relationship marketing

These hacks can help double your email response rates in 2021. Read on to find out how to send better emails this year and get the results you want.

Email marketing is an important strategy that businesses must use even this year. No, it’s not dead yet. In fact, the number of email users continues to rise (a recent estimate is at 3.9 billion daily email users).

Moreover, with 73% of millennials (a generation that comprises many management positions today) preferring business communications via email, the argument as to why email marketing remains crucial in business success still holds water.

On a personal note, we’ve had success in winning clients through email. And based on our studies (and experimentation), we’ll share with you nine tips that you can use to send better emails this year.

1. Have a plan and a strategy

Having a plan and a strategy allows your team to follow a process, thereby minimizing errors and ensuring good performance in the end.

However, this doesn’t mean you should always stick to the plan. Take time to experiment if possible and identify points for improvement so your emails can only get better in time.

2. Review how your emails appear on email clients and on mobile

There are email testing platforms like Litmus that allow you to check how your emails will appear on different email clients, in HTML and text, and on mobile.

This will ensure that your emails look perfect to every recipient and no distracting glitch or error appears— which may prompt your recipients to delete your email or even unsubscribe from your list.

3. Follow-up

Don’t be afraid to resend your email to recipients who haven’t opened them yet or send follow-up emails to those who haven’t clicked them yet. Some people may not have noticed your email the first time.

4. Keep your subject lines short

The wording in your subject line matters. In fact, a study found 30 character-subject lines have a click-through rate (CTR) of 6.4% compared to 90 character-subject lines of 5.4%.

Keeping your subject lines short also piques recipients’ interests and curiosity. After all, the point of a subject line is to get recipients to open your email to “tell me more.”

5. Personalize your emails with recipients’ first names

Emails that were personalized with recipients’ first names tend to perform better. According to a study, the CTR performance of emails with the recipient’s first name is at 6.9% compared to the 5.7% of non-personalized emails.

6. Get someone to proofread your emails

It’s important to get a third-party perspective to check your campaigns with a new pair of eyes. It helps remove all the biases and assumptions involved during the campaign, allowing you to have someone with a perspective as fresh as that of a customer.

7. Conduct A/B tests

An A/B test is a type of experiment that involves two different versions of content (such as a landing page, email, or call-to-action) to two similarly sized audiences to assess which content performs better.

Conducting A/B tests not only allows you to determine which type of content performs better. It also lets you have a grasp of how your target audience perceives your emails.

8. Check your metrics

Don’t just stick to open and click rates. There are also more important key performance indicators (KPIs) to take note of such as:

Unsubscribe rates

Conversion rates

Bounce rates

Return on investment

These metrics can give you an overview of your email marketing performance, which lets you know which part of your email strategy to improve.

9. Use a CRM software to measure performance

A CRM software allows you to keep a record of your leads and perform marketing activities to these leads— all in one, single platform. 

This means that all the tools you need are available in the software so you won’t have to switch platforms whenever you’ll need a tool to perform certain tasks.

Some CRM softwares have features that allow you to track and measure your email marketing performance at a glance (using the CRM dashboard). 

This makes it easy for sales and marketing teams to monitor how well they’re doing and make quick decisions based on the data they’ve gathered using the CRM.

Learn more about CRM for email marketing

Need to know more about CRMs and what they can do to improve your email marketing performance? Click here to get started.

2020 proved to businesses that they can adapt to drastic changes, even at a rapid pace, with the help of digital tools and technology. This pace carried on two years later. While some trends and predictions from 2020 were proven correct, others didn’t come to fruition due to urgent and strategic needs that needed to be met as the pandemic persisted. 

At present, global spending on digital transformation and initiatives is still rising. Statista predicts a jump to an annual 20% jump, making it $1.8 trillion next year. 

Now that 2022 is on full-combust mode, it’s going to be hard not to be able to keep up. So what will the headlines entail this year? What is the most engaging digital business driving trends to watch in 2022? Only time will be able to tell. 

But, for now, here are some of the most interesting digital trends in 2022 that might or might not surprise you. 

Data Fabric Weaves its Way to our Doors

Data fabric architecture is the future of data management and integration. This design concept uses both human and machine capabilities to access data in place or aid in data consolidation in which is most appropriate. 

Data fabric constantly determines and connects data from different applications to find unique, business-relevant relationships in-between available data points. The data points, in return, produce insight that supports “re-engineered decision-making.” Thus providing more value for businesses through immediate data access and comprehension than the traditional data management practices.

This concept provides scalable, flexible, and more tight integration of data sources across platforms and business users. If implemented vigorously, data will now be available everywhere it’s needed, regardless of the location of the data.

Data fabric uses analytics to learn and actively recommend where data should be used and changed, thus reducing up to 70% of data management efforts.

Agile and Flexible Solutions, No longer a Fad

This trend is not new, but agile and flexible solutions will be more prevalent and necessary this year. Agile methodologies have an excellent reputation and are popular among software developers, and IT teams alike. These methodologies began to make strides when COVID forced businesses and companies to acknowledge the importance of responding quickly to extreme changing conditions.

This trend will be more prevalent amongst retail and eCommerce businesses. With a vulnerable industry, investing in flexible, scalable, and agile IT solutions can help them adapt to changing market conditions. 

Customer and Employee Experience Centric Digital Transformation Projects

The pandemic has changed the way we interact with businesses and people. And, honestly, there’s no point in returning things the way there were in 2019. COVID-19 highlighted our need to focus both on customer experience and employee experience. 

Everything has turned virtual, from ordering food, grocery shopping and doctor visits. Customers and their experiences now shifted to digital channels. Companies that deliver better customer experience brought up to 5.7 times more revenue than competing brands with bad customer experiences. 

However, emerging trends now focus on investing in customer experience initiatives. The pandemic has also changed how businesses engage with their workforce. With the work-from-home setup, some companies find it hard to find ways to make employees feel engaged with their work. 

Research has shown that one-third of employees who work from home report feeling engaged in their job. This could pose a problem for businesses as low engagement can significantly impact output and performance. With this trend, companies are expected to increase and intensify investing in adopting modern CRM systems with customer experience, employee onboarding, and data management capabilities.

The Era of Privacy Rules

Tech companies will be in a blaring spotlight. Big tech companies will be regulated, and their privacy rules revisited most significantly. We are all aware that data creates the best experiences. But, somehow, there has been neglect on how data is collected and how often it is gathered. There’s no actual law or policy on how information is monitored from last year – until now. 

With the massive amount of data we voluntarily give to apps, e-commerce, and other social media sites, we have “unconsciously” created a world where tech companies can make the best user experiences. The best-of-breed user experiences will be balanced with more solid and thoughtful data management practices this year. 

This year, organizations that rely on data collection through apps and other third-party apps or organizations will need to expand their data collection policies. This will eventually lead businesses to find a new way to source data and decide on strategies to collect and manage data openly and honestly without hurting or compromising customer experience. It sounds like a bit of a pickle, which won’t be a manageable undertaking. Still, spending and investing time in building an excellent data privacy policy will be critical to your business’ success. 

Hybrid + Multi: Are you Paying Attention?

Cloud is old-school. But a new type of cloud is taking center stage as we speak (we mean, write). Welcome to the era of the hybrid+multi cloud!

2022 will be an exciting year as vendors compete for the perfect public and private clouds mix. As enterprise IT structures become more omnipresent, hybrid leadership will remain a focal point for legacy IT and cloud providers alike. The rise of open-source and popular modalities for hybrid IT architecture will be more prevalent this year.

Experts believe that businesses will be adapting this setup as any workload to any destination remains a requirement for sustaining the complex needs of a business. This trend will be advantageous for companies that use more than one public cloud to solve their technology and business integration challenges. Companies that invest in this space can simplify the process of orchestrating workloads and make their data more accessible and secure, eventually future-proofing their business core.

Wrapping Up

2022 is just getting started. There has been so much focus on data, privacy, AI, and applications, that it has become hard to keep up with what is happening around us. However, future-proofing and streamlining your business is always a priority. Regardless of these upcoming trends, 2022 will be a great and exciting year for tech and business advancement. Let’s just buckle up and see how things play out. 

Digital marketing has become an opportunity for many entrepreneurs and businesses to gain a competitive edge in the market. 2022 will be no different, as technological advancements and changing social media trends, and ever-increasing customer demands. As reality looms over, businesses have no other option but to evolve their services to keep up with the times. 

2022: Keeping up with the Customers

The year 2022 will be the dawn of the new age of digital marketing. There will be no actual numbers on how the year will look for businesses. But, Deloitte experts believe that global digital marketing will revolve around customer-centricity. The year 2022 entails marketers keeping up with the customers. 

So, in what ways will digital marketing change businesses in 2022? As the marketing game shifts into customer mode, Saphyte has identified some trends that might happen throughout 2022. We hope you have your papers and pens with you to jot down some of the most interesting digital marketing trends to help your business build dynamic customer experiences. 

Businesses Developing Human-first Data Experience

It’s time to bid goodbye, for real, to generic customer data deployment. Also, there’s a fine line between being helpful and creepy stalker-ish in treating customer data. In fact, 53% of consumers find active device listening super creepy. 

So marketers will be exploring how to use customer information and which strategies can build or erode trust. Businesses must cultivate transparency, value, and data security – apart from the promises they have to keep. Although using consumer data transparently and consistently keeping up with the customers’ needs in mind can lead to better decisions and more valuable brand relationships overall—absent the stalker-ish factor. 

Building customer trust is hard. Navigating through the consumer privacy landscape is also an increasingly complex endeavor. 2022 will change the way businesses treat customer data, and eventually, how they’ll treat the customer. 

However, developing a human-first digital experience for your business will give your business a better marketing edge. So, how will businesses achieve this?

Start with the relationship. Don’t lead tracking methods before the consumer trusts you. 

Empower customers. Giving them options puts customers in the driver’s seat to tailor their own data experiences. 

Involve privacy and security terms and teams on day one. 

Don’t let them read long terms and conditions. Nobody finds that fun. Just put it in bullet form, plain and simple language. 

Businesses Shifting to Authentically Inclusive Marketing

Customers are now more than self-aware. Modern customers are also socially aware, and they shop more with businesses that commit to addressing social inequalities. For businesses to win future customers, they have to be diverse, equal, and inclusive. 

Deloitte data says that high-growth brands (annual revenue growth of 10% or more) have more frequently established key performance metrics for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) objectives than lower-growth competitors. As a result, 57% of consumers are more loyal to brands that commit to addressing social inequities in their actions. 

Shifting to authentically inclusive marketing can also bring growth to your business and increase consumer loyalty. So how can businesses achieve this? 

Ensure teams and suppliers match your market.

Bring diverse voices back to the organization.

Make your commitments measurable. 

Businesses Taking Personalization to a Hybrid Level

The world shifted from physical to digital at the snap of a finger. Surprisingly, a lot of businesses excelled in delivering excellent customer experiences. Brands seemed to be more adept at providing services even in a digital space. However, the next challenge is integrating both physical and digital experiences – a hybrid, you might say. 

The challenge is not in the implementation but in exceeding people’s expectations. Customers will expect no less from hybrid experiences, and the omni-communication channels add to the complexity of this challenge. So how can your business cope up? 

When in doubt, always go back to your customer data. By putting the human at the forefront, involving other individuals, and innovating constantly, brands can make hybrid experiences more agile and flexible. 

Enable choices through greater personalization. Meeting your customer’s expectations in their preferred channel of communication helps businesses personalize their experience. Most importantly, tailoring channels to customers also allows your brand to offer more inclusive experiences. When your customers have empowered choices, you also gain customer loyalty—a total win-win for you and your business. 

Let the “human” take the lead. While systems and infrastructures play a vital role in delivering hybrid experiences, interaction still starts with humans. Tailoring experiences to meet consumer needs and empowering them with choices – brands are on the right track in elevating digital marketing experience. 

Businesses will Supercharge Customer Service with AI

Artificial intelligence is no longer the future. It is now the present. For brands, helping customers make purchase decisions is a top priority. However, it’s not a simple theory. 

A surge in digital channels and hybrid digital and physical journeys along with heightened customer expectations have complicated brands` desire to create and deliver a dynamic experience that equips customers with the correct information and incentives—when they need it most. Experts from Deloitte believe that for businesses to achieve an actual end-to-end customer experience, companies must optimize artificial intelligence within the customer experience to achieve harmony 

between human tasks and machine capabilities.

So, how can your business keep up with this? There’s no actual recipe for tapping into the power of artificial intelligence, but here are some starter steps.

Design a dynamic customer experience.

Let humans and machines meet halfway. 

Understand the experience strategy.

Always have a clear picture of your customers. 

Design with human-centered factors at the forefront.

Employ a customer data platform, like CRM software.

Conclusion

Digital marketing will change the way businesses function over the next decade. For business leaders, marketers, and sales leaders, this is an exciting opportunity to take in. If your business is still trying to adjust and keep up, don’t worry, you still have time to re-adjust your goals for next year and make things possible for your business. 

Digital marketing may have changed the way businesses run their operations, but it’ll never change brands’ perceptions and vision. So, what are you changing this 2022?

Product catalogues are powerful tools to showcase business products and services at one glance. Find out how they can help convert leads into loyal customers.

Catalogs used to be popular in print. Companies have been using them to display their product and service information, which helps customers decide quickly which product or service to go for.

Today, product catalogs are making a comeback. Companies that have been using them online— via email, for example— have observed a 28% increase in sales and a 77% lift in inquiries. 

How do you advertise using product catalogues? What are the best practices that you should keep in mind when using product catalogues? Read more to find out.

What are Product Catalogues?

Product catalogues are tools that businesses use to showcase all important information about their products and services. This helps buyers make a purchase decision, therefore shortening the sales cycle. Details in the catalogue may include product descriptions, features, and price, among others.  

Today, product catalogues are more commonly used online. They can be downloaded on companies’ websites or sent via email. (Read more: Business Growth Combo: Email Marketing and Sales Pipelines)

They may also be automated— where you can automatically populate them in your future quotes and invoices and send them to target recipients. Watch the video below to find out how:

How to Advertise Using Online Product Catalogues

Below are five best practices to be mindful of when using product catalogues online:

1. Choose your type of ad

The first thing to be mindful of is choosing the type of ad when promoting your products and services online (e.g. social media). Below are the common options:

Dynamic ads: This type of ad shows relevant items from your catalog to specific users. The banners adapt automatically to users based on their interests, intent, or actions. 

Collection ads: This is a type of ad that shows four items from your catalog in an immersive way. Here, users can click on items to learn more or browse similar items. 

Carousel ads: This ad format shows multiple images or videos that can be scrolled through. Each image or video can have its own headline, description, link, and call to action.

Ads with product tags: Ads with product tags can be made for users to click on. After clicking, they are directed to a product details page to learn more about the product and buy it. 

Products from Facebook Page shops or catalogs in photos and videos can be tagged.

Collaborative ads: A type of ad where brands can run direct sales campaigns by selling products through retailers and merchants. This allows brands to run performance marketing campaigns for their products while directing traffic to a retailer partner’s website or other online channels.

2. “More” is more

Information about your products must be complete, accurate, and detailed. Here, “more” is more. Every important detail matters to the buyer. Relevant images and videos can make purchase decisions easier and faster.

Includes technical attributes, images, videos, availability, units of measurement, product usage combinations, and related/alternative products, if possible.

3. Centralize your product catalogue using a tool

Use a tool like a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software if possible to centralize your product catalogue.

Make use of functions like automation where the catalogues are populated in quotes and invoices for the benefit of target recipients. Tools make it easy for businesses to manage their catalogs and send them to specific customers to maximize sales opportunities.

4. Upsell and cross-sell

Catalogs can be used to upsell and cross-sell. Suggest alternative products to encourage buyers to purchase products with better quality (at a higher price). This gives buyers options to weigh when buying— which increases the likelihood of the purchase happening.

5. Personalize your catalogues

Your catalogue’s content must be tailored to cater to each customer’s needs and interest. It must differ per customer or per ordering situation. 

For example, you can have two different catalogues with different pricing and descriptions, which are adjusted specifically for two different customers— one from the pharmaceutical industry and another from the automotive industry. (Read more: 16 Stats for Automotive Companies in 2021)

Catalog personalization is important as it allows you to not only maximize sales opportunities but also to ensure customer satisfaction at the end of the day.

Conclusion

Want to know more about product catalogs and how they can help your business? Book a demo now. Get started here.

Over the years, business owners thought that the marketing and sales departments were better off coexisting. However, these two departments are the most unlikely duo that is meant to be together. Believe it or not, sales and marketing work a lot better when they work closely instead of separately. Your business will greatly benefit when both departments are aligned and working on the same page. 

As a rule, the sales and marketing departments have separate functions within a business, and when they work together, they don’t always get along. More often than not, each department often underestimates the contributions of the other. Thus, ending up hurting corporate performance. 

There are two sources of friction between your sales and marketing departments. One is economical, and the other is cultural.

The economic friction is caused by the need to distribute the total budget given by senior management to support their sales and marketing teams. Promotion costs are also sources of conflict, and the sales teams often view the enormous sums spent on promotion as a waste of money. More often than not, sales teams think that the money spent on marketing be spent on increasing the quantity and quality of the sales force.

The cultural conflict between sales and marketing teams is even more rooted than the economic conflict. This is because the two departments’ functions bring different people who spend their time in very different ways. Marketing people are highly analytical, data-oriented, and project focused while salespeople are skilled relationship builders who spend most of their time talking to existing and potential customers.

The Benefits of Both Teams Working Together

The processes of both teams should not only coexist, but they need to work as if they’re one. That is why it is imperative to connect the sales and marketing processes of your company. Not only will your business greatly benefit when both teams are aligned and working on the same page, but you can also avoid more significant conflict inside your business. Here are more of those benefits.

Better Qualified Leads

Your marketing and sales teams can stop wasting their time and energy arguing about unqualified leads and blaming each other. When both teams are aligned, are in regular communication, and have a proper lead scoring in place, information can freely flow from department to department. Your teams can now determine what is and isn’t working to adjust strategies based on what has been observed based on data. 

Better Engagement and Stronger Relationships

The more both teams communicate clearly, the stronger their work and personal relationships will become. Hence, they’ll eventually learn to trust each other. This will make campaigns more impactful, your leads can be handled better, and potential buyers are more impressed. This shows that marketing and sales work better together rather than individually.

Accurate Buyer Personas

Both teams are responsible for attracting, nurturing, delighting, and closing deals; thus, both teams need to be on the same page for added success. Doing otherwise, both teams can find that the buyer personas don’t match up to the audience they’re targeting. By understanding your customers better and having accurate data on buyer personas, both teams can share ownership and help deliver a better and smoother buying experience.

Better and Clearer Feedback

Unifying your sales and marketing team means establishing a solid relationship, which eventually leads to open communication lines, creating a better opportunity to refine strategies down the line effectively. It’ll be easier to make adjustments, give and receive feedback, and they’ll focus on their shared goals. So things around the office won’t be too awkward anymore. 

Stay Ahead of the Competition

Your marketing team can keep your sales team informed of their tactics and the competition’s positioning by working together. In return, when your salespeople are speaking with prospects, your sales team will adequately address why your products or services are far superior to the competition.

Better Marketing Materials

Your sales team will be bombarded with the same questions from prospects through to customers. When your sales team communicates this to your marketing team, it creates valuable content to educate the target audience. When salespeople have better marketing materials, it’ll be easier for them to create more traction 

The Tool to Get Things Done

You have a long journey ahead of you when you decide to align your sales and marketing teams’ processes. Aligning your sales and marketing is the first step toward implementing sales enablement. So, what are the tools to get things done around your business? Here are some of them. 

Get sales involved in campaign planning.

Establish a straightforward lead scoring.

Set mutually agreed goals. 

Build a sense of connection between both teams.

Saphyte CRM Systems.

Implementing clear and straightforward tactics, tools, and processes can enable your marketing and sales teams to succeed. In return, your business will grow quicker, and your sales team will be more efficient at closing deals and enjoy a 36 percent increase in higher customer retention rates.

Saphyte: The Perfect Partner that Connects your Teams

Saphyte is a UAE homegrown business operating out of Dubai. Saphyte is a digital ecosystem designed for businesses of all sizes, helping them acquire, convert, and retain more customers at the end of the day. 

Users can experience increased visibility amongst their teams and better down tasks with their Team and Workspace tools. With Saphyte, businesses can promote team building while ensuring that team tasks are done and projects move forward.

Users can onboard, engage, and manage their leads on their journey to becoming customers. Saphyte’s Sales Management tools are built and designed to make sales processes faster, easier, and more convenient.

Users can redefine and create a personalized customer experience and gain a better understanding of their marketing campaigns. Saphyte’s Marketing tools allow you to have more straightforward and more engaging conversations with your leads and clients— all in just a few clicks.

Users can also build a strong customer feedback loop with Saphyte’s Support tools and keep themselves updated with the rapidly changing trends that may affect their customers’ purchasing decisions. With Saphyte, rest assured that your customers are constantly engaged.

Currently, Saphyte is helping hundreds of local companies in and out of Dubai to drive digital transformation through local support, zero implementation fees, competitive subscription models, and an advanced SaaS CRM ecosystem technology. 

Be a part of the main evolution and connect your sales and marketing processes with Saphyte today. How to make it work? Contact us, and we’ll show you how to turn things around.

Drip marketing is one of the most used strategies these days to gain leads fast and convert them into customers. Check out how these companies use it to grow.

If ever you’re wondering how companies grow these days, especially when they mainly deal with customers online, the answer to that is— drip marketing!

What is Drip Marketing?

Drip marketing (also known as drip email marketing or drip campaigns) is a series of email activities employed by companies to attract leads and guide them in their journey into becoming loyal customers. 

It can start simply as leads visiting a company’s website, signing up a form, and getting emails that spark interest— designed to fit the target reader’s needs and preferences— until the reader takes the desired action.

Does Drip Marketing Work?

According to statistics, it does. In fact:

Email itself reportedly generates $42 for every $1 spent. That’s a 4,200% ROI.

Drip marketing has been observed to generate 50% more sales-ready leads than traditional email.

A 20% sales increase has also been observed after companies used drip campaigns to nurture leads.

So, yes. In general, drip marketing does work. And companies that employ this strategy tend to perform better than those that don’t.

How to Start Using Drip Marketing

The easiest way to employ a drip marketing strategy is by using an email automation platform. This helps “automate” things, which means that the software is designed to perform certain tasks that are manual, repetitive, and monotonous, so you won’t have to.

Email automation platforms collect data, generate analytics, and are designed to let you focus on more important tasks when nurturing leads. They let you organize your leads, understand their journey at a glance, and send personalize emails in a few clicks.

Saphyte has helped companies generate growth with drip marketing. Find out how you can get started here.

5 Examples of Companies that Excelled in Drip Marketing

Here’s a list of companies that successfully used drip campaigns to win customers:

1. Netflix

One of the challenges of Netflix is to sustain the interest of customers and encourage them to remain subscribed to their services. To reduce its customer churn rate, Netflix employed drip marketing to remind its (former) customers what they’re missing out on.

This incentivizes former customers to resubscribe. After this, a series of emails that highlight the benefits of using Netflix are then sent to former customers to win them back (e.g. uninterrupted streaming, watching movies on any device, personalized viewing, etc.).

2. Trello

Trello used drip marketing to aggressively promote its product and its benefits to leads with project management needs. The “Twelve Days to Trello” campaign is inline with the holiday season, at which time it was launched. 

A timely message can generate interest, which, when coupled with personalized content that addresses the target reader’s needs and preferences, can effectively convert readers into customers.

3. Zendesk

Drip marketing is one of the easiest strategies to use to guide customers what to do next. This is to keep them interested in your product, explore its benefits more, until they establish reliance on your product. 

Zendesk perfectly understood this and used a simple drip campaign to demonstrate to their users what they can do next.

This also helps reduce customer churn— which can mainly be caused by customers losing interest in your product.

4. Uber

Uber uses drip campaigns to encourage customers to use their product again after a time of inactivity. Allowing customers to lock-in flat rates can stimulate the interest of those customers who may have lost interest in the product and its benefits.

5. 23andMe

Sometimes customers get easily distracted and forget to complete their purchases. 23andMe uses drip campaigns to remind customers what’s in their carts to push through with the process. This gives customers an opportunity to rethink and make a purchase at the most suitable time.

Start Your Drip Campaign Now

All the best tools and features you need in a digital ecosystem. Find out how you can start your drip marketing campaigns now, along with other possibilities for your business, by getting started here.

The world has reached a point where everything is expedited, customer demands and expectations are at an all-time high, and employees’ mental health is a priority. Businesses scramble all over the place to find solutions to their everyday problems and the problems mentioned earlier. The pressure has become overwhelming, that business leaders are finding it hard to keep up. 

With the challenges of the 21st century, businesses cling to software solutions to meet the demands and expectations of the times. With that came the demand for Software as a Service (SaaS) products. Many companies are moving away from off-the-shelf software or pen and paper to SaaS solutions. But, even though digital integration is a typical coffee table discussion, there are still businesses that are not familiar with the term SaaS.

So, what is Software as a Service (SaaS)?

To technically put it, Software as a service (SaaS) is a software distribution model in which applications developed by cloud provider hosts make them available to end-users over the Internet. SaaS models are independent software vendors (ISV) that may contract a third-party cloud provider to host the application in this model. 

How does Software as a Service (SaaS) Work?

SaaS works through the cloud delivery model. This model works when a software provider hosts a particular application and its related data through its own servers, databases, networking, and computing resources. Or it may be an independent software vendor (ISV) that sub-contracts with a cloud provider to host the application in the provider’s data center. 

The application will then be accessible to any device with a network connection. That is why you can see SaaS applications are typically accessed via web browsers. This is beneficial for businesses that use SaaS because they are no longer tasked to set up and maintain the software. Users pay a subscription fee to gain access to the software, which is a ready-made solution.

How SaaS helps Businesses Stand Out 

Customers look for two common qualities for an outstanding and reliable business: efficiency and always on the pulse. Mere processes do not achieve efficiency and being constantly on the pulse, but they are performed with tools and software like SaaS applications. So here’s how SaaS helps businesses stand out. 

Accessibility

All thanks to SaaS’s capacity for remote accessibility, users no longer have to purchase an application off the shelf or download it on their electronic device before installing it. With SaaS applications, users can have full access to a SaaS software’s features anytime and anywhere they want to. Every individual member of the team or business can easily collaborate through the software, can fully access necessary data, and be constantly in the loop. All they need is to access the Internet, and they can get to work without the hassle.

Up-to-Date Software

Most SaaS models and providers are responsible for maintaining and servicing their software, lest they want to drive away customers. Users no longer have to worry about updating or reminding themselves to update the software to the latest version. No one has to worry about missing an update because everyone gets their updates simultaneously with SaaS models.

Affordability

SaaS subscriptions run on a pay-as-you-go payment scheme. However, users must always be on the lookout for hidden costs when starting a SaaS subscription. They could be guise as maintenance fees, installation fees, update fees, and a whole lot of fees.

Users are likely to save money with SaaS software because they never have to pay for installation fees, fix bugs, or even customer support. Users also have more options for the type of features and packages they would sign up for, according to their business’s requirements. Upgrades are simple and can be done at any time, so users can always use them later.

Employee-Focused

SaaS operates on cloud computing models, and these models offer better options at communications, training, and project management throughout a regular business. Senior management can now transparently manage projects while communicating effectively with both local and remote employees. In turn, this allows companies and employees to look further off the path when finding new talent. 

Ease-of-Use

One of the most significant benefits of SaaS is its ease of use from interface to the function of its features.

A SaaS software is designed and built to be widely adopted. Therefore, it is made to have a short learning curve, well-organized, and a well-designed interface. Precisely, the interface, features, and all other components of the software are mapped out for a novice to learn quickly, either by intuition or following clear guides and tutorials. This model makes it easier for SaaS providers to keep subscribers and easily impress them than those who sell traditional software packages. 

Marketing

SaaS has dramatically increased the use of automated marketing software. Startups and small-to-medium-sized businesses can now utilize SaaS products to help optimize their marketing efforts. SaaS products not only allow businesses to automate their marketing campaigns, but they can also plan, execute and track their progress from an accessible interface, and also store and secure data in one place. 

Finding the Right SaaS Software for you? 

As much as SaaS programs are great for businesses, it is also noteworthy to remember that not all SaaS programs are created equal, and not all SaaS software fits your business. So, the actual challenge is not integrating or the process of shifting to a digital solution; instead, it is finding the right software that fits your business’s requirements, model, and budget. 

With that, you may want to check Saphyte. 

Saphyte is a UAE homegrown business operating out of Dubai. The company is currently helping hundreds of companies drive digital transformation through local support, zero implementation fees, competitive subscription models, and an advanced SaaS CRM ecosystem technology.

Interesting enough to check out? Book a demo with us today, and our digital ecosystem experts will be right on with you. 

Data-driven marketing decisions give companies an edge. They’re more responsive to real-world needs and drive significant customer acquisition better than marketing without data.

Marketing teams throughout history have relied solely on intuition and trial and error in making decisions. Some base their next decisions on their successes and the success of other companies. 

But one company’s marketing model may not necessarily work for another. History is not necessarily bound to repeat itself. That’s why for modern marketers, data is what takes them to a higher level.

With data-driven marketing, companies are able to personalize their interactions with potential and existing customers and engage them better. It improves customer experience, which helps leads convert into customers and encourage existing ones to stay.

What you should know:

Modern marketing teams use data to know more about their customers and send them targeted content tailored to their needs and interests. This approach is known to give improved conversion rates and drive more sales.

Data-driven marketing lets you know more about your customers. It provides a more personalized approach that lets you stand out from the crowd.

It also helps you cut down costs and optimize the impact of your marketing efforts and helps you gain better control over your business.

What is data-driven marketing?

Data-driven marketing is an approach that uses data to gain insights and a better understanding of trends to make more precise marketing decisions. The approach spans from the collection of clean data to the analysis of such data to guide companies in making better decisions.

With the use of technologies and tools such as software and apps, data-driven marketing has now become a lot easier to do than before. Successful companies often attribute their success to data-driven marketing, especially in a competitive environment where one small decision can make or break them.

Four ways data-driven marketing helps you

Collecting data and interpreting this data is essential in data-driven marketing. But how will all these help you? Check out these four ways data-driven marketing can benefit your company:

1. It helps you know more about your customers

In a sea of information, what separates you from your competitors is your relevance— is the information this company giving me relevant to my needs and interests?

You can only answer this question if you have sufficient data or information about your customers. And this data can be gathered through forms or surveys that customers can fill out when visiting your website.

Check out how you can configure your website to automatically prompt visitors to fill out a form for you:

Here, by filling out a form, all the relevant information is migrated and sorted automatically into your CRM database. With the CRM’s features and functionalities, you can use this database to manage your leads and customers with ease. 

For example, you can send targeted contented (such as stats or industry reports about automotive to customers listed as working in the automotive industry).

This builds trust among your target leads and customers. It helps build your credibility which allows you to build top-of-mind awareness and stand out in the competition.

2. It helps you save marketing costs while making campaigns more effective

Marketers commonly waste their advertising budgets by spending on campaigns that don’t guarantee results. With data-driven marketing, marketers can use tools to discover and determine which portion of their advertising budget gives the best result in terms of conversion or even brand awareness.

This helps marketers tweak their marketing campaigns to provide maximum impact at minimum costs.

3 .It helps give you an edge over your competitors

As mentioned above, personalization lets you stand out from the crowd because of your relevance and credibility. But more than that, knowing more about your customers also lets you plan ahead and build the best buying journey for them.

It lets you craft a system that your target customers would respond to the most and make that journey, that experience, the best among the best. 

In essence, it lets you know how to make yourself more accessible compared to existing marketing channels and provide the best customer experience, giving you an edge over your competitors.

4. It helps you make better decisions overall

Having access to data, to numbers, to results and consequences of your business decisions lets you quickly assess what to do next. This gives you better control over your business and cushion the risks and impact of bad decisions.

It also lets you determine which among the possible options give the best results, allowing you to climb the ladder to success quicker than anyone else.

Discover more what data can do for you

Learn how to use tools and software to gain access to business data in real-time. Know more about how your software can work for you. Get started here.

Stop buying email lists! Building an email list is actually easy and you can do it for free. Here’s how.

Emailing potential and actual customers remains an effective marketing strategy to get people’s attention. It quickly lets people know what you offer and how it can benefit them. That’s why, to many companies, buying email lists seems such a convenient and easy option to get leads and customers at the end of the day.

Many companies, however, have pointed out that this doesn’t really work and can even be detrimental to the success of the company. How so? Not only are you going to pay for a list that may not even give you potential customers, but you may also violate laws (such as EU’s GDPR or General Data Protection Regulation) and even damage your brand.

So how can you build your email list organically? Check out these tips:

Tips to Build an Email List Organically

Make your website work for you

If you don’t have a company website yet, this is a sign to get one now.

Having a company website not only makes your business look more professional, it can also make it earn higher.

By using landing page builders, websites can prompt visitors to fill out a form to get updated with your company’s marketing offers.

In the forms, website visitors type in their contact information and other relevant details which will all be migrated into a CRM database. The CRM’s sales and marketing features then allow users to quickly launch a campaign (such as an email marketing campaign) to engage these visitors and turn them into customers in no time.

Use lead magnets

Lead magnets are free items or services given away in exchange for leads’ contact details. Popular examples include PDFs, free trial subscriptions, e-newsletters, and free consultations.

Around 50% of marketers that used lead magnets report higher conversion rates and they are a free and easy way to get leads to give their contact details to you.

Just make sure that the content you’re providing via the lead magnets are valuable and can make them hooked with your brand and check what else you have to offer.

Provide tools for your target audience to use

Here, instead of getting content (as explained in #2), your target audience gets to use tools to get things done.

This is typical in B2B software companies’ websites. The tools that they provide on their websites serve as a sneek peak of their products and services. A free demo which can nudge leads into buying the actual product after realizing its value.

Examples of these are invoice generators, receipt makers, interactive quizzes that let customers know their design preference, interactive infographics, and interactive calculators.

Promote your tools and content across your marketing channels

Wherever your marketing channel is— online or offline— you can engage leads and customers by encouraging them to use your tools or read your content by promoting them across all your marketing channels.

For examples, a business that sells paints can have their social media page promote a content with a copy that says “Wanna know what kind of designer you are?” and put in the link for an interactive quiz. 

After clicking the link, the potential customer can then answer the quiz and know what kind of “designer” he is. The quiz can then provide links to actual products (such as colors or types of paints used by that kind of designer) and give customers a discount if they type in their email address upon checking out.

That email address can then be used for future marketing campaigns. And it ensures that they’re informed about your business updates and marketing offers (which will encourage them to buy again and become repeat customers).

Use a CRM to keep track of your leads and customers

There’s no better way to record and sort out your leads and customers than to use a CRM. Tools like these are built to let you launch sales and marketing campaigns with ease. 

And you can also use them to do things for you automatically— such as recording customer information from websites (as explained earlier), launch email campaigns based on schedule (configured using the CRM), or even score leads (assess leads’ potential to become customers based on fulfilled conditions).

They can also generate analytics automatically in real-time which helps companies a lot in making data-driven decisions. Plus, they’re also known to give an average ROI of $8.71 for every dollar spent. Totally worth it!

Turn your website into your lead generator

Check out how you can empower your website to pull in your leads for you. Get started here.

LinkedIn is one of the fastest-growing platforms for professionals. With the right tools and techniques, you can also find leads there that are likely to convert.

LinkedIn has been used globally to connect with companies and employees. It’s one of the most trusted platforms by professionals. With a growth rate of two new members joining per second, LinkedIn claims it has around 660 million users (and over 30 million companies) in more than 200 countries. 

Over the years, the platform has evolved, featuring tools that allow recruiters to look for potential employees and marketers to look for leads. Not many companies know this— LinkedIn is responsible for the success of many companies that have tried several marketing strategies around the platform.

What you should know:

LinkedIn has around 660 million users (and over 30 million companies) in more than 200 countries, which means there’s a great chance for you to convert one of these users into a customer.

Compared to other advertising networks, it’s the best when it comes to conversion rates and cost per lead.

With the right tools and techniques, you can generate leads from the platform fast and for free.

Can LinkedIn be used for marketing?

Definitely. Marketing is an essential part of every business and numbers show that LinkedIn is the best platform for B2B marketers. According to experts, marketing via LinkedIn gives you higher conversion rates and lower cost per lead compared to other advertising networks.

But how can you start marketing on the platform?

How do I start marketing on LinkedIn?

Launching a marketing campaign(s) on LinkedIn is fairly simple. Just follow these steps to start generating leads fast (and even for free) using the platform:

Create a LinkedIn profile that best matches your brand identity

Identify your target audience and start capturing company decision makers

Start cold calling. 

Follow up leads.

Automate your lead generation processes.

Create a LinkedIn profile that best matches your brand identity

You can’t interact well with users on the platform without registering first. So you need to create a profile that best matches your brand identity. Start uploading pictures to make your profile look credible and professional.

Identify your target audience and start capturing company decision makers

Narrow down your search by using criteria that best match your target audience. Are you looking for people of a particular age or profession (ex: 26-40; real estate professionals)? Are you looking for management-level professionals? 

Narrowing down your search won’t just make it quicker for you to get leads, but also make the chances higher for you to get hot leads or leads that are likely to convert.

Start cold calling

After identifying your target audience, start gathering their details (preferably) in a database. Details such as names, contact information, company details, and company positions would be important to create an effective opening message.

Follow up leads

Gentle follow-ups always give leads a chance to be heard and engaged effectively. When the first message is ignored, reframing your message gives you a higher chance to pique their interest and earn a response. When it comes to lead generation, nothing beats persistence.

Automate your lead generation processes

All the manual tasks involved in lead generation processes can be tiring to salespeople. Using tools that allow automation not only enhances the process by making them faster, they also let salespeople focus more on leads that matter.

Example of automation on LinkedIn

Imagine getting all the relevant details of a target lead (or a thousand of them) in one click. This lets you do away with manual copy and pasting which can save you time and energy. This is the power of automation.

Upgrade your lead generation

Want to know more about how you can enhance your lead generation processes? Get started here.