BI-TAGS

Rule #1: Don't ask for more information than you'd personally be willing to give. Asking for too much information in an opt-in form can be a major deterrent to visitors who would otherwise be likely to sign up.

Make signing up as simple as possible by requiring only the bare minimum. In many cases, this means just the email address. Every field you add to your form beyond that will decrease the chances of someone filling it out.

An opt-in form that says something like "Sign up for our newsletter," doesn't offer any benefit to the visitor. Give people a reason to opt-in by offering them something they'll care about, like: "Sign up for our monthly newsletter and gain instant access to our 57-page e-book on X."

I recently welcomed two kittens into the family and we buy our supplies from Petco. As soon as I signed up for Petco's Pals Rewards program, the store proceeded to email me every single day with a new coupon offer. Can you guess what I did? Yep, I opted out. I'll still buy pet supplies from Petco, but at some point, the annoyance became greater than the value of the coupons.

One of the most critical steps in structuring your e-commerce email campaign is to set the publish frequency to align with the types of products you're selling and who you're selling to. At a bare minimum, segment your audience into two broad categories of current customers and prospects.

When you're communicating with prospective customers, offer discounts, promotions and pre-sale notifications and buying tips in your emails, to move them along the conversion path.

You can further segment your email list by those you send to frequently, those you send to less frequently and those you send to only sometimes.

When most people opt in to receive B2B email communications, they are at the top of the conversion funnel; the "awareness" stage. A smart B2B email campaign will then provide the right content to bring the buyer deeper into the conversion funnel, with content specific for each stage of the buying cycle.

Here are some ideas to get you started: Explore learning concepts that get the reader up to speed on the ideas surrounding your services, and that demonstrate your brand's unique perspective.  Dive into the ideas behind why a service like yours is so important to customers, what to look for in a company, and how your service or ideas compare to others.  Answer common questions your prospective customers have at each stage of the buying cycle and even after the purchase.

Think of topics like, "7 Biggest Mistakes People Make When Choosing [insert your service here]" as a basis for building your case. If you have a sales team, ask them for the most common objections they hear from prospects, and create your content around the specific concerns known to be top-of-mind for many buyers.

Social channels are inherently built for sharing and engagement, making them the perfect place to cultivate valuable business relationships. Integrating social into every marketing campaign you run can move you from a company-to-buyer marketing model to a peer-to-peer influence model. This not only builds trust and brand loyalty, but also positively impacts ROI.

It can be tempting to jump right in to all the social media sites out there and start posting away. However, before you publish that first nugget of social marketing content, you need to develop your plan.

goals and metrics

Many marketers fall into the trap of thinking that social media campaigns can be dealt with on an ad hoc basis, but this couldn't be further from the truth. You don't want your company's online personality to come across as erratic or disjointed, so create a policy that guides those who are participating in the social marketing effort and be sure those guidelines are enforced.

Once everyone is on board, encourage them to create engaging content. A good starting place is to ask your team members to answer some of the most frequently asked questions they receive on the various social channels. If everyone is a content creator, you'll never be short of ideas.

Word-of-mouth is incredibly powerful and the "share" button on every social media channel allows you to tap into millions of different networks. One of the best ways to interact with your audience is by giving them content they genuinely want to share with their networks. Peer recommendation is extremely valuable because people believe their friends much more readily than a company or marketer.

A "Refer-a-Friend" campaign promotes a compelling offer via email marketing and social networks, then grants access to special offers for both the referrers and those referred. Using these campaigns will allow you to gather important metrics, like tracking who the biggest influencers are.

A "Social Sweepstakes" campaign allows your entrants to spread the word on your behalf. Through the sweepstakes entry, you gain important user data like who is sharing and where they are sharing most.

Finally, a "Flash Deal" campaign is similar to Groupon. Flash deals offer a limited amount of deals for a specific time period through your social platforms. If you use these campaigns, be sure to let participants track the deal's progress! These campaigns are fun and viral ways to spread brand awareness and boost new customer numbers with sharing.

make sure your shares are measurable. Monitoring social share numbers is not only an easy way to tell what's working and what's not, but also allows you to see your ROI by showing how far your social reach is in relation to how much time and resources you've put in.

Google Alerts and search functions, or enterprise level software like Viral Heat or Radian6.

Once you hear what people are saying, you can engage them with relevant responses.

Social has evolved into much more than just a channel or tactic and should be an ever-present strategy in all aspects of your marketing. Ultimately, if you come up with a plan, encourage creative content, incorporate social marketing into every stage of your funnel, and measure your results, you'll start to see your social efforts move the ROI needle in the right direction.