Digital marketing, of course, is still extremely relevant. Useful online content is one of the top ways to find new customers. But developing a balanced marketing strategy, based on traditional and digital marketing techniques, covers all your bases to deliver maximum exposure for your brand.

Let’s take a look at how traditional marketing perfectly complements your online efforts to build customer awareness, trust, and loyalty.

Common Traditional Marketing Strategies

What is traditional marketing? Essentially, any mainstream marketing channel that was well established before the onset of the World Wide Web is considered traditional marketing. Here are four key examples:

Print

Printed marketing materials go back to the origins of printmaking itself. Even before we had books, we had flyers. Traditional print marketing tools include newspaper and magazine ads, sales brochures, promotional coffee mugs, calendars, and business cards.

Broadcast

Free over-the-air radio and television are critical marketing channels for most major brands. Even as technology has evolved over the last 25 years, the largest companies in the world still look to TV and radio as important ways to distribute their marketing messages. And now that live video is easily accessible through social media, engaging broadcasts are seeing an upsurge in popularity.

Direct

Postcards, coupons, catalogs, and free gifts sent through the mail are still critical to many companies. According to Statista, 59% of the world’s population is active online. That leaves 41% of the world that needs to be engaged through other channels. And, of course, email marketing is a recognizable descendant of direct mail advertising, but more on that later.

Outdoor

Everything from concert posters and billboards to bus benches can be considered outdoor marketing. This is still an effective way to gain attention and brand exposure, and public spaces can reach both a broad audience and niche sectors in specific areas. Today, technology such as interactive digital billboards in shopping malls creates a new, hybrid marketing channel, based on traditional and digital techniques.

Traditional Marketing vs. Digital Marketing

Skype, the popular video calling app launched in 2003, gave people the widespread ability to have digital meetings. But traditional face-to-face interaction is still a vital way to network and conduct business. Even frequent virtual conference attendants will say that nothing beats the energy and full sensory measure of when people meet in person.

Many people argue that digital meetings cause a disconnect, both literally (when the broadband connection gets problematic) and figuratively (you can’t pick up all the nuances of body movement). As another example, some say that mobile devices have only made print media more distinctive. This all points to not if you need to leverage traditional marketing, but how.

Effective Offline Marketing Techniques

Trade shows and business conferences have, until recently, been a prime example of how traditional marketing can be extremely useful and lucrative. Although for much of 2020 these events have been canceled or moved online, that doesn’t mean traditional marketing has to take a full hiatus. Here are a few offline marketing techniques that remain effective.

Direct Mail/Email Hybrid Campaigns

Anyone with a mailbox knows that direct marketing is alive and well. From coupons for new homeowners and political postcards to grand opening announcements, people still receive and read a lot of mail. And it’s a proven technique that warming up your leads with a branded postcard or letter will help with the open and response rates for your email outreach.

Many of the same best practices apply to direct mail and email, so be sure your messaging is consistent and focused on customers’ needs. It’s all about building brand recognition and trust.

Private Demonstrations

Just because your trade show has been canceled, doesn’t mean you can’t have the same conversations in a one-on-one environment. Use your website to collect leads to real-world product demonstrations.

Even if you can’t travel to meet your potential new customer, product samples can be shipped, along with catalogs and how-to guides. Mailing product samples to people that have registered interest may even be more cost-effective than constantly traveling to trade venues and conferences.

Local Meetups

While large-scale events are on temporary pause, some smaller local organizations are already back to meeting in person. There are plenty of opportunities to market within clubs, business associations, and trade organizations. Even if your first small event is virtual, it could lead to a lucrative one-on-one presentation opportunity.

Re-Engaging Previous Customers

One of the best ways to expand your customer base is to re-engage previous shoppers. If someone has bought and used your product or service in the past, some brand trust has already been earned and it’s very likely they’ll be open to your offerings again.

Even if someone has changed their buying habits or lifestyle, revisiting lost relationships with a personal phone call can, at the very least, give you valuable market research to steer your business in new directions.

Traditional Approaches Should Complement Your Online Content Marketing

As mentioned, traditional marketing makes an excellent complement to digital channels, it doesn’t replace them. Your company still needs a thoughtful content marketing approach to be successful.

Your traditional marketing materials should reinforce what customers see online and vice versa. The best way to achieve brand harmony between online and offline content is to be visually consistent. And the easiest way to do this is to make sure all your messaging has a cool company logo while using the same color scheme everywhere. These core branding techniques let potential customers instantly recognize your brand, whether offline or online.

Email Analytics Help You Measure Your Offline Campaigns

It’s not that difficult to tie your offline campaigns into your online analytics. You could send out a discount coupon catalog through direct mail, and reinforce it with a follow-up email to see who clicks through to enter the codes. Another example is to send out an email with a questionnaire for the chance to win a special prize which you’ll mail them.

The Message Is Clear

The ideas, scenarios, and examples we’ve explained in this article make it clear that traditional marketing still has a strong part to play in an effective business marketing strategy. Done right, offline and online complement each other hand-to-glove. Together, they will effectively build instant brand recognition and strong customer engagement, casting a wider net than either channel can do on its own.

The post How Traditional Marketing Complements Your Digital Strategy appeared first on Relevance.

While some believe that biometric technology may help in dealing with the menace of hacking, others believe that falling back to the physical realm is the only option we have. However, while the experts try to come up with better and more reliable authentication methods, the marketers can adopt several ways to protect their information. Let’s have a look at the best four techniques, which can help you avoid an awkward situation:

1. Secure the Line

Some marketers commit a blunder by using their social networking accounts, emails, bank accounts, etc. through public Wi-Fi. Unless there is an emergency, you must avoid doing that. If you spend a lot of time on the go (which marketers have to) and need to use the internet in hotels, cafes or airports, we highly recommend you pay to gain access to a private network, as it should immensely reduce the risks of being hacked. Even if you use private browsing on your mobile, experts know how to check private browsing history on android.

2. Do Not Leave Personal Data in the Cloud

Online file-syncing services like Google Drive, SkyDrive, and Dropbox have made things extremely convenient for many internet users. However, you must remember that most of the data on those company servers remain unencrypted, which means that security agencies can access that information, although they may not have any moral justification to do so. Therefore, we strongly advise that you do not leave any personal data in the cloud. Learn the ways to keep your data safe on the cloud.

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3. Use Multi-Factor Authentication

Security experts love to see multi-factor authentication in action. This technique involves more than one method of verification. There are three primary factors of verification: something you know (like a pin or a password), something you have (like a key or a smart card), or something you are (biometrics). Taking into account the ever-increasing risks of information security, you should use more than one method for verification. Apart from many financial organizations, countless marketers, who cannot afford to lose their data, have adopted this strategy in recent times.

4. Password Security

Despite the fact that most marketing experts contain crucial information in their email or social media accounts, a big chunk of marketers does not give enough importance to creating and maintaining strong passwords. Your password should be of at least eight characters and a combination of capital and small letters, numbers, and symbols. Make sure your passwords are not guessable, even for your close friends or family members. On top of that, security experts recommend that you should change your passwords at least once in three months. It is a susceptible topic and is probably the one factor that can make your whole data secure online.

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Therefore, we will go into detail further:

Use Unpredictable Passwords

Since most websites limit the length of our passwords and ask for similar types of characters, we have been using the same pattern of passwords. According to a survey conducted by a security software developer Splashdata, the most commonly used passwords were ‘Password1’, ‘qwerty,’ and ‘12345678’. These passwords are straightforward to guess, and they do not require a great hacker to crack them.

When asked to use a combination of capital and small letters or adding symbol or a number to the password, most people tend to capitalize the first letter of the password and may use a ubiquitous symbol or number, which makes the job of a black hat hacker extremely easy.

If you are looking to have a securer password, make sure you do not use a typical pattern. Avoid using a single name, date, or any dictionary word. We strongly suggest that you choose a password, which is a combination of different characters, including small and capital letters, numbers, and symbols. Just to make your password more unpredictable, you may add a space.

Go for Lengthy and Genuinely Random Passwords

In order to make a long and robust password, you should be using multiple, truly random or unrelated words. According to the professionals, a longer and simpler password is harder to break than a shorter but complicated password. However, this theory is applicable only with genuinely random words. Avoid using standard terms or quotes for your passwords like ‘Honesty is the best policy’ or ‘HITBP’ for that matter. A dishonest hacker will crack such a password within minutes.

One of the best techniques to adopt is to create a truly random, complex, and lengthy password through a password generator.  Keep in mind that you would not be able to have a secure password if you want the convenience of being able to remember the code easily.

The post 4 Best Techniques Marketers Can Use To Enhance Their Online Data Security appeared first on Relevance.

Let’s admit it – all of our inboxes keep filling with emails we have signed up for at some point. Many we never open, but are too lazy to unsubscribe from. For a customer, that’s a minor bother. For an email marketer, it’s unacceptable.

The solution? Launching a killer re-engagement campaign to win back unresponsive subscribers. According to recent research, reconnecting to lost customers is five times more cost-effective than acquiring new ones. Here is how to create and deploy an effective campaign to re-engage your subscribers, and make the most of this opportunity.

1 – Make Sure You Are Using the Right Email Marketing Tools

When first setting up email marketing strategies, many businesses gravitate towards prominent platforms like Mailchimp. If you’re noticing many inactive subscribers and are thinking about launching a re-engagement campaign, first check whether you are using the right tools for your purposes, and maybe consider migrating to Mailchimp alternatives.

Especially after you’ve been using the same platform for a while, you can benefit from re-evaluating its segmentation, personalization, and automation features and comparing to other providers.

Even the best re-engagement campaign will have little lasting impact if your subsequent email marketing efforts remain mediocre. Making sure that you have the right tools at your disposal is the first step in taking your email marketing game to the next level.

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2 – Vet Your Email Marketing Strategy and Look for Weak Points

Why did your subscribers become inactive in the first place?

To a certain level, people just lose interest. Data shows that email list decay costs businesses up to 22.5% of their subscribers per year, with an additional 10-25% lost to inactivity. Perhaps they found an alternative to your solution, didn’t understand its benefits, or simply forgot about you.

Or maybe you really need to improve your email marketing strategy.

Personalization and providing engaging, relevant content are essential in today’s email marketing landscape. So is keeping up with trends like video email marketing and interactivity.

When you set out to re-capture your subscribers’ interest, you need to make sure that this time, you can keep it. Going over your current email marketing strategy is essential for that.

3 – Segment Inactive Subscribers

Before you get started on drawing up your re-engagement campaign, you need to clean your list and segment your inactive subscribers.

Breaking inactive subscribers up into different segments allows you to personalize the content you send them to regain their interest – and increases your chances of success.

Looking at subscribers’ most recent activity, the date and way they originally signed up, their purchase history, and demographics like location, gender, and age allows you to split them up into interest groups. On this basis, you can decide which way to go to regain their attention.

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4 – Choose the Right Subject and Content

What sort of message will recapture your audience’s hearts? Here are three possible routes to take.

Send Permission Reminders

Before sending content, ask for consent. This shows your customers that you are considerate, responsible, and mindful of their time and personal space.

In your message, remind subscribers of who you are, what services you provide, how you got their contact details, and what sort of content you will be sending in the future.

Asking for permission to keep contacting them, along with offering an option to unsubscribe is best-practice behavior – especially if subscribers haven’t heard from you in a while, or if you are planning to increase the volume of marketing emails in the future.

Some might take you up on the suggestion to say goodbye, but the majority of recipients will likely retain a positive impression instead.

Offer Compelling Advantages

If your analysis of previous customer behavior shows that they have purchased your services or products in the past, an excellent strategy to recapture their interest is to send a special offer or voucher their way.

They might not have thought of you in a while, but if they suddenly find a 30% coupon in their inbox, chances are they’ll have at least a quick look at your website.

Ask For Specific Feedback

What is it your subscribers want? Which topics interest them? What sort of content are they looking for?

Go right ahead and ask them.

Sending out a message that allows customers to personalize their content preferences – or opt out – shows that you care about their personal interests and want to avoid spamming them with useless content. Brownie points!

Getting this sort of feedback from your subscribers is invaluable for improving your list segmentation, marketing automation, and content personalization.

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Final Thoughts

Retaining the attention and interest of customers is a never-ending effort. Providing quality content, using the right marketing tools, and sticking to a well-thought-out strategy are key elements to succeed in doing so.

Designing an effective re-engagement campaign is a crucial step in winning back customers you might lose otherwise. And rather than chasing after new subscribers, it allows you to re-activate the potential of those you already have.

The post How to Launch an Effective Email Marketing Re-Engagement Campaign appeared first on Relevance.

Statistics show that during the lockdown, the opening rates of marketing emails have increased by as much as 25%. Even more impressively, weekly opening rate increases have been as large as 5-10%.

Basically, now is the time to step up your email communications. An essential part of doing that is to present the content in a visually stunning way.

No matter how good your content is, if the layout in which you present it isn’t aesthetically pleasing, chances are that your audience won’t give it a second glance.

Luckily, you no longer have to be a graphic designer, or proficient in the more finicky areas of design to give your emails a killer makeover. There are dozens of pages offering ready-to-go templates that you can use as they are, adapt to your own needs, or draw inspiration from.

Here are some of the best sources of amazing email marketing templates, and all you need to know about them.

1. Mailbakery

Mailbakery offers a broad palette of templates, both paid and free. Templates are categorized by industry – from Design & Photography to Travel & Lifestyle.

What is more, Mailbakery offers customization and creation to order.

2. Stripo

Stripe allows you to create responsive emails from templates without writing (or adjusting) a single line of HTML code. They offer over 350 free templates that can be exported to platforms like GetResponse, Campaign Monitor, or Mailchimp. A nice touch is also their modern AMP email integration, allowing app-like interactivity in your campaign.

However, the platform requires you to sign up. And to actually use the templates you choose or create, you have to pay a certain fee.

3. Cakemail

Though Cakemail in itself is an email marketing API that requires a subscription, they offer 40+ freely accessible newsletter templates for categories such as business, special events, and education.

4. 99designs

This UK-based online design agency offers 45+ free templates in return for a sign-up, for mail types such as newsletters, promos, and personalized notice templates.

5. Litmus

Litmus is a platform for email analytics and design optimization. In line with the latter, they collected 30+ HTML templates for product launches, sales, marketing, and other promotional activities. You can download them with no strings attached.

6. BeeFree

BeeFree offers over 200 templates to use with their editor. There is a free option in which you have access to the templates, which are sorted by usage (Events, Newsletter, Seasonal Promotion …) and industry (Automotive, Businesses Services, Computer & Internet …).

However, to actually use, save, or re-edit, you need a pro plan. Once you’re subscribed, you can export the templates to various platforms, such as Mailchimp.

7. Colorlib

Usually, Colorlib deals in templates for WordPress websites, but they also offer a collection of free, responsive HTML email templates.

8. Campaign Monitor

Campaign Monitor provides an integrated email marketing platform – but they also offer a stunning array of free templates. While you do have to sign in to export the templates you choose, using – and adjusting – them is free.

The templates are sortable into categories ranging from Announcements and Newsletters to Deals & Offers and re-engagement campaigns. What’s more, their design is responsive, which is of major importance since the majority of emails are now opened on mobile applications.

9. HubSpot

As the premier platform for integrated digital marketing, HubSpot also offers a broad choice of email templates. Some of them are even free for those who are unable (or unwilling) to swing the subscription fees.

In return for signing up for HubSpot’s newsletter, the platform offers 15 clean templates  (including text) for comarketing, customer references, PR & Blogging outreach, and sales. There is also a set of marketing and sales emails specifically for startups that are freely available.

If you actually do sign up for the paid platform, there are over 350 templates at your disposal.

10. Really Good Emails

Okay, confession time: Really Good Emails doesn’t offer templates as such. But what the site does provide are over five thousand real emails, including HTML code, that you can use to gather ideas for the design and content of your own campaigns. You can browse by industry, search by keyword, or discover email campaigns by brands such as Pinterest, Apple, or Invision.

Final Thoughts

With the massive offer of ready-to-send templates, you’ll more than likely be able to find the right match for you, to dream up an email campaign that will wow your audience.

But even if you don’t find a template that is exactly right for you, there are plenty of options to adapt the existing ones and shape them to your purposes. And at the very least, you can draw inspiration, so that you can develop a solution that appeals to your customers. Because you, after all, know them better than anyone.

The post The 10 Best Sources of Killer Email Marketing Templates appeared first on Relevance.