Tag: Marketing

What Is a Website Redesign & How To Plan For It Effectively

Websites have become essential marketing tools for businesses and it’s mandatory to keep them up to date and fresh always. This can be justified with the help of the statement made by a Danish computer scientist, Jakob Nielsen: “A bad website is like a grumpy salesperson.”

This is where the need for website redesigning comes into the picture. Your website can never be static, but it should be constantly tweaked so that to be in sync with the changing market scenarios and specific customers’ requirements. This task is a bit challenging but can be easily executed with the help of a seasoned website design company.

Usually, entrepreneurs overhaul their entire web presence to ensure a better user experience, increased conversion, and enhanced online visibility. But the real challenge is to plan for it strategically and effectively. Let’s explore the top eight steps that you should take in order to make your web redesign project successful.

1. Determine The Right Time

First of all, you need to evaluate that when is it the right time to redesign your company’s website? Assess the overall look, feel, technology stack, content, fonts, images, videos, etc. If you find one or more than one of these elements outdated then it’s the right time for you to invest some money in revamping your site. Also, you also have to decide whether you are going for a mild redesign or a complete overhaul.

2. Research Extensively & Define Clear Goals

Before anything else, you need to create an early sitemap on the basis of SEO research and define specific goals for the website redesign. With the help of research, you can discover the areas of your website which needs improvement. Also, you can identify the pain points that your current and potential customers are facing. You should analyze the current web design and find out where it’s falling behind?

Document all your ideas and ways in which you want to improvise your web presence. You should also find out ways in which you can make the overall design of your website much more impressive and appealing.

3. Coordinate With The Head Of Design & Finalize The New Site Structure

In order to redesign your website efficiently, it’s mandatory for you to consult with the head of design. Mostly, they are occupied with making website updates that are tedious and time-consuming. But they will be the best person to advise you on how to find a better and efficient solution.

In addition, you can discuss and finalize the new site structure with the head of design. Also, you can have a comprehensive plan of what type of content are you going to incorporate in your site? How will you storyboard the entire concept? What will be the site layout? And, how a sample of the landing page will look like?

4. Gather Referrals & Involve The Major Stakeholders In The Project

Before moving forward, you have to get consent from all the stakeholders of your business. Show them the design layout that you finalized and get their feedback. Also, answer the initial questions they may have.

In addition, you should also seek referrals from the people in your network so that to find the best design agency. Research about those companies and filter the ones who built your favorite sites. Document all the potential design agencies and have an introductory meeting or a call with them.

5. Create The Project Brief

On the basis of your meetings and calls, you should create a brief of the redesign project that you can present to the agencies you finalized. The brief should be straightforward and contain a background of your company. Also, you should specify the goals of your project and target audience.

In addition, you can also add a few supporting materials such as the branding guidelines, storyboard, main marketing assets, sample landing page, etc. Moreover, enrich the brief by mentioning the websites that are developed with the vibe, look, and feel that you want in your revamped site.

6. Pick The Best Design Agency

After presenting the potential design agencies with the project brief, give them some time to come up with their ideas and designs. Collect all of them and have a discussion with the head of design.

You can select the firms that seem apt according to you by evaluating the proposals on different criteria: the portfolio, price, the content of the proposal, creativity, etc. Ultimately, choose the agency that is in sync with your vision for the redesign and also has a robust portfolio to prove their calibre.

7. Manage The Entire Project Efficiently

Once when you are done with choosing a design agency, have a discussion with them and decide the timeline and costs. Also, during the entire redesign process, you should be always willing to give answers to the questions and give reviews and feedback about design layouts. This responsiveness will only keep your project moving forward.

It is quite possible that in the redesigning process, you are also required to deliver design assets, choose high-quality imagery, plan a team photo shoot, etc. Also, you will be needed to be on your toes when it comes to transforming and incorporating these innovative ideas into the fully functional design.

8. Get It Accomplished Successfully

This is the most challenging part of the entire project – making sure that the redesign is aligned with your vision. You should get all your stakeholders involved in the progress and take their consent on delivery date and budget. But remember that it’s advisable to schedule a launching date that’s at least one month later than the date given by your design agency.

Review the design several times, be sure that it’s coming out to be what you actually expected. Then, decide a final launch date to publish the revamped website and make sure that you commit to it.

In this way, you have to plan for the redesign project very logically. Your website is the asset that has the power to evolve with your brand so make sure that it’s redesigned in the best way so that to provide the end users with a mesmerizing experience.

Why to start email marketing with SendPulse

SendPulse is one of the leading email marketing platforms which offers integrated solutions: emails, SMS, push notifications, SMTP and API. It was launched in 2015, and now is a successful startup with representatives in 8 countries. SendPulse team offers cost and time efficient service  to over 250,000 active users including large and small businesses and individual business owners that increase their sales and brand awareness through affordable tools.

It’s all about efficiency

Trust and commitment to a simple yet high-quality communication lay at the core of SendPulse resulting in impressive numbers: average email open rate is 15% while SendPulse helps to elevate it to 25% and more. It’s a customer oriented company; thus, it offers up-to-date technologies for mobile, desktop, and tablet users. Almost 50% of emails are opened on mobile devices, and SendPulse team considers this fact  while developing mobile-friendly versions of their products.

Event-based email marketing

SendPulse launched an email marketing services centered around automation that allows sending emails, SMS and push notifications based on user actions. Intuitive interface lets you drag and drop desired events such as emails, web push, SMS, filters, conditions, actions, and goals to easily adjust your campaigns to the needs of the users, and create a personalized automation flow.

Artificial Intelligence

Do you know how many people actually read your emails? SendPulse makes sure that you do and implements artificial intelligence, which tracks down emails, analyzes your campaigns and predicts users’ behavior. Then, it automatically opts for the best time and channel to deliver your message. That leads up to 70% higher open rate. SendPulse tools help you segment users by their interactions with your products, and check detailed statistics on each newsletter and campaign: time of email opening, time between receiving and opening, clicked links, type of device, CTR, open rate, and many more. You can use this data to hold A/B tests and pick the most effective version which can be sent out automatically.

Drag-and-drop email builder

SendPulse offers amazing opportunities to its users giving out 2,500 subscribers, 15,000 emails, and 120+ email templates and designs for free. No extra efforts or HTML knowledge is needed to create a top quality email optimized for all devices in a drag-and-drop email builder. In a matter of minutes, you can import, create from scratch or edit ready-made templates. There is also a tool for setting up customized web forms for users to subscribe to your emails with further detailed statistics.

Easy to use web push and SMS

Web push notifications and SMS solutions are just as clear and simple. You can edit or create new templates, check the preview, and send SMS or copy the code of a push notification to your website.

API and SMTP: fast integration

SendPulse offers an SMTP integration with MS Outlook, The Bat or any other email client. There is also an option to receive a full API integrated with a CMS, CRM or other system for sending messages from personal projects. All settings are comfortably stored on the SundPulse user dashboard.

Discovering new opportunities

SendPulse made it to the TOP-3 finalists of The Next Web SCALE 2016 program and was acknowledged as one of the best startups of 2016. They also launched a Startup Accelerator Program that provides a $5,000 grant for email marketing development. SendPulse experts share their experience and coach all the participants of the program who bring innovative products on the market.

Customers first

24/7 support is ready to solve any possible issues and answer questions. Every user is heard, and SendPulse considers their feedback constantly upgrading existing tools and adding new useful features.

Best WordPress Plugins for Boosting your Email Marketing Efforts

Being a modern business owner, you can’t overlook the effectiveness of an email marketing, especially when it comes to generating quality leads and higher ROI. It is one of the most easy ways to reach a large number of targeted web audience. It doesn’t matter how big or small your marketing campaign is, email marketing has always played a crucial factor in driving potential customers.

However, there are many business owners who think that this form of marketing is either obsolete or ineffective. But, according to the fact, most of the B2B companies have generated an average ROI of $38 for each $1 spent via email marketing. In fact, email is three times more effective than Facebook, Twitter or any other social media to acquire new customers.

There is also a strong prediction that more than 3 million of the population will become active email users by the end of 2020. It means you will need to take this marketing method very seriously – no matter what you are promoting or selling.

And the best part is that WordPress comes with some of the worthy email marketing tools and plugins to make your work easier. So, if you are a WordPress user, you can automate your email marketing campaign by integrating the best WordPress plugins. These plugins will help you achieve your targeted business goals with ease.

In this blog post, we bring you the top 7 WordPress plugins that will boost your email marketing and help you generate more revenues for your business.

1. MailChimp For WordPress

MailChimp is one of the leading email marketing tools, with over 15 million active customers ranging from small businesses to giant organizations.

With MailChimp, you can automate your email marketing campaign, design and send email newsletters using beautiful ready-made templates in a matter of few minutes.

And the best thing is that MailChimp also offers a free yet robust plugin for WordPress site owners. MailChimp for WordPress is a great plugin that lets you tie in with your existing MailChimp account on the fly.

With this plugin, you can create beautiful and custom-ready opt-in forms, sign up forms to let visitors convert into potential subscribers on the fly.

Apart from this, you can send and track emails, view insights, manage subscribers, and craft beautiful email templates using MailChimp for WordPress.

Even, it integrates well with other powerful plugins such as Contact Form 7 and WooCommerce to let you take your marketing campaign to the next level.

[button url=”https://wordpress.org/plugins/mailchimp-for-wp/” postid=”” style=”btn-primary” size=”btn-default” target=”_blank” fullwidth=”false”]Download[/button]

2. SendinBlue Subscribe Form and WP SMTP

This is SendinBlue’s official plugin for WordPress that encourages you to leverage your email marketing strategy to inform, connect and grow your customer base in an affordable way.

The plugin helps you create engaging and customized subscription forms that you can add to your posts and pages, without any heavy lifting, You can even track emails via the wp_mail() function, divide your contact lists to generate higher revenues for your business.

Boost your marketing campaign by creating and sending professionally-robust newsletters using its simple and intuitive drag and drop builder.

You can also choose the design layout from its official template library. Plus, you have full access to performance analytics, such as clicks, opens, bounce rates, and conversion rates – this will definitely improve your marketing campaign via emails.

[button url=”https://wordpress.org/plugins/mailin/” postid=”” style=”btn-primary” size=”btn-default” target=”_blank” fullwidth=”false”]Download[/button]

3. Contact Form 7

Contact Form 7 is another spectacular email marketing plugin for WordPress, with over 3 million active installs. It’s user-friendly, accessible and flexible features make it super easy for WordPress beginners to take off their email marketing campaign, without any third party tool.

Creating multiple contact forms become easier with the introduction of this powerful plugin. Even, you can tweak your form and the mail content using simple markup.

The plugin comes with a ton of exciting features including Ajax- powered submitting, Akismet spam filtering and CAPTCHA to let you increase your chances of growing subscriber’s list. Plus, it supports MailChimp to help you get the most of your email marketing efforts.

[button url=”https://wordpress.org/plugins/contact-form-7/” postid=”” style=”btn-primary” size=”btn-default” target=”_blank” fullwidth=”false”]Download[/button]

4. SumoMe’s List Builder

Convert your real-time visitors into potential customers and subscribers using this prevailing WordPress plugin. It helps you build beautiful pop-up forms that appear on timers, clicks or before a visitor tends to leave a web page.

From the massive pool of the WordPress plugins, SumeMe’s List Builder has come up as one of the powerful and most advanced email capture tools on the web.

The plugin helps you catch your visitors just before they leave your site with a lightbox that occurs to let people submit their email address – all thanks to its smart mode technology.

Apart from converting web visitors, you can also have a full control over your pop-up design. You can change the text color, background color, font size, button color and a lot more to merge the design of your pop-ups with your WordPress site.

The plugin also supports popular marketing services such Aweber, MailChimp, GetResponse, Active Campaign, etc.

[button url=”https://sumo.com/app/list-builder” postid=”” style=”btn-primary” size=”btn-default” target=”_blank” fullwidth=”false”]Download[/button]

5. SendPress Newsletters

Boost your email marketing campaign by integrating SendPress Newsletter plugin into your WordPress site. It is a simple, intuitive and user-friendly plugin that allows you to create customized newsletter templates for your next email marketing campaign.

The plugin makes it super-easy for you to import post content from your site to the newsletter so that your subscribers get all the updated information about your site on the go.

Since the plugin is built on WP UI, it makes is easy for you to collect and manage your subscribers. Also, you can add unlimited subscribers to your email list.

[button url=”https://wordpress.org/plugins/sendpress/” postid=”” style=”btn-primary” size=”btn-default” target=”_blank” fullwidth=”false”]Download[/button]

6. MailPoet Newsletters

Build beautiful and professional-looking newsletters and send them to your potential web customers and subscribers to generate more revenues using MailPoet Newsletters plugin.

It is a great WordPress plugin that gives a robust platform to create automated emails, autoresponders and post notifications to accelerate your email marketing campaign. With its signup widget, you can convert web visitors into potential subscribers within a few clicks.

In fact, adding blog posts, images and popular social icons in a newsletter becomes extremely easy with this plugin. You can even tweak the colors and fonts of your newsletter to make it more attractive and personalized.

[button url=”https://wordpress.org/plugins/wysija-newsletters/” postid=”” style=”btn-primary” size=”btn-default” target=”_blank” fullwidth=”false”]Download[/button]

7. OptinMonster

OptinMonster gives an easy way to convert web visitors into potential customers and subscribers. If you want to expand your email list, then this plugin is for you. It helps you create eye-grabbing capture forms, without generating a single piece of coding.

The plugin comes with an advanced Exit Intent Technology that captures user behavior and display him a pop-up just before he leaves your site. There is also a simple and intuitive drag and drop builder that helps you create visually appealing optin forms that are developed to generate higher conversions.

Plus, you can access to the insights to see which form converting visitors into subscribers and how many of them need modification in terms of design and functionality. Overall, OptinMonster is an incredible tool that can take your email marketing efforts close to your targeted goals.

[button url=”http://optinmonster.com/” postid=”” style=”btn-primary” size=”btn-default” target=”_blank” fullwidth=”false”]Download[/button]

Conclusion

These are the seven most compelling WordPress plugins that will help you market your brand, grow your customer base and increase your subscriber’s list via your email marketing campaign. These plugins will make it easy for you to achieve your ultimate business goals effectively and efficiently.

9 Social Media Marketing Tips to Deliver Better Results

Social media has quickly morphed into one of the most important marketing channels. Within a few short years, it has moved from being a mere fad into the most powerful marketing tool on the planet. Facebook, for example, is just over a decade old but no business can afford not to have a Facebook marketing strategy.

But, social media marketing has now moved beyond being simply about likes and followers.To succeed, there is a lot to learn.

The following are nine social media tips guaranteed to deliver better results.

1. Focus on Specific Social Media Networks

A few years ago, conventional wisdom dictated that you should be on as many social media networks as possible. Now, we know better. The wisdom this time around is quite to the contrary. Experience has shown that various demographics are active in different social media sites. With the exception of Facebook, that seems to transcend all demographics, other social networks have shown affinity to particular demographics. For example, teenagers hang out on Snapchat and millenials under 30 love Instagram. So, the strategy should be to identify the favorite social networks of your target audience and only focus on those. This is critical for success because social media marketing has become expensive. Focusing only on the social sites frequented by your audience ensures you use marketing resources in the most effective way.

2. Tailor Your Content for Each Platform

If you are posting to more than one platform, do not make the mistake of posting the same content on all platforms. Posts that are good for Facebook don’t always deliver results on Twitter. Users on social networks like Instagram, Pinterest and Snapchat are into visual content. You must tailor your content appropriately.

3. Don’t Sell Stuff

This is the biggest mistake you can make. The fact is that you want to turn your audience into a lead eventually but you can’t turn a social profile into an online store. Instead, you should post content that increases engagement to the point that your audience feels compelled to check out your product offering. Before you start pushing products, remember that people go to social media to find interesting content, catch up with friends and socialize.

4. Get Visual

Everyone loves eye candy. When print media was dominant, magazines went out of their way to design striking cover images to whet the appetite’s of their readers. Visual content is the way to go. If you want success, have a strong visual content strategy. In particular, live video is doing very well on social media and this is a trend that will continue into the future.

5. Run Contests and Promotions

Contests and promotions are a great way to increase engagement on social media. Contests and promotions have a high likelihood of being shared. Be creative, see what other companies have done and create contests that go viral.

6. Lead with Educational Content

According to a HubSpot study, 100 of the top non-celebrity Twitter accounts have built large audiences by posting educational content. Educational content is much more effective at building audiences than social media conversations. Providing readers with content that they find useful is a great way to build trust.

7. Give Away Free Stuff

Who doesn’t love free stuff? Reel in audiences by giving away something of value. It doesn’t have to be your main product. It could be stuff like free videos, ebooks, webinars, non-premium content or anything else of value that you could reasonably give away.

8. Respond Promptly and Helpfully to Audience Communication

We live in an era when anyone can screenshot a conversation and share it on social media. This is a customer service nightmare for companies. Even a small company must invest thousands of dollars on training it’s frontline staff to avoid gaffes that can end up as PR disasters. You must respond in a timely, respectful and helpful manner to all social media comments, inquiries, complaints and suggestions.

9. Invest in Social Listening Tools

To drive the narrative and avoid other people writing the narrative for you, you must practice social listening. You must keep a close watch over your brand’s mentions, competitor mentions and other keywords that are relevant to your industry. There are a number of nifty tools that you can use for social listening. Data gathered from social listening will provide you with valuable insights that will inform your social media strategy.

Conclusion

We started off by stating that social media has quickly evolved to become one of the most important marketing channels. In conclusion, we also need to add that social media marketing is also changing rapidly. What is true today is old stuff tomorrow. So, while these nine tips are relevant today, to continuously deliver better results, you must keep a close watch on developments in the social media industry.