We’ve listed some of the best London agencies below for your convenience.

If you’re looking for an Experiential Marketing Agency in London we highly recommend The Arcane Agency who we work very closely with.

Our team specialises in Social Media advertising & marketing. So drop us a line if that’s what you’re looking for.  joe@primeeight.co.uk

www.primeeight.co.uk

More Digital Marketing Companies in London

www.flipsidegroup.com – Flipside are London-based mobile specialists. We have iPhone app developers and Android app developers ready to help with your mobile development

www.found.co.uk – Get Your Company Found Online‎

www.thecroc.com – Award Winning London Digital Agency Digital, Social, Content, Strategy

www.harvestdigital.com - Harvest are a performance digital marketing agency offering a full service across online marketing including display, paid search, seo and web design.

www.latitudegroup.com – Latitude is an award-winning digital marketing agency. ( A few of us at Prime Eight have worked at Latitude, we like them)

www.catchdigital.com - Our team of creative, technical and strategic specialists work with clients both large and small across a diverse range of digital projects

www.uniquedigital.co.uk - International digital marketing agency.

www.venndigital.co.uk – Broadcasting your brand message loud and clear.

www.steakgroup.com – Digital marketing agency | SEO & PPC

www.avenuedigital.co.uk – Avenue Digital are a performance focused Digital Marketing Agency from London delivering SEO, PPC, Social Media and Design & Build.

www.rawnet.com - Award winning, results-focussed digital agency based in the City

www.overthrowdigital.com - Digital Strategy & Multi-channel Experts

www.flipsidegroup.com - Web, Mobile, Search, Social & More, London based team of consultants.

www.movedigital.co.uk – We use our Imagination to MOVE you‎

www.bewonderful.co.uk - Wonderful Creative Agency: Digital Marketing Agency London

www.eightandfour.com - We work with brands who are serious about their digital futures.

www.mba.co.uk - MBA is an independent digital marketing agency based in London, Miami and Brighton.

www.firefly-digital.co.uk - ondon based digital web agency specialising in design and build of HTML5 responsive websites for desktop and mobile, social media, email marketing and more

www.jellyfish.co.uk - PPC, SEO & Social, Creative, Optimisation & Analytics.

www.clicky.co.uk - Clicky Media are an award winning team of digital marketing experts based in Chester & London.

www.epiphanysearch.co.uk - Multi award-winning UK digital agency specialising in SEO, PPC, website development, social media and conversion rate optimisation.

www.essencedigital.com - Digital advertising done well is more meaningful and more effective.

www.abacusmarketing.co.uk - Abacus is an integrated agency covering London delivers all aspects of marketing consultancy.

www.smartunit.co.uk - Digital Marketing Agency London – Mobile-Ready websites, Ecommerce websites, SEO, Pay Per Click (PPC) and other digital marketing services.

www.wickedweb.co.uk - ward winning Web Design & Digital Marketing Agency delivering outstanding Online Marketing Services. We excel in Web design, SEO, PPC and Social

www.iconicdigital.co.uk - Iconic Digital is an award winning digital marketing agency based in London, UK. Our digital marketing consultants will get your strategy working.

www.biggroup.co.uk - Big Group is an integrated digital marketing and communications agency based in Holland Park. We bring digital, experiential and creative ideas to life.

www.mediavisioninteractive.com - A digital marketing agency based in London that specializes in range of digital services.

www.plugandplaydesign.co.uk - A digital marketing agency, like other digital agencies London we offer a range of digital marketing consultancy and fulfilment. Your digital agency London.

www.twentysixdigital.com - twentysix is an interactive, digital and marketing company

www.koozai.com - Multi-Award Winning Digital Marketing Agency Delivering The Best Results In SEO, PPC, Content Marketing and Social Media. Find Out More.

www.branded3.com - Engagement through useful, targeted content marketing.

www.regroup-media.co.uk - Digital marketing agency London : Regroup Media is about growing your business in the digital domain. What we do transforms businesses.

www.liondigital.com – A London digital agency who specialises in the design and build of WordPress branded content marketing platforms for the social age.

www.deleteagency.com - Award winning London digital agency specialising in UX Design, Digital

www.seven.co.uk – Seven is an award-winning content marketing agency. We create content that delivers on our clients’ brand promises every day and everywhere

www.one2onedigital.co.uk - Your digital marketing agency in London, One2One digital dedicated team of experts provides a full spectrum of digital management services.

www.digitalsearchgroup.co.uk - We are an online marketing agency in London providing transparent and honest digital marketing services across a broad spectrum of industry sectors.

www.tictocfamily.com - We’re digital. It’s what we do. At tictoc we supply a complete suite of Digital & Digital Marketing services that covers every aspect of the digital universe.

www.webmarketinggroup.co.uk - One of the top 5 SEO Agencies in the UK. Experts in SEO, PPC, Content and Penalty Removal.

www.yogurttopmarketing.co.uk - We are a multiple disciplined digital marketing agency covering the whole UK, including London, Birmingham and Manchester.

www.tamar.com - Tamar is a multi-award winning digital marketing agency with over 19 years of experience in running integrated search and social campaigns

www.blueglass.co.uk - BlueGlass is an award-winning SEO and content marketing agency

www.ampliorgroup.co.uk – is a advertising agency that incorporates into itself a 360 approach to marketing.

www.freely.net - We’re a London-based digital marketing agency. We can help your business earn attention, connect with your audience and drive revenue online.

www.makeagency.co.uk – Make is a London-based creative agency. We deliver outstanding results across three key business areas: branding and graphic design; web design & More

www.yoyodesign.com - We offer digital strategy, creative online campaigns and web design & development to clients in London and beyond from our studio in Tunbridge Wells, Kent.

www.makehoney.com – The Honey Partnership is a Global Communications Consultancy. We help brands grow and globalise through social-led strategy and marketing.

Feel free to drop us a line if you need any digital marketing advice. joe@primeeight.co.uk 
Happy to help.

PS: If you’re an agency and want to be listed, drop us a line too.

All the best

The Prime Eight Digital Team

The post List of Digital Marketing Companies in London 100+ appeared first on Prime Eight Blog.

While the Internet secured a place as a dominant medium for promotions, the importance of search engine marketing has increased. If your aim is to gather targeted traffic to your online content, paid search advertising would be the obvious choice.

Paid search advertising is used very commonly but questions have been raised about its efficiency. Your aim is to convert website traffic into sales. Deduct advertising money from sales amount to calculate the success of this technique.

Ways to Check Effectivity of Paid Search Advertising

If you have invested in this form of advertising, 2 performance metrics can help you assess. They are:

• Click-through rate
• Website conversion

Click-through Rate

The percentage of times visitors click your paid search advertisement out of the total number of views during a given time period is called click-through rate (CTR).  For example, if your ad is viewed by 100 visitors, and 10 of them click on it, the CTR is 10%.

Website Conversion

The percentage of visitors who buy the product out of total website visitors is known as website conversion.

Advertisers usually want their ads to achieve high CTR, but this is a flawed approach. In reality, the website conversion rate is what defines success or failure of a paid search ad.

How to Make the Most Out of Paid Search Engine Advertising

So, it can be concluded that if website conversion rate is impressive, the paid ads helped. Below are some tips that will help you make the best use of your advertisement.

1. Differentiate Content and Search

Google and other search engines provide the option to show your search ads on not just the search results but also on the publisher’s website.

Note that the search and content must be separated into different campaigns. You need to recognize that the 2 sources are different and, write unique ads and also bid separately.

2. Split Test and Rotate Ads

Industry experts emphasize the importance of split testing. To be certain that the results obtained from split testing are accurate, you can set and rotate ads evenly. This way, you will know which ads perform better and then choose accordingly.

3. Use of Accelerated Mode

The accelerated mode will allow your ads to pop up as fast as possible. This rushes the testing process as well. Therefore, you can test results and improve conversions quickly.

4. Don’t Forget to Track Your Conversions

You will be provided with conversion tracking codes. You can use these to not only track the ad’s CTR but also sales and leads conversion percentages.

So, Is It Worth It?

Yes! Paid search engine advertising is undoubtedly a great way to promote your website or blogpost. However, in order to take full advantage of these ads, you must employ certain techniques.

It is important to calculate the click-through rate and conversion rates to decide whether an ad is triggering desired output. Analyze results and then take decisions regarding different ads. If applied correctly, it is a very strong marketing tool.

Looking to get started with search advertising?  Drop us a line at joe@primeeight.co.uk with a subject line SEARCH!, and we’ll shoot you some more info. 

The post Paid Search Advertising: Worth it or Dead End? appeared first on Prime Eight Blog.

Greetings if you have decided to incorporate e-mail marketing as part of your marketing campaign. While the decision to step into this new arena is easy, getting results requires a lot of hard work.

In order to set up a fruitful email marketing campaign that garners a wide customer base, you must focus on providing value to the recipient. If you fail to offer value and only try to sell, recipients will tend to lose interest and unsubscribe.   

Select the Type of E-mail

One of the very first steps is to identify the objective of the campaign and recognize to the target audience is. Keeping these 2 factors in mind, find out kind of e-mails your company should send out. The content must be both useful and engaging.

Begin this by looking at your personal experiences. Go through e-mails that were sent to you from other companies and read through them from the perspective of a customer. Recognize how some of them are nothing but sales pitches. This is something you want to avoid.

On the other hand, there are some savvy companies which send e-mails that readers find interesting and informative. That is your aim! You want to convey the message, without overwhelming or irritating the reader. Note that, sometimes, incentives such as coupons can excite the customers.

Focus on Quality and Frequency

You must understand no one has the time to read long emails anymore. Keep is short and simple. However, do not send multiple short e-mails. Receivers often get annoyed if companies send to many emails within a short span of time.  The frequency depends on typeof business, but it is ideal to send maximum 2 or 3 in the first week, and then gradually decreasing the number.

What You Need to Know About Auto-pilot Programs

Even if you use the auto-pilot option for your program, you cannot ignore the importance of monitoring and evaluating the program. You must analyze the statistics and go through customer feedbacks.

Analyze Results and Take Actions

Assess the situation and act accordingly. For example, if you think the number of people who have recently unsubscribed is too high, you can do the following to improve the experience for user:

1. Boost value
2. Reduce the frequency
3. Shorten the e-mails
4. Limit the amount of selling per e-mail

If you find that number of unsubscriber is low, you can increase the frequency subtly. Some spontaneous mails can be queued in addition to the scheduled e-mails.

Provide Incentives and Watch Your Database Grow

If you provide the right incentives, nothing can stop your e-mail database from growing. All subscribers are important as those who do not buy now, may be potential customers. Give customers a very strong incentive to sign up for the e-mail subscription. This could be a coupon, a discount code, or a gift.

If you can build a successful email marketing campaign, it will not only add profits but also provide brand recognition and recall to your company.

It gets better…
We know what you’re thinking, you now know what you need to do to run a successful email campaign, but how do you get more subscribers? Well we wrote a blog on just that subject right > here

The post How to Build a Successful Email Marketing Campaign appeared first on Prime Eight Blog.

To find out your page’s most popular times to post we recommend using sumorank.com.

Here’s a couple more tips before you post.

90% of Facebooks daily active users access it via mobile. Keep this in mind when posting, optimise the size of your image for mobile to take up more screen space.

Scheduling in posts through 3rd party tools like Buffer and Hootsuite can reduce your organic reach. ( Facebook wants you to be on Facebook) So use Facebooks directly to schedule your page posts.

Finally, tie your goals with your content types.

If your goal is to get people to your site to re-market to, use link posts.
If you’re looking for engagement and brand exposure, use photos or videos.

Share this Infographic On Your Site With The Code Below

<p><strong>Please include attribution to primeeight.co.uk with this graphic.</strong></p><br /><br /><br /><br /> <p><a href=’http://prime8.agency/infographic/the-best-times-to-post-on-facebook-infographic/’><img src=’http://prime8.agency/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/FB22.png’ alt=’The Best Times To Post On Facebook Infographic Read more at http://prime8.agency/infographic/the-best-times-to-post-on-facebook-infographic/#oDbMB2UHjOIamhjX.99′ width=’1024′ border=’0′ /></a></p><br /><br /><br /><br /> <p>

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The post Does Your CTR (Click Though Rate) Really Matter? appeared first on Prime Eight Blog.

It’s no secret — and won’t come as a surprise to anyone — that  just as it has revolutionised every other aspect of modern life, the internet has revolutionised the way businesses make themselves heard and get themselves noticed.

The big dinosaurs of the brewery business still throw bloated budgets at billboards, the printed press and televised advertising — largely because they can, it’s worked for them before, and old habits die hard.

Smaller savvier businesses however are now taking full advantage of the ability to inexpensively, tactfully and tastefully communicate directly with people that are going to buy their product.

There are three main platforms where brands do this:

• On social media

• Within websites

• Within search engine results

…And one overarching aim they all have when using them:

“We want our proof-of-product, our distinct brand identity and our individual voice seen and heard by the right people”

This is all well known and has been talked about to death, but what’s not so well understood is how businesses get themselves precisely in front of buyers.

Over time and trial-and-error, a pattern has emerged that marketers keep in mind when planning a campaign. The idea of it is that you hit a wide but relevant audience in an Awareness stage, and aim to retain as many as possible through to a sale at the Conversion / Purchase stage.

The middle stage — Consideration — is the most important part. How do you reach people who showed interests at the broad first stage and as a result are more likely to purchase?

There are many approaches to this — particularly through Facebook’s advertising platform which is hands down the most versatile and well-equipped out there for online advertising — but the most effective is Remarketing.

How remarketing works is that users who visit your website are added to an audience that you can then advertise to exclusively. You can even advertise to visitors of a particular page of your website should you want to promote something specific.

How strongly you make use of reaching potential customers at this Consideration middle section of your marketing approach powerfully influences your website actions and sales, and often makes or breaks businesses online sales performances without them knowing.

For more information or advise on your marketing, contact joe@primeeight.co.uk and we’ll point you in the right direction.

The post Smart Marketing Methods That Are Good For What Ales Your Brewery appeared first on Prime Eight Blog.

Ok, so we talk to a lot of business’s starting out and looking to grow. Most first time meetings someone will mention that they have got a load of emails.

We ask:

“wow that’s great, so did you create a landing page and collect these emails through people who have opted in or bought perviously?”

The response (1 out of 10 times):

“Nope. We know a guy who scraped a load of emails”
OR
“I’ll have to check where the emails are from”

Both are bad news. First of all, how don’t you know where you got your emails from? That’s useless.

Second of all, email marketing is based on permission. Something you don’t have. So, your “list” is worthless.

The Biggest Scammer We Met

We even had a particular meeting with a scammy individual…

(Who has been reported to the Met fraud division, and has left the country, due to an unrelated business matter)

Who had access to 600K+ emails and for some reason didn’t understand why non of these emails turned into sales when he spammed them. c’mon man. What are you thinking? you don’t even understand the basics of product market fit.

Scraping email addresses can seem like a fast way to build a list of contacts, even if you think they’re relevant emails — you’re just going to introduce your website/product or service as a spammer. Not the best start. Right?

People know when they receive something they didn’t sign up for. You’re just hurting the reputation of your business.

(Harvesting emails in this way is illegal in many countries, including the United States. In fact, the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 specifically prohibits the practice. )

There’s a very good reason professional marketers do not harvest email addresses through scraping.

Because it doesn’t work.

We know you may have read about some large business’s starting off by scraping emails, and spamming….but we find this hard to believe.

Email harvesting risks
Here’s some other issues.

• You could be flagged as a spammer by email clients and ISPs
• You could be suspended by your SMTP service. No professional SMTP service permits marketers to send unsolicited emails.
• Your bounce rate could skyrocket.
• Your company could be fined by local authorities. Each country has different laws regarding unsolicited emails, and different punishments for violating those laws.
• There’s a case that it effects your SEO badly too.
  https://searchenginewatch.com/sew/opinion/2421290/your-email-marketing-may-impact-your-rankings

CLIFF-NOTE: you know why those scam spam emails you get are so badly worded? You know the one’s — from a Nigerian Prince?

Some reasons:

• To filter out smart users who would immediately recognise the scam, thus ensuring that only the most gullible users respond.
• To read in a way that people with money might imagine a Nigerian would write
• To get past spam filters

Anyway, scraping emails?

Just don’t do it. It’s not smart & its not at all worth it. Build your business properly.

We’d like to hear your thoughts either way.

The post Why You Shouldn’t Mass Scrape Emails & How Doing So Can Ruin Your Business Before You Even Get Started appeared first on Prime Eight Blog.

While attaining traffic is easy, growing your conversion rate is not as simple. However, being able to tap into an audience like Facebook — where over 1 billion users are active per month – could go a long way to helping you drive sales.

With the platform inside Facebook, you can tap into an audience that has genuine interest by engaging them with well-crafted ads. That audience can be targeted in many ways, thanks to Facebook’s many features, and here’s how to do it.

Targeting Based On Interests

Facebook allows you to target users based on their location, age, gender, level of education, and a variety of other parameters. One of the major ‘other parameters,’ here, is interests: interests of users, groups users have joined, and pages that they’ve liked. As users like more pages and engage more with Facebook, you can reach a wider audience.

You can also reach other audiences that are related. Let’s say that you’ve introduced a new pizza restaurant to the local market. You can target fans of Pizza Express and promote your product in an effort to get them to give you a try instead.

Once you begin the ad creation process and have selected your Campaign Objective, find your market based on one or more interest. Since the interest(s) chosen result in their fans seeing your ad, you’re already attaining views and engagements from users who are already part of your target demographic.

A lot of these users, however, may not be ready to act on your ad just yet. This is where publicising key information and persuasive creative are necessary. Get the necessary processes in place to communicate with your new audience, such as a ‘lead nurturing system’.

Creating Compelling Lead Magnets

A ‘lead magnet’ is what you’re going to offer someone in order to have them as a member of your marketing audience. If you want their email, mobile number or other form of contact information, you may need to give away something in return. For example, discount codes or free trials are ways that you can attain increased engagement with your brand, products and services.

Other lead magnets include:
• Exclusive content
• Free tools
• Free articles
• Action plan checklists

Building Landing Pages For Facebook Leads

As Facebook visitors begin to come to your page and interact with your content, you’ll want to look at how to optimise your conversion rate. Like any landing page, elements such as headlines, graphics or call to action should be able to be treated as variables that can be tested and improved to achieve improved results.

A study by MarketingSherpa found that unique landing pages are becoming more and more popular for various campaigns or brands. This may mean that your Facebook visitors need to see something different from your pay-per-click visitors. However, some elements should stay the same — ensuring an informative action, call to action, and engagement (e.g., a submission form) are included.

When you’re creating a landing page, you need to convey as much information in as few words as possible. Keeping things simple is good, but too sparse and you may project the wrong image to your audience. How can you get the best of both worlds?

Leverage credibility. If you’ve worked with other credible brands, showcase their logo as appropriate so that the customer knows that you’re affiliated. For example, if you were trying to capture leads for an email newsletter software, you may want to show organisations you already supply services to. This brand association leads to the ‘halo effect’ — meaning that one positive association elevates another.

Showcase endorsements. If you can demonstrate that you have positively impacted other customers, share it! This also adds to the credibility of your organisation similarly to when a potential customer does research on you — only now, you’re taking the lead and showing what you want to be seen.

Your landing page should also have a single purpose. Just one. It keeps things neat and avoids overloading the consumer with messages. If you think that you need more than one purpose, create multiple ads and landing pages so you’re reaching the right target audience every time.

Your page should also be optimised for conversions. Remember, when you run an ad, lead generation is the number one purpose, no matter what kind of ad it is. When you’re optimising, there’s two main tenets to keep in mind:
• Add more of what works
• Stop doing what doesn’t work

Conveniently, there are also two main ways to optimise:

• Add clarity in your communication
• Monitor statistics

Both also help you with the above two principles of optimisation.

When it comes to adding clarity to communication, there are several ways to do it. You can create directional cues (pointing a visitor towards an action, adding a video so they stay on your page longer) or you can remove other links, thereby reducing the amount of potential actions a visitor could take on the page.

You can also add clarity by showing the visitor exactly what to expect when they give you their information. Using “Submit” implies that you’re simply collecting the data, while a term such as “Yes, I want the Free Guide” tells your customer what you’re delivering.

Monitoring the statistics behind your page is what you need to do whenever you’re testing an element. Once you’ve seen a pattern of your daily conversion rate, you can start to tweak your pages, and make informed decisions as to whether your changes are helping or hurting your conversion rate.

Now armed with this knowledge, there are plenty of tools available to help you create landing pages, and test them, including Leadpages, Instapage and Unbounce.

Driving Qualified Traffic From Facebook

Your landing page is ready. Now what? Facebook pay-per-click is a great tool to drive traffic and sales. Make sure you keep track of your cost per acquisition (CPA) — it will allow you to better compare your ad performance on Facebook compared to other campaigns you may be running elsewhere, like with Google AdWords.

In Facebook, conversions are tracked by a conversion pixel. This is placed on your website and in the ad, and will tell you which ads are boasting the best conversion rate. Facebook has also optimised CPM options that allow advertisers to set goals for a variety of actions, including registrations, checkout and other conversions.

To set up this conversion pixel, you’ll need to use Conversion Tracking on your Facebook Ads manager. Name the conversion, and categorise it based on the actions. Create your pixel and then copy the code. You will be shown where to put it on your website.

Facebook’s Power Editor can also be used to create a conversion pixel. Go to Manage Ads, then Conversion Tracking. Again, you will name and categorise your pixel, and add it to your website.

Once you’ve put in the conversion feature, create your ad itself. Consider the user intent and experience, and how the ad works with your landing page and goals. All parts need to work cohesively in order to deliver the best possible performance.

Be concise with what you’re offering. If you’re truly offering something of value, it won’t look too pitchy. Address all four of these elements to make sure your ad performs:

• Visuals — Use bright, clear images, without a lot of text.

• Relevancy — Between the headline, visuals, copy and call to action, every component must be relevant. Facebook also tracks this using a Relevance Score, based on feedback. Relevancy can help you drive down the cost of advertising, shape testing of creative options, and optimise active ads.

• Value proposition — Make sure what you’re offering is abundantly clear in the ad. If you want to say your new how-to guide is useful, eliminate the need for benefit of the doubt by offering a preview.

• Call-To-Action — You can’t expect anything from your customer if you don’t ask for it. Whether you want them to shop your site, join your mailing list, or anything else, you need to make it clear that that’s what you want.

Converting With Low Friction

You don’t want an uphill struggle for resonance between you and your customers. Conversions are optimal when the intent is clear, visits are productive, and the suitability of content to audience is high making it easy for the customer to interact. Chances are, your ad has been clicked on a whim, and if there’s too much commitment required upfront, visitors may abandon your page. They came to learn, not to immediately purchase. Create an environment for them that doesn’t require a lot of heavy lifting on their end. Try something that gets people connected immediately, like an email list.

Once you have an email list of a usable size and quality, Facebook ads work best when you have a conversion funnel set up, then add useful content that your engaged visitors (leads) will find useful. This allows you to pursue a sale while also proving your worth to your subscriber.

Regardless of the approach you take, continually monitor performance to see what works, and track your performance. Facebook Insights will provide a lot of information, but you need a system on the page you’re sending people to as well. You can use techniques and statistics like the UTM campaign parameter, and click-through rate.

Creating a successful campaign is a process:
• Set up a system to monitor your advertising
• Create the ad(s)
• Tweak based on feedback data

This will help you determine what will work for you. Every component needs to work together to convert a click into a lead, and the more cohesion you have, the more successful you will be.

The post The Beginner’s Guide To Making Facebook Ads That Convert appeared first on Prime Eight Blog.

It’s likely many of your audience members are suffering from email overload. When you’re receiving tens or hundreds a day, it’s hard to stand out. If you use email as a campaign tool, you need to differentiate yourself from newsletters, other organisations, and other emails that your audience is receiving.

It’s imperative that your emails spark interest, starting with your subject line, and ending with the content inside. You need a great subject line to get the open, and you need the content to prove to your readers that your message is worth their time.

How can you boost click through rates?

1.Numbered lists

Lists are great to use to help your audience understand the information provided. When you make it look easy for the reader, there’s a better chance your emails will be opened. The number also signals how much content there is in there for the reader, so make sure you’re providing enough information to get them reading! It also tells them how much time they might need to read the email, which can help produce quality opens, as people won’t be opening, seeing all the content, and clicking away because it’s too much.

2. Using questions

Engaging your audience is a great way to facilitate more opens; posing a questions has been proven as a great method. Using questions can spark engagement with your readers and improve click lines.

There is a line, however, when using questions — something like “What do you have to say?” would likely perform better than a spammy-looking subject like “Would you like to make $100 instantly?”

3. Focus on audience interests

Knowing the personality of your target market can help, as you can utilize information you know about them to engage. For example, a headline that uses a favoured sports team can garner more attention than one that uses a generic sports headline.

Depending on the amount of information known and level of outreach, it’s possible be incredibly detailed with your emails, customizing them for your customer. This means you can take advantage of visible customer segments and tailor emails to the audience.

4. Use symbols

Using symbols can help your emails stand out more. Some may even use emoji if it suits their message or demographic. Unicode symbols are also recognized by a wide range of email services, and can help you add some visual interest to your subject lines.

As an example, if you have the correct information, you can connect with your audience on a cultural level. Using information you know, (e.g. you’re sending a birthday email out to a segment of your audience) use the zodiac symbol to help your message stand out.

5. Use wit

Puns, rhymes, and jokes add interest and can increase your open rate. Make it company-relevant as well — e, g. if you’re in the pet business, you can try a play on words, such as “You’re Pawsome!”

6. Timing

The saying tells you that timing is everything, and it’s true. Being strategic with your send time can help you see results. If you’re in the restaurant business, for example, sending a message to your audience just before a meal time that you’re open for would likely result in increased engagement due to the likely hunger levels of your readers.

7. Pretend it’s Twitter

If you’re on Twitter, you know how to say a lot with a little. The 140 character limit has probably made you frustrated at one point when you try to talk about the latest in your world.

However, this is a great approach to take in your email marketing strategy. You want your emails to be short, precise and to the point. For example, if you want to promote your newest products, imply introduce the topic, add a preview, and indicate where those that are interested can go to see what you’re promoting.

8. Use a Call to Action

Adding a Call to Action can incite urgency in readers, which can lead to higher opens. If you can’t fit it in naturally (e.g. Don’t Miss Out! 50% Off), you can add it in brackets at the end of the subject line. Something like “Shop Our Shirt Sale [Ends Tomorrow]” uses both a call to action and sparks urgency.

9. Utilize Preview Text

When viewing emails in an inbox, both the subject line and a preview of the email content are shown. Using the preview to further elaborate on your subject line or adding more information can help increase your open rate.

It can help complete the hook of the subject line — for example, Buzzfeed commonly uses a generic statement that is explained by the preview text, starting the engagement with their audience that much sooner.

10. Adding Trigger Words

Certain terms can appeal to readers in that it triggers an action like an open. For example, using terms like ‘free delivery’ can increase open rates, as compared to emails that don’t use those terms.

11. Be Specific

Make sure your audience knows why you’re contacting them! If your subject line is vague and uninspiring, your audience will not know the purpose of your email, nor will they feel compelled to know more.

As an example, LinkedIn is incredibly specific as to why they’re reaching out. Whether they want to let you know about new posts from your connections, or if a contact has joined, you’ll know immediately based on the subject line.

12. Incentivise

Saying thanks may not be enough when someone opts-in to your email list. Turn a casual reader into an engaged customer by giving them another reason to engage with you. Examples include a discount with a first-time subscriber code, an immediate call to action, and drawing attention to the benefits of receiving your emails.

Need some headline inspiration?

1. “Jane, You Might Like These” — personalization is a great way to grab attention!
2. “You Only Have 6 Hours Left!” — create urgency with your subject line
3. “6 Tips To Accelerate Your Clicks” — provides a preview of your content without describing any one tip in general.
4. “How To Be Productive” — touting benefits is a great way to get people reading.
5. “You’ll Love What We Have Today” — emphasizing personalization without having to use a name.
6. “Surprise! 24 Hours Only” — intrigue your readers with something that’s unexpected.
7. “Where to Eat, Now” — combine this with a strategically scheduled send out time and capitalize on how your readers are feeling.

The post 12 Hints to Boost Your Email Clicks (and 7 Strategic Subject Lines) appeared first on Prime Eight Blog.

Have a new blog post that you want to promote, more blog traffic? You should do everything you can to do so. Share it, tweet it, comment on it, post it everywhere you can — there are many ways you can promote your blog. However, reliance on social media as your chief distribution channel may be dangerous.

Social media may not be a reliable channel for your article if:

• portions of your target audience are not on social media, and/or
• the right people aren’t being connected to you by social media.

There are other reasons as well, including:

• Effectiveness of social media varies
• Range of potential readers not being on social media
• it’s not the only method to drive traffic.

While social media has high potential, and should be utilized, dependency on social media and related research may not allow you to reach your maximum audience. Social media is only a segment of the population – instead of trying to maximize engagements from a segment, maximize your traffic from every source.

How can you do this without using Facebook, Twitter, or other social media? Start with the right content.

Usually, the traffic you receive is dependent on the content you produce. If you’re not producing low quality content, you’ll likely get low quality traffic.

Why? Google’s algorithm is incredibly sophisticated. It can discern well-written content from articles that were written with no consideration for grammar, voice or expertise.

The goal of content production isn’t to rank only; it’s to create well-written content that provides value and information to your target audience.

How do you start with the right content?

Write for your target persona.

Don’t have one created yet? Do so. This persona would include a few demographic points, along with a fictional name and photo that typifies the person you’re trying to reach.

What is also helpful is including some background on this persona – what are his/her objectives and obstacles in interaction, and how you can mitigate these problems. With a well developed persona, you can produce content that is focused and deep as opposed to generic and shallow.

Know your topic.

While your personal reputation is not a factor in ranking, how well you know your topic will impact your rank. Why is this?

It’s been noted that Google prefers long, in-depth content. Content that exceeds 2000 words, for example, is a competitor for first page results. However, writing for quota won’t help you rank. The content you produce should be thorough, use relevant terms, and authoritative links help indicate content credibility.

The better you know your topic, the more likely you are to create thoughtful, useful content that is ranked.

While this may not be news, forming the right foundation is imperative. If you can’t produce good content, no tips will be able to help.

Focus on the long-tail keyword.

The long-tail keyword is incredibly important. A long-tail keyword is a query that is made up of several words (four or more). Let’s say that you were looking for iPhone cases:

iPhone 6 case is a short-tail, or head term. It’s generic.

best iPhone 6 waterproof case for outdoor activities is a long-tail term.

It’s important to use long-tail keywords for a few reasons:

1. It’s difficult to rank for head terms — there is so much online “noise” for broad search terms, like iPhone, orange, or pens, that your post and site would have to be extraordinary. Head terms also have so much volume, the quality of traffic leaves something to be desired.
2. Long-tail keywords drive targeted traffic — it takes a conscious effort to create a long-tail query. Many searches now are based in long-tail keywords. Have you ever asked Google a question, such as “how do I install crown moulding on bookshelf?” That’s a long-tail term.
3. Long-tail keywords are likely to help conversions — since the targeted traffic is qualified, i.e. demonstrating interest in the subject, it’s more likely that they will take action if you’re able to answer their query.

Gain referrals from other websites.

Boost your referral traffic by obtaining links from niche, high-quality websites. Though social media referrals are growing, other websites can be as valuable, if not more, in terms of qualified traffic.

It can be difficult to get these links, though. How can you do so?

1. Find the website(s) you want to refer you. Focus on quality content and traffic.
2. In your blog posts,  put in a link. Even if it’s a mention about the great article you just read from that site, state that it was a great article. Don’t be shy about sharing.
3. Send an note to the author and/or publisher to let them know about your post and link.

By doing this, a variety of scenarios can happen:

• They now know you exist. It’s a non-confrontational way of letting the site you’ve targeted know that you’re here, and you’re being noticed.
• They can now appreciate you and your site. Good will is invaluable.
• They share your content to their audience via their channels.
• They link to your blog. This is where the referral begins.

In short, a link alone is not enough to ensure you’re being noticed. You need to be proactive, and hope to earn a link back.

Guest blogging.

Guests are a great way to add to your audience. When you write for your own site alone, your audience is limited. However, you can raise your reputation and profile by guest blogging through related websites. For example, if you’re a lifestyle blogger focusing on fashion, writing for a favoured brand’s blog will both deliver new value to that brand’s audience, and your own.

As a guest blogger, you may also have the opportunity to link to your own website — take that and get more referral traffic!

For your reputation, guest blogging can help you establish your credibility, presence and knowledge. Like any brand, your name can grow to become well-recognized, leading to more direct traffic to your site.

Getting started, however, takes a few steps:

• Are you already blogging? Most sites with guest bloggers make sure that the bloggers they choose are good writers, possibly with a body of work.
• Do you know who accepts guest posts? You may have seen these sites in passing, or you can search for them, using terms like “[keyword you want to target] + guest blog”.
• Contact the site you are looking to write for directly and ask. To make sure it isn’t a complete cold call, read the blog, engage with comments, etc. — just like writing a cover letter, this is the equivalent of doing your research.
• Pitch the topic directly. Submitting a pitch uninvited is risky, but if you have an idea, mention so.

The more guest blogging you do, the more you’ll be able to do in the future! Continuing to write and publish you work leads to more name recognition. Eventually, people will be looking for you, and not your site.

Conclusion

Of course, there are other ways to grow your website traffic without the use of social media. Using every method that makes sense for your brand and writing is beneficial. The most critical need, however, is to understand the audience: how they search, where they search, what they look for, what they invest their time in, etc. The audience is out there, it’s a matter of you knowing how to best tap in.

The post Increase Your Blog Traffic, Social Media Not Required appeared first on Prime Eight Blog.