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Tag Archives: Convert

Is there an intuitive and rational way to automatically convert ranges into coordinates?

June 15, 2020   BI News and Info
 Is there an intuitive and rational way to automatically convert ranges into coordinates?

I’m tired of typing and deciphering coordinates of the corners rectangles, and I’m wondering if anyone has found a better way.

A rectangle can simply be described by two lists x = {x1, y1} and y = {x2, y2}, but the coordinates of the corners quickly becomes the jumble {{x1, y1}, {x1, y2}, {x2, y2}, {x2, y1}} (if the coordinates are listed clockwise). It gets worse for cubes and higher dimensions.

I’ve found one promising approach. This is to create two lists for the points on the different axes, x = {x1, x1, x2, x2} and y = {y1, y2, y2, y1}, and then combine them with Transpose@Join[{x},{y}]. This approach extends to higher dimensions and also works for polygons, but it still requires the manual duplication of values.

One could write a function to do this in a black box, but I wonder if there a way to do elegantly and intuitively convert pairs of ranges into coordinates for rectangles?

3 Answers

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How to Create CTAs That Convert

September 11, 2019   CRM News and Info
CTAs that convert feature How to Create CTAs That Convert

Results-focused marketers know that their marketing efforts are only successful if they contribute to their organization’s bottom line. That requires them to go beyond focusing on brand awareness to develop marketing campaigns and collateral that attract, nurture, and, most importantly, convert leads into customers. In other words, our job, as marketers, is to motivate our target audience to keep wanting to learn more until they reach the finish line. 

Whether the marketing materials you are leveraging to attract, engage, and keep your customers moving along are part of an email, social media campaign, or landing page, one thing always rings true: clear and attractive calls to action (CTAs) are crucial for generating conversions. However, crafting a CTA that convinces your customer to fill out a form or schedule a demo can be way more difficult than it sounds. Everything from wording, placement, and relevance can influence whether your customer decides to take that action. And, unfortunately, finding a recipe that works often involves a lot of trial and error. 

While we definitely recommend you A/B test your CTAs and other elements of your marketing efforts, the process of refining and enhancing your marketing campaigns is easier when you already have a good foundation to work with. And while there are a variety of factors that can influence whether your target customer clicks on a CTA, there are definitely a few best practices you can follow to improve your chances of piquing your audience’s interest. To help you on your way toward marketing success, we’ve compiled the following tips to help you craft CTAs that are sure to convert more leads. 

Be Clear About What You Want Your Customers to Do

The worst mistake that you can make with your calls to action is to not be direct about what you want customers to do and what they will get if they do. If your call to action is not clear from the beginning, you risk having your email recipients or web visitors ignore your plea and navigate elsewhere. Or, even worse, if your prospect does decide to click through, they might be disappointed if they aren’t met with the offer or asset they were expecting to find. This is a surefire way to set the wrong tone and might lead to lack of engagement or unsubscribes and spam complaints down the line. 

Setting clear expectations about what you want your customers to do and what you will deliver when they complete that action allows you to prevent any confusion and improves your chance of success. So, if your goal is to get your prospects to fill out a form to download an eBook, place a button below the form that says “Download the eBook!” instead of “Submit.” This format indicates to your prospects that the eBook will be their reward for filling out the form.

Emphasize the Value Your Offer Provides Your Customers

Whether you’re asking your target audience to download an eBook or make an appointment to talk to an expert, you have to offer some sort of incentive to complete the action that you’re asking them to do. That doesn’t mean that you need to start handing out Amazon gift cards or sending personalized gifts. Instead, you need to ensure that whatever they get when they click a button or fill out a form provides some sort of value. 

For example, if you’re offering your audience an eBook, you should use your blog or email copy to clearly explain the type of valuable information they’ll gain if they choose to download and read it. Chances are there’s plenty of easily accessible content on the same topic available online, so your users and recipients will be more inclined to check out what you have to offer if they know what makes it unique. Or, if you’re asking them to schedule a demo with one of your salespeople, make sure to highlight the value of your product or service so they’ll be enticed to clear some time on their calendar to learn more about what you do.  

Make Sure Your CTAs Stand Out and Are Easy to Find

It should be common sense by now that a customer cannot complete an action if they can’t find your CTA to begin with. Yet, we’ve all received that confusing email or come across a landing page where we learn about an incredible offer but have no way of knowing where to click in order to access it. In these instances, both the marketer and the prospect end up losing out on a good opportunity. 

To avoid this fiasco, design the layout of your email or page so that your CTAs stand out and are easy to find. Don’t hide them on other pages, tuck them beside small-text telephone numbers, or make them available only after multiple clicks or searching.

Where you place your CTAs on a page or email can also influence whether your audience decides to click. Placing your CTAs in the following locations will make them more visible and increase the chance of having your prospect follow through. 

  • Above the fold: Putting a CTA “above the fold” on your site or email means placing it where it can be seen immediately without scrolling. Include a CTA above the fold on the first page of your site, landing page, email, or other digital property. For emails, we recommend using a responsive template to ensure all recipients can see your CTA regardless of their device. 
  • In the navigation bars: A “Get Started” or “Learn More” button in the navigation bars at the top or bottom of your page can encourage visitors to take action.
  • To the side: You could include a signup button or offer along the side column of your content where readers will see it as they scroll. (This is an especially good tactic for blogs.)
  • At the end: The end-of-page CTA can be a good anchor for your page, providing a reason for site visitors to take an action while the information they’ve just read is still fresh in their minds. If they’ve read all the way to the end of your page or email, they are likely interested, so you should take advantage of this opportunity by providing them with a way to further engage with your brand.

Provide More Than One Opportunity for Prospects to Respond to Your CTA

If your CTA is located within the body copy of an email, for example, you can improve the chances of getting your recipient to convert by providing more than one way for them to respond. In this case, you can insert a link to your offer in the header of your email, the body copy, and in a button at the end of the body copy. The reason this works is because some recipients will be immediately ready to learn more while others might want to read your email through to get more context before making a decision. 

If the opportunity calls for it, you can also have more than one CTA. We recommend this tactic with middle-of-funnel customers who may either be at the stage where they want to talk to a sales rep or keep learning more before committing to a real discussion. Providing them options offers them the opportunity to keep engaging regardless of the path they choose. In these instances, however, prioritize your CTAs so that your audience doesn’t choose the option that would be least beneficial for you. 

Provide Personalized Recommendations

Even if your calls to action are clear and you do a great job of describing the value of what you’re offering, prospects will not complete an action if neither of these are relevant to them. Your CTAs should coincide with your customers’ stage in the sales funnel, their industry, and overall pain points or interests. 

For example, your prospects are more likely to schedule a time to talk to an expert as they’re entering the decision-making stage than they will be if they’re just starting to become acquainted with your brand. Similarly, you have a better chance of getting a professional who works in manufacturing to download an eBook about supply chain technology than someone who works in the insurance industry. 

Providing every single customer with a targeted experience might seem like a handful, but it doesn’t have to be if you have the proper tools. A marketing automation platform (such as Act-On) can help you segment your audience based on where they’re at in the buyer journey, their product interests, pain points, and more, so you can improve your ability to target them with relevant information via email. Better yet, tools such as adaptive forms and lead scoring can help you uncover the insights you need to provide a more targeted experience. 

Keep the Momentum Going With Adaptive Web

Speaking of personalized recommendations, you can improve your ability to drive conversions if you continuously provide your audience with multiple opportunities to engage as they browse (instead of relying on a single CTA). Act-On’s Adaptive Web allows you provide each prospect with a personalized web experience by delivering the right content at the right time. This not only allows you to keep your customers moving through the sales funnel and present them with multiple CTAs, but it also provides you an opportunity to keep collecting valuable insights so that both marketing and sales can nurture (and eventually convert) better leads into loyal customers. 

Want to learn more about how you can leverage your website to generate demand and drive conversions? Download our eBook, Personalizing the Web Experience (also linked below).

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To Convert Browsers to Buyers, Choose Your E-Commerce Solution Wisely

November 28, 2018   CRM News and Info

This story was originally published on the E-Commerce Times on Aug. 24, 2018, and is brought to you today as part of our Best of ECT News series.

Shopping: It’s not what it once was. Forget the long drive to the mall and countless hours of browsing. Customers now simply log in from the comfort of their own home to have the world at their fingertips.

The massive uptake of e-commerce is an unprecedented shift in consumer behavior, expectations and purchases. The evidence is in the numbers: Internet shopping is the most popular online activity. Revenues
have doubled in the past five years, from total sales of US $ 1.336 billion in 2014 to an expected $ 2.842 billion this year.

Meanwhile, for traditional brick-and-mortar stores, patronage has continued to slide every year. Last year’s holiday season demonstrated the true power of modern, online shopping, as more U.S. consumers planned
to purchase their gifts from the Internet rather than in stores.

To keep up with rapidly evolving consumer behavior and historic demand, online retailers need to be more efficient and reliable than ever before. One of the best ways to do so is by integrating tech-based analytics and artificial intelligence.

More than just a buzzword or sci-fi concept, artificial intelligence already has a multitude of applications to convert browsers into buyers. Things like user personalization, registered shopping habits, tailored advertisements and customer engagement can push the likelihood of purchase toward e-commerce retailers — and that is just the tip of the iceberg.

Better CRM Management

Consider the importance of the customer — the human element in this equation. Customers are the ones who need to be convinced that their decision to purchase is the right one, and tech-based analytics help to improve the likelihood that their decisions go in the vendor’s favor.

For starters, analytics tools backed by artificial intelligence have been getting much better at creating user profiles of each customer. These can reveal valuable information on each and every visitor — from age to gender to what they actually do on the store website.

This information then can be used by any given e-commerce store to influence other parts of the business, such as online store design and special offers. Is a customer a repeat visitor? Does the customer search for specific categories? What is the customer’s average spend? These insights and many more can help to segment buyers and improve appeals to individuals.

Back in the real, non-virtual, brick-and-mortar world, businesses also have been monitoring customers more closely than ever before. Artificial intelligence solutions are used to monitor facial expressions and emotional reactions as people shop.

While this may sound like some sort of dystopian surveillance scheme, the tech aims largely to combat shoplifting. It also garners some usable data for stores, though, revealing which areas of the shop attract the most foot-traffic or what elicits the strongest reaction.

In the end, these methods allow companies to know their customers better than ever before. Essentially it all comes down to better customer relationship management: Applications that streamline the entire process from person to purchase require less manpower to achieve better results.

Personalization Wins

It’s under the hood of e-commerce stores where the possibilities of analytics and artificial intelligence really come to the fore. Smart systems are able to help businesses manage their inventory, automate indexing, instantly categorize, detect low-quality images, and flag objectionable content faster than ever before.

Humans no longer need to go through each post and every page manually. Instead, analytical tools can be used to maximum effect, making the online customer experience as smooth as possible.

Automated processes help to optimize a website, which in the world of e-commerce and online browsing is of the utmost importance. Some software operates like artificial intelligence with vision — essentially using advanced image and video recognition to see the world as humans do.

Machine learning then allows these systems to sort through huge volumes of data and customize Web pages for each shopper. It’s this personalization that is key to winning over buyers.

The more a website can appeal to individual needs, the more likely a browser will become a buyer.

This can take the form of anything from a simple website greeting to something more elaborate like a chatbot. Almost half of consumers who participated in a survey last year reported live chat as their preferred way to connect, and roughly the same number of shoppers said they would buy from a chatbot.

Evidently, high-tech solutions and relatively straightforward customer connections can live side-by-side in the online environment.

Precision Targeting

These trends all point to one simple aim for e-commerce platforms: Sell more things. No matter how much the world or technology changes, selling goods and services to customers always will be the paramount aim. So, the last — but likely largest — element to discuss is the impact these technologies have on advertising and customer experience.

The latest technologies herald a movement toward individual, tailored marketing. Unlike past advertisements, which aimed for blanket appeal, advanced marketing solutions can pinpoint customer desires and accurately foreground products for every single user.

This method can be incredibly effective, with the right ad in the right place allowing e-commerce stores to snag customers before they leave the house. An estimated 80 percent of shoppers
conduct online research even when they plan to buy an item in-store. Therefore, when marketed with intent, e-commerce retailers can attract customers by the sheer benefit of being online and adjacent to information the customer requires.

All of these metrics allow analytical tools to retarget prospective customers with meticulous precision. For instance, these systems can recognize when a customer spends a notable amount of time browsing a specific product and store this information for the next time that customer visits. This knowledge can then be used to make special offers or promotions based on the previous user activity.

Tech-based systems effectively remove missed sales opportunities. In fact, the marketing opportunities using artificial intelligence are almost endless. Cart abandonment rates, ease of catalog navigation and customer engagement all can be improved through the implementation of smart, customer-based systems.

Getting Smart

The e-commerce sector is ripe for collaboration with artificial intelligence systems. They can improve customer service, pinpoint marketing, and overhaul ineffective online stores — and that is just the start. There are many other elements of marketing and sales that can be improved significantly through the implementation of smart systems, and the uptake is expected to continue.

By the year 2020, 85 percent of a client’s relationship with a business will be managed without the need for human interaction, Gartner has predicted. The message seems to be clear: join the revolution or get out of the way.

E-commerce has been generating historic demand, and failure to integrate smart solutions that convert browsers to buyers ultimately could hurt a company’s bottom line.
end enn To Convert Browsers to Buyers, Choose Your E Commerce Solution Wisely


Abhijit%20Shanbhag To Convert Browsers to Buyers, Choose Your E Commerce Solution Wisely
Abhijit Shanbhag is the president and chief executive officer of
Graymatics, an artificial intelligence company that classifies images and videos to provide customer-centric solutions.

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Convert Chinese character into a list of lines

November 10, 2018   BI News and Info
 Convert Chinese character into a list of lines

For a puzzle I want to list pairs of Chinese cities. Once a line is drawn between each pair of cities the resulting lines will spell out a phrase in Chinese which is the answer to the puzzle.

I’ve loaded and visualized the geodata using:

cities=CityData[{Large,"China"}];
coords=Map[CityData[#,"Coordinates"]&,cities]
Graphics[Map[Point[Reverse[#]]&,coords]]

I can’t work out how to convert a Chinese character into a series of lines (I realise not all strokes in a character are straight but can they be approximated by one). I’ve tried rasterizing the character and using ImageLines to pick out the strokes but couldn’t get it to work.

Once I have the data points for the end points of each line in the character I plan to get mathematica to search through linear transformations to find suitable transform between the end points of the lines to the coordinates of the cities and minimize the error.

So my question is how can I convert a Chinese character into an list of lines?

E.g. 水 into {{{.15,.25},{.4,.65}},{{.15,.65},{.4,.65}},{{.35,.22},{.49,.22}},{{.49,.22},{.49,.85}},{{.49,.65},{.8,.22}},{{.6,.55},{.75,.7}}}

(Note this was just my rough approximation done by hand)

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User Experiences That Convert – The Do's and Don'ts

August 31, 2018   CRM News and Info

In technology parlance, the emotional result of a person’s interaction with a website or digital app is called “user experience” or “UX” — and the success of a business depends on it. Users who have easy, positive experiences with websites and apps likely will be drawn back to the business. On the contrary, websites and apps with poor navigation and slow loading times likely will turn off consumers.

UX is essential in e-commerce because conversion rates often are aligned with a positive or negative experience. As technology continues to improve and as customer preferences evolve, businesses must adapt UX to stay competitive.

To optimize UX and enhance customer perceptions of your brand, following are five UX Do’s and Don’ts to focus on.

1. Do invest in a unique visual experience. Don’t choose cookie-cutter solutions.

Today, most customers can spot stock imagery and templated websites from a mile away. These features not only make a business look lazy, but also restrict brand expression. Be sure to choose custom visual designs whenever possible.

A website or mobile app should evoke the identity of the brand. Whether a business offers home decor products or tax preparation services, users should be able to identify the business brand from its respective platforms. A relevant and consistent brand fosters legitimacy and trust. You want users to take your business seriously. Of course, this is much easier said than done.

Below is a homepage example from
Restoration Hardware. The simple, neutral background allows brand imagery to speak for itself, and the uncluttered navigation supports an easy, straightforward shopping experience. Additionally, the page’s text copy is short and direct, to give visitors clear options and guide behavior. Lastly, the main image not only displays business products, but also conveys the atmosphere that Restoration Hardware promises its customers. Regardless of stylistic preference, Restoration Hardware offers a distinct visual experience on its website.


85526 620x343 small User Experiences That Convert   The Do's and Don'ts

(Click Image to Enlarge)


Businesses can use custom visual content to stand out from the competition. A simple start is to use real pictures of teams/staff, offices/locations and products/services. Moreover, details like updated banners to reflect appropriate seasons, upcoming holidays or events relevant to the market/industry also help to add unique visuals. Unique visual content is a great way to enhance UX.

2. Do make messages personal. Don’t be generic.

People want to feel that their needs matter and their voices are heard. Individualized experiences/messaging can be tough with a diverse audience/customer base; however, businesses can gain advantages by using conversational language, addressing people by name wherever possible, and helping visitors/customers find content they might like.

It is important to research customer habits and desires. What words are used in the search for products or services relevant to your business? Talk to your customers in the language they use. Read reviews to better understand customer needs. Also, find out what your competitors are doing.

With the latter research, businesses can install appropriate technology to address specific customer desires, even at scale. For example, a simple upgrade for personal messaging could be automating business newsletters/email outreach to populate each recipient’s name in the greeting. Instead of, “Hello,” the customer would be greeted with, “Hi Ted.” Little details can make a huge difference.

More advanced features include personalized product recommendations, individualized search tools and saved checkout information. If a business offers UX that makes customers feel like VIPs, sales likely will grow.

3. Do get social. Don’t keep to yourself.

Social media is a mandatory extension for a business’ website. It contributes to the UX businesses want to create, but not all social media platforms are right for business. Be careful to choose the right social media platform to leverage your strengths and connect with your target audience.

For example, a clothing brand for teenagers would be wise to publish content on Instagram, which is image-focused and has a young user base, rather than on LinkedIn, which is text-heavy and oriented toward professionals. Pinterest might be a great choice for an event-planning company, while news blogs would favor Facebook and Twitter for sharing articles and stories.

Content should follow the voice of the brand. A children’s toy business should sound different than a high-end luxury sports car company. Be sure to talk to your audience in the language and style they understand and respond to. Below is a great example of brand voice from sunglasses retailer
Foster Grant, which uses messaging that is personable and that its customers can relate to.


85526 620x396 small User Experiences That Convert   The Do's and Don'ts

(Click Image to Enlarge)


Once a business has identified the right social media platform(s), it can share original content that reflects the brand. Some social media best practices are to engage with your audience (always reply to user comments) and to be consistent in content and posting. If your business is active and friendly on social media, you likely will build customer rapport and gain customer trust, which are essential parts of a compelling UX.

4. Do balance form and function. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

Not all beautiful websites work well, nor are all functional websites visually appealing. The UX sweet spot is where form and function complement each other, providing a fun and easy experience.

Businesses should audit appropriate website(s) and app(s) for strengths and weaknesses. For example, if a business has blazing-fast page speed and a robust payment gateway but a low conversion rate, it is possible that branding and content need improvement. No matter how good website infrastructure is, if visitors are not compelled to buy or act, they never will reach the checkout page or respond to your call to action.

Furthermore, if visual content is strong but site performance is lacking, businesses should invest in technology that improves page speed, checkout convenience and customer service. Any difficulty finding or buying products/services can ruin an otherwise engaging experience for current and potential customers.

To boost conversions, a website’s UX should feel and perform like it is from 2018. This requires keeping up with the latest technology and design trends, such as mobile-first optimization and simple, iconic aesthetics.

5. Do offer an omnichannel experience. Don’t restrict usability.

Omnichannel means providing the same excellent UX whether customers shop in-store, online or digitally via mobile device, tablet or laptop, or even live chat or by phone. Giving people options makes shopping more convenient and increases a business’ chances for conversion.

To start, businesses should integrate software that makes it possible to offer and manage an omnichannel experience. This often requires a website back end and an ERP (enterprise resource planning) that syncs inventory and processes orders in real time, whether someone buys a product online or in-store.

From the customer perspective, people want flexibility in how they shop, pay, and receive or pick-up purchases/services. Restricting customer options risks a loss in sales, and expanding options can help a business to stay competitive.

At the end of the day, UX is about creating an “environment” on your website or app that visitors/users will enjoy and want to return to. Remember, UX is never final — it is meant to be a work in progress, keeping up with the latest and greatest in innovation and technology.

Businesses should analyze performance and take corrective action to tweak and improve UX every few months. Ask questions on how customers are behaving, and that identify what is and is not working. Review Google Analytics, check conversion funnels, look at drop rates from email lists, and use heat mapping tools. Then, take this information and funnel it through the UX Do’s and Don’ts discussed here.

If you improve UX based on data and user feedback, you will see a corresponding improvement in the rise of conversion rates and customer satisfaction.
end enn User Experiences That Convert   The Do's and Don'ts


Amit Bhaiya is cofounder and CEO of
DotcomWeavers.

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Convert ArrayPlot Data to Matrix

December 1, 2017   BI News and Info
 Convert ArrayPlot Data to Matrix

I might have made a mistake here. Suppose I have spent a long time doing a calculation for an array plot as follows:

ArrayPlot[
 ParallelTable[
  abc[15, 1, K, n], {K, 1, 400}, {n, 1, 400}]]

Where abc is just some function that takes a while to evaluate for large K and n. Now, once the computation finished, all of the information is there, visually. But suppose I want to keep all of the data (actual numerical values) in some kind of external file. Is there any way to do this after the fact? Or is the only way to get those numbers to go back, re-compute every value again in a table, and then export that table to a .hdf file?

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Actionable Tips for Engaging Websites that Convert More Traffic

October 9, 2017   CRM News and Info
blog title rethink podcast andy crestodina 351x200jpg Actionable Tips for Engaging Websites that Convert More Traffic

This transcript has been edited for length. To get the full measure, listen to the podcast.

Michelle Huff: Andy, can you tell us more about yourself and Orbit Media Studios?

Andy Crestodina: I’m the cofounder of Orbit. We’re here in Chicago. And Orbit is a web design company. We do just one thing: web design and web development. But a few weeks ago was my 10th anniversary as a content marketer. I’ve done lots and lots of writing, and publishing, and teaching, and speaking, and making videos. And if anyone here has heard of me, it would be because I do a lot on the topics of Google Analytics and search engine optimization. I make my rounds at a lot of the conferences. I’m one of the many out there who just teaches everything I can about content marketing.

Role of Content Marketing for B2B businesses

Michelle: How did content marketing become such a big part of your role today?

Andy: Well, this is probably relevant to a lot of listeners because web design is something you don’t need that often. It’s a classic B2B service. It has multiple decision makers. It’s a complicated decision. It takes you sometimes months to decide who to hire for your website. And you only need it, like, every three or four or five years. So how can I possibly keep in touch with a large enough audience to stay relevant with them in that long sales cycle and long buying interval? The answer is content.

I realized early on, I need to have some way to try to put all this content on autopilot, in a way. I need to have a newsletter, and I need to have a blog. And the newsletter just invited people to read the blog. So that was 10 years ago. And it’s just a way to stay relevant and top of mind with people over long periods of time. Because, like a lot of B2B services, you just don’t need this stuff every day.

Blogging Trends and Best Practices

Michelle: What are some of the blogging trends you’re seeing about best practices today?

Andy: It’s changed a lot. I went back and looked at some of my old posts recently, like the first ones I wrote. Have you ever done this? I dare you. Go back and look at the first thing you ever wrote online. It hurts your eyes.

Comparing then to now, basically, there’s a lot more competition, and it’s a war for attention. To stand out in that, people do things that are both more concise and attention-grabbing ‒ and also deeper and taking kind of a thought-leadership position. When you combine that you get headlines that are very benefit-driven and indicate you’ll get value at a glance … like this: ‘16 things about marketing automation best practices.’

But then when you open the article and you get into it, it’s got multiple images, it’s formatted for scan readers, but it goes deep, deep into the topic. The classic blog post now is longer than before, includes more media than before, and multiple images, sometimes video, lots of formatting, lists, bullet points, sub-headers.

It’s become a more formal tactic and more serious endeavor for people who are going big and trying hard to both grab attention and then to keep attention by writing much longer, more in-depth detailed posts than we used to write 10 years ago.

Short or Long-Form Content?

Michelle: Is it because it’s working? Or do you think people are testing it out? You see contradictory statistics out there sometimes, where some they don’t have enough time and attention, and so they’re not going to read all the long-form content; you need to be quick, you need to be simple and scannable. Why do you think the trend towards more of the deeper, long-form content then?

Andy:It’s a good question. And it’s an apparent contradiction. But I don’t find any difficulty in balancing those things. Part of what you created is to get attention. And then part of what you created is to keep attention. To grab attention, we’re looking for benefit-driven headlines that suggest you’re going to get an answer to your question or a solution to your problem. Also, a number in a headline will indicate the content is going to be scannable or that it’s formatted to be easy to consume.

The headline’s goal is to just get you to click, whether it’s in the social stream or a busy inbox or in a search result. Now that we’re on the page, the top of the article, you could almost say the first paragraph’s job is to get people to read the second paragraph. And the second paragraph’s job is to get people to read the third paragraph. We are formatting for scanners. And that means short paragraphs, sub-headers, bullet lists, bolding, multiple images, internal links, and so forth. But there’s no reason to stop after 500 words. If the person is engaging with the content, they’ll continue to engage.

If you wrote something that’s good, even though it’s totally scannable, and they’re glancing and getting value, and it’s really good and detailed and in-depth, it might turn out to be … a lot of the things I write now are like 2,000-3,000 words. I use very short words, short sentences, and short paragraphs. But I never try to write a short article. It has to be as long as it needs to be to cover the topic in depth from every possible angle. My content gets longer and more scannable every year that I blog.

Trends in Websites, and How Businesses Can Improve

Michelle: In some sense, it kind of reminds me of journalism. You write the catchy title, and then every beginning paragraph stands on its own, so you can stop and kind of get the news, and you just kind of keep reading more. It seems like we’re starting to follow some of those past best practices, as well.

What have you been seeing for a trend in websites? Where and how are businesses failing today with their websites?

Andy:There are different kinds of pages on websites. And each type of page is also becoming a bit more formulaic or codified in its approach. Blog content, and blog pages, and articles, and white papers, are becoming a little bit more like a medium. We’re seeing more often just simple formatting and less visual noise. And these are just long, easy-to-scan pages, kind of like medium.com. And those articles are designed even more specifically. The design of the blogs is even more specifically intending to get the person to follow, or share, or subscribe. We’re also seeing way more pop-ups than we used to. And they’re still working.

Sales pages are the other type of page. And it’s a totally different goal. There it’s become single-column layouts that have less visual noise at every scroll depth. The classic sales page on a website looks more like a landing page than it used to. It’s going to have one most visually prominent thing at every scroll depth, and it’s going to do a more deliberate job of guiding the eye through a series of messages that answer visitors’ tough questions and supply evidence to support those answers. There are more calls to action. Web design now is much more about telling a story or controlling the eye more deliberately. We started in 2001. Back in the day we used to have three-column layouts with a right-rail and left-side navigation. Now, things look a bit more like mobile first or like a tablet-type design, with much less visual noise, and more deliberate control of the visitor’s attention and messaging.

Improving Your Website & Content for Conversions

Michelle: How do I optimize my content and my website to improve conversion ‒ not just having it out there, but driving the next behavior.

Andy: Barry Feldman has a great quote that I always use. He says that if the website is a mousetrap, the content is the cheese. In a way, a great page is both the cheese and the mousetrap. So, it’s a search-optimized page to rank for the phrase and attract the visitor ‒ that’s cheese. And it’s a conversion optimized page to trigger action to get the visitor to convert and become a lead or subscribe ‒ and that’s the mousetrap. If the goal is conversion optimization, then the page has to align with the psychology of the visitor. If you think about why your visitor is on your page, they’re trying to solve a problem, or they have a question they’re trying to get answered.

Our first job is to understand what the audience has in terms of questions and to make sure we supply an answer to every question. It goes from questions to answer. Then we want to give them what they want. The next goal is to give them what we want them to have, which is evidence, and marketing, and support for those answers. A lot of websites, especially years ago, but still today, have lots of unsupported marketing claims. There’s no evidence. So, it’s a weakness on websites and it’s something people can easily fix just by adding testimonials. Add evidence to support all your marketing claims.

The final ingredient is a call to action. You go from question, to answer, to evidence, to action. That’s a content-based approach toward conversions. And a page without calls to action is weak. A page without evidence is unsatisfying. A page without answers, rather, would be unsatisfying.

It’s really just mixing all these ingredients together and making sure that page is answering their most important questions, supplying evidence to support our claims, and then giving clear, compelling calls to action. Sometimes it’s in several places on the page. So many websites miss just those few things. It’s very common.

Look at a lot of sales pages. They end with nothing. There’s a dead end at the bottom of the page. But they have five claims and they never supply any evidence. There are bad websites and poorly converting pages all over the Internet. And it’s not that hard to fix.

The Three P’s for Winning More Subscribers: Prominence, Promise, Proof

Michelle: We were talking a little earlier, where you have kind of a mantra around the three Ps. Maybe this might be a good time to share your words of wisdom.

Andy: On a blog, which is the other type of page … blog website design or building out a blog page ‒ those would often be designed to convert visitors into subscribers. So why do visitors subscribe? To understand the psychology of the potential subscriber, our goal becomes to give them the answers they need, like: What am I subscribing for?

And these are the three Ps: The first is Prominence. The subscribe box is visually prominent. It stands out and it’s got white space around it, or uses a contrasting color. A pop-up is another way to make it obviously prominent.

The second P is Promise. Tell the visitor what they’re going to get, like marketing automation tips  and how often, weekly, or whatever. So many subscribe boxes don’t even tell the visitor what they’re going to get. The third P would be Proof or evidence, like how many people subscribe, or testimonials from one of the subscribers. If you just simply add those three Ps to your email signup box ‒ Prominence, Promise and Proof – as soon as we did that, we saw a 1,900 percent increase in the conversion rate from visitors into subscribers on our website. Very powerful.

Michelle: That’s a very good conversion rate improvement.

Andy: Big lift.

The Role of Marketing Automation with Content Marketing

Michelle: So much about what we talk about and what we’re trying to help marketers do is continuing that conversation. If you have longer sales cycles, you need to stay in touch, and people are kind of at different spots along that journey. What’s your take on marketing automation and how it fits into content marketing? Is it for everyone? How do you think about it?

Andy: There are lots of listeners and lots of companies and types of service that have very complex offerings with multiple decision makers. It’s something the buyer is not going to jump in with both feet immediately. There’s middle-of-funnel conversions that are very powerful. So, downloading something, or attending a webinar, or subscribing to the podcast, or even the emails, and subscribe to the newsletter. It’s kind of throwing the long bomb, if this were football, and if you’re expecting visitors to just become a lead on their visit. It’s just not that likely. There are too many offerings, and it’s too complex of a transaction.

The beauty and the power part of it – this is my take on it anyway, you guys have experts in-house – but the value of marketing automation is that you have a way to keep people in your information pipeline. You can keep in touch with people. You can give them micro conversions. You connect all the dots. So, you’re running an event, a webinar, and you’ve got a download, an email. All of those things now can keep that person sort of in your sphere of influence or begin to build thought leadership, awareness, demonstrate expertise. Because content marketing is really a contest to see who can be the most generous. They’re not going to become a lead immediately. You have to give away a lot of useful information until that person has enough trust to take action and get out their checkbook.

I love the power of marketing automation as a way to deliver middle-of-funnel content and keep and grow the audience in that undecided category until they’re ready. Because it’s just way too much to expect the first visitor to become a lead for any significant type of transaction.

Michelle: Exactly, right. And for middle of the funnel, you’re just wanting to nurture them along the way. Orbit recently completed its fourth annual survey of 1,000 bloggers. Any initial results you can share with listeners?

Orbit’s Annual Survey of 1,000 Bloggers

Andy: Yes, we have 12 questions every year. This is the fourth year. And the original goal was to find out how long it takes to write a blog post. And the first time we did it, it was like two hours and 15 minutes. Now it’s closer to three-and-a-half hours.

People are spending a lot more time on their content. The other results ‒ people are adding more imagery to their blog posts. Email and influencer marketing are both on the rise. A greater percentage of bloggers are using editors. A greater percentage of bloggers are checking their analytics more often.

These all suggest the industry has become a bit more formalized, a bit more professionalized. Blogging is less casual and ad hoc and a ‘whatever’ kind of thing. People are more serious about this, partly because of tools like Act-On.

We’re playing this game to win. We’re trying to help people as much as we can. I know from my data, I know from marketing automation, I know from my research, that not everything is performing equally well, and that over time people move toward getting more serious about their content. That’s the biggest finding, is just that all these things suggest that people are taking this much, much more seriously. It’s sort of a war for attention.

It has all kinds of interesting information about the trends in blogging now that we have four years of data. You can really see trends in promotion, and creation, and different tactics, and different media. And talking to you makes me think we should really be adding a question about marketing automation. Because that’s another key component for a lot of content marketers.

Michelle: Andy, I love this conversation; it was really insightful. How could people who are listening to this learn more about you and Orbit Media?

Andy:Well, orbitmedia.com/blog is where I write an article every two weeks. I wrote a book called Content Chemistry. You can find it on Amazon. It’s an illustrated guide to content marketing. LinkedIn is a good network to connect with me on. Connect with me anywhere and ask me anything. Anyone who’s listening is welcome to reach out to me on any topic, any time they like. I’ll personally respond as soon as I can.

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Learn how to convert website visitors into customers with Dynamics 365

July 29, 2017   Microsoft Dynamics CRM
CRM Blog Learn how to convert website visitors into customers with Dynamics 365

Did you know that less than 12% of visitors to your website take any action? How do you leverage website visit data to engage with visitors and drive conversions? Join us to learn how.

Most visitors to your website have an interest in your products/services or they wouldn’t be visiting in the first place. If you are not using website visitor data in your marketing & sales efforts you are missing significant opportunity.

There are a number of ways to integrate your website with Dynamics 365 to convert visits to customers. During this informative webinar we will review the options for integrating your website with Dynamics 365.We will also demonstrate how to create a closed-loop process for harvesting website visitor intelligence and applying a sales process in Dynamics 365 to assure action is taken.

All attendees will receive “Top Productivity Hacks”, a valuable whitepaper with the top hacks used by some of the most successful business owners across the globe.

Click here to register for this free training

This free training is brought to you by Sträva Technology Group. We help businesses evaluate, plan, implement & support Dynamics 365 solutions. More information - www.stravatechgroup.com

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How To Use Social Media To Convert More B2B Leads With Daniel Kushner

June 4, 2017   CRM News and Info
blog title rethink podcast social b2b leads 351x200 How To Use Social Media To Convert More B2B Leads With Daniel Kushner

Michelle Huff: Daniel, thank you so much for joining us today. Can you introduce yourself, and tell us about Oktopost.

Daniel Kushner: I’m one of the co-founders and CEO of Oktopost. We like to call ourselves the only B2B social media management and advocacy platform. Basically, Oktopost is a platform that is used for managing, scheduling, and measuring social media content. And, as we’ll get in this discussion today, we very much focus on the B2B aspects of social media because we see this as a very unique and special market when it comes to marketing and especially social media marketing.

Michelle: I couldn’t agree more. And it’s interesting just even talking to people in the B2B space, because I think people approach social media differently depending on where they’re at in the adoption curve, and how they think about it and their own buyers. Since you talk to a ton of B2B marketers, from your point of view what are people getting right about marketing on social media today? And on the flip side, where do you think they’re falling short?

Daniel: Social Media is very different for every company. Because on social media we’re kind of opening up ourselves and being very honest with this non-corporate talk, if it’s about employees, work environments, products, releases, etc. And when we look at our customers, some of the things they might not be doing as well as they should is the amount of content they push onto social. Because as social has advanced over the years, it’s become a very noisy place. And it was once was enough for us to tweet a couple of times a day ‒ maybe five times a day. Today, with the number of tweets that are getting pushed out by consumers, by companies, we need to increase the amount of content that we’re posting onto social media.

If we look at what a company will normally do when they develop content, we’re all in this game in the B2B world of content marketing. We’re generating the white papers, webinars, podcasts, blog posts, etc. All this content needs to get distributed onto social media. If I have a new blog post, sending out one tweet wouldn’t be enough. I would maybe write 10 or 20 different messages on the same blog post and schedule those multiple times. So, in essence I have dozens of different tweets going out at different times of the day for a single piece of content. That’s one thing I believe that many B2B companies could improve on: generating much more content on social.

The second thing is all about automation. We live in a world where a large part of the MarTech is around marketing automation. And I think when B2B marketers look at the social side, they’re trying to take that automation aspect to social as well. But in essence social works much better when it’s not automated. There’s only so much you can automate. In the end, as I said, it’s a very open and honest channel. And automating content, automating messages ‒ it just doesn’t work as well as messages and content being personalized.

I’ll give you an example of what automation can be. There might be a blog or a WordPress plugin, that whenever you have a new blog post, it will automatically create a tweet about that blog post. And how is it going to do that? It’ll be the blog title, put in the link, and send that out to Twitter. But that’s not engaging. And as I said, on a single blog post we can write dozens of different tweets with different content that really explains what the blog is about and not just repeating the title. So automation, from our experience, doesn’t work on social media.

And I’ll say the third thing is social media, like every other marketing channel, really needs to be measured. It doesn’t make much sense in us investing time, money, effort into creating content on social if we’re not measuring how successful the social is for us. It’ll be just like doing a webinar and not measuring how many registrants we have, or doing a trade show and not measuring how many business cards we collect. And it’s very much the same for social media. It’s a marketing channel that needs to be measured.

Michelle: For people who think of social as Facebook or Twitter, and how they use those platforms socially, can social media be an effective marketing channel? And how should people be thinking about it? Should it be the same or different than B2C?

Daniel: We definitely believe it’s a super effective channel. Actually, before founding Oktopost, I was VP marketing at another technology startup called Nolio. We were developing dev ops technology, selling to banks and telcos ‒ the classical B2B long sales cycle enterprise sale. And when we looked at the numbers at the end, because we were measuring everything in the platform, social media actually generated 25 percent of the new business. And this is B2B enterprise sales. So, it can be effective.

Michelle: How do you see B2C and B2B being different in terms of how marketers should use social media? Do you see big differences? I know that you’ve mentioned that you guys are really focused on B2B. What do you think are the big things?

Daniel: I think there are two major differences. The first, in the B2B market or B2B companies, they’re posting much more data or much more content onto social media channels than B2C. And this is counterintuitive, because B2C is full of images and content. But when we drill down and we look at what the B2B marketing organization is doing, they’re generating lots of content. We’re doing the blogs, and the webinars, and the white papers, and the podcasts, testimonials, eBooks, and white papers.

And all these pieces of content needs to get distributed multiple times onto social media channels. If we’re a large organization and we have multiple products, we’re multiplying that number again. If we have multiple languages, that’s another multiplication. And what we end up seeing is that B2B companies, they’re posting hundreds, if not thousands of messages on a monthly basis.

When we look at B2C, and I like to use Nike as an example, if you go over to their Twitter account you’ll see that Nike will post a single tweet maybe every couple of days. So, they’re posting maybe 12, 20 tweets on a monthly basis, far less than B2B. But on the Nike side that single tweet is now distributed to their millions of followers and gets retweeted tens of thousands of times. On the B2B side, we have much more content, but much smaller audiences. That’s kind of a complete reverse of what’s happening in B2C.

The second difference that I see is what are we measuring. Now, almost every single marketing event can be measured. If I’m going to a trade show, I know how many business cards I collected. If we’re doing a webinar, we see registrations and attendees. Even if we’re spending money on paid advertising, we have the technology to understand how many dollars I spent, how many leads, qualified leads, and we can follow that down the pipeline so we can understand the ROI of our marketing efforts. But when it comes to social, all of a sudden the metrics are very different. We see things like likes, and retweets, and shares, and comments, and followers month over month.

Now, going back to the pre-Oktopost days when I was VP of marketing, the CEO used to ask me one question each month. This was all they cared about. And the question was: ‘How many leads?’ And I couldn’t come back to the CEO and say, listen, we got 10,000 new followers on Facebook or so many retweets or shares. It’s all about the number of leads. This is the question every CMO is asked.

Michelle: OK, I’ve got a bunch of likes. What does that mean? 

Daniel: When we’re looking at social media from a B2B perspective, there’s no correlation between the likes and the shares and the retweets to the actual business values. Am I generating leads? Is social media helping push leads down the funnel? What we need to measure in B2B on the social media side are the real business values: leads, SQLs, MQLs, and how they helped opportunities and closed/won deals.

Michelle: Yes, so that brings up, from your viewpoint, how does a B2B social media management platform like Oktopost fit with marketing automation?

Daniel: I think these two platforms were made to work together. Because if we look at social media, we use it a lot for top of the funnel, so it’s awareness and bringing in traffic. And then we capture this traffic using marketing automation platforms. If we look at Act-On for example … so what are we doing with Act-On? We’re doing lead nurturing, we’re doing lead scoring, and we’re doing lead attribution. And the way we’re able to do this within Act-On is by using the data that we have on the lead. So if we spoke about nurturing, sending the right email to the right person at the right time, how do I know who’s the right person at the right time, which email to send, is based on the data I have on that lead? And the same with scoring and the same with attribution.

Now all the data that Act-On has is coming either from the website visits because of the beacon code that I have, it’s coming from email opens, email clicks, it’s from data that I’m synchronizing with CRM, whether it be Dynamics, Salesforce, etc. But much of the social data is missing – well, actually, it’s not because you have the Advanced Social Media module. But this data, this social click data, is a whole new dimension that we have in Act-On that’s coming from social media that tells us a lot about our leads, what they like, the content they’re interested in, what triggers them. And we can use this additional dimension of data to enhance the way that we’re nurturing and scoring and attributing our leads within marketing automation.

I’ll give you an example of how these two platforms work together. Let’s say we’re using Oktopost and we scheduled a LinkedIn message. And this LinkedIn message is pointing to an article in the Wall Street Journal that discusses maybe our company, or maybe just our general topic or general area that we play in. So now we have this prospect that might be known in the Act-On database that clicked on a LinkedIn post and went to the Wall Street Journal. But because of the integration between Act-On and Oktopost, that click is now available in Act-On. So Act-On has additional information and different data points about this specific lead.

They know that they’re on LinkedIn. They know what they clicked on, what the topic of the article was, or they went to the Wall Street Journal. And we can use this additional data to help the nurturing and scoring mechanisms, and basically improve the way that we perform those actions within the marketing automation platform.

Michelle: We couldn’t agree more that the two platforms work really well together, as you mentioned, with the advanced social media, and we’re a customer as well with Oktopost.

Daniel: And I think just to add one more thing, Michelle, there was a Forrester report recently. They were discussing that marketers who can’t measure what they’re doing, they’ve got a very hard time maintaining budgets, or even getting new budgets. Because, at the end of the day, when we have a close/won opportunity, we want to go back and say, ‘OK, I have a closed/won, how did I get the lead, what pushed that lead through the funnel, and what influenced this specific sale?’ And if we don’t have all those data points, which is normally recorded inside the marketing automation platform, as we know as marketers, sales are going to take all the credit. So we as marketers, we have to understand and know how to measure all the influence that our marketing activities ‒including social ‒ have on the opportunity pipeline.

Michelle: So, better understanding what you contribute, but then also understanding all the different touch points and influencing that you have with that customer … And bringing up sales and marketing ‒ the whole dynamic: Do you think that there’s a difference in how sales should approach your product or just social media?

Daniel: I think there are two approaches. The difference in social media between sales and marketing, I believe, is that sales is more of a one-to-one connection, if we’re talking about social sales, communicating to prospects, customers, via social media. And marketing is more of a broadcasting onto social media for awareness and to trigger this engagement.

One of the things we see ‒ and at Oktopost we have plugins for Salesforce ‒ we’re working on Dynamics, where the sales reps can see the social journey their prospects are taking. So when we look at the interaction between a prospect and a company, it doesn’t always happen on the website. It doesn’t always happen through emails. It might happen through social. I might be engaging with a company, or not even engaging, just following a company, because I’m interested in their technology, and clicking on their social content, on their tweets, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.

With Oktopost and Act-On and the CRM now all tied together, we can see that social journey within, let’s say Salesforce, for example. So when that salesperson is going to send the next email, pick up the phone and have the next conversation, they can really now have that in the right context that their prospect is interested in because they’re able to see what they’re doing on social media, what links they’re clicking on, and what really triggers them; and it’s a great piece of information to start a new conversation.

Michelle: The richness of that very first conversation that sales can have when they can see what topics have engaged that person in the first place … you just have a much more relevant conversation right from the get go.

If there are customers or companies who are listening right now and they’re thinking, ‘OK, you’ve sold me, I want to start doing a lot more on social,’ any advice for trying to identify what channels work best for them? Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, LinkedIn? Do they have to care? Do you just go try to do all of them at once? What’s the best approach to get started?

Daniel: This is very much individual on a company per company basis. I’ve seen companies where LinkedIn isn’t doing anything for them and they’re getting a lot of leads and lots of traction from Facebook. And then we see the exact opposite. So it’s very, very different. I think first you should try as much as you can, as much as you have the bandwidth for. As we discussed in the very beginning, everything has to be measured. So using a platform like Act-On, like Oktopost, with the Advanced Social Media module, you need to be able to measure which channels are working. Now it’s not only which channels, but what type of content is working.

When we compare this to marketing automation, today it’s basically a no-brainer that, when I’m sending out an email, I want to A/B test the subject line. And why do I A/B test the subject line? Because I know that this is what triggers the open rate of the email. This is like standard practice across the world today. But what about social media? When I’m writing this tweet, when I’m writing a Facebook update, or LinkedIn update, am I A/B testing my content? Am I writing different pieces of content to see what resonates with the audience and what’s getting the most clicks and conversions?

It’s not only between which channels are best for my company, but what type of content is best for my company and best for my audience. So it’s really drilling down and analyzing the data from the macro, which is the channels, all the way down to the actual pieces of content. Let’s say, for example: Twitter with the emoticons, without emoticons, upper case, lower case, exclamation points ‒ what is really getting the most attention out on social media? So you have to really measure everything to understand what works and what doesn’t work.

Michelle: Could you talk a little bit about how you leverage the power of enlisting your entire team to be what you call ‘social advocates’? Maybe you can tell everyone a little bit more about that.

Daniel: At Oktopost, we love social advocacy. And, in addition to the publishing, we have a social advocacy platform. And I can definitely say, Michelle, that our most successful customers understand this hidden secret of using their employees to share the message. So if we said that the number one KPI or the main objective of the CMO is normally lead generation, we can now tap into the advocates to help generate these leads.

So what is advocacy all about? It’s about the marketing team, the corporate marketing, creating social content, and getting this content into the hands of employees or partners ‒ these are normally customer-facing employees, like from the sales, customer success, support, etc. ‒ and having the employees share it on their own LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter networks. Now, what does this do? It benefits for everyone. So it’s really a win/win situation.

One, we have the benefit for the company because they’re getting what we call social amplification. If we take in the social reach of all the employees, this is normally much bigger than the reach of the B2B company itself. So we’re amplifying our social. For advocates, it very much positions them as thought leaders in the industry. If, for example we’re connected on LinkedIn, and you constantly see that I’m updating my LinkedIn with industry-relevant content, it might go through your head that, ‘You know, Daniel is really into this social media stuff; he’s updating his LinkedIn on a daily basis. But what am I doing? I’m just clicking on a button in the advocacy program that shares content that the marketing team wrote.’ So it really positions the advocates as thought leaders.

And, the third thing: Our data isn’t siloed. It’s flowing between social and Act-On and marketing automation, and we can really measure the results of advocacy. And, if I’m running an advocacy program and I’m getting the whole company involved, I want to make sure this is working. I’m not wasting, not only the marketers’ time, but I’m not wasting maybe 200 or 300 employees’ time when they’re sharing the social content on a daily basis. But now when everything is fit into Act-On, every social click, we know if it came from an advocate, if it came from corporate, who wrote the message, what the message was about. We can really see if the advocacy program is working from: Who’s sharing? How many clicks? Are we getting conversions? Is it helping pipeline? And that can definitely help us improve the way we run the advocacy program as well. So we’re big believers in advocacy.

And just one more thing. We see, when we’re looking at the successful advocacy programs, it’s normally compared to online ad spending on social. If we’re considering or maybe we even have existing budgets to spend on social media pay per click, we might be spending $ 5, $ 6, or $ 7 per click, let’s say on LinkedIn. And if we compare the data to the advocacy ‒ so let’s say I just have maybe 100 advocates, and they’re sharing content, and the 100 advocates are getting a conservative 10 clicks a month, super conservative, so it’s 1,000 clicks a month. So 1,000 clicks from LinkedIn and social media, compared with what I’m currently paying LinkedIn or Facebook or Twitter for these clicks, is worth between $ 5,000 and $ 10,000. And I’m getting this almost for free from my advocates themselves.

Michelle: Free ‒ that’s like music to my ears. I think, as a marketer, I love the idea of message and brand amplification. And I think people kind of missed it when you were mentioning your few different points. I think what I love about it is how easily you made it to ask people to be advocates and to share your message. They might do it once, they might do it twice. I love it.

Daniel: It’s definitely easy. And when we look at advocates as a wide spectrum of different levels of advocacy, we have the super social savvy advocates, like they’re on social all day, and then we have maybe a group that, if you give them content to share, they’ll share it. And the nice thing about the advocacy platform is that we can serve all the different types of advocates that we have in the organization. If somebody’s more savvy, they can take the marketing message that the corporate wrote and change it to their own words. Because they feel that if they’re posting on their personal Facebook page, they want it to come from them, and they speak with a different tone or different angle than the company would.

So we see that different advocates, they take it to different levels, what they’re more comfortable with. And the advocacy platform that we have really can be tailored to each one of those different types of advocates.

Michelle: The fact that it is more authentic, it is another person, it’s their personal channel, how you can actually take your message and put it in their words for their network, is the best of both worlds. Well, I thought this was awesome. I always learn so much more about social media when I talk to you, Daniel. Thank you so much for taking the time today

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Customer Lifecycle Metrics, Part 4: Convert, and Create a Customer

February 6, 2017   CRM News and Info
Customer Lifecycle Metrics Part 4 Convert and Create a Customer Customer Lifecycle Metrics, Part 4: Convert, and Create a Customer

This is part four in a series of five blog posts that examines the metrics you should measure throughout the five stages of the customer lifecycle: attract, capture, nurture, convert, and expand. 

Conversion – now that’s where the action happens. By this stage in the customer lifecycle, you’ve gathered up your prospects and nurtured them along the journey. They’ve become better educated and informed about your products and/or services, and your sales team is having more relevant conversations with them. Everything is going smoothly, and the lead pipeline is pumping out sales qualified leads – the kind of prospects that are ready to buy. Isn’t that the only metric that matters? Not quite. In part four of this series on customer lifecycle metrics, we’ll focus on the metrics that measure how well you’re converting leads into customers and creating new revenue.

The conversion stage can be a precarious part of the marketing lifecycle. It’s usually during this stage that the lead is handed from marketing, where it has been nurtured, to sales, where the nurturing continues and the deal is closed. And that handoff is a challenge for many organizations.

In a 2013 survey, Forrester Research asked B2B marketing execs about the quality of collaboration between sales and marketing, and 57% reported weak or mixed collaboration with sales when “defining lead qualification criteria” and “administering leads and lead pipelines.”

It’s not surprising to discover that marketing and sales continue to struggle with alignment. According to the new report from Gleanster and Act-On, sales alignment remains an issue. In fact, the survey found that 90% of B2B marketers surveyed indicated that marketing alignment with sales was a top challenge – one that was causing them to struggle to achieve their marketing objectives. This lack of alignment creates inefficiency and results in fragmented communications with customers.

On the other hand, the benefits of alignment can be significant. SiriusDecisions found that B2B organizations with tightly aligned sales and marketing operations achieved 24% faster three- year revenue growth, as well as 27% faster three-year profit growth.

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