Why Email Marketing (Still) Matters

November 22, 2021 Maya Benabdelhadi eCommerce, Email Marketing, Small business

When I say email marketing, what comes to mind? Mountains of spam, I bet. I think we can all agree that way too many useless emails are floating about, and that’s saying nothing about that nasty “won’t you leave me alone” feeling we all get when spotting one of them crowding our inboxes. Let’s get one thing clear: that (insert shudder) isn’t email marketing. It’s death by a thousand cuts, also part of How To Make Your Customers Disappear 101: Noise Pollution… or, in less heated terms, spam.

So what is email marketing?

Simply put, email marketing is the practice of using email to promote an organisation and/or its product and services to targeted customers. And here is the key: targeted customers. This means individuals who have opted to receive communications from your brand. Email marketing carefully curates engaging and compelling content to a meticulously selected audience. As such, indiscriminately bombarding anyone you can with emails about lawnmower sales does not qualify as email marketing.

… And what makes it worthwhile?

Email marketing enhances the customer experience

It enables you to tie the different touch points (your website, organic social media, partners, paid ads) your customers go through together to create a smooth and continuous customer journey across your multiple platforms and channels. Email marketing works as the bridge that links all your customers’ individual experiences on different platforms together so that they form a seamless, overarching experience.

It’s a brand awareness booster

This is the most obvious benefit of email marketing: reminding people you’re there! This is more important than one might think. All of us have a thousand and one big and small interactions with multiple brands each day, which makes it difficult to remember any one in the medium (let alone the long) term. Audience members may or may not stumble on your brand or its communications again, thereby rekindling the brand awareness spark, but it is not guaranteed.

Email marketing is therefore a conscious effort on your part to fan the brand awareness spark into a brand recall fire. (Excuse the fire metaphors, I am writing this in the middle of a cold Scottish winter and had fireplaces and bottomless hot chocolate on my mind). Now, you may be thinking that you can do all of this through your organic social media. True enough, social media is a great tool for brand awareness… just not as powerful as email marketing. Unless you’re following a brand, you may or may not see specific brands’ posts appear on your timeline, so it’s a bit of a gamble.

You will definitely see emails in your inbox (remember, we’re not spam so no reason for your comms to end up in the junk folder). While 14% of individuals check social media in the morning, 58% check their emails and check them about 20 times throughout the day. And now for the knock-out punch, on average the engagement rate on organic social media is 0.58%, while email marketing has a 22.86% open rate and 3.71% of views lead to website visits.

It allows for personalisation

Most channels your brand will use have you addressing your entire audience at once. While this means more people will hear your message, it may not be worthwhile for everyone to pay attention to, meaning that some individuals may get the wrong impression about your brand and what it can do for them.

Email marketing allows you to segment your messages to fit your different target audiences. This way, each type of customer gets a message that is valuable to them and aligned with their wants, needs and values. And this is the beauty of carefully built mailing lists: personalised communication is also more effective. By tailoring your message to your customer segments, you increase its readership, the perceived value of your brand, and in turn, sales.

Bonus: by using different messages per target segment, you can learn about their preferences, what works best for them and their behaviour. The better you know your audience, the best you can serve them… and increase your sales.

It helps you to nurture and deepen relationships

With email marketing, you are communicating with a warm audience: individuals who already know of your brand and who like it to an extent (remember, we’re not talking about spam, here). Through regular communication, email marketing enables you to slowly reveal other compatible facets of your brand to your target audience for them to get to know you a little better.

If you are clever with this tactic, you can also adapt your timing and content to fit major relevant moments in your audience life. This would demonstrate your understanding of your customer base but more importantly that you can be a partner in their lives. If you can achieve this, it will be absolute gold for your brand. This shift in perception deepens your relationship and upgrades your connection from a rational to an emotional one, which is stronger and longer lasting.

It’s an owned channel

Contrarily to paid advertising, email marketing is an owned channel, which means that you have complete control over the following:

Your message
Its visual aspect
The timing and frequency
The audience

This type of control is not that common when it comes to marketing. With email marketing, there are very few restrictions and templates you need to follow, allowing you to design every detail of your brand’s appearance, message and communication style.

It’s cost effective

In part because it is an owned channel, email marketing is an economical way to reach your audience. In the grassroots stage, all you need is a little time to write your message, basic computer skills, repurposing your brand assets (pictures, videos, GIFs) and you can send the lot through your regular email platform. At this stage, your emails are cheap and not too time consuming.

Once your business and brand stabilises a little, you can move to email marketing platforms like Klaviyo, Mailchimp and the like for a more polished look, scheduling and analysis capabilities. These platforms are relatively inexpensive, with varied levels of subscriptions to fit your brand’s needs, and they save you some time by giving you templates to work with and automating some of your work. When your brand gets even bigger, you can opt for a higher-level subscription, saving you even more time for a reasonable price.

Performance is easy to track and has a high ROI

Last but certainly not least, performance is easy to track and highly successful. By UTM tagging the links you include in your emails, you can review the behaviour of users who clicked on it. With this tool, you will be able to know by audience segment how many users visited your page, how many times, how long they spent on it, how many pages were visited on the website, and how many conversions (purchases if your brand is in eCommerce) were made. All of this will give you a good idea of how well each segment email performed and the overall interest in the content you have published.

Not only is email marketing performance eminently trackable and measurable, its return on investment is high, with email being one of the highest-ranking marketing tactics. In 2020, for every £1 spent on email marketing, £35.41 was earned in return! Hard to argue with those numbers.

… So, have we convinced you yet?

Want to get into email marketing or upgrade your game? Get in touch with us now at [email protected], we would love to hear from you!

Sources

https://optinmonster.com/email-marketing-vs-social-media-performance-2016-2019-statistics/

https://www.statista.com/statistics/283067/return-on-investment-roi-for-email-marketing-in-the-uk/

https://www.kub-uk.net/insights/email-marketing-stats/

eCommerce and Social Media: A Look to the Future of Social Shopping

November 1, 2021 Marius Platt eCommerce, Insights, Paid Media, Small business, Social Media

Hello everyone, my name is Marius and I’m the paid media manager here at Pilot Fish Media. Having worked on marketing campaigns around the world, I’ve found that my passion lies in eCommerce and driving sales through the use of paid ads. eCommerce brands and social media platforms are inherently intertwined. You’d be hard pushed to find any, new or old, who aren’t on social media in some capacity. I’m going to break down why this is the case, and why social media platforms are all moving towards an eCommerce approach.

What is an eCommerce brand?

An eCommerce brand is any company that is involved in the buying or selling of products, services, or experiences over the internet. Whenever individuals or companies are buying/selling products, services, or experiences online, they’re engaging in e-commerce.

Why do eCommerce brands use social media?

Social media is an incredibly powerful marketing tool for eCommerce brands to utilise. It not only allows them to send direct traffic to their website, but it also gives them the opportunity to create and foster a community, which they can nurture in order to encourage returning custom. Whether it’s through paid social ads, organic content or influencer marketing, social media is the most important marketing tool currently available to drive sales online.

What is social shopping?

Social shopping or social eCommerce is when social media platforms and eCommerce platforms become one. Certain social media platforms have direct integrations with eCommerce sites such as Shopify, which allows a customer to buy products directly from their feed/shopping section. Essentially, social shopping enables social media users to shop for and purchase products on social media.

Which social media platforms currently have shopping tools?

Social Shopping is already a popular feature on a range of social platforms and is expected to grow rapidly. But why?

Simply put, it reduces the purchase journey for a customer to 2 steps. They engage with the product on your social media feed and then begin the checkout process. This is now possible on the below platforms who all currently use social shopping in some capacity:

Facebook
Instagram
Whatsapp
Twitter
Pinterest
Snapchat
TikTok
WeChat

What does the future hold for social commerce?

Social commerce is the future and we expect it to be adopted by more platforms going forward. There will be a time in the not-so-distant future when customers in the UK can click on a product on Instagram and purchase directly within the platform. This feature currently only exists in the USA.

If you assume social media is where your target audience spends the majority of their time, then it only makes sense to sell products to them then and there. They’re already engaging actively with your brand, so there will be a sense of trust and you won’t have to move them off the platform onto a separate website. Furthermore, with all of the privacy changes (iOS14.5/death of the cookie) and the shift to ‘walled gardens’ it makes sense for platforms to keep users on the platform. They are unable to track them effectively when they leave and go to a website, and as such, if they keep users on the platform, they can collect first-party data and information. With one of the main struggles for eCommerce brands being the streamlining of the shopping process, social media and eCommerce integration should help combat that.

China has been the country at the forefront of social commerce through WeChat. WeChat originated as a messaging app and has developed into a unique hybrid platform. Users can do everything from calling a client, or their family group chat, to paying for their taxi or weekly shop. In China where services like Facebook are banned, WeChat is the standard platform for all business and communication. When we look at how important WeChat is, it’s no surprise that such a high percentage of products purchased in China are sold through social media. In fact, in 2019, 11.6% of eCommerce sales came through social commerce.

While China is a very different market to the UK, we can clearly see some similar patterns. There’s a history of copying what works in China: FB Messenger and Whatsapp have already adopted plenty of the features as seen in the chart below on WeChat.

It’s clear to see then why the UK and other countries in the West would adopt social commerce going forward. It allows for a streamlined shopping experience, which is beneficial to both the customer and seller. In addition, social platforms keep users on their app and try to keep their attention there, which is every platform’s ultimate aim. They’re trading in attention. Customers will expect to be able to purchase your products on social media with a couple of clicks very soon. So get ahead of the curve and prepare your platforms for social commerce now!

If you’re looking for help moving forward with social commerce, please get in touch with me at [email protected]!

Sources:

* https://www.bigcommerce.co.uk/blog/social-commerce/#what-does-the-future-hold-for-social-commerce

Why Your Brand Needs to Find Its Voice

October 25, 2021 Freya Whiteside Branding, Small business

The importance of speaking your audience’s language

You never really know someone until you get talking to them, and the same goes for brands and businesses. When your brand looks the part, you want it to sound the part too. But how do you start creating a voice that communicates who you are and what you stand for that really resonates with your audience?

In this blog, we’re deep diving into why your brand tone of voice is an essential part of helping your customers get to know you.

What is a brand tone of voice?

Your brand’s tone of voice is all about the way your brand talks to your audience. It’s a distinct personality that captures who you are and includes things like the words you use, the way you talk and the tone or emotion behind the messages you’re putting out.

The way you talk tells your audience a little more about what you’re about and helps them get a feeling of the kind of company you are. Think of your brand’s voice as an initial impression, like striking up a chat with someone new: what kind of conversation would get them to stick around?

Why is a brand tone of voice so important?

A well defined tone of voice will be used everywhere. From your website to your socials to emails and advertisements, your tone of voice should be front and centre, and is as essential to your branding as a logo or colour palette.

More than just telling the world about who you are, a tone of voice can also help to build community, especially on social media channels where consumers can opt-in to following your brand. Smart brand positioning, articulated through your brand’s voice, can foster a real connection between your brand, individual customers and a wider community, creating loyalty that goes beyond the quality of your offering.

It’s therefore vital that your tone of voice is right for your audience. You wouldn’t want to buy baby products from a brand that sounded harsh or cold, for example, or alcohol from a brand that reminded you of your old headteacher. But how to get started?

How can I define my brand tone of voice?

Your brand’s tone of voice is all about you – your company, your values, your mission and your purpose – so thinking about how to get those on paper is a valuable place to start. Defining your business in a few key words, or thinking about the sort of language your brand brings to mind, can help you start thinking about what your voice could become.

Your voice will be a key touchpoint for your audience, and this is particularly true online. As you start thinking about your tone of voice, consider the purpose your voice will serve as you create an online presence. Will your brand make your audience laugh? Empower your customers to be their best selves? Whatever your message, it’s up to your brand voice to get it across – so you want to get it right!

Thinking about how to find the right words for your brand? Reach out to me at [email protected] to chat more about copywriting and your brand’s tone of voice.

The Facebook Ad Funnel: What Is It and How to Make It Work for You

October 18, 2021 Paff Evara Facebook, Paid Media, Small business

The Facebook Ads Funnel is one of the most powerful tools in helping you generate leads, sales, increase ROI and ultimately grow your business. We want to help you get the most out of the funnel by breaking down what it is and how you can make it work for your business.

Are you ready to start advertising your business on social media? You’ve established your brand identity and your core offering, but now you’re ready to really drive up those conversions. Before you dive into the world of Facebook ads, it’s important to understand how the conversion funnel works and how you can use it to get your message in front of the right people to reach your goals.

The Facebook ads funnel is split into three key stages in the buyer journey (Awareness, Consideration, Conversion) and is designed to pull qualified users down the funnel to convert. A conversion is when the recipient of a marketing message performs a desired action, which might look like purchasing a product, booking an appointment or filling out a contact form.

Top of Funnel (TOF) – Awareness

At the top of the funnel is the awareness stage. This is where you target cold audiences, people who are not yet aware of your brand’s products or services, as your ideal customer persona. At this stage, your key focus is to introduce your brand and clearly communicate your brand purpose and offering. The ads you push at this stage should spark curiosity with potential prospects and educate them on your brand through an authoritative tone of voice.

Middle of Funnel (MOF) – Consideration

Moving into the middle of the funnel, you are targeting a warm audience as prospects: people who are aware of your brand and have previously shown some interest but who haven’t taken it further. For example, these prospects may have visited your website previously, engaged with your social media channels or engaged with the ads you are pushing at TOF.

At this stage, you want to push ads that communicate not only the key features of your offering, but also its benefits and how it can help users overcome their pain points. Here, you want to focus on clear and concise ad creative that communicates your core USPs in the first 3 seconds of a user seeing the ad.

Bottom of Funnel (BOF) – Conversion

At the bottom of the funnel is the conversion stage, where your prospects are now a hot audience of users you are retargeting. These users have come close to converting but have pulled back to consider further (e.g., adding product(s) to cart but abandoning before completing their purchase). Therefore, at this stage you want to push strong ad creatives that answer the ‘Why us?’ question and work to push users over the conversion line. You might use techniques such as highlighting social proof, featuring customer testimonials or using an offer (e.g., 10% off code) here.

The successful implementation of the full funnel Facebook ads structure works to nurture users and pushes those qualified users down the funnel to convert. It’s important to remember that most users are not going to convert on your core offer at the first touchpoint (particularly with high value conversions) as it’s likely they won’t know or trust you yet. Therefore, users need to interact with your brand over multiple touch points before converting – as the Facebook ads funnel is set up to facilitate.

To maximise the success of your new Facebook ads funnel, it’s important to implement an omnichannel marketing approach that uses various touch points including organic social media, paid social media, email marketing, SEO etc., ensuring an integrated and seamless experience for customers across each. At Pilot Fish Media, we can help you build a successful Facebook ads strategy as well as help you implement a full digital omnichannel marketing strategy to maximise its success.

Get in touch at [email protected] to find out about how our creative and strategy teams can help you reach your goals.

How to Design your Black Friday and Cyber Monday Offer

October 11, 2021 Maya Benabdelhadi Black Friday and Cyber Monday, Business, Paid Media, Sales

It’s this time of year again. Black Friday and Cyber Monday are approaching fast and 2021 looks like they will be even more hectic than 2020… But fear not, your trusty Pilot Fish Media team is here to guide you through the madness and help you plan (and execute) for BFCM success!

Step 1: Define your BFCM goal

Where should you start? First things first, begin by thinking about what you want to achieve this Black Friday and Cyber Monday. There are three big categories of BFCM goals:

Profit (short-term benefits)

And yes, it is profit, not revenue. The danger of focusing on revenue is that you try so hard to create an attractive offer that you could end up selling your products, services, or experiences at an unsustainable price where your profit margin is low to non-existent.

Tip: don’t forget to set yourself a best and worst case scenario measurable and time-specific profit objectives!

Growing your customer base (medium-term benefits)

With this goal, you are not so interested in a short-burst influx of cash as you are building your brand awareness in the market. You’re looking to the future with the goal of bringing in customers who will stay with you.

Tip: here also, you’ll want to define an ideal and break-even number of new customers from the BFCM sales to measure success!

Learning (long-term benefits)

Here, you take a longer-term approach and seek to know more about how your customers behave, to what techniques they respond best, their purchasing process… With this goal, you are using the BFCM sales as a research project to feed into future strategies.

Tip: Identify what you are analysing and how you will do so.

Step 2: Choose your type of offer

Now that you know your brand’s purpose in joining the BFCM sales, it is time to look at the different types of offers and deals available to your brand. You can then pick the one most aligned with your BFCM goal and most beneficial to your profit margins.

Percentage discount offer

This deal is one of the most widely used one and consists of offering a set discount to either selected items or to the customer’s full basket. Unsurprisingly, this is one of the most used offers and fits particularly well with profit-oriented BFCM goals.

E.g. 10% off selected items/your basket

Tip: make sure that your discount does not go beyond what your gross profit margin can sustain

Tip: display the original price AND the discounted price to show customers how much they are saving

Pounds-off discount offer

Here, you would offer a set amount of money off a product, selection of products, or even on customers’ total basket. This deal is also very popular and works well with profit goals.

E.g. £10 off selected items/your basket

Tip: consider bundling complementary products and offering your percentage discount off said bundle to increase your average order value.

Tiered discount offer

This offer is designed to increase savings based on levels of spending as set discounts are applied to specific levels of spending. This deal is designed to increase your average order value by giving customers an incentive to spend more. As such, it fits the profit goal best and the learning goals, too. It is also a great way to gently nudge your customers into trying more than just your hero product.

E.g. £30 off when you spend £80

£40 off when you spend £110

£50 off when you spend £140

Mystery box offer

This is a slightly trickier one but that can yield great results. The customers roughly know the type of product, service, or experience they are purchasing but not the specifics. As such, it is an opportunity for you to bundle complementary products and to surprise customers. The key is to manage expectations (so be very careful with your product name and description) so as to meet, or even better, exceed customers’ expectations.

This deal works best with experiences and when your product/service portfolio has a homogeneous high quality level. We would recommend this for learning-focused BFCM goals.

E.g. Wellness basket for £50 (but not mention of specific contents) OR one-night stay in our hotel (without specifying the room category or inclusions such as breakfast, bottles of wine, flowers…)

Tip: copy is critical, here. Make sure your offer descriptions generate excitement and play up the mystery for an enhanced unboxing experience.

Free gift offer

Always a good option when your gross margins are too slim to justify any discount, the free gift deal enables to increase overall value without decreasing gross profits. It is also a good tactic to use at key points throughout the year, especially when trying to extend your customer base!

E.g. Free mirror with every makeup purchase

Tip: make sure the gift is relevant and complementary to the product purchased, otherwise customers will have a lower incentive to pick this deal.

Extra donation offer

This offer consists of pledging a caritative action for every purchase, which can be monetary or not. It is an excellent way to create an emotional bond with your customer base and to enlarge it. It can also be a good learning opportunity for the brand to understand your customers better.

E.g. For each purchase, a tree will be planted in Kenya

Tip: for this to succeed, you must pick a cause about which your customer base feels strongly.

Step 3: Consider the customer experience

Once you have identified your goal and selected your offer, your work is not quite done. You should also consider the overall customer experience. First, look at your offer. The easier to understand it is, the better it will do. So make sure your deal makes sense to your target customers. In the eternal words of Michael Scott, “make it simple, stupid”. This is also why we would recommend only using one type of offer at a time! With customers having easy access to many sales from many different brands at the same time, any confusion will quickly cause them to go to a competitor.

Now that your offer is profitable, attractive, and simple to understand, examine the customer journey in detail to make it as smooth as possible. Don’t forget the check out process. As the last step in the purchase process prior to receiving the product, the check out is your last chance to make a positive impression. As the last link of the chain, the ease of checking out will leave a lasting impact on the customer and will likely colour their perception of the entire purchase process. As such, you will want to make this step, fuss-free, fast, and easy, without forgetting to thank customers once completed.

Your confirmation email is also an extension on your customers’ purchase experience and should reflect your brand. It is also a chance for you to subtly push one-time customers into becoming repeat or even loyal customers. To do so, make sure the email is visually appealing (in a way that highlights and supports your brand’s aesthetics), clear, concise, and highlights the next steps (i.e. delivery process and timing). Thank the customers for choosing your products and you, and add a little fluffy message to leave them with a fuzzy warm feeling about having supported your brand.

Need some expert help to make a splash this Black Friday and Cyber Monday? Get in touch with us now at [email protected] for a strategy consultation…

3 Tips for Using Social Media as a Small Business

October 4, 2021 Rachel Fox Business, Small business, Social Media

Hey there, Rachel here! Last month I joined the wonderful PFM team as a creative content producer. As you may have guessed from the job title, I am obsessed with almost everything to do with design. Although graphic design has my heart, I love experimenting in other creative areas such as rug tufting, painting, sewing…the list goes on. This love developed into a small business last year which is where the real learning process began!

Social media is something we all use and are comfortable with in our day-to-day lives. When you’re starting out as a small business, social media can be a key step to ensure success is around the corner…but only if you’re using it correctly. As well as being completely free to use, there are almost double the amount of active social media users browsing different social channels each day compared to just five years ago. So why should small businesses let this opportunity go to waste?

On average, each user spends around 2.5 hours scrolling per day, although the screen time feature on my iPhone has let me know on numerous occasions that my scrolling time is much higher than this – oops. These few hours offer an incredible opportunity for you to grow your business by building brand awareness, connecting with your audience or even making direct sales through different channels.

Having some experience running a small business, here are some tips I’ve learned along the way on how best to utilise social media for your business!

1. Choose your platforms

To ensure you’re using social media effectively for business, I cannot emphasise how important it is to do some research! It can be easy to assume which social platforms your target market is using regularly, but you may be shocked when you get down to the nitty gritty figures.

For example, you may assume that the average age of Facebook users is between 35-55. With this thought in mind, you may be inclined to skip over this platform when trying to reach a younger demographic and jump straight into both Instagram and TikTok. However, according to Digital 2021, surprisingly almost a quarter of Facebook users are aged 18-24.

It’s always great to start on the platform(s) your desired audience are using and build from there. That’s not to say you cannot and should not use other social platforms as well! Trialling new platforms and different channels can be great for expanding your audience and meeting different business goals. The beauty of social media is that you don’t need to take an all-or-nothing approach: experimenting can be fun, insightful and is all part of the process.

2. Consistency is key

No matter what you may be selling or what service your business is offering, posting consistently will help build strong relationships with your target audience. This doesn’t mean you’ll constantly need to bring out new products and offer new services every other day: posts can simply be about keeping your audience in the loop. Sharing what’s going on behind the scenes, resharing products and services you already offer or even having some fun and jumping on board with current trends can help create a buzz and build excitement.

Basically, don’t go radio silent and disappear completely! With all this being said, I believe it’s also necessary to touch on the importance of keeping your audience’s current needs in mind. Making sure you are up-to-date with what is going on in the world (especially within your target audience) is key as social media is constantly changing. What might have worked last year or even last month may not work today!

3. Have fun and be creative!

In my opinion, coming from a background and love for all things design, this is arguably the most important tip when it comes to posting on social media as a small business. You’ve got to be loving the content you’re creating and putting out into the world for everybody to see.

Now more than ever with how many posts we see per day, it’s clear to users when a brand hasn’t put thought into their content. These posts will be met with a quick swipe of the finger and likely never to be viewed again! If you’re not enjoying creating your content then you can’t expect viewers to engage.

As I mentioned before, it’s not a secret that social media is constantly evolving. With this comes each individual platform adding new features for us to creatively play about with. Even switching between static imagery, video, carousels or interactive polls can do wonders and keep the creative juices flowing…just have some fun with it!

Need some inspiration for your social media marketing? To get a complimentary audit of your current social strategy, get in touch at [email protected].

CategoryBusiness