (AKA The Part Everyone Always Skips)

In 2012, Marcus Taylor of Venture Harbour launched a ‘Groupon deal for musicians.’ (And wrote about the experience in another excellent ConversionXL case study. Yes, I’m completely ripping them off today).

He reportedly invested months and even dipped into personal savings to fund it. The boats were burned. There was no going back. It had to churn a profit.

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No need to bury the lead. He increased conversions from a mediocre-but-fine 2.5% up to an astonishing 10.8% by infusing urgency into every pore of the site.

That incredible conversion lift wasn’t the part that got me, though.

This was:

When people think of conversion optimization, they go to landing pages. They go to headlines. CTAs. Images. And other similarly miniscule details that kinda don’t move the f-ing needle.

But all of those elements (which we’ll touch in soon) are at the mercy of one giant thing: the audience.

All of the CTA tweaks in the world can’t save you from targeting the wrong audience in the first place.

That’s the critical difference Marcus understood. And acted on. (Emphasis, mine.)

“Prior to launch, I “tested” hundreds of traffic sources, from Reddit Ads, to specific music forums. I wanted to know was which traffic sources I need to prioritise during the real campaign.

I ended up with a custom Google Analytics dashboard like this, which made it clear which traffic sources delivered the most relevant traffic.”

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“Not only did I know where my customers would come from ahead of time, but I knew more about my audience, such as how guitarists were almost three times more likely to buy than drummers, and that my conversion rate was highest in the UK and Australia.”

Similarly, when ConversionXL worked with Bob & Lush initially they didn’t haphazardly start throwing stuff on a DIY landing page builder. Rather, they begun with a boring, tired, old survey.

One hundred eighteen people opted in. And many agreed that their biggest fear centered around “running out of food for their dogs.”

That’s the catalyst. The trigger.

It manifested as a purchasing roadblock based on “knowing when the food would arrive.”

So that’s what ConversionXL leveraged. You’ve already seen the updated landing page variation that was a success. Just by using simple language to entice people to buy now (instead of waiting around).

The tactic – the thing you see on the screen – isn’t the point. It’s the impulse it targets. The underlying motivation that’s already preventing people from feeling like they need your thing.

It’s no coincidence that this is the exact same strategy that one of the interwebs top converters implements.

Expedia recently announced gross revenues of $16 billion. Up 8% from online sales.

Which should come as no surprise when you see what they’re doing.

How Expedia Manufactures Urgency Out of Thin Air

Visit Expedia.com.

The homepage is fairly bare. A giant reservation form takes over almost everything above the fold.

Below that, a few of “Todays Deals” are highlighted.

So far, not much is happening. It’s not until you actually search for a trip that things start to get interesting.

Vegas sounds fun. Pool season sure beats reading another blog post like this in your pajamas.

Plug in some dates. Hit Enter. And here goes.

Whoa. Lots happening.

You see plenty of greens (good!) and reds (bad!) to help you instantly understand their meaning.

In the lower right-hand corner, multiple little callouts keep popping up, sliding in and out of the screen, emphasizing the same thing: a BUNCH of other people are looking at booking these deals right now – so they might not last long.

Then of course, the Daily Deal hits you at the top of the screen. A classic countdown timer that ticks away. My heart rate sped up. Palms sweaty. Despite not having any real interest in booking this initially.

Once again, that was no accident. As this case study featured on Behave.org (formerly WhichTestWon) indicates.

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All that was added was a countdown timer. That’s it.

They even removed a few elements, including ‘free delivery’ and ‘order now’ in order to remove extraneous distractions and focus viewers on what mattered most: that countdown timer.

The result after 50,000 viewers? An instant 8% conversion lift.

Ok. Enough boring marketing stuff. Back to Vegas.

How Expedia Uses Price Anchoring & FOMO to Make this Trip Look like a Steal

Those FOMO callouts slide in and out of view.

The countdown timer continues ticking down. And then the product attributes help you decide.

For example, scroll down a little bit until you reach Cosmo.

It’s garnered a little yellow “Top Hotel” badge. It literally screams “Wonderful!” with excellent ratings and reviews to match.

Price anchoring in full effect, with the ‘sales price’ slashed down to the new effective one.

Scarcity comes into view with the strip of text in red that highlights the number of people who also booked this hotel in the past forty eight hours. Along with when it was last booked.

So. If we’re even remotely serious. We need to move fast.

Let’s select Cosmo. Because c’mon: wraparound terraces!

You look at available rooms and are immediately met by an “Unreal Deal” that will “save you 100% on your flight.” That’s backed up by the pricing, which shows you’ll ‘owe’ $0.00 more to select it now.

Deals like that won’t last. Don’t last. Which means you should act.

Not later, but now.

How Expedia Forces You to Take Action (Now)

Words matter.

It’s not that people absorb every letter in detail. They don’t. Hell – people don’t even read. ‘Specially not online.

But the sum is greater than the parts. It’s scanned in a moment’s notice and the meaning hits home.

For example, email marketing service AWeber ran a simple copy test on their call to action.

The only change? A single word.

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AWeber added the word “Now” to their call to action. And they saw a 12% increase in paid signups with a credit card.

An online travel booking flow is no different than any other conversion flow. Doesn’t matter if we’re talking about signing up for a new email marketing app or trying to go through a shopping cart checkout sequence.

The stats are remarkably the same, too. Online travel bookings see a 81% abandonment! While shopping cart abandonment averages right around 70%.

61% of those cart abandonments are because of ‘extra costs’ (including shipping, taxes, fees, etc.)

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You know how this feels. You’re super pumped about that new pair of plastic jeans (yes, that’s a thing) you just found. Except when you head over to checkout, you see that another ~30% has been tacked on due to taxes, shipping, and fees.

Guess what Expedia does, instead?

First, they ‘drop’ the price. Two cents. Literally. But it’s green and happy and there’s a check mark exclaiming “Good News.”

The other thing it says? “Book now to secure this price.”

Zooming into the pricing area on the right, you also see the savings of booking the flight and hotel together. Then, down below, you see the total price (again first – price anchoring).

And then a “Due at hotel” line item that cleverly buries all of those damn resort fees that we hate so much.

But they’re almost invisible because of how Expedia has positioned this pricing and sale.

Instead of being ‘thrown off’ the conversion scent at the moment of truth, you’re practically already packing your bags. #Humblebragging about your upcoming Vegas trip.

Conclusion

Ranchers use a cattle prod to get those big, dumb, slow moving animals to do what they want.

Whether that’s to eat, find shelter, or head to the slaughterhouse.

Consumers don’t need to do anything.

They might want lots of things. But they lack nothing. And so there’s no inherent desire to purchase your widget.

Instead, you have to create it. Manufacture it and bring it into existence.

For guidance, start with the web’s top converters. Expedia is a master at creating urgency by using countdown timers, product attributes, prince anchoring, FOMO, and a host of other psychological tactics that would make Cialdini proud.

Increasing conversions online isn’t about tricks or gimmicks or hacks. It’s about building up the value of your offering so much that people can’t help but convert.

About the Author: Brad Smith the founder of Codeless, a B2B content creation company. Frequent contributor to Kissmetrics, Unbounce, WordStream, AdEspresso, Search Engine Journal, Autopilot, and more.

from The Kissmetrics Marketing Blog http://ift.tt/2qvQRRp