marketing management

Email marketing remains a potent tool in the digital marketing arsenal, and with the right strategies and tools, it can yield impressive results.  

In this article, we’ll delve into email marketing, uncovering best practices to help you craft compelling campaigns, segment your audience, design templates that convert, and analyze your campaign’s effectiveness. Let’s get started.

Make Your Email Campaigns Look and Sound Compelling

An effective email campaign begins with a well-defined strategy. Using email marketing tools like Saphyte, you can plan, execute, and refine your campaigns for optimal impact without breaking a sweat. Here are a few tips in crafting compelling email marketing campaigns:

1. Start by setting clear goals – lead generation, customer retention, or promoting a new product.
   
2. Define your target audience based on demographics, behavior, or previous interactions, ensuring your content resonates with the proper recipients.
   
3. Begin with a strong subject line that captures attention and entices recipients to open the email.
   
4. Personalization is critical – address the recipient by name and tailor content to their preferences.
   
5. Craft engaging content with images, videos, and concise text that conveys your message effectively.
   
6. Make your email mobile-responsive, considering that 46% of all email opens occur on mobile devices

Segment Your Audience for Maximum Impact

Segmentation is the cornerstone of successful email marketing, and Saphyte CRM’s robust segmentation features enable you to deliver highly targeted content. Leverage customer data, purchase history, and engagement patterns to divide your audience into segments.

This allows you to send tailored messages that resonate with recipients’ interests and needs, boosting open rates, click-through rates, and overall engagement.

Personalizing your campaigns based on segmentation can yield remarkable results. Research indicates that personalized emails deliver six times higher transaction rates.

For instance, segment your audience based on their purchase history and send tailored recommendations or exclusive offers. Email marketing tools like Saphyte simplify this process, letting you create dynamic content blocks that automatically adapt based on recipient attributes.

The result? Engaging, relevant emails that build stronger customer relationships.

Design Templates that Convert

Your email’s visual appeal is pivotal to its success. It’s important to have a tool that offers a gallery of customizable templates that you can tweak to match your brand’s identity. Focus on a clean layout that guides the recipient’s eyes from the headline to the call-to-action (CTA).

Place your CTA prominently, employing contrasting colors to make it stand out. Remember, a single CTA can increase clicks by 371% and sales by 1617%.

Personalization doesn’t stop at the subject line; it extends to the email body. Incorporate dynamic content that addresses the recipient by name and tailors product recommendations based on past interactions.

A sense of urgency can drive action, so include limited-time offers or countdowns. Furthermore, optimize your email for accessibility by using alt text for images and maintaining a logical structure for screen readers.

Analyze Campaign Effectiveness

Saphyte CRM’s email marketing module doesn’t just stop at sending emails; it empowers you with insights to refine your strategies. Track key metrics like open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates to gauge the effectiveness of your campaigns.

A/B testing is a valuable tool – experiment with different subject lines, CTAs, and content to identify what resonates best with your audience.

Additionally, delve into the engagement patterns of your recipients. Saphyte CRM provides detailed analytics on which links were clicked, how long recipients engaged with the content, and whether they shared the email.

This data offers a wealth of information to optimize your future campaigns. You can also track the journey of individual recipients, enabling personalized follow-ups based on their interactions.

Conclusion

Email marketing with Saphyte CRM transcends the traditional approach, offering a comprehensive suite of tools to create, deploy, and refine your campaigns.

By embracing best practices such as strategic planning, audience segmentation, personalized content, and thorough analytics, you can elevate your email marketing efforts to drive meaningful engagement and conversions.

With Saphyte CRM as your partner, email marketing becomes a playground for innovation and success. Want to learn more about email marketing and how to automate this process? Talk to us. Book a FREE demo below.

A new era of customer service has emerged where human-like conversations meet seamless automation. Chatbots have become the unsung heroes of customer interactions in a world where time is precious, and efficiency is paramount.

From handling inquiries to resolving issues, chatbots are changing the game, transforming how businesses engage with their customers.

In this article, we will explore the fascinating world of chatbots—their rise to popularity and their impact on the business landscape. Let’s get started.

Chatbots Demystified: A History of Evolution 

Let’s start with the basics. What exactly are chatbots?

Chatbots are intelligent virtual assistants simulate human-like conversations powered by artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms. Initially introduced in the 1960s as rudimentary text-based systems, chatbots have come a long way.

Thanks to advancements in Natural Language Processing (NLP) and machine learning, they now possess the ability to understand and respond to human queries with remarkable accuracy.

With the rise of messaging apps and voice assistants, chatbots have become increasingly popular, offering immediate and convenient support.

The Impact of Chatbots on the Business Landscape

The business landscape has witnessed a seismic shift with the widespread adoption of chatbots. Today, chatbots are the frontline soldiers, revolutionizing customer service across industries. They offer 24/7 availability, instant response times, and consistent interactions. 

According to recent studies, 64% of consumers believe that chatbots provide real-time assistance, while 55% appreciate their instant responses.

This efficiency translates into tangible business benefits, including increased customer satisfaction, enhanced brand loyalty, and significant cost savings. Moreover, chatbots were projected to have saved businesses over $8 billion annually by 2022.

How Chatbot Can Help Your Business

Chatbots can help businesses perform service-oriented tasks without the need for manual work.

For example, even without a man behind the computer, a business can talk to customers using an intelligent, personalized chatbot that could answer queries right away or book appointments for the customer.

Some businesses personalize their chatbots to a level where the chatbot can sound witty, entertaining, and friendly. This helps make the chatbot feel more human-like, removing communication barriers and making the process of growing meaningful relationships easier.

Chatbots can also answer frequently asked questions (FAQs), guide customers through product recommendations, or resolve simple issues. Overall, chatbots empower businesses to provide round-the-clock support and foster meaningful customer relationships.

Revolutionize Your Business with a Chatbot

In a world where time is of the essence, chatbots have emerged as customer service superheroes. They tirelessly assist customers, providing instant resolutions and freeing up human agents to focus on more complex tasks.

From witty banter to lightning-fast responses, chatbots bring a touch of automation to customer interactions, leaving customers impressed and businesses thriving.

Want to learn more about chatbots and their potential impact on your business? Book a FREE demo with our experts below.

How can marketing help with profits during an economic downturn? What must businesses do to get started? Read on to find out.

The current economic crisis is prompting businesses to change directions. Many are now focusing on qualifying and converting leads and delivering value to existing customers. What’s more, with the pandemic accelerating digital transformation, businesses are now more equipped to understand their customers better to achieve the aforementioned goals.

How can businesses use marketing to improve their profits, especially amid an economic crisis? What steps should businesses take to get better results? Check out our tips below.

Reexamine your lead scoring strategy

Your lead scoring strategy is what helps you qualify your leads and determine which potential customer is most likely to make a purchase. Lead scoring is a critical step in lead conversion strategy. 

Messing up with your lead scoring can impact your lead conversion results. This is why it’s important to reexamine your lead scoring strategy and check if it’s working well.

Some companies automate lead scoring so their sales and marketing teams can focus on more important tasks. By automating using a system, sales and marketing teams can automatically identify which of the incoming leads they need to focus on.

Focus on converting qualified leads

According to surveys, more than 25% of marketing qualified leads (MQLs) do not get a follow-up from sales. This is a wasted opportunity for driving sales. And in an economic downturn, every dollar counts.

To prevent this from happening, it’s important that, as previously mentioned, you can screen out the leads that are more likely to make a purchase, so you can focus on them and help them make a purchase as soon as possible.

You can generate qualified leads with content marketing, conduct follow-ups, connect with them through email marketing, or use positive customer testimonials and reviews to help speed up their purchase decision.

Work on your CTAs

Your CTAs are also crucial in your lead conversion strategy. CTAs may make or break your marketing campaign. If a CTA doesn’t match the customer’s needs or preferences, they may end up exiting from your website or from your other sales and marketing channels.

For example, having “Learn More” as a CTA may discourage customers that are looking to make an immediate purchase. “Buy Now” may not be effective if the customer needs more information about your product or service.

The point of CTAs is to convince users they need to take action immediately or you risk losing them, but this only works if the CTA matches the stage of the buyer in the buyer’s journey. 

Assess and evaluate your value chain

The final thing that you should remember is to add value for your customers. This can be done only when you understand how your value chain works and determine whether they’re giving value to the end users (your customers).

You can conduct a value chain analysis by doing the following:

• First, identify all your value chain activities. You can do this by having a list of each activity in your company that is essential in the creation of your company’s finished product.

• Second, calculate their costs. Costs such as rent, utilities, and manpower often play a role in value creation.  By identifying your value chain activities and their costs, you can see an overview of how your company is running and which parts are taking so much of your dough.

• Third, determine what your customers perceive as value. This is where it’s important to gather data and feedback from customers to help you understand them better. To get you started, gather data related to why and how your customers make purchase decisions. This helps you understand their intent and what they perceive as valuable.

• Fourth, compare with your competition. Understand the marketing effectiveness of your competitors. Compare how your competitors carry out tasks, what their business strategies are, and their revenue (or other performance) outcomes.

• Lastly, decide on a competitive advantage. After making your comparisons, you’ll already know which parts you are performing better compared to your competitors. It can be the cost, the perceived value of the brand, or the accessibility you provide to your customers.

Gather data from your customers now

Do you want to know how you can effortlessly gather data from your customers to understand them better? Book a FREE demo with our sales and marketing experts now to learn more.

A/B testing is one of the most effective ways to determine what elements to use that respond to customer needs and preferences the most. Find out why should you do it and how you can get started.

Many of the sales and marketing elements you see on the internet from huge companies have undergone A/B testing— the color of the CTA button, the copy or words they used in the button, the headline, and the pictures. These things were carefully studied and prepared using the test. 

But what is A/B testing, why should you do it, and how can you start doing it? Read on to find out.

What is A/B Testing

A/B testing is the process of comparing two or more versions of a variable (for example, web copy, color, picture, or other elements) to determine which version target audiences respond to the most.

The goal of A/B testing is to optimize websites, webpages, and other online channels using data to eliminate the guesswork. With the data, you can understand at a deeper level your target users’ behavior, pain points, and the elements needed to achieve customer satisfaction.

Benefits of A/B Testing

Many companies have observed the following benefits of A/B testing:

1. Addressing target customers’ pain points

Have you ever visited a website and encountered an inconvenience like not being able to buy a product, check its description, or request a demo?

These are some of the pain points that businesses must learn to address to give customers a smooth experience interacting with your online channels.

With A/B testing, you’ll learn more about customers’ experiences and journeys with your brand so that you’ll give them a better experience the next time they visit your website or other online channels.

2. Achieving better ROI and other business objectives

A/B testing also helps you achieve business objectives such as driving sales, generating leads, or growing your business overall.

The tests let you increase conversions through your websites and landing pages without having to spend another dollar to drive traffic. This optimizes your spending— helping you get more sales with minimal costs.

3. Helps you understand your target customers better

The data you get from A/B testing also gives you insights about your customers— even information that customers don’t even know about themselves. These include preferences such as what words work best to encourage them to make a purchase or what pictures they’d like to see.

This data can be used throughout your business— sales, marketing, and support, among other things— to attract more customers, increase retention, and establish brand loyalty.

How to Start A/B Testing

To start A/B testing, we such doing the following:

1. Identify your business goal

The most important part of A/B testing is knowing what business goal you want to achieve. Some companies that conduct this test have the following goals:

• Generating more leads through websites
• Driving more sales through email
• Getting more people to sign up for the newsletter
• Encouraging people to refer the website to their friends

Knowing what you want to achieve helps you decide what to test and how to conduct that test.

2. Decide what to test

After identifying your business goal, select the variable that you want to measure (e.g. the size of the CTA button, the color of the CTA button, the tone of the copy, the pictures used, etc.). You will have to establish a hypothesis before doing this. Some hypotheses include:

• The pictures you use in the email will encourage email readers to scroll through
• The color of the CTA button affects its visibility and user experience
• The headline used in the website will impact brand impression

These hypotheses will help you narrow down and select the elements that you want to test. When testing, make sure that you have a control (or the main/default element that you’re normally using) and a challenger (the new variable or element that you want to test). 

3. Increase the significance of your results

Make sure that your sample size is enough to increase the statistical significance of your test. Split your sample groups equally and randomly— like testing with two or more audiences that are equal in number. 

4. Take one step at a time

More importantly, when you’re new to A/B testing, take one step at a time. Learn the basics first before moving on to the more complicated steps of A/B testing. Use tools to make collecting data easier and to produce more statistically significant results.

Want to learn more about customer data collection?

Try Saphyte to make data collection smooth and easy. Our platform have all the tools and features you need to make data collection, interpretation, and reporting easier.

With our digital ecosystem, you will have access to features that will help upgrade your sales, marketing, administration, and support functions.

Learn more about how to organically grow your email subscription list, a crucial part of running a meaningful email marketing strategy.

Many companies do not know how to organically grow their email subscription list. This makes it hard for them to run their email marketing strategy and achieve meaningful sales and marketing objectives.

To make your job easier for you, we’ve listed down tips on how you can grow your email list without buying them off the internet. Let’s get started.

1. Offer value in exchange for subscription

One of the most effective ways to get someone to subscribe to your email list is to offer something that the customer would find valuable. This can be information that they’re interested in or are actively looking for or tools that can help them work easily. 

Many companies offer lead magnets such as an eBook, a PDF report, an inspiring or motivational video series, an infographic, or even a discount on a product or service.

Find something that your target customers would find valuable and offer that as your lead magnet.

Learn more about developing a content marketing strategy here.

2. Personalize your offers

Customers have different needs and priorities at every stage of the sales process. You may even be able to predict what they need depending on the sales channel they’re using. 

Because of this, it’s important to personalize your offers depending on what they need. Offering them discounts at the first stage of the sales process may not be needed as the customer is still looking for information about your product. 

Offering detailed product information may no longer be needed if the customer has already gone through many steps after discovering your brand and is close to purchasing your product.

Making sure your offers are personalized ensures a high level of success in closing the deal.

3. Differentiate yourselves from competition

When offering lead magnets, it’s important to identify and communicate to customers what you can do that your competition isn’t able to do. This guarantees that the customer understands your unique value proposition, and will make it likely for the customer to avoid scanning the market for alternatives.

4. Have a straightforward CTA button

Your CTA button should also be simple and straightforward and redirect the customer to a landing page where they need to be. This must be sensitive to their stage of the sales process. 

Do not redirect customers that still need a lot of convincing to a page where they would make a purchase. It’s important to note that the CTA button must communicate clearly what value the customer will get after clicking the button.

5. Make your content shareable

If you’re trying to grow your email list, make sure your content is shareable. Those that have subscribed to your email campaigns may find it valuable enough to share it with friends and family. This makes the spread of your content through word-of-mouth communication easier to do. 

6. Connect through social media

Social media is one of the best places to get customers to sign up for email campaigns. Not only are most people active on social media platforms, but these social media platforms can deliver and spread information fast.

It’s also easy to promote your brand on social media organically or through paid content. This allows you to instantly connect with a massive target audience and get them to sign up for your email campaign.

Check out our list of the best social media campaigns here.

7. Conduct A/B testing

A/B testing is an important way of assessing the effectiveness of the elements of your sales and marketing strategy. This type of testing will tell your subscribers’ preferences over things such as:

• Subject line
• Type of Content
• Color or Style
• Schedule When Email is Sent

8. Engage through your employees

Get more people to sign up by making your messages sound more personal by coursing them through your employees. Have a “human tone” by signing off using your employees’ signatures. 

Below is an example of how Semrush, an American SEM company, uses a “human face” to communicate with target audiences.

You can also add customer reviews or feedback to social proof— making it easier to convince your target audience to sign up to be part of your email list.

Easier Email Marketing

Get access to a complete set of tools to easily gather customer data and grow your audience now with Saphyte. 

Saphyte provides a powerful digital ecosystem that can help you boost your sales, marketing, and support functions. Learn more from our experts and book a demo now for FREE.

What are the ways that personalized content helps businesses? Why should companies seriously consider personalizing? Read on to find out.

Personalization is a strategy that has been observed to help businesses that apply it. It has helped with boosting brand recall, driving sales, and establishing customer loyalty. In 2022, with the pandemic-induced trends, personalization has been found to matter more.

What are the ways that personalized content can help businesses? Read on to find out.

1. Personalization helps engage the audience better

It’s not enough for you to communicate with your audience through marketing. It’s also important to keep them engaged as an engaged audience is more likely to take action. 

Personalization narrows down the message, making it relevant and responsive to the target audience’s needs and preferences. This ensures that the audience will: (1) read the message you sent, (2) take the desired action, and (3) help you achieve your marketing objectives.

2. It enhances lead nurturing

Personalized content also helps convert more leads into MQLs (marketing qualified leads) and SQLs (sales qualified leads). With personalized lead nurturing, the process of establishing and nurturing relationships with leads at every stage of their journey becomes enhanced, making it easier for them to convert into customers.

3. It improves lead conversion rates

Personalization also includes the strategy of engaging a prospective customer with the right message at the right time. This curated experience makes them more likely to convert into actual customers compared to random, irrelevant messaging.

4. It helps drive sales

With an engaged audience, an improved lead nurturing process, and better conversion rates, sales are highly likely to increase. According to statistics, personalization has been observed to drive sales, with 70% of brands claiming a 200% ROI and 63% observing an increase in customer interactions and conversion rates. 

5. It boosts brand recall

Personalization has also been observed to improve the customer experience. This helps the customer remember the brand the next time the need comes up. Personalization not only helps with lead conversion, but it also increases repeat purchases for existing customers.

6. It helps with establishing customer loyalty

With an improved experience, customers are more likely to come back to you in the future. This makes their chances of churning or moving to competitors for their preferred product or service less likely. With established customer loyalty, it becomes easier for brands to convince customers to take an action to reach a sales and marketing goal. 

Discover how to personalize content

Explore how a digital ecosystem like Saphyte helps you collect important information about your customers for your personalization goals. Discover how you can keep your target audience engaged with minimal effort. Book a FREE demo now.

How can marketing help with profits during an economic downturn? What must businesses do to get started? Read on to find out.

The current economic crisis is prompting businesses to change directions. Many are now focusing on qualifying and converting leads and delivering value to existing customers.

What’s more, with the pandemic accelerating digital transformation, businesses are now challenged to understand their customers better to achieve the aforementioned goals.

How can businesses use marketing to improve their profits, especially amid an economic crisis? What steps should businesses take to get better results? Check out our tips below.

1. Reexamine your lead scoring strategy

Your lead scoring strategy is what helps you qualify your leads and determine which potential customer is most likely to make a purchase. Lead scoring is a critical step in lead conversion strategy. 

Messing up with your lead scoring can impact your lead conversion results. This is why it’s important to reexamine your lead scoring strategy and check if it’s working well.

Some companies automate lead scoring so their sales and marketing teams can focus on more important tasks. By automating using a system, sales and marketing teams can automatically identify which of the incoming leads they need to focus on.

2. Focus on converting qualified leads

According to surveys, more than 25% of marketing qualified leads (MQLs) do not get a follow-up from sales. This is a wasted opportunity for driving sales. And in an economic downturn, every dollar counts.

To prevent this from happening, it’s important that, as previously mentioned, you can screen out the leads that are more likely to make a purchase, so you can focus on them and help them make a purchase as soon as possible.

You can generate qualified leads with content marketing, conduct follow-ups, connect with them through email marketing, or use positive customer testimonials and reviews to help speed-up their purchase decision.

3. Work on your CTAs

Your CTAs are also crucial in your lead conversion strategy. CTAs may make or break your marketing campaign. If a CTA doesn’t match the customer’s needs or preferences, they may end up exiting from your website or from your other sales and marketing channels.

For example, having “Learn More” as a CTA may discourage customers that are looking to make an immediate purchase. “Buy Now” may not be effective if the customer needs more information about your product or service.

The point of CTAs is to convince users they need to take action immediately or you risk losing them, but this only works if the CTA matches the stage of the buyer in the buyer’s journey. 

4. Assess and evaluate your value chain

The final thing that you should remember is to add value for your customers. This can be done only when your understand how your value chain works and determine whether they’re giving value to the end users (your customers).

You can conduct a value chain analysis by doing the following:

• First, identify all your value chain activities. You can do this by having a list of each activity in your company that is essential in the creation of your company’s finished product.

• Second, calculate their costs. Costs such as rent, utilities, and manpower often play a role in value creation.  By identifying your value chain activities and their costs, you can see an overview of how your company is running and which parts are taking so much of your dough.

• Third, determine what your customers perceive as value. This is where it’s important to gather data and feedback from customers to help you understand them better. To get you started, gather data related to why and how your customers make purchase decisions. This helps you understand their intent and what they perceive as valuable.

• Fourth, compare with your competition. Understand the marketing effectiveness of your competitors. Compare how your competitors carry out tasks, what their business strategies are, and their revenue (or other performance) outcomes.

• Lastly, decide on a competitive advantage. After making your comparisons, you’ll already know which parts you are performing better compared to your competitors. It can be the cost, the perceived value of the brand, or the accessibility you provide to your customers.

Gather data from your customers now

Do you want to know how you can effortlessly gather data from your customers to understand them better? Book a FREE demo with our sales and marketing experts now to learn more.

Content marketing is a way for businesses to attract leads, convert them, and keep them engaged. Read on to find out why it’s important to do it in 2022.

Articles, e-books, videos, and any information you get from a brand— whether entertaining or educational— can be called content and it’s designed to make you aware of the brand and keep you engaged.

Some forms of content remind you that the brand is there on the market. Other forms of content motivate you to make an on-the-spot purchase.

So what is content marketing and why is it important in 2022?

What is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is a marketing strategy that involves the use of articles, videos, and other forms of content to attract, engage, and convert leads into customers, and retain them.

This approach helps the brand do the following:

Promote brand awareness and top-of-mind awareness

Establish credibility in the market

Encourage purchases to drive sales

Motivate leads to make their first purchases

Businesses often use search engine optimization (SEO), social media, and email marketing to forward their content to their target audience.

Talk to us to know more about content marketing and what tools to use here.

Why Is It Important?

The following are reasons why content marketing is an important strategy that businesses should use in 2022:

Content marketing works. According to 42% of B2B marketers, content marketing works and they’re effective in producing results.

They bring in necessary traffic. According to content marketing leaders, they experienced a 7.8x higher year-over-year growth in unique site traffic when content marketing is done right.

They help you get more leads. Businesses with blogs report getting 67% more leads than other companies.

Content determines buyers’ next steps. According to a report, 47% of buyers view three to five pieces of content first before engaging with a brand’s sales rep.

Content helps build loyalty, nurture audiences, and drive sales. According to a report, 78% of successful organizations use content marketing to build loyalty, nurture leads and audiences (64%), and generate sales and revenue (57%).

Content marketing can help you establish and nurture your relationships with your prospective and existing customers. When the recipient of your content thinks of your company as credible, trustworthy, and responsive to their needs and interests, they’re more likely to choose you among your competitors when it’s time to buy.

How Content Marketing Works

Every buyer has a different set of needs and expectations at every stage of the buying process. Knowing the right content to send helps you nudge them to move forward to the next stages.

For example, a buyer at an awareness stage may need to know more about how your brand’s products and services can address their pain points, challenges, and questions. A buyer at a consideration stage may need to know more about the specific features or functions of your products and services and how they differ from what’s available on the market. A buyer at the closing stage may need to know how choosing you can benefit them in the long run.

Sending them the right content at the right time is crucial in closing these deals. Some tools are built and designed to help businesses automate this process.

Here’s an example of how you can engage your leads and customers through email with ease:

How to Get Started

To make content marketing easier, here are things to take note of:

Know your audience. The first step to making a content marketing strategy is to know who you want to reach and how to reach and engage them effectively. This requires you to determine their needs, preferences, and interests, among others, so you’d know what type of content to send them.

Get a team. Hire professional writers and editors to make your content for you. Remember, a small error in content, typography, or grammar can make you lose your credibility and discourage prospective customers.

Determine your distribution strategy. Know where your target audience is hanging around, when they’ll be most active, where they’re more likely to click on your content, and what type of content works best for them.

Use tools. To make the entire content marketing process easier, use tools and technologies designed for it. Some can help you distribute your content automatically with just a few clicks.

Automate your content marketing now

Want to know more about content marketing and how you can automate it? Talk to us and click here to get started.

To achieve business goals, marketers need to develop a content marketing strategy that is designed for their organization’s needs, as well as their audiences’. Read on to find out how to start making yours.

Many businesses plan to write blogs, post on social media, and send bulk emails to their target audience. But many also don’t know where to begin.

It’s understandable. According to a report, 74% of companies observed that content marketing increased their lead generation results. Those with a content strategy also achieved 27.1% higher win rates and 18.1% higher quota attainment.

That’s why 90% of marketers continue investing in the channels they focus on using a content marketing plan.

In this post, we’ll talk about what content strategy is, why it’s important, and how you can develop your own content strategy that is designed for your unique business needs and your target audience. Let’s get started.

What is a Content Marketing Strategy?

A content marketing strategy is a plan of action or policy that uses content (blogs, articles, videos, among others) designed to help organizations achieve their business goals.

Most business organizations use the content for the following:

• To increase brand awareness in the market
• To attract and generate more leads
• To engage leads, nurture them, and convert them into customers
• To remind customers of the brand and make a repeat purchase
• To retain customers and reduce customer churn

A successful content marketing strategy will help businesses achieve their targets and goals, like those mentioned above.

Why is it important?

A content marketing strategy is important because it ensures that the content that you’re sending out is doing work.

Remember, it’s not free to produce content. It requires time, energy, and company resources to write articles or publish videos. That’s why a strategy is important to make sure that they work.

It’s also important to note that your competition is sending out content too. Your strategy should take this into account because the first content the customer receives may lead that customer to ignore all other options and make their first purchase.

7 Essential Parts of a Content Marketing Strategy

What should your content marketing strategy be made of? Here are seven essential elements to take note of:

1.   Your target audience

The most important element of your content marketing strategy is understanding your target audience. Who are they? How do they behave? Getting the right idea about your target customers lets you decide what to do in the next steps so you can get your message across effectively.

2.   Their needs and preference

Of course, each customer has a need that they have to address. Understanding each customer’s needs and preferences lets you provide an offer that is relevant and responsive to their unique situation.

3.   Your competitive edge

You need to know how to market your unique selling proposition (USP). What makes you different from the rest? Why should the customer choose you among the competition?

Knowing your competitive edge allows you to drive your message home— telling the customer to ignore all other options and just focus on your brand.

4.   Your content format

Not all customers respond positively to blogs and articles, some prefer the video format. Choosing the right content format for the right customer is critical to getting them to consume your content.

5.   The channels to focus on

This is extremely important especially when you market on social media. Understanding which platforms your target customers is likely to use lets you optimize your content performance, especially when you choose to run paid ads.

6.   Your team

The success of your content marketing strategy depends on the team executing it. Choosing the right people to implement tasks and run workflows is an important part of the strategy.

7.   The evaluation

Last but not least, evaluating your performance lets you spot what needs to be corrected in your strategy and what needs to be retained. Use the right tools and metrics. Learn from industry peers and be ready to adapt.

5 Steps to Develop a Content Strategy

Now that you know what elements to focus on when developing your content strategy, it’s time to make one! Let’s dive in.

1.   Set a goal

Goals are what would determine what your plan is going to look like and how it’s going to be implemented.

There are many goals to choose from. When planning their content marketing strategy, many businesses aim to:

• Generate more leads
• Establish brand awareness
• Drive sales
• Retain more customers

2.   Know more about your customers

Clearly defining your content’s target audience also allows you to be more specific about your content marketing strategy.

It lets you produce more relevant and valuable content that they’ll want to consume and which will, later on, push them to become customers.

Customer profiling helps you know more about your customers:

3.   Choose your tools

It’s going to be hard to run a content marketing strategy, especially if it’s your first time. Choosing the right tool makes the job easy and also helps you become more efficient in your tasks.

Tools like Saphyte’s Drip Marketing lets you send emails automatically on schedule to your target customers.

4.   Determine your content

There are several content formats to choose from and your content will largely depend on your target audience. Among them are:

• Blogs.
• Videos
• Podcasts
• Infographics
• Emails
• Case Studies
• Ebooks
• Lead magnets

5.   Explore and experiment

The success of many content marketing strategies today can be attributed to their willingness to explore and experiment. Evaluate what’s working and what isn’t. Try something new and see how far it goes. The sky’s the limit.

Want to know more about content marketing tools?

See how Saphyte’s tools can reinvent the way you engage with your leads and customers. Talk to us and get started here.

Relationship marketing plays a crucial role in increasing customer lifetime value, the amount of value a customer contributes to your business from their first purchase towards their last. Read on to find out the things you should know about relationship marketing and why you should consider this approach.

Focusing on building valuable and lasting relationships with customers improves retention. And customer retention is becoming more important these days, especially when businesses aspire to grow.

Multiple studies found that improving customer retention by at least 5% helps in increasing revenue by 25% to 95%. It’s also more cost-effective. Engaging existing customers for retention has been shown to be at least 6-7x cheaper than acquiring new ones.

What do these numbers mean? All of these mean that in order for companies to increase their sales, cut their expenses, and grow their profits, they should find ways to build customer loyalty and reduce customer churn. And one proven way to do this is through relationship marketing.

What is Relationship Marketing

Relationship marketing is the process of building long-term personal, individualized connections with customers. It focuses on providing value and relevance through content, product, and services for a continuing, lasting relationship.

Companies that implement relationship marketing seek to get to know a customer better to improve their experiences with the company. They do not stop after a deal is closed.

In fact, they continue to reach out to the said customer by sending relevant content, personalized offers, and discounts to encourage repeat purchases and consequently increase the chances of customer retention.

The way relationship marketing works is often illustrated with customers going through a lifecycle process. They start by discovering the brand and end up becoming advocates of that brand.

Learn more about relationship marketing here: ​​What is Relationship Marketing and Why is it Important?[1] 

Examples of Relationship Marketing

The following are examples of how relationship marketing works:

1.   IKEA

IKEA is one of the few companies that focus on relationship marketing as a primary means of growth. It is considered the world’s largest home furnishing retailer and has more than 400 stores worldwide.

The company is famous for using demographic, psychographic & geographic segmentation to provide personalized experiences to customers and offering value at every stage of the buyer’s journey. It gives importance to customer retention, establishing loyalty, and building long-term relationships with its customers.

To “deliver a clear, consistent, and compelling message about the organization and its product,” IKEA uses a combination of experimental marketing, customer engagement and content marketing, and digital marketing and social media engagement, among others.

2.   Starbucks

Starbucks didn’t just rise to the top because of good coffee. The company has been known to provide excellent customer experiences that make it easy for them to be the topic of conversation.

Starbucks starts with providing customers with comfort and peace at their stores— a different feeling that customers don’t commonly get elsewhere. A personalized product option is then offered to every customer— whether they want 2 pumps of syrup, soy milk to replace dairy milk, a scoop of java chips, or anything else added to their drink.

Starbucks communicates with its customers via text, email, and direct mail. There, they provide content to customers and also open accessibility for purchase. Starbucks also allows customers to turn their mobile phones into electronic rewards cards to redeem free drinks, a birthday gift, or a free sample menu item.

3.   Amazon

Amazon’s success story rests primarily on its ability to provide a customer-centric experience to its over 300 million customers.

The company built its own Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software to collect customer data, such as location, searched items, and previous purchases, to instantly modify and personalize users’ on-site experience.

Amazon uses email to connect with customers and keep them purchasing. They also have the ​​Prime customer loyalty program where customers get free and fast shipping, free cloud storage, and free streaming services, among others, by paying extra for membership.

6 Things You Should Know About Relationship Marketing

When talking about relationship marketing, here are six things that you should know about:

1.   Personalization is key

Personalization is the process of crafting an experience or message to match a recipient’s needs, interests, and other factors, based on the data the company has gathered.

For example, if the customer has searched for hair products in the past few minutes, it’s likely that the customer needs a hair product or is interested in buying one. Having this data allows companies to offer relevant product recommendations which increase the chances of the said customer making a purchase.

Personalization is key to a relationship marketing’s success. Companies need to be able to offer relevant and valuable information for customers to continue to interact with them. When a brand’s product and services do not match the customer’s needs, interests, or preferences, it’s likely for a churn to occur.

2.   Repeat customers are more likely to spend more

A study found that repeat customers spend three times more per transaction compared to non-repeat customers. They’re also easier to sell to, which means that in relationship marketing, retaining customers is more important than anything else.

When repeat customers become advocates of your brand, they’re not just there to make repeat purchases. They’re also there to influence others to make a purchase, spreading good word-of-mouth marketing to promote your brand and increase your sales revenue.

3.   Technology is an advantage

Improving customer relationships through personalization would be impossible without technology. Technologies like CRM software allow companies to seamlessly collect and sort customer data for instant use.

CRMs help inform sales and marketing teams what a customer needs, what they’re likely to purchase, and what to do to encourage them to make a purchase. With CRM tools and features, companies can also automate tasks involving personalization such as email marketing, catalog offering, and customer profiling, among others.

4.   Everybody loves incentives

To keep customers engaged, companies need to keep sending content that helps customers maximize the use of their purchased products or encourage them to browse for other products for enhanced use and experience.

But nothing engages customers more than incentives. Incentives can take the form of discounts and freebies.

Many companies incentivize their customers through a loyalty program, where customers gain points with every purchase. These points can be exchanged for free items and products.

Each purchase allows the company to gain more details about the customer— their needs, preferences, and other information that can be used to provide a more personalized experience to the said customer.

5.   Customer feedback and insights are game-changers

Building a good relationship is a two-way street. Companies guestimating what customers need wouldn’t suffice. Customers also have to contribute and inform companies what they think, feel, and experience when using their products and services.

To encourage customers to provide real feedback, companies have to find ways to reward honesty, make providing feedback accessible and convenient, and be transparent about how the feedback would benefit the customer.

6.   Provide a multi-channel experience for every type of customer

For companies to truly capture every type of customer’s interest, they need to be sensitive about their marketing channels— how the customers found out about them and how these customers interact with them.

This way, the company can map the whole experience of the customer and look for ways to improve this experience. A different journey may then be provided for a customer that used online marketing channels compared to traditional marketing channels.

Because customers nowadays use more than one marketing channel, companies have to provide a consistent multi-channel experience (omnichannel marketing) to all customers.

Customers expect a consistent, quality experience throughout and that’s why the brand’s identity and values should be unified and consistent as well across these channels.

Upgrade Your Relationship Marketing

Improve the way you build relationships with customers. Get in touch with Saphyte’s support team now to know more about relationship marketing and the tools you can use to connect with customers.