This October, Replug gives you a little extra feast, think of it as our way of Trick-or-Treating you.

Replug has always paved ways for its users to improve their digital marketing campaigns.

Recently, we have announced 3rd party integrations to boost your email marketing. Now, you can integrate your Replug account with different email newsletter applications, SMS messaging services, and email marketing tools.

Social media revolution has introduced many communication channels to us. But, businesses use email marketing to grow their sales.

Yes, Email Marketing is still in-house!

Capterra states that with each dollar spent on email marketing, you can generate a revenue of  $44.25.

Make your own branded call to actions with Replug and request users for email subscriptions. You can forward these email addresses to the integrated email marketing tools.

Track the best leads with Replug and escalate your consumer outreach.

In this week’s article, we’ll discuss the three integrations that can change the perspective of email marketing for you.

Sendy

Sendy is an email newsletter application which helps digital marketers send newsletters via email through Amazon’s Simple Email Service (SES).

Sendy is the best tool to economize your newsletter emails to the masses.

How to integrate with Replug?

You can easily integrate the two platforms in very easy steps demonstrated below.

Step#1: Find Sendy’s API key

Sendy’s API key is the unique key which enables its integration with other tools. To find your API key, go to Account Settings. You’ll find your API key on the right side of your screen.

Your key will look something like this.

Step#2: Access Sendy’s List ID

As explained earlier, Replug collects leads and redirects them to your Sendy account. To maintain that list, Replug requires Sendy’s list ID.

Go to your Brand and click on View all lists

You’ll find an encrypted List ID for your account here.

Hover over to view the complete ID.

Step#3: Sendy and Replug’s Connection

Now, you have to connect these two accounts to start the magic.

Go to your Replug account and then go to Integrations.

Here, you’ll find the whole list of third-party integrations available in Replug.

Click connect for Sendy.

Fill in all the details and click on Connect.

 

Step# 4: Create your Call to Action in Replug

In this step, you will create the branded CTA using Replug. Select your campaign and start creating your CTA.

• Select the CTA type as Form.
• Select Sendy as your Email Service Provider.
• Select the Account.
• Select the email list (the same for which you entered the List ID)

After a successful integration, all the email subscribers will be sent to your Sendy list.

ConvertKit

ConvertKit is one of the most popular yet simplified email marketing tools. It provides marketing automation to small-scale businesses at a very reasonable cost.

Connect your Replug account with ConvertKit today and scale your email subscribers.

How to integrate with Replug?

The integration is very easy. Let’s begin.

Step#1: Find ConvertKit’s API Key and API Secret

In order to connect your ConvertKit account with Replug, you need to find your unique API key and API Secret.

Go to your Account Settings. Along with your basic account information, you’ll find both of the encrypted figures.

Step#2: ConvertKit and Replug’s connection

To connect these two accounts, go to your Replug account and click on Integrations in Account Settings.

Find ConvertKit among the list of all Integrations and click on Connect.

Step#3: Enter your Information in the pop-up

A pop-up box prompter will appear.

Enter your ConvertKit API Key and ConvertKit API Secret here and click on connect.

Step#4: Create your Branded Call to Action in Replug

In this step, you have to create your branded CTA using Replug.

• Select the CTA type as Form.
• Select ConvertKit as your Email Service Provider.
• Select the Account and the email list.

Sendinblue

Replug has made a handshake with another major marketing automation tool; Sendinblue.

It is a cloud-based marketing automation SaaS suite.

They provide organizations the services to communicate with their clients via email and SMS.

How to integrate with Replug?

You can easily connect both of your accounts to get the most of your marketing campaigns.

Let’s start.

Step#1: Find your API Key

Find the API key in your Sendinblue account.

To do that, log into your Sendinblue account.

 

The front Dashboard will appear.

Go to your personal account settings and click on SMTP & API.

 

You will be redirected to a page where you’ll find your API Key. Copy your API key.

Step#2: Sendinblue and Replug’s connection

Go to the Integrations list and find Sendinblue. Click on Connect.

On the next screen, you will be asked to enter the API key to complete the connection.

Choose the list that you’d like to connect with your Replug Account and press Save.

Step#4: Create your Branded Call to Action in Replug

Create a call to action in Replug and start routing your traffic to your Sendinblue list. To create a CTA.

• Select the CTA type as Form.
• Select Sendinblue as your Email Service Provider.
• Select the Account and the email list.
  

This is not it, we have some more exciting news for you. Wait for our second Episode to get more insights into Replug’s latest Integrations.

We can’t wait to hear from you. Share your experiences in the comment section below.

Did you know that the use of effective call to actions on your websites can multiply the rate of conversions for you?

Hard to believe?

Let me tell you how different companies improved their conversion statistics by simply improving their call to actions.

Some User Stories for you

Friendbuy, a company that promotes referral marketing for growth marketers, was able to increase the click-through rate of their improved CTA by 211%.

Now, that’s a huge figure.

Another striking example was set by Jason Fried, the co-founder of a software company 37Signals. His team tried different CTA variations in the quest of optimizing conversions for Highrise. And finally, they got lucky.

They observed a boost in sign-ups on the website by 200% by changing just the text of a CTA button.

You must be drooling over these figures by now and want the same for your website.

You are fortunate to stumble upon this blog. Because in this, you will walk through a journey of creating the most appealing CTAs and how to utilize them in unmasking the potential of your business.

Let’s start by understanding the nature of a call to action.

What is a Call-to-Action?

A webpage has a pool of content that has to be explored by the readers. If a motive is created for the readers, they’re more likely to stay on the page. A call to action could be used to retain the visitors on the web page. Basically, the call to action serves the purpose of answering the question, “Where do I click?”, to the users.

A call to action could be a button or a text that incites the user to click on it. It could be anywhere on your website or across other channels as well. Once a call to action is clicked, the user is redirected to your intended page.

A call to action plays a vital role in lead generation and customer conversion. Because it makes it easy for the user to browse through your website.

Your website might have won the best website award or could be a slick content source, but if your audience fails to understand the workflow, your efforts could go futile. That is why you need to cite your websites with a helpful call to actions; to help users progress through your website easily.

 

A perfect Design for your perfect CTA

The design is the first thing that you need to take care of. Because it’s the first thing the viewer is going to see. Using the right color palette and the right words can sweep your audience off their feet.

An attractive website with attractive and organized CTAs can get you the desired conversion rate.

Let’s see how you can play with the design scheme of your CTA.

Psychology of colors

We all experience and perceive colors differently. The vibe we get from different colors strums the strings of our brain and settles in the subconscious part of our mind.

Researchers found in a study, Impact of color on marketing, that 90% of the immediate judgment about a product is greatly affected by its color.

An item that stands out attracts more eyeballs towards itself. The importance of color could be magnified by this example below.

An ordinary alteration like a change in button color can boost conversions.
The boost in conversion was noticed by doing a very ordinary alteration; change in button color.

The red colored ‘Get Started Now’ CTA boosted conversions by 21%. Keeping this example in mind, imagine what you can achieve by changing just the color of a button.

There you go, a very simple yet a revolutionary tip can turn the tables for you.

Nevertheless, the idea is not to use blazing colors in your CTAs but the idea is to make the CTA stand out from the background.

In this example, the page is constructed on a green palette. A green colored CTA simply blends in with the background and doesn’t pinch the viewer that much. Whereas, the contrast of the bright colored CTA button adds to its captivation.

Shopify

Let’s see how Shopify grabs your attention with their CTAs. The current call to action they use on their website looks like this:

But before this, during the past few years, they had been constantly trying to improve the look of their CTA. In 2013, they advertised these versions of CTA ads.

The predominant version of their CTA till 2016 was

You can also get the maximum lead by playing with your CTAs and improving their outlook.

Smart wordplay

Overlooking your website’s call to actions is synonymous to wasting hours of effort spent into creating one. Be it the colors or the text of your CTA, it should be well thought out.

Don’t use mainstream CTA words such as ‘Buy Now’, ‘Download’ or ‘Click This’. Such boring words could destroy your conversions. Use the words that go best with the idea of your product.

Because you don’t want your users to think that you are a brain fed robot prone to go with worn convention.

Choose the words wisely!

Let’s take an example of this case study, changing one word in the call-to-action of B2B website generated a 38.26% lift in conversions.

Here the weighted value of the two words ‘Order‘ and ‘Get‘ can be measured.

Apparently, both these words are used to nudge the user to click on the CTA to buy your product. But take a look at the psychological effect these words make.

The word Order indicates what the user has to do- no anticipation for the end result is built for the user.
Conversely, the word Get emphasizes on the end result- what the user is going to get if they click on the button.

And just like the colors of your CTA, your text has to be discrete too.

There is a fine line between being unique and being extra. At the verge of being unique, don’t lose your originality.

The secret is to resonate with your product. Let’s take an example of WordPress and how they’ve shaped their CTA.

“Create a website that works for you.”
You can observe that the text of the CTA goes seamlessly with the story of the website.

So, spend some time associating your CTA with your business story.

What is a business story?; you must ask.

Let me spell it out to you.

The power of storytelling

Have you ever heard about neural coupling?

It is a phenomenon which illuminates the storyteller’s and the listener’s brain in the same areas.

You must have witnessed an unwitting attention when you start listening to a story.

A story is the compilation of events in such a manner that it reverberates maximally with our neural cells. In easier words, we ought to remember information in the form of a story much easier than plain facts.

When you are righting the text in your CTAs, the wording needs to compliment the rhythm of the story. Let the readers feel the emotions and make them empathize with your concepts.

Tommy Walker states in a blog that the purpose of the CTA is to build anticipation. The effective CTA is not created by smart wordplay, it is an insurance to the reader that your story gets better when they sign up.

Let’s take a look at the example of Movement Mortgage

Their concise CTA “Your Mortgage. At your fingertips” is appealing enough for the user to click on the “Try it now” button.

The information they’ve provided on their landing page is neither insufficient nor overwhelming.

Value and Relevance

Even a single word can have a huge impact on conversions. A change of a single word might not hold significance for you but it can majorly affect the decision-making process of the onlooker.

Create a sense of Urgency

Fear and love are those two powerful forces that drive mountains. Love is difficult to understand, so let’s use fear in our marketing strategies.

To sell your deal, sometimes you have to use alarming words in your call to actions. Use the words that create urgency and enchant the viewer to click on it.

If you succeed in making your users believe that if they don’t click on the CTA, they’ll miss out on the hot deals. The fear of missing out will push the users to check out the deal before the time runs out.

 

Less is more

Keep things simple and unambiguous.

Simplicity brings out elegance and elegance is attractive.

If you can explain something while keeping it simple, why go down the hard path?

Simplicity could be used to sprout curiosity in the viewer’s mind which elicits them to explore more of your offerings.

Unamo, a tool for marketers, sets a live illustration of simplicity.

You can see it in the screenshot that the words used on their landing page are quantifiable and ignite questions in the reader’s mind. And, to unveil the details, the users are invited to learn more via a call to action.

Be direct

If you own a renowned brand, you don’t need to splash unnecessary information on your website. People already know you and your specialties. So be direct, swab away all the explanation and directly introduce your user to your offer.

Square, a credit card processing tool, aces the use of CTA by direct targeting. Check out their landing page in the screenshot below.

On their website, they have taken advantage of the fact that people are already acquainted with them. Look at how sleekly they have made the use of CTAs.

People know their business and visit the website to sign up. And there it is, right in front of their eyes, they don’t have to search for it. The effective targeting and agile placement bring in the exact audience that Square hopes to convert.

Contextual Placement

Using a CTA on your website is essential but its placement is the tricky part.

A well-placed CTA is likely to gain more leads than a misplaced CTA which is not backed up by a powerful story.

Don’t we all crave harmony in our lives?

Just like that, you as a marketer should harmonize all your call to actions on your website. Create a story on your website and make the end user a part of your selling story.

A logical story will create a momentum in the user’s brain to figure out your product’s value.

To make sense to the user, everything has to be in context.

Let’s say you have a website and your motto is to promote your product. After highlighting one of your key features, invite the user to try out that feature via a CTA right below the description. This will encourage the user to click on the CTA to substantialize the concept they’ve just learned.

Make the user’s visit worthwhile so that they appreciate the sweet symphony your service provides them.

The relevance of your content with your CTA matters equally as the quality of both, if not more.

If you don’t place your CTAs in the right context, the users will be confused about their next move. Thus, they will get intimidated and bounce off of your website.

Check out how smartly Lynda’s CTAs integrate with the offers they sell.

The CTA is placed right above the offered courses, directing the users to start a free trial right away. The point to notice here is that, had the CTA been present elsewhere, it would have been cumbersome for the seeker to find the CTA to move forward.

Another perspective explains that for complex websites, it’s better for the CTA to reside below the fold. ContentVerve reinforces this statement by providing us with some facts and figures.

So, according to their study, CTAs placed at the bottom of complex products and service websites gained 304% more conversion than if the same CTA were placed at the top.

This theory is not a game changer though, as the concept is to stay consistent. If you have a product that needs plenty of description for the viewer to digest, then don’t risk on skipping the important message.

Remember that the expanse of your CTA is wider than just pixels and colors, it’s about creating the psychical chemistry with the onlooker.

Customer Feedback

At this point, you pretty much are on the expert ladder to incentivize your CTAs.

The next thing to take care of; is the customer feedback. Your website should be understandable by a wider audience and should elucidate their cognitive curiosities.

Even if you have created a classic CTA for your website that withstands all the rules, you still have to rely on the end user. Because an impartial user attains an unbiased experience of your website.

Value the feedback of your customers. Make sure that your users understand the workflow of your website properly. Revise and upgrade your design to an extent that your website becomes a piece of cake for the coming traffic.

CTAs in a Blog

A Call-To-Action may defer in its guise, but the essence remains the same; i.e to lead the visitor towards their next step.

Above are some of the examples of CTAs being used in the home website to guide the visitor towards their next move.

CTAs could also be used for brand marketing as well. The use of such CTAs could easily be staged in a blog.

For example, if you’re explaining a new feature in your blog or creating a relevancy with your product, you could escort the user towards the landing page of your home website via a powerful CTA. This could be done on different channels.

Voila!
You can generate leads even when the audience is not present at your website. But how do you do it?

Replug has the answer to this question.

Branded CTAs by Replug

Replug has commercialized the concept of a call to action. You can create branded CTAs for your website that could be broadcasted anywhere across the web to the relevant audience.

With Replug’s branded CTAs, you can target the relevant audience anywhere across the web and drive them toward your website. Which means an exponential escalation in your leads resulting in uprearing conversions.

You can customize your CTA by choosing the CTA type from the option pool and bolster your marketing campaigns.

Replug provides a complete canvas for you to draw a catchy call to action from scratch. The intuitive design of the website lets you smoothly progress through the whole process.

Try Replug for free and envisage your business venture by creating the powerful call to actions for your business.

Conclusion

Discard the conventional rulings and design intuitive, more compelling CTAs for your audience.

Get them hooked with your products and services by resonating with their cognitive needs. Make your CTAs stand out by choosing smart color schemes for your CTAs. Create a story for your customers to make their exploration on your website purposeful.

The placement of the CTA is as important as its design. Carefully contextualize your CTA’s placement and make the journey of your users a seamless one.

Create benefit-oriented CTAs for your websites and multiply your conversion rate and lead generation.

A well-placed and well-designed call to action is not to be undervalued as it can stretch your business capacity to many folds.

 

 

A widget is a small piece of code that helps you perform a very specific function. This code translates to a visual entity that you can add to a sidebar or otherwise known as widget ready area on your website.  

Widgets are available to give design and structure control. There are various types of widgets e.g. navigation menu, categories, tag cloud, calendar, search, recent posts etc.

Plugins often add their own widgets to give users more control over the display of plugin functions. An example of a plugin widget would be OIO Publisher which allows you to add a specific banner ad zone in your widget areas by using the widget.

Adding 3rd Party/ Custom Widget using Replug

Replug now allows you to add 3rd party widgets here to use them in your campaigns. This opens a horizon of possibilities for you to include any type of widget you desire.

A great example is the use of optin forms from tools like Optinmonster, Sumo, Poptin, Convertful or even your own lead forms.

You can add chat widgets (Intercom, Drift or any other), Video embeds (Youtube, Vimeo, Vooplayer, Wistia etc.), Quizzes ( BrandQuiz, Outgrow, SurveyMonkey etc.) or just about any other widget you can normally use on your website.

Follow the below-mentioned guidelines to add a basic widget and integrate Drift as a custom widget with Replug.

Add Custom Widgets using Replug

Custom Widgets has been moved from the Campaign Type to Settings > Custom Widgets.

Now, you can add Custom widgets directly without going to the campaign type and can display a simple text-based view with the message.

Step1

Connect to your replug account by signing in. Navigate to settings > custom widgets which is located on the top right corner of your screen.

Step 2

Click on the “Add Custom Widget Code” button as shown below.

After clicking on the button a pop-up appears with the following fields: Name, Custom Javascript and Custom HTML.

As mentioned above, let us take the example of Drift. It is the leading conversational marketing platform. With Drift, you can turn your traffic into qualified meetings using our bots.

Step 3

This step we show you how to find the javascript code in Drift. Starting off, from the Drift dashboard, which is on the left side, Click the settings gear on the left, and head into: App Settings > Chat Widget > Install.

 

After that you’ll see various options, Click on the Install which is under the Advance option. Click on the JavaScript. and copy that Code and paste it into Replug  Custom widgets.

Now go to your replug account and paste that code in Custom widgets and click on the Save button, you can preview it if you want.

The drift chat widget is now embedded in Replug. You can verify this from the list of widgets added in you  Replug account.

 

Online sales have gradually but surely become the backbone of almost all businesses. Companies across the globe have developed attractive websites, irresistible sales and quicker check out procedures.

This surge in online sales has such a huge impact that in Q4 of 2017 alone consumers spent almost 100 billion dollars in the retail e-commerce market. No wonder why everybody wants to sharpen their online sales skills.

Empathy is the first thing to practice if you want to become the heart and soul of people. If you’re an empathetic business person, it shows that you care about the utility of the customer. If you learn to prioritize your customers above your business, you’re going in the right direction.

One thing is certain, people are smart these days. Digital media has made them aware of their surroundings. If you are not sincere with them, you could easily get caught.

It is important to address the needs of the general public so that they invest in you.

It also waters your relationship with your customers if they start thinking that you strive for their interests.

The pursuit of your target market will help you grow exponentially. I wouldn’t be lying by saying that no one cares about random ads. While browsing through social media, you see tons of ads and you just skim through irrelevant ones.

Invest your energies in those people who you think could be your potential clients. Don’t just create content and randomly spam it. Go down this road with your own strategy otherwise, your competitors will subjugate you. One of the best strategies in narrowing down your audience is via Re-targeting. You must check out this infographic published by Chango.

We have more for you.

Read through the article to unravel the secrets to increase online sales.

Top Drawer advice to Increase online sales

The trick of the trade is so straightforward. You have to build and implement a sales strategy that evolves with time and changing the behavior of your clients.

Your number one goal should be to direct traffic to your online business and then make sure that those who visit don’t leave without a purchase. Below are a few pointers to help you achieve just that.

As you sow so you reap

Most recently, quite a few companies have plunged to their doom because of the data breach. The average data breach costs a company about $3.6 million. Customer trust is the biggest factor in making or breaking a business. People keep coming back month after month to business/ services they trust.  

Providing false information on your website, over-committing, underperforming and breaking promises you make to your customers are some traits that are bound to make a company lick the ground.

On the other hand, having a trustworthy relationship with your paying customer ensures loyalty even if there are hiccups along the way.

But to build customer trust and win their hearts. Here are some best practices to follow.

Honor your Commitment

Do not make promises that you can’t keep. Not living up to expectations almost always backfires. Keep your word with your clients even if it sets you back a couple of bucks.

Transparency

Providing insights into your company builds a strong trust level between business and client. If customers can see your inner workings, their mind is at ease from fraudulent activities.

Customer Support

Answering customer queries and solving their ambiguities enthusiastically elevates their moral and confidence. Offer them solutions and respond to customer support questions at your earliest.

Acknowledge Shortcomings

Every business has shortcomings and once in a while, they are exposed to the clients. Do not try to cover them up, rather own up to your mistakes and explain to your clients how you will fix them.

Use trust Badges

Highlight certificates awarded to you by trusted bodies to elevate trust level. Small things like SSL certificate and similar badges are bound to cement confidence in your product.

Target Audience and Conversion Optimization

To maximize the revenue, a business must identify the target audience and mold according to their needs. Identify the problems faced by common people and try to add value to their lives.

Do your homework before shaping your product. Collect demographic, psychographic, behavioral and geographic information of your audience. Be aware of their lifestyle, opinions, activities, and interests. If you don’t care about all these things you’ll be just another joe in the market with an unambiguous vision.

Conversion optimization works on this same strategy; to become organic and evolve according to your customers’ needs. You can gather valuable insights about what your customers actually like and not just crunch random numbers.

Conversion optimization is the best way to increase your ROI. You could take two approaches to create your sales strategy.
One way is to invest time and resources in acquiring customers. But, in the long run, it could cost you much more and negatively impact your ROI. Conversely, you can give your current customers what they want and give them a chance to convert. In short, make the most out of the traffic already coming to your site rather than luring new visitors.

Psychological persuasion

Believe it or not, psychological triggers do improve your online sales. You all must have heard of the Law of Reciprocation; having the urge to help someone who has helped you in some way. That’s human nature to bloom through mutual benefit and it could be used as an instrument to strategize your online sales.

Use Reciprocity in your business, that will cast a spell on your customer to automatically like you. Give them freebies, gift coupons or surprise them by a random check-in call. Make things problem-free for them proactively.

This will propagate a seed of compassion in their head and directly or indirectly they’d want to return the favor. It’s like balancing the seesaw swing.

Let me back up the power of persuasion by telling you the story of Phillip Kunz, a professor at Brigham Young University. In 1976, he and his fellow Michael Woolcott sent Christmas Cards to random people. And surprisingly, he kept on receiving Christmas greetings from random people even after 15 years. Read this amazing compilation of persuasion strategies enlisted by Neil Patel.

Not just by reciprocation, you can win more converted customers by aiming at them via different channels. Check out 5 Powerful Psychological Triggers to Improve Marketing to Increase Sales.

Improve your Website

Improving your website means improving your customers’ experience. You have to walk on eggs while designing your website. Because no matter how fully developed your website is, if it’s not a feast for the user’s eyes, then it’s of no use.

Your website should be easy to use and should not intimidate the user.

If you don’t know how to start, you must let a tool mentor you and figure out your website’s score.

The first step is to run heat maps on your website. Heat maps are used in every discipline these days but in this context, they analyze your website. They make you see which areas of your website gets the most attention by highlighting your website in different colors.

Some top tools to help you create heat maps are Hotjar, crazyegg, and Inspectlet.

By inspecting the heat map, you can easily decide the placement of your content, Call-to-action ads, navigation bars, and buttons etc.

The mannerism in which heat maps are concluded could vary. Let me explain all of the types for you in detail

Heatmaps

You must already be aware of the heat maps by now. The area that is accessed the most is colored with bright colors.

Scroll Maps

You have written a well-organized blog post containing thousands of words and blazing information, but how to judge that the visitors actually read your whole content?

That’s where scroll maps come in handy. Scroll Maps help you identify how useful your content is from the viewer’s perspective. If the users are skimming through your post and bouncing halfway through your blog, this could be calculated via scroll maps. If the colors transit sharply, then it is an alarm for you to amend your website layout and modify your content a little.

Nielsen Norman Group identified that 80% of the visitors are focused on what’s above the fold. This instructs us to crown the important information.

Encourage people to scroll down your websites by beautifying it. Exclude all the spoilsport information that dwells on your page that does nothing but repels the visitors away.

Click Maps/ confetti

Confetti calculates the singular movement of every visitor on your webpage. A tiny colored speck is formed at the spot where the user clicked.

You can find out where the visitor clicked the most on your page and the intent behind each click.

You can see where the user clicked and if it’s a clickable area or not. Often a time, users misjudge clickable from non-clickable items and get frustrated when it doesn’t consequent to the desired outcome.

Effortless checkouts

From my personal experience, signups or any additional processes while checking out my cart, torments me. It’s understandable that it’s necessary to build your business by asking for more sign ups but that is not the appropriate time to nudge the user. This might vex away the user and affect your sales.

There must be some sports-geeks reading this article. Have you ever shopped from Nike’s website? They ask their customers to sign-up with them to avail free shipping or be able to return merchandise.

Their idea is to make their customers feel important by becoming a “Nike Member” but shouldn’t everyone be treated equally? Non-members should be sanctified to get free shipping as well.

In another perspective, Non-Nike members might feel a gush of resentment if they need to return the purchased item for any reason.

Streamline your checkout process and do not shoo off your customers when they came this far. It means very limited question fields on the checkout page and no extraneous ads.

And if it is an utter necessity of your company to increase signups, wait till the user is done with the purchase and then invite them to create an account. That’s synonymous to doing the right thing at the right time.
Module is the live example of the latter technique.

Customer Engagement via Communication

Customer engagement plays a major role in keeping your brand at the top of the ladder. Interacting with your customers personally would gain their loyalty towards you.

When the customer has invested some amount of money in your product, they expect you to empty the tank. They can compromise on anything but they feed on your responsiveness.

Do not neglect any channel where your customer has initiated conversation with you. Answer to their facebook queries, reply to their tweets, reply to them on your blog and emails.

Have you ever felt the influx of admiration after getting a response from your favorite blogger? This really has the power to assimilate influence in random people and just because of your good manners; they actually do business with you.

You can also track your engagement on social media to statistically improve your communication.

Twitter lets you keep track of your twitter activity by analyzing average tweet performance, average retweet number, and average shares. Keep an eye on the responses and reciprocate with the customers.

Live Chats

Live chats are a fail-proof and responsive communication channel. Real-time communication with the customers characterizes you as a reliable source. Even if it’s the chatbot answering to their queries, they’ll feel that they’re important to you.

And if the chatbot fails to understand their question, they may get redirected to an actual customer support representative. It’s a good deal for everybody

SmugMug, a support community for photographers, gained 94% of customer satisfaction after deploying live chat in their community.

According to an extensive study done by Furstperson, 77% of the customers are reluctant to make a purchase from those companies that don’t have the option of live chat.

A marketing Automation service provider company, Autopilot, has disclosed the secret of their exponential growth. Live chat has helped them win their customer-base from 0 to 2500,  and 21% MoM revenue growth.

The technology of Live chat has widespread not just because of its convenience. But, because of its perpetual evolution day by day.

The modern day chat messengers are intuitive, responsive and are a bargain-counter expense.

And above all, it keeps your customer happy and satisfied.

Decoy Pricing

Once again, psychology gives you a way to bait your customers.

Decoy effect, also known as asymmetric dominance effect, states that if a decoy is added as an option to the customers, they’re most likely to choose the midway object.

When the customers are given two options, it’s hard for them to make a choice. If you wish to encourage your customers to buy the expensive item, add a decoy.

Keep the value of the bait lower than the most expensive item and make sure that its price is almost the same. Most people will prefer the most expensive item that’s providing them more value, but even if they don’t, they’ll buy the bait. Which means more cash inflow for you.

Apple stepped up their strategy and created two decoys when they unveiled their iPod Touch devices.

If you look at the prices in the above screenshot, they’re offering 16GB iPod in $229, 32GB iPod in an intermediate price of $299 and $64GB in $399.
The middle option looks like the best option for the user to buy a good storage device at an average price.

Share unique content via Emails

The act of keeping in touch with your customers help you in customer retainment. Many businesses have faced plight by disregarding their customers after getting their money.

You must be aware of a famous quote by Bill Gates; “Content is King”.

Educational content is valued and appreciated by a number of people, nonetheless, that is not the only way to share your content. The number of subscribers to the newsletters is also increasing. The most recent data shows that 23% of consumers subscribe to the newsletters to get their hands on different deals.

Remember, the more attention you’ll pay to your customers, the more likely they are to become your loyal customers.

Offer a guarantee

Your customers will believe in you when you will believe in yourself.

If you stand by your product and give them a ‘Satisfaction guaranteed’ approval, a weight of uncertainty will be lifted from their heads.

If you’re guaranteeing your product then this gives a feeling that you have confidence in what you’re selling.

Even in case of a dissatisfied customer, assure them that you’re always available to adjust this inconvenience. Provide a money back guarantee or give them an option to return their purchase in case of any accidental transactions.

As a conclusion to a common observation, almost 70% of the shoppers check the returns before actually initiating the purchase.

Make a hassle-free return policy for your customers to smooth out the return process for them. Together with that, customers are more inclined to buy even costly items if you have a good return policy to offer.

Shoppers agree that return policies do affect their shopping behaviors. 27% of the consumers said that they’re more likely to buy a $1000 item from a company that offers a smooth return policy and only 10% of the people would buy such items from companies providing cumbersome or no return policies.

Conclusion

Social media has upgraded e-commerce many a fold over the past few decades. In order to survive in the competitive market, you need to come up with cautious strategies.

For your business to soar, you need customers to invest in you. I have discussed a few practices for you to elevate your sales game.

The first and the foremost step is to gain your clients’ trust. Deal with your clients honestly and do not wreck your credibility by making the promises you can’t keep.

Devotedly serve your targeted audience and make the best of your time and resources.

Reciprocate with your customers and incline them towards loyalty.

Work with the latest technologies and make them believe that they’re in best hands.

Use scroll maps and heat maps to improve your website thereby improving the quality of business with your customers.

Engage with your customers via Live Chats, Emails and other social platforms.

The most crucial thing to worry about is consistency. Consistently working towards betterment will improve you in every field of life.

Below is a step by step guide to help you understand how Replug can shorten URLs in for entire RSS feed and use it for third-party platforms.

Step 1

Navigate to your replug dashboard and click on the RSS icon

Step 2

Click on Add RSS Feed button located on the top left corner. See below image for reference

Step 3

After step 2, a pop-up will appear on your screen. Select your campaign and in the second section enter the RSS feed URL that you want to shorten.

Replug check for content feed updates every 30 minutes. Click on the “Add Feed” button to generate the shortened URL.

You can now copy and add the RSS Feed URL to any third-party platform i.e. Contentstudio

Step 4

Once the RSS Feed is created, you can perform the following actions.

Edit: You can update/change your RSS feed whenever you want.

Re-crawl: In order to re-crawl your entire RSS feed, click on the re-crawl button. It will be re-crawled instantly to fetch any new links that have been added for the RSS feed.

Preview: You can preview the list of posts from RSS feeds that are converted.

Remove: You can remove your RSS feed and create a new one or anything else.

Retargeting is a marketing strategy used for selling your products or services while focusing on a very definitive consumer base. It is observed that only 2% of people are inspired to buy your product on the first go, the rest of the 98% audience could be converted via retargeting. The approach is to attract the users who have visited your website but haven’t explored or bought your product yet. Fortunately, with the evolution of brand marketing, this can easily be done with the help of a ‘Retargeting Pixel’. Retargeting pixel is just a snippet of code which when added to your website, drives traffic towards you by promoting your brand on social media platforms. The beauty of this technology is that it only brings tailored audiences; people who are familiar with your product but chose not to perform any operations during their first visit.

So, basically, it assists the users in making a decision by highlighting your key features to them, all in a very convenient way.

How do Retargeting Pixels work in RePlug?

Replug can configure Retargeting pixels of social media platforms for your businesses in very simple and easy steps. A step by step demonstration has been given below

Log into your RePlug account and create a Brand which you wish to advertise. Add the name of your business and your company’s official website. This can be done by clicking on the + New Brand button as shown in the image below

The next step is to create a Campaign. This campaign will help you choose the advertisement strategies for your business. You can choose multiple options of your choice. The steps to be followed are to Select your Brand, Enter your Campaign Name and Select Campaign Type; here you can select Retargeting Pixels. Just as explained in the images below

Create a new campaign by clicking on the + New Campaign button.

Select your brand among all your listed brands in RePlug.

Type in your Campaign Name and select Retargeting Pixel as your Campaign Type and click Next.

In this step, you are required to add your retargeting code. Select the Social Network where you want to run your campaign. Type your script name and your pixel ID and add your script. You can check the option Redirect to original website so that the user may be redirected to the original website in case if he/she enters an invalid URL.

Your script added in the previous step is selected automatically now. You can create as many scripts as you want for different platforms and save your campaign.

What value does Replug add?

Replug makes it very easy for you to create as many campaigns as you want in a minimal amount of time. You can select all kinds of social platforms by adding your own custom Networks. All you have to do is add a retargeting script and you’re good to go. You can also track the traffic brought in by this campaign in the Analytics section and monitor all your campaigns.

In the next article, we’ll discuss how we can exploit different social media platforms to create efficient campaigns.

Whenever you get flaky lips, you go to the market to buy a chapstick. Have you noticed that chapstick is a brand name for a lip balm product made by Pfizer? How did people start using the word ‘Chapstick’ instead of ‘lip balm’ then? That is called brand awareness.

Brand Awareness is the familiarity of the consumers with a brand to such an extent that the brand name becomes the Household name. Every brand owner dreams of their brand name becoming a real word; this concept is called proprietary eponym.

Brand awareness cannot be achieved merely by creating a brand and with conventional marketing techniques; one has to keep on growing higher and building deeper roots with their followers.

It is quite a challenge to gain a never-ending attention to a brand from its audience. A brand created on the foundation of a well-thought-out vision can easily expedite a sentimental value amongst the public.

We have gathered some of the best practices for you to expand your brand.

Pick your platform

The monumental growth of social web is the result of increasing social networks every day.  The basic intent of each platform is to tear down the geographical distances between people and to maximize communication between them. People use social media for multiple purposes like sharing their opinions, brand monitoring, entertainment, media sharing, political activity, news reporting, education, collaboration and spreading information etc. Nevertheless; each social platform provides a unique service.

For example; Instagram is for sharing photos telling your everyday activity, Twitter is to connect people with similar interests who can share in-the-moment updates; Pinterest is to allow users to visually share and discover new interests by creating new Boards and sharing ideas among the followers.

With that being said; it is very necessary for you to pick a platform to run your campaign.

The backbone of marketing is to target the right audience. So, it is necessary to pick the right platform to advertise your business. By doing so, you will be able to drive back the maximum traffic of those users who are actually interested in your offer and are most likely to buy your products/ services.  

For instance; if you have a clothing business, you might need to focus on your Facebook, Instagram and YouTube campaigns. Know where your audiences reside and save your energies to target them as your potential customers. If you don’t know the suitable networks for your business, the best way is to start analyzing your incoming referral traffic.

Market your uniqueness

The community of social web comprises of humans interacting with each other; selling or acquiring services from others. It is an inbuilt necessity for humans to find an emotional value in the things they use or the people they talk to. We are attracted to charismatic personalities, kindness, authenticity, and most importantly uniqueness. A unique trait of a thing or a person makes them stand out from the rest of the crowd.

 

This trait can easily be exploited for marketing your businesses. Uniqueness could be attained in the form of an eye-catching tagline, highlighting a key feature of your product that no one else provides or giving your brand a fun identity.

So, create your brand voice by applying this strategy and again find the target audience which could easily get influenced by the flavor you have added to your marketing strategy.

Remarketing or Retargeting

You must have experienced visiting a website and later on getting similar ads throughout your social media browsing. Some may call it magic but we call it remarketing.

Remarketing also goes by the name of Retargeting, is capturing the attention of those users who came to your website and left. This strategy is applied by placing a cookie in the viewer’s web browser when they visit your website for the first time. So, while they are browsing you can track their browsing activity and which social platforms they use the most. That way, you can serve them with your ads on the platforms they use and drive back the lost traffic.

Remarketing saves a lot of time and energy as it only targets those people who have already shown interest in your product. If done smartly, remarketing can turn window-shoppers into actual buyers.

Social platforms like Google display Network, popular blogging websites, Quora, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn and many more; allow you to run ads. You have to come up with a specific ad strategy to reclaim maximum traffic. Analyze the exact needs of the user by shrinking the horizons of possibilities.

For example, when a user visited your blog, it is important to figure out what product or service did the user showed interest in, how much time did the user spend on your blog, what is the intent of the user. Understanding the user’s need will help you qualify them by serving the ads which would hit them at the right spot.

In another example, if a user came to our blog and viewed the product, we’ll focus on the specific feature he/she viewed and float related ads in their network.

Retargeting is observed to be one of the most popular marketing strategies because of its distinctive approach.

Replug makes marketing very easy for its users. It lets you create a social media campaign for platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube or your custom platform; by creating a very simple retargeting script. All you have to do is add a retargeting pixel ID in your campaign and it does the rest of the job for you.

Biddyco is a social advertising company which claims to have achieved 1,284% ROI in just 7 days, by retargeting. Check out their Kick in the Pants Technique and how they used this strategy to get rewarding leads. A step by step demonstration is explained in this article to help you start from the beginning.

Guest Posting

Guest posting/blogging is an amazing way of reaching out towards the public. Guest posting is an exchange process of writing or posting your articles on someone else’s website or blog, someone who has a significant amount of followers. Likewise; you allow them to publish their content on your own blog.

This association helps to build strong relationships among the bloggers. Providing others with quality content also helps improve your name and credibility. In addition to it, guest posting is proven to be great for search engine optimization as well. When you’re the host blogger and you’re publishing someone else’s blog article, you’ll use a link to their article somewhere in your blog. And we know how search engine friendly these links are.

Buffer, a social media scheduling app, managed to grow its customer base from zero to 100k customers, all in 9 months. The Co-founder Leo Widrich shares his secret that he started off by approximately 150 guest posts… Sounds like a small number but it isn’t.

Later on, with experience and growing success, he wrote blogs on bigger networks which got them bigger traffic.

Tom Hunt, a TEDx speaker and founder of Virtual Valley, has written a very helpful post about guest blogging in which he shares 42 experiences and 42 lessons he learned from those.

Neil Patel, a New York Times bestselling author, has shared some statistics about guest blogging which you might want to check out.

Do the math for your own business, and start guest blogging right now.

Infographics and Gifographics

According to the Social Science Research Network, 65% of us are visual learners. It is a common observation that visual information is more likely to be ingrained and remembered among the viewers rather than textual information. In fact, if you want to grab viewers’ attention towards an extensive blog post that you’ve written, it is better to take an aid from colorful infographic images.

The best thing about an infographic is that it is equally informative but comprehensive, and also it is good to look at after reading some text-heavy information. Metaphorically speaking and stressing upon the value of infographic, the comparison is the same as a word document vs a PowerPoint presentation.

On social media platforms, Infographics are likely to be shared 40x more than other types of content. Imagine how far the name of your company could go if you share your infographics regularly.

Like Infographics, a new term Gifographics (also known as InfoGIFs) has been introduced by Neil Patel. Gifographics is a combination of two words GIF and Graphic-Visual Content. In other words, gifographic is an animated infographic. The reason for the creation of this terminology is to increase viewer’s engagement towards your content and make learning more fun.

A very sophisticated and interactive infographic was created for the New York Times to group the characters of ‘Game of Thrones’ in a graph of Good, Evil, Ugly, Beautiful. Check it out and get inspired by it.

‘Ceros’ lets you create fun infographic and gifographics for your businesses. Scroll through the following blog to check out their story of ‘Marketing Evolution’

Promotional Sales and giveaways

Who doesn’t love seasonal sales, free stuff, gift cards, and whatnot? People are charmed by such freebies and they themselves market your product by word of mouth (WOM) or via social media platforms. Unknowingly, the user feels more special about your product when they get good results in lesser prices and they prefer your products over your competitor’s.

The most recent trend ‘Like, tag, share’; has been adopted by most of the small-scale online businesses to get famous among their users. Such contests require users to advertise the brand’s name and as a prize, they get free stuff or gift cards.

These contests could also be carried out with the help of CTAs. CTAs don’t have to necessarily be a rectangular pop up with contrastive colors, they could be anything that the user sees and feels the need to view your ad. In short, you have to give them an offer they can’t refuse. These kinds of CTAs create a sense of urgency among the audience and drives them to participate… a win-win situation for both the parties.

Bitly shares the do’s and don’ts of giveaway marketing in a blog shared by femtrepreneur.co

Campaign Consistency

You must be familiar with Marketing rule of 7. Back in 1930, studio bosses of film industry noticed that its users needed to be nudged by advertisement several times to buy their movies. Today, the number has been generalized to seven; a user needs to see your advertisement at least seven times before signing business with you. If you’re consistent enough with your marketing campaign and create compelling ads; you may end up on-boarding many clients with you.

A business ought to run different campaigns on different social media platforms; nevertheless, all their content should be consistent. If you have a theme for your business, use that in your advertisement.

For example, use the same logo of your company in every advert campaign, use the same colors as that of your website theme, use the same style that you’ve set for your business. That helps the viewers recall and remember your brand name.

Create a catchy slogan for the services your company provides and use it for spreading the word. Slogan campaigning has been the most famous strategy used by many companies. Slogan becomes an identity for your company and it is a fun way of engaging your customers.

You just have to be creative. Remember, sky is the limit.

Referral

Your strategy should also be to engage your loyal customers. Referral programs help you increase brand awareness and your customer base. The basic idea is to provide a benefit to a customer if he/she refers your brand to their friends or family. It helps your customers gaining a benefit from you as well as it helps you in achieving long-lasting customers.

A study made by Social Media Software firm Lithium reveals that 92% of the people trust referrals from their friends and family rather than a random advertisement.

So, you need your customers to create hype by talking about your brand in their social circle. This can be done by several referral programs in which you offer a discount or a free service. This helps people know about your brand without you actively selling your product or showing them in-your-face ads which might annoy the public at some point.

Do you want to know how Robinhood‘s referral got 1 million potential users even before their launch? They amplified their followers by creating a competition in which the users could get ahead in the queue by referring more people. That is what got them viral.

Check out this blog to know about it in detail.

Need an even bigger number?

You must be familiar with Dropbox. Everyone uses Dropbox nowadays. Dropbox’s referral program won them around 3 million users in just 15 months.

Dropbox raised their brand awareness exponentially just by using referral marketing. Although, the idea was not entirely their own. They got inspired by PayPal’s refer-a-friend scheme. While Paypal paid its customers with cash, Dropbox provided both the referrer and referee with free storage. Read more about this in an article shared by ReferralCandy Blog.

Following the footsteps of Robinhood. Hotjar also created an ‘early access’ waiting list. Whenever someone tried to access Hotjar, they’d put them last in the line and ask them to refer Hotjar to their family and friends.

The more the merrier, right?

They incentivized this contest by

• Providing free 6 months access to the users who referred Hotjar to 5 friends.
• Free T-Shirt giveaway to the top 200 positions.
• Free lifetime access to top 20 positions.

They got a massive response from their users who wanted to overtake other contestants. Read their complete success story.

Webinar Marketing

Webinar Marketing is also trending among many service providers all across the globe. Webinars are helpful because they let you interact with your audience. You can host a webinar even remotely by arranging video or audio conferences. Many platforms allow you to multicast your webinar i.e. you can communicate with multiple receivers. This lets you save so much of your precious time which could be utilized somewhere else.

Webinars have proven to be a good medium for building the name of your brand. You could start with free webinars and later on move to the paid version to be entertained by the premium features. These videos could be used in your Video marketing as well; save your videos and upload them on Facebook or YouTube, as videos are more helpful in quick learning and a better understanding of your product.

According to Google trends quick search, the search term ‘Webinars’ has increased steadily from 2004 to this day.

The term webinar is a subtle marketing technique. You shouldn’t be ranting about the amazingness of your products or services, rather you should gain the trust of your audiences by telling something useful and hinting about the values you could add into their lives. You do that by addressing their pain points and answering their questions.

Marketo, an email marketing service, applies this rule in their webinars. Their motto is to create a value of their services throughout the webinar and give them a powerful stance to buy your services.

If your target audience is new to your brand, you could attract them by giving them discounts on each sign-up or sending an e-mail at the end of the webinar.

Webinars help you in creating a  personal bond with your customers by adding a  human touch to your brand.

Inc. shares Russ Ruffino’s story of how his company converted the Webinar attendees into their clients and how it helped them in increasing ROI.  In his article, he has shared some tips and tricks which might come in handy for your webinar to become a success.

Jenna Soard, the founder of YouCanBrand.com, explains that Webinars are the best source for client conversion. Jenna is considered the Webinar Rockstar and you are encouraged to read her success story to get started.

Conclusion

Like oxygen is important to our lungs, marketing is important to our brand. It is not easy to compete in today’s crowded industry… but then there are no shortcuts to success. The marketing gurus suggest to innovatively apply all the standard rules of marketing. Let your audience trust you and make them feel that you care. Adopt the newest ways of engaging with your clients and remember; change is inevitable. Never stop growing!

We’d love to hear from you. Share your experiences if your business has benefited from these marketing strategies.

Enlighten us in the comment section below.