Marketing hacks that'll unlock your campaigns

Marketing trends can be difficult to recognise and harder to get ahead of. Back in the day, the idea that marketers would turbocharge campaigns via data-driven analytics would have been considered blue sky thinking.

The world has changed a lot over the last few decades, especially as our lives have become more intertwined with digital services and applications.

It’s easy to get stuck in your old ways, but there are some easy marketing hacks for subscription-based businesses we can use to throw off the shackles.

If you’ve been the victim of failed marketing campaigns, poor click-through-rates or bad return on investment, you need to find a fresh way of thinking. Here are some fresh ideas to try out on your next campaign!

Personalisation should be your go-to

Personalisation is incredibly important. Marketing automation flows can optimise subscription experience in a number of ways - with happy subscribers, you’re more likely to increase all your important metrics.

There are four classic quick wins that you can use to improve your marketing:

• Welcome flows to say an incredibly warm hello to new subscribers are great. These are a series of emails that let your new subs know exactly what your brand is about and are geared towards showing off products and services. A decent welcome flow sets the tone and leaves subscribers absolutely clear on the benefit of signing up to your subscription business.

These people are interested enough in your brand to opt-in to your communications, and you should make the most of it.

• Nurture subscribers and make sure your organisation meets their needs. With marketing automation, you can keep an eye on what your subscribers and visitors are doing. Instead of waiting for them to come to you, you can see what interests and engages them, and hit them with a data-driven email.

Personalised messages are key to this. Basic nurturing keeps customers and prospects engaged through steady communication that shares insights with subscribers. For example, if you’re marketing a newspaper with a subscription paywall, you can personalise your emails by sending thought-leading articles to people who have been browsing a corresponding part of your website.

Profile data including downloads and sections of the website browsed indicates what your members find most interesting - you should use this to tailor your email marketing campaign.

• Loyalty flows don’t have to be reserved for your most important, long-standing subscribers. You can use them to take satisfied subscribers into the happiest, most loyal long-term customers who know you can meet their requirements over a longer period. 

For those who aren’t signed up to your premier offering, don’t be afraid to reach out to subscribers and let them know that they’re missing out on. Businesses can combine this with a free trial to give them a taste of what they’re missing out on! 

You can also ask for feedback and then reward those who provide it - this can also be incentivised by providing discount codes and offering solutions as acknowledgement of someone’s long-standing membership.

• Re-engage lapsed members to bring back the ones that got away. Approach those who have let their subscription run out with a strategy to show them what they’re missing and make it easy to sign back up. With marketing automation, you can create segments that target these old flames, and plan a content strategy to win them back.

Content marketing hacks you should embrace

Content marketing can help your blog rank on SEO, bring new subscribers to your business and give your organisation a real sense of authority. 

Here are a few handy content marketing hacks you should embrace:

1. Engaging, interesting articles. Google really likes long and full-fact articles, which tend to do really well in search. Properly researched content in your pieces also gives the reader a sense that you are sharing relevant knowledge on the chosen topic, and that you’re a real sense of authority on the subject matter.
    
2. Get guest bloggers involved. If you can snag some of the best in the business to create content for you, that’s a win. Imagine you’re a subscription box that sells beers, if you can land the best sour brewer around, or an up-and-coming superstar, to write a long-from guest blog for you, that’s going to say something to existing customers and prospects. 

What’s more, it’ll create really engaging, targeted and relevant content that really hits what your target audience wants.

3. Test your call to action buttons. Conversion rates can vary wildly depending on which call to action your business employs and this can make a massive difference to your business. A good one will help to secure that next subscriber, a bad one will result in another bounce from your web page. One good way of doing a test is via A/B split testing.
    
4. Try to embrace multimedia content. Content marketing strategy is no longer editorial focused. There’s so many other different forms of media out there, it would be a shame not to make the most of it. Podcasts and videos are now all over the internet, and your businesses should really look to these if you want to make an impact. Starting a podcast or video series can bring in new followers, and display the qualities you want your brand to be associated with.
    
5. Be an early adapter. Concentrate on new trends and ways in which Google and social media change the way they show content to users. It can be tiring, but it’s the best way to get ahead of the curve and make inroads as a business. Staying on top will see traffic grow, falling behind will see it slump.

Handy SMS marketing tricks

SMS marketing is a really good way to make sure subscribers get your comms fast, and what’s more, it’s highly likely these messages will be read. The growth of mobile phones has been tremendous, and this almost guarantees that every person you target will have one.

You can create personalised, short messages that include CTAs (make sure your website is optimised for mobile!) that are easy to click on.

SMS campaigns can be really good at elevating communication strategy and making sure your voice is heard. If you’ve got an important announcement - say you sell subscription boxes and there’s some big breaking news about a new product, you can send out a text campaign with a link to an in-depth article on your website.

Some of the numbers for SMS campaigns are pretty astonishing, too.

• 90% open and read rate
• Click rates are over 30%

A little word of warning first, though. As with email marketing, you will need to get proper consent to send your subscribers SMS messages.

Get your email marketing firing

Email marketing should be the biggest and best tool you have access to. Intelligent software will ensure you’re always sending the right message to the right people, while intuitive email editor software will help you to create emails that look good too!

You can create templates and personalised emails that send out happy birthday messages to all your subscribers - perhaps with a discount to something you or a partner organisation can offer. Birthday offers get clicked on 179% more than regular emails, so this is something well worth considering!

People sign up to you for a reason, whether that’s for the outstanding service you offer or because your organisation is a thought-leader. With that in mind, it’s likely that they’ll want to hear from you on the latest and greatest - you can use email marketing to send out regular newsletters.

This is a great way to maintain loyalty and prove you have something to offer. All you gotta do is nail the subject line, include lots of relevant content and send it on it’s way on the right day.

Personalisation and email marketing go hand-in-hand. When you use proper marketing automation tools, all that comes as standard. You can set up profiles and segments so that you can divide an audience based on heaps of stuff - age, location, interests, previous visits to your website. With that information at your fingertips, you’ll find open rates and click through rates improve, which means more efficient marketing and a better ROI.

Design is important

Email design can be an important way to set your communications apart from your competition and engage subscribers. Here are some tips on how to get the most out of it:

• Images are great, but they should be used with caution. Big background images can cause slow load times, so you don’t want to cram heaps in there. Instead, use features like a button or text element to relay important information.
• Simple is good. Convey a clear message as succinctly as possible, without the use of complex code. Grid structures work well here, it looks good across all devices and is eye-catching without being too overpowering. Oh, and keep your email width between 600px and 800px.
• Fonts can be tricky because some email clients don’t support specific ones. Pick something web-based to make sure your audience will get the email as you designed it. Good fonts to use are Arial, Comic Sans, Courier New, Georgia, Helvetica, Lucida, Tahoma, Times New Roman, Trebuchet Ms and Verdana.
• Create a mobile version of your email to see how it’ll look on the smaller screen. Most of your recipients will be viewing your email on the go, so it makes sense to design one that they’ll be able to view best.

Get organised

Hopefully these marketing hacks and marketing trends will be useful to you as you design ways to engage and interact with your subscribers. If you want to do even more planning, download our content marketing calendar and take your marketing to the next level!