To create a video with professional standard, here are some video editing tips you should follow.

Start a New Video Editing Project

First thing’s first, no matter what software you use, you’ll have to do a new project to import the clips you will use. This step is pretty essential. As long as you’re computer literate, it would help if you did this.

Software like Adobe Premiere Pro CC allows you to add as many clips as you want, basically unlimited. However, some free software might be more limiting regarding how much space you can use within a project.

Pro tip: It’s always a good practice to watch your footage a few times to ensure that they are good enough to be included in your video.

Remember, if you’re making a video marketing for your company, it has to look professional and well-polished. Having a low-quality clip, both in terms of resolution and message, could impact your brand negatively.

Organize Your Footage to Tell a Story

The next step is organizing the clips you’ve shot and imported to create an enjoyable story. It’s okay to drop the shots you think aren’t good enough to be included in the video.

Depending on the software you’re using, the order usually arranges your shots you import them. Move around your pictures, or name them accordingly (e.g., Intro, Outro, Filler, etc.) to make it easier to tell apart which clip is which.

Modern video editing software like Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premiere Pro usually have a ‘timeline’ that allows you to put marks on specific points of your video. Use this feature to pinpoint exact frames that you want to emphasize, where you want to cut your clips, or maybe where you want to add transition or effects.

Start Cutting and Assembling Your Videos

Once you are done marking important frames, it’s time to start putting your videos together. This step is simply about cutting and ‘sewing’ clips together to tell an engaging story that’ll keep viewers glued to your video.

This point is where the timeline we were talking about earlier comes to play. The timeline is exactly what it sounds like; it’s a long line that indicates where your video starts and ends. You can move your clips around to make a better arrangement.

Trimming Your Story

Once you’ve managed to make a story emerge from the clips you’ve shot, it’s time to make everything more concise and to the point. Because whether you realize it or not, your video is still too fluffy.

This part is where you make sure that every frame in the video serves a purpose. Like what Marie Kondo says, if the structure doesn’t spark joy, throw it out.

Add Transitions to Your Video

Once you feel that everything is cut down to only the necessary, it’s time to spice up your video with some cool transitions.

When I say cool, I don’t mean exaggerated transitions like those you see in tacky TV commercials. We both know that your brand is more than that.

Simple transitions like swipe, fade, and even jump-cuts should be enough as long as you put them in the right places. Each transition effect creates a different mood for your video, so try them out one by one and see which one works better to bridge between scenes.

If you’re feeling extra creative, you can play around with your shots to make jaw-dropping transitions like this:

But keep in mind that transitions aren’t what builds your brand ;)

Final Touch-Ups

Now that your timeline’s clean, your story’s trimmed, and your transitions are well-done, it’s time to do the final touch-ups to make your video more compelling.

To make your video look professional, you can’t skimp on the visual aesthetic department. The color palette shot compositions and framing are skills that you can’t master instantaneously.

In the meantime, the videos that you just put together will have to do the job. Filters and color grading are your best friends in touching up your final video.

Filters and Color Grading

There are plenty of web-based apps that can add a filter of your choice to your video in one click. Here are some of them:

• Filter. Video
• Kapwing
• Veed.io

But if you prefer using something custom and more unique, you can always choose color-grading. Color grading is essentially an effort to tune and tweak the colors in your frames to build a specific mood.

Don’t worry. There are hundreds of free color grading templates that you can choose to set the mood for your video. Here are a few compilations of them:

• 52 Color Grading Template by RocketStock
• 99+ LUTs Color Grading Template
• 70 Color Grading Presets
• Effects, Text, and Motion Graphics

Treat effects, on-screen text, and motion graphics as the garnish to finish up your video. Also, be prepared to spend WAY more time making effects (if you plan on doing so) – because even the most direct effect can take some time to perfect.

Mixing Sounds and Background Music

Sounds are an essential factor in shaping the mood of your video. That said, having background music that is too dominant could be pulling away from the overall message of your video rather than amplifying it.

Here at Breadnbeyond, we always use a subtle undertone as the background whenever we make explainer videos on something technical. We do this to make sure that the music doesn’t distract the viewer from the main subject.

Pro tip: use intro and outro tracks as the bookends for your video for lack of better words. Doing this gives off a clear message when your video begins and ends. Plus, it makes the footage feels complete.

Now you're ready to share your video project. Ensure you publish it on the right channel like YouTube, website, Vimeo, or even social media.

Nowadays, multichannel selling has become a necessity for online sellers. And why won't it be? Selling on multiple platforms is not only an effective way of expanding online business, but it also helps sellers reach potential customers more efficiently. However, this method can sometimes become a headache for sellers instead of a solution if they don’t have a suitable platform to manage it all. This is where the role of eCommerce marketplace Integration comes in.

But What is Marketplace Integration?

eCommerce Integration helps online sellers connect their eCommerce store with the marketplace. It offers a centralized platform from where the seller can manage all the products, orders, accounts, notifications, and more. In simple words, they no longer need to sign in/out of different accounts now and then. The feature list of Marketplace Integration doesn't end here. Check out other features below -

Features of eCommerce Integration

Centralized panel to manage all product reports.

• Real-time update inventory, listings, products, and orders
• Cron scheduler for all-round real-time synching
• Bulk product upload
• Support multiple seller accounts
• Real-time shipment and tracking
• Live notifications
• Centralized platform to manage orders

Benefits of eCommerce Marketplace Integration

Above mentioned features undoubtedly look fascinating, but what are the benefits of eCommerce Marketplace Integration for multichannel sellers? Here is the list -

Reduces Manual Selling Process

The Marketplace Integration is an automated solution that will automatically update product information on all the connected platforms. As a result, it reduces sellers’ efforts and saves many hours. They can utilize the same time in other important tasks.

Secure and Fast Data Transfer

The Integration solutions actually integrate marketplace seller accounts in real-time. Therefore, the data flow is not only fast but secure as well. It further eliminates any chance of errors in the process.

No Need to Switch Between the Accounts

Managing different platforms for multichannel selling can be a pain in the neck as it is tiring and time-consuming. The API connector saves this hassle by providing a single platform for managing products, orders, and accounts.

Improves Visibility

Visibility is an essential aspect of being an online seller. Because if your customers can’t see you, they know nothing about your existence. And that’s painful to hear after putting in this much effort. eCommerce Integration will help you improve SEO and rank your products on the top of search engine results.

So, what do you think of eCommerce Marketplace Integration?

When it comes to lead generation, learning all you can is a must. You have to set yourself up for success by educating yourself on the topic. Now that you are ready to get yourself to the top of the field, check out the article shared by Thomas Salzano to begin your adventure.

Perfect the art of a good call to action, to generate more leads for your business. A good call to action is highly specific, very relevant to the particular readers, and always links to a landing page where the offer can be found for purchase or download. Make your CTA count for more valuable leads.

Make landing pages for leads when advertising. Targeted landing pages are often more effective than people being led to the main site page. You are providing them with the exact information they were seeking. Make certain a contact form is available and easy to use.

Invite potential customers to opt into joining your community on your website. You'd be amazed at how many website browsers will decide to provide their email. Make sure, though, that you've got relevant content to share with them afterward. Think about developing a newsletter or a series of tips emails.

Do not pre-judge your lead gathering technique. Though you may think you are not going to get great results, or you are overly confident about the success, you cannot be sure. The only way to know if your lead generation is working is to put it into action without preconceived ideas about results.

Consider local garage sales if your business is focused locally. For example, if you run a garage you could host a table at a neighborhood sale selling tools or first aid kits. You can let people know how honest and reliable you are face to face, increasing your reputation and generating leads.

Target people seeing freebies as part of your list generating efforts. While giving things away doesn't usually make money right away for you, there will be plenty of people ready and willing to sign-up for the free stuff. Keep this list separate from your others, but include it in all your future campaigns.

Search engine optimization, while organic, is all about lead generation as well. How? Your targeted customer base is searching niche-specific keywords. If you're targeting the right keywords with all of your sites and content, then you're generating new leads. This does take time, but it's a process that should always be in the works.

Consider volunteering to help build leads. Choose a group that somehow relates to your niche, such as Cub Scouts if you are a dentist or a French club if you happen to be a tutor. Volunteering shows you have a good soul and can help build a positive reputation.

Stop trying to butter customers up! When you need to generate more leads, use a direct approach with them because chances are good that neither you nor they have a lot of time for small talk and schmoozing. Get to your point, offer a great price for clicking the "buy now" icon and get better results.

Make sure to keep your lead pipeline in motion at all times. This means you need to do lead generation tactics daily. It can take a lot of leads to get just one to convert into a customer, so you need a good source of them at all times.

People love the word "free." Free spreads by word of mouth and social media as well as in other ways. Free can mean free giveaways, free trials, free consultations, and more. So, think about how you can incorporate the word free into your business objectives and goals for generating new leads.

Never put too much focus on contests. If you offer too many contests, your site will only be viewed as a place to win something. Have a contest a few times a year so customers remember you.

Say thank you for your marketing efforts. If someone fills out a form, have an email set up that sends them thanks. If a person contacts you directly for more information, immediately give them verbal thanks. Thank you goes a long way to building quick trust, and that means a stronger lead.

Sign up for Google AdWords. These ads target potential customers who visit various websites across the Internet. The beauty of this is that you only have to pay when someone clicks on the link that leads to your site. Once you have them on your site, you can convert them to a paying customers.

Now that Thomas N Salzano, know so much about lead generation, you should have no problem optimizing your techniques. Take your time and plan carefully, but start your journey right away. If you can use this advice as soon as possible, you'll be sure to reach your goals before you ever dreamed you could.

Fortunately, there are tons of methods for software companies, big and small, to secure higher quantities of leads and better revenue numbers.

Visit the original one to continue reading!

Marketing automation is meant to take care of “the majority of the work,” allowing you to focus on the essential aspects of your business. Simply said, SaaS marketing automation allows you to generate leads, nurture those leads so they’re ready for a trial or demo, improve trial conversion, track lead-flow and analytics, and execute the customer journey, all while putting a lot of it on autopilot.

Operating a SaaS company, you already know that, so in today’s post we want to put the spotlight more on how marketing automation can help drive more leads, improve conversions, and grow your SaaS company. 

What are SaaS metrics, and why are metrics important for SaaS companies / Startups?

If you want to grow and be successful as a SaaS company or Startup, it is necessary to keep track of your numbers. Metrics are essential in all parts of your funnel, whether in marketing in the acquisition phase or in sales in the revenue phase. If you don’t track your numbers, you will not know if you are moving closer to your goal or further away. Only measuring your metrics will help you improve and adjust to your journey of growth. This article will guide you through the labyrinth of SaaS metrics by showing you all the definitions and helping you understand which metrics to measure and how to calculate and improve each of them. 

Why you should not measure everything & how to find the right metrics that move the needle for your company

There are different metrics to measure for every part of your sales funnel, but not all metrics are essential to achieve your goal. There are over 50 SaaS / Startup metrics. However, tracking all of them is not helpful, and if you want to monitor them all, you will easily get lost. These four steps help you find the metrics that affect your business success:  

1. Define your companies’ goal 
2. Define what metrics will help reach this goal  
3. Rank metrics based on business impact and viability 
4. Create action steps to improve the underlying metrics 

Monitoring the right metrics requires a sound business strategy. First, ask yourself what your companies’ goal is. Here it is vital to be as precise as possible. For example, “increasing revenue” is a poorly drafted goal since everybody has a different opinion of what increasing revenue means. However, if you state it like “increase this years’ revenue by 3%, compared to last year”, it is clear what you are trying to achieve. Based on your overall goal, start creating key performance indicators. Key performance indicators (KPIs) represent the most critical metrics in your company and help you measure your growth. This goal may be to increase sales, reduce costs, or expand into a new market. KPIs are metrics that move the needle,  therefore keep them limited.  

After you have defined your KPIs, ask yourself what underlying metrics will help you reach your goal. For example, your goal could be to increase customer lifetime value by 2% by the end of this year. A possible underlying metric that directly influences this goal is the average order size per customer. Once you have a list of underlying metrics, start prioritizing these metrics based on impact and viability. For instance, if you measure the effectiveness of your e-mail campaign (which directly affects your sales), it is crucial to measure the open rate, click-through rate, and click-to-open rate. Yet, only the overall conversion rate shows you if you are moving closer to your goal. So keep in mind to prioritize the metrics that support your companies’ success. 

What is the suitable benchmark for SaaS metrics? 

Especially when you start, it isn’t easy to know what growth numbers are reasonable and what goal you can achieve. There is little sense in setting arbitrary goals without further exploration. Instead, research industry benchmarks in your area to get a feeling, what numbers make sense, and what goal you can set for your company. If we look at revenue growth, for example, according to SaaS-capital, “a $2 million SaaS company needs to be growing at over 90% year-over-year to be in the top 25% of its peers.”

However, do not be scared off by those numbers. These benchmarks are good to get the first indication for growth. Yet, it is more important to measure your own numbers and compare them to your companies’ results. For example, track your key metrics for February and compare them to January’s results to see what growth rate is realistic for your firm.  

How to monitor your metrics

Once you know which metrics impact your business and which metrics to track, monitor the KPIs in a dashboard. Keeping an overview is easier this way, and you can share it with your team regularly, so everyone is on the same page. To make the most out of your dashboards, keep these two steps in mind: 

Group similar KPIs and metrics:

Grouping similar metrics in your dashboard has the advantage that you can use the dashboard in a task oriented way. For example, if you focus on the acquisition phase and want to get people on your website, group metrics like organic reach, visits, traffic sources, etc. Suppose you focus on the Retention phase and want people to continuously visit your website, grouping metrics like returning visitors or logins might go well together.  

Make it easy to understand:

One of the prime mistakes of creating a dashboard is making it too complicated to assess the situation immediately. To avoid this, make sure only to use the important metrics and provide them in a comprehensible way that can be interpreted easily. 

Read more about all the important metrics to track.

In today’s age of digitization, companies are betting big on Natural Language Processing to up their finance game.

NLP is a component of AI that utilizes machine learning algorithms to empower computer systems to comprehend and interpret human language. NLP is most commonly linked with initiatives to improve human-to-machine interactions, such as a customer support chatbot or a virtual assistant.

Today, finance is driven by data. The most crucial data is present in textual form in records, texts, websites, forums, and other places. Finance professionals spend a lot of time reading analyst reports, financial print media, and other sources of information.

Techniques such as NLP and ML could be leveraged to develop the financial infrastructure and thus help make data-driven, informed decisions in real-time.

5 Use Cases of NLP in the Finance Sector

Though NLP has a broad array of applications in the financial services industry, five, in particular, stand out:

1. Unstructured Data Utilization

In the financial services business, dealing with a flood of data is a common occurrence. Research and analytics reports, corporate filings, and transcripts of quarterly revenue are just a few of the financial resources traders, investment managers, financial analysts, and other professionals need to paddle through. Also, the finance data is stored in varying formats like pdf, XML, HTML, web, feeds, etc.

This piling of unstructured data adds to the problem of analysis, making it more time-consuming and tedious. Consequently, imperative finance data capable of providing in-depth insights to build future strategies may remain underutilized and thus influence decision making.

Natural language processing (NLP) allows you to glean valuable information from stuff that is underutilized. You could train NLP models to analyze unstructured data, content, and information to address concerns or trends that could influence financial markets.

NLP aids in the compliance processes of banks across the globe. Unstructured data labeling makes searching reams of digital documents easier, enabling compliance authorities to evaluate whether standards and regulations get implemented.

2. Efficient Text Analytics With NLP

Text analytics is the process of extracting qualitative, insightful structured data from unstructured text, which has grown in importance in the financial industry.

Sentiment analysis is one of the most commonly used objectives of text analytics. It is a technique for determining the underlying sentiment and extract key financial entities by understanding the context from a piece of text. 

By utilizing the NLP engine for text analysis, you could remodel unstructured data sources that investors regularly consume into a single, enhanced format optimized particularly for financial applicability. This smart format can be convenient in producing impactful data analytics by enabling readable structured data and effective data visualization, thus increasing the efficiency and accuracy of data-driven decision-making. 

Text analytics is primarily used for risk management and alpha generation in the finance world. Institutions like the Bank of America and JP Morgan Chase rely on this technology. Compliance and risk managers, data scientists, quantitative investors, and many others utilize it for scanning through financial documents, thereby gaining imperative insights. 

3. Financial Document Analyzer

Using AI technology, users can incorporate their document finance solution into current workflows without interrupting the existing methodologies. NLP empowers finance professionals to read and comprehend large volumes of financial documents automatically.

Businesses can train NLP models utilizing their existing documentation resources. Then, the NLP-backed financial statement analyzer swims through hundreds of these documents to extract and consolidate the most relevant, insightful information. 

Furthermore, NLP is instrumental in creating a search engine for financial market developments. There are tons of documents stored in the databases of financial institutions. The NLP-empowered search engine retrieves the elements, concepts, and notions present in these documents to obtain valuable investment data.

The system then displays a summary of the most relevant information for search requests from financial firm employees on the search engine interface. 

Banks that utilize this technology include Deutsche Bank, Axis Bank, Federal Bank, etc. Some fintech companies use it as well, such as Capital Float, Flipkart, Edelweiss, etc. to automate processing huge volumes of documents and extracting key concepts and data fields from it. 

4. Content Enrichment

Financial firms could harness content enrichment to compose better investment management and improve risk management and compliance. Content intelligence systems are sound in completing and enriching enterprise-wide data with extensive contextual information to entice real, actionable insights.

Content intelligence is an emerging technology that boosts content strategies by delivering data-driven analytics on content and its influence on consumers. It entails both direct and indirect financial gains from content marketing initiatives, such as decreased squandering and increased ROI. 

These tools leverage the NLP technology to:

• Assess the tone of your content, spot patterns, and make data-driven decisions.
• Figure out what the content’s goal is and how to route it to the apt topic.
• Generate and curate content for your engagement platforms.

NLP helps achieve content enrichment objectives in the finance sector by:

• Identification and differentiation of the most appealing thought leadership blogs from the competition.
• Delivering personalized customer experience through targeted client-specific content.

McKinsey, a management consulting firm, has a content enrichment and intelligence model that verifies data content and performs quality and consistency checks. This allows them to help their clients with insurance, wealth, and asset management.

5. Reporting and Omnichannel Customer Engagement

The finance industry has lots of data to sink in, making it challenging to monitor transactions. Natural language processing serves the purpose of allowing financial analysts to obtain relevant information through information filtering.

Also, in the financial services industry, client communication is imperative this sector, and NLP tools provide banks with critical information when they interact with customers.

NLP algorithms forecast and detect customer pain points, allowing banks to design policies and services to address these issues. Other financial institutions could take decisions backed by NLP, which speeds up the overall financial reporting process even further.

What’s more, financial firms must provide high-quality services to their customers that necessitate going above and beyond to comprehend customer data and information. NLP analyses customer data, such as social interactions and cultures, to personalize services.

NLP, for example, sifts through social media data and finds conversations that might help them improve their services. Major retail banks like HDFC Bank and ICICI Bank deploy powerful customer engagement tools like chatbots to understand client intention. 

Top 5 Key Benefits of Utilizing NLP in Finance

Consider the following benefits of utilizing NLP to the fullest, especially in the finance sector:

1. Efficiency

It is capable of automating large volumes of unstructured content into meaningful insights in real-time.

2. Consistency

A single NLP model can deliver way more consistently than a team of human analysts, each of whom may decipher aspects of text slightly differently. 

3. Accuracy 

Human analysts might overlook or misread content in voluminous unstructured documents. It gets eliminated to a greater extent in the case of NLP-backed systems.

4. Scaling

Text analysis at scale is possible using NLP technology on a variety of documents, internal processes, emails, social media data, and more. You can process massive volumes of data in seconds or minutes, whereas manual analysis might take days.

5. Process Automation 

NLP empowers you to automate the entire process of scanning and extracting actionable insights from the financial data under study. 

The Bottom Line

In recent years, natural language processing algorithms have grown considerably more reliable, consistent, accurate, and scalable, providing financial decision-makers with a thorough grasp of the market. NLP is being used in the finance industry to significantly reduce mundane tasks, speed up deals, analyze risks, comprehend financial sentiment, and build portfolios while automating audits and accounting. 

Thus, there is no hesitation in saying that natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning (ML) have become the tools of choice for financial analysts, traders, and portfolio managers. 

In the right hands, a cold email can be a perfect conversation starter. It lets you introduce yourself and throws a hook that will get your target audience interested in your company. Cold emails are vital for building engagement and providing as much information as possible without exhausting your prospects. 

It’s a point of pride to craft a cold email template that instantly delivers replies and interactions. It means that you nailed your recipients’ concerns and understood how to appeal to them. Nevertheless, even a good cold email template won’t last forever. 

At some point, you’ll start noticing that your emails get opened less, that your current cadence isn’t enough to motivate recipients into responding. 

But cold emails can be difficult to master because they come from reps who have no prior relationship with the person they’re reaching out to. You check your domain health, but your DNS records and Sender Score are top-notch. You run a mailbox audit and see that nothing affects the journey of your emails. 

What the heck is happening? Did you build your winning templates wrong? Are your prospects getting intercepted by your competitors?

The reason is, in fact, much more pragmatic - you haven’t refreshed your templates in a while.  

Why is it important to refresh email templates?

Nobody likes to hear that they’ll have to change their cold email templates sooner or later. It takes a lot of time and brainstorming to create an email that hits the spot, so when you know you’ll be going through this again, you’ll feel defeated. However, don’t let yourself prioritize feelings over facts. 

• Your business evolves, and so should your cold email templates. Can you keep your business growing by sticking to just one sales channel, one sales tool, and a sales pitch that hasn't been updated since 2000? Of course, not. That would be an exercise in futility, like trying to paint a sunset with only a liner brush and one color in your palette. The more your business expands, the more components your workflow gets, the more assistance you’ll need with managing your company, and the more channels you will add to your pre-sales activities. 
• Your cold templates must be consistent with your brand image. As time goes, your vision and mission will change to reflect your expanding list of values. As it happens, you'll have to make sure that everything reflects it, from your social media presence to your email templates. 
• Your winning templates may not win your new audience over. Additionally, you can’t keep winning with just one set of templates. Whenever you start selling to a new market, you must research its specifics, understand the key concerns of the consumers and develop an individual strategy for presenting your brand. This strategy involves both inbound and outbound marketing. 

Refreshing cold email templates is the normal part of any successful outreach process. It’s about staying flexible and ready to catch up with the latest trends and changes. 

5 signs it’s time to refresh your email templates

All right, we sorted out why you should change your core cold email templates. But when should you change them? How not to do it too early or too late?

You get fewer results

Hands down, it’s the most obvious sign. Your message is delivered but it fails to deliver. It's hard not to notice that your winning formula starts bringing fewer replies and email opens. Whether it's the subject line, the introduction, or the body text, it doesn't capture the recipient's interest as well as it used to. 

How do you fix it? You don’t have to scrap your email templates entirely. They did so well generating leads for you; maybe they need just a little tweak. Some good A|B testing will help you figure it out. Launch two separate campaigns: One with slightly changed email templates and another one featuring a completely new set. Comparing the results will let you see the scale of changes that your email campaigns need. 

Your business has grown

You may have begun your journey as a startup, but your goal was to go big and take over the world… or take over your potential buyers' world by taking care of their needs and solving their issues. So, after several years in business, you have a lot more things to take pride in, aside from your first baby steps. The question is: Do your email templates reflect the long way you've gone? If you still use templates developed back when your company didn't have a proper office, you under-present your company and keep shooting your business in the leg. 

How to fix it? Stop being shy. Do you mention the names of industry giants or voices of authority when you describe your customers? Have you attached the link to your presentation on the industry-relevant event? You have the right to brag! It’s not even bragging, just stating the facts about your success. People love working with successful partners. 

Your templates are no longer mobile-friendly

According to the rule of thumb, if any content takes more than one minute to upload on mobile, the user will discard it. Given that at least 97% of your target recipients check their email from their smartphones while engaging in their everyday activities (lunchtime, fitness, shopping, etc.), your email templates must look good on a smartphone screen. Otherwise, your recipients will grow frustrated with poor user experience and give priority to messages that are easier to access from a mobile device.

How to fix it? When you see that your email templates get fewer opens and fewer interactions, try checking your emails from a smartphone and a tablet. If you see that your emails don't fit the screen size, the image format is messed up, and your templates take too long to upload, it's time to get adaptive. 

There are new compliance regulations

There are certain laws and regulations that protect people from receiving unwanted content or passing important business data to the wrong company. They are the reason why you must inform your recipients about why you reach out to them and that you're fully aware they didn't expect a message from you. Also, this is why you must add a disclaimer just in case you accidentally send an email to the wrong recipient. The list of regulations regarding safe electronic mail transfer is quite large, and it keeps growing because malicious senders keep trying to invade innocent users' inboxes. When your templates fail to keep up with the new rules, the outcome is as predictable as driving without license plates.

How to fix it? Don't isolate yourself from the news. Subscribe to sources dedicated to informing users about all important updates that concern email outreach and email marketing. Explore the new guidelines for mail senders and make sure that your templates are fully compliant. Do you need to add more information to your sender ID? Done! Change the format of your logo icon? Not a problem! The sooner you act, the better your email templates will do. 

Your style is growing out of relevance

This part is mostly about the visuals you use for your cold email templates. Sometimes, companies change their design to a sleeker and brighter one, build a social media presence, create new logos…but they don't update their email signature and forget that they still use their old logo for their emails. Yes, it happens. And it matters. Recipients like consistency, so when they receive an email that clashes with the style of the sender’s company, they grow suspicious. You could have been spoofed for all they know. 

How to fix it? Polish your email templates as much as you polish your visuals and web sources. Whenever you add a new element, think about how it would affect your cold outreach templates and the materials you attach. Do you need to change something? Does your sales deck need a visual upgrade? If you have an art director, have them take a look at your promotional content and marketing materials and let them see what they can do. 

How to refresh your email template correctly

We gave a long speech about the necessity of changing cold email templates, but we aren't going to leave it at that. Yes, we fully acknowledge how hard it is to write a good set of compelling email messages. It may get easier when you get the hang of it, but still, every new industry or segment of your target audience would introduce a new challenge that will lead to more brainstorming sessions and increased coffee consumption. So, to give you something to build on, here are the rules that you should always follow when writing or rewriting a cold email template: 

• Don’t write an essay. Long sentences, overly complicated words, huge paragraphs of text…it will never work out. Your recipients don’t have time to work their way through an onslaught of characters just to read the call to action. If you hide it behind a wall of text, you probably don’t want them to act. With that thought, they’ll trash your email and move on. 
• Send a message, not a list. Bullet point lists are great. They let you outline each benefit without taking up too much space and letting your recipients focus on high-value aspects of your business. But when you send only a bullet-point list with a dry introduction and a generic call-to-action, you don’t leave your audience compelled to follow your call. Emails like that lack the humanity necessary for convincing prospects to give you the time of their day.
• Always be personal. Don't go in blind, starting your introduction with "Dear Sir or Madam." Nobody does that anymore. Admitting that you send emails to no one, in particular, is a bad way to start a business relationship that is built on mutual trust and mutual benefits. Take care to learn the name, title, and duties of your recipient and make a message that addresses them properly.
• Use tools to check your templates. You may know how human recipients see your emails. But you'll need some help with viewing your templates from the perspective of email service providers. Luckily, tools for mailbox audits are at your service. Platforms like Folderly and mail-tester.com let you quickly check your email templates and get a clear image of your text/image ratio, your HTML elements, and spam trigger word density. 

As long as you remember these basics, you’ll have no problems with rewriting your template or creating a new set of cold emails for your new campaign. 

Conclusion

Cold emailing takes a cold head, a human heart, and a watchful eye. No solution or strategy is permanent. Sometimes, you'll have to write a cold template that would address a global and relevant situation and then rewrite it to address all segments from the list of your recipients. Sometimes, you'll mold your templates into something that fits your brand image better. Whatever the reason, stay flexible. The more you respond to the change and work your way around modern trends, the sharper your mind gets! 

If you want to make sure that your cold email templates are welcomed by email service providers, you can use Folderly right now, and run your first mailbox audit. Fewer things to worry about, more highly valuable outreach data to process!

In B2B, you won’t be successful selling to a company that does not really need your product or service right now, or simply – it can’t afford it.

On the other hand, selling comes easy to those that have an aching business pain that your solution can help with. Actually, they might be actively looking for you right now.

Yet, many businesses are still having a hard time connecting with the second type of B2B buyers – those that fit their Ideal Customer Profile. 

Here is some help with that.

Quick Recap:

What is an ideal customer profile ICP (or a B2B Customer Profile)?

An Ideal Customer Profile (also known as a B2B Customer Profile), is a rough sketch of the best-fit companies for your products and services. 

It helps you focus your efforts on finding and targeting your ideal prospects who will enjoy the most value from your business offer, as opposed to wasting time and “dignity” asking random companies to buy from you.

The way I see it = your ICP acts as the best representation of the business organizations that you had in mind when you came up with the idea to build a product (or a SaaS solution) to serve their specific, business needs and it guides you to find them and target them with the message they care to receive.

The ultimate purpose for defining an Ideal Customer Profile is prioritizing your resources on those prospects that have the highest potential to buy from you. =Something we like to call smart working, instead of hard-working.

As we stand behind one of the leading platforms for B2B Sales & Marketing teams, we believe it’s only fair that we share our insights with the business-to-business community along with actionable steps for finding and targeting their ideal buyers. We owe you that much.

Therefore, this article will be focused on the best practices for identifying your ICP in B2B Sales. 

For starters, let’s look at all the different reasons why you need to define an ICP framework for your business.

(p.s. B2B companies that have crafted and make use of their own Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) achieve 68% higher account win rates. (TOPO)

Benefits of having a clearly defined Ideal Customer Profile Framework

• ICP Framework will not only align your Sales and Marketing teams but will also guide them to invest their resources where it makes the most sense = targeting the ideal buyer;
• 
  
• *Sales and marketing alignment leads to your company becoming 67% better at closing deals (Marketo) and enjoy 36% higher customer retention rates (Marketing Profs). 👈True that. From our own experience.

• An ICP helps you make better decisions when planning out the future roadmap for your SaaS updates and new product features as it sheds light on the most acute problems of your current customers 💡;
• If your organization is into Account-Based Marketing (ABM), the ICP will act as your guiding compass to aim your sales efforts on specific, high-value target accounts; If not – take a look at these stat: According to SalesForce, 89% of B2B organizations already have an account-based marketing program. Maybe start incorporating ABM into your business?
• 
  
• Increase Customer Acquisition Rate – Having a well-defined B2B customer profile helps you understand the business context surrounding the type of customer that is in current need of your solution and how best to approach them. This results in more closed deals and mutual benefits on both sides. It’s a win-win situation;
• Increase Customer Lifetime Value – The more qualified prospects you target (once you know who they are) the better their LTV and lower churn rate. Being surrounded with satisfied and valuable customers has a direct influence on your business’ exponential growth. (Referrals included!) 
• 
  
• Faster Sales Cycles – ICP is truly, madly, deeply an inevitable part of the strategic planning for sales activities.
• 
  
• among many others.
• 
  

But what are Firmographics, really?

In the B2B world, marketers and salespeople target entire companies and business organizations (not just individual customers as in B2C) to promote and sell their products and services.

Therefore, firmographics are to B2B Sales & Marketing teams what demographics are for the B2C and e-commerce companies.

Firmographics then, are the data points (units of information) you have on your B2B prospects that help you better understand the context surrounding their business so you can create customer profiles (firmographic segments) and place each prospecting company into a specific segment according to their mutual characteristics & pain points related to your products/services.

Makes sense, right?

Firmographics help us – the B2B professionals, differentiate between the many companies the industrial market consists of, sort out those that are a good fit for our solution so we can focus our time, money, and effort where it makes the most sense for collaboration.

Then, we divide and segment our “ideal fit” firms according to their similarities and mutual traits to better understand their business needs and therefore deliver relevant and personalized marketing & sales communication to optimize our sales win rate. 

Essentially, Firmographics are the attributes of firms and B2B companies that help you understand who are your ideal buyers from your target market.

🏢 Firmographic data on a company level include:

• Industry
• Location: Head Quarters + Subsidiaries per Country or Region (for Geophysical Prospecting);
• Company’s Name, Email Address and Phone Number;
• URL – The domain of the company’s website;
• Operating status – Is the company still active on the market or not?;
• Turnover (or Company Revenue) – The amount of money taken by a business in a particular period;
• Company Size (Employee Range + Revenue Range);
• Employee range -Total number of employees at company + Organizational Tree by Hierarchy;
• Technographics – Technology and applications that are used on the company website (e.g. program languages, web frameworks, payment gateways, operating systems, etc.);
• Monthly Tech Spending.

What is a buyer persona and why is it important?

If your Ideal Customer Profile consists of B2B businesses that fit your target company, the Buyer Persona is the representation of the business professionals working behind the curtains of those companies.

Remember, B2B buyers are still human.

Even though you target an entire organization, your sales reps will communicate with the business owners, key stakeholders, and the people involved in the decision-making process. 

That’s why we have Firmographic data on contact level.

Bear in mind, since now we talk about individual human beings that are part of those corporations, in sketching your Buyer Persona you will have to take into consideration the demographics, psychographic, behavioral data besides the firmographics on contact level.

Also, you will have to create a different “portrait” of a Buyer Persona for each department. In other words = more Buyer Personas per prospecting company.

👨‍💼👩‍💼Firmographic data on contact level (the professionals working in those companies) include:

• Name and Surname of the business professionals you aim to contact;
• Job Position and Job Title;
• Department;
• Contact in the Organizational Tree by Hierarchy (Director, Executive, Manager…);
• 
  
• Did you know that 81% of non-executive B2B employees have a say in company purchase decisions? Now you do.
• Contact Location (Country and City) for Geophysical Prospecting;
• Direct Email Address;
• Personal Social Media Profile. In B2B that would be LinkedIn = 89% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn for B2B Sales.

What is Firmographic Segmentation? 

In B2B, using Firmographic Market Segmentation makes all the difference between wasting your time shooting in the dark with darts and expecting to hit the dartboard VS. using a sniper.

We have only so much time to spend here on Earth, would you waste it prospecting to people that are not in the position to decide if they can buy your product? Or businesses that do not need your service at all? Or companies that simply cannot afford the price of your solution (yet)?

Exactly. 

That’s why every successful B2B organization claims to use firmographic segmentation to nail down its ICP.

Here is an example of using Firmographic Segmentation to define Ideal Client Profile and where to find them: 

"We use Firmographics to make highly targeted lists for our cold email campaigns 
and LinkedIn outreach. The campaigns are written keeping in mind the size and goals 
of the company, their competitors and case studies from our clients in their niche. 

For defining an ideal client profile, we the following firmographic segmentation:

- Industry and sub-industry (eg. Marketing SaaS, SalesTech, D2C beauty eCommerce)
- Size of the company - (number of employees)
- Funding Status
- Revenue
- Areas of Operation
- Is their website/app already translated?
- News - Is there news of them expanding?

And finally, we look for firmographic data on GetLatka, Traxn, Crunchbase, SeedTable, SaasStock 
and other industry-specific directories. 

Also, we look at their website and LinkedIn to see if they are a good fit based on 
employee size, funding, geographical location and business format."

Nikita Agarwal, Director at Milestone Localization

Extra Benefits you can expect from using Firmographics Segmentation to build your Ideal Customer Profile

* Personalize your cold outreach – The more you know about your prospects, the more meaningful the conversation = the better the outcome. Here is an informative read on how you can leverage the data you have on your prospects to deliver hyper-personalized outreach that ensures reply rates of up to 45%.

* Predict the buying behavior of your potential customers and don’t miss out on sales opportunities – Have you heard about Sales Triggers? We talk a LOT about them in this –

Related Read: Ultimate Guide on Sales Triggers and how to Track Them

* Optimize the ROI on your B2B Marketing campaigns and boost your inbound marketing efforts – 78% of B2B companies use website conversions as a performance metric.

This means leveraging SEO and content marketing. According to Forrester & Gartner, In 2020 alone, 80% of the B2B buyer journey took place on the internet and those B2B buyers will only reach out (or respond) to an SDR only after they’ve surveyed the market and done extensive research.

Actually – 90% of B2B customers research approx. 2-7 sites before they purchase.

Brian Dean explains it simply:

Sure, your marketing team can send thousands of visitors to your site. But if those marketers don’t know what an ideal customer looks like. Or why they’ll ultimately convert. Traffic could stay exactly that: just traffic.

BRIAN DEAN, FOUNDER OF BACKLINKO

How to Identify and Segment your Ideal Customer Profile?

Brainstorm 🧠🌩️

Make this a group activity where every member of your Smarketing team is involved as you brainstorm all together to sketch the “first draft” of what your ideal potential customers look like through the following points:

Company Location – Where on Earth are located the most valuable companies from your addressable market? (When Elon Musk finally builds the first colony on Mars, we will include them as well.)

Industry – What are the top 3 industries, or top 1 business niche if your service is resolving super-specific pain points?

Type of company – Private companies, Public companies, or One Person Companies (OPC) – Private Limited?

Company Size – Startups, Small to Mid-size Business (SMB) or Large Enterprises?

Company Annual Revenue or Gross margin – In what revenue frame should your prospects fit in to be able to afford the price of your product or service?

Company Level or Product company maturity – How mature a company is based on the project and the clients it is dealing with. 

Look at your existing clients 🧐

Especially those that are most satisfied with your product or services and have the highest LTV.

Survey your existing customers – What made them choose you? Ask your customer success team to conduct in-depth customer interviews particularly for this need. Prepare a list of questions that aim at constructive feedback.

Your key customers hold the secret to the unique customer acquisition process of your sales professionals. So why not simply ask them? 

Was there something that created friction during the sales cycle and slowed down the sales process? Remove those obstacles. 

What made the buyer journey run smoothly and with the least amount of resistance?

Hunt for actionable sales advice from your most satisfied customers – what brought the “a-ha!” moment and made them decide to buy from you? 

Their answers will help you to narrow down the common characteristics of your current prospects.

Our customer success heroine Ana has developed a whole drip campaign for this purpose so she can follow their satisfaction with our product over different time periods since they’ve been with us.

Analyze your Web Analytics data 🐱‍💻

Web analytics tools help you better understand your customers (and future customers) by giving you insight into pretty much every activity happening on your website.

This includes how users navigate and interact throughout your website, what webpages they’re most engaged with, what content they prefer, and whether they take valuable actions on the site (⭐conversions⭐) such as: creating an account, purchases, or contact requests.

As a B2B Marketer, using this data, helps me optimize channel and website performance by making data-led decisions.

There are quite a few analytics tools available on the market today, some of them free and others paid, to name a few: Hotjar, Kissmetrics, Adobe Analytics, Woopra…

But our personal favorite is the free version of Google Analytics 💘 which we use to understand and make sense of our website traffic, engagement, and conversion data. I will be using Google Analytics tab names and vocab for this purpose.

When crafting your Ideal Customer Profile, make use of your analytics data to look at the origin of your website traffic:

The Audience tab will give you insight into “WHO is coming to your website?” including their:

Demographic profile: this is how you learn more about the types of people that are interested in your website, after all – they are your potential future clients.

Age – What is the age range most of your website visitors fall within? Gender – Depending on your business needs, gender might be relevant for you: Does one gender make the majority or evenly split?

Geo Report: It’s KEY to know where are your potential customers physically located and what language they speak.

Location – What country do they currently live in derived from the IP address? What Region, what city? Language – What language do they speak?

This data information will assist you to find groups of high-value customers in different locations and focus your efforts on segmenting them accordingly.

Mobile Report: Although it’s called “Mobile Report” it enables you to view traffic and conversion data from mobile and desktop users, as well as the devices being used.

So what device your ICP prefers to use – desktop, tablet, or mobile?

The Acquisition tab will let you know “HOW are users getting to your website?”

Or simply put – Which channel/source/medium (ferry boat?) they used to travel and arrive at your website (island 🌺)?

When you can get an idea about where your most valuable traffic comes from you will know where to optimize and allocate your resources.

Sources include Google, Bing, LinkedIn, Appsumo, Twitter, Direct…

Mediums include Organic, Email, CPC (PPC), Display, Social media, referral.

Those are the basic ways in which you can leverage Web Analytics Data to help you create a well-rounded profile of your ideal customer.

With this type of holistic approach to defining an ICP you will enjoy the benefits of being able to get closer to your potential customers, to better understand who they are, to forecast monitoring the patterns in their behavior on your website, and prioritize your resources where the gold mine actually is.

What are the best Firmographic Data Providers / B2B Database?

Firmographic data providers are SaaS companies that offer access to a huge B2B database filled with business information such as company and contact data that you can make use of for finding your ICP and more targeted and meaningful sales prospecting.

Following are the top 5 B2B Database and Firmographic data providers in the industry.

Not to brag but we are one of them.

#1. Sales.Rocks

If you didn’t know already, we are reaching some industry heights as one of the most popular Firmographic Data Providers. It’s only natural since our mission and goal in life are to help businesses connect easily to exchange their services and grow their revenue.

Our B2B Database acts as a storage of a huge volume of structured data filled with valuable information about companies and business professionals from 241 countries & territories worldwide so you can perform your Firmographic segmentation without any friction.

On top of that (to make your life easier), we have integrated Sales & Marketing automation tools and features that you can use to automate your every day, manual tasks that do not really require a human touch and set them on autopilot.

The features include:

Company and Contact Search – Using our powerful filtering system based on 50 different data points you can nail down your Ideal Customer Profile in minutes.

Email Warmer – Since 77% of B2B companies use email and 99% of buyers, consumers, and customers check their email accounts every day, we thought you might find useful this tool to keep your emails out of the spam folder by “warming them up” before you start your cold outreach, improve your email deliverability and keep your email sender reputation neat & tidy.

Multichannel Drip Campaigns – You can connect your email provider with Sales.Rocks platform, get all the information you need on your prospects, and now that you’ll have their email addresses and LinkedIn profiles you can have fun crafting drip campaigns to reach your prospects on both channels. Play around setting triggers and conditions that will maximize your delivery and email personalization.

p.s. The IceBreakers feature is coming soon* 🧊

The Sales Toolkit will arm you with an email & phone verifier – to check if you have the correct email addresses and phone numbers so you don’t waste time and risk spam alerts + the Bulk Extractor will enrich your already existing data with the missing information.

Chrome Extension – based on data scraping technique, the Sales.Rocks Chrome extension will extract, or ‘scrape’, data from any website you land upon while surfing the internet. 🏄‍♀️

#2. ZoomInfo – Powered by DiscoverOrg

ZoomInfo is another B2B Database provider, including Firmographic data, so you can perform firmographic segmentation using their tool.

They collect most of their data by researching and interviewing companies a few times each year. But they are focused on the US market, not globally, with an accent on Boston, New York City, Houston, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Atlanta.

ZoomInfo is a sales intelligence tool best suited for enterprises and large corporations that do their business in the USA. You can use them as well to build out a set of comprehensive ideal customer profiles, enrich your marketing database with business information and use uses AI to recommend similar contacts based on previous searches.

Pricing: Quote-based Plan, but when you do the math it goes like this: $4900 per 5000 emails or $10.000 per year.

See how ZoomInfo compares to Sales.Rocks

#3. Vainu

Vainu is a Sales Intelligence tool and a business data provider based in Helsinki, Finland. As you can read on their homepage, they do provide firmographic data but mostly of Nordic and Dutch companies.

Vainu’s B2B database covers only 7 countries, but it includes features such as alerts, workflow triggers, and actions you can set for strategic sales and marketing operations.

They offer integrations to Salesforce and Hubspot, so if you’re using one of them, you can get Vainu’s prospects directly into your CRM.

However, their pricing plan is based on a yearly subscription module and pricing per country.

Check out how Vainu compares to Sales.Rocks

#4. Snov.io

Snov.io is a sales automation platform that is based upon a B2B database with data coverage mostly from LinkedIn. It offers firmographic data on your leads and prospects through three different ways – Email Finder Extension, Li Prospect Finder Extension and Domain Search.

Just the same as Sales.Rocks, Snov.io’s features include launching drip campaigns, verifying emails, finding email addresses as you browse the net and providing you with technographics among other B2B information.

Compare Snov.io with Sales.Rocks

#5. Lusha

Again, Lusha’s B2B database is limited mostly to LinkedIn data, but still, they are our fifth choice as one of the better Firmographic data providers on the market.

Their other features for prospecting and cold emailing are not completely developed just yet. In order to use Lusha, you need to download a plugin and start your LinkedIn search. For this to work, you’ll need to know the names and surnames of the business professionals you’re aiming to contact.

However, Lusha is best-known for its phone numbers data accuracy and is one of the best phone number data providers in our industry. So if your business is into cold calling, you might consider them.

Just like Sales.Rocks, Lusha is 27001 ISO certified, CCPA and GDPR aligned.

Feature comparison between Lusha and Sales.Rocks

Have fun using Firmographic Segmentation to find and target your Ideal Customers – and good luck! 

When your email marketing is booming, it means that you didn’t let any single detail slip away from you. To follow that logic, if your email campaigns are doing poorly, you must take a good look at all the vital components of your email outreach and see what you neglected. 

In many cases, it would be your list of email addresses. Sometimes, senders think that the “spray and pray” approach to sending emails is still valid, so they send a lot of messages to the contacts they gathered and hope that the major part of these emails goes to the intended folder. 

However, this method is a thing of the past, a very messy and chaotic past when recipients felt like they were walking across a minefield whenever they interacted with their inbox, and senders kept their fingers crossed whenever they hit “Send”. 

In other words, this is not the “good old times” scenario. You don’t want to go back there and you don’t need to recreate this experience by refusing to verify your active email addresses. 

Modern email outreach is all about being attentive to your contacts, even before you send your first email. Not only must you be able to craft a template that would appeal to your intended recipients (and their email service providers), but you should also make sure that you reach out to the right people. 

Now, let’s break active email address verification down and see why it is so important and how to make it work for you. 

Why do you need to verify an email address?

As we mentioned in some of our previous posts, email address verification plays a major part in email list hygiene. 

• Better deliverability. When you send around 2500 outbound emails, you’d be happier if all of them landed in the recipients’ inboxes, right? However, if you don’t verify every email address on your list, you can expect that only 1000 or even 600 messages would reach the destination folder. When your goal is to develop your email marketing and expand your target audience, you can’t be satisfied with such results.

• Fewer bounces. So, if around 1000 emails out of 2500 you send get delivered, what happens to the remaining 1500 messages? They bounce back at you as hard bounces - and the more bounces you receive, the worse your sender reputation gets. Logically, the worse your sender reputation gets, the fewer emails you get to send to verified addresses because email service providers start treating you with suspicion. Long story short, you don’t want to see your bounce rate grow. 

• More transparency. Unverified email addresses lead to more bounces and a low open rate - something that you’ll see when checking your campaign metrics. Because of this, you won’t be able to understand the true state of your email campaigns and evaluate your performance. Whatever relationship you may have with active recipients, it would be obscured by the data coming from interacting with invalid and obsolete email addresses.  

• Higher engagement rate. The more recipients interact with your messages, the better internet service providers receive you. So, when you send emails to an address that hasn’t been active since 2018 and let them just pile up there, you do your email marketing a huge disservice. Your content should set things in motion! 

As we always say, the quantity will never matter more than quality. You can add thousands of email addresses to your sending list every day, but it won’t mean anything if you never bother to verify any of them. 

How to verify an active email address without sending an email

We make such a huge emphasis on the “without sending an email” part because sending an email to a questionable address is the quickest way to figure out whether it’s valid or not. If the address isn’t valid, you receive a hard bounce. No point in sending more messages, time to remove the inactive address from the list. 

However, this is also the most harmful way of verifying email addresses - our goal is to evade bounces, not collect them. Therefore, abandon the thoughts of testing contacts with your mailbox and look for more elegant solutions. Modern technology is more than happy to provide those. 

Manual email verification

The most reliable way to craft a list of verified and validated emails is to work on it personally, separating apples from oranges by hand. Of course, it’s time-consuming, but in the end, you can personally vouch for every email address on your list and no longer concern yourself with worrying about inbox placement. 

How can you verify emails by hand?

• Dummy account. Not the most sophisticated option, yet you can get the hang of it pretty quickly. Register a free account on an alternative domain and send an email to the address in question. See if your message gets delivered or bounced. If you receive a hard bounce, you know that the address is invalid. The downside of this method is that the more addresses you need to verify, the harder it is to keep track of your work. Of course, you can manage it via spreadsheets, but it won’t make your task less taxing. Also, your alternative domain name would still build up a reputation, meaning that pretty soon, you’ll be receiving inaccurate data because your emails would be intercepted by spam filters. 

• Double opt-in verification. This technique is mostly used in inbound marketing to keep track of registered users. Whenever a visitor decides to create an account or your website or sign up for a free trial or subscribe to your content, they receive a unique link. By clicking on that link, they confirm their email address, letting you quickly verify all inbound contact data and prevent users from providing non-existent email addresses. With double opt-in, your registered users also consent to receiving emails from you, making it easier to deliver messages to their inboxes.  

• Double re-typo verification. This method works for your inbound recipients who sign up for your newsletter or subscribe to your blog. After they confirm their decision on your website, you can make a pop-up form that asks them to enter their email address once more. Thanks to that, you can rest assured that your inbound contacts are real. However, sometimes, your website visitors may use an alternative email address to keep their main mailbox free from unnecessary messages, so monitor those new addresses closely. 

• Email checker. Let us be clear, when we say “manual,” we don’t mean that you can verify an email without tools entirely. Accessing DNS records and sending requests to an SMTP service isn’t something anyone can pull off. You need an email checker to do it for you. Luckily, there is a broad choice of email-checking tools that let you go through every email address on your list and see whether it’s good to go or not. A lot of these services are available online, without requiring you to install them or even sign in. Let’s take a look at an email checker developed by Hunter.io 

To start email address verification, you just enter the email address you need to check and click “Verify.” After this, you’ll receive a brief outline of the domain name and server status. Hunter.io email checker also informs you whether the email address is publicly available. 

In addition to the Hunter.io online email checker, there are Snov.io Email Verifier, Bouncer email-verifying feature and email-checker.net. However, you must keep in mind that each of these email checkers has specific features of its own. For example, with Hunter.io, you can find out whether the email address is valid, but you may get a bunch of outdated addresses that no longer belong to relevant recipients. The email-checker-net tool doesn’t let you work at scale and upload emails in bulk. So, keep this in mind when choosing the best email checker for your business goals and marketing needs. 

Email verification within an email finder tool

When you have more than a couple of email addresses to work with, using email checkers that only allow you to verify them one by one won’t do. You need something bigger. Something that would let you verify an entire list within a relatively short time period. 

In that case, you should go for a good email finder. An email finder is a tool that lets you harvest email addresses from a publicly available web source and verify them on the spot. Hunter.io Email Finder provides such a feature, letting you collect business email addresses from the company’s website. However, the issue of outdated email addresses still stands - and some of those addresses can be transformed into spam traps, so don’t get carried away. 

There are also paid services, such as ZoomInfo, but startups with limited budgets can find their pricing intimidating. Snov.io also offers bulk email verification, letting you decide which volume fits your pace. 

Due to this, our advice is to use a sales tool in addition to your email finder of choice. For example, LinkedIn Sales Navigator scrapes data from active LinkedIn profiles, letting you compare it to the data collected from the company’s website and see which emails are guaranteed to be active and valid. This process may take more than just a couple of clicks, but the end result would be worth it.  

How do email verification tools work?

Any bulk email checker that's worth its money puts an email address through several verification stages: 

• Syntax verification. The email checker checks the local part of the email address (johndoe@) and the domain part (company.io) to ensure its compliance with the syntax guidelines (character use, dot placement).

• MX records check. At this stage, the email checker uses a DNS lookup, accessing the intended recipient’s public DNS records, such as an MX record that outlines which email server is in charge of managing mail.

• Email server ping. The email checker connects with the SMTP server connected to the email address and sends a validation request. After receiving a reply (250 OK), the email checker gets a confirmation that the email address is valid. The negative result would look like this: 550-5.1.1 User Unknown.

• Disposable email check. The email checker makes sure that the email address isn’t a dummy account created by a spammer or a user not interested in providing their real contact data. Email verification services usually locate temporary email addresses by scanning through domains that generate them - whenever they find a match, they mark the address as disposable. 

• Domain name validation (DNS). The email checker looks through the DNS records associated with the email address, checking the DKIM public key, SPF record and DMARC policy. If all those are available, the address is considered valid. 

Some tools may go as far as checking whether some email addresses on your list have been greylisted or blacklisted before and even reveal them as spam traps, preventing you from being trapped in a blacklist database.  

How often do you need to verify email addresses with a bulk email checker? 

If you operate in a B2B area and have a massive list of emails, you must always verify your email addresses before you start your campaign. Make it a part of your routine:

1. You gather new email addresses by researching the prospect’s website, LinkedIn page, or scanning the list of contacts registered for a webinar. 
2. You run email verification via an email checker, email finder or any other service that fits your budget and end goals. 
3. You remove email addresses that you weren’t able to verify and launch campaigns for the validated ones. 

These three steps are essential for your deliverability and maintaining a positive sender reputation. When it comes to planning inbound marketing campaigns, you have to verify your email list quite frequently. The rule of thumb says that the frequency of your email list verification should match its growth speed. Even though you make your inbound prospects go through double opt-in verification or re-typo verification, remember that they might have an email address reserved specifically for emails they don’t want to see. So you must check those new addresses for activity, and if you see zero engagement on their behalf, don’t hesitate to get rid of them.  

Is it sustainable to verify emails with a mail checker? 

It’s no big deal when you need to check one or two email addresses. However, when you need to run bulk email verification, you’ll eventually have to look for paid tools and services. For many users, it seems like too much - after all, a good email deliverability tool that allows you to manage several inboxes doesn’t come cheap. Adding even more services seems like wasting too much money. 

The truth lies in the ROI. There are many flexible price offers that let you pick a tool that matches your pace, workflow, and financial capacity. Even though it may feel like you’re putting a strain on your budget, you’ll end up losing more money trying to fix your sender reputation or even having to register a new business domain. Business email outreach requires a lot of investment, so you must make every cent count. The best way to do it is to ensure that none of your messages flies past your recipients’ inboxes. 

So, having an email verification tool to back you up will sustain you in the long run, letting you stay in control of your list of email addresses and your campaign metrics. The price paid for the service will return to you in outnumbering high-value prospects that didn’t miss your emails. 

Conclusion

Having to verify your email addresses may feel like an extra chore, but in fact, it’s an important part of building a successful email marketing campaign. You should be attentive to your recipients, and this attentiveness begins with the very first steps, such as making sure you have the right contact data and know the journey your email has to go through. 

There are many tools that will help you handle any volume of emails you need to verify. Don’t be afraid to use them for the sake of your deliverability. Many services that we mentioned offer free trials, so you can make up your mind while making the most out of the features provided to you. 

Before you start email verification, it also doesn’t hurt to check your performance and make sure that you’re moving in the right direction. Our Foldlerly tool lets you instantly see your Sender Score and measure your relationship with all the email services that you send to. Additionally, it allows you to check the state of your DNS records and email templates, informing you of potential outreach issues before internet service providers do. If you want to be fully ready to take your email marketing to the next level, don’t hesitate to run a couple of tests and see your performance.

Source: https://folderly.com/blog/email-deliverability/why-do-you-need-to-verify-your-active-email-address

Remember the 90’s? Never received a notification, barely even touched a computer. Wired telephones and face-to-face meetings with overhead projectors. 

Now look at us, we’ve come so far. We are staring into (three) screens, streaming (90’s) tunes on the iPhone (with three cameras), and writing an article about how technology can make your job easier; which is available to people (billions) at the click of a button. Are we at our technological peak? No, but we’re higher up the technological mountain than ever.

Sales teams needn’t dread the working day anymore. Technology has come so far that they don’t need to painstakingly enter data into a spreadsheet, browse user accounts for activity, or sit by the phone; waiting for it to ring. 

Sales automation is something that helps salespeople.

At NetHunt CRM, we analyzed processes that are mostly automated by sales teams. If you still do any of the listed below processes manually, don't even walk...run to automate them :)

Automatic Sales Process No1: Lead Generation

Lead generation is the process of getting people in your sales pipeline to sell to.

To automate outbound lead generation, you may use a CRM or cold outreach tool to set up personalized email campaigns and set up automated email sequences to nurture leads until they are sales-ready. You may also automate lead generation on LinkedIn by adding person's or company's profile in one click to a CRM already enriched with available data from LinkedIn.  

To automate inbound lead generation, you may use web forms that will automatically store leads to your database adding data from web forms. Afterwards, you can qualify those leads, set up automated nurturing sequences and automatically create tasks for managers.

Automatic Sales Process No2: Email Sequence Lead Nurturing

Email lead nurturing involves establishing a strong relationship between a brand and its consumers through email. They can occur at each pipeline stage, and email sequences enrich the buying journey for both sides of a transaction. 

Email sequence lead nurturing doesn’t just work in terms of sales, but it also increases email open rates, keeps you fresh in a prospect’s mind, provides instant results for prospects, and opens up an opportunity to inform and entertain leads. They’re win-win.

Setting drip campaigns is as easy as it sounds. After our inbound lead enters the pipeline, an email is immediately sent. It welcomes them to the crew, tells them you’re absolutely always here for them, and sews the idea of getting a product demo booked in. And then you wait for three days, to give your prospect some breathing space.

After three days another email is sent in your drip campaign. Obviously it can say whatever you want it to, but we chose to invite our participants to talk to us about our product. 

Automatic Sales Process No3: Moving a lead to the next stage in your pipeline.

Once your automated sales process gains traction, your sales velocity increases, and we can start moving our prospects and leads through the pipeline based on their behaviour. Let's say they answer one of your emails in a sequence, you set it up as a trigger to change the stage of the leads. You don't want them to send another automated email. Instead, you want to take it under control and continue to send hyper-relevant emails manually. 

You can come up with various triggers like you've received money from the lead, and you automatically move the lead to the stage 'Won'. 

Automatic Sales Process No4: Tasks creation.

You may want somebody from your sales team to take action on a certain pipeline change. Once the lead moves to the 'Prepare Quote' stage, you may create a pre-defined set of tasks for a manager: prepare the quote, contact the finance department, etc. Another example is when a lead moved to 'Won' stage, you may create a task to send them an email in a month to find out how things are going. 

Automatic Sales Process No5: Post-Sale Automation.

Once the lead is won, your sales automation may not come to its end. Post-sale automated workflows can strengthen customer relations, increasing LTV and retention.

You may set up an automated customer satisfaction survey to send to a client in a month after their first payment. Another thing you can automate is setting up a follow-up email if you see a low activity from a customer. A good work of your Customer Success team will be setting up automatically assessment calls with a client to see if they meet their initial expectations after the purchase.

So many processes can be automated, saving precious time of salespeople, protecting them from manual errors and freeing up time for activities that have higher impact on ROI. All those workflows are just limited by your imagination...and the tools you choose to accompany you. So, choose the sales automation tools wisely.

Email deliverability: best practices for you to implement

Before we get started, it’s worth saying that you shouldn’t look for the most recent techniques on improving email deliverability, for there are none. It all starts with you and the way you use your resources. There are tools and programs that can merely assist you with monitoring and organizing your email campaigns. However, if there is something wrong with your deliverability, they can’t fix it for you. 

With that said, let’s see what you can do as a credible sender. 

Monitor your sender reputation 

We’re starting with one of the most complicated steps. Sender reputation is not a score that you can look up somewhere. It’s a combination of your domain reputation and your IP reputation. Both these factors have individual KPIs and are hard to calculate. 

As you can see, both shared IP and dedicated IP provide an individual set of benefits. From our personal point of view, we suggest investing in a dedicated IP early, no matter how tempting the shared IP growth looks.

After all, even if you start out as a small company, you’ll get bigger in time, so you’ll get a dedicated IP anyways. However, in that case, you’ll also end up spending time and resources on warming it up and adjusting your email campaigns to the change. Therefore, it’s better to start early.

Your domain reputation either lets you into your prospects’ inboxes or results in you getting banned from sending emails. It all depends on how well you take care of it. Think of building your domain reputation as if you’re building a brand.

• Is it respectful to its target audience?
• Does it comply with the rules and quality standards?
• How does it speak to users and potential buyers?

The more invested you are in your relationship with internet service providers and recipients, the easier it is for you to manage your domain reputation. 

Is there a way to check your sender reputation?

In the world of modern online technology, everything is possible. For example, there are services that compile all spam reports and responses to your IP address and domain in order to generate an approximate sender score, showing how well you’re doing. 

Folderly provides a faster and more reliable way of viewing your sender score. You can launch an email deliverability test for your chosen domain. In that case, Folderly will run an in-depth analysis of your domain settings, scan all major blacklists, evaluate your IP and provide a general Sender Score as well as tips for improvement.

Never send to random employees

Sometimes, senders get overwhelmed by an org chart of their target company. Therefore, they select a title that seems to be relevant to their sales offer and send a sales template, speaking to the title as if they were their potential client. This approach has led to more emails getting rejected or sent to the Spam folders than you can imagine. 

When it comes to B2B correspondence, you’re dealing with busy people. They don’t have time to figure out what a sudden message has to do with them. They won’t bother with correcting you or navigating you… unless you ask. 

There is nothing wrong with asking for assistance if you’re feeling confused by the company hierarchy and don’t know where your decision-maker is. However, you must ask directly instead of beating around the bush. 

Therefore, don’t send a sales offer. Ask for a referral instead. 

There. With just a couple of phrases, you made your intent clear and reached out for information. Your recipients are human, too — they understand that you need a hand, and since you asked nicely, they’ll meet you halfway.

View feedback loops

Major internet service providers make sure to document every aspect of your behavior as well as the way your recipients respond to you. For example, there are Complaint Feedback Loops (FBLs) that contain information about complaints regarding a certain email. 

Accessing such feedback loops allows you to learn about disgruntled recipients before they start moving your emails to spam or complaining about your domain, thus keeping your sending reputation safe and intact. You can get this information easily from almost all large internet service providers.

For example, Microsoft, Gmail, and Yahoo! provide open access to their FBLs. However, the process of accessing the Gmail feedback loop differs a little from the way things are done in Yahoo! and Microsoft.

• Access your Gmail profile with Gmail's Postmaster tools
• Authenticate with DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM)
• Publish a Sender Policy Framework (SPF) record
• Published all sending IPs the SPF record and make sure that your reverse DNS (PTR) record is valid and resolves to a valid hostname (the DKIM domain).
• Insert the Feedback-ID header.

Personalize your emails 

The way to your prospects' hearts lies through personalization. This is the ultimate truth that our Folderly team has learned when building outreach and increasing deliverability for our recipients. 

What do we mean by personalization?

In any case, always make sure to avoid making your templates generic. Don’t use generalizations or assumptions, don’t try to play up to your prospects’ desire for profit. For example, don’t use such boring and outdated phrases as “Our solution will increase your revenue.” Instead, make them more informative, “The {ProductName} has increased ROI by 30% for our client {RelevantCompanyName}.”

Sometimes, it’s hard to nail which personalization technique will work best for you. Folderly provides a 24/7 monitoring of your campaigns, letting you manage your A/B testing easily and select the winning approach for every prospect group in your sales pipeline.

Provide your recipients with an opportunity to opt-out 

Whether it’s inbound or outbound email marketing, your recipients shouldn’t feel as though this communication is forced upon them. They mustn’t feel obliged to speak with you just because they opened your email or subscribed to your newsletter. It’s amazing how the best way to keep your prospects around is to show them that they can leave at any time they want. 

In the case of outbound emails, when you send unsolicited emails, you must make them extremely polite and tactful. Therefore, in addition to keeping your tone calm and your offer personalized, provide the following: 

• A return address. Your prospects must know that they can reach out to you in case they want to respond or make a request. A solid email address hosted on a business domain is a great trust builder, so it instantly puts your recipients at ease. 
• A disclaimer. Unlike spammers, credible senders do care about who they send to and why they do it. This is why they attach a small notification to their email signature, informing the user that if the received email addresses them by the wrong name and title or makes an irrelevant offer, it’s quite possible that they received this message by mistake and, therefore, aren’t obliged to interact with it. 

• Final push templates. In case of unresponsive prospects who seem to be opening your emails for weeks without leaving any meaningful reply, you can make the first step and offer them to make a decision: Either say “yes'' and acknowledge their interest in further communication or say “no” to any further emails. This is a good way to let your prospects opt-out from outreach while keeping your sender reputation and deliverability intact.

For this article, we have prepared 4 types of emails. These templates and examples will facilitate the process of creating emails, and most importantly you will understand the structure of a good email. We'll tell you which elements are necessary and which can be missed. Also, we'll compare good emails and bad ones.

Before you start an email marketing campaign, you should understand your main goal.

Do you want to surprise your client?

Do you want to remind him about you?

Do you want him to read the article?

Or you want him to watch the video?

Or to make a purchase?

These questions are very important, because the structure of your emails depends on them. Also it's important to understand the type of your business.

If it's a service, you need to generate confidence and explain why precisely you should provide this service. If you have an online store, then most likely you will send a list of goods.

If you have a content project, then it will be a list of recent blog articles. And if you have sales connected with personal communication, then you will send automatic emails which looks like a personal email without beautiful pictures.

1. Example of a one-picture email

It's the most common type of email marketing campaign.

You have one thought, one goal and one page where the user should go. You remove all unnecessary things and design the structure in such way that the user clicks on the link and goes to your site as soon as possible.

This type of email works well if you have a visual or information product. You can create a beautiful infographic or product photo. Also it works well in the service industry.

For example, you have an interior design studio and you have written an article about architectural styles. You can make a picture of the interior, a short description and a link to the article.

Let's take a closer look at the structure and all the elements of such an email.

1. To make the email looking more clearly in the browser, you need to place it on a background. Typically, the background may be light gray, and the body of the email itself may be placed on a white background. It will add visual volume and the design will look more brightly.

2. Make sure you put your logo in all emails. This is critical. Every touch with the client should remind him of you. Sometimes emails are sent to me and only after a few seconds I understand from who it is. The more often your logo will flash before the eyes of the client, the better.

3. It is necessary to make the heading of the email. This is the most important part. The user must immediately understand what is inside and what this email is about. The heading should "sell" the next action - "click". Don't confuse the heading with the subject line. They are different.

In the subject of the email, we must hook the user to make him open the email. But in the heading you should explain what is inside.

4. Create a picture for visual perception. It should be beautiful and understandable. It is desirable to make it opens up the subject of the heading and the entire email. But first of all, it should be beautiful and pleasing to the eye. The heading can be placed on the picture itself.

5. A brief description of the email. Tell what's inside, why the user should move on. Write a maximum of 5 lines. Briefly open up the topic of content that is on the site. This block can be made with mini thesis.

6. Call to action. It's the second most important element in your email. It should motivate the user to take action, go to the website. Make this button bright. It needs to stand out.

7. Identify your physical address. The user must realize that you are alive and real. If there is any problem, he will be able to find your company.

8. Create a unsubscribe button. Make it visible. Users should be able to unsubscribe from your newsletter in one click.

Many companies hide this button or make it inconspicuous. It is a very bad strategy. If the user cannot unsubscribe, he clicks on spam. When a user unsubscribes, it doesn't spoil the reputation of your domain.

When he clicks on spam, your entire subscriber base is at risk. All your emails will be spam.

Also you can place links in the text or pictures in logo. Try to put one link in all buttons. There's only one goal. It's link.

2. An example of newsletters for online stores

Email marketing for e-Commerce is a critical business process. Thanks to it, you can make repeat sales and return the visitor to the site. The type of email for online stores differs because several items are included in the email at once.

You make a selection of the best products and make a separate link in each. I've found a great example of such email. Let's analyze its structure.

1. Look at the description of the first variant of the email.
2. In the emails of online stores, you can add a menu of your products by category. Email may have a simplified structure of your site. This will allow you to switch to the desired category in one click, if the suitable model doesn't appear in the list of products.
3. Look at the description of the first variant of the email.
4. In the e-commerce, pictures play a very important role. You should make beautiful photos of your products. The user must fall in love with the product at a glance at the photo. A beautiful picture is very important when you have a visual product.
5. Below the photo you can make a brief description of the product, brands, etc. But it's not the most important element of this type of email.
6. Call to action on the main product. You should put your flagship product at the center of the email.
7. View all models in the category. The space in the email is limited, and there may be thousands of models in your store. And you will never guess which one is suitable for the user. The client should be able to see all products in this category with one click.
8. Pictures of secondary items. They should be smaller than the main ones. You can use 2, maximum 3 rows. It depends on your product.
9. The button under each product should lead to the page of a specific product. The user can open several tabs with products of his interest. This is the difference from the type of email with one link.
   
   If in the first version we reduced the number of links, here it's the opposite. Each product has its own separate link.
10. Look at the description of the first variant of the email.
11. Insert links to your social networks. Gather a subscriber base in all communication channels for omni-channel marketing.
12. Insert your contact details. The user should be able to call immediately without going to the website.
13. Don't forget to add the unsubscribe button.

Modern mailing software has functions that automatically substitute a shopping cart in the email. You don't need to make an email every time and guess what products will be needed. The system has already collected this data. It will automatically substitute those products that the user has watched.

3. Newsletter

The third type of mailing is the newsletter. It is similar to an online store mailing, but usually, all blog news is placed in one column.

If a picture plays a key role in an online store, in the newsletter so does the heading. Therefore, we need to allocate as much space as possible to the headings. Pay attention to block 2. It has a picture, a heading, a short description and a call to action.

4. Simulation of personal email

As soon as the opportunity to send beautiful emails appeared, everyone began to do it.

Obviously, it quickly stopped to be a unique event and beautiful pictures immediately became associated with the fact that they are sent automatically.

But some niches value a personal touch, especially if you do business in service with a large average bill or complex b2b sales.

In such cases, you can use a personal email simulation strategy. Such an email looks as if it was written by a living person specifically for you. This type of email is often used in cold email outreach. There is no clear design structure. When you make such a newsletter, imagine that you personally write to a client.

An email with pictures or text?

You have a reasonable question. What's better? Personal approach or beautiful emails with pictures? In fact, there's no perfect solution. It all depends on the niche and the product you sell.

In my opinion, in businesses where there is a visual product, it is best to write emails in design. If your product is functional, you make complex sales and you work with a personal relationship, it is better to send text emails.

Email comparison

So we've understood what emails are, let's move on to the examples. It's best to understand which emails are good and which are bad. As the saying goes, "Cognition comes through comparison." I've found several emails on the Internet, let's discuss them a bit.

I will not go into the essence of these emails. Now we are talking about the visual perception.

In my opinion, the email number 1 is losing. The email number 2 looks much more solid and beautiful.

The style is more clear and understandable. The user doesn't need to think what to do. There is only one option. Click on the link in the email.

In the email 1 you need to strain. It is not immediately clear what is happening and for what reason this email is. The goal of the email 1 is to bring a friend and get a bonus, but this is stated at the very bottom.

We move on. You can see examples number 3 and number 4. They are very different in perception. The email number 4 looks like a zebra. There is no holistic picture, everything is rippling and it isn't clear what is important and what is secondary.

The email 3 has a clear structure. There are a picture, a heading and call to action.

Also here we can find a brief explanation of the essence and a call to action too. In letter 4, I don't understand what I have to do right now? Where to click?

When you make emails, don't try to find some kind of magic template that will increase your sales by 10 times. It doesn't exist.

Everything is done by trial and error.

The main thing in the structure of email is the common sense. Put yourself in the position of the reader. What do you want to read and what do you want to click on.

Different strategies are used in different types of business. A lot has already been written about email marketing. More information on this topic can be found on the websites of software vendors for email marketing.

Inbound marketing, which is based on the use of a huge range of tools, is perhaps the most successful strategy that can increase traffic and improve brand awareness.

Content marketing, email marketing, blogs, events, SEO, social media - no matter what area you are engaged in, all this should work together, and for implementation it is recommended to use inbound marketing tools.

There remains only one question: who exactly should you take as your assistants? Here you will find the answer not only to this question, but also find out which is the best marketing automation software.

For convenience, we differentiated digital tools and selected the coolest program for each, as well as alternative inbound marketing tools. Here we go!

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

CRM is an opportunity to forget about complex and inconvenient tables with a bunch of unsystematic data, about cluttered mailboxes and work tools that steal your money and time.

A high-quality CRM not only optimizes the work of the sales department, but also serves as a place where potential customers are "delivered". And already here they turn into permanent ones.

Recommended inbound marketing tools:

• HubSpot CRM;
• Zoho CRM;
• Zendesk;
• Pipedrive;
• Salesforce.

HubSpot CRM is the first to deserve attention. It will help you study and understand your leads. It will find the optimal time to contact them and automate a lot of tasks, depriving staff of hate and headaches. Additionally, HubSpot CRM has the highest indicators for ROI generation.

Online Advertising

We are sure that there is a point in your strategy - advertising using PPC. And it doesn't matter what system you use: Google, Bing, Twitter, FB - advertising campaigns due to simple control should successfully "shoot", and reports coming from each system should be complete and systematized for further adjustment.

You might go crazy here! Trust the routine work to intelligent software.

Recommended inbound marketing tools:

• AdStage;
• HubSpot Ads Tracking Software;
• Perfect Audience;
• Google Keyword Planner;
• AdRoll;
• WordStream.

Our tip is AdStage. It is a simplified technology for generating reports and collecting data from all PPC platforms that run ad campaigns in a single location.

The strong point of this software is the perfect automation of work processes: AdStage allows you to create and manage contextual advertising easily and with pleasure. This inbound marketing tool will appeal to both a pro and a novice.

Social Media

Scheduling the time of publication, as well as analyzing posts for errors is not all that can be squeezed out of the software that regulates work in social networks. Analytics is their main "trump card". They collect it scrupulously and from various sources, including those where it is difficult to do using classical tools for collecting analytical data.

Recommended inbound marketing tools:

• Iconosquare;
• Buffer;
• Hootsuite;
• BuzzSumo;
• HubSpot Social Inbox.

Traditionally, the first item on our list is the best recommendation. And today it's Iconosquare. The platform is ideal for marketers promoting their brand on Instagram. Simple and quick extraction of information, richness of data is what distinguishes Iconosquare from peers.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

A SEO specialist has many tasks: creating a semantic core, analyzing high-, medium- and low-frequency keywords, optimizing the content part, determining a position in search results and much more.

But why not make your life easier?

It is enough to take an intelligent service as an assistant who will take care of planning, tell you what texts you need to write and how to optimize them in order to be in the TOP.

Recommended inbound marketing tools:

• Ryte;
• Ahrefs;
• SEMrush;
• Moz;
• Keywords Everywhere Chrome Extension;
• HubSpot Content Strategy Tool.

We recommend using Ryte. The software analyzes and isolates relevant key queries specifically for your product, and then gives advice on creating optimized content.

In addition, Ryte will audit the completed text and provide recommendations for improving it.

The main "trick" of the software is a clear answer to exciting questions: whether my efforts are not in vain, if the right techniques are used or not, how the chosen strategy affects inbound marketing, etc.

Content Creation and Design

Creation of really captivating social media posts, down to the smallest detail web pages for the site, attention grabbing videos for Instagram stories or brand ads on YouTube, cute graphics that can be used to decorate an email advertising campaign - there is little inspiration and skill for all this.

A cool tool ready to create textual and visual masterpieces is still welcome.

Recommended inbound marketing tools:

• Adobe Spark;
• Venngage;
• Piktochart;
• Canva;
• Recordit;
• Kap;
• Adobe Color CC.

Let us introduce Adobe Spark, which comes with three pillars: Spark Page, Spark Post and Spark Video. From their names, the purpose of each becomes immediately obvious.

By cleverly juggling these tools, you will save 5 years, which would be required to acquire specialized knowledge.

Now you can make awesome page layouts quickly and easily, edit videos like a professional, and create win-win content in an awesome wrapper.

Video Marketing

Experts give rosy forecasts for video marketing, which, according to their estimates, will "chop off" more than 80% of user traffic by 2020. It's all about the human psyche and the ability to memorize.

You see, scientists have proven that after three days a person remembers about a tenth of the text, but the video - as much as 65%. Just imagine, information in video format is absorbed by us more than 6 times better.

Therefore, we simply have to do video marketing.

But take your time to embed YouTube videos on a website page or email. Popular video hosting has long been suffering from a large volume of broadcast advertising. Believe me, you will be no exception, and on your landing page, even before the start of the video about your product, visitors will see someone else's ad.

What could be worse? Conversion rates will drop, as well as customer loyalty to your brand. But there are alternative ways to promote with video.

Recommended inbound marketing tools:

• Wistia;
• Vidyard;
• Vimeo;
• Loom.

Experts give rosy forecasts for video marketing, which, according to their estimates.

All of these services are good in their own way, but our advice is Wistia. This is a powerful video hosting service that allows you to broadcast your videos on web resources without third-party advertising. Playback is without delays, the work of the player is fast.

Wistia's bonus is its powerful analytics that details the rationale for a video marketing investment.

Additional inbound marketing tools can be social media, which has gone beyond posting and messaging platforms. For video marketing use: Instagram, TikTok, Facebook.

By building a competent sales funnel, CTR can grow by 25-27%, website conversion - by 34%.

Event Marketing

Meetings with regular and potential customers, although they seem to be relics of the past, especially against the background of global interactivity, still remain one of the most effective ways to build trust in yourself and your brand.

These can be small round tables and seminars, presentations and industry conferences, large-scale trade exhibitions and expositions, pop-up stores, workshops, parties, as well as job fairs, networking events, charity events, industry awards.

Statistics show that more than 80% of marketers associate the company's success with regular events.

A third of marketing professionals give preference to event-driven promotion over digital, email and content marketing. Because events generate leads and sales.

By the way, don't give up online events either. The best option is a mixed type, when both offline and online meetings are held.

Recommended inbound marketing tools:

• Eventbrite;
• Facebook Events;
• AddEvent;
• UberConference;
• GoToMeeting;
• Google Hangouts;
• Skype.

We recommend Eventbrite. A wonderful tool to create a landing page for the upcoming event quickly and easily. You can also sell tickets on it. Eventbrite's "feature" is a free use if your event is also free.

Lead Capture and Conversion

Lead conversion rate is one of the most important metrics that we consider when determining the effectiveness of a digital strategy. You must understand that people who visit your site are not potential customers yet. They still need to be turned into such. For these purposes, you can also use special services.

Recommended inbound marketing tools:

• HubSpot's Free Marketing Tools;
• HubSpot's Free Pop-up Forms Tool;
• Typeform;
• OptinMonster;
• Sumo;
• Convertflow.

HubSpot's Free Marketing Tools confidently demonstrate the highest efficiency among all. The HubSpot software is working on the operational collection of information and providing it in real time.

Thus, when your lead gives his email, you will know everything you need about him for further interaction and turning him not only into a potential, but also a regular customer. The main advantage here is super-powerful analytics, which allows you to quickly apply leverage.

In addition, it clearly demonstrates what is done on the site correctly, and what needs improvement or is not effective at all, which traffic sources bring the maximum conversion, which pages and even blocks of text are of the greatest interest to users. And all of that is absolutely free!

Lead Generation

The dream of any marketer is the cheapest lead possible, but even if it turns out this way, this does not mean at all that he will become a target lead (buyer) and finally a regular customer. Usually, a standard set is used to attract: filling out a questionnaire, an application for participation in an event, a request for a call back, etc.

A lead can be only a number and a name, or it can have a whole dossier: e-mail address, place of residence, name and surname, links to pages in social networks, information about age, preferences, profession, browser used. Naturally, such a lead is what you need for large-scale work. How can it be generated?

Recommended inbound marketing tools:

• Unbounce;
• Leadpages;
• Instapage;
• HubSpot's Landing Page Builder.

Your choice is Unbounce. With this advanced and easy-to-use software, you can create responsive landing pages yourself, even if you don't have any web development knowledge.

Integration with other apps and CMS is another advantage of Unbounce.

By using the optional Convertibles feature inside the software, you can customize triggers and targeting for each page.

This way you will see who is doing what and when on your site. With this information and using Unbounce, you can showcase the most relevant content, the offers that are most likely to interest a particular visitor.

Website Optimization and CRO

Client-centric conversion optimization is not the technology of the future; it is an intelligent approach to customer satisfaction that is widely used today. It is not enough for us, for a person who visits the site or opens our letter to take the targeted action. We go for more, focusing on what stimulates, stops and motivates the client.

User friendliness and value for the user is the cornerstone of CRO and related web resource optimization. A logical question: who will provide us with the necessary information about the true feelings, thoughts and feelings of customers when they visit our site?

Recommended inbound marketing tools:

• Hotjar;
• Optimizely;
• Lucky Orange;
• Google Optimize;
• Clicky.

The optimal solution is Hotjar. This is a fairly new service that in an accessible form gives you visualized summaries of clicks and user transitions, what and for how long they are most interested in, what their pains, wishes and requirements are.

With such invaluable knowledge, you can move mountains: everything you need to optimize specific elements and no longer look for a needle in a haystack in the hope of improving conversion rates.

Lead Nurturing and Email Marketing

Large-scale traffic attraction to the site is yesterday, because such leads usually leave the site without pressing the coveted Buy button.

Today, experienced marketers understand that traffic should be exclusively targeted, and pig in a poke is the lot of amateurs. If you have 20 targeted leads, then 8 of them will make a purchase.

Email marketing is perfect for these purposes. Its modern tools are designed to nurture regular customers in leads.

Recommended inbound marketing tools:

• Constant Contact;
• Campaign Monitor;
• MailChimp;
• AWeber;
• ActiveCampaign.

Our tip is the modern Constant Contact email marketing software.

The company's slogan is: "It's just smart business".

The service combines advertising mailing by email, e-commerce by creating an online store, sites with built-in marketing "gadgets" that promote brand and product promotion and, of course, promotion on social networks. It turns out to be a kind of combo that may satisfy your requirements in one fell swoop.

But audience segmentation and content personalization are the exact functions that will make your messages targeted and accordingly, customers will become such as well. The ability to integrate all this into your corporate system or website using the API makes it possible for all tools to easily interact and get reliable analytics in real time.

Marketing Automation

Routine work, repetitive actions, everyday rituals... Free yourself from this with automation. An intelligent tool is able to take on a wide range of tasks: mailing lists, work on social networks, sending SMS, web push campaigns.

Automated marketing does the best job with another interesting challenge: personalization. All that is needed is to prescribe an algorithm of actions for certain triggers. Although, if you are dealing with a professional, the platform will do that for you.

Thus, your conversions, as well as sales, will grow. But you will get a much more valuable resource - time. Time that will be freed up with the disappearance of routine tasks. Trust them to artificial intelligence and devote yourself to deepening relationships with customers and improving the microclimate in the team.

Recommended inbound marketing tools:

• Apiway;
• Drip;
• Marketo;
• Omnisend.

Routine work, repetitive actions, everyday rituals... Free yourself from this with automation. An intelligent tool is able to take on a wide range of tasks: mailing lists, work on social networks, sending SMS, web push campaigns.

Automated marketing Apiway.ai is the best marketing automation software that will help you increase workflow productivity, increase sales, improve request-to-buy conversion, automate the sales process, reduce stages and lead time, attract more customers, optimize the average bill, reduce CAC, remove the human factor and some risks of errors and errors, get accurate analytics.

Data Reporting and Analytics

A high-quality, accurate, complete and relevant report for a marketer is like sour cream for a cat. These are not just numbers and graphs. These are the results of a blood test taken from your marketing strategy.

Based on these data, one can conclude not only about the effectiveness of individual measures, but also look at the whole picture, make a forecast, decide whether to adhere to the chosen promotion vector or change it.

Recommended inbound marketing tools:

• Digital Marketing Tuner;
• Google Analytics;
• Google Search Console;
• Databox;
• RavenTools.

Our tip is Digital Marketing Tuner.

The platform audits the marketing activities that you conducted the day before and provides information on their effectiveness.

Time and date of publication of posts in social networks, methods of driving traffic and converting leads into regular customers, regularity of email campaigns - these and other events are considered by Digital Marketing Tuner from the standpoint of numbers and dry data, after which it issues a verdict in the form of a convenient and understandable visualization.

Digital Asset Management

Marketing is always a colossal amount of information, as well as its most diverse forms.

Collecting all these terabytes and systematizing them so that it is convenient and easy to use the resources for each team member is within the power of modern software. With its help, you will have access to absolutely all your developments, and chaos and data loss will leave your company.

Recommended inbound marketing tools:

• Google Drive;
• Dropbox;
• Box;
• Shift;
• Brandfolder.

Google Drive knows best about data storage. It is cloud-based software where you can throw everything from complex, multi-level tables and piles of electronic documents to images, videos, presentations. And you will have access to all this 24/7 anywhere in the world, even when you are offline.

Sharing documents is another nice thing about Google Drive. You don't need to send anything: just open the file you want and start working with it all together.

Do you know what?

All this is absolutely free! Unless, of course, you have enough storage capacity of 15 GB. Need more? No question, the required volume can be purchased: premium tariff plans - from $ 1.99 per month.

Team Communication and Collaboration

A real marketing team is like a hive, where conversations grind all day, new projects and strategies are discussed, and brainstorms are held in search of alternative methods of promotion. And with the advancement of technology, all of this is now happening online.

Recommended inbound marketing tools:

• Slack;
• Join.Me;
• Zoom;
• Skype.

Try Slack at least once to fall in love with it forever. In addition to messenger functions, the program performs quick and easy integration with many popular tools such as Gmail or Giphy. With Slack, you can create groups for various marketing departments, conduct business correspondence at any time, and exchange data for productive work.

Project Management

Managing files is one thing, but managing an organization, people and processes is another story.

Here one cannot do with data storage and systematization. You need a reliable assistant and professional in the field of Project Management.

When choosing, pay attention to the number and quality of integrations that the tool is capable of. In order not to hire a specialist who you need to pay a salary, adopt free software. Yes, you didn't hear it!

Recommended inbound marketing tools:

• Trello;
• Asana;
• Airtable;
• Wrike.

Marketing executives as well as small entrepreneurs prefer Trello. Wonderful and intuitively simple interface allows you to plan and take notes, leave text or dated notes, assign labels or artist names, etc. You can also upload files of almost any format here: photos, images, tables, texts, links and much more.

Thus, you always have a complete picture at your disposal: you see how things are with a particular direction / project / task, who is responsible for it, what has already been done, how much more time will be required, etc. In short, Trello is all about comfort.

Looking for the right platform to collect your favorite inbound marketing tools? The best marketing automation software will help you. Start increasing conversions easily, quickly and affordably!

I decided to write a short article about organizing educational conferences and producing experts. Today we see a huge number of business conferences, which are often unprofitable or self-covered in best cases.

I'll try to explain how to improve this process and build the right product line in your educational business.

Singer or producer

First, you need to understand who you are - "singer" or "producer". In the beginning, you may be both of them, but after a while, you will have to make a choice. A professional "singer" is someone who "sings" on stage. The brightest singer in business education is Tony Robbins.

Behind him, there is an entire production factory that helps him organize trainings, sales, etc. As a rule, no one knows producers, because they are producers, not singers.

Suppose you decided that you want to be a producer. You want to earn on the fact that someone will "sing", I mean, teach people something. For simplicity, we take an understandable niche - training in marketing, sales, and business. Your target audience is entrepreneurs and marketers.

You need to build a specific product matrix that will allow you to sell several times to the same client.

Product Types

At the very beginning, you need to understand the main idea.

There are products that need to be advertised, and there are ones which help you earn money. People make a mistake when they try to make money on products that work as lead magnets.

If you don't have the appropriate product line, no matter what events you will hold, everyone will earn, except you.

Free Webinar

Thanks to webinars, you can quickly check the demand for a speaker

- How does he speak?

- Is the topic relevant?

- Can he bring you leads?

- Is the speaker in demand?

CAC (customer acquisition cost) is the lowest. The application price will be significantly lower than one for paid events. Thanks to webinars, you can collect the base, warm it up and then sell other products in your line.

Offline meetup

It may be a meeting where several speakers which you produce make presentations for 45 minutes. Usually, such meetings take place on weekends, or in the evening on weekdays after work.

Attendance at such events should be paid, but at the price should be at the level of going to the cinema.

It is important to understand the purpose.

Your task is to introduce the speakers to people and take their time. People should have fun, not sink in learning new information. Many make a mistake when they begin to load a large amount of new information on listeners.

It's important for you to understand that all the information already is on the Internet for free.

People came to hang out, not to study. A third of them came because they didn't want to go home, another third came because they want to meet a guy/girl, and only one third came for new information. But nobody will ever tell you this.

If you ask a question: "Why did you come here?" you will get the answer "To learn something new", but in fact, everyone came to hang out under the slogan of training. Moreover, people don't understand this at a conscious level.

It seems to them that they are going to study.

At such a meetup, you introduce the speaker to the audience; see how he keeps in public.

If everything is fine, you can make a few more meetups and webinars with him, invite him to the main conference and then sell his training to this audience.

When people meet you offline, they become much more loyal to your brand. This tactic works well if you live in the capital or in a big city.

Today everything is online, and people want to chat in real life.

This is our natural need and it will always be paid for. You sell a party, not knowledge.

But people should think that they buy knowledge. Such events will be attended by 70% of new people and 20-30% of your regular community members. You need to create a community with a party.

These kinds of events won't be profitable, but it's a cheaper way to get leads. The client price will be much lower than for a paid product.

Offline Conference

This is a brand event that can be held 1-2 times a year. In spring and fall.

You invite all the speakers that you are producing in this niche, also you invite star speakers who can get people together.

The star speaker will be a bait for people, and you sell those you produce. Such conferences should be large-scale, at least 500 people. It should feel like a conference, not an ordinary meeting.

The format can be different, several streams, reports of 40 minutes, 8-12 speakers. Such an event is also easier to advertise than training with an unknown speaker. Star speakers share some of their credibility with those you produce. The conference participants have a reason "why should I listen to this unknown speaker".

Thus, you make unknown speakers famous (of course, if you have the opportunity to produce famous ones, it's good. But it doesn't always happen).

Tickets at the conference must fully pay off all expenses for holding it.

This is the rental of the hall, the fee of star speakers, the cost of advertising, etc.

But here be careful.

If you work correctly with the database and hold sequential events, then free webinars and inexpensive offline meet-ups will gather a lot of loyal subscribers.

It's enough to send them a newsletter, SMS or make a redial. You don't need to sell them. It's enough to tell about your event. And if you did everything right before - people will buy tickets on their own.

When people attend your events, they begin to trust you. It greatly simplifies the sales process and you don't need to spend money on sales managers.

You can earn extra income from sponsors.

If the conference is about marketing and business, then there will be many different companies that will gladly pay you money for the stand. You can get a profit at such a conference thanks to the sponsors.

Tickets cover all expenses, and with the help of sponsors, you earn money.

Workshop

Now we move on to the products that make money.

One of them may be a workshop. This is an all-day event on which one speaker reveals a topic widely. Let's say, all day he will talk about how to implement email marketing in a business, or how to automate a sales department.

You can assemble a group of 100 people, and make good money. You can promise the speaker a fixed payment, a percentage of sales or percentage of the profit. It depends on what is more convenient.

The larger base you have, the easier it's to convince the speaker to more favorable conditions for you.

Many people make the mistake starting to advertise such events through paid traffic. People come in and go away without buying anything.

The maximum that needs to be done is to upload your database to the retarget and advertise a bit. Ideally, for such events, you should only gather people through your newsletter. You invest in attracting people to events that I mentioned above.

At the workshop, you should have a maximum margin.

Workshops can be held once a month. You can hold 10-15 events a year. You can do more if you have a good, segmented base. For example, it can be one series of events for entrepreneurs, another for PPC specialists, the third for email marketers.

Training

It's the most marginal product that makes the most money. For example, you hold a 2-month training of 8 lessons on the topic "Complex digital marketing". There are many modules, and for each module, you invite a separate speaker. This format implies doing and checking of homework, etc.

Mistake 1

Try to sell an expensive training or workshop with cold, paid traffic. It is very difficult, and if you are just starting, it is better to go along a longer, but more effective path. Of course, if you have extra money, then you may miss the optimization of your sales pipeline.

Mistake 2

Try to build a business by organizing conferences. It's also very difficult. It's much easier to have several products in the line and recapture all the costs using Backend products.

Mistake 3

Don't make recordings of conferences, meetings or webinars. It's better to make high-quality recordings of all your events and trainings, and then sell them by subscription.

You can record a selling webinar with one of the speakers who sells a recording of his training. Next, you implement marketing automation and add a pipeline.

Subscribers will receive an invitation to a master class every few months where they can buy a product by subscription. The task of such mini products is to recapture investment in traffic.

Mistake 4

You should have speakers with different temperaments. Someone loves funny people, someone love techies, someone loves motivators.

One speaker should rock; the second should be like a professor at the university. People are different.

It's important to understand what type of speaker people like, not what type you like. It's best to work with charismatic speakers. Because the niche in which you work is more business entertainment than business training.

The lead magnet is a free offer to get something useful in return for your email and phone number. The presence of good lead magnets will significantly increase the conversion from visit to registration and significantly reduce the price of lead. A lead magnet is vital for you if you run paid ads on Google and Facebook.

Why do you need a lead magnet?

In the 2000s there were websites where you could find out some information and subscribe to the so-called "news" of the company. And now a new secretary has come to you and you want to tell this to the whole world. Here is one example of a disgusting form on a site.

The user can fall asleep while filling in this form. Using lead magnets makes it easier for you to build a subscriber base.

The task of the lead magnet is to simplify the process of collecting contact information and make it simple, and what is more important, a pleasant process.

Today, the hype about user data is gaining momentum and if 20 years ago everyone easily left their contacts, now the user will think 10 times before leaving their contacts on an unfamiliar site. Our task is to offer him such a lead magnet that he cannot refuse.

It's important to understand that a lead magnet must be a digital product and it must be scaled easily. Suppose you received 1000 registrations in one day and you need to send 1000 lead magnets. If it is digital information, this is easy to do.

And if it's a paper catalog, it will be labor-intensive. Therefore, our task is to come up with a useful and at the same time free digital products.

Perhaps you are asking yourself "How the lead magnet can look like in my business?". The answer to this question can only be given by you since no one knows your business better than you. You can see some examples for inspiration.

We have collected for you many types of lead magnets.

Free software or tool

This is my favorite type of lead magnet because it's difficult to repeat and it can be only yours. The amount of information is getting bigger and bigger, and we are getting into the digital noise. It is very difficult to please a person and provide him unique information. PDF guides also work, but every year they're working worse and worse.

No one is interested in downloading "Another article with 10 useful tools for digital marketing" since such a list can be found on every blog. A guide is easy to make, and software is difficult. Therefore, the value of software is much higher, and in my opinion, this is the most effective lead magnet of the future. I'll give a few examples.

Email Signature Generator by Hubspot

When you start a business, you most likely create an email on your domain like [email protected] and you need to create a beautiful email signature.

You type in the keyword "email signature" in the Google search and you see several free software including Hubspot. It's silly not to use it, as it will greatly speed up the process of creating an email signature. 3 minutes and you've solved your problem, and just left your email and phone number.

Also, Hubspot found out in which company you work, your position, your website, and a link to social networks. Now they have all the information about you in order to sell software more efficiently.

Data enrichment for Gmail by ClearBit

You can use the free plugin for Chrome, which finds additional data about those who write to you the email. It also finds other employees and their emails. Of course, then they will try to sell you the premium version, but you must admit that "paying" with an email address for such software is very beneficial.

Trial

It's the opportunity to provide access for a certain amount of time to your software. It works well, but it can be applied in IT companies that make money by selling software. But in the first version with free mini-software, you can sell anything.

Imagine that you made a calculator on the website for calculating construction estimates and anyone can get it by leaving an email. Think of how such mini automation can solve some problem of your client.

Step by step guide / How to ...

This is one of the most common types of lead magnets. You need to understand the pains of your target audience. In step-by-step guides, you can cure these pains and get user contact information. People love the step by step instructions. You need to create an article or a PDF file where you can tell how the problem can be solved.

Let's take an example from the Techradar website. They have an entire "How to" section. By writing such content, you immediately solve two problems: write an article on a blog, and create a lead magnet. Because you can make a "Collection of the best articles" on a specific topic from several articles.

Template

It's hard for everyone to come up with something from scratch. They want ready-made templates, instructions. According to the instructions, they still need to do something from scratch, but the template is a completely different thing.

A good example can be found on the Snappa website. Creating pictures for Facebook advertising is quite a difficult task, especially if you're not a designer. Coming to this site you see a lot of ready-made templates, but you can use them only after registration.

Checklist

Checklists are similar to step-by-step guides. You make a list of actions that need to be done in order to get some kind of result.

Imagine that you are teaching people how to do business. A beginner doesn't know where to start his campaign. You can create a checklist, with the help of which, he will have no problems with the state and tax, he will open a bank account, etc.

Or maybe you teach website development.

Provide the user with a checklist of what should be on the site. A heading with an offer, a subtitle with an explanation of the product, a detailed explanation of the product, contacts, etc.

After passing through your checklist, the user should come to the understanding of whether he did everything right or not. You can also do such checklists for the manager. He downloads it and tells employees that here is the instruction, checklist - just do it.

A discount

The easiest and most common lead magnet. Of course, I don't recommend you use it, but if you don't have any content, you can start collecting contacts in this way. You just provide a discount coupon and people leave you their contacts.

I was always skeptical about giving discounts right away, but one story really surprised me.

We had a client who had an offline parquet store. He made a lead magnet and said that people who come to an offline store in swimsuits could get a discount. I started to laugh, and then he showed me a photo of the line in his store.

After that, I realized that everything can come true.

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Podcasts

You can invite different people from your industry and discuss some important problems and solutions. The cooler the guests, the better your podcast. Offer people to subscribe to your podcast and receive new release notifications.

If you are in business, then here is a good Reed Hoffman's podcast. Among the guests, there are Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and other guys who built billionaire companies.

Video courses

Every business should become a mini media platform. Creating your own mini video courses is a very good idea, although many are skeptical about it. It works in any niche, especially if you make a digital product.

If you sell services, you can create a mini-course about solving a problem for a client. For example, "How to build a house." In this video course, tell how you have built your client's house and what future clients need to pay attention to.

Buffer provides a service for SMM marketing. They talk about the best marketing strategies and train marketers to use their software. For each niche, you can come up with a mini-series with some kind of the story of your client.

Video tutorials / how to

This type of lead magnet is similar to the Step-by-step guide but differs slightly in format. It all depends on the type of business, product, and your ability to create content.

Of course, today, video works better than articles, but creating videos is more difficult.

You can make a "map" of client problems and record mini video tutorials on how to solve a problem. Below you will see a video lesson about making a video for Instagram. Share useful features and people will gladly leave you an email.

Compilation

People really like different compilations. Top 10 best songs, top 50 best software, top 5 films of all time, top 5 best hockey players, etc. You can make a useful list of some things that are important for your audience.

Also, you can make a selection of ways to solve a problem, as the guys from Optinmonster did. They created a lead magnet where they will tell 12 ways to convert abandoning users into your subscribers.

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Most of all I like software compilations. If you have a B2B project, then for each niche you can come up with a selection of special software that is best suited for any niche. Top 5 software for marketers, top 10 software for a construction company, top 10 yoga applications, etc.

Create a list of useful software for your industry and provide access to it after the user left the email.

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Test / survey / quiz

This type of lead magnet always has the best conversion.

People always want to know some kind of secret.

Who are they? What suits them best?

They always want detailed instructions for themselves. You can create surveys on the type of person, what kind of work is best suited, what level of knowledge a user has in a particular area. Here is an example of a quiz on the topic of archetype selection.

After passing the test, polls will come to your email. Also, tests are a good way to qualify for a client. Technically, such a survey can be implemented through special services for surveys.

Reports

If you have some data that other companies don't have, it's a very effective way to collect a subscription base. For example, PromoRepuplic company provides software for SMM and they understand where the industry is moving. A simple marketer has no such information.

They made a detailed report about the industry of Social media marketing. Gather a report about your industry and present it to your clients.

Webinars

In many niches, people need to be explained why they need your product and how to use it. This works especially well in B2B business, where products are often incomprehensible and it takes time to figure it out.

A webinar / auto-webinar is a great way to explain to people why they need your product. MailerLite provides an email marketing service. They hold webinars, and if users didn't attend a live webinar, after providing the email they can get a record.

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Contacts for presentation

If you make presentations at conferences always there are people who want to receive a presentation. You can say on stage that if a user sends you his email, he can receive a presentation on it.

This can be easily done using the QR code and the email newsletter service. The conferences gather the right audience. It's a great way to get warm leads 5 minutes after the presentation.

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Combined with multiple offers

The first rule is no rules. Who told you that there can be only one lead magnet? You can combine lead magnets and enhance your offer. Provide the user with several PDF reports, guides, and video courses at once. Offer him a lead magnet that he cannot refuse.

Case study

Everyone loves live examples. People need inspiration, they need to know that someone has succeeded, which means they can do it too. Everyone wants to know, "How did they do it." Case studies are the most powerful and easiest way to create content. Just describe the process, what problems you encountered, and how you solved them.

Here is an example of a case study of how guys promoted a site from 0 to 3millions visitors. Are there 3millions visitors on your site? Do you want to know? Then download the case faster :)

How to make a lead magnet Offline?

Making the lead magnet online is very easy. But what about companies whose interaction with subscribers is offline? Don't be upset. There is a way out of the situation.

Alcohol or something tasty. At exhibitions, people come up to your stand, ask something, and leave. Your task is to take business cards from them.

Man is arranged in such a way, that an exchange must take place. It exists on a subconscious level. Give something valuable. Once I was at an exhibition of Italian furniture.

The main process of lead generation for companies that sell VIP furniture is to drink with architects and designers. And so you come closer to the table where there are beautiful and tasty cocktails, and they say to you "Leave a business card and take a cocktail".

It works flawlessly.

Raffle prizes. There are a lot of people in your store, but you don't know how to get contacts? Make a raffle of valuable prizes, and the user can receive a notification by phone or email. The more valuable the prize, the greater the conversion to registration.

Catalogs / books. At first glance, this is a fairly old way and nobody needs magazines today. But if you've made a beautiful, printed booklet with some useful information, then it can be easily exchanged for contacts. In addition,n beautiful books are very difficult to throw out.

Have you ever thrown beautiful books? You always put them on the shelf and say "someday I'll read it". A book is a sacred subject to which a person has an emotional dependence. Give me a business card - get a book.

How to make a lead magnet technically

We learned how to create a lead magnet itself and what it is. Now let's learn how to implement it technically. We need that website visitors automatically convert to subscribers. To do this, we need special services.

Landing page builder - services that help you quickly create landing pages. Such services already have ready-made landing templates. You can create them in 5 minutes, change the picture, the title, and start the traffic.

You can integrate the email marketing service with the Landing Designer and automatically send emails with information after filling in the form.

Pop-up services - they help you increase the conversion of your landing page. Surely you saw them on the Internet when you tried to leave the website, but a window popped up and offered to leave you an email in return for useful information. It annoys everyone, but it works.

The conversion of pop-ups is 2-7%. This is a good result that can be added to the conversion of the landing page itself.

Here are the stats. We caught 289 leads who wanted to leave.

Messenger pop up - it's exactly the same pop-ups, but now the client has the opportunity to subscribe to the messenger. After subscribing, the chatbot starts interacting with the user and sends him the lead magnet that you promised. You need to use both pop-ups for emails and pop-ups for messengers.