By Amy Andrew, Writer.

Email marketing has evolved from SPAM to highly-personalised messages. Read on for more about the history of this effective way to connect with customers.

1971 — the year that started it all.

There was a lot happening around the world in 1971. China was admitted to the UN, Disney World opened, women in Switzerland were granted the vote, Disney World opened, Quatar became independent from the UK, Disney World opened.

Okay, you get the point. And in among all these huge changes, a gentleman called Ray Tomlinson sent the first email. Given that people were very concerned about issues like coining the term “Thatcher the Milk Snatcher” and fathoming decimalisation at the time, he didn’t garner the public attention he arguably should have.

Taking it to the masses — 1978.

Just seven years later, a certain Gary Thuerk had a bit of a brain wave. A marketing manager at Digital Equipment Corp, he got the ball rolling for commercial email by sending the first mass email.

Maybe it was an action triggered by the fact the world’s population had just hit 4.4 billion (so he had a lot more customers to speak to). Or maybe Gary just fancied trying something different after the last mass print catalogue mailing. Whatever the reason, it resulted in $13 million worth of sales for DEC machines. And that meant it wasn’t long before others started to cotton-on to the potential of this new communication medium.

Increased spread, or dread? SPAM arrives — 1998.

A lot of important things happened in the 1990s (some seriously cool members of the asabell team were born, for starters). And the decade kicked off email marketing with a bang when the internet was born in 1991.

The next invention this over-achiever of a decade produced? The smartphone — in 1992. Then, in 1996, it was time for the launch of Hotmail — the first web-based email service, and the platform which introduced personal email accounts (before that, you had to have a business or a University one).

Add these together and what have you got? The potential for anyone with access to a computer and internet connection to receive an email. And receive them they did. Email marketing soared and the aim of the game was to get as many emails on people’s screens as possible. In fact, just two short years later, this supposed boon for business was turning into a crisis for customers, as SPAM was born.

The noughties, or should that be naughtys?

Yes, with SPAM and associated viruses sweeping through inboxes around the world, lawmakers began to play the age-old game of cat and mouse with technology. The US and Europe led the way with anti-spam legislation, and naughty marketing companies began to feel the pinch.

It was also around this time that companies like AOL and Windows Live began to feedback on SPAM complaints and set up recipient feedback schemes. It looked like this could be the end for mass email marketing…

The 2010s were about personalisation.

Luckily for smart marketers who still wanted an engaging way to connect with customers via email, there was hope. Way back in 2001 the first behavioural email (triggered automatically by a user’s individual behaviour) had been sent. It’s a more personal form of email, as it’s targeted to the particular customer, reminding them, for example, of products they recently looked at.

This is one of the advances that meant personalisation became a key factor in email campaigns in the 2010s. After all that SPAM legislation, the rise of savvy users and the wealth of customer data available through various platforms, it was time for marketing to focus more on targeted campaigns. Hence the ‘Hi Amy, how’s that winter weather treating you? Remember that Caribbean holiday you were browsing yesterday…?’

No, we didn’t forget the smartphone.

But the real significance of this technology for email marketing wasn’t fully capitalised on until almost fifteen years later. Along with personalisation, phones are the other hallmark of today’s email marketing. In 2011, the year Apple announced that it had sold over 100 million iPhones, over 75 per cent of iPhone users accessed emails via this device.

And by 2012, more than 40 per cent of all marketing emails were opened on a mobile device. Suddenly, it became very important to make sure that your emails rendered effectively on a phone — or you were going to miss out on communicating with almost half of your market.

What does that mean for your marketing?

Today, email marketing is a great way to connect with customers, and 72 per cent of marketers say that it helps to develop loyal and active customers. Nowadays, a wealth of information about customers and their preferences means email lists can be easily segmented into relevant categories. So marketers can send highly-targeted emails that always hit their mark. In fact, conversion rates as high as 50 per cent can be seen across marketing email campaigns that take advantage of behavioural automation.

So, to find out more, and be part of the ever-evolving world of email marketing (like your customers), get in touch and see how we can help

Inbound marketing is all about creating content that prospects will proactively seek out. And to do that, you need to offer them something pretty special…

Enter the eMagazine.

eMagazines are digital collections of quality content that are as glossy as their printed counterparts, but come at a fraction of the production cost.

They give your prospects something to read that’s entertaining, looks awesome, and, importantly, brings your messages to the fore.

Right now you’re probably thinking: that’s all great, but how do I actually create something that’ll resonate with my audience? And what should I eat for lunch?

Well, for lunch, we’d emphatically suggest pizza — because, pizza.

And as for crafting a compelling eMagazine, we’ve got some tips that’ll get you off to the best possible start.

The dos and don’ts.

Do…

  • Think glossy magazine and use eye-catching images. Make sure these images are high-quality so there isn’t a pixel out of place and you get the clarity that’ll grab attention.
  • Include a wide range of content — an eMagazine is your chance to both show off and to showcase every aspect of your organisation.
  • Think about how you can keep design consistent. Create some spread templates and reuse them, as printed magazines do; it’ll help your content feel warm and familiar.
  • Decide how often you’re going to publish — and stick to it. No one wants a disappointed readership.
  • Use material you already have. Case studies, interviews, photo shoots, white papers and brochures all have elements that lend themselves to eMag content.
  • Shout about it — let your customers know there’s a new great read out there. Use your social channels, drop prospects an email or pick up the phone.

Don’t…

  • Treat it like a blog; it’s bigger than that — you can use articles, but only in conjunction with images and other forms of content.
  • Be afraid to push the design boundaries — this is your chance to add imagery into the communications mix, so make the most of the opportunity. Your design could create fresh and welcome perceptions amongst prospects.
  • Include things for the sake of it. Beware of padding things out; you risk diluting your overall message.
  • Forget about it once it’s done — your eMagazine is a great tool to share with customers and prospects in most situations — until the next issue comes out.
  • Think it’s restricted to an online presence — you can print it out, too.

So, what are you waiting for? Get writing — your prospects will appreciate it, we promise.

And if you need more help creating a connection with your prospects, then get in touch — we’d love to talk to you about your B2B marketing strategy. And pizza. We’re always happy to talk about pizza.

By Amy Andrew, Writer.

Making an entrance isn’t just for parties. Make sure readers choose your article ahead of the competition’s by creating a stand-out title. Here’s how.

So, you’ve written your article. It’s thrilling. Maybe even ground-breaking. But without a great title to represent it, people are far less likely to read it. So, here are our tips to help make sure that they can’t resist:

Forget about it.

Yep, ignoring the fact you have to do something is a pretty strange way of getting it done. Could you imagine the #fitspo fitness motivational posts? Instead of “do it”, we’d live in a world of “don’t bother”.

But, weird as it sounds, getting on with your writing and forgetting about the title is often a good way to make sure your headline is on point (when you do get round to it).

Instead of stressing about your catchy title from the beginning, start by simply noting a short topic sentence (sometimes called a ‘working title’) at the top of your piece. This is designed to help you, not engage your readers. It’s a great big reminder of what you’re trying to achieve through the piece you’re writing.

For example, for this blog, my working title was ‘five tips for writers: how to create a title that will grab their attention’. It’s not sexy, it’s not clickbait, it’s not clever. But it’s a simple reminder of what this blog needs to say.

Grab some friends.

It’s time to call in the reinforcements and have a collective thought shower. A useful way to go about it is to discuss the piece and have a think about key words; then throw about ideas, create a mind-map, doodle on your notepad, write a list, whatever works for you.

The aim of the game is to get as many catchy phrases and great words jotted down as possible. Best case scenario, you come out of the meeting with a catchy title. But more often than not, you’ve got plenty of material to work with to create one.

The practical side.

Just like that right!? Just, you know — ‘create one’…

Gulp

It’s not as daunting as it might sound. But there are some practical considerations to take into account.

The first is to be accurate. This relates to respecting your readers, which I’ll talk about a little more in tip four. If you lie to them in the title, you’ll lose their trust.

What else?

  • Try having fun with alliteration.
  • Keep it short (between six and eight words typically generates the best click-through).
  • Use strong language.
  • Include numbers and lists where possible.
  • Interesting adjectives are your friends.
  • People like a good pun.
  • Try a little hyperbole (but remember not to stray from the truth). Think: ‘Our greatest business solutions yet’ as opposed to ‘A new business solution’. It’s more compelling.
  • Make your reader part of a club (again, more on this one in tip 4: ‘know your audience’).

Some other good tips, which are dependent on what you’re writing about, include: using your title to solve a problem (‘How to manage business accounts’) and letting the reader know if your piece contains unique data (‘Study reveals why eating ONLY one piece of chocolate is impossible’).

Know your audience.

You need to know what is likely to be compelling to your readers. Including a funny reference to One Direction probably won’t have any impact on the bank your business is pitching to.

If you don’t intuitively know your audience, there are ways to get an insight. Google Analytics can reveal your best-performing pages and outline what your readers like. You can also track onsite queries and use Google AdWords Keywords to find out what terms are popular.

Also, get out there and see what they’re talking about. Online, at the boardroom table, around the water cooler, in the queue at Tesco, on the dancefloor. Whatever audience you’re trying to capture, find out what matters to them, and shape your title (and your writing) around that. It makes you part of their group, and many of us can’t resist an in-joke, so it’s a great way to get people clicking.

But be careful. Those keyword searches I mentioned earlier? They’re great, but you can get into a black hole of trying to make a bunch of keywords work as a title. And this can end up distracting from the flow of your writing. If you’ve got a catchy title, that follows the tips I’ve outlined above, don’t worry too much about trying to wrap it around a keyword generator.

Or, you know, relax and let us write one for you. Here’s how to get in touch.

By Amy Andrew, Writer.

Get your readers clicking. Find out how to put together a great call to action (CTA) and seriously increase your conversion rate.

A good CTA takes up a tiny amount of time, money and space, yet it punches well above its weight, improving conversion rates by up to 30 per cent.

It’s a quick, easy and cost-effective way to convince your audience to do something: whether that be clicking a link or downloading a file. By writing great CTAs, you can re-generate older content in minutes and make sure your new stuff is irresistible to readers. Here’s how:

Six steps to create a great CTA.

  1. Make it actionable.
    Imperatives and the second-person are your friend. Get customers’ attention by using ‘you’. And make it clear what they should do with imperative verbs (the bossy ones) — think ‘download this’, ‘click that’, ‘get it?’.
  2. Motivate me.
    Give your reader a reason to act. They’re asking ‘what’s in it for me?’, so it’s important you tell them, clearly. ‘Download something’ would be a less motivating CTA than, for example, ‘Downloading this will make your job easier’.
  3. Consistency is key.
    Whatever your CTA refers to, give the offer/proposition a name and stick to it. If you call it a download on your landing page, call it a download in your blog, and in all CTAs. Otherwise people either:

    1. get confused
    2. don’t trust you.

      Either way, they’re not clicking on your link.
  4. Add some urgency.
    We’re all busy, so you need to make the most of people’s desire to get things done quickly. The internet, after all, is hardly a place for thoughtful contemplation. The word ‘now’ is your friend.
  5. Look at me.
    Websites that are consistent and well designed, encourage trust. But it’s important that CTA buttons also stand out. So make it pop (and look clickable). Buttons are stereotypically red for a reason.
  6. Testing, testing 1, 2, 3…
    Not sure if your CTA has what it takes? Ask your audience. A/B test multiple CTAs to find the one with the best engagement. (This can also help you personalise CTAs based on different groups in your audience — but that’s a blog for another day.)

    As you can see, these steps are pretty simple. They’re also inexpensive and can be done straight away. So don’t be deceived by their size, CTAs are powerful little things.

Click now for even more conversion tips.

(See what we did there!?)

References:
Ginny Soskey (2013). The Complete Checklist for Creating Compelling Calls to Action. Available: http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/call-to-action-optimization-ht#sm.001sng5wp11k7fqcw4q2g8zrtcrit

Heidi Cohen (2013). How to Improve your Social Media Calls to Action. Available: http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/how-to-improve-your-social-media-calls-to-action/

Hubspot Academy (2016). How to create an A/B variation test for Calls-to-Action (CTA).
Available: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/cta-user-guide-v2/how-to-create-an-a-b-variation-test-for-calls-to-action

Good grammar has amazing power, helping you build credibility and persuade your target market. Do you give it the attention it deserves?

Grammar gravitas.

When you communicate, you want people to listen. You want them to take you seriously. You want your opinion to count.

In the world of written business communication, your words represent your organisation and good grammar gives you credibility.

Why does grammar matter so much?

Business operates in an environment where written language lags behind the spoken, and there’s one rule for speaking and another for writing.

Yes, some people argue that we shouldn’t place so much importance (conscious or otherwise) on grammar in writing. They want the grammar-sticklers to lighten up a bit, take a chill pill, go with the spoken flow — so what if we don’t structure our sentences perfectly if people get the gist?

However, we’re just more forgiving of lapses in spoken language: sometimes our brains can’t cast the optimum sentence before we start speaking and minor grammatical mistakes happen. Using ‘me’ where you should have ‘I’, or saying ‘who’ instead of ‘whom’ are just verbal hiccups. People might notice, and slips like these might interrupt their understanding momentarily, but they don’t linger in memory as the conversation moves on.

Written errors, however, hang around like a bad smell. We consider them avoidable and make judgements accordingly about the writer’s capabilities and trustworthiness.

Raspberry ripples.

Think about an important face-to-face business discussion: there’s no way you’d deliberately scupper your chances of persuasion by suddenly blowing a raspberry. They’d think you childish and question your suitability as a business partner. In the written sphere, poor grammar is the equivalent of that raspberry — it puts your capabilities under the spotlight. After all, if you can’t use grammar correctly, what else can’t you do?

Craft carefully and win confidence.

You put your heart and soul into winning business, so you’d be daft not to make the most of every little thing that could tip the balance in your favour. Your written communications have the power to persuade your target market to believe in your abilities and to say ‘yes’ to the sale. Using grammar correctly builds business confidence — and that’s why it matters.

Our writing team lives and breathes grammar (and air); it’s a vital part of creating copy that gets the job done. Do get in touch if you’d like us to pitch in with your written communications.

Make sure your words don’t fail you. Follow our five proofreading tips to help your business create accurate copy.

Does this sound familiar?

Nowadays, it’s easy for businesses to publish as much copy as they like. Blogs, tweets, posts, emails — they can all be written, edited, and sent from something as small as a smartphone (if you don’t mind taking ages about it).

But, as always, there’s a catch. Your copy is representative of your business — and, as harsh as it sounds, people will judge you by it. So if your written content is full of mistakes, you’ll give a bad impression to potential customers.

The consequences of poor copy.

Knowing this, you’d think people would be careful with what they put out there.

You’d be wrong. The internet’s crammed full of examples of cringeworthy copy mistakes. If you’re going to have a billboard about education, for example, you’ll want to familiarise yourself with the difference between their, they’re and there.

To be fair, when you produce a lot of written content, proofreading everything carefully and effectively is no walk in the park. If it were, then professional proofreaders would be out of a job. It takes time, concentration and commitment.

Thankfully though, there are things you can do to make it easier for you to stop those frequent copy faux pas.

Proofread like a boss (or a professional proofreader).

Based on our experience, here are five steps you can take to help you seek out those errors.

  1. Change the font to make it easier to spot mistakes.
    The more obnoxious the font, the better. It should make you feel like someone else wrote the text — and that you don’t like them at all. Basically, if it doesn’t read easily — that’s what you’re looking for. We suggest this proofreading font.
  1. Read it once to check that the story works.
    The first time you read your work, don’t worry about mistakes — just make sure that it makes sense as a story.
  1. Read it aloud.
    Sure, reading a document out loud in the middle of your office might make you look a bit odd. But look on the bright side — you’ll hear the mistakes and dodgy phrases that your eye would normally skip over.
  1. Read it again to check for accuracy.
    Make sure you have those rowdy full stops in the right places (especially when it comes to bullet points). And remember to check for contractions and apostrophes as well.
  1. Now read it backwards to check individual words.
    This sounds kind of mad, but it’s much easier to spot spelling mistakes and typos when you look at each word without the context of the sentence around it.

Have a little patience.

Remember: cutting the errors from your copy takes time, patience and a lot of hard work, so don’t expect instant results. But stick with our five-step process and you’ll get there in the end.

And if you do want any extra help, we’re here for you. We can write you copy that’s proofed and ready to go — stuff that your business can be proud of.

Get in touch to find out more.

By Kate Hayden, Designer.

The infographic — get it right and it’s a stylish way to get a message across; get it wrong and you’ll be left with a dog’s dinner on your website.

Turning the information into graphics.

I love an infographic — and that’s lucky because creating them makes up a fairly hefty chunk of my job as a designer here at asabell. I’ve worked on infographics about everything from cybersecurity, to breakfast… to the history of infographics themselves. So I think it’s fair to say that I know a thing or two about what makes (or breaks) a successful infographic.

Working on such a variety of infographics has really highlighted to me why these punchy little visuals are so popular nowadays. Because they’re a simple, quick and fun way to get a message across, they’re great at cutting through the ‘noise’ on the internet and helping you to connect with your customers.

Use them, but use them right.

So yes, you’ll definitely want to use infographics in your B2B communications, that much is clear. But you can’t just pull a great infographic out of a hat. You need to get it right; because your information deserves the best representation you can provide, and because sticking a failed-attempt-at-an-infographic up on your website will reflect badly on you.

To help you create an infographic that earns pride of place among your content, rather than becoming an unsightly waste of space, here are my three top tips for a crafting an infographic that works:

  1. Be consistent.
    When it comes to the design of your infographic, consistency is important. Remember: infographics are about clarity — getting your message across clearly and simply. If your design is messy — with photos here, logos there, and vector graphics all over the place — then you’ll only take away from your message. If you’re working for a big brand, it’s likely that you have brand guidelines — sticking to these is essential and an easy way for your infographic to maintain a consistent style.
  2. Typography is your friend.
    It’s all too easy to let your infographic get bogged down in text, but that’s something you should fight. Boil the infographic’s copy down to as few words as possible, and then use whatever typographical tricks you have up your sleeve to make that copy more visual. For consistency, stick with one font (changing the weight or colour if you want to add some flair).
  3. Chuck charts in the bin.
    When you’ve got some data that needs visualising, the first thing that comes to mind is probably creating some kind of chart or graph. My advice is to do what all responsible designers do — take your first idea and throw it in the bin. You want your infographic to be compelling, unique and memorable — not the equivalent of what a 13-year-old could do with Microsoft Excel. Take your information and get creative with how you represent it; make it fun, clear, memorable and, importantly, something that’ll resonate with your target audience.

Where to go from here.

Following these three tips will give you a good place to start, and get you well on the way to creating an awesome infographic. But it’s not the whole story. I could waffle on about how you should make sure your infographic is designed so that you can chop it into bits, for use on social media. Or why you need to focus on quantitative information, not qualitative. But I don’t have time for that here.

Get in touch though, and I’d be more than happy to talk your ear off about infographics. Or I could even create them for you (with the help of our lovely copywriters). Either way, I’d love to hear from you.

By Jenny Harbour, Head of Social Media.

Employee advocacy is a vastly underrated tool for B2B businesses in the battle to get their messages to the right audiences. Here’s why I’m all for it.

The power of employee advocacy.

Employee advocacy is getting employees to use their personal social networks to spread their organisation’s messaging, and it’s the fastest-growing means of building brand engagement. By encouraging employees to be ambassadors for your brand, you generate discussion around topics to do with your company that reach far beyond the people your company could normally make contact with.

This ripple effect is extremely valuable; instead of your organisation pushing out the same messages (again and again), the information spreads outwards more organically, from person to person and from group to group. I’ve helped clients to make this happen in their organisations and I know it works. One client, for example, found their bylined thought-leadership blogs shared by employees across their networks got nearly 70 per cent more views than standard ‘company’ blogs.

Advocacy really works…

And there are wider stats to back this up: research shows that a formal employee advocacy programme helps to shorten the sales cycle. Plus, over 60 per cent of people involved in an advocacy programme believed that it helped to attract and develop new business, and nearly half agreed employee advocacy had created new revenue streams.

…so why isn’t it happening?

In an ideal world, employee advocacy would be in the DNA of your company. All your people would integrate thought-provoking, work-related comments across their social media channels —without being asked. And any new joiners would understand that following suit was part of their contract.

But that’s not the norm. It might be that today’s large organisation has put so many rules in place to protect its brand and tone that it’s scaring people off from mentioning their work on their personal social media networks.

Or, perhaps it’s because digital natives are not yet senior enough in the organisation to be able to lead by example. Plus people may be reluctant to mix their personal and work lives too much. However, creating and maintaining a profile purely for work purposes easily gets around that.

Making employee advocacy a reality.

Today, employee advocacy has to be consciously introduced to a company through a carefully-thought-out programme of training, encouragement and ongoing support.

With backing from senior management, you first need to persuade your people that it’s a good idea. Focusing on the value advocacy brings to the sales process is a starting point. And you can back that up with the research that shows an impressive 86 per cent of people who took part in an employee advocacy programme felt being a brand ambassador on social media had had a positive effect on their career.

The next step is to make sure your people are proficient on social media and have appropriate profiles. It’s important at this point to be clear about how to grow connections, how and what to share, and how to stand out from the crowd. It takes so much more than just hitting the ‘share’ button. You need your people to understand how best to spark discussion, and how to handle themselves if their opinions prove a little controversial.

Plus, you need to get people to understand that they’re in this for the long haul; there are no quick fixes. In fact, whenever I run training to get an advocacy programme started, I seem to spend a lot of time stressing the importance of regularity, regularity, regularity!

Find your experts.

Every organisation has an untapped, rich resource of subject matter experts who are perfectly placed to spread your word across their networks. Often, though, these individuals don’t realise their own expertise; you may need to seek them out and make sure they are equipped to start sharing. In fact, these subject matter experts may need support in getting their point across with ghost-written profiles, blogs and social media comments. Then, over time, they will become more confident and undertake more of the advocacy themselves. When working with companies, I’ve seen (and supported) a whole range of competencies and levels of confidence.

The time conundrum.

Once your employee advocacy programme is ready to go, the final hurdle you have to get over is making sure your people have time to do it. Initially, this can feel a bit strange — giving people the freedom to go on social media during working hours. But if you think about it, what you’re aiming to achieve is a fluid mix of personal views about work subjects. So encouraging your people to check in on their social media throughout the day, and to take the time to comment or share is a natural consequence. It shouldn’t be a crime! In fact, for an employee to create and maintain a valuable presence on social media, I recommend allowing a minimum of five hours in the working week.

Are you ready?

So, is your organisation ready to fully embrace employee advocacy yet? If you’d like to bounce some ideas around about this, or find out what services we offer to support advocacy, then do get in touch.