Synclio: September 2011

What is Bounce Rate, Really? Everything You Need to Know toTruly Understand this Metric in Google Analytics

Friday, September 30, 2011 – posted by Maty Grosman

If you’ve just opened a Google Analytics account and eagerly got everything set up only to find a 100% bounce rate figure staring you in the face, don’t toss in the gloves just yet. In reality, bounce rate (at least as reported in Google Analytics) is not quite as straight cut as, say, French Fries – but let’s not get ahead of ourselves...

What is Bounce Rate?

According to Google Analytics:

“Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page.”

Google goes on to say that you should use this metric to measure visit quality – but this begs the question: do single-page visits always necessarily indicate poor quality?

The reasoning behind Google’s definition is that if a visitor landed on your page and then jumped back without engaging any further (filling in a web-form, exploring other pages, etc), it’s most likely because he didn’t find the page relevant to his query.

But there’s something missing from this assumption...

The Problem with Google’s Definition

Not all web pages are the same.

In the case of a landing page that offers a free product trial, for instance, Google’s estimation may very well be sound: the goal here is conversion, and if the visitor clicked on the ‘Back’ button instead of filling in the web-form, he most likely wasn’t interested in what you had to offer. So the bounce – or single-page visit – may indeed indicate a problematic area to explore (perhaps your keywords are misleading, or your offer isn’t compelling enough, or your design is too confusing, etc).

However, consider a blog for instance: an internet user searches for some specific item of information, comes across your site, and clicks through. He reads the article, finds the answer he was looking for, and carries on with his day.

As a blogger (or any other online content provider), your goal is to be read and (preferably) to establish repeat readership. The fact that the visitor left your site after reading only the one page he landed on doesn’t necessarily indicate that he didn’t find your content relevant—to the contrary, it might be that your page answered his question so completely that he had no need of searching any further.

Some may argue that if he did like your page he would have proceeded to explore other pages, but – while it's certainly a reasonable proposition– in reality not all users have the time for random browsing. Many of us often seek to answer a specific question or looking for some specific item of information. In either case, we might find what we need without having the time (or desire) to engage any further – at least not during that same visit.

But we might still return at a later date, in which case both your goals will have been accomplished.

So with Google’s definition of Bounce Rate (and the same pretty much applies to other web analytics vendors across the board), the metric should be understood to indicate the number of single-page visits rather than the number of visitors who didn’t care for your page.

That's an important distinction.

Really then – What IS Bounce Rate?

Perhaps a more accurate definition – at least where pages that don’t aim to get an immediate conversion are concerned – would take into account the amount of time a visitor has spent on the page in question. That’s assuming Bounce Rate as a concept attempts to measure lack of relevance or quality.

Unfortunately, as aptly explained by Analytics expert Avinash Kaushik, Time on Page and Time on Site metrics give only a crude picture at best of what happened in reality. As it relates to our discussion, when it comes to single-page visits (or bounces), analytics registers a grand total of 0 seconds regardless of how much time the visitor actually spent on your page – that’s right, ZERO, zip, nada!

But what if you wished to find out not only how many single-page visits you got (which may not concern you as much if you run a one-page website or a blog), but how much time the visitor really spent consuming the content on your page (which would be of the utmost concern)?

Fortunately, where there’s a will, there’s a way – and where there’s a crack, there’s usually a hack!

Ok Big Shot, So How Do I Measure this ‘Real’ Bounce Rate of Yours?

While there may not be an official way to do this, Claudiu Murariu of PadiCode has posted a short snippet of code that utilizes Event Tracking to create an event every time a visitor stays on your page past a set period of time. This in effect accomplishes the very thing, as you'll learn how many visitors dropped out before they could have reasonably consumed your content.

Generally less than 5 seconds is considered a bona-fide bounce (i.e. the page was completely irrelevant), though you can set it higher if you wish to get a sense not only of the perceived relevance, but also the perceived quality and value of your content.

But How is Bounce Rate Calculated?

When looking at your page's stats under the Content section, Bounce Rate is grouped right along with Pageviews and Unique Page Views – but again, this can be misleading. You might think the bounce rate percentage figure is calculated based on the number of pageviews or of unique page views – but neither would be correct...

As explained by Claudiu Murariu, the bounce rate is calculated based on visitors that landed on a page (for example, by following a link from a search engine or from a referring site). However, it does not take into account visitors that came from another page on your site.

So let’s assume your dashboard shows 300 pageviews, 200 unique page views, and a bounce rate of 50% – you might take this to mean that 150 (or at least 100, if going by unique views) of your visitors bounced. However, if you check how many Entrances you got for the page under the Top Landing Pages tab, you may find only 80 or so. So in reality, 40 visitors bounced.

While this doesn’t necessarily alter the significance, it does change the perspective. And at any rate, it’s a matter of understanding what you’re looking at. (As a case in point, when the folks at PitStop Media ran a one-question survey to see how many people understood this fact, only 23% of responds got it right!)

Great – So if I Run a Blog I Don’t Really Have to Worry About High Bounce Rate, Right?

Wrong – sorry... Google needs measurable parameters to evaluate the perceived ‘quality’ of a page, and Bounce Rate happens to be one of them. So having high bounce rate might eventually affect your search engine ranking. No one knows exactly how much it factors in the overall computation, and hopefully your other on page and off-page SEO efforts will offset its impact, but that’s certainly something to be aware of.

Moreover, just because single-page visits aren’t necessarily a bad thing doesn’t automatically make them ideal. You do want your content to encourage further engagement, and if visitors consistently fail to explore more of your site, there may very well be something lacking. Look under Top Landing Pages and consider the ratio of Bounces to Entrances for individual pages. If certain pages consistently get a high ratio, you'd want to revisit them with a scrupulous eye.

Good luck!

How to add the Google Analytics Tracking Code Snippet to Websites and Blogs?

Tuesday, September 27, 2011 – posted by Maty Grosman

Adding Google Analytics tracking to your website or blog is one of the first and easiest steps you can take to start getting more informed about the traffic running through your website. It’s quick, simple, free—as a matter of fact, there’s simply no excuse for NOT doing it!

So roll up your sleeves and get ready for some cyber grease.

Where Do I Find the Tracking Code?

In order to start tracking your pages, Google Analytics must first sneak a few lines of code that will direct the application to do so. And, because the fine folks at Google aren’t the sneaky type, they actually let you do it yourself.

Here’s how:

Log in (or sign up) to Google Analytics.
A custom code is generated specifically for each and every profile (website), so find the account that contains the profile you wish to start tracking in your Account Overview page and click ‘Edit’ in the Actions column.
Click ‘Check Status’ at the top.
Grab the code from the dialog box by using right-click -->copy or the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-C.

A video is worth a thousand pictures. Check out this Google video if you’re having any trouble.

Traditional vs. Asynchronous Snippet

Last year Google released an upgraded version of the tracking code snippet that enables Asynchronous tracking. In a nutshell, this means faster load times.

While today Google maintains support for both the Traditional and the Asynchronous snippets, if you’re just getting started with Google Analytics for the first time there’s really no reason you should backtrack, so just go ahead with the latest version.

If you’ve already got Google Analytics set up, Google warns that you must first remove the traditional snippet before adding the new one, and offers some more migrating advice.

How to Add Google Analytics to your Blog?

Blogs generally use a template. That’s good, because it means that you’ll only have to insert the code once and it will automatically be added to all the subsequent pages.

Assuming you’ve already copied your code and it’s waiting to get pasted, sail over to Blogger (check out this guide if you’re on Wordpress), find your template tab, and choose Edit HTML—a scary dialog box full of strange symbols will display. Don’t freak out though, you don’t have to understand any of it!

To add the latest Asynchronous snippet, find the </head> tag (a quick Ctrl-F search would do), and paste the code right above it. It’ll look something like this:

</script>

**Insert Asynchronous code snippet here**

</head>

<body>

Should you be determined (for some stubborn reason) to use the traditional snippet, scrawl all the way down to the bottom and find the </body> tag—paste the traditional snippet right below it, like so:

</div>< >

</body>

**Insert Traditional code snippet here**

</html>

How to Add Google Analytics to your Website?

Adding the Google Analytics code to your website is mostly the same as adding it to your blog, with the exception that you’ll have to add it manually to every page you wish to track. That is, unless you’re using a template. If you do, according to Google, you need only add it once to the file that contains your <head> section—just above the closing </head> tag, like in the first example above.

Verify Your Setup

Follow these simple steps to test the success of your little operation: Asynchronous or Traditional.

That’s that—time to quit slacking and start tracking!

What is Google Analytics, Who is it for, and How Can it Help?

Wednesday, September 21, 2011 – posted by Maty Grosman

Google Analytics might seem like a drop in the bucket when you’re faced by the twenty-something apps available under the ‘My Account’ page in your Google dashboard, but I’m sure it will fast become your new BFF if you take the time to get familiar.

So let’s start at the top.

What is Google Analytics?

In a nutshell, Google Analytics is a free tool offered by Google that provides insights into the origin and behaviors of your visitors, the usability of your website, and the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns. It does this by tracking visitors’ activity from the moment they enter a keyword search term all the way through conversion.

You may want to visit this video tour for a concise visual presentation.

Who is it for?

While it may seem (at least at first glance) that the Google Analytics dashboard is meant exclusive for expert marketing professionals, the platform was in fact designed with the layperson in mind, and can benefit anyone that has a web presence: from executives, to marketers, to programmers/designers/developers, to private website owners.

How can it help?

Are you attracting the right audience? Google Analytics can tell you how visitors find your site and what they do while browsing it (which pages they visit, how long they spend on any given page, what site-searches they perform, etc). This information can help you gain a better understanding of the type of audience your website is attracting and compare it with your marketing research and targets. You may find that you’re off, or you may realize there’s a whole group of users you've neglected to consider and adjust your plan accordingly.
Are you targeting the right keywords? Google Analytics can also tell you which keywords a visitor had searched to find your website, and by following their behavior thereafter you can assess the effectiveness of the keywords targeted in your SEO efforts. Are you getting a high bounce-rate on certain pages, suggesting that surfers are misled into following the link but ultimately find the page irrelevant? While bounce-rate is not always an accurate measure, it can certainly indicate a possible problem.
Are there knotty points in your site’s architecture? Sometimes functional sites can have instances that, for one reason or another, users find frustrating. It might be the layout, the number of mouse-clicks required to reach the desired information, etc.

By monitoring how users behave while visiting your site—where they come in, what they do, how long they stay, and where they exit—and by looking out for discrepancies between an action you would have expected them to take and the action they end up taking, you can find possible evidence of such troublesome areas.
How effectively are you guiding visitors through specific actions? Another advantage of tracking visitors’ behavior is the ability to evaluate how effectively they go through any given conversion process—like signing up to a newsletter or downloading a whitepaper. If visitors don’t complete the process, you can see where they drop out and thereby zone-in on the problem.
Which channels account for the bulk of your traffic? Ads, keywords, search engines, emails—Google Analytics tracks all of them and lets you know just how many leads you got via each and every channel, so that you may calculate your ROI in no uncertain terms.
Which of your advertising campaigns are the most profitable? Email campaigns, banner ads, offline ads—again, by using Google Analytics you’ll be able to gain valuable insights and start making informed decisions instead of educated guesses.
Adwords Integration. Adwords users in particular will find Google Analytics a blessing. You’ll be able to see exactly how well each of your ads performs, which are the most effective keywords, and more.

These are just a few highlights, but I'm sure by now you can start seeing what a powerful tool Google Analytics can be. And best of all—it’s absolutely FREE.

To learn more, check out the full list of features.

posted by Maty Grosman @ 11:24 AM

How to Use Phone Number and Call Tracking with Google Analytics Integration Video

Tuesday, September 20, 2011 – posted by Maty Grosman

We teased, we touted, and now—at last—it’s here: Ladies and gentlemen... Phone Number and Call Tracking with Google Analytics!

Phone number and call tracking, coupled with the strategic selection and placement of phone numbers, can help take the guesswork out of your offline advertising campaigns and ROI calculations. No more shooting in the dark. With detailed call tracking information you can learn exactly how many of your leads came through which channels and start focusing your efforts on those that demonstrably work best.

To avoid rehashing the same thing over and over (and since we’ve got a fine videographer on stuff as well, besides our skilled wordsmith) we decided to do something different this time around and created this short ‘how to’ video.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, a one minute video at 30 fps is like a turbo-charge of thirty-thousand words—makes you think of Neo in Matrix going: “I know Kong-Fu!”

If you are inclined to reading more, check out this oldie but goodie for a more detailed explanation of how tracking phone numbers using call analytics can help you gain intelligence about your offline marketing campaigns.

Enjoy!

posted by Maty Grosman @ 4:05 AM

What is CRM, What are the Advantages, and How Do You Tell if it’s Time You Gave it a Try?

Friday, September 16, 2011 – posted by Maty Grosman

The sweet fragrances of Labour Day weekend BBQs have finally faded from the streets and, with well-rested employees back at their workstations, employers return to ponder the age-old question: how do I improve productivity?

Indeed, some business owners look up from their latest stat sheets like the captains of a ship realizing they’re taking in water. But as you start searching for the leak, don’t just grab onto the first pigeon hole you come across—like cyberslacking, for instance. Sure, it may be tempting to blame such ‘extra-curricular activities’, but consider that a recent study has once again confirmed what previous studies shown before: a healthy dose of web-browsing can in fact improve rather than hinder employee productivity.

So if lazy workers aren’t to blame, what is?

Said David Caruso of AMR research in a 2005 report:

Today, ineﬃcient workﬂow processes and inaccessible islands of information are the root causes of bloated overhead costs and poor response times. Oftentimes employees waste valuable time rekeying redundant information into many different systems because these systems are not integrated.

What in principle held true six years ago, still holds true today: productivity loss often occurs through no fault of individual employees, but rather due to lack of integration, outdated technology, and inefficient processes.

Luckily, there’s a simple fix for that: CRM.

Customer Relation Management utilities are sophisticated applications that let you keep customer related information synced and integrated between different programs, platforms, and even between different users. While in the past companies depended on localized CRM products that had to be purchased, deployed, and maintained locally (read: expensive)—the advent of cloud technology gave rise to cloud-based solutions like Sales Force, for instance, so today virtually anyone can take advantage of high-end CRM products at affordable monthly rates.

Now that you know what CRM is and what are the advantages, consider the following four telltale signs to decide if it may be time you gave it a try:

Scattered information. Do you have to look up information in ten different places—email, IM, voicemail, calendar, sticky notes, etc—whenever getting ready for a call or meeting? That’s a good indication you can benefit from better integration.
Every man is an island. Is each one of your team members surrounded by a moat with no effective bridges to facilitate constant communicating or sharing of information? In a company, this is a recipe for disaster. A company depends on proper communication between team members.

Even if you methodically try to keep each other abreast of new developments using traditional tools (email, phone, etc), you may still want to consider a more elegant solution to streamline the process and ensure nothing gets lost between the cracks.
Customers tipping—the wrong way. If you’ve failed to observe the last point, you won’t miss its consequences: 41% of respondents to a 2010 survey about Customer Tipping Point conducted by ClickFox chose ‘having to speak with multiple agents and starting over every time’ as the thing that frustrates them the most. When asked how they typically react to a bad customer service experience, almost 40% (39.7, to be exact) answered ‘cease doing business with the company’. Serious? You bet!
Missed sales opportunities. We mentioned previously that leads must not only be gathered, but also nurtured. If you find yourself having a hard time keeping track of the sale cycle, following up with individual prospects, or generally keeping the ball rolling and notice your figures suffer—CRM can help.

Conclusion

No one aspect of CRM taken by itself will likely be perceived as a game changer—but, to paraphrase Richard Boardman of Customer Think, a collection of small enhancements put together can add up to a big impact. That’s the key here. It’s like the lube that makes the same rusty cogs run so much smoother the old clunker seems like a whole new machine!

How to Get Customer Feedback: 7 Easy Customer Feedback Methods to Help You Start Listening

Tuesday, September 13, 2011 – posted by Anonymous

Are customers happy with your product or service?

Yes
No
Maybe

As a sensible business owner, you must’ve asked yourself this question more than once—but have you ever pursued the answer?

The problem is that all too often businesses don’t find out about a problem until it’s too late. That is, until the customer has left the house. But it doesn’t have to be this way. There was a time when getting customer feedback was an elaborate, intensive, and expensive process—involving outside agencies, focus groups, and lots of legwork. Today, agencies and focus groups still exist, but there is an ever increasing wealth of solutions available to the DIY business owner—perfectly suited for small business!

Here are 7 suggestions, from the basic to the sophisticated:

Create cards to display in your retail location

This is probably the easiest method to implement if you own a retail location. Simply prepare a short questionnaire—preferably using multiple-choice or ‘yes/no’ questions at the most (remember, customer aren’t eager to fill out long forms)—and print it on a deck of index cards. Next, grab a small cardboard box with a slotted opening for the index cards. Now you’re ready to find a prominent place for both, and don’t hesitate to offer something in exchange for filling up the questionnaire—incentive goes a long way ;)

It’s also a great place to remind your customers they can join your newsletter and receive special offers and promotions by providing their email address.

Email

Email may be old, but it’s certainly still rocking. If you don’t expect an overwhelming amount of responses, feedback can be as easy to garner as firing an email to your mailing list. Just be mindful and don’t abuse your clients’ time, patience, and confidence. Carefully select and limit your questions, and don’t blast too frequently.

You can also include a standard message at the bottom of your emails and newsletters inviting feedback. (You’d probably be wiser if you don’t use your main email address for this purpose, just in case it’s picked up by spammers). A service like Zendesk can help you automate this process (and more), albeit for a fee.

Blog

Your company blog is another great place to invite feedback on specific issues via the comments section. Just be aware that comments are public. If you’d rather receive feedback privately on any given issue, choose a different method. You can still use your blog and simply include an email address at the bottom (like we did in our last post)—granted, again, that you don’t expect an overwhelming amount of responses.

Survey Software

Now that you’ve got an email list, you can also utilize the information-super-highway (aka the internet) to run surveys. There are many online applications that can help you craft the perfect customized survey and even analyze results. Check out the 2011 comparison by TopTenReviews.com of 7 popular survey services for more information. Some, like Survey Monkey or Rational Survey, even offer a basic package for free. That’s a great way to test the waters and see how you like it before making a commitment.

Social Media

With the prevalence of today’s social media platforms—most notably, Facebook and Twitter—customers from all walks of life are plugging into the hub and regularly chirp, buzz, and even sting their opinions. It’s easy to capitalize on this presence by simply running a poll or posing a question. For simple queries, you may not have to look any further.

Online Communities

Yeah, so that covered simple tasks—but what if you need something more comprehensive? Well, there are more sophisticated tools:

Get Satisfaction, for instance, lets you create communities of customers. That is, to unify all those random voices scattered in disarray and give them an orderly means of communication. The power of this tool is that you can integrate it virtually anywhere—on Facebook, on your website, via mobile devices, etc—so that you can come to where your customers already hang instead of trying to make them abandon their preferred platform in favor of the new hangout you’d just created. It can also integrate with CRM software so that all correspondence stays organized and tractable.

For more information and for comparison with similar products, check out the User Feedback Apps reviewed by AppApeal.

Experimental

For those with a more adventurous disposition: Webengage is a new initiative by Mumbai based WebKlipper to incorporate simple, single question surveys on your website. The good? According to the developer, the program lets you set rules to target specific users with specific questions. The program is currently in private beta testing, and the developer is offering a free three-month testing trial. So if you’re the kind of person who enjoys getting involved in something new during the development stages and helping to hone it in with your input, all the while taking advantage of the product, this might be for you.

For more info, check out this review by the Indian technology site PluGGd.in

Conclusion

What’s there to say? With so many options to fit any size and budget, there’s absolutely no reason any business owner should remain in the dark concerning their customers.

Synclio Just Got Better!

Thursday, September 8, 2011 – posted by Maty Grosman

We know, you love us just the way we are—but that doesn’t mean we’re not working to keep getting better. So while you were busy enjoying our latest additions—SMSing your customers, viewing text transcripts of your voicemail messages, signing up local and toll-free numbers overseas, perhaps even treating yourself to a rare true 800 number—we’ve been busy preparing something bigger...

A New Release!

Not a complete redesign—more like tightening the nuts and bold on our present build—but with the addition of a glaring crown jewel. Want to know more? Keep on reading!

Here are the highlights:

Voicemail now in Mp3. Previously, voicemail recordings were stored in WAV format. While the uncompressed nature of WAV offered the highest audio quality, we doubt anyone planned to break out their high-fidelity audiophile headset to check their messages. On the other hand, MP3s are both GMail and iPhone friendly, offering enhanced functionality and improved integration all around.
Infinite File Uploads. It’s now official. There’s no cap on the number, length, or size of the files you can upload to your Synclio library. Written an amateur libretto and feel like incorporating it into your IVR menu? By all means, go right ahead... this might not be the best business decision you’ll ever make—but hey, we won’t stop you. We’ll even call to listen (and promise we won’t laugh...hard).
Synclio voicemail replaces Carrier’s voicemail. Up till now, when a call was transferred to your mobile device and you didn’t pick-up, your carrier’s voicemail service automatically kicked-in. But we realize this wasn’t helping your branding efforts. So now the phone will ring trice, after which your Synclio voicemail greeting will play in lieu of your carrier’s automated message (if you’re using our Find Me/Follow Me feature, the call will continue rolling every three rings to the next number queued until completing the sequence and then transfer to your Synclio voicemail). This ensures a unanimous business front no matter where, when, or how customers try to reach you.
IVR greeting loops (instead of hanging up). Ok, now this one might seem kind of obvious—but we all have our flops now and then. For some strange reason (that may or may not have to do with a programmer named Joe and his pet iguana) the IVR system played through the greetings once and then hung up instead of looping back again. We’ve corrected this little embarrassment and now all greetings will be leapin’ and loopin’ to infinity, so you can plug in and listen to your heart’s content (perhaps break out that audiophile headset and admire your own libretto).

And lastly, the crown jewel—

Integration with Google Analytics. We mentioned in the past what a powerful tool call stats can be and suggested one way you can leverage them to measure marketing performance, but that was just scratching the surface. Now, Google Analytics integration is here. As it stands, you’ll be able to see the date, time, and phone number to which a call has been placed. But our intention is to closely monitor performance and learn what items of data are of interest to you, our users, so as to progressively grow this feature and expand it based on input.

What about the future?

We’re not much for reading in the cards (nor for showing our hand, for that matter) and we do like the element of surprise—but we also know you must be eager to learn what lies ahead. So here’s a taste of things to come:

In the short term, we are working on a revamp of our backend (that’s YOUR dashboard) that will give you more control and versatility while allowing for a cleaner look. Our iPhone app is already functional and currently undergoes beta testing, so the day iUsers will be able to join our base of Androids and control the world with the tips of their fingers is near at hand.

As for the longer term, we have our sights on CRM integration. We can’t divulge any particulars at the moment least we’d have to kill you (and you, and definitely YOU at the back), but we’re very excited about the project and hope you will be, too!

So the future is bright here at Synclio, where we keep you synced to the virtual world.

Enjoy the improvements—and, as always, we’d love to hear what you think: about the updates, about our plans for the future, or about anything else that’s on your mind.

Drop us a line at shaun.clark@synclio.com

--Synclio out.

Beyond Lead Generation: The Importance of Nurturing New Leads

Tuesday, September 6, 2011 – posted by Maty Grosman

Last month we talked about acing your landing pages to generate new leads. But, just like fruits, not all leads come ready to be picked: some spent more time basking in the web's sun and absorbing nutritious information. Resolution is a temperate fruit, and your task is to make sure the conditions are right for it to ripen.

So what are the right conditions?

Need. A prospect must have a clear need for your product or service (and the fact that they may have downloaded a whitepaper isn’t proof enough—in fact, most of the visitors to a website aren’t ready to make a purchase according to Marqui Inc and other experts, but are merely gathering information)
Compatibility. If the prospect can indeed benefit from your product/service, they’ll have to be confident that it can adequately meet their needs—and do so better than the competition.
Trust. You might have a great product, but unless the prospect feels confident about you they’ll never proceed to make a purchase.
Affordability. Even the best service/product from the most trustworthy company is worthless to a prospect who can’t afford it.

A lead nurturing program is like the bridge between your marketing and sales departments. The sad reality is that salespeople are concerned with opportunities rather than with leads. SiriusDecisions research group has found that up to 80% of prospects discarded by sales teams have gone on to make a purchase from competitors within 24 months.

So the goal of a lead nurturing program is to:

Keep your company fresh in the minds of prospects
Establish need, compatibility, and trust
Determine when a lead is sale-ready

There are different services that can help manage and automate your lead nurturing program by creating a sequence of emails to be sent out in a specific order. John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing has put together a helpful list of 10 Small Business Lead Nurturing Tools.

Here are some things to keep in mind:

Mind the ‘From’ and ‘Title’ fields. The prospect must recognize the sender. They must also get an idea of why they're getting the email and how it pertains to them. Avoid spammy-looking phrases or abusing characters (as in: ‘You HAVE to Read This!!!’ or 'Make BIG $$$')
Keep it relevant. As human beings, we can actually be trained very easily—for better or for worse. You want your emails to be associated with value. The worst thing you can do is train a prospect to take you as irrelevant—it’s a straight passage to the junk box, and there’s no coming back from there.
Don’t blast too frequently. Prospects have more to do throughout their day than go through your emails, and you don’t want your messages to go unread. That’s another behavioral training: if they skip two, it’ll be just as easy for them to go on skipping the rest.
Consistency. Once you have set an expectation, make sure you stick to it—with the same frequency, quality, and relevance. This will gain you another valuable brownie point: reliability. In this game, you can never have enough brownie points.
Go from early stage to late-stage offers. According to hubspot, an introductory offer will appeal to a broad audience and achieve high conversion-rate but can’t reliably indicate that someone is sale-ready. On the other hand, a late-stage offer will generate less interest but attract those who are likely ready to make a commitment. (The first can be downloading a whitepaper; the latter signing up for a free-trial) This is an important distinction and incorporating both with help you strike a balance between generating leads and identifying where they are along the conversion cycle).

By sending consistent, valuable information and strategically planned offers, you will sort out the sale-ready leads from those who need more time, meanwhile providing the latter with the nourishment necessary for their resolution to ripen. A lead nurturing program should be an integral part of your marketing efforts. With patience and commitment, you too will ultimately pick the fruits of your effort.

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Synclio

What is Bounce Rate?

The Problem with Google’s Definition

Really then – What IS Bounce Rate?

Ok Big Shot, So How Do I Measure this ‘Real’ Bounce Rate of Yours?

But How is Bounce Rate Calculated?

Great – So if I Run a Blog I Don’t Really Have to Worry About High Bounce Rate, Right?

Related Articles:

Where Do I Find the Tracking Code?

Traditional vs. Asynchronous Snippet

How to Add Google Analytics to your Blog?

How to Add Google Analytics to your Website?

Verify Your Setup

Related Articles:

What is Google Analytics?

Who is it for?

How can it help?

So if lazy workers aren’t to blame, what is?

Conclusion

Related Articles:

Are customers happy with your product or service?

Create cards to display in your retail location

Email

Blog

Survey Software

Social Media

Online Communities

Experimental

Conclusion

Related Posts:

What about the future?

Related Posts:

So what are the right conditions?

Here are some things to keep in mind:

Related Articles:

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