Page conversion rates have ALWAYS been a problem. The simple fact is most people don’t convert even on the most optimized pages. 

What’s why traditional retargeting on ad networks has been so dang powerful. While retargeted leads come cheap, they still aren’t free. Worse, you’re back competing against your competition in the ol’ ad auction system. 

For the last 6 years, I’ve been using a tactic called Inbox Retargeting to identify who lands on my key pages and directly reach out to them in their inbox. 

No more ads. No more auctions. Just a targeted contact that showed they were interested, but didn’t quite take the leap yet. 

Before I dive into the “What’s” and “How’s”, this tactic can only be used in the good ol’ US of A. If you aren’t in the states or don’t have clients in the states, you’re out of luck. Sorry! 

How It Works

Inbox retargeting doesn’t take a lot of heavy lifting. I’ll share the strategy next but I wanted to start with some of the logistics. 

DISCLAIMER: I am not a lawyer or coder, so keep that in mind if technical or legal questions pop up. 

If you have a website, you have tracking scripts, e.g.,  GA4, the Facebook Pixel, Heatmap software, etc…

To get started with Inbox retargeting, you just need to be able to copy and paste two scripts on your site: 

• A collection script: This fires and tries to identify the visitor

A suppression script: You’d fire this on your conversion confirmation pages, you don’t want people who converted to land in your Inbox Retargeting campaigns.

The tech works off of a database of contacts in the United States that are eligible for emails, so it’s completely above board with your ESP. However, you’ll want to do a few things before you start treating them like a regular member of your email list. 

We initially tested this on one of our paid media campaigns. We already had a really strong campaign that we wanted to squeeze more leads out of…and boy did we. 

We were driving traffic from Meta (Facebook for the OGs) to this landing page:

This page converts at 58%. Yeah, that’s a humble brag…deal with it. 

Even with a 58% conversion rate, we’re still missing out on 42% of the traffic we’ve already paid for. That’s kind of a bummer. 

After we added the collection script to the page, they were able to capture a lot more leads. The conversion rate jumped from 58% to a very sweet 87% – that’s a 50% increase! 

That was the impact on a single page, that’s when we knew it was time to go bigger. 

The Strategy

Most of the tools out there, whether it’s Retention.com or Customers.ai, are going to charge based on the number of contacts. So it can get pretty easy to burn through contact credits if you run the script on every page you manage, your site and your clients’ sites included. 

That’s why you’ll want to make sure to select pages that capture intent versus targeting all of your traffic. 

ID Key Pages

Here are some of the pages you should consider adding the collection script: 

1. Campaign Landing Pages – If you’re paying to send someone to a page, the referring source piqued their interest. If they didn’t convert, you’d definitely want to follow up. 
2. Product Pages – If someone is viewing this page they’re evaluating a particular product they were interested in. 
3. High Intent/Value Content Pages – This could be your pillar content on your blog pages, podcast pages, or your top level service pages. 
4. Registration Pages – This is a subset of a landing page, but if someone got all the way to a registration or sigh up page, they’re a prime candidate for outreach.
5. Cart Pages – People abandon carts all the time. If you weren’t able to catch their details during checkout, this is an ideal opportunity. 

Effectively it’s any page where you’re pushing a specific action. While the above pages are the pages to choose from, a homepage is acceptable but will require a little more finesse when you follow up. 

Map to Email Campaigns 

Now that you’ve identified where you’re going to identify leads, you’ll need to map it to your automation tool. 

GET CERTIFIED. Discover the proven plan for effortless, automated email marketing. Click Here

Most tools have a direct integration with your email service provider, but worst case scenario you may have to pass the data through a no code integration tool like Zapier. 

Once you’ve worked out the digital plumbing, you’ll want to follow up based on the page the contact was collected on. Here’s how you should approach follow up: 

1. For Campaign Landing Pages – Give them the specific asset. They were interested in it, you’ve got their contact information, just hand over the goods. This builds good will at the start of the relationship. 
2. Product Pages – Send over the details of the product or product category they were viewing. This could be as simple as a reminder or you could build goodwill with a special offer or coupon. 
3. High Intent/Value Content Pages – Send over some of your best content or freebies that move people to the next phase of the Customer Value Journey. 
4. Registration Pages – Treat these like an “abandoned cart” type of email and get them to take that next step. 
5. Cart Pages – Same as “Registration Pages” but it’s, you know, an actual abandoned cart reminder. Similar to the product pages you could entice them to come back with a deal or coupon. 
6. Homepages – If you do run these on the homepage, you’ll need to do more of a reintroduction then transition to showcasing your best stuff. 

Email Structure

The initial message you send needs to have a very specific flow. There are four critical things that need to happen when they open up your Inbox Retargeting message. 

First, remind them about who you are and how they know you. This can be as simple as a, “Hey, thanks for stopping by…” message. Have some fun with it. 

Next, you need to provide highly specific value based on their browsing intent. If you get this wrong, they’re just going to file your message under SPAM. 

After that, you’ve got to set expectations with what they’re getting and now you’ll be communicating with them moving forward. 

And Finally, you need to give them an EASY OUT. These campaigns have our highest unsubscribe rate, but that’s because we outright ask people to unsubscribe if they don’t want any additional contact. 

Once you’e gone through this, you treat them like one of your regular subscribers with all your fancy ascension automations, content emails, and promotional emails. 

Here are the email stats from one of our PPC Campaigns:

With an average open rate of 53.87%, we know there’s a base line interest in the deliverable. The click rate is DANG good for messaging visitors who didn’t convert.

Sure the unsubscribe rate is a little high for this campaign, but that is intentional. We push them to opt-out in the first email so we don’t get dinged later with complaints. 

The Payoff: An Additional 109k Last Year

I mean, who doesn’t want another cool 100 grand for adding a script to your website and writing a couple of emails? Here’s how the numbers work out: 

Last year, we identified 3,714 leads using this method. IMPORTANT: When I was pulling these numbers, I realized we installed the code wrong on some pages and missed out on about another 2k leads…oops!

Our average lead cost was ~$7, so the leads themself were a $26,000 additional value. This alone would be a reason to use the tech. 

BUT JUSTIN, did they convert?! 

Yes!

We closed $36,000 in IPPC business from this lead source. For what we spent on those leads we’re looking at a 750% ROAS. Not too shabby. 

The rest of the money we made was by selling this service to our clients. Since we run paid ads for clients, this method is a complete no brainer. We ran a pilot program and only offered this to a handful of clients last year, we averaged about 4k/month in sales.

We sold clients the leads at ~$2/lead for some of the niches we work in, that’s a steal. 

If you decide to sell this you need to make sure the client knows these are lower intent leads and will require longer term nurtures. If you follow the email strategy I shared above, you’ll be good to go! 

Protip: Charge for building the follow up sequence! 

So that’s it! If you’re running your own business or are an agency owner, you’ve got to consider Inbox Retargeting. Though, I do have some bad news…

Not to be “Chicken Little” but this is starting to get way more attention, there are services popping out of the woodwork so this will become a table stakes method. So get ahead of this today.

The post Unlocking Hidden Revenue: The Inbox Retargeting Methodology appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

By now, you’ve probably heard us talk a lot about lead magnets. But just in case you’re unfamiliar, a lead magnet is an irresistible bribe offering a specific chunk of value to a prospect or visitor in exchange for their contact information. Let’s break that down…

There are a few VERY key words in that definition: Specific and Value

Specificity is absolutely key when developing a great lead magnet. You don’t need to create some broad ultimate guide or white paper (in fact white papers are generally terrible… they feel like homework). Instead, you want to offer something that solves a specific problem. 

This makes the content highly consumable and even more targeted. 

Think about it—what if you created something like an org chart template? There’s an incredible amount of value here. It’s a done-for-you template/swipe file AND it tells you that your customer likely has a team. Win-Win.

Value is the other important ingredient in the lead magnet recipe and this is twofold. You want the perceived value to be HIGH and then you need the actual value to be as high. If you’re marketing something that sucks, then you’re just going to convince someone you suck faster. 

In our YouTube series, Marketing Mastery with DigitalMarketer, I talk about my 5 favorite types of lead magnets that ANY company can use. 

Number 1: Cheat Sheets and Checklists

Talk about easy to consume and HIGHLY VALUABLE. The cheat sheet or checklist is hands down one of the best types of lead magnets. Nobody wants a PDF or eBook; they just don’t have the time, BUT they do have time for this type of content. 

Cheat sheets are great for any niche that requires reference points. This is perfect for business and marketing. You could do a glossary, buzzword, or keyword cheat sheet for newbies or even a list of easy calculations everyone forgets. 

The best way to come up with a cheat sheet for your audience is to figure out the questions they need answered, gather up all the answers, and put them on a nice and easy to use reference guide. 

Checklists are a little different but can be even MORE effective. At DigitalMarketer, we believe in giving tactical, step-by-step advice and that anything other than that is fluff. 

Checklists are the best way to make sure a task gets done right the first time (and every other time after that). Regardless of your industry, there is a useful checklist you can create. 

When putting together a useful checklist, make sure that it outlines a task that people actually do and then do the “Peanut Butter & Jelly” test. 

This test is a good way to teach you how to explain something step-by-step. So, if I asked you “Can you tell me how to make a PB&J?” and you start with, “First you spread the peanut butter,” I’ll quickly follow up with, “Where’d you get the peanut butter? Where do I spread it? Where did you get that?”

You’ll see how many assumed steps exist and be able to address them in a succinct and sequential order. 

Number 2: Templates, Templates, Templates

PEOPLE LOVE TEMPLATES. They see these as lead magnets and go absolutely bananas. 

Templates are the ultimate shortcut for your audience. 

You don’t have to be in the email business, landing page business, or website creation space to create templates for your audience—we do it all the time at DigitalMarketer. 

You’ll want to ask yourself, “What’s something that my audience could just fill in and then implement in their business?” It’s like a business MadLib! 

We’ve created things like plug and play email templates, ad templates, marketing scorecards, and customer avatar/persona templates.

Number 3: Video Training

Notice I didn’t say “webinar.” Don’t get me wrong, webinars are a phenomenal way to generate leads and sales, BUT…

A webinar is meant to be an event and when someone says “no” to your webinar, they might be saying “no” to the date, the time, or the content. 

On-demand, limited-time, video trainings have been a game changer at DigitalMarketer. We don’t use evergreen webinar funnels much these days, instead we take a piece of video content out of our vault (we have a ton of it) and ask people to register within a time frame to lock in access. 

WE NEVER TAKE AWAY ACCESS. That’s key. 

So, now when they hit the landing page, they aren’t weighing their options and checking their calendar. They are, however, evaluating your content and its value… so make it good. 

Oh, one more thing. The limited time nature is really just the cherry on top to spark action. If you plan on having this content readily available, just gate it.

Number 4: Free Shipping or Discounts

I know we’ve said coupons aren’t really lead magnets, but you can position discounts and free shipping so that they become lead magnets (or at least check most of the boxes).

If you’re running a brick and mortar or ecommerce shop, you might be a little strapped for lead magnet content. Also if they’re on your site, you probably don’t want to navigate them away from a purchasing decision. 

Enter discounts or free shipping in exchange for their contact information. 

Yup, it’s that simple. Target new visitors on your site and try to LOWER the barrier to entry. Make the buying decision even easier (either in that moment or in the inevitable follow up emails you’ll send). 

The unfortunate thing is that MOST e-commerce and retailers are running this playbook, so it’s pretty much table stakes. You’re going to want to find a way to stand out in a crowd of “10-15% off for new visitors”. 

Number 5: Swipe Files

Ah the good ol’ swipe file. If you’re anything like me, you have an email folder filled with swipe-able emails, a bookmark folder of swipe-able pages (for design, copy, and content), and a slack channel dedicated to cool swipe-able examples. 

If you’re not like me, then (in this case) you probably should be. Become obsessed with your industry (even your tangential ones) and you’ll be surprised at what you can learn! 

Even better, as you start building these out, you can create one of the most powerful lead magnets IN EXISTENCE: the swipe file. 

There are two truths that make swipe files so useful and desirable:

1. There’s an overabundance of valuable information readily available
2. People are lazy 

If you’re doing the whole swipe file curation correctly, you can do a significant amount of competitive research AND compile what you’ve found into a single document that you can trade for contact information. 

In fact, I’ve seen swipe files used for more than just lead magnets (I’ve bought swipe files for as much as a couple hundred dollars)! 

At DM, our most successful lead magnets have ALL BEEN SWIPE FILES:

• FB Ad Templates
• Social Media Swipe File 
• 101 Blog Subject Lines 

All are examples of lead magnets that have generated hundreds of thousands of leads for us. 

So, to recap:

1. Cheat Sheets/Checklists
2. Templates, Templates, Templates
3. Video Trainings
4. Free Shipping or Discount
5. Swipe Files

If you want to dive deeper, you can check out some more examples, 4 other lead magnet ideas, PLUS a super helpful Lead Magnet Checklist (hey remember how much I like checklists?!) on the DM blog. 

And head over to our YouTube channel for more Marketing Mastery tips.

The post 5 Lead Magnets Any Business Can Use appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

A lot of you like to jump right in and start building ads, writing copy, creating landing pages, and doing all that other fun marketing stuff. 

BUT if you don’t have a customer avatar, you’re seriously hurting your results. If you don’t know who your customer is, then how in the heck can you market to them?! Getting a clear understanding of your customer will impact virtually EVERY aspect of your marketing and sales process.

One caveat—as you’re creating this avatar you may need to actually reach out to your customers and buyers, don’t let that stop you from starting this process. 

Number 1: Identify the Goals & Values

Now, these aren’t YOUR goals and values so don’t project them onto your ideal customer! 

Let’s start with goals:

What are the goals of your ideal customer that YOUR business, service, or offering can help them achieve? 

To take this out of the abstract, I’ll use one of our Avatars: “Agency Eric” 

What are Eric’s “want” statements? This will make it abundantly clear what his goals are:

“Eric wants to…”

• Increase his agency business
• Increase the capabilities of his team
• Scale his business

Having someone who can help you achieve their goals doesn’t mean a whole lot if you don’t have matching values. I could have an offering that will supercharge your traffic, but if I’m a shady dude doing all of the black hat tricks in the book, you likely will stay away. 

That’s why you have to list out values at the same time as goals. 

A good way to start this exercise is to phrase it like this:

“[Customer Avatar name] is committed to…”

What are his/her personal or professional commitments? What does she want to achieve? By what means is she willing to achieve these things? 

Using our Avatar:

Agency Eric is committed to…

• Professional Development
• Providing value for his clients
• Using white hat marketing tactics

This type of information will help you drive product creation, offer copy, content, and more. 

Get the Digital Marketing Blueprint…

With a Customer Value Journey that strategically builds a relationship with new prospects and converts them into loyal, repeat customers. Click here

Number 2: Find Their Sources of Information

Marketing at its core is just getting the right message in front of the right person at the right time.

This understanding misses one other important factor: Marketing to them in the right place.

What books are your customers reading? What magazines? 

Do they frequent particular types of blogs? What about specific blogs? 

What conferences or trade shoes to they go to? 

Who are their “gurus”?

This will help you nail down where you can advertise and how to speak to them in a language they understand. 

The BEST and EASIEST way to answer these questions without it becoming this massive list of nonsense is to use the “But no one else would” trick…  

“My ideal customer would read [BOOK], but no one else would.”

“My ideal customer would attend [CONFERENCE], but no one else would.”

This is mission critical for figuring out WHERE to target your audience, what to talk to them about, and in what way. 

Number 3: Write Out Their Demographic Information

This section always felt weird to me and I honestly thought it was lame. Creating this fictional person seems odd, but it really does give you a complete picture of your customer. It makes them “real” or as real as a fake avatar can be…

You’ll want to name your avatar—just like we have Agency Eric. 

How old, what’s his or her gender… does it matter? What about their marital status? Do they have kids? Where do the live? 

Next, you’ll want to fill in the more baseline data—occupation, title, income, education. 

One other thing you’ll want to do is try to list out a “quote” they’d use. This helps you get into their head. 

For us, Agency Eric is a 40-year-old married male with 2 children living in Orlando, Florida. He’s the CEO & Founder of a digital marketing agency making ~$150k per year. He’s been known to say, “I surround myself with people smarter than me” more than a few times. 

That paints a way prettier picture than just saying “Oh, our main prospect is an agency owner.” 

Number 4: List Out Their Challenges & Pain Points 

Now that your avatar is a bit more real, you want to dig into what their challenges are and their main pain points (or in some cases their fears). 

Obviously, you should limit these to challenges and pain points your business or service can help with! 

This step will help you identify your main copy hooks and help you out in filling any holes in your product catalog. 

Number 5: Identify the Objections to the Sale & Their Role in the Purchase Process

These are often overlooked, specifically the objection part. Nobody has a product or service so great that literally everyone will want to use it if they become aware of it. That just doesn’t happen. 

The important thing is WHY wouldn’t your ideal customer want to work with YOU at this point in TIME. 

Asking this question will get you into their head more and will help you better anticipate objections in your marketing copy and sales scripts. 

Finally, and this is more on the B2B side, are they the decision maker or an advocate? If they’re a decision maker, then you can push for the sale. If they’re an advocate who would need approval, you’ll need to switch up copy and likely provide other types of content like, pitch decks, proposal templates, etc.…

So, to recap, in order to build a customer avatar, you need to: 

1. Identify their Goals and Values
2. Find their Sources of Information
3. Fill in their Demographic Info (and NAME them)
4. Identify Challenges & Pain Points
5. List out their Objections & Role in the Purchase Process

If you want to dive into more details, get a downloadable customer avatar worksheet, and see some examples of our customer avatars—click HERE. Seriously. Do it. This is the most important thing you could do for your business today.

And head over to our YouTube channel for more Marketing Mastery tips.

The post Create a Customer Avatar in 5 Easy Steps appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

Even with the changes in content consumption, emerging MarTech, and articles consistently claiming email is dead or dying, we’ve seen (as have many others) that email is one of the single most effective channels in moving people through the Customer Value Journey. 

In our YouTube series, Marketing Mastery with DigitalMarketer, I talk about 4 of my favorite email campaigns that any company can add to their marketing promotions to see a boost in opens, clicks, and sales.

Number 1: Goodwill Campaign

This is a series designed to be more benefit rich and content heavy. This uses some really solid email subject line types, specifically Blind & Direct which I covered in another video where I talked about my favorite types of email subject lines.

The REALLY important thing about goodwill emails is to make sure they are providing VALUE and that whatever you’re offering is FREE. 

You shouldn’t be using a goodwill campaign to pitch a new product or sale. This is meant to engage your audience and provide value upfront. 

In this three-part email series, you’re going to lead with a blind email to spark interest and curiosity. The subject line doesn’t reveal the topic of the content but gets people excited enough to open. 

Subject lines like “This flat-out works” and “Kinda weird but very [insert word] like profitable, effective, etc.” … are a great start. 

The body copy then needs to connect the dots. Remember, subject lines are meant to sell the open and the copy is meant to sell the click. You’re going to want to be SUPER direct in your body copy in order to spark more action from a blind open. 

Here’s an example:

Okay, the next email you have to go super direct with a subject line like, “Presenting…”, “Free Report”, “Free Video”, “Case Study”, etc.…

From there, you just deliver on the promises in the body copy. You’ll lead with the desired end result and then deliver on the promise (or how to get there).

The last email uses another direct subject line and really stresses the value of the content and teases some of the learnings in the body copy. 

If you’re looking to boost email engagement with your subscribers, this is the perfect campaign to send out. Test out a few different pieces of content and when you have one that works super well, you should consider automating this for new subscribers (or subscribers who take particular actions… or who DON’T take other actions).

Number 2: News Jacker Campaign

What convinces people to buy? Well, lots of things. But time and time again people buy what’s NEW and what’s relevant. 

A news jacker campaign helps you do BOTH of these things. If you’re sharing a current event, then you’re making what’s old new again and what’s even more powerful is you’re making it RELEVANT to your prospect. 

For this email, you’ll want the subject line to call out the source and piece of relevant information immediately. 

You can use these 2 formulas:

“According to [Person in News Article/Video] [Relevant News]” 

Or 

“[News Source] LOVES/HATES [Topic]”  

From there, the email leads with the relevant part of the news story and you can include an image with a link to the article. You can choose to link or not. If you link, you could potentially lose clicks to your offer, but you could also alienate your reader because you didn’t provide the source information. 

Another way to do this would be to footnote your source with a link at the bottom of the email or in a P.S. with some copy like “Want to read the article?” or “Want to watch the video?” You can do that here.

Next, is where you make the pivot. Generally, you want to compare two binary options with one being the clear option. From there, you just link to your related sales page and offer and you’re off to the races. 

This is a great campaign to run midway through a promotion to re-engage prospects who haven’t seen the relevance of your offering yet. 

Number 3: Gain/Logic/Fear Campaign

Ah, the old “Gain, Logic, Fear” campaign. This campaign is one of the single most effective ways to generate conversions from your email list. 

You generally send this after a subscriber has received a free piece of valuable content from you (either new subscribers who signed up via a lead magnet or someone who engaged with your Goodwill Campaign). 

The email cadence breaks down like this:

First, you send an email following up to see how they’re doing with the free resource and to make an offer to a related product focusing on the product benefits and what’s in it for them. For example:

“Oh, hey you like Facebook ads? Well, we have this course about scaling Facebook ads you should check out.”

Next, you’ll send an email that covers all the logical reasons why they should take the offer. These normally perform the worst, but it will appeal to your more “logical” subscribers that would scoff at making more emotional purchasing decisions. 

Finally, you bring in the fear. This is best done with scarcity. Generally, you’re offering the product at a discount during GLF campaigns. At this point, this is where you let them know that the price is going to go up. 

A lot of people say there’s no inspiration like the deadline, well that couldn’t be any truer in this case. 

GLF is a proven email strategy that works great with new subscribers you’re trying to turn into new customers. 

Number 4: Need Help? Campaign

To round this out, let’s look at a standalone email that is designed to sell higher ticket items and is perfect for anyone selling coaching or done-for-you services.

Simple subject lines like “Can I help you with [result]?” or “Need some help?” are enough to get subscribers to open and give your message a read. 

The important thing is, you want to send this email to a segment of your audience that meet a certain qualification. You wouldn’t be using this as a broadcast email. YOU HAVE TO KNOW the details about the subscriber, their problem, and have indicators that they’re at a point in the Value Journey where this message is relevant! 

So, to recap: 

1. The Goodwill Campaign
2. News Jacker Campaign
3. Gain Logic Fear Campaign
4. Need Help? Campaign

Want more campaign examples or swipe copy for the campaigns I just talked about? Become a DigitalMarketer Insider and you’ll get that and more! Check it out here.

And head over to our YouTube channel for more Marketing Mastery tips with me, Justin Rondeau.

The post 4 Email Campaigns to Boost Conversions appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

In our YouTube series, Marketing Mastery with DigitalMarketer, I talk about the 5 most effective types of blog posts.

So, check out the video, and keep scrolling if you want to read more!

Number 1: Original Research Posts

I asked one of my favorite content marketers (or really marketer in general) Andy Cretodina at Orbit Media if he had to start all over again, what would he do. His response to me was: Original Research. 

People GO NUTS for original research. They read it, share it, interact with it—it’s the CONTENT HOLY GRAIL. 

However, it’s hands down the most difficult and time consuming to produce. You need to put together research questions (avoid as much bias as possible), collect a big enough sample size, parse through the data, visualize the data, and then interpret it in a way that’s useful for your audience. 

It’s a hell of an undertaking, but one of the most fruitful pieces of content you can produce today. Not only will you build up anticipation from the people who took part in research, but your posts will get cited, get oodles of back links, and likely show up in presentations years after the original research went live (even if it’s out of date).

Number 2: Checklist Posts

At DigitalMarketer, we firmly believe that anything and EVERYTHING should be broken down into easy step-by-step checklists… in fact, we built our premium paid content with that philosophy.

Heck, even pilots follow a standardized checklist before they take off. 

Simply put, we think checklists are awesome. 

I mean, who doesn’t want to go through a piece of content that tells them exactly what to do and, if they follow it, they have a deliverable. 

This instantly makes your content actionable for your audience and once they’ve taken one action and gotten over any level of doubt in your brand or self-doubt in themselves, they’ll take another action. 

Posts like, “5 Copywriting Elements You Should Test”, “10-Point Blog Post Audit”, “15-Point Landing Page Checklist”, etc.… are all checklist style posts that generate a deliverable at the end. 

Number 3: Pillar Posts

This is the big dog post. A piece of pillar content is your thesis—it’s why you exist; it separates you from everyone else out there. 

When everyone was focused on Customer Acquisition, we were writing about Customer Value Optimization. That post was our line in the sand and changed how startups and founders approached business growth. 

Then, we realized that CVO was only one (minor) step in the overall ecosystem that was the Customer Value Journey, so we wrote a NEW piece of pillar content that covered the journey and how to apply it in your business.

Pillar content is your evergreen content that becomes your backlink magnet and an amazing way to help you create derivative work for future posts. 

These posts are normally HUGE and should be accompanied by a PDF download so people can read it later. 

If you don’t have a business that can have this level of content that draws a line in the sand, then the other kind of pillar content is creating some kind of Ultimate Guide. 

This won’t differentiate you, but if you build the definitive guide and get it to rank, then you become the authority and you get all the other benefits from pillar content. 

Number 4: Crowdsourced Posts

These have somewhat gone out of style, but I think they’re effective if you get the right people talking about a topic that hasn’t been covered a million times. 

Nobody wants another “Best Practices in Content Marketing, Growth Marketing, Email Marketing from 25 EXPERTS.” 

You have a chance here to create some truly interesting content from people with unique perspectives and authority. 

A major benefit is that this type of content doesn’t require a ton of time to create, it’s stackable, and people like sharing things with their name in it. You’ll get more social traction, borrow authority, and provide different perspectives. 

The best kinds of crowdsourced posts I’ve seen include an overarching narrative that uses expert quotes and responses to further points. This variant of the crowdsourced post takes more time to make, but it is incredibly effective. 

Number 5: Content Aggregator Posts

We should really rename this the “Swipe File” post. Seth Godin said, “All Marketers Are Liars” … well they’re also thieves. 

Who doesn’t have a folder full of email, ad, social, and landing page swipe files? If you don’t… well, you’re the weird one, not me. 

The fact is, we tend to emulate (even when we shouldn’t). Why? Well, that’s a question for another time, but my simple belief is this:

It’s much harder to start with a blank page/canvas/or whatever. 

Swipe files that show examples of Great Instagram video ads with commentary are a great device to help inspire your audience and get those creative juices flowing. 

Even better, this type of content is super shareable and will benefit from backlinks and social traffic. 

So, to recap, if you want better and more shareable blog posts you should try: 

1. Research Posts
2. Checklist Posts
3. Pillar Posts
4. Crowdsourced Post
5. Content Aggregator Post

If you never want to run out of blog post ideas, you can get a list of WAY more post types and examples when you become a DigitalMarketer Insider. If you’re interested, click HERE.

And head over to our YouTube channel for more Marketing Mastery tips.

The post 5 Types of Highly Effective Blog Posts appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

In our YouTube series, Marketing Mastery with DigitalMarketer, I talk about the 5 types of email subject lines that ALMOST always get opened.  

So, check out the video, and keep scrolling if you want to read more! 

Number 1: The Dead-On Offer

This is a pretty simple one, I got the goods and I know you want them. Though, you REALLY need to make sure that people ‘want what you got’. 

When using dead-on email subject lines, you’re going to want to hit a segment of your list that finds the offer attractive. From there, don’t get creative or crafty—you just need to sell the open with the WHAT. 

It doesn’t matter if you’re selling a free download or a $3,000 product, direct subject lines are a great way to break up campaigns and boost click-to-open rates. 

Here are a few of our best performing dead-on subject lines:

“11 Copywriting Books You (Probably) Should Read” – 19.64% open rate

“Email Marketing Announcement: Enrollment is Back Open” – 21.56% open rate

This sets a clear expectation and primes the click more than our next subject line type. 

Number 2: Curiosity/Blind

Want to boost opens? Well that’s EASY—get them curious or… wait for it… confused. 

Sure, a confused customer GENERALLY doesn’t convert, but confusion will provoke the EXACT action you want in this case: the open. 

Now, when someone is opening because they’re curious or confused, you’ll very likely see a drop in email click rates. 

For example, say I got the blind email subject line “Cut Off” (one of our best performing promo email subject lines last year). This pattern interrupt may have been enough to get me to open, but the second I see it’s a promo I’ve already said no to means I’m just going to trash that email. 

However, you don’t need to rely on blind emails (those emails that get a high open but lower click rate)! You can pique interest and get readers going “Ooooo what’s that?” with the right type of curiosity subject lines. 

If you’re in marketing and you got an email saying: “Netflix’s Huge Homepage Fail”, you’re going to open that email up. Regardless of your marketing specialty or interest area, everyone knows Netflix and wants to know HOW they failed. 

This SL borrows authority, tells a story, AND makes the recipient curious. 

Number 3: Self-Interest “What’s in It For MEEEEE”

We’ve heard “What’s in it for me” in more ways than one and this is an objection ALL marketers ALWAYS have to overcome. 

In terms of email, it’s a little easier to overcome this question because you know a lot about your subscriber and you’re not an interruption, but a message they took time to evaluate whether they’d read or not. 

This all comes down to WHY SHOULD I READ THIS NOW?

Well, if you were interested in copywriting, you might open up an email saying: “Up to 85% OFF Our Best Copywriting Strategies” because you’ll get our best trainings AND save some cash. 

Or if you’re a marketer and you saw an email saying: “How to Create a Video Studio on a Shoestring Budget”, you’re likely going to give it an open because we all know just how important video is in the current marketing landscape. 

Number 4: Urgency

There’s no motivator like a deadline, that was true in school AND in business. People hate missing out and they ESPECIALLY hate missing out on a deal.

Email subject lines like… “LAST CHANCE: DigitalMarketer Lab goes off the Market in 3…2…1…” or “$95 today, $995 tomorrow” use FOMO as a strategy to get people to actually open, read, and take action. Now, these subject lines aren’t appropriate for every email… in fact, you should use them fairly sparingly so you don’t become the boy or girl who cried wolf.

Also, you’ll notice that the 2 examples I shared are a hybrid of dead-on and urgency. 

Pro-tip… if you want to get higher open rates, you’re going to need to mix and match these subject line types. 

Number 5: Story/Relevance

The most interesting part of the story is… well… the middle. With these kinds of subject lines, you’re trying to transport your reader into the middle of a conversation. 

“The Little Facebook Tweak that Halved Lead Cost”

Or…

“Here’s the REAL Reason Amazon is Buying Whole Foods”

See what I did there?

These types of subject lines work best to promote content or to prime a promotional series.

When you start with a story, especially a timely one, you’re given the opportunity to answer one of the most important questions you need to overcome: “Why should I care… now?!”

These email subject lines tend to open a serious loop with your reader, but you HAVE TO DELIVER the goods in the email body to ensure they do the intended action.

So, to recap:

1. Dead-On Offer
2. Curiosity/Blind
3. Self Interest “What’s in it for me”
4. Urgency
5. Story/Relevance

If you want to dive deeper, check out 101 examples of our best performing subject lines on the DM blog.

And head over to our YouTube channel every week for more Marketing Mastery tips with me, Justin Rondeau.

The post 5 Types of Email Subject Lines That (Almost) ALWAYS Get Opened appeared first on DigitalMarketer.