Thursday, November 30, 2017

5 Ways to Ensure Your Fancy Site Doesn’t Suck

Macromedia has a lot to answer for. Flash may be on the way out; but flashy websites reminiscent of the ’90s are very much alive and kicking. They just use JavaScript now. And they take up a lot of bandwidth.

Okay, I promise that this won’t be yet another rant extolling the virtues of minimalism, and websites that are hard to break. I mean, I prefer them. I always will. However, I am coming to realize that we minimalism-loving designers are outnumbered by designers who like to make things move around the screen (excessively), and the customers who hire them to do it.

you can make your websites all kinds of fancy, while still making sure they don’t suck

Just look at any of my portfolio review articles. Fancy, “flashy” websites are here to stay, and they’re going to eat our data plans alive. You blew it up! Goddamn you a… okay, that’s out of my system.

All hope is not lost, however. Best practices are still a thing. There are still ways you can make your websites all kinds of fancy, while still making sure they don’t suck. Here are some basic tips for making sure your dynamic, power-point-style, parallax extravaganza still converts users instead of frustrating them:

1. Use Moderation

Fancy effects stand out more when they’re not everywhere. When everything is animated, then animated stuff isn’t all that special, is it? Try to limit the number of elements on your page that get hit with the innovation stick. If that’s not an option, make elements that users have to interact with fancier and flashier than other elements. Use more subtle animation for hero images, and especially for anything in the background.

Limiting the number of things you animate or otherwise make fancy will drastically decrease the amount of time spent optimizing your site for speed. It can also drastically reduce the cognitive load on your user’s brains, as they spend less time figuring out what they can or can’t tap on.

2. Navigation Should Never Be Too Fancy

It’s frustrating to do the same thing over and over. Navigation patterns all tend to look the same, even more than other website elements. It can feel like there’s no innovation. It can be tempting to go wild with new ideas for website navigation.

You might enjoy creating new design patterns; but users do not like learning them

Here’s the problem: you still need to make sure every user can find exactly what they’re looking for, as quickly as possible. The more unfamiliar your navigation becomes, the harder it is for users to find what they want. You might enjoy creating new design patterns; but users do not like learning them. This is triply true if they’re in a hurry.

Make everything else on the site as wild as you want. Go nuts! But navigation should always be the easiest thing on your site.

3. Make a Fallback For Everything

Do you have a JavaScript workaround for CSS that isn’t fully supported yet? Make a fallback for it. Have a slideshow? Fallback. Animated background? Fallback. I’m going to assume you’ve gotten the idea now.

To put it bluntly, if any part of your site breaks when the JavaScript does, you have failed. And JavaScript does break. If things go really wrong, it can break for thousands of users at a time. The only reasonably foolproof site is one that remains functional even when JavaScript does not.

Let’s take it further: Your site should ideally be functional even if the CSS doesn’t load. Yes, it’s an old argument; but is it really any less valid for its age? The job of any good designer or developer is to make sure their client’s site is usable under the widest possible range of conditions.

So yeah… fallbacks. Learn to love them.

4. Optimize For Speed

Okay, I know I’ve been over this before, but the more fancy schmancy stuff you put into a site, the more important speed becomes. It’s really bad enough that people are using pre-loaders on websites again. Once everything is loaded, everything should run fast.

Forget the classic examples of low-end phones and old desktops. There are Chromebooks being sold even now with only two gigabytes of RAM. 2GB. That’s it. For an OS based on Chrome, one of the world’s most notorious RAM hogs. Even Android phones with only two gigabytes are starting to feel slow and sluggish. Running a laptop on similar specs is basically lunacy.

But it’s still your job to make sure your site loads and runs reasonably fast on those weird, sad little laptops. Your Chromebook-loving users aren’t going to give you a free pass if the site you build doesn’t work for them.

5. Don’t Skip User Testing

You’ve thought outside the box. You’ve broken the mold. You’ve made something new and unique. Look at you go! Now test it… with people. The more fancy and outlandish your design, the more it needs to be tested on regular people, especially those outside the design industry. Even if your site is targeted directly to designers and no one else, designers are busy people. Busy people don’t have time to learn a whole new way of browsing.

Conclusion

The only reason I don’t tend to like showy websites with lots of extras is because every extra feature is another chance for your site to break. That’s it. That’s the only reason. I have seen far too many that basically leave the user with a blank home page if anything goes wrong at all.

It doesn’t have to be like that. Your site can be as robust as it is pretty, dynamic, and innovative. It’s just gonna take some extra work. That work is worth it.

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Wednesday, November 29, 2017

7 Trials and Tribulations Of Email Outreach

It’s the grand old way of getting your website noticed online, but despite its long-in-the-tooth reputation, the effectiveness of email outreach is showing no signs of slowing down – despite what some experts might have us believe.

An old-fashioned email campaign can seem like the loneliest method of promotion available in the 21st Century. It’s not unusual to write thousands of outreach emails knowing full well that well over half of your messages will never even be read.

Neil Patel believes that a reasonable expectation from an outreach campaign is to get around five links for every 100 emails sent, amounting to a success rate of 5%. Meaning that 95% of the time you spend composing messages and hitting that ‘send’ button will be a fruitless endeavor.

So why do we bother? In a world where cold emailing is heavily frowned upon, and a third of all emails are opened based solely on whether the recipient likes the subject line or not, you could be forgiven for thinking that it might all be just a waste of time and resources.

However, this isn’t the case. Email outreach is an extremely powerful tool when correctly utilized, but effective email etiquette is a minefield – and many people struggle to run engaging campaigns.

So it’s for this reason that I’ve decided to offer a list of the seven biggest trials and tribulations that face email marketers today.

1. Making Sure your Campaign isn’t too Spammy

It’s the first and perhaps the biggest point to make. Absolutely nobody wants to be on the receiving end of a cold email. They’re annoying, irritating, frustrating and every other synonym of awful. Think about cold calls – where you pick up the phone and listen to somebody with no idea of whom you are speaking from a script with the intent of getting you to give their business money. It’s soulless and often insulting. The cold email is just that in written form.

Like with many websites that aim to expand their network, we try to avoid the risks that come with cold emailing by adding a personal touch to our campaigns. It’s a tricky business because personalization takes time, but if you treat your target audience with respect, it can pay dividends.

In a bid to reach out to people personally, while keeping our quantity of outreach emails high, we’ve constructed a template to customize based on the individual we’re contacting. This enables us to utilize a personal touch that impersonal general marketing emails are devoid of. Here is the one we’re using:

Hey NAME,

Hope you’re doing well!

My name is Dmytro Spilka, and I’m a Head Wizard at Solvid, an Inbound Marketing Blog based in London, UK.

I recently stumbled upon your post on POST TITLE (LINK TO THE POST), and found it incredibly useful. In the post (point #7 to be precise), you mentioned a POST THEY’VE MENTIONED by NAME OF THE PERSON THEY’VE MENTIONED. Although it’s a great resource, it feels slightly outdated and incomplete to some extent.

Anyway, the reason I’m contacting is that I’ve recently put together YOUR POST TITLE (YOUR POST LINK). SOMETHING UNIQUE ABOUT YOUR POST. Basically, did everything to create the ultimate go-to resource.

In fact, our post has been recommended by Rand Fishkin (founder of Moz), Brian Dean of Backlinko and Smart Blogger (BE HONEST HERE).

I would really appreciate if you could please take a second to scan our post and see whether it could be of any help to you and your audience as an additional resource.

Apologies for eating up your time!

Best Wishes,

Dmytro

Web: https://solvid.co.uk
Email: hello@solvid.co.uk

As you can see above, we’re using a few personal touches.

  • The actual name of the person. Believe it or not, a lot of ‘outreachers’ use phrases like Dear Webmaster, Hello Editor, Hi Sir, etc.
  • We’re mentioning the exact location in the article where they’ve mentioned a resource. This shows that we’ve actually looked at the article and know what it’s about.
  • We’re using influencers to add value to our resource. Be honest here. If, in fact, your post hasn’t been featured or mentioned by anyone – don’t make it up – this can easily undermine your credibility.

2. Nailing the Subject Line

The importance of the subject line can’t be emphasized enough. This is your big hook to get the recipients to read on – and there are plenty of theories behind the recipe for an irresistible heading.

Convince and Convert state that 69% of recipients report emails as spam based solely on the subject line, while 35% open emails because of the allure of the heading. These are substantial figures that underline the importance of the few words that pop up first in your recipients’ inboxes – so nailing your subject line is imperative.

So what’s the secret formula behind the perfect email subject? Throwing their two cents into the ring is Adestra, which believes that the use of words like ‘Alert’, ‘Daily’ and ‘Free Delivery’ bring marketers the best responses.

However, our outreach campaigns try to show honesty without the use of superfluous superlatives – our subject line is simple:

‘Typical outreach email’ shows that we have no interest in click-baiting our intended audience. It also indicates that we have enough faith in our service that we don’t need to rely on tricks of the trade to lure prospective customers in. That being said, email subjects will vary on a case-by-case basis. Hence, we’d suggest to A/B test different subject lines to see which one performs better. In our tests, ‘Typical outreach email’ performed much better, improving an open rate by roughly 20-30%.

3. Optimizing your Open Rate

You could be marketing the best product or service on the web, but if your open rate is lacking then it means that your recipients aren’t interested enough to even look beyond the subject line of your emails.

According to research conducted by MailChimp, the average open rate varies between 20 – 25% – depending on the industry you’re in. This is unsurprising and disappointing in equal measure, but it’s also a great benchmark to incorporate a bit of trial and error into your campaign.

All sorts of factors can influence your open rate, from the aforementioned subject line, to the relevance of your target audience, to the time of day that you send your emails out (no, really – RingLead have compiled stats that suggest the sweet spot for posting outreach mail is between 2 pm and 5 pm on a Tuesday afternoon).

Premium services like reply.io, buzzstream and outreach.io not only offer the opportunity to personalize automatic outreach emails, but also provide very useful stats on open rates and click-through rates, allowing you to monitor what aspects of your campaign is working better than others and giving you the chance to fine-tune your messages.

For instance, here are some open rate stats for our latest outreach campaign:

In all honestly, 71% open rate is pretty decent (even our regular email subscribers aren’t that active).

4. Sussing out Whom to Target

Figuring out whom to target is risky business – if you pick the wrong recipients, then you’re in danger of wasting valuable time.

There are many great services that can scout out relevant email addresses to aid your campaign, and hunter.io is a good example that offers a free email search engine (albeit with limited usage for non-premium members).

A good alternative to hunter.io is Voila Norbert.

To find an email address, simply enter the name of the person and a domain name of the company they work at.

Although the information isn’t 100% accurate all the time, this way of finding the right email address can save a lot of time, especially if that particular domain has hundreds of registered emails.

5. Finding the actual recipients

It pays to be attentive in finding which website staff to email – if you believe your blog has a resource that you feel should be added to a website’s list, you could contact the author of an existing article in which you believe your site would make a good reference point. However, a generic ask for a link would not bring the numbers, as it’s likely to be regarded as spam. Answer the following questions before asking for an inclusion of your link:

  1. Is the site relevant to my resource?
  2. Is my resource of an exceptional quality and is better than the rest?
  3. Does the site look trustworthy?
  4. Do I have the name of the website owner or the author of the article?
  5. Do I have the right email address?
  6. When was it published? If the article is 4-5 years old, it’s very unlikely that someone will update it for the sake of one additional resource.
  7. Did I use enough personal touches? See point 1 for examples.

If only 2-3 of these questions fall under the category of ‘No’ or ‘Negative’ then it’s not worth the effort outreaching – simply because your email will appear spammy.

You need to be observant – if you’re targeting an author of an article that you feel your work would benefit as a reference, be sure to check whether the author is a guest poster or a member of staff for the business. If it’s the former, you’d be better off contacting the editor – though getting in touch with the original content producer may lead to your work being linked in future publications.

Many websites now shy away from publishing emails of editors and content producers in favor of using website contact forms, but if you’re looking to get your posts or resources noticed, the best way of having your message read by those who matter is to find the details of the content producers themselves.

6. Keeping on Top of Your Follow-Ups

It can be easy to neglect a follow up to your outreach email. If the recipient didn’t want to reply the first time, why would they bother a second time? While chasing a less responsive target may seem counter-intuitive, it works as a great simple call to action and indicates to them that you’re serious about showing off your work.

Our follow up template is a simplified reminder of our original email – our intention is to drop a subtle reminder that we have a great product that would benefit the user and their readership:

Hey NAME,

Just a quick follow-up on a message I sent earlier (attached below) about our awesome POST TITLE (LINK TO THE POST): I would really appreciate to hear back from you.

Best Wishes,

Dmytro

Web: https://solvid.co.uk
Email: hello@solvid.co.uk

We use the reply function on our initial email for ease of reference for the recipient, while including a transparent subject line informing our target that we’re simply following up to an original email.

It’s important to refrain from trigger-happy follow-ups. Becoming a nuisance outreacher risks alienating your audience and even damaging your reputation. Therefore, we wouldn’t suggest going for more than 2 follow-ups after the initial outreach email.

7. Managing the Scale of Outreach

The business of outreach is a long-winded one that carries no guarantee of success. You could invest days of hard work into emailing 1000s of recipients and receive no interest in return.

Luckily you can maximize your chances of success and minimize the time spent chasing poor leads by doing a little bit of market research.

Try to understand who your target would be and whether they would have any affiliates or backlinks that would also benefit from utilizing your work or service.

It’s better to have 100 quality recipients than 1,000 poorly researched ones – this is how we got 20-25% success rate of our latest email outreach campaign.

We like to run tidy outreach campaigns, so take the preemptive measure of identifying leads to investigate to assess whether associated websites would benefit from using our work. If we feel that they would, we add their information to our spreadsheet and invite them to take a look at a relevant piece that would make a good reference point.

Conclusion

So there you have it – with some good prep and honest marketing, the age-old slog of email outreach doesn’t have to be such a pain.

As long as you’re outreaching to a relevant personal with a resource that can potentially bring value to that website’s audience while keeping your emails reasonably personal (without being too creepy), you should see a positive return for the time spent.

Now it’s time to get out there and put your website on the map!

 

About Kissmetrics

Kissmetrics combines behavioral analytics with email automation. Our software tracks actions of your users across multiple devices allowing you to analyze, segment and engage your customers with automatic, behavior-based emails in one place. We call it Customer Engagement Automation. Get, keep and grow more customers with Kissmetrics.

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About the Author: Dmytro is a Head Wizard at Solvid, a creative inbound marketing & software development agency in London, UK. His work has been featured and mentioned in a wide range of publication, including The Next Web, Business2Community, Huff Post, Crazy Egg, Sitepoint, SEMRush, and more.

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How Designers & Copywriters Can Collaborate (and Why They Should)

The online world is dynamic and constantly evolving. One method holds the high ground today only to lose it tomorrow. But in spite of this volatile nature, one thing remains the sine qua non of online success: Content.

However, the question remains whether there’s a type of web content which is one-size-fits-all.

The short answer is no.

Big brands beat online competition by churning out high-quality content—well-knitted text and visuals in the form of blog posts—as a tool for lead generation. Doing this, they know that using a one-way approach to content creation in today’s age of big data and visual culture will take them nowhere.

Let’s face it, designer-copywriter collaboration is a great idea every freelancer or solopreneur operating in the digital marketing world should consider, for creating good web content.

Here’s a thumbnail analysis of why, and the benefits of going down that road.

All-in-one Content Offers Greater Value

Because the Internet is jam-packed, attention is perhaps the most expensive thing online. According to Jakob Nielsen, an average web visitor is likely to read only 20-28% of a blog post. The only power to extend the duration lies in truly compelling content.

And what is that? Any beautifully crafted article that’s saturated with high-value, attention-grabbing images and visuals.

But if you’ve never tried this before, you might doubt its efficiency. Luckily for you, experts say that articles with images get 94% more total views than text-only posts. And there’s more: infographics deliver up to 120-180% more engagement thereby increasing viewers’ retention, engagement and, ultimately, sales.

Better Illustrations

What makes the above possible is the extraordinary power of visual content in making a digestible illustration of textual messages. Indeed, “a picture is worth a thousand words.”

It’s not only about illustration, however. Readers retain 65% of any information three days later, when communicated through visuals.

Text-Visual Content is Brain Friendly

One of the top reasons why brands go blogging is to provide sufficient insights, thus making it easier for prospects to comprehend how their products and services work. Simply put, the method yields well, as 37% of marketers say visuals are essential form of content.

The reason, is that the human brain processes visual data 60,000 times quicker than text. Brain Rules also notes that:

We [human beings] are incredible at remembering pictures. Hear a piece of information, and three days later you’ll remember 10% of it. Add a picture and you’ll remember 65%.

It’s clear: web visitors do not struggle to remember details when they’re given all-inclusive memorable content.

SEO, SEO, SEO

Visual content is just so amazing. Going from merely adding glamour to a blog post, to creating other essential values, visuals can boost webpage ranks on search engines when seamlessly integrated into a body of valuable text.

If SEO were key to content marketing success, creating all-inclusive content is a task that you cannot ignore – and that’s easier done through collaborative efforts, both from SEO and ROI perspectives.

Why Collaboration Matters

The significance of having the right visuals alongside written content has become more evident. However, choosing the wrong content is as disadvantageous as having none. If you find yourself falling victim to such issues, or copyright infringement, it’s probably time to partner with an expert designer and up the game like a pro.

When graphic artists and copywriters work together, they can both flourish. Part of the reason is that design connects directly with the side of the brain that is responsible for creative thinking, image recognition and such like, while writing occupies the other side that handles logic and critical thinking.

For any content to hook prospects and compel immediate action, these forces must come together. And to get the best results designers and copywriters should not transfer works, but handle it side-by-side.

Other Benefits

There’s a plethora of them, but following are the key benefits of copywriter-designer collaborations:

Unlocking New Ideas

According to William and Phyllis Mack of the Mack Institute for Innovation Management, choosing the right partners is the first step to successful innovation:

In today’s globalized business environment, firms are no longer developing innovations in a vacuum. Instead, companies often work with partners from all over the world to develop innovative strategies and products.

Are innovative ideas important to copywriters and designers? There’s no other answer than yes, and experience has shown that more ideas emerge when these sets of creatives work together.

Even in science, it’s easier to make new discoveries when scientists share ideas rather than working as a lone genius. “The best ideas don’t come from working in a silo,” says Michele Kamenar.

Enabling Premium Service / Increased Authority

To deliver excellent service and drive better bottom line results for all parties, you probably know already that you cannot thrive in isolation as a copywriter or designer. You must collaborate!

Sara Duane-Gladden of Specky Boy says:

The jobs of copywriters and designers are very similar. They are both masters of their crafts. They express complex concepts and ideas in bite-sized bits that convey meaning in a moment. The fact that one does all this with words while the other accomplishes it with images isn’t important: They are kindred, creative spirits that can amplify their abilities when they work together.

So if you do not want to keep going back and forth, but rather accelerate quality service and build more authority, you should collaborate.

Reducing the Burden

As a copywriter with a long list of deadlines, you’re always on the search for an expert designer to turn some text into visuals. Found one, you’re still not off the hook. You keep reviewing because only an impeccable job would satisfy your clients and win you more referrals. On the other hand, a designer goes through a similar situation each time there’s a need to come up with a masterpiece that would complement an infographic or other visuals.

The process can be time-consuming and difficult. With collaboration, however, it can be lessened and streamlined. In fact, a teamwork approach will enhance efficiency on both sides.

Growing from Solopreneur Status to an Agency

Successful collaboration offers a chance for freelancers to move to the next level of establishing an agency.

A freelance copywriter with a web design expert needs only a person who offers technical SEO. Why not add that, combine all the skills, start an agency, get more clients and charge more?

Going Forward

Designers and copywriters are important personalities in the world of digital business. Media and SEO companies, PR organizations, marketing and advertising agencies, all need them to meet their bottom line.

If you’re one, not only can you generate new ideas through efficient collaboration, you can also increase the quality of your service, minimize the hassles, and expand your business.

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Tuesday, November 28, 2017

3 Shortcuts for Business Owners to Market Effectively Without Wasting Time

9-to-5 jobs are never truly 9-5.

There’s always something that comes up that needs to get done. ASAP. No questions asked.

Thank your boss for that one. Actually, don’t. That’s probably not a good idea.

But running a business is a whole new level of busy. Being a business owner in today’s world is damn near impossible.

Want to have a normal work-life balance? Good joke.

Need to take a vacation to refresh your brain? Sure. If you’re okay with a business-level apocalypse.

Family asking you to go apple picking this weekend? It ain’t happening.

As a small business owner, you’ve got to run every single department, constantly making sure everything’s running smoothly.

That means creating new content, generating big ideas, speaking with clients, landing sales, checking emails, running marketing reports.

The list goes on.

You simply don’t have enough time in the day to complete all of these tasks.

You can’t scale your business to new heights if you ignore any of them though.

They need to get done. Your business and livelihood literally depend on it.

So what do you do?

You need to automate. Put boring, tedious, time-consuming tasks on autopilot to save yourself hours every week.

Marketing automation isn’t easy, but it’s necessary if you want to scale your business without dying from sleep deprivation.

Here are the reasons why you need marketing automation and three tips for small business owners to automate and scale.

How marketing automation can be your saving grace

Marketing automation is just what it sounds like: automating marketing-based tasks.

If you’re not too familiar with marketing automation, here’s a simple definition from Google:

The goal is to save you time and increase your ROI.

Automation does this by cutting out time spent on tedious processes. Meaning you’re using less labor. And less labor means less overhead.

But here’s the biggest benefit of all:

Less time spent working means more time looking at pugs.

Yes, it’s a real addiction that affects thousands every year (source: N/A).

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The more you can automate, the better.

According to the latest data, the vast majority of marketers using marketing automation strategies are successful in achieving their objectives:

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Another study discovered that 50% of marketers using automation tools found either some increases or massive increases in leads:

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But effectively gaining leads isn’t all that comes with marketing automation.

It shouldn’t even be the main focus.

Sure, it’s great that marketing automation can increase leads; don’t get me wrong.

That’s amazing.

But the goal here is to reduce time spent working without reducing profit.

If you don’t see a massive spike in leads, but you’re cutting out 10 hours of marketing work each week with automation, you’re effectively increasing profit by reducing labor.

See what I mean?

Even if the process doesn’t generate 10x the amount of leads, you’re spending less on labor.

Less labor = less overhead = more profit.

This is where people tend to go wrong. When you only focus on lead increases, you lose sight of profit and business growth.

There are dozens of ways to achieve profit and growth that don’t include landing more clients.

And according to Aberdeen, companies using marketing automation can reduce their marketing-to-close time by 49%.

That potentially means completing your work in half the time.

If you’re strapped for time and haven’t slept in weeks, it’s time to implement marketing automation.

It will not only cut down on your working hours, but it’ll also reduce your labor costs and help you generate more leads.

Here are three great ways you can automate your growth today.

1. Automate your Content Promotion

Content promotion is critical to business growth.

When it comes to driving new organic traffic and leads, nothing competes with top-notch content.

But having good content alone won’t always drive traffic.

So most marketers turn to promotion on social channels like Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

All of these platforms are an easy way to generate more leads.

But it takes time. And lot’s of it.

In fact, Statista found that the majority of marketers are spending anywhere from one to 10 hours per week on social media.

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By scheduling content and loading it into your Buffer queue, you can quickly waste a few hours every week.

Coming up with tweets and trying to squeeze your content into 140 characters sucks.

Especially when you’re re-sharing that post five different ways.

Content sharing is a necessary process that’s tedious and often time-consuming.

On top of that, it doesn’t always equate to a perfect return on investment.

So it’s sometimes thrown on the backburner.

But that’s not an option in today’s world that’s obsessed with social media.

Thanks to marketing automation, it doesn’t have to be.

You can automatically share content from your blog to social media without lifting a finger.

Here’s how.

Start by creating an account with Zapier.

It’s a popular automation tool that connects thousands of different SaaS tools that you use daily.

Once you make an account, click on the explore tab and head to the “Marketers” section:

Next, you should be able to locate the following “Zap,” or automation process:

This is legitimately a life saver.

If social media is the bane of your existence, you will save hours every week from trying to post and come up with new ideas.

Click “Use This Zap” to start a new automation workflow.

Next, you’ll have to link your public blog RSS feed.

If you’re not sure what that is, you can set up an RSS feed in just a few minutes with this Google tutorial.

After plugging in your feed URL, you can head to the “Action” step, which is where your social post will happen:

All you have to do here is link your account, and you’re good to go.

So next time you publish a blog post on your site, Zapier will trigger this automation process and craft a tweet for you instantly.

You can use this automation technique for all of your social channels. If you don’t want to use an RSS feed, Zapier allows you to connect WordPress too:

Ditch the hours spent crafting tweets and social posts. Automate it instead.

2. Only Focus on the Important Emails

If you’re like me, you spend too much time checking your email.

It’s obviously not because you want to, but simply because your inbox is jammed with emails.

HubSpot’s latest research shows us that marketers spend an average of nearly four hours just sending emails every week.

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That doesn’t include checking your email. That’s just typing and sending emails.

Brutal.

Email sucks. It’s boring and often filled with junk.

Yet, your iPhone is blowing up every two minutes from new emails, distracting you from the task at hand and killing your productivity.

So, how do you only get notifications for the important stuff? How do you cut out those nearly 4 hours of sending emails each week?

By automating your email process.

In Zapier, you can set up an automation workflow that allows you to get notified only when specific people email you:

Do you have important clients that email you frequently?

Or even employees that ask time-sensitive questions?

Then you need this. It’s extremely easy to set up, too.

Click “Use This Zap” to get started. Be sure to connect your Gmail account to Zapier and select your work email as the inbox.

Next, you need to type in the search string that will trigger this process.

For example, you can enter a few different search strings:

Try using direct email addresses from clients, employees, or even another boss (like your significant other).

You can also set up simple subject lines like “from:client name.”

Once you save this automation workflow, you’ll get pinged on Slack whenever an important email comes in.

Meaning you can respond instantly and only spend time on the most important emails.

So silence your email notifications, get some work done, and respond to the big-ticket clients.

Stop spending four hours weekly on email with this automation tip.

3. Automate your lead flow

Collecting leads is awesome.

You just drove some quality traffic to your site and converted a few of them.

Great. Now what?

Do you download the data and upload it into a CRM? Or into your favorite email campaign platform?

Lead flow processes can quickly become tedious and time-consuming.

From downloading, formatting, and uploading lists, you could be spending hours on it weekly.

Plus, if you don’t follow up with a lead fast, you risk losing them.

Automation is critical when it comes to perfecting a lead flow.

From automatically sending nurturing emails to uploading lists without doing the work, you can quickly cut down your hours.

One of my favorite Zapier integrations is adding new sales leads directly to a CRM or email platform without doing the actual work.

You have much more important things to do besides uploading lists and creating new campaigns.

With Zapier, you can actually automatically upload new leads from your site or social media ads directly into a CRM or email campaign.

Zapier is great for this simply because of the integrations they offer.

You can connect it with the top services like MailChimp, HubSpot, and more.

If you use it, they most likely have it.

This is one of my favorite Zaps:

If you don’t use Constant Contact or Gravity Forms, don’t fret.

You can connect nearly anything with Zapier.

This is just an example of two integrations that are amazing.

If you set up this Zap, you are automating the process of lead gen to nurturing without ever having to worry about it.

With your favorite email platform, you can usually turn on settings to send newly-added leads a welcome email, too.

Meaning you are virtually skipping these steps:

Checking your leads, downloading the lead list, formatting it for your platform, uploading it, creating and sending a new campaign.

That’s potentially hours of work every week.

If you’re a lazy business owner like me, you can get tons of value from automating lead flows.

Conclusion

Running a small business is one of the toughest ventures you can embark on. Besides kids.

Don’t get me started.

From sleepless nights (or weeks) to chasing the ever elusive “work-life balance,” you’re always strapped for time. Your plate is constantly full to the point where nothing gets done.

Your workload exceeds human capabilities. And unless you’ve got the hookup on some new age brain transplant technology, you’ve only got one option:

Automation.

If you notice that tasks are piling up and taking up your time, you need to automate.

Do you want your business to have any shot at scaling and achieving new growth? If so, you’ve gotta cut out the junk that, though necessary, doesn’t directly contribute to growth.

But you can’t ignore it full scale. You just need to automate it, filter it out, or delete it entirely.

Freeing up time doesn’t just save you time. It can also help make you a lot more money in the long run.
 

About Kissmetrics

Kissmetrics combines behavioral analytics with email automation. Our software tracks actions of your users across multiple devices allowing you to analyze, segment and engage your customers with automatic, behavior-based emails in one place. We call it Customer Engagement Automation. Get, keep and grow more customers with Kissmetrics.

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About the Author: Brad Smith is the founder of Codeless, a B2B content creation company. Frequent contributor to Kissmetrics, Unbounce, WordStream, AdEspresso, Search Engine Journal, Autopilot, and more.

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Ultimate UX Design Guide to SaaS On-Boarding, Part 4: First Login

This is the 4th part of The Ultimate UX Design Guide to SaaS Customer On-Boarding.

SaaS Customer On-boarding is the process that users have to experience while initiating their journey on a company’s software application. Customer on-boarding initiates from the experience that employees previously had to undergo while joining a firm. The on-boarding process sets the tone for a good user experience.

Long story short, special emphasis should be given to making the on-boarding process as flawless as possible.

The SaaS customer on-boarding process is based on 6 comprehensive aspects, the first three of which we’ve already covered:

  1. Sign up Form
  2. Welcome Email
  3. Drip Campaigns
  4. First Login & Product Tutorial
  5. Data Import & Notifications
  6. Check up calls & Swag

All the aspects of the process play an equally important part in forming a desirable reputation of the brand in the eyes of the customers during the on-boarding process.

Today we will be focusing on First Login & Product Tutorial.

First Login

I cannot stress the importance of crafting a first login experience to delight your customer enough. The first login experience is where you should be looking if you want your churn rate to go down.

Rules of Thumb:

  • Do not present your user with a UI that is empty. You need to keep that in mind because with a SaaS product that is B2B oriented, the user isn’t going to have everything in front of him from the beginning. Services requiring extant data to function will need that step to be performed after first login.
  • Give clear directions to users for what they should be doing first. They are completely new to the interface so they would need a nod in the direction of the first step.
  • They have gotten to this point—it would be great to thank them again and tell them of how cool it’s going to be, once they have set up everything.

The first log-in screen at Mention is a great example of this. The dashboard is not empty, there are immediate options with simple captions that you can explore and there’s a very clear CTA at the end, which directs you to create your first alert.

Product Tutorial

An initial tutorial can be a great way to start building a rapport with your customer, now that you’ve gotten your first login. Depending on how you design your tutorial, you can quickly familiarise them with the interface of your app so that they can get down to using it.

Rules of Thumb:

  • Users have to be able to skip it. Going through a tutorial that cannot be skipped can really turnoff your user. If they don’t want to see it just yet, they should have the choice of opting out.
  • It should always be something that users can revisit. It is very common to skip any pop up or notification upon logging in for the first time; users just want to start getting their hands dirty. Just ensure that it can be easily located.

These are some guiding principles that you should keep in mind when designing your first log-in page and product tutorial(s).

Making the Experience an Improvement

A famous programmer called Kathy Sierra says that the app should be able to make its users amazing at something within the initial five minutes of using that app. Ultimately the user should be taking an action that causes a result relevant to your business. Try to generate an experience that would be bound to bring the user back.

User Communication

You want to establish a relationship with the user that is of mutual benefit to both of you. That happens when you begin to communicate with them frequently and that too in the initial stages. The product tutorial is one of the easiest ways to establish that channel of communication. Ideally a product tutorial should accomplish:

  • Basic Guidance on how to use the software
  • Allow the user to do something really cool
  • Do this within as limited a time frame as 1-2 minutes

One of the best examples of this is Canva.

1. The sign up is simplicity itself. You can create an account by just giving your email address or use a social media sign in (Recall our discussion on Sign Up Flows)

2. Decide what you want to start doing. There’s a general orientation that you can select at the beginning that will affect the images in Canva’s database that you will get to see initially.

3. The guide starts. How long will it take? 23 seconds. As soon as you click “Show me how it’s done”, a tutorial will guide you through the simple drag and drop process of selecting an image and modifying it. As mentioned above, the defaults are “intelligent” ones. A graphic is created for you and then you’re invited to give it a try.

4. The interface is colourful, engaging and very easy to use. You’re immediately looking at the Beginner’s Challenge, which attracts the user even more.

5. Finally, you get to do something fun, like selecting a hat that you drag onto a monkey’s head! The whole process takes under a minute, and you’ve already mastered the basics of using Canva.

Within 23 seconds, Canva manages to capture the attention of its users. The interface is intuitive. The tutorial is simplicity itself as it shows the process of dragging and dropping images from its database, adding the relevant headings and downloading the image. It then gets the user to do the same. It’s light hearted as well as it gets you to put a hat on a monkey!

Analytics

You can analyse the effectiveness of your first sign in and product tutorial. The sign in and product tutorial can be grouped into an experience called the first run experience. The series of steps that need to be taken can be defined and then you can do something called funnel analytics to evaluate the effectiveness of the experience. Tools I would recommend in order to build and measure your funnel are Mixpanel or Amplitude. The idea of funnel is that many users enter the beginning of the user experience and a few come out at the end.

Measure user progress through the experience by observing the completion rates for each step.

So usually, you’ll get rates of completion that look something like this:

  • Step 1: 1,773 people
  • Step 2: 1,701 people
  • Step 3: 1,399 people
  • Step 4: 1,211 people
  • Step 5: 1,152 people

Now it’s between Step 2 and 3 that a lot of people opted out of the user experience, which indicates that that’s the area where you should focus.

In this way you can refine your first login experience so that it retains the most users.

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Source

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