How to Combine Email Marketing and Social Media

Combining two of the most common marketing methods can help you save time, improve your branding, make your message consistent, and maximize the impact you have on your audience and potential customers.

Creating campaign experiences that are cohesive between email and social can save you time purely in asset management. Using similar headlines, body copy, and images from your email to social posts means no more one-off copy needs to be done on a regular basis.

This consolidation of efforts also keeps your message consistent. Not to say that you can’t spice things up from one post to the next—but combining these efforts will make sure every line you create has the same impact and carries the same message.

All of this will strengthen your brand. As your audience sees your campaigns over and over again amidst email and social posts, your message is rooted into their memories by sheer volume and consistency. This builds on your voice and reach, ensuring your audience brings the right image to mind when thinking about your company.

Check out this infographic below to see how you can begin combing your email and social media strategies to improve your marketing today.

Source: How to Combine Email Marketing and Social Media by Campaign Monitor

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How to use Google Analytics: Tools to Analyze Your Website’s Data

So your business is doing well. Your website receives traffic, and activity occurs on its pages. Though, nothing is storing this valuable information which can be used to make data-driven decisions. There is a lack of insight generation. To reverse this untapped potential, you decide to employ Google’s free Analytics application that is housed within their Marketing Platform. This product provides an array of features to help analyze your site’s data with the goal of generating insights on behaviors, trends, and associations useful for improving your online presence and future business. The time has now come to set the service up and dig into its features.

Setting It Up

To start, make sure you have a personal Google account and head to https://marketingplatform.google.com/about/analytics/. From there, click “Start for free,” and then “website.” The next entry asks you to create an account name, which will serve as the Google Analytics account associated with your personal one. Then, enter your website name, url, industry category, and time zone. Your industry category does not impact tracking or data collection but rather enables Google to create customizable reports that suit your industry-specific needs. Once completed, you will receive a tracking ID unique to the site that was just set up. In order to enable tracking, some web hosts or website builders like Wix provide features or plugins that allow you to input the tracking ID right into a field. If this is not an option in your case, you can enter this tracking ID into a specific section of a tracking snippet, and then paste that snippet into the code of each of your site’s pages that you want to track. Though tracking snippets can come in different forms to account for functionality, basic tracking snippets work fine for most purposes to start. If you want more information on this, Google’s tutorial pages provide details regarding additional snippet specifications. In general, it is a good idea to browse the various resources Google provides for powering up your website with their analytics.

Overview

Once within the Google Analytics interface, you will see an audience overview dashboard that reports different types of data such as sessions, users, and pageviews, among several others. Scrolling down will pull up demographic splits like language and country. The information displayed in this view comes from the combination of all pages on your site. You can refine the insights displayed on this overview page by date range as well as audience segments. Lastly, a menu resting on the left of the screen provides ease of navigation throughout a majority of Google Analytics’ capabilities.

Segments

Segmenting the audience will isolate a subset of traffic to be juxtaposed against overall site traffic or other segments you wish to analyze. To define (create) a segment, you must set specific conditions related to user, session, or hit data. If the correct combination of those aspects fulfill their conditions, the associated data point enters the segment. Sessions and hits differ in that hits are specific user interactions (click, pageview, transaction, etc) on your site that occur during a session, whereas sessions are the group of hits occurring in a certain time frame or before a defined ending activity.

For your analysis, you might create a segment of users in the United Kingdom who spend at least 2 minutes on your home page — in order to separate them from the rest of your data in reports and dashboards. You can also combine conditions using “or” or “and” operators in order to produce more specific segmentations.

Essentially, segments allow for breaking traffic into more nuanced groups that could be of particular interest. The tool might also highlight important details or lucrative adjustments regarding your site, content, or product, as revealed through the groups targeted with the segment.

Goal Setting and Alerts

Google Analytics lets you define goals — specific on-site activities that you tell the platform to view as a conversion. You may, for example, set a goal that checks if users visit five pages in a session. Every user that visits five or more pages will subsequently be entered as a conversion for that goal. Creating your own definitions for conversions empowers generation of custom ratios and statistics to gauge occurrences on your site.

Site owners commonly utilize goals for monitoring key performance indicators such as purchases, submitting contact information, signing up for a service, or viewing a certain piece of content. Indicators of performance vary across businesses and sites. For example, a commerce entity may value and track purchases, while a marketing one might define performance by the number of email signups. When setting goals for your objective, make sure to contemplate what signifies success, or conversion, in addition to what might provide clues on the broader spectrum of behaviors that make up the critical sales funnel. People might not be purchasing your product today, but they could have viewed it three times, indicating high likelihood of future purchase. Some may decide to set both of those activities as goals. Lastly, alerts function just like goals, but instead of logging conversion, they simply notify you (via email if desired) when a set condition fulfills.

Views

Thus far, you’ve become familiar with creating segments and goals for one particular view – the default overview – that shows combined data from all pages on your website. With this said, the analytics platform lets you add views for up to 25 subdomains per property. Each view you create houses its own segments, goals, alerts, reports, and dashboards. If you create these tools for one view, they can be copied to any other. Within each view, you can also apply filters to exclude certain data from the dashboard or to restrict viewing access for members of your organization.

Reports and Dashboards

You can create reports that – well, report – on different metrics. These forms let you create custom visualizations of data that can be cut in a number of different dimensions. All created reports exist in the “reports” section of the menu, but you can place ones you so choose into each view’s dashboard. In addition to reports, dashboards can house segments and individual widgets including: Metrics, Timelines, Geomaps, Tables, Pies, and Bars.

Integration

Google Analytics provides a supports integration with tons of other services, some of which include: Campaign Manager, Google Ad Manager, Search Ads 360 Reporting, Display and Video 360 Remarketing, and Salesforce Sales Cloud. The platform’s help pagesaccommodate integration inquiries with rundowns for each service. A host of 3rd party solutions, perfect for integration with Google Analytics, lie on the Partner Solutions page. This page essentially functions as an app store for extensions that connect the analytics arm with existing business services. Instituting such integrations allows aspects of the business solution apps to serve as elements within dashboards or on reports. If you have data housed within a business solution app, it will also pop up in Google Analytics.

When checking out the Solutions Gallery, you will see where individuals post their custom analytics creations for all to download and use. In some cases, it may more efficient to find an existing dashboard, report, or segment than generate your own, especially if the desired creation proves to be quite complex. The Partner Solutions and the Solutions Gallery both provide descriptions of the various plugins in addition to comment sections that serve as references when perusing options.

As you may tell, Google Analytics offers quite a powerful suite full of functionality and possibilities for customization that are useful in examining your website’s data. Taking advantage of all the various features may require some familiarization. Though, thanks to the accommodative help pages provided by Google and the many online discussions, you should be able to find your way. Now, go on and generate some insights with all of that information connected to your site!

Author Bio:

Sara is an experienced tech expert who writes with her colleagues on Enlightened Digital, to share her passion with others around the web. After 15 years in the industry, her goal is to bring information on all technology to the masses. Her philosophy is to create each article so that anyone can understand the content, whether they are a consumer or a technology expert. Check out her site at Enlightened-Digital.com.

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Best Online Apps for HR Executives

The job of Human Resources (HR) personnel does not stop at screening and hiring the right people for the company, it also includes duties such as making sure that employees get their commensurate pay and benefits, employee satisfaction and happiness at work, and overall employee productivity and teamwork.

Screening applicants and hiring employees is just one of the easier tasks for HR executives, the hardest part is how to ensure that the best employees stay in the company for good – and how the company in turn can maximize and realize their full potentials and talent.

Luckily in this digital age, there are many online and digital apps that can help HR executives and personnel track each employee’s attendance, manage payroll, and gain feedback. All these can be used to ensure that employees are constantly attended to, and that no one gets left behind (especially when it comes to compensation).

1. Zoho Recruit

Of course, there is an app that can make the screening and hiring process easier, and aside from Zoho Recruit, apps such as BambooHR and Workable can do this too. However, let’s just take the spotlight to Zoho Recruit for now because this is the most popular app in this category.

Zoho Recruit allows HR personnel to post jobs at once on multiple leading job listing sitesand Social Media pages such as LinkedIn, Monster, Indeed, etc. The app also allows you to create an applicant form which can be redirected to the company’s website. Most of all, Zoho Recruit helps organize, filter and track every resume that is received from a candidate.

The best part? The app has a completely free version, but this one has very limited features. Its paid version however, has two options. Their most popular package costs $25 per month, while the premium one costs $50 per month.

1. VibeCatch

As mentioned earlier, the work does not stop at hiring and screening employees for the company. It also extends to making sure that they are actually happy and motivated to do their job. Employee engagement is an important duty for every HR executive, and VibeCatch can help out with that.

VibeCatch allows HR executives and personnel to set-up polls, get feedback from employees and enable a crowdsourcing of ideas for company and work improvement. So it could work even for companies who do not have a regular work space yet.

Best of all, the app is mobile-friendly, which makes it easier for both employers and employees to access its features. The app does not have a free version, and price starts at $24 each month for each employee.

1. CakeHR

Recording employee attendance have never been easier with CakeHR. The app is created for small to medium-sized entrepreneurs who don’t want to be burdened with piling documents and spreadsheets that tally an employee’s attendance, absence, leave requests and actual leaves taken.

Aside from time-in and time-out tracking, CakeHR lays out a shared company calendar that could show approved leaves for each employee, approval of leaves for the management to take care of, requests for time-offs from employees, and the number of leaves that an employee is still entitled to.

The app provides two options for payment – one is $3.30 per employee on an annual basis, while the other is priced at $4 per employee on a monthly basis. Interested companies can however avail of a one month free trials service.

1. Workday HCM

Workday HCM is not essentially an app, rather, it is a cloud-based tool that has all the essential features when it comes to HR functions such as attendance tracking, payroll management, compensation plans, recruitment and even up to the retirement process. Aside from that, it is also a place where customer engagement can be improved with its mobile and desktop compatibility.

Workday HCM is however pricey, since its target is mainly large and established companies. Its cost would also depend on the contract agreement, which should not be less than 3 years.

1. HR Management Magazine App

Of course, improvement of customer engagement and management cannot be done without reading up on additional knowledge and trends that concern the HR industry as a whole. The HR Management Magazine app is a place where HR executives and personnel can be up to date with staffing and recruitment strategies, leadership training and seminars, labor law updates, and many more.

Every HR executive should also take into consideration the size and industry of the company they’re working for before deciding which app is best for use. Most apps actually work best for startups and medium-sized businesses (especially those with free versions), but high-priced and premium apps are mostly targeted to large businesses which employ a higher number of employees. With more employees, HR management could get more complicated – hence the need for more inclusive HR services and apps.

Author Bio:

Jessica Radburn is a seasoned writer who enjoys creating helpful articles and interesting stories. She has worked with several clients across different industries such as advertising, online marketing, technology, healthcare, family matters, and more. She is also an aspiring entrepreneur who is engaged in assisting other aspiring entrepreneurs in finding the best office space for their business.

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How to Harness the Power of Instagram for Your Ecommerce Site

With competition in the e-commerce sector getting even stiffer, there is an urgent need for entrepreneurs to innovate. While the internet marketplace has brought about myriad opportunities, especially for smaller brands, the vicious competition on this platform makes it crucial to keep adapting. If you are still sticking to your old website as the only avenue for marketing, you are driving your business to oblivion.

The e-commerce industry is growing rapidly and if the challenges you are facing today are driving you to the wall, you just have to consider the opportunities you are losing. According to a study by eMarketer, retail e-commerce sales will shoot up to $4.058 trillion in 2020.

A similar study by Big Commerce says that over 51% of Americans today prefer shopping online, with over 96% of all consumers already having completed a purchase online. The same study says e-commerce is growing 23% year-over-year, which highlights the opportunity that every business can enjoy if they have the best digital marketing strategy.

There are over 3.7 billion internet users according to Internet Live Stats and you have to position yourself strategically to leverage the opportunities available. The best way to do this today is by riding the crest of the Instagram wave. The days of Facebook dominance seem to be over with its reach reducing and Instagram now gives the innovative marketer an opportunity to thrive. In fact, Instagram has been labeled the world’s most powerful marketing tool and for many good reasons.

The Power of Instagram Marketing

With Facebook’s decline in business marketing, it was only a matter of time before another platform came up. This time, Instagram, a photo and video sharing platform started by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger in 2010, has come in to provide the much-needed solution. With over 700 million monthly active users (MAUs) and 500 million daily active users (DAUs), this is one of the most powerful social media networks today.

Close to 50% of brands in the U.S are already using Instagram for marketing purposes and according to eMarketer, the number is expected to go up to 71% by the end of 2017. A recent Forrester Research tagged Instagram as one of the most effective social marketing tools.

All these numbers highlight the power of Instagram for your marketing campaign. If you are struggling to leverage the growing numbers of internet users, it is time you learnt how to build your Instagram followers, but first things first.

Harnessing the Power of Instagram for Ecommerce

While it is very easy to set up an IG account, it is more difficult to start getting followers on Instagram and achieve your business objectives. In fact, this is the reason why most brands say social media offers no returns. In the rush to build an IG account, most business owners miss out on the bigger picture and they find it hard to get any results from their campaign.

If you want to leverage the power of IG, consider the following:

• Create an Instagram Strategy

Like with any other business campaign, you have to create a roadmap to get you to the desired objectives. There are many objectives of taking your brand to Instagram and it is advisable to first assess what you want to achieve before even opening your account. For example, do you want to increase your e-commerce website’s visibility on social media or do you want to drive sales?

Are you more after brand awareness or do you want more mentions of your products? Whatever the idea you have, make sure you set it down as this will guide the rest of the campaign. You should also consider the type of content you will be posting, schedule of posting, and the person tasked with posting content among other factors.

• Optimize Your Bio

The cardinal rule when creating a profile for your e-commerce website is to use a public account and use the new business tools to give your profile a professional touch. More importantly, you need to optimize your bio by giving detailed information about your business and more importantly adding a link to your landing page.

This is the only chance to direct traffic to your e-commerce site and it is surprising that most marketers overlook it. While at it, make sure you have optimized the landing page to make it easier for shoppers to compare the products available and make a purchase in a few steps.

• Integrate IG Photos into E-commerce

The easiest way to use Instagram for conversion is by integrating IG photos into your e-commerce website design. You can use a feed or a widget on your landing page with your IG posts to showcase your products. For instance, if you are selling eyewear, why not share posts from your IG account by customers who are wearing the same? This instantly creates a sense of authenticity in your products and you will witness better sales conversions. There are many 3rd party Instagram tools which you can now use to embed Instagram photos onto your website.

• Show Your Best Products

The power of visuals drives Instagram and this is also the reason why it has become one of the most powerful marketing tools over the last few years. It is now possible to showcase your best products in the best way possible. With IG photos, you have an opportunity to call attention to your products.

The platform has the amazing photo and video editing features to give your images an edge. These amazing photos will attract visitors to your store and from there it gets easier to close a purchase.

• Contests Galore

If you want to engage users on social platforms, start with a contest. The same applies on Instagram and it is easy to get started; you just need to choose a prize, pick a contest-specific hashtag, create a contest “theme” and finally aggregate and display the photos online.

• Use the Full Power of Hashtags

Now that there are no links, you have to leverage hashtags which allow connection of your Instagram followers with the larger marketing strategy. Start by getting a small number of real Instagram followers using popular hashtags. To get the best out of your hashtags, use a mixture of broad and specific terms. However, avoid overusing hashtags or using irrelevant ones.

Using Instagram for your e-commerce site is a learning process and these tips will help you get started.

This is a guest contribution by Scott Harris for Instamacro.

Author Bio

Harris is a leading blog writer and content marketing professional with thousands of real Instagram followers for his postings.

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Helpful Tips On Hiring An Outsourced Web Designer

Outsourcing has become the norm for small to medium and large enterprises these days, and how could it not be? It is a smart move for companies looking to save or cut costs and still get what they need done, when they need it.

Among the most highly outsourced jobs today is web design and development. It has become too costly for companies to have their own in-house web developers, especially if they just need them for seasonal projects. This is why outsourcing to a web design company or individual contractor has become the more logical and practical option.

But while hiring outsourced talents appear to be the better option, especially for small and upcoming companies, there are downsides to it that can also be detrimental for business. This includes not getting the expected outcome, abandoned work, and so on. So how can you hire an outsourced web designer and be well satisfied with it all the way through? Here are some helpful tips that you can do.

1. Come up with a specialized screening process – Whether you’re outsourcing to a company or directly to a remote contractor, it would help to come up with a special screening process to easily filter out those that are unqualified for the job. Example of which is by providing specific instructions to follow upon their submission of their application and if not met, would automatically be not considered for the job.
2. Ask for samples of previous work and references – In hiring remote “creatives” (e.g. writers, designers, etc), it’s necessary to request for a couple of the sample work they’ve done, whether it’s from their portfolio or work that they did for previous clients. It would also help to get references, whom you can contact regarding the work done by the remote contractor. Not only will you get an idea of their work ethic, but you’ll also be able to verify if they’re a suitable candidate for the job you need to get done.
3. Prepare list of questions – Don’t just rely on spontaneous conversation when doing the formal interview. Live video chat is preferable (e.g via Skype or Google Hangouts) and you’ll need to have a fixed set of questions to ask and go through with the candidate. You can then compare answers among candidates to see who’s the best person for the job.
4. Observe communication throughout hiring process – Are they very responsive or does it take some time before you hear back from them? How respectful are they when discussing the details of the job? The hiring process would normally take at least more than a week and that’s enough time for you to assess how well they communicate. Communication is key in managing a remote employee and if there are certain red flags just from the hiring phase, then it may be a sign to simply move on to the next candidate.
5. Read between the lines before committing – You and your outsourced employee should agree on a contract that specifies your terms and conditions for the employment. As with any other agreement, due diligence is important before signing and committing to a binding contract.

Hiring an outsourced employee always has its risks but do it the right and careful way, and you’ll certainly reap the benefits of having the work you need at a more cost-efficient level and be completely happy with the results. Of course, it’s also one thing to hire and it’s also another thing to nurture the working relationship you have with your outsourced employee. At that point, it’s also dependent on you, as a business owner and superior, to be able to effectively manage and guide your outsourced employee as you would with your in-house employees.

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