O:9:"MagpieRSS":23:{s:6:"parser";i:0;s:12:"current_item";a:0:{}s:5:"items";a:10:{i:0;a:14:{s:5:"title";s:80:"Personalize your Messages, Build Memorable Relationships, and Gain Back Time Now";s:4:"link";s:70:"https://www.activecampaign.com/blog/how-to-personalize-email-messages/";s:8:"comments";s:79:"https://www.activecampaign.com/blog/how-to-personalize-email-messages/#comments";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Tue, 17 Oct 2017 19:29:41 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:10:"Perry Leon";}s:8:"category";s:30:"Email MarketingGeneralStrategy";s:4:"guid";s:44:"https://www.activecampaign.com/blog/?p=10164";s:11:"description";s:307:"In all my years of working I can&#8217;t think of a team who needs more hours in the day than sales. Based on the Salesforce “Second Annual State of Sales” report “On average, sales reps spend 64% of their time on non-selling tasks.” But, if you are a business owner this could not be more [&#8230;]";s:7:"content";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";s:5887:"<p><img class="alignnone" src="http://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/s5b23xxa_untitleddesign(7)(1).png" alt="Personalize your message." width="700" height="467" /></p>
<p>In all my years of working I can&#8217;t think of a team who needs more hours in the day than sales.</p>
<p>Based on the Salesforce “<a href="https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2016/11/second-state-of-sales-report.html">Second Annual State of Sales</a>” report “On average, sales reps spend 64% of their time on non-selling tasks.”</p>
<p>But, if you are a business owner this could not be more relatable&#8230; performing many of the business functions on your own.</p>
<p>Having supported many sales reps throughout my career, many have complained about how tedious and time consuming personalizing emails can be. Though, it is necessary.</p>
<p>Your potential and current customers are being bombarded by emails everyday. Just as you are.</p>
<p>So, it is more important than ever to create personalized content that prospective and current customers are actually interested in receiving, and willing to open and engage with.</p>
<p>This is where it gets tricky.</p>
<p>How do you build quality relationships while maintaining efficiency <i>and</i> hitting your sales numbers?</p>
<h2>Personalized saved responses</h2>
<p>Many of the sales reps I worked with have met this challenge by <a href="https://www.activecampaign.com/blog/announcing-saved-responses/">saving responses</a> in a personalized manner. A <a href="https://help.activecampaign.com/hc/en-us/articles/115001103424-Saved-Responses">saved response</a> can be thought of as a personal email template for one-off emails to a contact.</p>
<p>The goal of this is to limit the writing of repetitive messages.</p>
<p>Every sales rep has an email or question that they answer over and over again. Saving their response is a way to enable a certain amount of personalization without typing it 100 times.</p>
<p>However, the reps I supported usually had to get creative with how they would “save” their responses because, they didn&#8217;t have the ability to “save” their emails. They also didn&#8217;t have the ability to personalize emails with ease.</p>
<p>This is what one of their saved emails, confirming a meeting, might have looked like:</p>
<p><img class="alignnone" src="http://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/ylnxvr0z8_untitleddesign(8)(1).png" alt="Sample email to schedule a meeting" width="700" height="380" /></p>
<p>As you can tell in the example above, the sales reps would leave fields that could be personalized for the prospective customer. The subject line and body of the email were complete, but they had to manually personalize it prior to sending.</p>
<p>However, if you are <a href="https://www.activecampaign.com/">using ActiveCampaign</a> we offer <a href="https://www.activecampaign.com/blog/announcing-saved-responses/">saved responses</a> that can be personalized automatically.</p>
<p>This is a great way to efficiently send your responses while keeping them personalized.</p>
<h2>Best practices when using saved responses</h2>
<p>Let&#8217;s talk about the do&#8217;s and don&#8217;ts of saved responses&#8230;</p>
<p>You will notice in the above example, the saved response is used to confirm a meeting. This is a great example of when saved responses should be used. A meeting confirmation should be personalized, but it doesn&#8217;t need to be so specific that it needs to be a custom email.</p>
<p>Again, if you find yourself answering the same questions or sending the same emails constantly; these are good use cases for saved responses. Both require some personalization, but a saved response will still address 100% of the intended message.</p>
<p>This is a crucial point to understand.</p>
<p>Whether the message is 100% personalized or automated it should <i>always </i>satisfy exactly what you are trying to achieve or answer for the customer.</p>
<p>This means if you are responding to a current or prospective customer and your response only answers 80% of what they are asking, you should not send it. The message does not fully address the needs of the customer.</p>
<h3>Intro and follow-up emails should not be “saved” responses</h3>
<p>For instance, you would not want to use saved responses when sending an intro or meeting follow-up email.</p>
<p>An intro email requires a response that is well researched about the individual(s) and company. Similarly, when following-up after a meeting it should be very specific to what was discussed.</p>
<p>By sending a saved response you will be missing an opportunity to connect with the customer and show you are listening and engaged.</p>
<p>For these content specific scenarios, responses are not a formula that are programmed. Rather, these are personalized emails that need to <i>address</i> what your <i>message</i> wants to <i>accomplish</i>.</p>
<p>Thus, when determining use cases for saved responses, always keep in mind what you want to accomplish for the end user.</p>
<h2>Why should I care? Free time.</h2>
<p>Saved responses should be a <i>tool</i> to efficiently, personalize your responses.</p>
<p>It should not, and will not, ever replace messages that ought to be truly personalized.</p>
<p>However, this tool will allow for additional face-to-face interactions and the ability to <a href="https://www.activecampaign.com/blog/what-your-business-must-do-to-survive/">focus on high value tasks</a> due to the increased efficiency.</p>
<p>Ultimately, this allows you to spend more than 36% of your time building memorable relationships. While current or prospective customers will receive more engaging, relevant interactions.</p>
<p><i><a href="https://www.activecampaign.com/learn/guides/what-are-saved-responses-3-use-cases/">Learn more about the Saved Response feature in ActiveCampaign with 3 additional use cases.</a></i></p>
";}s:3:"wfw";a:1:{s:10:"commentrss";s:75:"https://www.activecampaign.com/blog/how-to-personalize-email-messages/feed/";}s:5:"slash";a:1:{s:8:"comments";s:1:"0";}s:7:"summary";s:307:"In all my years of working I can&#8217;t think of a team who needs more hours in the day than sales. Based on the Salesforce “Second Annual State of Sales” report “On average, sales reps spend 64% of their time on non-selling tasks.” But, if you are a business owner this could not be more [&#8230;]";s:12:"atom_content";s:5887:"<p><img class="alignnone" src="http://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/s5b23xxa_untitleddesign(7)(1).png" alt="Personalize your message." width="700" height="467" /></p>
<p>In all my years of working I can&#8217;t think of a team who needs more hours in the day than sales.</p>
<p>Based on the Salesforce “<a href="https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2016/11/second-state-of-sales-report.html">Second Annual State of Sales</a>” report “On average, sales reps spend 64% of their time on non-selling tasks.”</p>
<p>But, if you are a business owner this could not be more relatable&#8230; performing many of the business functions on your own.</p>
<p>Having supported many sales reps throughout my career, many have complained about how tedious and time consuming personalizing emails can be. Though, it is necessary.</p>
<p>Your potential and current customers are being bombarded by emails everyday. Just as you are.</p>
<p>So, it is more important than ever to create personalized content that prospective and current customers are actually interested in receiving, and willing to open and engage with.</p>
<p>This is where it gets tricky.</p>
<p>How do you build quality relationships while maintaining efficiency <i>and</i> hitting your sales numbers?</p>
<h2>Personalized saved responses</h2>
<p>Many of the sales reps I worked with have met this challenge by <a href="https://www.activecampaign.com/blog/announcing-saved-responses/">saving responses</a> in a personalized manner. A <a href="https://help.activecampaign.com/hc/en-us/articles/115001103424-Saved-Responses">saved response</a> can be thought of as a personal email template for one-off emails to a contact.</p>
<p>The goal of this is to limit the writing of repetitive messages.</p>
<p>Every sales rep has an email or question that they answer over and over again. Saving their response is a way to enable a certain amount of personalization without typing it 100 times.</p>
<p>However, the reps I supported usually had to get creative with how they would “save” their responses because, they didn&#8217;t have the ability to “save” their emails. They also didn&#8217;t have the ability to personalize emails with ease.</p>
<p>This is what one of their saved emails, confirming a meeting, might have looked like:</p>
<p><img class="alignnone" src="http://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/ylnxvr0z8_untitleddesign(8)(1).png" alt="Sample email to schedule a meeting" width="700" height="380" /></p>
<p>As you can tell in the example above, the sales reps would leave fields that could be personalized for the prospective customer. The subject line and body of the email were complete, but they had to manually personalize it prior to sending.</p>
<p>However, if you are <a href="https://www.activecampaign.com/">using ActiveCampaign</a> we offer <a href="https://www.activecampaign.com/blog/announcing-saved-responses/">saved responses</a> that can be personalized automatically.</p>
<p>This is a great way to efficiently send your responses while keeping them personalized.</p>
<h2>Best practices when using saved responses</h2>
<p>Let&#8217;s talk about the do&#8217;s and don&#8217;ts of saved responses&#8230;</p>
<p>You will notice in the above example, the saved response is used to confirm a meeting. This is a great example of when saved responses should be used. A meeting confirmation should be personalized, but it doesn&#8217;t need to be so specific that it needs to be a custom email.</p>
<p>Again, if you find yourself answering the same questions or sending the same emails constantly; these are good use cases for saved responses. Both require some personalization, but a saved response will still address 100% of the intended message.</p>
<p>This is a crucial point to understand.</p>
<p>Whether the message is 100% personalized or automated it should <i>always </i>satisfy exactly what you are trying to achieve or answer for the customer.</p>
<p>This means if you are responding to a current or prospective customer and your response only answers 80% of what they are asking, you should not send it. The message does not fully address the needs of the customer.</p>
<h3>Intro and follow-up emails should not be “saved” responses</h3>
<p>For instance, you would not want to use saved responses when sending an intro or meeting follow-up email.</p>
<p>An intro email requires a response that is well researched about the individual(s) and company. Similarly, when following-up after a meeting it should be very specific to what was discussed.</p>
<p>By sending a saved response you will be missing an opportunity to connect with the customer and show you are listening and engaged.</p>
<p>For these content specific scenarios, responses are not a formula that are programmed. Rather, these are personalized emails that need to <i>address</i> what your <i>message</i> wants to <i>accomplish</i>.</p>
<p>Thus, when determining use cases for saved responses, always keep in mind what you want to accomplish for the end user.</p>
<h2>Why should I care? Free time.</h2>
<p>Saved responses should be a <i>tool</i> to efficiently, personalize your responses.</p>
<p>It should not, and will not, ever replace messages that ought to be truly personalized.</p>
<p>However, this tool will allow for additional face-to-face interactions and the ability to <a href="https://www.activecampaign.com/blog/what-your-business-must-do-to-survive/">focus on high value tasks</a> due to the increased efficiency.</p>
<p>Ultimately, this allows you to spend more than 36% of your time building memorable relationships. While current or prospective customers will receive more engaging, relevant interactions.</p>
<p><i><a href="https://www.activecampaign.com/learn/guides/what-are-saved-responses-3-use-cases/">Learn more about the Saved Response feature in ActiveCampaign with 3 additional use cases.</a></i></p>
";s:14:"date_timestamp";i:1508268581;}i:1;a:14:{s:5:"title";s:78:"Are Your Contacts Engaged with Your Content? There’s an Automation for That.";s:4:"link";s:80:"https://www.activecampaign.com/blog/are-your-contacts-engaged-with-your-content/";s:8:"comments";s:89:"https://www.activecampaign.com/blog/are-your-contacts-engaged-with-your-content/#comments";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Mon, 09 Oct 2017 16:28:35 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:10:"Perry Leon";}s:8:"category";s:23:"Email MarketingStrategy";s:4:"guid";s:44:"https://www.activecampaign.com/blog/?p=10108";s:11:"description";s:310:"About six months ago I signed up for a business newsletter. I had the intention of reading it everyday, and for a while I kept that up. Eventually though, life got the best of me. Things got busy and the newsletter just fell to the wayside. It was nothing personal. Life happened. The newsletter sent [&#8230;]";s:7:"content";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";s:6835:"<p><img class="aligncenter" src="http://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/x7lripvu_untitleddesign(6)(1).png" alt="Business Newsletter Image" width="700" height="465" /></p>
<p>About six months ago I signed up for a business newsletter. I had the intention of reading it everyday, and for a while I kept that up.</p>
<p>Eventually though, life got the best of me.</p>
<p>Things got busy and the newsletter just fell to the wayside. It was nothing personal. Life happened.</p>
<p>The newsletter sent “We Miss You” emails, but nothing gave.</p>
<p>Have you ever been in that situation?</p>
<h2>Gauge interest with tagging and segmenting</h2>
<p>That scenario is one of the many challenges of being a marketer or business owner. Especially when you are competing with the many newsletters or content variations that exist today.</p>
<p>So, as a marketer or business owner, how do you determine a subscriber is inactive or unengaged with your content? In turn, determining the level of engagement of your contacts.</p>
<p><a href="https://frictionfreesales.com/blog/">Matt Fox</a> in our <a href="http://www.activecampaign.com/blog/automations-you-can-import/">automation sharing thread</a>, in the <a href="http://www.activecampaign.com/community/">ActiveCampaign Community</a>, had a great solution for determining a contact&#8217;s interest; tagging and segmenting.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.activecampaign.com/blog/automations-to-track-and-engage-your-contacts/">automations</a> he shared automatically records the recency of the clicks and opens for his customers.</p>
<p>Matt does so by <a href="https://www.activecampaign.com/blog/manage-your-tags/">applying tags</a> to “more engaged” contacts and “less engaged” contacts.</p>
<p>These tags are based on the time passed since the contact last opened or clicked the campaign (email).</p>
<div style="background-color: #f5f8fa; padding: 30px; text-align: center;"><i>Check out these two previous blog posts covering advanced engagement tracking with <a href="https://www.activecampaign.com/blog/advanced-engagement-tracking-with-lead-scoring/">lead scoring</a> and <a href="https://www.activecampaign.com/blog/engagement-scores-part-ii-engagement-segments/">tagging</a>.</i></div>
<p>Once the tag is applied, you can easily segment your list.</p>
<p>So, in the above example of contact engagement, you might want to <a href="https://www.activecampaign.com/blog/breaking-your-list-into-segments/">segment your lists</a> based on “less engaged” contacts and “more engaged” contacts.</p>
<h2>Level of engagement is a huge factor in deliverability</h2>
<p>Determining if your contacts are “less engaged” or “more engaged” will hugely help your deliverability; a way to measure the success of getting a campaign into a subscriber&#8217;s inbox.</p>
<p>Why does engagement play such a large role in deliverability? In a recent <a href="https://returnpath.com/newsroom/new-research-return-path-shows-strong-correlation-subscriber-engagement-spam-placement/">news release</a> by <a href="https://returnpath.com/">Return Path</a>, the President George Bilbrey dives into this:</p>
<blockquote><p>“More than ever before, subscriber engagement is critical to getting your email delivered to the inbox. Major mailbox providers like Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo are constantly looking for ways to improve their customer experience, and they are increasingly reliant on engagement signals to filter out unwanted messages,”</p></blockquote>
<p>The question then becomes; what can you do to be sure you have subscriber engagement? Manage your subscriber lists better.</p>
<p>In a <a href="https://wordtothewise.com/2015/07/yes-there-is-list-churn/">blog about delivery improvement</a>, it&#8217;s noted that about 30% of addresses become invalid, or churn, in a year.</p>
<p>List churn exists. And list management, will help you address the churn and allow for a more effective email marketing program overall.</p>
<p>Thus, segmenting your lists by “less engaged” and “more engaged” allows you to better nurture your leads <i>and</i> ensure deliverability of the message you wanted them to receive.</p>
<h2>Nurture your leads once you know their interest level</h2>
<p>So, once you know which contacts are engaged based on your tags and segments; what do you do?</p>
<p>Now, you want to interact with and <i>nurture</i> those contacts accordingly.</p>
<p>To achieve this you can send a nurture track or a series of engaging emails.</p>
<p>The thing to remember is&#8230; what is the <i>goal</i> of nurturing these specific contacts?</p>
<p>Are you trying to re-engage the contacts? Inform them about your business? Warm them up to a specific product?</p>
<p>There is no right or wrong answer here. But, it&#8217;s critical to keep in mind the goal and purpose of sending the nurture track.</p>
<p>Without keeping in mind the goal, you aren&#8217;t going to be as effective in your message or add value to your contacts. You will just be adding noise, to their already noisy lives.</p>
<p>So, for “less engaged” contacts you might consider sending a re-engagement automation.</p>
<p>For instance, check out the re-engagement automation below for download:</p>
<p><a href="http://tplshare.com/ZloW_xx" target="_blank"><img class="alignnone" src="http://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/9sx0251rq_ctabutton.png" alt="Get this automation call to action" width="250" height="53" /></a></p>
<p>By using automations and nurture tracks with engagement tags and segments you will be able to nurture your leads based on their <i>specific</i> level of engagement and interest.</p>
<p>This will allow for an overall higher level of engagement and re-engagement of your contacts.</p>
<h2>Personalize your message based on level of engagement</h2>
<p>By knowing your contacts interest level, you can then personalize your message even further based on engagement.</p>
<p>One way to personalize your message is by empathizing with your contacts. The better we can empathize and understand their needs, the better nurture tracks we will customize for them to travel down.</p>
<p>Taking into consideration their level of engagement while personalizing the message, we can create a higher likelihood of engaging them further. Which means we can <a href="https://www.activecampaign.com/blog/shawshank-marketing/">provide more value</a> to our engaged contacts.</p>
<p>We can not forget that life happens. As marketers and business owners we can do a better job. Specifically, we can do a better job interacting with our contacts.</p>
<p>This will result in more engaging content for them and more business for you. Win-win.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.activecampaign.com/free/">Better engage with your contacts for free today. No credit card required. 14 day trial.</a></p>
";}s:3:"wfw";a:1:{s:10:"commentrss";s:85:"https://www.activecampaign.com/blog/are-your-contacts-engaged-with-your-content/feed/";}s:5:"slash";a:1:{s:8:"comments";s:1:"0";}s:7:"summary";s:310:"About six months ago I signed up for a business newsletter. I had the intention of reading it everyday, and for a while I kept that up. Eventually though, life got the best of me. Things got busy and the newsletter just fell to the wayside. It was nothing personal. Life happened. The newsletter sent [&#8230;]";s:12:"atom_content";s:6835:"<p><img class="aligncenter" src="http://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/x7lripvu_untitleddesign(6)(1).png" alt="Business Newsletter Image" width="700" height="465" /></p>
<p>About six months ago I signed up for a business newsletter. I had the intention of reading it everyday, and for a while I kept that up.</p>
<p>Eventually though, life got the best of me.</p>
<p>Things got busy and the newsletter just fell to the wayside. It was nothing personal. Life happened.</p>
<p>The newsletter sent “We Miss You” emails, but nothing gave.</p>
<p>Have you ever been in that situation?</p>
<h2>Gauge interest with tagging and segmenting</h2>
<p>That scenario is one of the many challenges of being a marketer or business owner. Especially when you are competing with the many newsletters or content variations that exist today.</p>
<p>So, as a marketer or business owner, how do you determine a subscriber is inactive or unengaged with your content? In turn, determining the level of engagement of your contacts.</p>
<p><a href="https://frictionfreesales.com/blog/">Matt Fox</a> in our <a href="http://www.activecampaign.com/blog/automations-you-can-import/">automation sharing thread</a>, in the <a href="http://www.activecampaign.com/community/">ActiveCampaign Community</a>, had a great solution for determining a contact&#8217;s interest; tagging and segmenting.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.activecampaign.com/blog/automations-to-track-and-engage-your-contacts/">automations</a> he shared automatically records the recency of the clicks and opens for his customers.</p>
<p>Matt does so by <a href="https://www.activecampaign.com/blog/manage-your-tags/">applying tags</a> to “more engaged” contacts and “less engaged” contacts.</p>
<p>These tags are based on the time passed since the contact last opened or clicked the campaign (email).</p>
<div style="background-color: #f5f8fa; padding: 30px; text-align: center;"><i>Check out these two previous blog posts covering advanced engagement tracking with <a href="https://www.activecampaign.com/blog/advanced-engagement-tracking-with-lead-scoring/">lead scoring</a> and <a href="https://www.activecampaign.com/blog/engagement-scores-part-ii-engagement-segments/">tagging</a>.</i></div>
<p>Once the tag is applied, you can easily segment your list.</p>
<p>So, in the above example of contact engagement, you might want to <a href="https://www.activecampaign.com/blog/breaking-your-list-into-segments/">segment your lists</a> based on “less engaged” contacts and “more engaged” contacts.</p>
<h2>Level of engagement is a huge factor in deliverability</h2>
<p>Determining if your contacts are “less engaged” or “more engaged” will hugely help your deliverability; a way to measure the success of getting a campaign into a subscriber&#8217;s inbox.</p>
<p>Why does engagement play such a large role in deliverability? In a recent <a href="https://returnpath.com/newsroom/new-research-return-path-shows-strong-correlation-subscriber-engagement-spam-placement/">news release</a> by <a href="https://returnpath.com/">Return Path</a>, the President George Bilbrey dives into this:</p>
<blockquote><p>“More than ever before, subscriber engagement is critical to getting your email delivered to the inbox. Major mailbox providers like Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo are constantly looking for ways to improve their customer experience, and they are increasingly reliant on engagement signals to filter out unwanted messages,”</p></blockquote>
<p>The question then becomes; what can you do to be sure you have subscriber engagement? Manage your subscriber lists better.</p>
<p>In a <a href="https://wordtothewise.com/2015/07/yes-there-is-list-churn/">blog about delivery improvement</a>, it&#8217;s noted that about 30% of addresses become invalid, or churn, in a year.</p>
<p>List churn exists. And list management, will help you address the churn and allow for a more effective email marketing program overall.</p>
<p>Thus, segmenting your lists by “less engaged” and “more engaged” allows you to better nurture your leads <i>and</i> ensure deliverability of the message you wanted them to receive.</p>
<h2>Nurture your leads once you know their interest level</h2>
<p>So, once you know which contacts are engaged based on your tags and segments; what do you do?</p>
<p>Now, you want to interact with and <i>nurture</i> those contacts accordingly.</p>
<p>To achieve this you can send a nurture track or a series of engaging emails.</p>
<p>The thing to remember is&#8230; what is the <i>goal</i> of nurturing these specific contacts?</p>
<p>Are you trying to re-engage the contacts? Inform them about your business? Warm them up to a specific product?</p>
<p>There is no right or wrong answer here. But, it&#8217;s critical to keep in mind the goal and purpose of sending the nurture track.</p>
<p>Without keeping in mind the goal, you aren&#8217;t going to be as effective in your message or add value to your contacts. You will just be adding noise, to their already noisy lives.</p>
<p>So, for “less engaged” contacts you might consider sending a re-engagement automation.</p>
<p>For instance, check out the re-engagement automation below for download:</p>
<p><a href="http://tplshare.com/ZloW_xx" target="_blank"><img class="alignnone" src="http://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/9sx0251rq_ctabutton.png" alt="Get this automation call to action" width="250" height="53" /></a></p>
<p>By using automations and nurture tracks with engagement tags and segments you will be able to nurture your leads based on their <i>specific</i> level of engagement and interest.</p>
<p>This will allow for an overall higher level of engagement and re-engagement of your contacts.</p>
<h2>Personalize your message based on level of engagement</h2>
<p>By knowing your contacts interest level, you can then personalize your message even further based on engagement.</p>
<p>One way to personalize your message is by empathizing with your contacts. The better we can empathize and understand their needs, the better nurture tracks we will customize for them to travel down.</p>
<p>Taking into consideration their level of engagement while personalizing the message, we can create a higher likelihood of engaging them further. Which means we can <a href="https://www.activecampaign.com/blog/shawshank-marketing/">provide more value</a> to our engaged contacts.</p>
<p>We can not forget that life happens. As marketers and business owners we can do a better job. Specifically, we can do a better job interacting with our contacts.</p>
<p>This will result in more engaging content for them and more business for you. Win-win.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.activecampaign.com/free/">Better engage with your contacts for free today. No credit card required. 14 day trial.</a></p>
";s:14:"date_timestamp";i:1507566515;}i:2;a:14:{s:5:"title";s:59:"How to Decide What Your Contacts Want (and Give It To Them)";s:4:"link";s:94:"https://www.activecampaign.com/blog/how-to-decide-what-your-contacts-want-and-give-it-to-them/";s:8:"comments";s:103:"https://www.activecampaign.com/blog/how-to-decide-what-your-contacts-want-and-give-it-to-them/#comments";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Fri, 25 Aug 2017 20:36:53 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:10:"Perry Leon";}s:8:"category";s:56:"AutomationsEmail MarketingGeneralMarketingSmall Business";s:4:"guid";s:42:"http://www.activecampaign.com/blog/?p=9870";s:11:"description";s:339:"&#160; I was recently helping a client figure out how they could send specific, targeted content to their clients. It&#8217;s every marketers dream to know, and deliver, exactly what the customer wants to consume. But, the question is, how do you identify the specific interests of each of your customers? Just imagine you own an [&#8230;]";s:7:"content";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";s:8091:"<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><img class="alignnone aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/5i2r5czjn_untitleddesign(1).png" alt="Customers wants are blurry until you focus" width="700" height="462" /></p>
<p>I was recently helping a client figure out how they could send specific, targeted content to their clients. It&#8217;s every marketers dream to know, and deliver, exactly what the customer wants to consume.</p>
<p>But, the question is, how do you identify the specific interests of each of your customers?</p>
<p>Just imagine you own an online bookstore. Jane is in the market for a book; maybe even two. But, here&#8217;s the kicker; Jane only likes business related books. She has never been able to get into fiction. It&#8217;s just not her style.</p>
<p>So if you start sending her emails about romance novels or the latest sci-fi thriller, she&#8217;s going to tune you out and eventually unsubscribe. She may end up seeking out a bookstore that&#8217;s more in tune with her interests.</p>
<p>How would you as a bookstore owner know that Jane only likes business books?</p>
<p>That&#8217;s the goal for you as the owner of a bookstore. Anticipate the wants and needs of your customers. That means happier customers and more sales for you. And guess what? Happy customers tend to become repeat customers. Double win.</p>
<p>Happy client, happy you.</p>
<p>Determining and anticipating your customer&#8217;s wants and needs is a relatively simple task. Relative being the operative word. Regardless, this is simple to accomplish with the right tools, and it&#8217;s a necessary action.</p>
<p>Providing your customer with the content they want versus what you think they want, could be the difference between gaining a new long-term client, and losing a client&#8217;s interest forever. I can&#8217;t harp on it enough. It&#8217;s all about the customer. Their needs. Their wants.</p>
<p>Focusing on your customer will provide the biggest return and opportunity. Don&#8217;t let it be a missed opportunity.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: left;">Just ask their opinion</h2>
<p>One of the easiest ways to figure out what your customer wants or needs is by asking. Sounds simple right? It is. But, it&#8217;s often a missed opportunity.</p>
<p>Continuing with the bookstore example&#8230;</p>
<p>Jane visits your online bookstore and she is presented with a form.</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/aokkjw5m3_image2017-08-25at12.06.21pm.png" alt="Radio button form: What's your favorite genre?" width="495" height="464" /></p>
<p>This particular form, using radio buttons, will only let Jane select her absolute favorite genre. If you want to allow Jane to select many options the check boxes work well.</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/2zkfmosgr_image2017-08-25at12.06.57pm.png" alt="Check box form: What's your favorite genre?" width="493" height="464" /></p>
<p>By simply presenting the online user with a form; they have the option to tell you exactly what they like and want. Once you know their interests you can setup a simple automation similar to the below.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<div style="width: 710px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img class="" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/hfhntfe3_untitleddesign(2).png" alt="" width="700" height="583" /><p class="wp-caption-text">Interest automation based on form responses.</p></div>
<p>Don&#8217;t get overwhelmed. It&#8217;s worth asking your customer and taking action based on that information gathered.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s not enough to just gather the information. It&#8217;s about the “Now what?” and the action that will get you results.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: left;">Listen well</h2>
<p>Closing a deal is similar to the ideal date. Ask good questions. Listen well. Then explain your understanding. You want to talk enough to let the person in, but you don&#8217;t want to dominate the conversation.</p>
<p>Listening can come in many forms. In the case of our online bookstore example though, listening might look like yelp feedback, G+ reviews, or live chat support.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s germane that you are focused and listening to the feedback your customers are providing. If you take care of them, they will take care of you.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: left;">Actions speak louder than words</h2>
<p>If you are asking the right questions and listening to your customers, the next important step is watching what specific actions your customers are taking. These actions may give you the most important information of all.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">Use campaign opens as interest indicators</h3>
<p>If Jane said she only likes business books, but every time an email is sent about psychology books, she opens the email and clicks on links to read more; maybe Jane also like psychology books. Even though when asked, she only liked business books.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">Use page visits as interest indicators</h3>
<p>You can create segments based on which category of books the visitor has browsed in your online store. You can assume that if they&#8217;ve visited the business books category in the past, they have some interest there.</p>
<p>Next time you&#8217;re having a sale on a business book, you can send that campaign to people that have browsed that category of books in the past.</p>
<p>Below is an automation that will do exactly what we described above. It can also be found when you are creating a new automation in the ActiveCampaign platform by going to the “Manage &amp; Track Contacts” category and selecting “Apply Interest Tags.”</p>
<p><a href="http://tplshare.com/o2nF7Yh"><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/e79d5nr8l_ctabutton.png" alt="Get this automation" width="250" height="53" /></a></p>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">Use campaign link clicks as interest indicators</h3>
<p>If you send a catalog style email campaign, you can apply tags when someone clicks on a particular type of book. If they click on non-fiction books, you can tag them as “Interested in non-fiction” if they click on fiction, you can tag them as “interested in fiction.” If you send another campaign to people tagged as “Interested in fiction,” this time with different categories of fiction books, you can zero in closer to their exact interest. If they click on a mystery novel, tag them as “Interested in mysteries.” If they click on a romance novel, tag them as “Interested in romance,” and so on.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: left;">Leveraging interest indicators</h2>
<p>So, now that you know what they&#8217;re interested in, how can you leverage that intelligence to send interest-targeted campaigns?</p>
<p>The automation could look similar to the below image:</p>
<p><img class="alignnone" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/j5m9zgtqd_untitleddesign(3).png" alt="Leveraging interest indicators automation" width="652" height="585" /></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><a href="http://tplshare.com/K8TqK7Q"><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/p239u71xb_ctabutton.png" alt="Get this automation" width="250" height="53" /></a></p>
<h2 style="text-align: left;">Ultimately, it&#8217;s all about your customer&#8217;s interests</h2>
<p>This is all to say that your customers interests and voice should be taken into consideration. This will help you give your customers exactly what they are interested in, while giving them a better experience.</p>
<p>Take care of your customers and they will take care of you.</p>
<p>By incorporating marketing automation and other tools provided in ActiveCampaigns platform, you will not only better understand your client base, but you can better delight them.</p>
<p><a title="Get started with delighting your customers, today. 14-day free trial. No credit card required. Instant set up." href="http://www.activecampaign.com/free/" target="_blank"><i>Get started with delighting your customers, today. 14-day free trial. No credit card required. Instant set up.</i></a></p>
";}s:3:"wfw";a:1:{s:10:"commentrss";s:99:"https://www.activecampaign.com/blog/how-to-decide-what-your-contacts-want-and-give-it-to-them/feed/";}s:5:"slash";a:1:{s:8:"comments";s:1:"0";}s:7:"summary";s:339:"&#160; I was recently helping a client figure out how they could send specific, targeted content to their clients. It&#8217;s every marketers dream to know, and deliver, exactly what the customer wants to consume. But, the question is, how do you identify the specific interests of each of your customers? Just imagine you own an [&#8230;]";s:12:"atom_content";s:8091:"<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><img class="alignnone aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/5i2r5czjn_untitleddesign(1).png" alt="Customers wants are blurry until you focus" width="700" height="462" /></p>
<p>I was recently helping a client figure out how they could send specific, targeted content to their clients. It&#8217;s every marketers dream to know, and deliver, exactly what the customer wants to consume.</p>
<p>But, the question is, how do you identify the specific interests of each of your customers?</p>
<p>Just imagine you own an online bookstore. Jane is in the market for a book; maybe even two. But, here&#8217;s the kicker; Jane only likes business related books. She has never been able to get into fiction. It&#8217;s just not her style.</p>
<p>So if you start sending her emails about romance novels or the latest sci-fi thriller, she&#8217;s going to tune you out and eventually unsubscribe. She may end up seeking out a bookstore that&#8217;s more in tune with her interests.</p>
<p>How would you as a bookstore owner know that Jane only likes business books?</p>
<p>That&#8217;s the goal for you as the owner of a bookstore. Anticipate the wants and needs of your customers. That means happier customers and more sales for you. And guess what? Happy customers tend to become repeat customers. Double win.</p>
<p>Happy client, happy you.</p>
<p>Determining and anticipating your customer&#8217;s wants and needs is a relatively simple task. Relative being the operative word. Regardless, this is simple to accomplish with the right tools, and it&#8217;s a necessary action.</p>
<p>Providing your customer with the content they want versus what you think they want, could be the difference between gaining a new long-term client, and losing a client&#8217;s interest forever. I can&#8217;t harp on it enough. It&#8217;s all about the customer. Their needs. Their wants.</p>
<p>Focusing on your customer will provide the biggest return and opportunity. Don&#8217;t let it be a missed opportunity.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: left;">Just ask their opinion</h2>
<p>One of the easiest ways to figure out what your customer wants or needs is by asking. Sounds simple right? It is. But, it&#8217;s often a missed opportunity.</p>
<p>Continuing with the bookstore example&#8230;</p>
<p>Jane visits your online bookstore and she is presented with a form.</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/aokkjw5m3_image2017-08-25at12.06.21pm.png" alt="Radio button form: What's your favorite genre?" width="495" height="464" /></p>
<p>This particular form, using radio buttons, will only let Jane select her absolute favorite genre. If you want to allow Jane to select many options the check boxes work well.</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/2zkfmosgr_image2017-08-25at12.06.57pm.png" alt="Check box form: What's your favorite genre?" width="493" height="464" /></p>
<p>By simply presenting the online user with a form; they have the option to tell you exactly what they like and want. Once you know their interests you can setup a simple automation similar to the below.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<div style="width: 710px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img class="" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/hfhntfe3_untitleddesign(2).png" alt="" width="700" height="583" /><p class="wp-caption-text">Interest automation based on form responses.</p></div>
<p>Don&#8217;t get overwhelmed. It&#8217;s worth asking your customer and taking action based on that information gathered.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s not enough to just gather the information. It&#8217;s about the “Now what?” and the action that will get you results.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: left;">Listen well</h2>
<p>Closing a deal is similar to the ideal date. Ask good questions. Listen well. Then explain your understanding. You want to talk enough to let the person in, but you don&#8217;t want to dominate the conversation.</p>
<p>Listening can come in many forms. In the case of our online bookstore example though, listening might look like yelp feedback, G+ reviews, or live chat support.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s germane that you are focused and listening to the feedback your customers are providing. If you take care of them, they will take care of you.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: left;">Actions speak louder than words</h2>
<p>If you are asking the right questions and listening to your customers, the next important step is watching what specific actions your customers are taking. These actions may give you the most important information of all.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">Use campaign opens as interest indicators</h3>
<p>If Jane said she only likes business books, but every time an email is sent about psychology books, she opens the email and clicks on links to read more; maybe Jane also like psychology books. Even though when asked, she only liked business books.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">Use page visits as interest indicators</h3>
<p>You can create segments based on which category of books the visitor has browsed in your online store. You can assume that if they&#8217;ve visited the business books category in the past, they have some interest there.</p>
<p>Next time you&#8217;re having a sale on a business book, you can send that campaign to people that have browsed that category of books in the past.</p>
<p>Below is an automation that will do exactly what we described above. It can also be found when you are creating a new automation in the ActiveCampaign platform by going to the “Manage &amp; Track Contacts” category and selecting “Apply Interest Tags.”</p>
<p><a href="http://tplshare.com/o2nF7Yh"><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/e79d5nr8l_ctabutton.png" alt="Get this automation" width="250" height="53" /></a></p>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">Use campaign link clicks as interest indicators</h3>
<p>If you send a catalog style email campaign, you can apply tags when someone clicks on a particular type of book. If they click on non-fiction books, you can tag them as “Interested in non-fiction” if they click on fiction, you can tag them as “interested in fiction.” If you send another campaign to people tagged as “Interested in fiction,” this time with different categories of fiction books, you can zero in closer to their exact interest. If they click on a mystery novel, tag them as “Interested in mysteries.” If they click on a romance novel, tag them as “Interested in romance,” and so on.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: left;">Leveraging interest indicators</h2>
<p>So, now that you know what they&#8217;re interested in, how can you leverage that intelligence to send interest-targeted campaigns?</p>
<p>The automation could look similar to the below image:</p>
<p><img class="alignnone" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/j5m9zgtqd_untitleddesign(3).png" alt="Leveraging interest indicators automation" width="652" height="585" /></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><a href="http://tplshare.com/K8TqK7Q"><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/p239u71xb_ctabutton.png" alt="Get this automation" width="250" height="53" /></a></p>
<h2 style="text-align: left;">Ultimately, it&#8217;s all about your customer&#8217;s interests</h2>
<p>This is all to say that your customers interests and voice should be taken into consideration. This will help you give your customers exactly what they are interested in, while giving them a better experience.</p>
<p>Take care of your customers and they will take care of you.</p>
<p>By incorporating marketing automation and other tools provided in ActiveCampaigns platform, you will not only better understand your client base, but you can better delight them.</p>
<p><a title="Get started with delighting your customers, today. 14-day free trial. No credit card required. Instant set up." href="http://www.activecampaign.com/free/" target="_blank"><i>Get started with delighting your customers, today. 14-day free trial. No credit card required. Instant set up.</i></a></p>
";s:14:"date_timestamp";i:1503693413;}i:3;a:14:{s:5:"title";s:50:"12 Tips to Get Your Best Email Deliverability Ever";s:4:"link";s:66:"https://www.activecampaign.com/blog/how-to-improve-deliverability/";s:8:"comments";s:75:"https://www.activecampaign.com/blog/how-to-improve-deliverability/#comments";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Thu, 03 Aug 2017 20:42:47 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:11:"Brian Gladu";}s:8:"category";s:23:"Email MarketingStrategy";s:4:"guid";s:42:"http://www.activecampaign.com/blog/?p=9794";s:11:"description";s:357:"Unfortunately, there isn&#8217;t a magic bullet for perfect email deliverability. But, like many things with marketing, if you do what&#8217;s best for your customers, things tend to work out well for you. Just like search engines want to display the best search results to searchers, the email providers want to deliver the emails their customers [&#8230;]";s:7:"content";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";s:12067:"<p><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/qlv70vs69_13stepstoyourbestdeliverabilityever.png" alt="" width="690" /></p>
<p>Unfortunately, there isn&#8217;t a magic bullet for perfect email deliverability. But, like many things with marketing, if you do what&#8217;s best for your customers, things tend to work out well for you.</p>
<p>Just like search engines want to display the best search results to searchers, the email providers want to deliver the emails their customers want. So, if you&#8217;re sending quality campaigns to people that asked for them, you&#8217;ll be fine.</p>
<p>In addition to that golden rule of deliverability, there are some tips and tricks you can employ to keep your deliverability sky-high or establish a rock solid, positive reputation as a new sender&#8230;</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">Send these two types of automated campaigns</h3>
<p>Email service providers (ESPs), like Gmail and Yahoo Mail, are watching your open rate because it&#8217;s a great indication of whether a campaign is wanted. If an ESP sees your emails are being ignored, they&#8217;re going to assume they&#8217;re unwanted, and your sender reputation will suffer.</p>
<p>There are two types of email campaigns that consistently get higher open rates than all others. The high-engagement these campaigns get will help offset the occasional campaign that misses the mark and gets low engagement.</p>
<p>Be sure you&#8217;re sending:</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Welcome emails</strong><br />
It&#8217;s not uncommon for welcome emails to achieve a higher than 50% open rate. A finely-tuned welcome email sets you up for future engagement over the long-term. Here&#8217;s a simple automation <a href="http://www.activecampaign.com/blog/share-automations/" target="_blank">you can import</a> to get you started:<a href="http://tplshare.com/M1CVZSX"><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/ltkufr5n9_get-automation-button.png" alt="" /></a></li>
<li><strong>Emails triggered by behavior<br />
</strong>On average, triggered emails can achieve open rates over 150% higher than traditional campaigns. Behavior-based emails work extremely well because they&#8217;re perfectly timed. You know a specific behavior just occurred, so you can make the campaign&#8217;s content extremely relevant by referencing that event and giving next steps or guidance. <a href="http://www.activecampaign.com/blog/behavioral-targeting-site-tracking-and-marketing-automation/" target="_blank">Here&#8217;s</a> another post that might help you get started with behavioral campaigns.</li>
</ul>
<p>These email campaigns are also staggered, rather than broadcast to a whole list at once, so they&#8217;re a great way to establish yourself if you&#8217;re just getting started with a new marketing automation or email marketing provider. The email service providers will see that you started out at low volume (which is a good sign for a new sender) and that you&#8217;re getting excellent engagement. That gives you a solid foundation to build your sender reputation on.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">Optimize the sending frequency of your automated follow up</h3>
<p>ActiveCampaign offers <a href="http://www.activecampaign.com/split-action/" target="_blank">automation workflow split-testing</a> — something no other marketing automation provider does — and it&#8217;s the best way to get answers to some of your most important follow-up questions:</p>
<ul>
<li>Should I send five long emails in this sequence or 10 short ones?</li>
<li>Should I wait two days between messages or five?</li>
<li>Should I send three follow up reminders or just one?</li>
</ul>
<h3 style="text-align: center;"></h3>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">Enable SPF, DKIM, and DMARC</h3>
<p>These things aren&#8217;t going to cause your deliverability to sky rocket, but they&#8217;re worth doing because they&#8217;re reassuring to the ESPs. It&#8217;s a way for them to verify that you are who you say you are. It&#8217;s like putting an SSL certificate on your website. It&#8217;s not a guarantee your website is legit, but it&#8217;s one factor that contributes to trust and an overall positive reputation.</p>
<p>See <a href="https://help.activecampaign.com/hc/en-us/articles/206903370-DKIM-SPF-and-DMARC">these docs</a> for information on getting these set up.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">Up your subject line game</h3>
<p>Again, when it comes to deliverability and sender reputation, opens matter (even more than clicks!). The subject line is the second most important factor in whether your emails are opened (we&#8217;ll get to most important factor next). So, if you&#8217;re going to be an elite sender with perfect deliverability, you&#8217;re going to have to become an expert subject line copywriter.</p>
<p>The trick with subject lines is striking a balance between “clickbait headline” and “an accurate description of the message.” The ideal subject line is both tantalizing and accurate. The accuracy is important because if your contacts learn that your subject lines are clickbait, you might see a short-term boost in opens, but, your contacts will feel tricked. This harms your relationship with them. Don&#8217;t sacrifice your long-term relationship for a momentary boost in opens. You want people to open your email, but only because its content is relevant and important to them. If you feel like you need to use clickbait subject lines to get a decent open rate, you don&#8217;t have a subject line problem, you have a content or segmentation problem.</p>
<p>On your journey to mastering subject lines, split testing is your best teacher.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center;"></h3>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">Split test your sender info</h3>
<p>The sender information, specifically the “from” name, is the most important factor in whether your emails get opened, beating out even the subject line that gets so much emphasis among email marketers.</p>
<p>The general rule of thumb is that including the person and business name gets the best results.</p>
<p>“Kelly from ActiveCampaign” will generally work better than “Kelly O&#8217;Connell” or “ActiveCampaign.” But, split-testing is the only way to be certain.</p>
<p>ActiveCampaign allows you to split-test 5 versions of your sender info at a time and I&#8217;d recommend repeating that test several times before deciding on a winner to use across all your campaigns.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center;"></h3>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">Avoid these words and phrases</h3>
<p>You probably know the <a href="http://www.mequoda.com/articles/audience-development/subject-line-spam-trigger-words/" target="_blank">words and phrases to avoid</a>, but it&#8217;s a good idea to bring these top of mind again. They can sometimes sneak their way into otherwise legit campaigns if you aren&#8217;t paying attention.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center;"></h3>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">Add this to your email templates</h3>
<p><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/lyt79d8lv_image2017-08-02at11.37.21am.png" alt="" /><br />
Put a line at the bottom of all campaigns asking people to add you to their contacts so they can be sure they receive every email from you. <a href="http://www.activecampaign.com/blog/save-email-content-for-reuse/" target="_blank">Save it as a content block</a> and drop it into every message. Even if only a tiny fraction of contacts do this, it&#8217;ll help your overall reputation. To make it extra easy, link to a vCard (.vcf file — electronic business card) so you&#8217;re automatically added with correct contact information.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center;"></h3>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">Find the best time to send</h3>
<p>Take a look at your reports and see when the majority of your opens are happening. Take a look at a specific time frame, like the last 30 days, and take into account the time your emails were sent, as this will bias your open time reports. Look for a spike in opens outside of your send time. This might be a sweet spot.</p>
<p>With your automation emails, make use of the Wait Until conditions and the “send according to contact&#8217;s time zone” feature to deliver messages when they&#8217;re most likely to be read.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center;"></h3>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">Clean your list with a list cleaning service</h3>
<p>Clean your list with a service like <a href="https://kickbox.io/" target="_blank">Kickbox</a> or <a href="http://www.briteverify.com/" target="_blank">BriteVerify</a>. This will remove known spam traps (a HUGE deliverability killer) and non-existent email addresses from your list.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s a fantastic idea to do this before your first send with a new provider so that your sender reputation starts off on the right foot.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center;"></h3>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">Segment, segment, segment</h3>
<p>You can only segment on conditions you&#8217;re tracking. So, it&#8217;s important to decide what segments you&#8217;d like to be able to use and then be sure that you&#8217;re tracking and storing the relevant data so that you can leverage it as needed.</p>
<p>You may want to track:</p>
<ul>
<li>Relationship (customer, partner, lead, etc.)</li>
<li>Lifecycle stage</li>
<li>Characteristics (For B2B: vertical, size, etc. For B2C: gender, age, etc.)</li>
<li>Interest (page view data, form submits, purchase history, etc.)</li>
</ul>
<p>&#8230; so that, when it&#8217;s time to send, you can pinpoint the exact group of contacts who would be most interested in that message. This will ensure your engagement stays sky high.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center;"></h3>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">Set up these three automations</h3>
<p><img src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/pic9f65hu_image2017-08-02at12.14.02pm.png" alt="" width="650" /><br />
The engagement tagging automations we provide apply tags based on the recency of engagement with your campaigns and website. With these automations, you&#8217;ll know which of your contacts has recently been active, who&#8217;s engaged, who&#8217;s disengaged, and who&#8217;s inactive. If a contact is inactive, you&#8217;ll want to unsubscribe them. Many people continue sending to these contacts hoping that they&#8217;ll become active again. This is unlikely and it harms your overall deliverability so that the contacts that are engaging with your campaigns are less likely to receive them!</p>
<p>What about the contacts you have to unsubscribe? They aren&#8217;t a complete loss. Create a custom Facebook audience and display relevant ads. Just because they didn&#8217;t like your emails, doesn&#8217;t necessarily mean they don&#8217;t want your solution. With the right offer, you may be able to bring them back into your funnel as highly-engaged leads.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center;"></h3>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">Don&#8217;t let your list grow stale</h3>
<p>One of the biggest causes of SPAM complaints (which are detrimental to your deliverability) is a prolonged lull in sending. Your contacts are busy and, if you go too long without contacting them, they&#8217;ll forget that they ever requested your emails. At minimum, avoid going more than 60 days without a contact receiving a campaign from you.</p>
<h3></h3>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>Your email deliverability reputation takes time to establish itself and improving it is a slow process. When you&#8217;re a new sender, you&#8217;re viewed with skepticism. You&#8217;re an unknown. A wildcard. No one knows what to expect, so the ESPs watch your every move carefully. They&#8217;ve been burned before, so they&#8217;re careful and they read into things. They error on the side of caution.</p>
<p>But, the good news is that it&#8217;s a fair system that works most of the time. If you follow some simple, logical best practices over time your deliverability will improve.</p>
";}s:3:"wfw";a:1:{s:10:"commentrss";s:71:"https://www.activecampaign.com/blog/how-to-improve-deliverability/feed/";}s:5:"slash";a:1:{s:8:"comments";s:1:"0";}s:7:"summary";s:357:"Unfortunately, there isn&#8217;t a magic bullet for perfect email deliverability. But, like many things with marketing, if you do what&#8217;s best for your customers, things tend to work out well for you. Just like search engines want to display the best search results to searchers, the email providers want to deliver the emails their customers [&#8230;]";s:12:"atom_content";s:12067:"<p><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/qlv70vs69_13stepstoyourbestdeliverabilityever.png" alt="" width="690" /></p>
<p>Unfortunately, there isn&#8217;t a magic bullet for perfect email deliverability. But, like many things with marketing, if you do what&#8217;s best for your customers, things tend to work out well for you.</p>
<p>Just like search engines want to display the best search results to searchers, the email providers want to deliver the emails their customers want. So, if you&#8217;re sending quality campaigns to people that asked for them, you&#8217;ll be fine.</p>
<p>In addition to that golden rule of deliverability, there are some tips and tricks you can employ to keep your deliverability sky-high or establish a rock solid, positive reputation as a new sender&#8230;</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">Send these two types of automated campaigns</h3>
<p>Email service providers (ESPs), like Gmail and Yahoo Mail, are watching your open rate because it&#8217;s a great indication of whether a campaign is wanted. If an ESP sees your emails are being ignored, they&#8217;re going to assume they&#8217;re unwanted, and your sender reputation will suffer.</p>
<p>There are two types of email campaigns that consistently get higher open rates than all others. The high-engagement these campaigns get will help offset the occasional campaign that misses the mark and gets low engagement.</p>
<p>Be sure you&#8217;re sending:</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Welcome emails</strong><br />
It&#8217;s not uncommon for welcome emails to achieve a higher than 50% open rate. A finely-tuned welcome email sets you up for future engagement over the long-term. Here&#8217;s a simple automation <a href="http://www.activecampaign.com/blog/share-automations/" target="_blank">you can import</a> to get you started:<a href="http://tplshare.com/M1CVZSX"><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/ltkufr5n9_get-automation-button.png" alt="" /></a></li>
<li><strong>Emails triggered by behavior<br />
</strong>On average, triggered emails can achieve open rates over 150% higher than traditional campaigns. Behavior-based emails work extremely well because they&#8217;re perfectly timed. You know a specific behavior just occurred, so you can make the campaign&#8217;s content extremely relevant by referencing that event and giving next steps or guidance. <a href="http://www.activecampaign.com/blog/behavioral-targeting-site-tracking-and-marketing-automation/" target="_blank">Here&#8217;s</a> another post that might help you get started with behavioral campaigns.</li>
</ul>
<p>These email campaigns are also staggered, rather than broadcast to a whole list at once, so they&#8217;re a great way to establish yourself if you&#8217;re just getting started with a new marketing automation or email marketing provider. The email service providers will see that you started out at low volume (which is a good sign for a new sender) and that you&#8217;re getting excellent engagement. That gives you a solid foundation to build your sender reputation on.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">Optimize the sending frequency of your automated follow up</h3>
<p>ActiveCampaign offers <a href="http://www.activecampaign.com/split-action/" target="_blank">automation workflow split-testing</a> — something no other marketing automation provider does — and it&#8217;s the best way to get answers to some of your most important follow-up questions:</p>
<ul>
<li>Should I send five long emails in this sequence or 10 short ones?</li>
<li>Should I wait two days between messages or five?</li>
<li>Should I send three follow up reminders or just one?</li>
</ul>
<h3 style="text-align: center;"></h3>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">Enable SPF, DKIM, and DMARC</h3>
<p>These things aren&#8217;t going to cause your deliverability to sky rocket, but they&#8217;re worth doing because they&#8217;re reassuring to the ESPs. It&#8217;s a way for them to verify that you are who you say you are. It&#8217;s like putting an SSL certificate on your website. It&#8217;s not a guarantee your website is legit, but it&#8217;s one factor that contributes to trust and an overall positive reputation.</p>
<p>See <a href="https://help.activecampaign.com/hc/en-us/articles/206903370-DKIM-SPF-and-DMARC">these docs</a> for information on getting these set up.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">Up your subject line game</h3>
<p>Again, when it comes to deliverability and sender reputation, opens matter (even more than clicks!). The subject line is the second most important factor in whether your emails are opened (we&#8217;ll get to most important factor next). So, if you&#8217;re going to be an elite sender with perfect deliverability, you&#8217;re going to have to become an expert subject line copywriter.</p>
<p>The trick with subject lines is striking a balance between “clickbait headline” and “an accurate description of the message.” The ideal subject line is both tantalizing and accurate. The accuracy is important because if your contacts learn that your subject lines are clickbait, you might see a short-term boost in opens, but, your contacts will feel tricked. This harms your relationship with them. Don&#8217;t sacrifice your long-term relationship for a momentary boost in opens. You want people to open your email, but only because its content is relevant and important to them. If you feel like you need to use clickbait subject lines to get a decent open rate, you don&#8217;t have a subject line problem, you have a content or segmentation problem.</p>
<p>On your journey to mastering subject lines, split testing is your best teacher.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center;"></h3>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">Split test your sender info</h3>
<p>The sender information, specifically the “from” name, is the most important factor in whether your emails get opened, beating out even the subject line that gets so much emphasis among email marketers.</p>
<p>The general rule of thumb is that including the person and business name gets the best results.</p>
<p>“Kelly from ActiveCampaign” will generally work better than “Kelly O&#8217;Connell” or “ActiveCampaign.” But, split-testing is the only way to be certain.</p>
<p>ActiveCampaign allows you to split-test 5 versions of your sender info at a time and I&#8217;d recommend repeating that test several times before deciding on a winner to use across all your campaigns.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center;"></h3>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">Avoid these words and phrases</h3>
<p>You probably know the <a href="http://www.mequoda.com/articles/audience-development/subject-line-spam-trigger-words/" target="_blank">words and phrases to avoid</a>, but it&#8217;s a good idea to bring these top of mind again. They can sometimes sneak their way into otherwise legit campaigns if you aren&#8217;t paying attention.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center;"></h3>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">Add this to your email templates</h3>
<p><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/lyt79d8lv_image2017-08-02at11.37.21am.png" alt="" /><br />
Put a line at the bottom of all campaigns asking people to add you to their contacts so they can be sure they receive every email from you. <a href="http://www.activecampaign.com/blog/save-email-content-for-reuse/" target="_blank">Save it as a content block</a> and drop it into every message. Even if only a tiny fraction of contacts do this, it&#8217;ll help your overall reputation. To make it extra easy, link to a vCard (.vcf file — electronic business card) so you&#8217;re automatically added with correct contact information.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center;"></h3>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">Find the best time to send</h3>
<p>Take a look at your reports and see when the majority of your opens are happening. Take a look at a specific time frame, like the last 30 days, and take into account the time your emails were sent, as this will bias your open time reports. Look for a spike in opens outside of your send time. This might be a sweet spot.</p>
<p>With your automation emails, make use of the Wait Until conditions and the “send according to contact&#8217;s time zone” feature to deliver messages when they&#8217;re most likely to be read.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center;"></h3>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">Clean your list with a list cleaning service</h3>
<p>Clean your list with a service like <a href="https://kickbox.io/" target="_blank">Kickbox</a> or <a href="http://www.briteverify.com/" target="_blank">BriteVerify</a>. This will remove known spam traps (a HUGE deliverability killer) and non-existent email addresses from your list.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s a fantastic idea to do this before your first send with a new provider so that your sender reputation starts off on the right foot.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center;"></h3>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">Segment, segment, segment</h3>
<p>You can only segment on conditions you&#8217;re tracking. So, it&#8217;s important to decide what segments you&#8217;d like to be able to use and then be sure that you&#8217;re tracking and storing the relevant data so that you can leverage it as needed.</p>
<p>You may want to track:</p>
<ul>
<li>Relationship (customer, partner, lead, etc.)</li>
<li>Lifecycle stage</li>
<li>Characteristics (For B2B: vertical, size, etc. For B2C: gender, age, etc.)</li>
<li>Interest (page view data, form submits, purchase history, etc.)</li>
</ul>
<p>&#8230; so that, when it&#8217;s time to send, you can pinpoint the exact group of contacts who would be most interested in that message. This will ensure your engagement stays sky high.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center;"></h3>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">Set up these three automations</h3>
<p><img src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/pic9f65hu_image2017-08-02at12.14.02pm.png" alt="" width="650" /><br />
The engagement tagging automations we provide apply tags based on the recency of engagement with your campaigns and website. With these automations, you&#8217;ll know which of your contacts has recently been active, who&#8217;s engaged, who&#8217;s disengaged, and who&#8217;s inactive. If a contact is inactive, you&#8217;ll want to unsubscribe them. Many people continue sending to these contacts hoping that they&#8217;ll become active again. This is unlikely and it harms your overall deliverability so that the contacts that are engaging with your campaigns are less likely to receive them!</p>
<p>What about the contacts you have to unsubscribe? They aren&#8217;t a complete loss. Create a custom Facebook audience and display relevant ads. Just because they didn&#8217;t like your emails, doesn&#8217;t necessarily mean they don&#8217;t want your solution. With the right offer, you may be able to bring them back into your funnel as highly-engaged leads.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center;"></h3>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">Don&#8217;t let your list grow stale</h3>
<p>One of the biggest causes of SPAM complaints (which are detrimental to your deliverability) is a prolonged lull in sending. Your contacts are busy and, if you go too long without contacting them, they&#8217;ll forget that they ever requested your emails. At minimum, avoid going more than 60 days without a contact receiving a campaign from you.</p>
<h3></h3>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>Your email deliverability reputation takes time to establish itself and improving it is a slow process. When you&#8217;re a new sender, you&#8217;re viewed with skepticism. You&#8217;re an unknown. A wildcard. No one knows what to expect, so the ESPs watch your every move carefully. They&#8217;ve been burned before, so they&#8217;re careful and they read into things. They error on the side of caution.</p>
<p>But, the good news is that it&#8217;s a fair system that works most of the time. If you follow some simple, logical best practices over time your deliverability will improve.</p>
";s:14:"date_timestamp";i:1501792967;}i:4;a:14:{s:5:"title";s:63:"One List vs Multiple Lists: The ActiveCampaign Experts Weigh in";s:4:"link";s:79:"https://www.activecampaign.com/blog/should-you-have-one-list-or-multiple-lists/";s:8:"comments";s:88:"https://www.activecampaign.com/blog/should-you-have-one-list-or-multiple-lists/#comments";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Thu, 22 Jun 2017 16:36:11 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:11:"Brian Gladu";}s:8:"category";s:23:"Email MarketingStrategy";s:4:"guid";s:42:"http://www.activecampaign.com/blog/?p=9636";s:11:"description";s:384:"The most popular thread from our community forum is a back-and-forth about whether there should be one list or multiple lists for organizing contacts and customers. There&#8217;s debate because ActiveCampaign doesn&#8217;t force a structure. It&#8217;s flexible — you&#8217;re free to organize contacts however you want — you can use a single list, multiple lists, tags, [&#8230;]";s:7:"content";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";s:21232:"<p>The <a href="https://community.activecampaign.com/t/beginner-101-one-master-list-or-multiple-lists/773">most popular thread from our community forum</a> is a back-and-forth about whether there should be one list or multiple lists for organizing contacts and customers.</p>
<p>There&#8217;s debate because ActiveCampaign doesn&#8217;t force a structure. It&#8217;s flexible — you&#8217;re free to organize contacts however you want — you can use a single list, multiple lists, tags, custom fields, or a combination. Pretty much anything will work.</p>
<p>But, nearly unlimited flexibility means you have to decide what&#8217;s most appropriate for your business. Even among the experts, there&#8217;s differing opinions on what is “best.” This can lead to uncertainty and confusion.</p>
<p>To help you find the right contact organization scheme for your business, I asked our community of email &amp; marketing automation experts to give their advice.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/c0wk8bwts_round_0c5bbdf.png" alt="" width="190" /></p>
<h2 style="text-align: center;">Dan Dewitte</h2>
<h5 style="text-align: center;">Founder of <a href="https://activerelay.co/" target="_blank">ActiveRelay</a>, simple order forms for ActiveCampaign</h5>
<h5 style="text-align: center;">Recommends: A list of prospects and a list of customers (subdivided with tags)</h5>
<p>&#8220;There are many ways you can segment your contacts in ActiveCampaign, all of which are powerful, but some which I believe are simpler and more effective.</p>
<p>The first and most important thing to do is to take a step back and evaluate what you would ultimately like to know about your contacts/customers. This will determine whether they go in a “list” or are assigned a “tag” so let’s break it down.</p>
<p>I’m a huge fan of keeping two lists. I have a “Master List” and a “Customer List” the names are pretty obvious but on a high level I can see if this contact is a customer or a general email prospect that hasn&#8217;t converted yet.</p>
<p>So that&#8217;s super basic and a great building block to begin more complex segmentation. Cue Tags, I love these because they are unlimited and versatile! BUT a word of advice, keep an Excel spreadsheet or make sure you put a description on the tags in the tag manager because it can get very messy, very quickly!</p>
<p>I like to categorise my tags to keep them clean. For example: If your prospect is interested in dogs, running, and had downloaded a lead-magnet your tags would look like:</p>
<ul>
<li>“INTEREST: Dogs”</li>
<li>“INTEREST: Running”</li>
<li>“DL: Lead-magnet name” (DL = downloaded)</li>
</ul>
<p>Using this example: You want to send a sales email to everyone who’s not a customer but interested in running and has downloaded “your lead-magnet name”. You would send to contacts in the “Master List” that have “INTEREST: Running” &amp; “DL: Lead-magnet name” Tags.</p>
<p>Ultimately your segmentation will reflect your brain and business needs. Take as much information as you can from this blog post and the brilliant ideas of the Other ActiveCampaign partners, find the flavour you and grab a cuppa, pen, and paper, then map out what information you would like from your contacts.&#8221;</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<hr />
<p><em> </em></p>
<p><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/wzq0vqjfy_round_1eb9739.png" alt="" width="190" /></p>
<h2 style="text-align: center;">Carl Taylor</h2>
<h5 style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.activecampaign.com/consultants/automation-agency">Certified Consultant</a> and founder and CEO of <a href="http://automationagency.com/">Automation Agency</a></h5>
<h5 style="text-align: center;">Recommends: A list for prospects, a list for customers, and a list for content nurturing.</h5>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>&#8220;You can certainly do the one list and just use tags approach however it does have a downside&#8230;</p>
<p>What happens when someone (who is also a client) unsubscribes from your newsletter which unsubscribes from the list meaning they no longer can get ANY email communication from you!</p>
<p>The thing to remember is Lists are permission to mail, so my approach is to have 2 maybe 3 lists and no more.</p>
<blockquote><p><em>List 1. Master List (this is essentially the 1 list idea that you use tags to segment)</em><br />
<em> List 2. Client Communication (this is where you send clients important information about the product/service they have bought)</em></p></blockquote>
<p>This is a bare minimum in my opinion if you are a service business. I personally also like to break out another list for my ongoing regular broadcasts that aren&#8217;t special offers, but are content.</p>
<blockquote><p><em>List 3. Newsletter / Nurture list (this is the weekly or monthly newsletter or blog posts you send out)</em>&#8220;</p></blockquote>
<hr />
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/fxq4wjl5b_round_photo.png" alt="" width="190" /></p>
<h2 style="text-align: center;">Edward Haskins</h2>
<h5 style="text-align: center;">Founder of <a href="https://activeautomations.com" target="_blank">ActiveAutomations</a>, power tools to turbocharge ActiveCampaign</h5>
<h5 style="text-align: center;">Recommends: Master list and customer list. Separate lists as needed for integrations.</h5>
<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s no right or wrong when it comes to how you decide to use Lists inside ActiveCampaign. For me, I typically setup my client accounts using two Lists: Master List and Customer List. All Leads are added to the Master List and remain there. Only once a Lead makes a purchase of any kind do they get added to the Customer List.</p>
<p>In certain situations, additional Lists may be appropriate. The most obvious is when a 3rd party tool doesn&#8217;t integrate at the Tag level. That often forces you to add them to a separate List so that you can properly Tag the Contact via Automation.</p>
<p>When possible, keep the number of Lists to a minimum and make use of Tags and Custom Fields for Segmentation.&#8221;</p>
<hr />
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/r2elfwkmf_round_barry.png" alt="" width="190" /></p>
<h2 style="text-align: center;">Barry Moore</h2>
<h5 style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.activecampaign.com/consultants/barry-moore" target="_blank">Certified Consultant</a> and <a href="https://theactivemarketer.com/" target="_blank">Expert ActiveCampaign Coach</a></h5>
<h5 style="text-align: center;">Recommends: One list with tags. Additional lists as needed for integrations.</h5>
<p>&#8220;Like many folks I try to keep contacts consolidated onto one list and segmented with tags and/or custom field data.</p>
<p>However, I do resort to multiple lists every now and then. Some of the times that additional lists work well are when using an API from another system that only integrates at a list level.</p>
<p>If the other program allows you to specify a list only (with no tags), it is difficult to segment your contacts based on that optin channel. I use what I call action lists to take the inbound contacts, tag and process them, then add them to my main list. That way I can segment all incoming subscribers based on source and still maintain an accurate master list.</p>
<p>I also tend to use additional lists for temporary promotions, just because it is easy. But again I make sure all contacts get tagged properly and added to the main list in the end.&#8221;</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<hr />
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/3fiq50p8w_round_monicapig.png" alt="" width="190" /></p>
<h2 style="text-align: center;">Jason Henderson</h2>
<h5 style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.activecampaign.com/consultants/advanced-activecampaign-email-marketing" target="_blank">Certified Consultant </a>and creator of <a href="http://acvideotracker.com/?s=listsvstagsacblog" target="_blank">ACVideoTracker</a></h5>
<h5 style="text-align: center;">Recommends: Don&#8217;t worry about it.</h5>
<p>&#8220;As someone who has been doing email marketing for themselves and clients since 1996 (Yes, that&#8217;s over 20 years), one of the biggest wastes of time for ActiveCampaign users in my opinion is the subject of tags versus lists.</p>
<p>Having worked with multiple companies who do over seven figures a month (not to mention the countless clients who do seven figures a year) and use high-end email service providers like ExactTarget, I&#8217;ll tell you how many of them have worried about eliminating lists or even asked about this subject.</p>
<p>Zero.</p>
<p>Why is that? It&#8217;s simple. There are so many more things email marketers can be focusing on that will actually make you money.</p>
<p>Lists are, and always be, the simplest and most efficient way to organize contacts (Especially when using ActiveCampaign) and targeting the right message&#8230; to the right person&#8230; at the right time. Plus, there&#8217;s nothing preventing you from using both lists and tags for further segmentation and targeting.</p>
<p>Lastly (for now), every single &#8220;reason&#8221; I&#8217;ve seen for eliminating most, if not all, lists are personal preferences. In fact, you can turn most of their reasons into why you want to use lists more.</p>
<p>This is why ActiveCampaign rocks. You get the best of both worlds.&#8221;</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<hr />
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/1gh2hblpl_round_36d8737.png" alt="" width="190" /></p>
<h2 style="text-align: center;">Alex King</h2>
<h5 style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.activecampaign.com/consultants/alex-king" target="_blank">Certified Consultant</a> and CCO at <a href="http://alexkingcreative.com/" target="_blank">Alex King Creative</a></h5>
<h5 style="text-align: center;">Recommends: Lists for demographics and tags for actions &amp; interests.</h5>
<p>&#8220;I believe that business and marketing systems should be as beautiful and organized as they are effective. I think that just like you feel more at peace when your house or desk is clean, your business can function more effectively with organized and structured systems. I can’t tell you have many email marketing platforms I’ve logged in to of my clients (some that even earn millions of dollars) and seen a complete disaster of a management system.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>I see lists with contacts that have unsubscribed and haven’t been deleted.</p>
<blockquote><p><em>Potential Client: “My list has 150,000 contacts”</em><br />
<em>Me: “What’s your average open rate”</em><br />
<em>Potential Client: “Uhh… Erm… Ahem…”</em></p></blockquote>
<p>I see tags with no descriptions or clear references.</p>
<p>Stuff like… “TR MPW 2016 20X &#8211; DO NOT DELETE”</p>
<p>I see entire accounts that have been passed from “expert” to “expert” and not one of them has thought to create a structure or formula for organizing the client’s account.</p>
<p>We can do better&#8230;</p>
<p>The most important thing for me is to trigger Automations based off Tags being added / removed and NEVER from being added to a list. Most of your automations are triggered by a circumstance. Like someone buying a specific product or opting in to a certain funnel. Use these “triggers” as Tags.</p>
<p>I like to use lists to create “demographics” within my ActiveCampaign accounts and prefer to use tags for showing actions or interest.</p>
<p>I find that with the different plugins and integrations that end up being built around a sophisticated marketing system, it’s easy to add a contact to a general or master list without being too worried that they’re in the wrong place. But a tag needs to have specificity to it, because it needs to trigger the right automations &#8211; and only those automations.&#8221;</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<hr />
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/ggkf7isbj_round_charl.png" alt="" width="190" /></p>
<h2 style="text-align: center;">Charl Coetzee</h2>
<h5 style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.activecampaign.com/consultants/real-fortune" target="_blank">Certified Consultant</a> and Senior Managing Partner at <a href="https://myrealfortune.com/" target="_blank">Real Fortune</a></h5>
<h5 style="text-align: center;">Recommends: Lists for relationships and levels of intimacy.</h5>
<p>&#8220;Here at RealFortune, we believe in having different lists based on the level of intimacy in the communication. For example, you would speak one way to your general broadcast list. You speak differently to your low-value clients who have purchased one or two small products. Then you speak another way to your high-value coaching clients. The different relationships map to different lists and different levels of intimacy in the way you speak to your contacts. The likelihood of people leaving a list gets smaller as their level of intimacy increases. As people become disengaged, we move them to a fourth list and purge them from the account every few months, thus protecting your sender reputation and saving money.</p>
<p>By managing lists based on the relationship, we can then refine our criteria to define even more granular segments of your lists. In most cases, we create three lists: a general broadcast and marketing list, a customer list, and the bucket list which we flush from time to time for list hygiene. We typically segment the general broadcast and marketing list based on interest and demographics. You segment the customer list based on purchases and current activity.</p>
<p>This system makes list management a whole lot easier. We can easily exclude people from certain messages because we’ve defined the segments beforehand.&#8221;</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<hr />
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/i752dwbxz_round_kristoff.png" alt="" width="190" /></p>
<h2 style="text-align: center;">Kristoff Henry</h2>
<h5 style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.activecampaign.com/consultants/kristoff-henry" target="_blank">Certified Consultant</a> and <a href="https://magnetischemarketing.be" target="_blank">Freelance Marketer</a></h5>
<h5 style="text-align: center;">Recommends: A list for each type of content and housekeeping lists for automation.</h5>
<p>&#8220;To me there are two types of lists: a content-driven list and a housekeeping list. For a content driven list I ask myself: do I need to send a different type of content to certain contacts. If yes, what do I want to happen if they unsubscribe? If I don’t want them to unsubscribe from everything, but just from that particular type of content, then I will put those contacts in a separate list.</p>
<p>Sometimes, I also have lists that trigger automations for housekeeping: adding tags, changing field information, sending notifications and finally adding the contact to a content-driven list. Once the actions have been carried out, the housekeeping list no longer has a purpose for that contact. This is particularly useful when using third party forms to track where the contact comes from and adding that information as a tag.</p>
<p>For anything else I use tags to build a contact profile and to use as segmentation criteria.&#8221;</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<hr />
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/b7ailic12_round_2fdb2c0.png" alt="" width="190" /></p>
<h2 style="text-align: center;">Sean Tierney</h2>
<h5 style="text-align: center;">Director of Sales &amp; Marketing at <a href="http://pagely.com" target="_blank">Pagely</a> and ActiveCampaign power user</h5>
<h5 style="text-align: center;">Recommends: One list segmented with tags.</h5>
<p>&#8220;I have yet to find anything that can be accomplished with lists that cannot be done better via tag. I prefer to set up one master list and segment everyone within that based on tags. As best I can tell the arguments for doing multiple lists revolve around one of the below (I&#8217;ve put my rebuttal to each after describing the argument):</p>
<ol>
<li>Giving users a <b>more granular way to unsubscribe</b> without nuking their subscription to everything &lt;- IMO this should be achieved with link that sets a segment-specific opt-out tag and you should have conditional logic in your automations that suppresses sends upon presence of this tag. Same thing for campaigns you exclude any segments that have the suppression tags from sends.</li>
<li>From an admin perspective it provides a <b>more convenient way to see how many people are at which stage</b> or subscribed to which list. Same can be accomplished via saved segments and saved searches. Having multiple lists IMO leads to sprawl and multiple ways to accomplish the same thing. All things being equal I would rather have one bulletproof way to do things and not have the cognitive load each time of trying to decide whether it should be a list or a tag.</li>
<li><b>Tag sprawl</b> &lt;- this is addressed by having a sensible tagging taxonomy strategy. One of the useful things I picked up from my time as an Infusionsoft consultant is this nested () nomenclature of doing tags in a way that shows hierarchical structure. So for instance I&#8217;ll do (Segment)(Demographic)(Male) or (Flag)(Training)(Sales) with the most high-level category on the left. This allows you to run searches on the top-level category and keep your tags organized. Tag sprawl can occur independent of this notion of using multiple lists so you should come up with whatever taxonomy strategy is most beneficial given your circumstances regardless of whether you choose to consolidate to a single list or not.</li>
</ol>
<p>The reality of our situation with Pagely is we started using multiple lists and the overhead of changing that setup now doesn&#8217;t merit the advantages of consolidating so but such is life. Anyone I coach at this point setting things up from scratch I steer towards the One List gospel. I would love to hear the arguments from anyone who is a fan of the multiple list approach and will happily stand corrected if there are valid arguments for doing it that way.&#8221;</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<hr />
<h2></h2>
<p><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/t4bn6p9b0_round_d7f3muq22_chris.png" alt="" width="190" /></p>
<h2 style="text-align: center;">Chris Davis</h2>
<h5 style="text-align: center;">ActiveCampaign&#8217;s Director of Education</h5>
<p><b>Lists</b><br />
Lists are a powerful feature in ActiveCampaign but often confusing because their capabilities are mistaken for basic list functionality found in platforms that provide only email marketing.</p>
<p>I like to view, and teach, our users to look at list as the most broad means of communication. That means that people who exist on a list are at the top of the targeting funnel. As you progress downwards this funnel you get more targeted with your messaging thus necessitating the need to use tags and custom fields.</p>
<p>Overall you should use lists for broadly segmenting your database. As your segmenting needs increase you will need to start implementing tags and custom fields.</p>
<p>One thing to note is some third party tools only integrate with ActiveCampaign on a list level. For those types of integrations I recommend you creating a list specific to the third party tool and move contacts to the list of your choice once they have performed some type of engagement after being added via third party.</p>
<p><b>Tags</b><br />
Tags, on the other hand, are a lot more flexible and targeted than lists. They can be applied, and removed, multiple ways and have the ability to represent a more targeted group of contacts. For instance, you may sell apparel and have two separate lists for outerwear and underwear. With tags it&#8217;s possible to target all males across both lists. Thus, giving you more flexibility than lists provide at sending targeted messages.</p>
<p>The usage of tags should help tell a story of what the contact has done, is doing, and help predict what they might do. For that reason I recommend using tags on the most important actions in ActiveCampaign as well as using tags to identify your most important segments. It is very common for users to have a minimal amount of lists (1-3) and use tags to further segment their contact database.</p>
<p><b>Custom Fields</b><br />
Custom fields are the most permanent data the exists in ActiveCampaign. Out of all of the 3 segmentation options custom fields are the only feature that allows you to display its data to your contacts. For instance, if you have captured the type of pet someone owns you can then display that value in outbound communication to make it more personalized.</p>
<p>A good rule of thumb for custom fields is to use them when data will not be changing quickly and you would like to display the value to your contacts in any outbound messaging from ActiveCampaign.</p>
";}s:3:"wfw";a:1:{s:10:"commentrss";s:84:"https://www.activecampaign.com/blog/should-you-have-one-list-or-multiple-lists/feed/";}s:5:"slash";a:1:{s:8:"comments";s:1:"0";}s:7:"summary";s:384:"The most popular thread from our community forum is a back-and-forth about whether there should be one list or multiple lists for organizing contacts and customers. There&#8217;s debate because ActiveCampaign doesn&#8217;t force a structure. It&#8217;s flexible — you&#8217;re free to organize contacts however you want — you can use a single list, multiple lists, tags, [&#8230;]";s:12:"atom_content";s:21232:"<p>The <a href="https://community.activecampaign.com/t/beginner-101-one-master-list-or-multiple-lists/773">most popular thread from our community forum</a> is a back-and-forth about whether there should be one list or multiple lists for organizing contacts and customers.</p>
<p>There&#8217;s debate because ActiveCampaign doesn&#8217;t force a structure. It&#8217;s flexible — you&#8217;re free to organize contacts however you want — you can use a single list, multiple lists, tags, custom fields, or a combination. Pretty much anything will work.</p>
<p>But, nearly unlimited flexibility means you have to decide what&#8217;s most appropriate for your business. Even among the experts, there&#8217;s differing opinions on what is “best.” This can lead to uncertainty and confusion.</p>
<p>To help you find the right contact organization scheme for your business, I asked our community of email &amp; marketing automation experts to give their advice.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/c0wk8bwts_round_0c5bbdf.png" alt="" width="190" /></p>
<h2 style="text-align: center;">Dan Dewitte</h2>
<h5 style="text-align: center;">Founder of <a href="https://activerelay.co/" target="_blank">ActiveRelay</a>, simple order forms for ActiveCampaign</h5>
<h5 style="text-align: center;">Recommends: A list of prospects and a list of customers (subdivided with tags)</h5>
<p>&#8220;There are many ways you can segment your contacts in ActiveCampaign, all of which are powerful, but some which I believe are simpler and more effective.</p>
<p>The first and most important thing to do is to take a step back and evaluate what you would ultimately like to know about your contacts/customers. This will determine whether they go in a “list” or are assigned a “tag” so let’s break it down.</p>
<p>I’m a huge fan of keeping two lists. I have a “Master List” and a “Customer List” the names are pretty obvious but on a high level I can see if this contact is a customer or a general email prospect that hasn&#8217;t converted yet.</p>
<p>So that&#8217;s super basic and a great building block to begin more complex segmentation. Cue Tags, I love these because they are unlimited and versatile! BUT a word of advice, keep an Excel spreadsheet or make sure you put a description on the tags in the tag manager because it can get very messy, very quickly!</p>
<p>I like to categorise my tags to keep them clean. For example: If your prospect is interested in dogs, running, and had downloaded a lead-magnet your tags would look like:</p>
<ul>
<li>“INTEREST: Dogs”</li>
<li>“INTEREST: Running”</li>
<li>“DL: Lead-magnet name” (DL = downloaded)</li>
</ul>
<p>Using this example: You want to send a sales email to everyone who’s not a customer but interested in running and has downloaded “your lead-magnet name”. You would send to contacts in the “Master List” that have “INTEREST: Running” &amp; “DL: Lead-magnet name” Tags.</p>
<p>Ultimately your segmentation will reflect your brain and business needs. Take as much information as you can from this blog post and the brilliant ideas of the Other ActiveCampaign partners, find the flavour you and grab a cuppa, pen, and paper, then map out what information you would like from your contacts.&#8221;</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<hr />
<p><em> </em></p>
<p><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/wzq0vqjfy_round_1eb9739.png" alt="" width="190" /></p>
<h2 style="text-align: center;">Carl Taylor</h2>
<h5 style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.activecampaign.com/consultants/automation-agency">Certified Consultant</a> and founder and CEO of <a href="http://automationagency.com/">Automation Agency</a></h5>
<h5 style="text-align: center;">Recommends: A list for prospects, a list for customers, and a list for content nurturing.</h5>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>&#8220;You can certainly do the one list and just use tags approach however it does have a downside&#8230;</p>
<p>What happens when someone (who is also a client) unsubscribes from your newsletter which unsubscribes from the list meaning they no longer can get ANY email communication from you!</p>
<p>The thing to remember is Lists are permission to mail, so my approach is to have 2 maybe 3 lists and no more.</p>
<blockquote><p><em>List 1. Master List (this is essentially the 1 list idea that you use tags to segment)</em><br />
<em> List 2. Client Communication (this is where you send clients important information about the product/service they have bought)</em></p></blockquote>
<p>This is a bare minimum in my opinion if you are a service business. I personally also like to break out another list for my ongoing regular broadcasts that aren&#8217;t special offers, but are content.</p>
<blockquote><p><em>List 3. Newsletter / Nurture list (this is the weekly or monthly newsletter or blog posts you send out)</em>&#8220;</p></blockquote>
<hr />
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/fxq4wjl5b_round_photo.png" alt="" width="190" /></p>
<h2 style="text-align: center;">Edward Haskins</h2>
<h5 style="text-align: center;">Founder of <a href="https://activeautomations.com" target="_blank">ActiveAutomations</a>, power tools to turbocharge ActiveCampaign</h5>
<h5 style="text-align: center;">Recommends: Master list and customer list. Separate lists as needed for integrations.</h5>
<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s no right or wrong when it comes to how you decide to use Lists inside ActiveCampaign. For me, I typically setup my client accounts using two Lists: Master List and Customer List. All Leads are added to the Master List and remain there. Only once a Lead makes a purchase of any kind do they get added to the Customer List.</p>
<p>In certain situations, additional Lists may be appropriate. The most obvious is when a 3rd party tool doesn&#8217;t integrate at the Tag level. That often forces you to add them to a separate List so that you can properly Tag the Contact via Automation.</p>
<p>When possible, keep the number of Lists to a minimum and make use of Tags and Custom Fields for Segmentation.&#8221;</p>
<hr />
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/r2elfwkmf_round_barry.png" alt="" width="190" /></p>
<h2 style="text-align: center;">Barry Moore</h2>
<h5 style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.activecampaign.com/consultants/barry-moore" target="_blank">Certified Consultant</a> and <a href="https://theactivemarketer.com/" target="_blank">Expert ActiveCampaign Coach</a></h5>
<h5 style="text-align: center;">Recommends: One list with tags. Additional lists as needed for integrations.</h5>
<p>&#8220;Like many folks I try to keep contacts consolidated onto one list and segmented with tags and/or custom field data.</p>
<p>However, I do resort to multiple lists every now and then. Some of the times that additional lists work well are when using an API from another system that only integrates at a list level.</p>
<p>If the other program allows you to specify a list only (with no tags), it is difficult to segment your contacts based on that optin channel. I use what I call action lists to take the inbound contacts, tag and process them, then add them to my main list. That way I can segment all incoming subscribers based on source and still maintain an accurate master list.</p>
<p>I also tend to use additional lists for temporary promotions, just because it is easy. But again I make sure all contacts get tagged properly and added to the main list in the end.&#8221;</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<hr />
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/3fiq50p8w_round_monicapig.png" alt="" width="190" /></p>
<h2 style="text-align: center;">Jason Henderson</h2>
<h5 style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.activecampaign.com/consultants/advanced-activecampaign-email-marketing" target="_blank">Certified Consultant </a>and creator of <a href="http://acvideotracker.com/?s=listsvstagsacblog" target="_blank">ACVideoTracker</a></h5>
<h5 style="text-align: center;">Recommends: Don&#8217;t worry about it.</h5>
<p>&#8220;As someone who has been doing email marketing for themselves and clients since 1996 (Yes, that&#8217;s over 20 years), one of the biggest wastes of time for ActiveCampaign users in my opinion is the subject of tags versus lists.</p>
<p>Having worked with multiple companies who do over seven figures a month (not to mention the countless clients who do seven figures a year) and use high-end email service providers like ExactTarget, I&#8217;ll tell you how many of them have worried about eliminating lists or even asked about this subject.</p>
<p>Zero.</p>
<p>Why is that? It&#8217;s simple. There are so many more things email marketers can be focusing on that will actually make you money.</p>
<p>Lists are, and always be, the simplest and most efficient way to organize contacts (Especially when using ActiveCampaign) and targeting the right message&#8230; to the right person&#8230; at the right time. Plus, there&#8217;s nothing preventing you from using both lists and tags for further segmentation and targeting.</p>
<p>Lastly (for now), every single &#8220;reason&#8221; I&#8217;ve seen for eliminating most, if not all, lists are personal preferences. In fact, you can turn most of their reasons into why you want to use lists more.</p>
<p>This is why ActiveCampaign rocks. You get the best of both worlds.&#8221;</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<hr />
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/1gh2hblpl_round_36d8737.png" alt="" width="190" /></p>
<h2 style="text-align: center;">Alex King</h2>
<h5 style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.activecampaign.com/consultants/alex-king" target="_blank">Certified Consultant</a> and CCO at <a href="http://alexkingcreative.com/" target="_blank">Alex King Creative</a></h5>
<h5 style="text-align: center;">Recommends: Lists for demographics and tags for actions &amp; interests.</h5>
<p>&#8220;I believe that business and marketing systems should be as beautiful and organized as they are effective. I think that just like you feel more at peace when your house or desk is clean, your business can function more effectively with organized and structured systems. I can’t tell you have many email marketing platforms I’ve logged in to of my clients (some that even earn millions of dollars) and seen a complete disaster of a management system.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>I see lists with contacts that have unsubscribed and haven’t been deleted.</p>
<blockquote><p><em>Potential Client: “My list has 150,000 contacts”</em><br />
<em>Me: “What’s your average open rate”</em><br />
<em>Potential Client: “Uhh… Erm… Ahem…”</em></p></blockquote>
<p>I see tags with no descriptions or clear references.</p>
<p>Stuff like… “TR MPW 2016 20X &#8211; DO NOT DELETE”</p>
<p>I see entire accounts that have been passed from “expert” to “expert” and not one of them has thought to create a structure or formula for organizing the client’s account.</p>
<p>We can do better&#8230;</p>
<p>The most important thing for me is to trigger Automations based off Tags being added / removed and NEVER from being added to a list. Most of your automations are triggered by a circumstance. Like someone buying a specific product or opting in to a certain funnel. Use these “triggers” as Tags.</p>
<p>I like to use lists to create “demographics” within my ActiveCampaign accounts and prefer to use tags for showing actions or interest.</p>
<p>I find that with the different plugins and integrations that end up being built around a sophisticated marketing system, it’s easy to add a contact to a general or master list without being too worried that they’re in the wrong place. But a tag needs to have specificity to it, because it needs to trigger the right automations &#8211; and only those automations.&#8221;</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<hr />
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/ggkf7isbj_round_charl.png" alt="" width="190" /></p>
<h2 style="text-align: center;">Charl Coetzee</h2>
<h5 style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.activecampaign.com/consultants/real-fortune" target="_blank">Certified Consultant</a> and Senior Managing Partner at <a href="https://myrealfortune.com/" target="_blank">Real Fortune</a></h5>
<h5 style="text-align: center;">Recommends: Lists for relationships and levels of intimacy.</h5>
<p>&#8220;Here at RealFortune, we believe in having different lists based on the level of intimacy in the communication. For example, you would speak one way to your general broadcast list. You speak differently to your low-value clients who have purchased one or two small products. Then you speak another way to your high-value coaching clients. The different relationships map to different lists and different levels of intimacy in the way you speak to your contacts. The likelihood of people leaving a list gets smaller as their level of intimacy increases. As people become disengaged, we move them to a fourth list and purge them from the account every few months, thus protecting your sender reputation and saving money.</p>
<p>By managing lists based on the relationship, we can then refine our criteria to define even more granular segments of your lists. In most cases, we create three lists: a general broadcast and marketing list, a customer list, and the bucket list which we flush from time to time for list hygiene. We typically segment the general broadcast and marketing list based on interest and demographics. You segment the customer list based on purchases and current activity.</p>
<p>This system makes list management a whole lot easier. We can easily exclude people from certain messages because we’ve defined the segments beforehand.&#8221;</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<hr />
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/i752dwbxz_round_kristoff.png" alt="" width="190" /></p>
<h2 style="text-align: center;">Kristoff Henry</h2>
<h5 style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.activecampaign.com/consultants/kristoff-henry" target="_blank">Certified Consultant</a> and <a href="https://magnetischemarketing.be" target="_blank">Freelance Marketer</a></h5>
<h5 style="text-align: center;">Recommends: A list for each type of content and housekeeping lists for automation.</h5>
<p>&#8220;To me there are two types of lists: a content-driven list and a housekeeping list. For a content driven list I ask myself: do I need to send a different type of content to certain contacts. If yes, what do I want to happen if they unsubscribe? If I don’t want them to unsubscribe from everything, but just from that particular type of content, then I will put those contacts in a separate list.</p>
<p>Sometimes, I also have lists that trigger automations for housekeeping: adding tags, changing field information, sending notifications and finally adding the contact to a content-driven list. Once the actions have been carried out, the housekeeping list no longer has a purpose for that contact. This is particularly useful when using third party forms to track where the contact comes from and adding that information as a tag.</p>
<p>For anything else I use tags to build a contact profile and to use as segmentation criteria.&#8221;</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<hr />
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/b7ailic12_round_2fdb2c0.png" alt="" width="190" /></p>
<h2 style="text-align: center;">Sean Tierney</h2>
<h5 style="text-align: center;">Director of Sales &amp; Marketing at <a href="http://pagely.com" target="_blank">Pagely</a> and ActiveCampaign power user</h5>
<h5 style="text-align: center;">Recommends: One list segmented with tags.</h5>
<p>&#8220;I have yet to find anything that can be accomplished with lists that cannot be done better via tag. I prefer to set up one master list and segment everyone within that based on tags. As best I can tell the arguments for doing multiple lists revolve around one of the below (I&#8217;ve put my rebuttal to each after describing the argument):</p>
<ol>
<li>Giving users a <b>more granular way to unsubscribe</b> without nuking their subscription to everything &lt;- IMO this should be achieved with link that sets a segment-specific opt-out tag and you should have conditional logic in your automations that suppresses sends upon presence of this tag. Same thing for campaigns you exclude any segments that have the suppression tags from sends.</li>
<li>From an admin perspective it provides a <b>more convenient way to see how many people are at which stage</b> or subscribed to which list. Same can be accomplished via saved segments and saved searches. Having multiple lists IMO leads to sprawl and multiple ways to accomplish the same thing. All things being equal I would rather have one bulletproof way to do things and not have the cognitive load each time of trying to decide whether it should be a list or a tag.</li>
<li><b>Tag sprawl</b> &lt;- this is addressed by having a sensible tagging taxonomy strategy. One of the useful things I picked up from my time as an Infusionsoft consultant is this nested () nomenclature of doing tags in a way that shows hierarchical structure. So for instance I&#8217;ll do (Segment)(Demographic)(Male) or (Flag)(Training)(Sales) with the most high-level category on the left. This allows you to run searches on the top-level category and keep your tags organized. Tag sprawl can occur independent of this notion of using multiple lists so you should come up with whatever taxonomy strategy is most beneficial given your circumstances regardless of whether you choose to consolidate to a single list or not.</li>
</ol>
<p>The reality of our situation with Pagely is we started using multiple lists and the overhead of changing that setup now doesn&#8217;t merit the advantages of consolidating so but such is life. Anyone I coach at this point setting things up from scratch I steer towards the One List gospel. I would love to hear the arguments from anyone who is a fan of the multiple list approach and will happily stand corrected if there are valid arguments for doing it that way.&#8221;</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<hr />
<h2></h2>
<p><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/t4bn6p9b0_round_d7f3muq22_chris.png" alt="" width="190" /></p>
<h2 style="text-align: center;">Chris Davis</h2>
<h5 style="text-align: center;">ActiveCampaign&#8217;s Director of Education</h5>
<p><b>Lists</b><br />
Lists are a powerful feature in ActiveCampaign but often confusing because their capabilities are mistaken for basic list functionality found in platforms that provide only email marketing.</p>
<p>I like to view, and teach, our users to look at list as the most broad means of communication. That means that people who exist on a list are at the top of the targeting funnel. As you progress downwards this funnel you get more targeted with your messaging thus necessitating the need to use tags and custom fields.</p>
<p>Overall you should use lists for broadly segmenting your database. As your segmenting needs increase you will need to start implementing tags and custom fields.</p>
<p>One thing to note is some third party tools only integrate with ActiveCampaign on a list level. For those types of integrations I recommend you creating a list specific to the third party tool and move contacts to the list of your choice once they have performed some type of engagement after being added via third party.</p>
<p><b>Tags</b><br />
Tags, on the other hand, are a lot more flexible and targeted than lists. They can be applied, and removed, multiple ways and have the ability to represent a more targeted group of contacts. For instance, you may sell apparel and have two separate lists for outerwear and underwear. With tags it&#8217;s possible to target all males across both lists. Thus, giving you more flexibility than lists provide at sending targeted messages.</p>
<p>The usage of tags should help tell a story of what the contact has done, is doing, and help predict what they might do. For that reason I recommend using tags on the most important actions in ActiveCampaign as well as using tags to identify your most important segments. It is very common for users to have a minimal amount of lists (1-3) and use tags to further segment their contact database.</p>
<p><b>Custom Fields</b><br />
Custom fields are the most permanent data the exists in ActiveCampaign. Out of all of the 3 segmentation options custom fields are the only feature that allows you to display its data to your contacts. For instance, if you have captured the type of pet someone owns you can then display that value in outbound communication to make it more personalized.</p>
<p>A good rule of thumb for custom fields is to use them when data will not be changing quickly and you would like to display the value to your contacts in any outbound messaging from ActiveCampaign.</p>
";s:14:"date_timestamp";i:1498149371;}i:5;a:14:{s:5:"title";s:22:"Email as the Interface";s:4:"link";s:59:"https://www.activecampaign.com/blog/email-as-the-interface/";s:8:"comments";s:68:"https://www.activecampaign.com/blog/email-as-the-interface/#comments";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Thu, 30 Mar 2017 18:47:45 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:12:"Jordan Skole";}s:8:"category";s:22:"Email MarketingGeneral";s:4:"guid";s:42:"http://www.activecampaign.com/blog/?p=9442";s:11:"description";s:314:"“Would you buy the report now?” A hipster whizzed by on an electric scooter behind me. The motor whurring as I presented my document to the chain&#8217;s VP of marketing. I handed him a red Sharpie, as I peeled back the first page. “Cross off whatever you don&#8217;t need, and add a little note in [&#8230;]";s:7:"content";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";s:3545:"<p><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/nvx3s2s5p_burger.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="465" /></p>
<p>“Would you buy the report now?”</p>
<p>A hipster whizzed by on an electric scooter behind me. The motor whurring as I presented my document to the chain&#8217;s VP of marketing.</p>
<p>I handed him a red Sharpie, as I peeled back the first page.</p>
<p>“Cross off whatever you don&#8217;t need, and add a little note in the margin if information is missing.”</p>
<p>I was presenting him my “User Interface” or lack thereof. Inside the ~12 printed pages contained several charts, graphs, and numbers. Each one representing the fast-casual burger chain&#8217;s performance across all 14 locations.</p>
<p>Back at the coworking space, my cofounder was anxious to throw some CSS up behind a login screen. He wanted to add little charts that wiggle as they erupt from the bottom of the graph, like tiny organic skyscrapers rising up from the x-axis.</p>
<p>But an interface is just a means to an end.</p>
<p>Your customers don&#8217;t actually need the graph itself (<em>they definitely don&#8217;t need the wiggle</em>). What they need are answers. What they need — is a way to do their job better, faster. To get to of work 1/2 hour early.</p>
<p>Your customers aren&#8217;t paying for your app or service, they are paying to get to their kids&#8217; soccer game on time.</p>
<p>Once you realize this, you realize that you can (and should) bleed your experience outside your walled garden. Any real estate you can transform into a method of communication with your customer, is real estate available to provide value. And email is fantastic real estate.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: center;">8 Examples of Using Email as the Interface</h2>
<p>Using email as an interface is not a new concept. Here are a few examples of emails I have compiled that treat the email as a dashboard to provide information directly to the inbox.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">Lyft</h3>
<p><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/g5jscyth0_lyft.png" alt="" /></p>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">Pebble (rip Pebble)</h3>
<p><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/lir3qzm2e_asmith-pebble.png" alt="" width="700" height="2623" /></p>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">Fitbit</h3>
<p><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/ien2agf6d_fitbit.png" alt="" width="700" height="1740" /></p>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">Fitbit (again)</h3>
<p><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/46lpd64re_fitbit-2015.png" alt="" /></p>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">Conspire</h3>
<p><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/gqhuj23ek_conspire.png" alt="" width="645" height="2186" /></p>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">G Suite (formerly Google Apps)</h3>
<p><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/orvnpdwv4_gsuite.png" alt="" /></p>
<h3 style="text-align: center;"><strong>OnHub</strong></h3>
<p><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/350ashylg_hello-from-onhub.png" alt="" /></p>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">Grammarly</h3>
<p><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/kls0xgocg_grammarly.png" alt="" width="700" height="2470" /><br />
<em>Let us know other examples you have come across of using Email as an Interface and so that we can update this blog post with your examples! </em></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
";}s:3:"wfw";a:1:{s:10:"commentrss";s:64:"https://www.activecampaign.com/blog/email-as-the-interface/feed/";}s:5:"slash";a:1:{s:8:"comments";s:1:"0";}s:7:"summary";s:314:"“Would you buy the report now?” A hipster whizzed by on an electric scooter behind me. The motor whurring as I presented my document to the chain&#8217;s VP of marketing. I handed him a red Sharpie, as I peeled back the first page. “Cross off whatever you don&#8217;t need, and add a little note in [&#8230;]";s:12:"atom_content";s:3545:"<p><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/nvx3s2s5p_burger.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="465" /></p>
<p>“Would you buy the report now?”</p>
<p>A hipster whizzed by on an electric scooter behind me. The motor whurring as I presented my document to the chain&#8217;s VP of marketing.</p>
<p>I handed him a red Sharpie, as I peeled back the first page.</p>
<p>“Cross off whatever you don&#8217;t need, and add a little note in the margin if information is missing.”</p>
<p>I was presenting him my “User Interface” or lack thereof. Inside the ~12 printed pages contained several charts, graphs, and numbers. Each one representing the fast-casual burger chain&#8217;s performance across all 14 locations.</p>
<p>Back at the coworking space, my cofounder was anxious to throw some CSS up behind a login screen. He wanted to add little charts that wiggle as they erupt from the bottom of the graph, like tiny organic skyscrapers rising up from the x-axis.</p>
<p>But an interface is just a means to an end.</p>
<p>Your customers don&#8217;t actually need the graph itself (<em>they definitely don&#8217;t need the wiggle</em>). What they need are answers. What they need — is a way to do their job better, faster. To get to of work 1/2 hour early.</p>
<p>Your customers aren&#8217;t paying for your app or service, they are paying to get to their kids&#8217; soccer game on time.</p>
<p>Once you realize this, you realize that you can (and should) bleed your experience outside your walled garden. Any real estate you can transform into a method of communication with your customer, is real estate available to provide value. And email is fantastic real estate.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: center;">8 Examples of Using Email as the Interface</h2>
<p>Using email as an interface is not a new concept. Here are a few examples of emails I have compiled that treat the email as a dashboard to provide information directly to the inbox.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">Lyft</h3>
<p><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/g5jscyth0_lyft.png" alt="" /></p>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">Pebble (rip Pebble)</h3>
<p><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/lir3qzm2e_asmith-pebble.png" alt="" width="700" height="2623" /></p>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">Fitbit</h3>
<p><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/ien2agf6d_fitbit.png" alt="" width="700" height="1740" /></p>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">Fitbit (again)</h3>
<p><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/46lpd64re_fitbit-2015.png" alt="" /></p>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">Conspire</h3>
<p><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/gqhuj23ek_conspire.png" alt="" width="645" height="2186" /></p>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">G Suite (formerly Google Apps)</h3>
<p><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/orvnpdwv4_gsuite.png" alt="" /></p>
<h3 style="text-align: center;"><strong>OnHub</strong></h3>
<p><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/350ashylg_hello-from-onhub.png" alt="" /></p>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">Grammarly</h3>
<p><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/kls0xgocg_grammarly.png" alt="" width="700" height="2470" /><br />
<em>Let us know other examples you have come across of using Email as an Interface and so that we can update this blog post with your examples! </em></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
";s:14:"date_timestamp";i:1490899665;}i:6;a:14:{s:5:"title";s:21:"Success Hours Trilogy";s:4:"link";s:58:"https://www.activecampaign.com/blog/success-hours-trilogy/";s:8:"comments";s:67:"https://www.activecampaign.com/blog/success-hours-trilogy/#comments";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Tue, 23 Aug 2016 20:30:36 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:11:"Brian Gladu";}s:8:"category";s:22:"Email MarketingGeneral";s:4:"guid";s:42:"http://www.activecampaign.com/blog/?p=8510";s:11:"description";s:368:"I am happy to give you three recordings of Success Hours with Kelly (and now Megan)! This is a story stuffed with amazing insights, tips, deep dives, and very actionable use-cases for all types of businesses. It stars marketing automation heroines that are simply amazing in their performances. These episodes are &#8220;cannot miss&#8221; installments. When [&#8230;]";s:7:"content";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";s:7357:"<p style="text-align: left;">I am happy to give you three recordings of <a href="https://www.activecampaign.com/training/">Success Hours with Kelly (and now Megan)!</a> This is a story stuffed with amazing insights, tips, deep dives, and very actionable use-cases for all types of businesses. It stars marketing automation heroines that are simply amazing in their performances. These episodes are &#8220;cannot miss&#8221; installments.</p>
<p>When viewing, please make sure that you click the links to take advantage of Full Screen Mode, so that you can see what&#8217;s going on in-app.</p>
<p>First up, is Kelly&#8217;s comprehensive overview of our New Contact &amp; Deal Management BETA. While this webinar goes into the update and more use-specific cases, you can read about the entire release, background and how to upgrade<a href="http://www.activecampaign.com/blog/deals-crm-beta/"> here</a>. When you go to join the BETA, you&#8217;ll see a very granular overview of all the new features and functionality on the self-service update page.</p>
<p>Diving in was a fantastic experience for me, even as I&#8217;ve been working in the new update for a couple months now, I was still able to learn a few new pieces of the update.</p>
<p>For example, you can fully customize how your Deal cards look and prioritize, so that you can make our intuitive, graceful Kanban board entirely yours and have your deals reflect your priorities. That&#8217;s just one of the many cool features that Kelly highlights in the following webinar. Others include a unified interface for contacts &amp; deals, the ability to associate multiple contacts to a deal, updated permissions structure, <a href="http://www.activecampaign.com/blog/deals-crm-beta/">and more.</a></p>
<p><strong>Click below to learn more!</strong></p>
<p><a href="https://vimeo.com/176510029"><img class="alignnone" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/l8tri3b6_image(55).png" alt="" width="640" height="360" /></a></p>
<p>Next up, we have our most recent webinar detailing all of our Automation Start Triggers. This was a highly requested topic, and we were happy to dig into our numerous ways to begin an automated workflow. Currently, we have 20 start triggers (21 if you count <i>not</i> having a trigger as a trigger).</p>
<p>We&#8217;ve all run into the fabled “Blank Canvas.” It&#8217;s part of any creative endeavor. It&#8217;s a pretty unique moment where the boundless possibilities of your creativity comes to a crossroad of sorts, and having so many options leads to a choice paradox&#8230;like me on a Friday night with my Chromecast.</p>
<p><img class="" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/953j6kawz_screenrecording2016-08-05at11.00am(1).gif" alt="" width="640" height="452" /></p>
<p>However, with this Success Hours, we sought to enlighten and inspire the vast possibilities available to you.</p>
<p>Below is a list of all the triggers outlined by Kelly. Each trigger has a use-case, and a short example of how it can be utilized.</p>
<ol>
<li><b>Subscribes</b> &#8211; to a list</li>
<li><b>Unsubscribes</b> &#8211; from a list</li>
<li><b>Submits a form</b> &#8211; any or specific</li>
<li><b>Open/reads an email</b> &#8211; choose between campaigns and personal emails</li>
<li><b>Clicks a link in an email</b> &#8211; any or specific link</li>
<li><b>Web page is visited -</b> exact or wildcard URLs available</li>
<li><b>Event is recorded</b></li>
<li><b>Shares an email</b></li>
<li><b>Forwards an email</b></li>
<li><b>Replies to an email</b> &#8211; choose between campaigns and personal emails</li>
<li><b>Tag is added</b></li>
<li><b>Tag is removed</b></li>
<li><b>Contact field value changes &#8211; </b>choose between added or updated</li>
<li><b>Goal is Achieved</b> &#8211; <a href="http://www.activecampaign.com/blog/automation-goals/">learn more from this blog post</a> or this <a href="https://vimeo.com/168813114">episode of Success Hours </a></li>
<li><b>Date Based</b> &#8211; <a href="http://www.activecampaign.com/blog/date-based-trigger/">Learn more about updates made to this trigger </a></li>
<li><b>RSS based</b> &#8211; select all or segmented contacts &#8211; <a href="http://www.activecampaign.com/blog/new-rss-based-automation-trigger/">Learn more from this blog post</a></li>
<li><b>Score changes &#8211; </b>choose between deal score and engagement</li>
<li><b>Enters a pipeline</b></li>
<li><b>Deal stage changes a pipeline </b></li>
<li><b>Deal status changes</b></li>
<li>&#8230;no trigger!</li>
</ol>
<p><em>Advanced: Segment your contacts based upon your automation triggers. </em></p>
<p><strong>Click below to learn more about all of our triggers.</strong></p>
<p><a href="https://vimeo.com/177451389"><img class="alignnone" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/n1potgcah_image(56).png" alt="" width="640" height="360" /></a></p>
<p>It would be pretty mean to give you all these triggers, and no automations, right?</p>
<p>Well, we thought it would be, so last, but certainly not least, is our Success Hours that goes into the nitty gritty of some of our most popular automations.</p>
<p>This is a pretty cool episode of Success Hours for two reasons really. Firstly, joining us for her inaugural webinar is Megan from our Customer Success team! Second, this is a pretty hands on episode, we go through every single step that goes into building four of our most popular automations we see users building, implementing, and growing their businesses. <strong>Click below</strong> to watch Megan build out a Webinar Registration, Internal Field Update, Welcome Series, and an Event/Post-Purchase Follow-up sequence.</p>
<p><a href="https://vimeo.com/178361049"><img class="alignnone" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/rmh6wnwqv_30988f59e033b8e22d011daec0ce923e.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="360" /></a></p>
<p>After you&#8217;ve watched the recording, put the automations to work!</p>
<p style="text-align: center;">Webinar Registration</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://tplshare.com/8TRVU5X"><img class="alignnone" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/cnzprt0bd_ltkufr5n9_get-automation-button.png" alt="" width="250" height="53" /></a></p>
<p style="text-align: center;">Internal Field Update</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://tplshare.com/o28LOMI"><img class="alignnone" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/cnzprt0bd_ltkufr5n9_get-automation-button.png" alt="" width="250" height="53" /></a></p>
<p style="text-align: center;">Welcome Series</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://tplshare.com/3VSFFa9"><img class="alignnone" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/cnzprt0bd_ltkufr5n9_get-automation-button.png" alt="" width="250" height="53" /></a></p>
<p style="text-align: center;">Event/Post Purchase Follow-up</p>
<p><a href="http://tplshare.com/Auslz$_"><img class="alignnone aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/cnzprt0bd_ltkufr5n9_get-automation-button.png" alt="" width="250" height="53" /></a></p>
<p>There you go! Now that you&#8217;ve watched Stranger Things, you have something else to binge on! Enjoy.</p>
<p>Make sure to tweet your ideas for upcoming webinars to <a href="https://twitter.com/ActiveCampaign" target="_blank">@activecampaign</a> and make sure to use the #successhours hashtag.</p>
";}s:3:"wfw";a:1:{s:10:"commentrss";s:63:"https://www.activecampaign.com/blog/success-hours-trilogy/feed/";}s:5:"slash";a:1:{s:8:"comments";s:1:"4";}s:7:"summary";s:368:"I am happy to give you three recordings of Success Hours with Kelly (and now Megan)! This is a story stuffed with amazing insights, tips, deep dives, and very actionable use-cases for all types of businesses. It stars marketing automation heroines that are simply amazing in their performances. These episodes are &#8220;cannot miss&#8221; installments. When [&#8230;]";s:12:"atom_content";s:7357:"<p style="text-align: left;">I am happy to give you three recordings of <a href="https://www.activecampaign.com/training/">Success Hours with Kelly (and now Megan)!</a> This is a story stuffed with amazing insights, tips, deep dives, and very actionable use-cases for all types of businesses. It stars marketing automation heroines that are simply amazing in their performances. These episodes are &#8220;cannot miss&#8221; installments.</p>
<p>When viewing, please make sure that you click the links to take advantage of Full Screen Mode, so that you can see what&#8217;s going on in-app.</p>
<p>First up, is Kelly&#8217;s comprehensive overview of our New Contact &amp; Deal Management BETA. While this webinar goes into the update and more use-specific cases, you can read about the entire release, background and how to upgrade<a href="http://www.activecampaign.com/blog/deals-crm-beta/"> here</a>. When you go to join the BETA, you&#8217;ll see a very granular overview of all the new features and functionality on the self-service update page.</p>
<p>Diving in was a fantastic experience for me, even as I&#8217;ve been working in the new update for a couple months now, I was still able to learn a few new pieces of the update.</p>
<p>For example, you can fully customize how your Deal cards look and prioritize, so that you can make our intuitive, graceful Kanban board entirely yours and have your deals reflect your priorities. That&#8217;s just one of the many cool features that Kelly highlights in the following webinar. Others include a unified interface for contacts &amp; deals, the ability to associate multiple contacts to a deal, updated permissions structure, <a href="http://www.activecampaign.com/blog/deals-crm-beta/">and more.</a></p>
<p><strong>Click below to learn more!</strong></p>
<p><a href="https://vimeo.com/176510029"><img class="alignnone" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/l8tri3b6_image(55).png" alt="" width="640" height="360" /></a></p>
<p>Next up, we have our most recent webinar detailing all of our Automation Start Triggers. This was a highly requested topic, and we were happy to dig into our numerous ways to begin an automated workflow. Currently, we have 20 start triggers (21 if you count <i>not</i> having a trigger as a trigger).</p>
<p>We&#8217;ve all run into the fabled “Blank Canvas.” It&#8217;s part of any creative endeavor. It&#8217;s a pretty unique moment where the boundless possibilities of your creativity comes to a crossroad of sorts, and having so many options leads to a choice paradox&#8230;like me on a Friday night with my Chromecast.</p>
<p><img class="" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/953j6kawz_screenrecording2016-08-05at11.00am(1).gif" alt="" width="640" height="452" /></p>
<p>However, with this Success Hours, we sought to enlighten and inspire the vast possibilities available to you.</p>
<p>Below is a list of all the triggers outlined by Kelly. Each trigger has a use-case, and a short example of how it can be utilized.</p>
<ol>
<li><b>Subscribes</b> &#8211; to a list</li>
<li><b>Unsubscribes</b> &#8211; from a list</li>
<li><b>Submits a form</b> &#8211; any or specific</li>
<li><b>Open/reads an email</b> &#8211; choose between campaigns and personal emails</li>
<li><b>Clicks a link in an email</b> &#8211; any or specific link</li>
<li><b>Web page is visited -</b> exact or wildcard URLs available</li>
<li><b>Event is recorded</b></li>
<li><b>Shares an email</b></li>
<li><b>Forwards an email</b></li>
<li><b>Replies to an email</b> &#8211; choose between campaigns and personal emails</li>
<li><b>Tag is added</b></li>
<li><b>Tag is removed</b></li>
<li><b>Contact field value changes &#8211; </b>choose between added or updated</li>
<li><b>Goal is Achieved</b> &#8211; <a href="http://www.activecampaign.com/blog/automation-goals/">learn more from this blog post</a> or this <a href="https://vimeo.com/168813114">episode of Success Hours </a></li>
<li><b>Date Based</b> &#8211; <a href="http://www.activecampaign.com/blog/date-based-trigger/">Learn more about updates made to this trigger </a></li>
<li><b>RSS based</b> &#8211; select all or segmented contacts &#8211; <a href="http://www.activecampaign.com/blog/new-rss-based-automation-trigger/">Learn more from this blog post</a></li>
<li><b>Score changes &#8211; </b>choose between deal score and engagement</li>
<li><b>Enters a pipeline</b></li>
<li><b>Deal stage changes a pipeline </b></li>
<li><b>Deal status changes</b></li>
<li>&#8230;no trigger!</li>
</ol>
<p><em>Advanced: Segment your contacts based upon your automation triggers. </em></p>
<p><strong>Click below to learn more about all of our triggers.</strong></p>
<p><a href="https://vimeo.com/177451389"><img class="alignnone" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/n1potgcah_image(56).png" alt="" width="640" height="360" /></a></p>
<p>It would be pretty mean to give you all these triggers, and no automations, right?</p>
<p>Well, we thought it would be, so last, but certainly not least, is our Success Hours that goes into the nitty gritty of some of our most popular automations.</p>
<p>This is a pretty cool episode of Success Hours for two reasons really. Firstly, joining us for her inaugural webinar is Megan from our Customer Success team! Second, this is a pretty hands on episode, we go through every single step that goes into building four of our most popular automations we see users building, implementing, and growing their businesses. <strong>Click below</strong> to watch Megan build out a Webinar Registration, Internal Field Update, Welcome Series, and an Event/Post-Purchase Follow-up sequence.</p>
<p><a href="https://vimeo.com/178361049"><img class="alignnone" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/rmh6wnwqv_30988f59e033b8e22d011daec0ce923e.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="360" /></a></p>
<p>After you&#8217;ve watched the recording, put the automations to work!</p>
<p style="text-align: center;">Webinar Registration</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://tplshare.com/8TRVU5X"><img class="alignnone" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/cnzprt0bd_ltkufr5n9_get-automation-button.png" alt="" width="250" height="53" /></a></p>
<p style="text-align: center;">Internal Field Update</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://tplshare.com/o28LOMI"><img class="alignnone" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/cnzprt0bd_ltkufr5n9_get-automation-button.png" alt="" width="250" height="53" /></a></p>
<p style="text-align: center;">Welcome Series</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://tplshare.com/3VSFFa9"><img class="alignnone" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/cnzprt0bd_ltkufr5n9_get-automation-button.png" alt="" width="250" height="53" /></a></p>
<p style="text-align: center;">Event/Post Purchase Follow-up</p>
<p><a href="http://tplshare.com/Auslz$_"><img class="alignnone aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/cnzprt0bd_ltkufr5n9_get-automation-button.png" alt="" width="250" height="53" /></a></p>
<p>There you go! Now that you&#8217;ve watched Stranger Things, you have something else to binge on! Enjoy.</p>
<p>Make sure to tweet your ideas for upcoming webinars to <a href="https://twitter.com/ActiveCampaign" target="_blank">@activecampaign</a> and make sure to use the #successhours hashtag.</p>
";s:14:"date_timestamp";i:1471984236;}i:7;a:14:{s:5:"title";s:53:"Engagement Management Webinar Recording Now Available";s:4:"link";s:66:"https://www.activecampaign.com/blog/engagement-management-webinar/";s:8:"comments";s:75:"https://www.activecampaign.com/blog/engagement-management-webinar/#comments";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Fri, 08 Jul 2016 20:56:08 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:11:"Brian Gladu";}s:8:"category";s:31:"Email MarketingGeneralMarketing";s:4:"guid";s:42:"http://www.activecampaign.com/blog/?p=8334";s:11:"description";s:340:"Click here for full screen Thanks to everyone that&#8217;s been attending and participating in our new series of webinars. We&#8217;re very happy with the response and reception and we&#8217;re excited to keep these webinars coming! If you have topics you would like for us to cover, make sure to post them in the comments section [&#8230;]";s:7:"content";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";s:2986:"<p><iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/173650023" width="640" height="360" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><strong><a href="https://vimeo.com/173650023" target="_blank">Click here for full screen</a></strong></p>
<p>Thanks to everyone that&#8217;s been attending and participating in our new series of webinars. We&#8217;re very happy with the response and reception and we&#8217;re excited to keep these webinars coming! If you have topics you would like for us to cover, make sure to post them in the comments section or tweet us at <a href="https://twitter.com/activecampaign">@activecampaign</a>.</p>
<p>In this webinar, Kelly O&#8217;Connell, Head of Customer Success, dove deep into the nuances and best practices of engagement management. With most user lists seeing an annual depreciation of 25% in their engagement, this is one of the most important strategies you can employ as part of you marketing strategy. Don&#8217;t be alarmed, this is a normal statistic, and when you take on engagement management, you&#8217;ll see three very positive outcomes: increased conversions, better segmentation options, and constant high deliverability.</p>
<p>As always, Kelly then breaks down what you can <i>do</i> to ensure health engagement. Kelly highlights two key components to any burgeoning engagement management implementation: permission &amp; testing.</p>
<p>By permission, one must be transparent and upfront with your contacts, and here are Kelly&#8217;s four foundational facets &#8211; dig in:</p>
<ul>
<li>A clean, concise opt-in</li>
<li>Implementing a preference center</li>
<li>Deploying a welcome series</li>
<li>Utilizing clear, easy to find unsubscribe links</li>
</ul>
<p>After implementing these tactics, one must be open to testing. Engagement management is certainly not a static practice, and one much constantly iterate to cater to the needs of their contacts.</p>
<p>While there are hundreds of aspects one can test, Kelly highlighted three pieces of low-hanging fruit:</p>
<ul>
<li>Testing your From name (must be from a valid email address)</li>
<li>Subject lines (for example: CTAs vs no CTAs)</li>
<li>Message content</li>
</ul>
<p>As it&#8217;s sometimes difficult to get started, and you might be staring at that “blank canvas” that all of us have encountered, Kelly demonstrated a engagement tagging automation you can implement right away. It was graciously shared by one our users, Matt Fox in a previous blog post. <a href="http://www.activecampaign.com/blog/automations-to-track-and-engage-your-contacts/" target="_blank">Click here to get going</a>.</p>
<p>You can also find alternate pre-built engagement management workflows in our Automation Recipes as seen below:</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/lczdmgpwy_image(54).png" alt="" width="630" height="382" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;">We&#8217;ll be holding our next webinar soon, so keep a lookout!</p>
";}s:3:"wfw";a:1:{s:10:"commentrss";s:71:"https://www.activecampaign.com/blog/engagement-management-webinar/feed/";}s:5:"slash";a:1:{s:8:"comments";s:1:"2";}s:7:"summary";s:340:"Click here for full screen Thanks to everyone that&#8217;s been attending and participating in our new series of webinars. We&#8217;re very happy with the response and reception and we&#8217;re excited to keep these webinars coming! If you have topics you would like for us to cover, make sure to post them in the comments section [&#8230;]";s:12:"atom_content";s:2986:"<p><iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/173650023" width="640" height="360" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><strong><a href="https://vimeo.com/173650023" target="_blank">Click here for full screen</a></strong></p>
<p>Thanks to everyone that&#8217;s been attending and participating in our new series of webinars. We&#8217;re very happy with the response and reception and we&#8217;re excited to keep these webinars coming! If you have topics you would like for us to cover, make sure to post them in the comments section or tweet us at <a href="https://twitter.com/activecampaign">@activecampaign</a>.</p>
<p>In this webinar, Kelly O&#8217;Connell, Head of Customer Success, dove deep into the nuances and best practices of engagement management. With most user lists seeing an annual depreciation of 25% in their engagement, this is one of the most important strategies you can employ as part of you marketing strategy. Don&#8217;t be alarmed, this is a normal statistic, and when you take on engagement management, you&#8217;ll see three very positive outcomes: increased conversions, better segmentation options, and constant high deliverability.</p>
<p>As always, Kelly then breaks down what you can <i>do</i> to ensure health engagement. Kelly highlights two key components to any burgeoning engagement management implementation: permission &amp; testing.</p>
<p>By permission, one must be transparent and upfront with your contacts, and here are Kelly&#8217;s four foundational facets &#8211; dig in:</p>
<ul>
<li>A clean, concise opt-in</li>
<li>Implementing a preference center</li>
<li>Deploying a welcome series</li>
<li>Utilizing clear, easy to find unsubscribe links</li>
</ul>
<p>After implementing these tactics, one must be open to testing. Engagement management is certainly not a static practice, and one much constantly iterate to cater to the needs of their contacts.</p>
<p>While there are hundreds of aspects one can test, Kelly highlighted three pieces of low-hanging fruit:</p>
<ul>
<li>Testing your From name (must be from a valid email address)</li>
<li>Subject lines (for example: CTAs vs no CTAs)</li>
<li>Message content</li>
</ul>
<p>As it&#8217;s sometimes difficult to get started, and you might be staring at that “blank canvas” that all of us have encountered, Kelly demonstrated a engagement tagging automation you can implement right away. It was graciously shared by one our users, Matt Fox in a previous blog post. <a href="http://www.activecampaign.com/blog/automations-to-track-and-engage-your-contacts/" target="_blank">Click here to get going</a>.</p>
<p>You can also find alternate pre-built engagement management workflows in our Automation Recipes as seen below:</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/lczdmgpwy_image(54).png" alt="" width="630" height="382" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;">We&#8217;ll be holding our next webinar soon, so keep a lookout!</p>
";s:14:"date_timestamp";i:1468011368;}i:8;a:14:{s:5:"title";s:44:"Contact & Lead Scoring Webinar Now Available";s:4:"link";s:65:"https://www.activecampaign.com/blog/contact-lead-scoring-webinar/";s:8:"comments";s:74:"https://www.activecampaign.com/blog/contact-lead-scoring-webinar/#comments";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Thu, 23 Jun 2016 16:30:52 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:11:"Brian Gladu";}s:8:"category";s:38:"Email MarketingMarketingSmall Business";s:4:"guid";s:42:"http://www.activecampaign.com/blog/?p=8272";s:11:"description";s:357:"The amazing Kelly O&#8217;Connell is back with another Success Hour webinar. This time she covers one of my favorite features — Contact &#38; Lead Scoring. Our scoring feature is one the best. It&#8217;s infinitely flexible and you can score on a wide-range of factors and data to create multi-dimensional scores for product fit, engagement, and [&#8230;]";s:7:"content";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";s:2547:"<p>The amazing Kelly O&#8217;Connell is back with <a href="https://vimeo.com/171805307" target="_blank">another Success Hour webinar</a>. This time she covers one of my favorite features — Contact &amp; Lead Scoring.</p>
<p><a href="https://vimeo.com/171805307" target="_blank"><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/sh05rdipc_image(6).png" alt="" width="700" /></a><br />
</p>
<p>Our scoring feature is one the best. It&#8217;s infinitely flexible and you can score on a wide-range of factors and data to create multi-dimensional scores for product fit, engagement, and more.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, lead scoring is a misunderstood tool. Whenever I get the chance, I try to make the point that <strong>scoring is for marketers too!</strong> It&#8217;s so much more than just a sales tool for sales people. It&#8217;s been unfairly confined to that tiny, little box and we&#8217;re on a mission to make that box bigger.</p>
<p>The ability to boil vast amounts of behavioral and demographic data into a simple numerical value is useful to salesmen, sure, so they can rank and prioritize their leads, but, marketers can use it to:</p>
<ul>
<li>Identify contact&#8217;s interests and begin targeted follow-up with relevant offers and content</li>
<li>Define and create marketing qualified leads then automatically pass them onto sales</li>
<li>Increase or decrease the frequency of sending based on how engaged a contact is</li>
<li>Identify advocates and give them resources to promote your company (and reward them when they do)</li>
<li>Track the success of their onboarding process and automatically reach out to customers that have disengaged.</li>
</ul>
<p>In <a href="https://vimeo.com/171805307" target="_blank">this webinar</a>, Kelly explains:</p>
<ul>
<li>Why you&#8217;d want to use lead scoring</li>
<li>How to set up lead scoring in ActiveCampaign</li>
<li>Best practices for creating an effective lead scoring system</li>
<li>How to leverage scores to improve your marketing and sales processes</li>
</ul>
<p>It&#8217;s about 40 minutes long and well worth your time if you&#8217;re struggling with leveraging all the data you&#8217;ve collected or want to create more customized, personalized experiences for your contacts.</p>
<p><a href="https://vimeo.com/171805307" target="_blank">Click here to watch it now on Vimeo.</a></p>
<p>Do you have any idea for a future Success Hour webinar? What would you like us to cover?<a href="https://ac.activehosted.com/f/2088" target="_blank"> Let us know</a>!</p>
";}s:3:"wfw";a:1:{s:10:"commentrss";s:70:"https://www.activecampaign.com/blog/contact-lead-scoring-webinar/feed/";}s:5:"slash";a:1:{s:8:"comments";s:1:"3";}s:7:"summary";s:357:"The amazing Kelly O&#8217;Connell is back with another Success Hour webinar. This time she covers one of my favorite features — Contact &#38; Lead Scoring. Our scoring feature is one the best. It&#8217;s infinitely flexible and you can score on a wide-range of factors and data to create multi-dimensional scores for product fit, engagement, and [&#8230;]";s:12:"atom_content";s:2547:"<p>The amazing Kelly O&#8217;Connell is back with <a href="https://vimeo.com/171805307" target="_blank">another Success Hour webinar</a>. This time she covers one of my favorite features — Contact &amp; Lead Scoring.</p>
<p><a href="https://vimeo.com/171805307" target="_blank"><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/sh05rdipc_image(6).png" alt="" width="700" /></a><br />
</p>
<p>Our scoring feature is one the best. It&#8217;s infinitely flexible and you can score on a wide-range of factors and data to create multi-dimensional scores for product fit, engagement, and more.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, lead scoring is a misunderstood tool. Whenever I get the chance, I try to make the point that <strong>scoring is for marketers too!</strong> It&#8217;s so much more than just a sales tool for sales people. It&#8217;s been unfairly confined to that tiny, little box and we&#8217;re on a mission to make that box bigger.</p>
<p>The ability to boil vast amounts of behavioral and demographic data into a simple numerical value is useful to salesmen, sure, so they can rank and prioritize their leads, but, marketers can use it to:</p>
<ul>
<li>Identify contact&#8217;s interests and begin targeted follow-up with relevant offers and content</li>
<li>Define and create marketing qualified leads then automatically pass them onto sales</li>
<li>Increase or decrease the frequency of sending based on how engaged a contact is</li>
<li>Identify advocates and give them resources to promote your company (and reward them when they do)</li>
<li>Track the success of their onboarding process and automatically reach out to customers that have disengaged.</li>
</ul>
<p>In <a href="https://vimeo.com/171805307" target="_blank">this webinar</a>, Kelly explains:</p>
<ul>
<li>Why you&#8217;d want to use lead scoring</li>
<li>How to set up lead scoring in ActiveCampaign</li>
<li>Best practices for creating an effective lead scoring system</li>
<li>How to leverage scores to improve your marketing and sales processes</li>
</ul>
<p>It&#8217;s about 40 minutes long and well worth your time if you&#8217;re struggling with leveraging all the data you&#8217;ve collected or want to create more customized, personalized experiences for your contacts.</p>
<p><a href="https://vimeo.com/171805307" target="_blank">Click here to watch it now on Vimeo.</a></p>
<p>Do you have any idea for a future Success Hour webinar? What would you like us to cover?<a href="https://ac.activehosted.com/f/2088" target="_blank"> Let us know</a>!</p>
";s:14:"date_timestamp";i:1466699452;}i:9;a:14:{s:5:"title";s:71:"6 Inbound Marketing Experts Reveal the 6 Enduring Keys to List Building";s:4:"link";s:58:"https://www.activecampaign.com/blog/keys-to-list-building/";s:8:"comments";s:67:"https://www.activecampaign.com/blog/keys-to-list-building/#comments";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Wed, 06 Jan 2016 16:32:39 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:11:"Brian Gladu";}s:8:"category";s:15:"Email Marketing";s:4:"guid";s:42:"http://www.activecampaign.com/blog/?p=7754";s:11:"description";s:347:"Every marketing blog has a post on list building so when I started this post I knew it would have to be extraordinary to stand out. So, I contacted a “dream team” of inbound marketing experts and companies known for their innovative list building: Brian Dean (Backlinko) Neil Patel (HelloBar and NeilPatel.com) Grant Thomas (JustUno) [&#8230;]";s:7:"content";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";s:28516:"<p><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/c2euve92n_6.jpg" alt="" width="675" /><br />
<script src="https://activecampaignforms.activehosted.com/f/embed.php?id=17" type="text/javascript"></script><br />
<i>Every</i> marketing blog has a post on list building so when I started this post I knew it would have to be extraordinary to stand out.</p>
<p>So, I contacted a “dream team” of inbound marketing experts and companies known for their innovative list building:</p>
<ul>
<li>Brian Dean (<a href="http://backlinko.com/" target="_blank">Backlinko</a>)</li>
<li>Neil Patel (<a href="https://www.hellobar.com/" target="_blank">HelloBar</a> and <a href="http://www.neilpatel.com" target="_blank">NeilPatel.com</a>)</li>
<li>Grant Thomas (<a href="https://www.justuno.com/" target="_blank">JustUno</a>)</li>
<li>Noah Kagan (<a href="https://sumome.com/" target="_blank">SumoMe</a>)</li>
<li>Chris Davis (<a href="http://www.leadpages.net/" target="_blank">Leadpages</a>)</li>
<li>Kevan Lee (<a href="https://buffer.com" target="_blank">Buffer</a>)</li>
</ul>
<p>I asked these experts to reveal their latest and greatest list building and opt-in conversion strategies, and provide the data.</p>
<p>The topic was “List Building: What’s Working <i>Right <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Now</span></i>.” The focus was on revealing the list-building tactics and opt-in optimizations that are working best <i>at this exact moment</i>, in January 2016.</p>
<p>That’s still what this post is, but not really.</p>
<p></p>
<p>The direction of this post changed when I saw what these experts had to say&#8230;</p>
<p>As responses started to trickle in, first from Brian Dean and Neil Patel, and then from Noah Kagan and Kevan Lee, I noticed that <b>what’s working best <i>right now</i> is actually <i>what has always worked</i>.</b></p>
<p>The specific tactics that are working best have evolved, there are some especially effective new ways to display forms and improve your opt-in rate, and we’ll cover those strategies in depth, but<b> the underlying principles that increase your opt-in rate have stayed the same.</b></p>
<p>The revelation for me was: <b>there isn’t actually anything “new”</b>— the strategies that work best today are variations on unchanging themes that have worked best for years, and aren’t going to change any time soon.</p>
<p>I’ve listed them as the “6 immutable laws of list building.” Given the amount of data backing them up, these are probably the closest thing we have to laws in inbound marketing.</p>
<p>In fact, understanding these unchanging list building principles is the key to creating new opt-in offers and forms that work even better than what we are using today. If you are interested in getting ahead of the game, you’ll find some way to innovate based on, and within, the “rules” outlined here.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: center;">Why is list building still important in 2016 (and beyond)?</h2>
<p>Your opt-in forms are the crux of your inbound marketing.</p>
<p>Everything else is simply setting up the moment you present your lead gen form to visitors.</p>
<p>All the ads you’ve bought, all the content you’ve poured yourself into, all the SEO research and tweaking, is just so you can show your lead those simple input fields, in hopes they’ll raise their hand and say, “I want to hear more from you.”</p>
<p>It’s here that the resources you’ve invested into traffic generation pay off or get wasted. If your forms suck or your offer is off, your time and money spent on traffic generation is wasted in proportion.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>If your opt-in rate is 20% lower than it could be, 20% of your ad budget and time spent creating content is being wasted. You’ll have 20% less resources to reinvest back into marketing, advertising, and sales, you’ll have 20% less word-of-mouth referrals, 20% less repeat sales, leading to a vicious cycle of limited resources, missed opportunity, and hobbled growth.</em></p>
<p>The thing is a 20% improvement is extremely conservative. Unless you have a highly optimized offer and form, you could feasibly 2x or even 3x your current opt-in rate.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s not a perfect relationship, but that&#8217;s similar to getting 2-3 times as much traffic to your website at no additional expense.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: center;">The top of your funnel is <i>needlessly</i> narrowed&#8230;</h2>
<p>Ads may be expensive, SEO is engineered to be a crapshoot, and content is time-consuming to produce but, improving your opt-in rate?</p>
<p>That fruit is hanging so low, you’d have to reach down to pick it.</p>
<p>Simple changes in form placement, design, color, and verbiage, can dramatically widen the top of your funnel so you squeeze more opportunity out of your existing traffic, and convert more visitors into paying customers, thus maximizing the ROI of all the resources you invest into your inbound marketing.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: center;">The 6 Enduring Principles of List Building</h2>
<p>There are six foundational rules for generating as many opt-ins as possible. These aren’t theories you’ll have to test. The experiments have been run, the data is in, and this is what has proven to work time and time again.</p>
<p>These are as close to “laws” as you’ll get in inbound marketing:</p>
<h2 style="text-align: center;">1. The More Forms You Display,<br />
the More Opt-ins You’ll Get</h2>
<p>The more opportunities you give people to opt-in, the more they will.</p>
<p>Brian Dean recommended <i>at least</i> three forms per page with one appearing above the fold.</p>
<p><a href="https://blog.bufferapp.com/get-more-email-subscribers-how-we-doubled-email-signups" target="_blank">Buffer famously doubled their opt-in rate</a> by going from one opt- in form on their blog to five and adding four more opt-in forms to their social media accounts.</p>
<p>Just by pasting code into eight more pages, they went from getting 2,500 new email contacts each week to getting more than 5,400. That’s over twice as many incoming leads!</p>
<p>Chris Davis of Leadpages suggested placing high-value offers at:</p>
<ol>
<li>The end of all blog posts</li>
<li>Top of the blog (<a href="http://www.hellobar.com" target="_blank">HelloBar</a>)</li>
<li>Your blog&#8217;s sidebar</li>
<li>Top of your blog (under navigation)</li>
</ol>
<p><i>Takeaway: Put your forms </i><span style="text-decoration: underline;">everywhere</span> and use different display formats.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: center;">2. The More Desirable the Incentive,<br />
the More Opt-ins You’ll Get</h2>
<p>An opt-in is a trade. The subscriber gives you a portion of their inbox and attention while putting themselves at risk of annoyance, wasted time, and possibly spam.</p>
<p>It’s not an insignificant risk and, what’s more, you’ve got to pull them away from what they are doing, overcoming the momentum of their original intent. No one is surfing the interwebs hunting for opt-in boxes to fill their empty inbox.</p>
<p>They are on your website for some other purpose, so their decision to opt-in is a departure from their reason for being there. You’ve got to interrupt their attention and motivate them to do something they did not plan on doing.</p>
<p>While researching this post I found some list-building advice from 2002. The author used Franklin Covey as their example of stellar list-building tactics because they prominently offered product updates at the top of their homepage, motivating the author to opt-in.</p>
<p>Using the Wayback machine, I was able to find the offer he referenced:</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/q3chueoz7_image2016-01-05at7.31.51am.png" alt="" /></p>
<p>Franklin Covey of the early 2000’s is almost ambivalent, “Oh, sure, you can opt-in, if you really want to…” I’m not picking on them, this was the norm back then, and they deserved the praise for positioning their offer so prominently on their homepage when so few companies were focused on list-building at that time.</p>
<p>A lot has changed over the last 13 years. The “content marketing arms race” we’ve all been participating in since then has led to an escalation of incentives. No one is offering “product updates” as their primary list building tactic anymore.</p>
<p>I went to Franklin Covey’s website to see how their strategy has evolved. Their homepage opt-in incentive has changed:</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/0swej15ox_screenshot2015-12-09at4.09.59pm.png" alt="" /></p>
<p>After clicking, you are redirected to an <a href="http://www.franklincovey.com/books/the5choices/" target="_blank">entire long-form landing page</a> describing the book in depth, including video chapter overviews, testimonials, and more:</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/efk4bqja_screenshot2015-12-09at3.58.56pm.png" alt="" width="600" /></p>
<p>… and finally they display the opt-in form after you’ve clicked “Get the first chapter:”</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/jcdopwnv7_screenshot2015-12-09at4.00.33pm.png" alt="" /></p>
<p>It’s not just Franklin Covey, we are all working harder than ever to get opt-ins. We’ve become more protective of our inboxes, time, and attention. To make “the trade” we expect something of value upfront.</p>
<p>Throughout this post we’ll cover examples of the <strong>specific kind of highly desirable incentives that are working particularly well right now.</strong> For now, the point is that the more value your incentive provides, the more appealing you can make it, the more opt-ins you’ll get.</p>
<p><i>Takeaway: Offer something extraordinarily desirable so visitors are motivated to make “the trade.” </i></p>
<h2>3. The Less You Ask For,<br />
the More Opt-ins You’ll Get</h2>
<h3>Use Micro-Commitments</h3>
<p>This tip comes from Grant Thomas, JustUno, “Micro-commitments are small actions that you ask visitors to perform leading up to a bigger conversion step. In our case of promotions, the higher conversion step would be an email opt-in or purchase.</p>
<p>Simply pose a question like “Want a discount?” Then provide two calls to action: one that is a “Yes” response and another that is a “No” response.</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/pdenanemr_brooktide-1.png" alt="" /></p>
<p>This presents visitors with a decision that they must make. When an individual selects a “Yes” response, <a href="http://preneurmarketing.com/essays/micro-commitments/">they are psychologically inclined to behave consistently with the “Yes” commitment</a>.</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/1zfztpw5_brooktide2.png" alt="" /></p>
<p>By using this technique, you can increase engagement while also influencing people to take the intended action.”</p>
<p>Perhaps the most famous use of micro-commitments is Leadpages two-step conversion process. According to Chris Davis, “It allows the reader to make a small commitment (like clicking a link or a button) before we ask for a bigger commitment (email address). For instance, we provide the option to receive an <a href="https://www.activecampaign.com/blog/sms-marketing-best-practices/" target="_blank">SMS</a> reminder for our weekly webinars after you register. That landing page has a 2-step opt-in form that is converting between 80%-90% (with over 2,000 views collectively).</p>
<p>When we use these forms in blog posts they can perform between the range of 60-80% conversion rate.”</p>
<p><i>Takeaway: Rather than displaying the form field first, use a button press of some sort to begin the conversion process with an easy step. </i></p>
<h3>Minimize form fields:</h3>
<p>Do you actually need a contact’s first and last name? Sure, it’s nice to <a href="http://www.activecampaign.com/blog/targeting-your-marketing-with-personalization/" target="_blank">personalize</a> with their name but is it worth getting 10% fewer leads?</p>
<p>Neil Patel says, “Collecting an email instead of &#8220;name&#8221; and &#8220;email&#8221; usually boosts conversions by 10%.”</p>
<p>Grant Thomas of JustUno made the same point as Neil, “A general rule of thumb: The less fields in a form, the better. This presents less barriers and is much easier for an individual to subscribe to your newsletter. By eliminating unnecessary fields, you can streamline the opt-in process and allow visitors to act on impulse instead of them asking “Wait, Why do they need to know my annual income?”</p>
<p>If you can, just ask your visitors to submit their email address. This will result in the highest amount of new subscribers.</p>
<p>At the same time, form fields can be a valuable tool for gathering visitor info that can later be used for segmented email campaigns and providing relevant content. For example, if I’m selling shoes, I may ask you for your email, shoe size, and favorite shoe type. As a consumer, I can see the purpose for those two additional fields because I want to receive relevant emails. Now, you can send me an email featuring size 10.5 sandals that are currently on sale. That’s an email that is bound to drive sales.</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/roosbcw5o_myrobeez_form.png" alt="" width="600" /></p>
<p><a href="http://www.myrobeez.com/"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Robeez</span></a> uses the form below to collect valuable data that makes their email campaigns more successful.</p>
<p>When possible, limit your forms to just one field. If you do want to gather more information, make sure it is relevant to your email campaigns.”</p>
<p>To maximize your lead generation, instead of requesting their name upfront, consider using progressive profiling so that you gather a little more information each time you offer something:</p>
<ul>
<li>Just try to get the opt-in by <i>only asking for the email</i>.</li>
<li>Once you have their email you can send them another offer and collect their name. Now you can personalize your messages using their name.</li>
<li>Then you can send them additional offers to collect other information you can use to improve your marketing.</li>
</ul>
<p>But, be sure you <i>need</i> the information you are asking for. If you are collecting data that isn’t being leveraged to produce better marketing, you are constricting the number of leads flowing through your funnel for no reason.</p>
<p>Contact data is potentially very useful, but don’t undermine your lead generation by collecting data you aren’t actually leveraging to be more effective. It’s the inbound marketer’s hoarding complex.</p>
<p><i>Takeaway: Use as few fields as possible for the initial opt-in then collect more data later with other offers</i></p>
<h2></h2>
<h2 style="text-align: center;">4. The More Relevant Your Incentive,<br />
the More Opt-ins You Will Get</h2>
<p>&#8220;Relevance&#8221; is what is working really, really well right now.</p>
<p>If you’ve made it this far into this post, it’s safe to assume that you are interested in list building. You may be interested in marketing automation, you may not be. What&#8217;s certain, is that “list building” is top of mind right now.</p>
<p>Psychologists call this “primed.”</p>
<p>Priming is easy to understand and demonstrate. If I say “moo” and then ask you to think of an animal, you’ll probably think of a cow. That’s priming.</p>
<p>The neurons related to marketing automation have fired less recently, burying them somewhere lower in your consciousness while “list building,” and closely related ideas, are at the forefront of your consciousness.</p>
<p>You need to offer something that appeals to the visitor <i>in the exact moment their attention is on the offer</i> so consider the context the offer appears.</p>
<p>Brian Dean says, “a form that targets what that person wants NOW will work best. For example, I recently swapped out a generic popup form with one that was laser-targeted to the page you were on:</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/4xaoijezu_unnamed.png" alt="" width="500" /></p>
<p>… and it boosted conversions by 65%!”</p>
<p>The offer he replaced had mass appeal, it was high-value and tantalizing, but it couldn’t compete with an offer that was <b>perfectly aligned with the content of the page they were viewing</b>.</p>
<p>With an increasing amount of data supporting the case for increased relevance improving opt-in rate, we can safely add it to our laws of list building.</p>
<p><i>Takeaway: The more relevant your offer is to the content the visitor is viewing, the better it will work. </i></p>
<h3>Content upgrades</h3>
<p>When I asked Neil Patel, Brian Dean, and Chris Davis (Leadpages), “<b>What list building technique is working really well right now?” </b>They both said exactly the same thing in the first sentence of their reply: content upgrades.</p>
<p>Neil Patel says he “collect[s] around 20 to 35% of my emails from this method.”</p>
<p>Brian Dean increased his opt-in conversion rate by 785% with content upgrades. He says, “Without a doubt, the Content Upgrade is the #1 list building tactic online right now. In fact, Leadpages (who know a thing or two about building an email list) said that The Content Upgrade is &#8216;<a href="http://blog.leadpages.net/content-upgrade/">changing blogging</a>.&#8217;”</p>
<p>Chris Davis reports that Leadpages never gets less than a 40% conversion with them!</p>
<p>A content upgrade is offering a complimentary resource that matches the topic of the content a visitor is consuming at that moment.</p>
<p>It adds value either by making it easier to apply the content or presenting the content in a different way:</p>
<p>Content upgrades give you an opportunity to present another form (and remember, more forms = more opt-ins) and the hyper-relevance ensures the contact’s interest. Content upgrades check all the right boxes. It’s no wonder they work as well as they do.</p>
<p>I agree with <a href="http://blog.crazyegg.com/author/devesh-khanal/">Devesh Khanal</a> <a href="http://blog.crazyegg.com/2015/02/04/list-building-case-study/" target="_blank">that</a>, “The best part is that it’s<a href="http://blog.crazyegg.com/2014/08/18/opt-pop-ups/"> not annoying (like pop ups)</a>, or deceitful (like slimy “make money online” squeeze pages). It actually adds value to your readers.”</p>
<h3>Creating your content upgrade incentives</h3>
<p>The downside to content upgrades is that you can’t just paste the same offer all over your site. The good news is that you already did the bulk of the work when you created the original content.</p>
<p>The content upgrade is usually just presenting that information in another way or finding related resources. They don’t need to be long or in depth, but the more valuable you make them, the better they will work.</p>
<p>Chris Davis says that at Leadpages, “we will often give away a flow chart or any resources mentioned in the post as a LeadMagnet.”</p>
<p>Some other ideas for content upgrades include:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><i>You may be able to repurpose a related blog post on the topic. </i></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><i>You could interview an expert on that topic. </i></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><i>You could find 10 tools that will help them apply the information.</i></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><i>With a video, you might offer a transcript in PDF and EPUB so they can read it later on their tablet. </i></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><i>With a post covering a process, you might give them a workbook that them apply the process to their situation.</i></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><i>With a post that has informative content, you could give away a two-page list of tools that will help them apply it.</i></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><i>With a post on how to create something, you could give them a template file or example of the end result.</i></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><i>With a long post covering a lot of tips and tricks, you might give them a checklist that pulls out and summarizes the important takeaways. </i></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><i>You could simply present an offer to sign up for your list so that they can get more tips and tricks on the same topic. </i></p>
<p>Here&#8217;s a tip for displaying your content upgrades inline&#8230; Devesh Khanal found that displaying the offer twice, including once at the top of the post, <a href="http://blog.crazyegg.com/2015/02/04/list-building-case-study/" target="_blank">improved conversion rate by 315% over just displaying it at the bottom of the post</a>.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h2 style="text-align: center;">5. The More Intrusive Your Offer Display is,<br />
the More Opt-ins You Will Get</h2>
<p>We may not like it, but the fact is: the more intrusively you display your offer, the better it will work.</p>
<p>Some people will be annoyed by highly intrusive display and close it without reading it, some won’t opt-in out of principle (they don’t want to encourage intrusive methods), but they will be a minority compared to the people who will opt-in simply because <i>you are forcing more people to notice it. </i></p>
<p>“<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banner_blindness" target="_blank">Banner blindness</a>” is a real phenomenon. Making your offers big, bright, and busy can’t fully counteract it because our brain is unconsciously filtering to focus on what it perceives to be important — and, let’s face it, the majority of information displayed in banners and sidebar offers isn’t usually important, so our visitor’s brains are right to filter it.</p>
<p>Intrusive display ensures it can’t be overlooked or filtered.</p>
<p>According to Grant Thomas, of JustUno, “Email opt-in pop ups have proven time and time again that they are the most effective way of building an email list. <a href="http://blog.justuno.com/skinnyme-tea-uses-on-site-promotions-to-increase-email-sign-ups-by-758"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">In one conversion rate optimization study</span></a>, an ecommerce brand increased email sign ups by 758% with a simple addition of an email pop up. Other email pop up studies have shown pop ups doubling conversion rates with almost no negative effect on bounce rates.</p>
<p>Here are three reasons why email pop ups are the most effective way of converting your website visitors into email subscribers.</p>
<ul>
<li>It’s a quick pitch for your business. The best pop ups use copy and content to showcase what the website is all about. In 10 seconds, a visitor should know what your business is about and why they should subscribe to your emails.</li>
<li>Pop ups grab attention without interfering with the website experience. If you want to build your email list, you must draw attention to your signup form. A pop up momentarily interrupts a visit and brings attention to your email newsletter offering. Since these “pop ups” are actually modal overlays, a visitor can exit out with a simple click outside of the pop up box.</li>
<li>They effectively hook your visitors. Ask a question, use social proof, or showcase the benefits of your newsletter. Pop ups allow you to engage visitors with marketing content. Once your visitors are hooked, they are much more likely to subscribe.”</li>
</ul>
<p>Of course, no discussion of intrusive display would be complete without a stern disclaimer that you should carefully weigh your visitor’s experience against the benefit of getting more opt-ins. That’s a decision no one can make for you.</p>
<p>A new type of form display that finds middle ground between, “I didn’t even notice it,” and, “you are angering me!,” is the Welcome Mat.</p>
<p>You’ve probably seen a Welcome Mat display if you read a lot of marketing blogs…</p>
<p>When you land, it will appear that a form has filled your screen, forcing you to focus on the offer before scrolling down to find the content you are after:</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/62s1nt9ry_wpid-47948c2c721c99478db51a4265b3eea7.png.png" alt="" width="625" /></p>
<p>You can get Welcome Mat functionality from <a href="https://sumome.com/app/welcome-mat" target="_blank">Noah Kagan&#8217;s SumoMe</a>. He says, &#8220;[they get] around 2-15% overall email conversion and <a href="https://sumome.com/app/welcome-mat" target="_blank">it&#8217;s free</a>.&#8221;</p>
<h2 style="text-align: center;">6. Finding the Right Colors,<br />
Will Increase the Number of Opt-ins You Will Get</h2>
<p>Perhaps the easiest change you can make is trying different colors.</p>
<p>But, don’t immediately run to the warmer, brighter spectrum of the color palette.</p>
<p><a href="http://leadpages.net" target="_blank">Leadpages</a> recently reported <a href="https://blog.leadpages.net/ab-test-did-a-green-or-orange-button-increase-opt-ins-86-41/" target="_blank">a split test where a green CTA button got 86.41% more opt-ins than an orange one</a> with 99.9% confidence. That’s a huge upside to changing literally six characters of code!</p>
<p><a href="https://blog.leadpages.net/ab-test-did-a-green-or-orange-button-increase-opt-ins-86-41/" target="_blank"><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/4h5fw5fbw_795x447_split_test_thumbnail_blog2.jpg" alt="" width="625" /></a></p>
<p><a href="https://blog.leadpages.net/ab-test-did-a-green-or-orange-button-increase-opt-ins-86-41/" target="_blank">This case study</a> also illustrates that it is not always the brightest color that wins, challenging the intuitive notion that the brighter your CTA, the better it will perform.</p>
<p>Kevan Lee, one of the marketing masterminds behind <a href="http://www.buffer.com" target="_blank">Buffer</a>, sent over some pretty impressive data strengthening the case that simple changes in color can have huge impacts on conversion rate:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><i>“The Buffer blog has been orange (technically #eb593c) for quite some time. For particular posts, we&#8217;ve changed up the color to attract more attention to the CTA</i></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><i>Orange &#8211; 0.4% conversion</i><br />
<i>Green (#569625) &#8211; 1.1% conversion</i><br />
<i>Blue (#168eea) &#8211; 4.5% conversion (also happens to be our Buffer brand color)</i></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><i>We expect the green and blue conversion numbers to normalize a bit more as additional traffic hits the page &#8211; the orange one has 10 to 20x more views than the rest so far. :)”</i></p>
<p>How will you find the color that works best for your offer/form/CTA button?</p>
<p>Split-testing. There just isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution, unfortunately.</p>
<p><i>Takeaway: Continually split-test different colors for the headline text of your offer as well as the button. </i></p>
<h2>Bonus tip: Tag their interest</h2>
<p>Relevance doesn’t just apply to getting opt-ins, <strong>it applies to all content, messages, offers, and calls to action</strong>, including your <a title="7 steps to create your best automated follow up sequence" href="http://www.activecampaign.com/blog/7-steps-to-create-your-best-automated-follow-up-sequence/" target="_blank">automated email follow-up</a>.</p>
<p>To keep your contacts opening and reading your emails, you need to deliver content and offers that align with their interests. You need to send information that is interesting, important, and timely.</p>
<p>The context of their opt-in reveals exactly that — it allows you to surmise their interest.</p>
<p>If they were on your site reading an article on a particular topic and then opt-ed in for a content upgrade on the same topic, you can safely assume that this person is highly interested in that topic.</p>
<p>If you can send them more content on that topic they’ll probably happily open and read it which gives you the chance to introduce marketing messages that explain the benefits of your product or service.</p>
<p>In this way, you&#8217;ll have a marketing pipeline that utilizes relevance throughout the conversion process.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
";}s:3:"wfw";a:1:{s:10:"commentrss";s:63:"https://www.activecampaign.com/blog/keys-to-list-building/feed/";}s:5:"slash";a:1:{s:8:"comments";s:1:"6";}s:7:"summary";s:347:"Every marketing blog has a post on list building so when I started this post I knew it would have to be extraordinary to stand out. So, I contacted a “dream team” of inbound marketing experts and companies known for their innovative list building: Brian Dean (Backlinko) Neil Patel (HelloBar and NeilPatel.com) Grant Thomas (JustUno) [&#8230;]";s:12:"atom_content";s:28516:"<p><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/c2euve92n_6.jpg" alt="" width="675" /><br />
<script src="https://activecampaignforms.activehosted.com/f/embed.php?id=17" type="text/javascript"></script><br />
<i>Every</i> marketing blog has a post on list building so when I started this post I knew it would have to be extraordinary to stand out.</p>
<p>So, I contacted a “dream team” of inbound marketing experts and companies known for their innovative list building:</p>
<ul>
<li>Brian Dean (<a href="http://backlinko.com/" target="_blank">Backlinko</a>)</li>
<li>Neil Patel (<a href="https://www.hellobar.com/" target="_blank">HelloBar</a> and <a href="http://www.neilpatel.com" target="_blank">NeilPatel.com</a>)</li>
<li>Grant Thomas (<a href="https://www.justuno.com/" target="_blank">JustUno</a>)</li>
<li>Noah Kagan (<a href="https://sumome.com/" target="_blank">SumoMe</a>)</li>
<li>Chris Davis (<a href="http://www.leadpages.net/" target="_blank">Leadpages</a>)</li>
<li>Kevan Lee (<a href="https://buffer.com" target="_blank">Buffer</a>)</li>
</ul>
<p>I asked these experts to reveal their latest and greatest list building and opt-in conversion strategies, and provide the data.</p>
<p>The topic was “List Building: What’s Working <i>Right <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Now</span></i>.” The focus was on revealing the list-building tactics and opt-in optimizations that are working best <i>at this exact moment</i>, in January 2016.</p>
<p>That’s still what this post is, but not really.</p>
<p></p>
<p>The direction of this post changed when I saw what these experts had to say&#8230;</p>
<p>As responses started to trickle in, first from Brian Dean and Neil Patel, and then from Noah Kagan and Kevan Lee, I noticed that <b>what’s working best <i>right now</i> is actually <i>what has always worked</i>.</b></p>
<p>The specific tactics that are working best have evolved, there are some especially effective new ways to display forms and improve your opt-in rate, and we’ll cover those strategies in depth, but<b> the underlying principles that increase your opt-in rate have stayed the same.</b></p>
<p>The revelation for me was: <b>there isn’t actually anything “new”</b>— the strategies that work best today are variations on unchanging themes that have worked best for years, and aren’t going to change any time soon.</p>
<p>I’ve listed them as the “6 immutable laws of list building.” Given the amount of data backing them up, these are probably the closest thing we have to laws in inbound marketing.</p>
<p>In fact, understanding these unchanging list building principles is the key to creating new opt-in offers and forms that work even better than what we are using today. If you are interested in getting ahead of the game, you’ll find some way to innovate based on, and within, the “rules” outlined here.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: center;">Why is list building still important in 2016 (and beyond)?</h2>
<p>Your opt-in forms are the crux of your inbound marketing.</p>
<p>Everything else is simply setting up the moment you present your lead gen form to visitors.</p>
<p>All the ads you’ve bought, all the content you’ve poured yourself into, all the SEO research and tweaking, is just so you can show your lead those simple input fields, in hopes they’ll raise their hand and say, “I want to hear more from you.”</p>
<p>It’s here that the resources you’ve invested into traffic generation pay off or get wasted. If your forms suck or your offer is off, your time and money spent on traffic generation is wasted in proportion.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>If your opt-in rate is 20% lower than it could be, 20% of your ad budget and time spent creating content is being wasted. You’ll have 20% less resources to reinvest back into marketing, advertising, and sales, you’ll have 20% less word-of-mouth referrals, 20% less repeat sales, leading to a vicious cycle of limited resources, missed opportunity, and hobbled growth.</em></p>
<p>The thing is a 20% improvement is extremely conservative. Unless you have a highly optimized offer and form, you could feasibly 2x or even 3x your current opt-in rate.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s not a perfect relationship, but that&#8217;s similar to getting 2-3 times as much traffic to your website at no additional expense.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: center;">The top of your funnel is <i>needlessly</i> narrowed&#8230;</h2>
<p>Ads may be expensive, SEO is engineered to be a crapshoot, and content is time-consuming to produce but, improving your opt-in rate?</p>
<p>That fruit is hanging so low, you’d have to reach down to pick it.</p>
<p>Simple changes in form placement, design, color, and verbiage, can dramatically widen the top of your funnel so you squeeze more opportunity out of your existing traffic, and convert more visitors into paying customers, thus maximizing the ROI of all the resources you invest into your inbound marketing.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: center;">The 6 Enduring Principles of List Building</h2>
<p>There are six foundational rules for generating as many opt-ins as possible. These aren’t theories you’ll have to test. The experiments have been run, the data is in, and this is what has proven to work time and time again.</p>
<p>These are as close to “laws” as you’ll get in inbound marketing:</p>
<h2 style="text-align: center;">1. The More Forms You Display,<br />
the More Opt-ins You’ll Get</h2>
<p>The more opportunities you give people to opt-in, the more they will.</p>
<p>Brian Dean recommended <i>at least</i> three forms per page with one appearing above the fold.</p>
<p><a href="https://blog.bufferapp.com/get-more-email-subscribers-how-we-doubled-email-signups" target="_blank">Buffer famously doubled their opt-in rate</a> by going from one opt- in form on their blog to five and adding four more opt-in forms to their social media accounts.</p>
<p>Just by pasting code into eight more pages, they went from getting 2,500 new email contacts each week to getting more than 5,400. That’s over twice as many incoming leads!</p>
<p>Chris Davis of Leadpages suggested placing high-value offers at:</p>
<ol>
<li>The end of all blog posts</li>
<li>Top of the blog (<a href="http://www.hellobar.com" target="_blank">HelloBar</a>)</li>
<li>Your blog&#8217;s sidebar</li>
<li>Top of your blog (under navigation)</li>
</ol>
<p><i>Takeaway: Put your forms </i><span style="text-decoration: underline;">everywhere</span> and use different display formats.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: center;">2. The More Desirable the Incentive,<br />
the More Opt-ins You’ll Get</h2>
<p>An opt-in is a trade. The subscriber gives you a portion of their inbox and attention while putting themselves at risk of annoyance, wasted time, and possibly spam.</p>
<p>It’s not an insignificant risk and, what’s more, you’ve got to pull them away from what they are doing, overcoming the momentum of their original intent. No one is surfing the interwebs hunting for opt-in boxes to fill their empty inbox.</p>
<p>They are on your website for some other purpose, so their decision to opt-in is a departure from their reason for being there. You’ve got to interrupt their attention and motivate them to do something they did not plan on doing.</p>
<p>While researching this post I found some list-building advice from 2002. The author used Franklin Covey as their example of stellar list-building tactics because they prominently offered product updates at the top of their homepage, motivating the author to opt-in.</p>
<p>Using the Wayback machine, I was able to find the offer he referenced:</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/q3chueoz7_image2016-01-05at7.31.51am.png" alt="" /></p>
<p>Franklin Covey of the early 2000’s is almost ambivalent, “Oh, sure, you can opt-in, if you really want to…” I’m not picking on them, this was the norm back then, and they deserved the praise for positioning their offer so prominently on their homepage when so few companies were focused on list-building at that time.</p>
<p>A lot has changed over the last 13 years. The “content marketing arms race” we’ve all been participating in since then has led to an escalation of incentives. No one is offering “product updates” as their primary list building tactic anymore.</p>
<p>I went to Franklin Covey’s website to see how their strategy has evolved. Their homepage opt-in incentive has changed:</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/0swej15ox_screenshot2015-12-09at4.09.59pm.png" alt="" /></p>
<p>After clicking, you are redirected to an <a href="http://www.franklincovey.com/books/the5choices/" target="_blank">entire long-form landing page</a> describing the book in depth, including video chapter overviews, testimonials, and more:</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/efk4bqja_screenshot2015-12-09at3.58.56pm.png" alt="" width="600" /></p>
<p>… and finally they display the opt-in form after you’ve clicked “Get the first chapter:”</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/jcdopwnv7_screenshot2015-12-09at4.00.33pm.png" alt="" /></p>
<p>It’s not just Franklin Covey, we are all working harder than ever to get opt-ins. We’ve become more protective of our inboxes, time, and attention. To make “the trade” we expect something of value upfront.</p>
<p>Throughout this post we’ll cover examples of the <strong>specific kind of highly desirable incentives that are working particularly well right now.</strong> For now, the point is that the more value your incentive provides, the more appealing you can make it, the more opt-ins you’ll get.</p>
<p><i>Takeaway: Offer something extraordinarily desirable so visitors are motivated to make “the trade.” </i></p>
<h2>3. The Less You Ask For,<br />
the More Opt-ins You’ll Get</h2>
<h3>Use Micro-Commitments</h3>
<p>This tip comes from Grant Thomas, JustUno, “Micro-commitments are small actions that you ask visitors to perform leading up to a bigger conversion step. In our case of promotions, the higher conversion step would be an email opt-in or purchase.</p>
<p>Simply pose a question like “Want a discount?” Then provide two calls to action: one that is a “Yes” response and another that is a “No” response.</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/pdenanemr_brooktide-1.png" alt="" /></p>
<p>This presents visitors with a decision that they must make. When an individual selects a “Yes” response, <a href="http://preneurmarketing.com/essays/micro-commitments/">they are psychologically inclined to behave consistently with the “Yes” commitment</a>.</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/1zfztpw5_brooktide2.png" alt="" /></p>
<p>By using this technique, you can increase engagement while also influencing people to take the intended action.”</p>
<p>Perhaps the most famous use of micro-commitments is Leadpages two-step conversion process. According to Chris Davis, “It allows the reader to make a small commitment (like clicking a link or a button) before we ask for a bigger commitment (email address). For instance, we provide the option to receive an <a href="https://www.activecampaign.com/blog/sms-marketing-best-practices/" target="_blank">SMS</a> reminder for our weekly webinars after you register. That landing page has a 2-step opt-in form that is converting between 80%-90% (with over 2,000 views collectively).</p>
<p>When we use these forms in blog posts they can perform between the range of 60-80% conversion rate.”</p>
<p><i>Takeaway: Rather than displaying the form field first, use a button press of some sort to begin the conversion process with an easy step. </i></p>
<h3>Minimize form fields:</h3>
<p>Do you actually need a contact’s first and last name? Sure, it’s nice to <a href="http://www.activecampaign.com/blog/targeting-your-marketing-with-personalization/" target="_blank">personalize</a> with their name but is it worth getting 10% fewer leads?</p>
<p>Neil Patel says, “Collecting an email instead of &#8220;name&#8221; and &#8220;email&#8221; usually boosts conversions by 10%.”</p>
<p>Grant Thomas of JustUno made the same point as Neil, “A general rule of thumb: The less fields in a form, the better. This presents less barriers and is much easier for an individual to subscribe to your newsletter. By eliminating unnecessary fields, you can streamline the opt-in process and allow visitors to act on impulse instead of them asking “Wait, Why do they need to know my annual income?”</p>
<p>If you can, just ask your visitors to submit their email address. This will result in the highest amount of new subscribers.</p>
<p>At the same time, form fields can be a valuable tool for gathering visitor info that can later be used for segmented email campaigns and providing relevant content. For example, if I’m selling shoes, I may ask you for your email, shoe size, and favorite shoe type. As a consumer, I can see the purpose for those two additional fields because I want to receive relevant emails. Now, you can send me an email featuring size 10.5 sandals that are currently on sale. That’s an email that is bound to drive sales.</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/roosbcw5o_myrobeez_form.png" alt="" width="600" /></p>
<p><a href="http://www.myrobeez.com/"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Robeez</span></a> uses the form below to collect valuable data that makes their email campaigns more successful.</p>
<p>When possible, limit your forms to just one field. If you do want to gather more information, make sure it is relevant to your email campaigns.”</p>
<p>To maximize your lead generation, instead of requesting their name upfront, consider using progressive profiling so that you gather a little more information each time you offer something:</p>
<ul>
<li>Just try to get the opt-in by <i>only asking for the email</i>.</li>
<li>Once you have their email you can send them another offer and collect their name. Now you can personalize your messages using their name.</li>
<li>Then you can send them additional offers to collect other information you can use to improve your marketing.</li>
</ul>
<p>But, be sure you <i>need</i> the information you are asking for. If you are collecting data that isn’t being leveraged to produce better marketing, you are constricting the number of leads flowing through your funnel for no reason.</p>
<p>Contact data is potentially very useful, but don’t undermine your lead generation by collecting data you aren’t actually leveraging to be more effective. It’s the inbound marketer’s hoarding complex.</p>
<p><i>Takeaway: Use as few fields as possible for the initial opt-in then collect more data later with other offers</i></p>
<h2></h2>
<h2 style="text-align: center;">4. The More Relevant Your Incentive,<br />
the More Opt-ins You Will Get</h2>
<p>&#8220;Relevance&#8221; is what is working really, really well right now.</p>
<p>If you’ve made it this far into this post, it’s safe to assume that you are interested in list building. You may be interested in marketing automation, you may not be. What&#8217;s certain, is that “list building” is top of mind right now.</p>
<p>Psychologists call this “primed.”</p>
<p>Priming is easy to understand and demonstrate. If I say “moo” and then ask you to think of an animal, you’ll probably think of a cow. That’s priming.</p>
<p>The neurons related to marketing automation have fired less recently, burying them somewhere lower in your consciousness while “list building,” and closely related ideas, are at the forefront of your consciousness.</p>
<p>You need to offer something that appeals to the visitor <i>in the exact moment their attention is on the offer</i> so consider the context the offer appears.</p>
<p>Brian Dean says, “a form that targets what that person wants NOW will work best. For example, I recently swapped out a generic popup form with one that was laser-targeted to the page you were on:</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/4xaoijezu_unnamed.png" alt="" width="500" /></p>
<p>… and it boosted conversions by 65%!”</p>
<p>The offer he replaced had mass appeal, it was high-value and tantalizing, but it couldn’t compete with an offer that was <b>perfectly aligned with the content of the page they were viewing</b>.</p>
<p>With an increasing amount of data supporting the case for increased relevance improving opt-in rate, we can safely add it to our laws of list building.</p>
<p><i>Takeaway: The more relevant your offer is to the content the visitor is viewing, the better it will work. </i></p>
<h3>Content upgrades</h3>
<p>When I asked Neil Patel, Brian Dean, and Chris Davis (Leadpages), “<b>What list building technique is working really well right now?” </b>They both said exactly the same thing in the first sentence of their reply: content upgrades.</p>
<p>Neil Patel says he “collect[s] around 20 to 35% of my emails from this method.”</p>
<p>Brian Dean increased his opt-in conversion rate by 785% with content upgrades. He says, “Without a doubt, the Content Upgrade is the #1 list building tactic online right now. In fact, Leadpages (who know a thing or two about building an email list) said that The Content Upgrade is &#8216;<a href="http://blog.leadpages.net/content-upgrade/">changing blogging</a>.&#8217;”</p>
<p>Chris Davis reports that Leadpages never gets less than a 40% conversion with them!</p>
<p>A content upgrade is offering a complimentary resource that matches the topic of the content a visitor is consuming at that moment.</p>
<p>It adds value either by making it easier to apply the content or presenting the content in a different way:</p>
<p>Content upgrades give you an opportunity to present another form (and remember, more forms = more opt-ins) and the hyper-relevance ensures the contact’s interest. Content upgrades check all the right boxes. It’s no wonder they work as well as they do.</p>
<p>I agree with <a href="http://blog.crazyegg.com/author/devesh-khanal/">Devesh Khanal</a> <a href="http://blog.crazyegg.com/2015/02/04/list-building-case-study/" target="_blank">that</a>, “The best part is that it’s<a href="http://blog.crazyegg.com/2014/08/18/opt-pop-ups/"> not annoying (like pop ups)</a>, or deceitful (like slimy “make money online” squeeze pages). It actually adds value to your readers.”</p>
<h3>Creating your content upgrade incentives</h3>
<p>The downside to content upgrades is that you can’t just paste the same offer all over your site. The good news is that you already did the bulk of the work when you created the original content.</p>
<p>The content upgrade is usually just presenting that information in another way or finding related resources. They don’t need to be long or in depth, but the more valuable you make them, the better they will work.</p>
<p>Chris Davis says that at Leadpages, “we will often give away a flow chart or any resources mentioned in the post as a LeadMagnet.”</p>
<p>Some other ideas for content upgrades include:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><i>You may be able to repurpose a related blog post on the topic. </i></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><i>You could interview an expert on that topic. </i></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><i>You could find 10 tools that will help them apply the information.</i></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><i>With a video, you might offer a transcript in PDF and EPUB so they can read it later on their tablet. </i></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><i>With a post covering a process, you might give them a workbook that them apply the process to their situation.</i></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><i>With a post that has informative content, you could give away a two-page list of tools that will help them apply it.</i></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><i>With a post on how to create something, you could give them a template file or example of the end result.</i></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><i>With a long post covering a lot of tips and tricks, you might give them a checklist that pulls out and summarizes the important takeaways. </i></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><i>You could simply present an offer to sign up for your list so that they can get more tips and tricks on the same topic. </i></p>
<p>Here&#8217;s a tip for displaying your content upgrades inline&#8230; Devesh Khanal found that displaying the offer twice, including once at the top of the post, <a href="http://blog.crazyegg.com/2015/02/04/list-building-case-study/" target="_blank">improved conversion rate by 315% over just displaying it at the bottom of the post</a>.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h2 style="text-align: center;">5. The More Intrusive Your Offer Display is,<br />
the More Opt-ins You Will Get</h2>
<p>We may not like it, but the fact is: the more intrusively you display your offer, the better it will work.</p>
<p>Some people will be annoyed by highly intrusive display and close it without reading it, some won’t opt-in out of principle (they don’t want to encourage intrusive methods), but they will be a minority compared to the people who will opt-in simply because <i>you are forcing more people to notice it. </i></p>
<p>“<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banner_blindness" target="_blank">Banner blindness</a>” is a real phenomenon. Making your offers big, bright, and busy can’t fully counteract it because our brain is unconsciously filtering to focus on what it perceives to be important — and, let’s face it, the majority of information displayed in banners and sidebar offers isn’t usually important, so our visitor’s brains are right to filter it.</p>
<p>Intrusive display ensures it can’t be overlooked or filtered.</p>
<p>According to Grant Thomas, of JustUno, “Email opt-in pop ups have proven time and time again that they are the most effective way of building an email list. <a href="http://blog.justuno.com/skinnyme-tea-uses-on-site-promotions-to-increase-email-sign-ups-by-758"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">In one conversion rate optimization study</span></a>, an ecommerce brand increased email sign ups by 758% with a simple addition of an email pop up. Other email pop up studies have shown pop ups doubling conversion rates with almost no negative effect on bounce rates.</p>
<p>Here are three reasons why email pop ups are the most effective way of converting your website visitors into email subscribers.</p>
<ul>
<li>It’s a quick pitch for your business. The best pop ups use copy and content to showcase what the website is all about. In 10 seconds, a visitor should know what your business is about and why they should subscribe to your emails.</li>
<li>Pop ups grab attention without interfering with the website experience. If you want to build your email list, you must draw attention to your signup form. A pop up momentarily interrupts a visit and brings attention to your email newsletter offering. Since these “pop ups” are actually modal overlays, a visitor can exit out with a simple click outside of the pop up box.</li>
<li>They effectively hook your visitors. Ask a question, use social proof, or showcase the benefits of your newsletter. Pop ups allow you to engage visitors with marketing content. Once your visitors are hooked, they are much more likely to subscribe.”</li>
</ul>
<p>Of course, no discussion of intrusive display would be complete without a stern disclaimer that you should carefully weigh your visitor’s experience against the benefit of getting more opt-ins. That’s a decision no one can make for you.</p>
<p>A new type of form display that finds middle ground between, “I didn’t even notice it,” and, “you are angering me!,” is the Welcome Mat.</p>
<p>You’ve probably seen a Welcome Mat display if you read a lot of marketing blogs…</p>
<p>When you land, it will appear that a form has filled your screen, forcing you to focus on the offer before scrolling down to find the content you are after:</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/62s1nt9ry_wpid-47948c2c721c99478db51a4265b3eea7.png.png" alt="" width="625" /></p>
<p>You can get Welcome Mat functionality from <a href="https://sumome.com/app/welcome-mat" target="_blank">Noah Kagan&#8217;s SumoMe</a>. He says, &#8220;[they get] around 2-15% overall email conversion and <a href="https://sumome.com/app/welcome-mat" target="_blank">it&#8217;s free</a>.&#8221;</p>
<h2 style="text-align: center;">6. Finding the Right Colors,<br />
Will Increase the Number of Opt-ins You Will Get</h2>
<p>Perhaps the easiest change you can make is trying different colors.</p>
<p>But, don’t immediately run to the warmer, brighter spectrum of the color palette.</p>
<p><a href="http://leadpages.net" target="_blank">Leadpages</a> recently reported <a href="https://blog.leadpages.net/ab-test-did-a-green-or-orange-button-increase-opt-ins-86-41/" target="_blank">a split test where a green CTA button got 86.41% more opt-ins than an orange one</a> with 99.9% confidence. That’s a huge upside to changing literally six characters of code!</p>
<p><a href="https://blog.leadpages.net/ab-test-did-a-green-or-orange-button-increase-opt-ins-86-41/" target="_blank"><img class="aligncenter" src="https://d226aj4ao1t61q.cloudfront.net/4h5fw5fbw_795x447_split_test_thumbnail_blog2.jpg" alt="" width="625" /></a></p>
<p><a href="https://blog.leadpages.net/ab-test-did-a-green-or-orange-button-increase-opt-ins-86-41/" target="_blank">This case study</a> also illustrates that it is not always the brightest color that wins, challenging the intuitive notion that the brighter your CTA, the better it will perform.</p>
<p>Kevan Lee, one of the marketing masterminds behind <a href="http://www.buffer.com" target="_blank">Buffer</a>, sent over some pretty impressive data strengthening the case that simple changes in color can have huge impacts on conversion rate:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><i>“The Buffer blog has been orange (technically #eb593c) for quite some time. For particular posts, we&#8217;ve changed up the color to attract more attention to the CTA</i></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><i>Orange &#8211; 0.4% conversion</i><br />
<i>Green (#569625) &#8211; 1.1% conversion</i><br />
<i>Blue (#168eea) &#8211; 4.5% conversion (also happens to be our Buffer brand color)</i></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><i>We expect the green and blue conversion numbers to normalize a bit more as additional traffic hits the page &#8211; the orange one has 10 to 20x more views than the rest so far. :)”</i></p>
<p>How will you find the color that works best for your offer/form/CTA button?</p>
<p>Split-testing. There just isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution, unfortunately.</p>
<p><i>Takeaway: Continually split-test different colors for the headline text of your offer as well as the button. </i></p>
<h2>Bonus tip: Tag their interest</h2>
<p>Relevance doesn’t just apply to getting opt-ins, <strong>it applies to all content, messages, offers, and calls to action</strong>, including your <a title="7 steps to create your best automated follow up sequence" href="http://www.activecampaign.com/blog/7-steps-to-create-your-best-automated-follow-up-sequence/" target="_blank">automated email follow-up</a>.</p>
<p>To keep your contacts opening and reading your emails, you need to deliver content and offers that align with their interests. You need to send information that is interesting, important, and timely.</p>
<p>The context of their opt-in reveals exactly that — it allows you to surmise their interest.</p>
<p>If they were on your site reading an article on a particular topic and then opt-ed in for a content upgrade on the same topic, you can safely assume that this person is highly interested in that topic.</p>
<p>If you can send them more content on that topic they’ll probably happily open and read it which gives you the chance to introduce marketing messages that explain the benefits of your product or service.</p>
<p>In this way, you&#8217;ll have a marketing pipeline that utilizes relevance throughout the conversion process.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
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