New Gmail and Yahoo Spam Prevention Requirements and How Email Marketers Can Prepare Posted on November 29, 2023November 29, 2023 by Natalie Slyman Ending up in the spam folder is every marketer’s nightmare. Not only does it mean your message didn’t make it to your recipient, but it could set you up for failure later on. The more your emails get marked as spam, the worse your email deliverability can get over time. Also, being seen as a spammer isn’t great for your brand, as it corrodes your credibility and breaks down any trust you’ve worked hard to earn with your audience. Major email providers, like Gmail and Yahoo, know just how annoying it is for users to receive spammy messages. That’s why they’ve adjusted their screening policies to better enforce email marketing best practices. These new policies will go into effect in February 2024. But what does this mean for email marketers? While it’s crucial that you’re prepared to comply with Gmail and Yahoo’s guidelines, it’s also important to note that if you’re following email marketing best practices to begin with, you’re already set up for success. Let’s dive into these new spam screening policies Google and Yahoo are implementing so you can avoid being flagged as spam. Google and Yahoo’s Spam Filtering Policies Google and Yahoo’s new spam filtering policies require that email marketers do the following: Set up domain verification Make it easy for recipients to unsubscribe from your emails Keep your complaint reporting below 0.3% Email senders who do not comply with the terms of the policy are more likely to have their emails rejected or classified as spam. Gmail will instill these new policies in February 2024, and Yahoo! Mail will instill them by the first quarter of 2024. The good news is that these policies have long been recommended as general email marketing best practices so, if you’ve been following these guidelines all along, good for you! You’re one step ahead on improving your overall reach and ensuring your emails stay in the inbox. However, if you’re not sure you’ve been following these practices, don’t stress. We’ll walk you through how to ensure you’re operating in line with these new policies. Step-By-Step Guide to Following Gmail and Yahoo’s New Spam Prevention Requirements 1. Set Up Domain Authentication One of the most typical types of spam is a spoofed email. A spoofed email is an email message that has been altered or falsified to misrepresent the sender’s identity. In a spoofed email, the sender’s information, including the “From” address, is manipulated to make it appear as though the email comes from a different source than it actually does. The intent behind spoofing can vary, but it is often used for malicious or deceptive purposes, and “domain authentication” is a set of electronic certificates that proves the sender is who they say they are. If you are sending emails from another company’s server, for example, by using an email delivery system, a situation may occur where the server that actually delivers the emails and the domain server of the sender address is different. At this time, the receiving server determines whether the source address is genuine by referring to a digital certificate such as SPF or DKIM. As an email marketing best practice, you should send from a domain you own, giving you better control over your sending reputation. In addition, your domain should be authenticated. Setting up this digital certificate, or “domain authentication,” is strongly encouraged. Don’t have a private domain today? There are inexpensive domain registrars you can use, such as: GoDaddy Domain.com Web.com For BenchmarkONE Users Please go to the “Domain Authentication Settings” page of your account to perform the authentication process. Click here for instructions: How to set up email authentication 2. Make it Easy to Unsubscribe For recipients who want to unsubscribe, email marketers should enable a “one-click unsubscribe” option that unenrolls the recipient from your email marketing outreach within two days. This rule is limited in Gmail to “email subscribers who send more than 5,000 emails a day to their Gmail account.” However, Yahoo! Mail does not restrict. For BenchmarkONE Users BenchmarkONE has a fully compliant unsubscribe system in place, and no special action is required. An unsubscribe link is included in our existing email footers. Including a clearly visible unsubscribe unsubscribe link within the email body is the responsibility of the sender. 3. Keep the Complaint Reporting Rate Below 0.3% If email recipients have an issue with an email they’ve received, they can report complaints to Google or Yahoo and have email from that particular sender blocked. Some common reasons recipients issue complaints are: They’ve received an unsolicited email. They are frustrated by receiving a newsletter they are no longer engaged with. They don’t know how to unsubscribe, or they find it complicated. Email senders should maintain a complaint reporting rate that’s less than 0.3% in order to stay aligned with these new policies. The best way to do this is to only send emails to recipients who have opted into your email marketing. As a best practice, clean your email list often by removing email recipients who have not opened your emails in a long time. You can potentially add these emails back later with a re-engagement campaign. In the same spirit, we have to stress to never used a purchased email list. Although it can be tempting to buy a large list of emails rather than build your subscriber list, a purchased list can do irreparable damage to your sending reputation, costing you in the long run. Building and maintaining a clean email list of contacts that are engaged with your business is essential to the health of your email campaigns. Lastly, make sure you place the unsubscribe link in a location where recipients can easily find it. If you are using Gmail, you can check your own spam report rate with Postmaster Tools, so if you have a problem, take the above measures. For BenchmarkONE Users As you already know, the distribution of emails to lists that have not opted-in is prohibited. Unsubscribe links should be clearly placed. If complaints are generated, make sure you are using list management features to avoid sending to readers who are less engaged. In recent years, Google and Yahoo have made great efforts to automatically detect spam emails, and their algorithms for this purpose are evolving daily. This policy formulation may be a request for cooperation from us email marketers for precise spam detection. It is a good thing for email marketers who are operating correctly with best practices because it means that subscribers will no longer receive spam, and it will be easier for them to find your email, promotion or newsletter in their inboxes. Use this opportunity to deepen engagement with your subscribers!
6 Tips to Help You Thrive as a SaaS Salesperson During a Recession Posted on October 30, 2023January 24, 2024 by Jess Lunk 6 Tips to Help You Thrive as a SaaS Salesperson During a Recession Did you know that during the economic downturn of 2020, caused by the pandemic, nearly 100,000 small businesses temporarily closed their doors and are now out of business? It’s a frightening statistic, but as a SaaS salesperson, there are specific strategies to not only weather a recession but to come out stronger on the other side. We’re here to provide you with tips on how to be proactive and ensure your career in SaaS sales remains resilient. While Bloomberg predicts a 72% probability of a recession, it’s unlikely to result in a sudden stoppage of the global economy. However, there may be economic challenges ahead, and it’s crucial to consider how you, as a SaaS salesperson, can not only survive but thrive in this environment and build a great relationship with your manager, as many issues have been noted in a new Checkr study. Here are actionable tips tailored to SaaS salespeople that can help you navigate a recession successfully and potentially achieve significant gains in 2024. Analyze Your Cash Flow Understanding how money flows into and out of your SaaS sales role is essential. It allows you to identify unnecessary expenses that can be cut, freeing up resources for revenue-generating activities. Consider the following steps: Review your expenses for redundant spending. Are there tools or services that you can do without? Evaluate your software stack and look for opportunities to consolidate subscriptions that serve similar purposes or find cost-effective alternatives. Explore renegotiating the prices and terms of the services you use to optimize your operational costs. Strengthen Customer Relationships Building and nurturing customer relationships is paramount for SaaS salespeople. A strong bond with your clients fosters brand loyalty, enhances customer retention, and increases the chances of repeat sales. Take into account that customer experience is a significant factor in customers’ decisions. In fact, a PWC study revealed that 73% of consumers say that customer experience is an important factor in choosing businesses to purchase from, yet only 49% of consumers in the U.S. agreed to have had good customer experiences with businesses. Prioritize your clients, actively engage with them, and provide exceptional support. It’s a simple way to gain an edge as competition for customers heats up in an economic downturn. Leverage your SaaS CRM to track customer interactions, preferences, and issues. This data can guide you in delivering tailored solutions, building trust, and securing future business. Save and Explore Financing Options To thrive as a SaaS salesperson during a recession, it’s crucial to be proactive, not reactive. Begin saving a percentage of your earnings in a dedicated account. This reserve can be a lifeline during economic challenges. Additionally, consider seeking low-risk loans and grants in advance. Securing financing while your career is stable is more manageable than waiting until the recession threatens your financial stability. Explore resources like the Small Business Administration (SBA) and Grant.gov for loan and grant opportunities. Invest in Strategic Marketing Marketing for SaaS salespeople not only drives sales but also provides insights into your target audience, expands your brand’s reach, and maintains customer trust. While some companies may cut marketing budgets during a recession, it also presents opportunities: Reduced competition in the advertising space can lead to lower ad costs. Take advantage of this to boost your visibility. Focus on marketing channels that yield the best results for your SaaS sales role, such as email marketing, known for its high ROI and flexibility. Focus on Profitable Offerings Assess your suite of SaaS products and services and identify those that are thriving and those that are underperforming. Concentrate your efforts on promoting the profitable ones and consider improving the performance of the weaker offerings or discontinuing them to streamline your sales efforts. For example, a product that requires little customer support from your team might be a better sell than an offering that is more difficult to scale. By concentrating on your top-performing services, you can optimize your approach and maintain a lean focus on the products and services that are in demand. Embrace Marketing Automation During a recession, it’s essential to focus on long-term growth, not just short-term cost-cutting. Marketing automation can be a game-changer for SaaS salespeople, allowing you to: Automate repetitive tasks, saving time and resources. Enhance efficiency and increase conversion rates. Gain insights and accurate reports on customer behavior and campaign performance. Implementing marketing automation can help you cut costs and improve your overall workflow, freeing up resources for long-term success. In challenging economic times, salespeople who plan, act early, and remain prepared can not only survive but also thrive. As a SaaS salesperson, proactivity, strategic planning, and utilizing the power of technology can help position your career for success, ensuring that a recession won’t spell the end for your sales endeavors. Tap into the power of marketing automation without spending a dime. Request a free BenchmarkONE account today!
How to Build a Creative Agency from Scratch Posted on February 1, 2023February 1, 2023 by Jonathan Herrick The creative industry in the United States is a multi-billion-dollar industry, and it seems everyone wants a piece of the pie. Since 2021, there has been a 12% increase in the number of creative agencies. If you’ve got your sights set on building your own business from scratch, you’re in luck. We’ve laid out everything you need to know to help you get started. Without further ado, let’s dive in. Step 1: Financing Your Agency There are five main ways to raise the money you need to get started. Bootstrapping: You’re basically using your own money. You either tap into your cash savings or your 401K through the ROBS (Rollover for Business Startup) scheme. Banks: This is a frustratingly slow process, as these lenders want to see a steady income, equity in your home, a 700+ credit score, relevant industry experience, and your business plan. SBA loans: These fall under two types – community programs, which loan you up to $250,000, or micro-loans, which can furnish you with $50,000. Crowdfunding: You can apply for funding through online platforms like Indiegogo, Kickstarter, and GoFundMe. Angel investors: there are two types – warm market (friends and family) and cold market (people you don’t know). Approach the warm market when you want smaller amounts and the cold market when you’re seeking larger sums. Step 2: Hiring Your Employees As a startup owner, your first hire should be someone with opposing skills/strengths. For example, if you’re strong at sales but poor at administration, then hire someone who is skilled where you lack and is a collaborative worker. Ultimately your agency should have at least one person in each of the following core departments: Sales Marketing Accounting Finance Product development Operations/administration Legal You’ll also need to figure out a compensation model for your staff. Are you hiring full-time, part-time, or seeking freelancers? Consider hiring supporting freelancers or SMEs for client contracts, like an SEO audit or a media strategy, by using resources such as CloudPeeps, Upwork, or Torchlite. These marketplaces focus on bringing the right talent to companies like yours. Step 3: Choosing an Office Location The first question you might want to ask yourself is, “Do I need an office right now?” Locking yourself into a year-long lease when you’re not even established yet might not be the best decision for your business. If you’re a homeowner, consider turning a spare room into your workspace. You could even use your garage! As you grow and start looking for space, think about joining incubator and accelerator hubs in your city, to get access to communal offices and boardrooms to meet with your clients. Once you can afford a place of your own, create a budget first. Then pay attention to the functionality as you view different locations (e.g. ease of access to the office, safety, visual needs of your agency) and your contract terms (e.g., does rent increase yearly?). Keep in mind that you may want to create an agency that is fully remote. Or, perhaps, you want one that has a hybrid approach. Either way, these decisions should be taken into consideration when/if looking for a physical location. Step 4: Networking and Building a Client Book Without clients, you don’t have a business. As a brand-new creative agency, you’re going to have to spend time building brand awareness and credibility so you can secure clients. This can be done by leveraging social media to push content and winning awards and accolades (e.g., check out the various US Agency Awards you can apply to.) Start networking by reaching out to your current professional network. Utilize your contacts! Reach out to old coworkers and colleagues and ask them to catch up on the phone or grab coffee or lunch with you. Sometimes, your contacts may have opportunities they’re too busy to manage or don’t have the right resources for. This would be the perfect opportunity for an introduction. If you share with your colleagues that you’re going out on your own, chances are they’ll want to support you and keep you in mind the next time a creative need lands on their plate. The power of referrals and word of mouth is incredible. People are more likely to buy when referred by someone they know. But don’t just wait for these referrals; ask for them! Also, think of networking karma. When you’ve learned all you can from your new and existing connections, don’t just move on. Make sure you pay it forward to new entrepreneurs who might need guidance or introductions to support their new business. Agree to chat with people who reach out and ask for help building their own businesses. Step 5: Establishing KPIs The late management expert Peter Drucker once said that you could not manage what you don’t measure. Simply put, every business owner needs to track business metrics and analyze them. You cannot gauge how well you’re doing as a company on a month-to-month basis without keeping accurate records. Without data, you won’t be able to tell where you stand in the industry against peers. So what should you be measuring? There’s a host of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) you could potentially track but here are some important ones: Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) Net Promoter Score Lead Conversion Rates Website Traffic Retention Rate Client Acquisition Cost Customer Lifetime Value Employee Satisfaction Step 6: Figuring Out Your Payment Models There are six primary pricing models you can opt for based on your needs and objectives as a creative agency: Fixed fees: clients like this model as there are no surprise surcharges. Hourly fees: in this compensation model, the client is billed based on the time taken and associated expenses incurred to complete a project. Monthly retainer: most common model in use. Each client pays a set fee each month. Performance-based pricing: some well-established agencies prefer to opt for this model, although the agency assumes the greater risk. Project fees: client is billed per project regardless of the time taken or resources needed to complete the task. Value-based pricing: an excellent way to build a mutually beneficial long-term relationship where pay is based on value addition. Step 7: Creating Your Agency Website First impressions count. You’re a creative agency. You need a brand and a website that wows your visitors and prospects and shows off your capabilities and talents. However, don’t be that agency that tries too hard to be clever. Consider working with a UX expert to ensure you don’t end up with confusing navigation and no clear website hierarchy. Your website should appear professional and unique but also have really clear information for any visitor that wants to hire you. Also, remember that your website is meant to generate leads. Be sure you have a clear call to action and that the visitor can easily understand who you are, what you do, and how you can help them. Besides your call to action and clear navigation, there are a few other things you should consider to make your web presence an effective part of your marketing strategy: Contact information on every page A blog An SEO strategy to drive more qualified traffic to your site Testimonials and case studies Photos or videos of your work, venue, or team (think: online portfolio) A newsletter sign up Social media accounts Step 8: Setting up a Content Strategy Content marketing is SO important for lead generation, as well as brand trust and awareness. As mentioned above, two necessary basic things to consider when you create a website are a blog and an SEO strategy. Help your potential clients find you! Content fuels your online marketing channels. Start with writing blogs that will attract clients to your business. Think about the problems your prospects are trying to solve and how you can help. Dig into creative problems you’ve solved for past brands and clients. The content on your blog can form the basis of bite-sized content that can be used on your social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter. It can also be repurposed into: An email newsletter E-books Online Courses Lead Magnets Try to gain additional exposure and showcase your expertise through guest blogging for top creative publications such as AdWeek, B2B Marketing Blog, or Creativity. Keywords are also critical to consider as a part of your content strategy. Keywords will help you drive more qualified traffic to your specific web pages, which leads to better conversions. Put simply; they help you get your content in front of the right people at the right time. Owning an agency is not for the faint of heart, but it’s worth the work to build a business of your own. When you’re burning the midnight oil, it’ll all be for your own success and your own revenue. Be sure to take the time to consider what kind of company you are — really hone in on your value proposition. Focus on the type of clients you want, how to make them happy, and build a team culture that you’re proud of. Lastly, don’t forget to have fun. Your agency is your livelihood and something you should feel passionate about. Share your passion with your colleagues, employees, and your clients.
42 Best Sales Prospecting Tools for Sales Teams in 2023 Posted on January 25, 2023January 17, 2023 by Guest Author Good prospecting leads to good business. Prospecting is what brings you to the attention of your potential clients and keeps your sales pipeline full, leading to more business. But it is not as easy as sending a simple message randomly to people. Most sales reps consider prospecting to be the toughest part of the sales process. So, how do you get your sales prospecting process bang on? How do you know which prospects are good enough to approach? Where and how to approach them? How to track them and convert them? This is where sales prospecting tools come in as a savior for all sales reps. These tools allow you to control the entire sales process more easily and effectively. And today, we will share some of the best sales prospecting tools and how they can help you ace your sales game! Before jumping on the massive list of sales prospecting tools, let’s first understand what exactly sales prospecting is. What is Sales Prospecting? Sales prospecting is the practice of gathering further information about potential leads who have expressed interest in your company’s product or service. It contributes to the development of the sales pipeline and moves you one step closer to gaining potential clients. Prospecting is an essential component of your business and marketing plan. Sales prospecting can help you gain competitive insights, boost your sales team’s productivity, enlarge your sales pipeline, and lower acquisition costs. Top Sales Prospecting Tools for 2023 Here’s a list of the best tools that will make sales prospecting much easier and more efficient. We have categorized these tools into 6 categories as follows – Tools for Building a Prospect List Tools to Find Contact Details Tools to Qualify Prospects Tools for Sales Engagement Sales Engagement Tools for Gmail & Outlook Tools for Scheduling Meetings Tools for LinkedIn Prospecting Tools for Building a Prospect List 1. BenchmarkONE BenchmarkONE is an integrated CRM and marketing automation tool that seeks to make managing and maintaining both existing and potential customers easier. It assists agencies and small business owners in converting relationships into sales. It helps businesses increase sales, manage contacts, improve response rates, and track their success at a glance. Also, the BenchmarkONE CRM is a cost-effective substitute for complex sales software. Being integrated into a marketing solution, it provides a more comprehensive picture of your contacts. You can also use marketing automation to fill in the gaps in corporate operations and data. Overall, the robust features of the tool enable you to keep and track prospects and current clients more efficiently. Apart from that, landing pages and pop-up forms help you generate more leads from your website and convert them into customers. Key Features: Customer acquisition Communication management Engagement management Contact list management Landing pages and pup-up forms Templates Custom reports 2. Leadfeeder Leadfeeder tracks website visitors and tells you when a member from a target company visits your website so that you can follow up efficiently. The application integrates with various CRMs and automatically adds new visitors to the sales pipeline, and refreshes lead records to ensure no leads are missed. Leadfeeder, in contrast to other sales prospecting platforms, reveals the frequency with which prospects visit your website over a broad period. This data eventually comes in handy while qualifying and engaging your leads. Key Features: B2B lead generation Channel attribution Conversion tracking Customer segmentation Dynamic engagement tracking Automatic lead scoring Email Alerts 3. Clearbit Clearbit allows you to identify anonymous website visitors and track their activity, allowing you to see which aspects of your site are the most popular. Firmographic data allows you to personalize your website visitors’ experiences in real-time and alerts your sales team when one of their accounts shows intent. You get visitor information, such as company size and location in real-time. With this data, you can create highly targeted accounts and lead lists, as well as automatically verify contact information. This ensures that your lists are always up to date with the most recent information. You can also create a preferred contact persona and search for new target accounts based on your criteria. Key Features: Lead management Lead segmentation Data cleaning Dynamic tracking Performance metrics Opportunity management 4. LeadIQ LeadIQ contributes to improving your sales and marketing efficiency by assisting your sales team in devoting more time to higher-value activities. The LeadIQ tool alone saves sales reps six hours per week on manual data entry. It helps your sales team connect with the right prospects at the right companies. With a single click, you can capture leads directly from LinkedIn Sales Navigator or any website and add them to your favorite sales tools. Key Features: Campaign builder Account-based prospecting Lead capture Lead segmentation Campaign management Lead distribution Lead nurturing 5. Adapt Adapt is a global B2B account intelligence provider with 500M+ high-quality business contacts. It is a unified sales acceleration platform that helps you discover and enrich critical sales and marketing data accurately. Adapt integrates with leading CRMs and fills your pipeline with high-quality data on existing and new contacts. Its chrome extension helps you get email IDs and other contact details right out of Linkedin and websites. Key Features: Email finder Job update alerts CSV & CRM enrichment Adapt API Technology data 6. LeadFuze Set your lead generation on autopilot with this unlimited and automated sales prospecting platform. Build lists of leads and automatically sync leads to CRMs and outreach tools or even for custom audience ad targeting. LeadFuze aggregates, matches, and verifies contact emails in real-time across 500+ million business professionals. Key Features: Email finder Automated list building Automatic contact syncing Lead enrichment Marketing + Account-based prospecting 7. Cloudlead Cloudlead combines software scalability with a human touch for custom sales triggers that indicate strong buying intent and provides human-verified leads Sales and marketing teams can easily supplement their multi-channel outreach with deeper insights into prospects and accounts while covering their Total Addressable Market. Examples include verified phone numbers, social ranks, and email scores so you know where your leads are most active. Key Features: Find contact emails B2B sales insights Human verified data Data enrichment Lead scoring 8. Triblio ABM Platform The Triblio ABM platform brings together intent data, multichannel account-based advertising, website personalization, and sales activation to enable go-to-market teams to identify and prioritize best-fit accounts at scale, engage them, and grow the pipeline. Triblio finds the accounts most likely to buy and tees them up for sales prospecting. Once high-fit prospects have been reached, salespeople can engage them with 1:1 personalized landing pages (Smart Pages) at scale. Key Features: Sales activation Sales engagement Lead-to-account matching Account scoring Intent data Tools to Find Contact Details 9. Datanyze Datanyze allows your sales team to quickly obtain highly accurate information about their prospects. One point in Datanyze’s favor is that they take privacy seriously and exceed all legal requirements for finding information about people online. Its Chrome extension-as-default interface makes prospect research a breeze because there is no cumbersome user interface between research and outreach. They also have this feature called “ice breakers,” which are related to the prospect’s geographic location and social media activity. So you’ll not only be able to contact the right people, but you’ll also have something to say when you do! Key Features: Chrome extension Account-based marketing LinkedIn prospecting Customized conversion Contract renewals A lead-scoring predictive model Email marketing Analytics Integrations 10. Hunter Sometimes finding leads isn’t the issue–it’s about finding the right way to reach out to them. This is where tools like Hunter come in handy. By delivering relevant email addresses in real-time, Hunter enables sales professionals to connect with the right prospects in the best way. You can search for a single prospect’s email address or enrich your database with bulk email searches. You can also use Hunter as a Google Sheets extension and in integration with your preferred sales and marketing tools. Key Features: List management Email finder Email verifier Domain search Confidence score CRM and marketing tool integration 11. Overloop Overloop is another tool that helps you connect with your prospects by providing email addresses and phone numbers associated with them. All you need to do is provide the domain you want details about and Overloop pulls out the data for you. It also crawls and drives results from spreadsheets, PDFs, and documents hosted on the target domain. However, the tool works best with SMBs and small sites, given its limitation to crawl up to 50 pages per domain. Key Features: Lead management Finds email addresses Finds phone numbers Performance metrics Proposal management Contact management LinkedIn automation & import 12. Voila Norbert Voila Norbert is a powerful search engine that allows you to enter a person’s name and company to find that person’s email address. Voila Norbert’s eight-step email verification process ensures that you’re sending emails to real people. It also provides data and insights for enrichment, such as job titles, companies, locations, and social profiles that will further help you segment your prospects and personalize your conversation better. Key Features: Single & bulk email search Email verifier Marketing tool integrations Chrome extension 13. Skrapp Skrapp is an email lookup and data enrichment tool for B2B sales outreach. Unlike other email lookup tools, Skrapp is one of the few sales tools that allow you to search for email addresses associated with a LinkedIn account. Using their Google Chrome extension, you can go to someone’s LinkedIn profile and find the email address they used to sign up. Another useful feature is the ability to save leads directly into lists, which saves your time. Key Features: Email finder Cold emailing Prospecting Database enrichment Email verification Catch-all server detection 14. GetProspect GetProspect is a pretty effective tool for targeted B2B lead generation. With it, you can find emails by lead’s name, domain, and even LinkedIn URL. Importantly, its Linkedin Chrome extension is a game changer for salespeople looking for leads on LinkedIn. Why? It allows getting email addresses from LinkedIn search and personal pages just in a few clicks. In addition, this software can support your contact enrichment and lead management thanks to excellent B2B database and CRM features. Key Features: Email finder Email verifier LinkedIn extension Data enrichment Lead management 15. FindThatLead FindThatLead is an all-in-one lead-generation platform that allows you to contact people, local businesses, and companies from any industry. Just giving a few parameters, the platform provides you with contact information from public sources with its search and prospecting tools and helps you run and set up cold email campaigns to contact leads. Key Features: Email finder Email verifier Automatic email sequences Lead generation 16. DeBounce DeBounce is an affordable verification tool that makes spotting harmful emails simple and uncomplicated. Users can purchase 5,000 email verifications for just $10, and bigger orders are eligible for discounts. Although DeBounce is inexpensive, it eliminates bounces, leaving users with a clear, useful email list. It even offers thorough reporting to back up this claim. Businesses on a budget seeking a trustworthy email verification system should check out DeBounce. Key Features: Bulk email validation Email validation API Data enrichment Lead finder Tools to Qualify Prospects 17. Zoominfo ZoomInfo is a massive database that contains a wealth of information that can be used to qualify leads. The tool digs into your leads’ contact information, suggests similar contacts to reach out to using AI, and discovers intent signals, such as projects that organizations are working on or launching. Such information helps you qualify your prospects, establish better communication, and increase your ROI by offering a relevant solution. Furthermore, ZoomInfo natively integrates with several popular sales software platforms, automatically enriching lead profiles in your CRM. Key Features: Lead qualification & enrichment Website visitor tracking Activity and pipeline management Artificial intelligence outreach Account targeting Campaign optimization Enterprise API 18. BuiltWith BuiltWith is a platform that identifies which technologies a company is currently employing. You can refine your searches by location, traffic, and vertical and then download comprehensive lists of businesses that use a specific platform. This comes in handy while targeting your prospects. You can see who uses shopping carts, hosting, advertising, CMS, and analytics by searching a database of over 53,000 web technologies and 673 million websites. Then, before engaging in a conversation, you can use BuildWith’s sales intelligence feature to better understand your prospect’s platform. Furthermore, with global data coverage spanning over 270 countries, you can get a complete picture of your target market and competitors. Key Features: Contact database Lead qualification Lead capture & segmentation Cyber risk auditing Report filtering API access CRM integrations 19. Vainu Vainu is a sales intelligence platform that assists businesses in providing the tailored sales experience that customers expect. You get 100+ search filters from Vainu’s real-time database to find the best-fit prospects. It’s packed with powerful features, such as the ability to follow prospect lists and react instantly when a new company matches your criteria, or a prospect appears to be interested in you. Furthermore, the platform integrates with several marketing automation platforms to prioritize inbound leads and personalize campaigns. Key Features: Company profiles A comprehensive range of data Data enrichment Data customization Target accounts Workflow triggers Automation 20. Crystal Crystal analyses public data and employs an algorithm to detail that person’s DiSC personality profile. You can, for example, see how a prospect prefers to communicate and how they make decisions so that you can adjust your pitch and communication style. So, you will know how to communicate and engage your prospects better, pushing them toward the conversion stage. You can also install the Gmail plugin, which in Gmail offers immediate recommendations regarding the recipient’s personality and communication style. Key Features: Prospect personality profile Prospecting Pitch tailoring Customer engagement Contact management 21. LeadBoxer LeadBoxer is a website lead identification and qualification platform built for sales teams. It helps you identify, qualify and manage your leads in one place. With LeadBoxer, you can enrich, score and segment your leads. Its web application allows you to modify lead scores, set up notifications, manage leads in kanban view, and much more. Key Features: Website lead capturing and Identification Lead qualification by enrichment and lead scoring Lead Management & Marketing CRM Tools for Sales Engagement 22. Reply Reply is a powerful sales engagement platform that streamlines multichannel outreach while keeping every interaction relevant and personal. Aside from its core sequencing capabilities, it also offers a ton of valuable add-ons like an email finder, effective deliverability features, and an AI-powered assistant to power up every aspect of your sales process. It’s a perfect platform for larger teams with advanced performance analytics and permission management. Key Features: Email finder Automatic multichannel sequences Email warm-up LinkedIn automation Cloud calls 23. SmartTask SmartTask is an all-in-one work management platform that empowers sales teams with both project management and CRM capabilities. It allows you to manage tasks in multiple views, such as list, kanban board, calendar, and timeline. You can track deal progress throughout the sales pipeline with custom fields and predict sales with accurate sales analytics. SmartTask also allows you to manage contacts, trigger audio & video calls to engage leads, and keep track of communication history. Key Features: Sales CRM Sales forecasting Contact management Call tracking Project management Task management Time tracking Team collaboration Analytics & reporting 24. monday sales CRM monday sales CRM is a part of monday’s work OS, which is another work management platform that helps sales professionals with both core project management and CRM capabilities. It allows you to collect leads from any source, manage deal stages, keep track of contacts, manage post-sales activities, and other sales operations. Key Features: Lead capturing & management Account & contact management Sales forecasting Deal management Project management 25. Pipeline CRM Pipeline CRM is an alternative to old-school spreadsheets for real economy sectors. The clean design, easy setup, seamless integrations, and intuitive tools are perfectly designed to minimize data headaches and accelerate sales for any team. Without the chaos and hefty price tag of big-brand CRMs, this cost-effective sales platform is just what you need to manage your leads, monitor conversations, and track insights in an organized manner. Key Features: Easy Integrations Manage Multiple Pipelines Account Customization Lead Tracking and Reporting Lead Nurturing and Management 26. Bloobirds Bloobirds is a sales engagement platform that transforms your CRM. Bloobirds sit on top of it to make it more functional for the sales team. It eliminates admin tasks, makes selling more intuitive, and makes sure best plays are followed. It helps sales teams flow through their pipeline; it also collects crucial data and creates competitive insights. Key Features: Dialer Smart email editor Task assistance Linkedin extension In-app playbook 27. Close Close is a customer relationship management (CRM) software to assist your sales team in making more calls, closing more deals, and ultimately meeting or exceeding the targets on or before deadlines. Close was created to allow users to spend more time communicating with their existing customers and potential clients and less time entering data. The platform is essentially an engine that combines customer management tools with communication capabilities like VoIP calling and two-way email. Close allows users to make and receive calls as well as take business notes without ever picking up a phone or leaving the application. Key Features: Contact management Interaction tracking Workflow management Power dialer Integration with email clients CRM reporting & analytics 28. Outreach Outreach is an email outreach and sales engagement platform that aims to improve the productivity of sales teams by enabling them to manage their prospects efficiently. The tool facilitates communication with outbound sales prospects via email, sending out cold emails, tracking them, and other sales automation features. You can also integrate the platform with your email to clear the unwanted clutter and provide a consolidated report of everything to make better decisions. Key Features: Sales engagement Pipeline generation Deal management Revenue forecasting Sales intelligence Opportunity management A/B testing Meeting scheduling 29. VanillaSoft VanillaSoft is a sales engagement platform that helps sales teams save time, stay organized and focused, achieve agile goals, and grow revenue. The platform empowers sales reps to respond promptly to new leads, keep interactions consistent across multiple channels, and generate more qualified sales opportunities. VanillaSoft’s lead prioritization engine automatically serves the next best lead based on your ideal customer profile, buyer intent data, and cadence schedule. Key Features: Lead & sales tracking Auto dialing Lead routing Call recording Appointment setting 30. Autoklose Autoklose is an all-in-one sales engagement platform that offers B2B data and email automation. Utilizing a B2B database packed with clean, verified leads, Autoklose helps you target the right prospects. You can automate your email campaigns in 5 easy steps and engage your prospects by sending out sequences of highly personalized emails at scale. It also enables you to monitor your response rates and fine-tune your campaigns in real-time. Key Features: Email campaign management B2B contact data Email verification Email tracking Real-time reporting 31. Salesloft Salesloft is a sales engagement tool that assists you in effectively managing your tasks. The tool helps you send personalized emails, as well as track opens and follow-ups. When a buyer responds to an email, the automation rules take effect and direct them to the most appropriate workflow with hyper-relevant messages. It also has a powerful caller to contact your prospects. You can also integrate Salesloft with your CRMs, allowing you to manage your database more seamlessly. Key Features: Lead management Sales acceleration Sales automation Call recording Cold email Sales pipeline Performance dashboard 32. Kixie Kixie is an automated calling and texting platform built for sales teams that work with leading CRMs like HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, etc. With tools like automated lead caller and automated event-based SMS, Kixie engages leads when *they* are engaged. Plus, it saves agents hours each day with smart tools like the PowerCall multi-line autodialer, voicemail drop, local presence dialing, dashboard analytics & reporting, and more. Key Features: Multi-line power dialer Voicemail drop Local presence dialing Outbound calling tools Inbound calling tools 33. SendX SendX is an Intuitive and affordable email marketing tool. With its simplest UI, SendX provides unlimited email sends with every plan, automation capabilities, best of breed email deliverability. With SendX, you can segment the customers on the basis of demography, subscriber behavior, and more than 25+ other parameters. Key Features: Email marketing Email template collections Email deliverability Email segmentation Email automation 34. Vidyard Vidyard is a video application that helps you build virtual connections. You can create personalized and interactive video experiences, as well as gain valuable insight into customer behavior and preferences. With Vidyard, you can create videos with your webcam or screen recorder, customize your thumbnail, and share via email, social media, or other platforms. You can send or distribute product demos, customer stories, executive updates, and other materials. Key Features: Analytics/ROI tracking Social sharing Video editing Screen recording Animated video previews Multi-channel distribution Sales Engagement Tools for Gmail & Outlook 35. Mixmax Mixmax is a sales engagement tool built for Gmail. It helps entire revenue teams collaborate to work as one cohesive unit with the goal of turning prospects and leads into happy, long-term customers. Mixmax’s features are designed to automate repetitive tasks and workflows–like manually updating Salesforce–and help teams boost engagement with recipients via one-click meetings, polls, sequences, email tracking, and more. Key Features: Automatic email sequences One-click meetings One-click polls Salesforce automation Email tracking 36. Boomerang Boomerang is a powerful extension that integrates with Gmail and Outlook and acts as a mini-AI assistant in your inbox. It offers numerous useful features, such as the ability to schedule an email in advance to reach a prospect at their most convenient time. Boomerang also has a few other useful features to help you stay organized. You can, for example, configure it to send an email automatically if you don’t receive a response or to send reminders if you don’t respond to an email after a certain number of days. Key Features: Email scheduling Meeting scheduling Magic live calendar Follow-up reminders Tracking email engagement 37. Yesware Yesware is another Google and Outlook email prospecting tool that allows you to reach out to prospects, schedule meetings, and follow up with leads directly from your inbox. With daily activity-tracking features, you can see what’s working and where they need to improve. The platform also sends you notifications when leads open your emails, view attachments, or click on links. You can easily schedule automated emails and calls and create meaningful follow-ups using Yesware’s multi-channel campaign features. You can also create a library of your most effective email templates and share it with the rest of your team. Key Features: Email tracking Multi-channel campaigns Meeting scheduler Email templates Reporting & analytics Integrations Tools for Scheduling Meetings 38. Calendly By far the most popular scheduling platform is Calendly. Over 50,000 businesses have used it to streamline over 200 million meetings since 2013. Calendly not only syncs with your calendar, but it also allows you to easily determine your availability. From there, it only shows visitors where you’re available, so there’s no need to worry about double-booking. Clients can also only select the type of meeting and meeting lengths you’ve predetermined. You can also provide multiple in-person or virtual locations so that invitees can choose the best way to connect with you. Key Features: Meeting scheduling Group appointments Auto follow-ups & reminders Personalized notifications Overview team activity Excellent mobile app 39. Demodesk Demodesk is a great meeting platform for sales and success teams that takes engaging prospects/clients to a whole new level. It loads the ideal playbook into every customer meeting, guiding reps with the appropriate slides or web apps to present and track talks and battle cards on the fly. Its AI-based insights help sales leaders understand what’s happening in the call and what works and coach teams. Key Features: Agenda management Scheduling & invitation management Audio/video conferencing Auto-dialling Call recording Reporting/Analytics Sales automation Tools for LinkedIn Prospecting 40. LinkedIn Sales Navigator LinkedIn has several add-ons designed specifically for lead generation, one of which is the LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Sales Navigator is a powerful tool that enables sales professionals to quickly find quality leads on LinkedIn who are likely to convert with just a few clicks. This tool allows users to view more leads than a standard search would, while also expanding the user’s network by allowing them to message leads who aren’t yet connected. Key Features: Prospecting Advanced search Saving searches & leads InMail Customized news feed Automated lead recommendations CRM integration 41. Surfe (Previously Leadjet) If you are tired of moving data manually between LinkedIn and your CRM, then this is a great tool to use. Surfe is a sales productivity tool that integrates with your CRM and LinkedIn and makes your CRM data viewable on LinkedIn. The extension synchronizes messages, contacts, and other data between the two platforms, eventually removing the need for manual data entry and input errors. Leadjet also enhances contacts and creates personalized message templates to help you personalize your LinkedIn outreach. Surfe integrates with Hubspot, Salesforce, Salesloft, Pipedrive, Copper, and Sales Navigator, among other systems. Key Features: LinkedIn lead generation On-Profile lead information CRM & enrichment tool integration Lead verification Automated data entry CRM data enrichment 42. LinkMatch LinkMatch is a Google Chrome extension which allows you to instantly see which LinkedIn or Xing profiles are already in your CRM and which are not. It allows you to view/edit existing profiles and related information, hide/show and rearrange the fields, and save LinkedIn and Xing profiles to your CRM system. You can also automatically save your LinkedIn messages into your CRM assigned to the right profile. Key Features: LinkedIn profile saving Managing CRM contacts from LinkedIn Prospect like a Pro! We did our part by introducing these amazing tools that can be revolutionary for your business. And now it’s your turn to pick the right tools that align with your requirements the best and manage your sales prospecting process like a pro! Author Bio Shyamal Parikh is the Founder of SmartTask, an online work management/automation software that helps teams streamline their processes, whether sales, hiring, customer success, or projects. He actively shares strategies and techniques that improve a team’s productivity.
How to Create Team Goals that are Measurable Posted on January 18, 2023January 18, 2023 by Jonathan Herrick It’s the New Year, and while many of us would like to start anew, the reality is that we’re still dealing with some 2022 baggage. Talks of a recession have not quieted down, so how you start this year off can have a lasting impact on your business’s sustainability. In order to drive top performance and keep your business looking to the long term, it’s important for you and your team to be goal driven. This is why, as a business owner or manager, you should define goals to help your team understand what you want to accomplish this year. Team goals require the collective participation of every team member. Setting them can be challenging, but it is necessary for you and your team to do your best work and to ensure that you thrive this year, despite all the economic ups and downs being thrown your way. By planning and executing measurable goals, you can better assess your team’s progress, accountability, and performance. This will benefit you, the team, and the business at large. In this article, we’ll go over some tips for setting measurable goals, simplifying goal setting, and giving your team a head start on increasing marketing and sales in 2023. 1. Specify What You Want to Achieve As the owner of your small business, you need to identify the purpose of setting a goal and what you hope to achieve by doing so. You can begin by identifying areas where the business is falling behind and setting goals to help close those gaps. Your goals will be more likely to be met if they are broken down into daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly targets. Ensure that all team members understand the goals and their roles in achieving them. 2. Set Smart Goals Get together with your team to establish the goals you’ll want to work toward. Also, document the key results you expect to obtain as a way to assess success and determine whether or not the goal was met. When setting these goals, make sure they’re SMART. A smart goal is an acronym written within the framework below: Specific: It should be clear and easy to understand what you and your team want to accomplish. Measurable: A way to determine whether or not the goal was met should exist. Attainable: It should be possible to accomplish it. Relevant: It should be a goal that is essential to the entire team and the business at large. Time-bound: There should be a time frame for successful delivery. Assume you and your team currently have a weekly customer service and support satisfaction rate of 75%, and you want to increase that to 80% or higher within two months. You can cross-check this goal with the smart framework to ensure you’re on track: S: The goal has a clear and specific percentage increase outlined. M: The goal includes a weekly measurement. A: The goal is to go from a 75% to an 80% satisfaction rate in two months, which is attainable. R: If customers are satisfied, they will be loyal to the brand, making the goal relevant to the business. T: The timeframe for achieving this goal is two months. 3. Establish Deadlines and Commit This step aligns with your “SMART” goals, but make sure you assign deadlines to these initiatives. Deadlines assist in holding the team accountable, and a team that does not have a deadline to meet might be slow in completing tasks. What’s worse, they could become discouraged, disengaged, and neglect the goal altogether. Deadlines help you succeed; however, when it comes to deadlines, don’t be afraid to fail. Your team may fall short of the metrics by the project’s end date, but this only serves to highlight where they need to improve or if the goal necessitates more time. Failing to meet deadlines provides a clear indication of where and how to improve the goal itself in order to achieve greater success. 5. Set Individual Goals As well as setting team goals, individual goals can be helpful too. Setting individual goals helps each team member understand their role in achieving the team goal. It keeps each individual engaged and gives them room to grow. Suppose the team’s goal is to reduce customer attrition by 15% in the first quarter of the year. To ensure that each team member is actively participating in the achievement of this goal, assign specific tasks to each of them. You can also ask each team member to come up with a task idea that is in line with the team’s goals. Setting measurable goals allows your team to assess whether their efforts were successful and what impact they had on sales, performance, or engagement. Examples of SMART Team Goals Now that we understand how to set team goals and how essential they are to your business let’s look at some specific examples to give you inspiration. Rebrand Your Business by X Date This is a process that involves changing the business’s corporate image in order to establish a new identity in the minds of customers. To accomplish this, you will set goals for creating a new brand identity. You could consider giving different team members different tasks. For example, one person is in charge of updating email templates, and another ensures that the website homepage displays the new branding. Make sure that you all agree on a date for all marketing materials to be fully updated with the updated brand design. Boost Website Traffic by X% As a business seeking to grow, it is critical to set goals for increasing website interaction, and you will need to come up with some specific strategies that can assist you in accomplishing this feat. Here are some ideas: Start a blog in order to deliver more valued content to prospective clients. Ensure that all marketing channels, such as email and social, link back to your website. Improve your search engine ranking by increasing your SEO efforts. Expand your paid advertising campaigns. Improve Email Marketing Success For this goal, it will be important to measure success using various metrics: CTAs conversion rate. Make sure your CTA copy is compelling and that the offer is tailored toward the needs of the people it’s being offered to. Open rate. Make sure your email subject line grabs the attention of your subscribers and hints at what’s inside the email. Click-through rate. Make your emails personalized and offer content that is educational and informative so that people will want to click on it and engage. Subscriber rate. Make sure you include email sign-up forms on your website in high-traffic places, like your homepage, your blog, or on landing pages. Unsubscribe rate. When your subscribers are receiving emails they find helpful, informative, and educational, they’ll be less inclined to unsubscribe or mark you as spam. Kick-off 2023 right by outlining specific goals you want your business to achieve this year. Make sure they’re attainable and that they push you and your team forward so you can make this year especially productive and positive for your brand.
Small Business Trends on the 2023 Horizon Posted on January 4, 2023December 21, 2022 by Natalie Slyman A lot has changed within the past couple of years, and it’s ultimately affected how businesses operate. The United States currently has about 32.5 million small businesses in active operations. However, a looming recession, rising inflation, and inventory issues are all curve balls that could ultimately make that number change. If small businesses are going to not only survive but thrive, this coming year, then they need to be one step ahead of what’s to come. There are trends to look out for, and if small business owners prepare and plan as soon as possible, it could help them stand out against bigger businesses they may be in competition with. Would you like to know what’s on the horizon for small businesses? This article gives insights into the trends your small business should capitalize on this year. Let’s take a look. 6 Small Business Trends for 2023 1. Integrated Marketing With the rise of digital media, integrated marketing has become an essential tool for small businesses. By delivering a consistent message across all channels – from social media to email marketing to blog posts – businesses can ensure that their audience will not only recognize them but easily identify them and connect. This is an important trend, given the current marketing landscape and the way consumers engage with brands. Consumers interact with brands more than ever before and across multiple touchpoints. They might see your ad on TV, look up your business on their phone, and then see your ads hit their feed on social media. If the message is different at each touchpoint, it becomes confusing, and there will be no easy brand recognition. A consistent message creates a better customer experience because there’s no confusion. It also lends itself to the following: A cohesive brand identity – your branding will match no matter what channel you’re reaching your audience on. Improved marketing campaigns – with consistency across platforms, your marketing campaigns will have a focused message. Increased brand recognition and visibility – customers will know your brand just from the messaging. Increased credibility – when you’re consistent across channels, your brand appears more organized, focused, and in tune with the needs of your customers. Reduced marketing costs – it’s expensive to adjust marketing campaigns, but when your marketing is integrated, there’s no need to make changes for consistency. In a world where countless small businesses compete for attention, a strong and consistent identity is crucial. As a small business owner, you need to jump on integrated marketing for your business’s success. 2. Social Media Selling Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok are home to millions of active users per month and growing. Social media selling, also known as social commerce, is an excellent way for small businesses to reach their target audiences and generate more sales. It can be an extremely effective tool in your small business’s sales arsenal if done correctly. Instagram is home to over 200 million business accounts, and it’s no surprise. More and more businesses are using social media channels to connect with prospects and leads, develop relationships with them, and engage for conversions and sales. And why? Because social commerce is effective. There are a few things that you need to keep in mind when using social media selling: Ensure that your social media pages are set up for success and that you’re targeting the right audience. Be aware of the different ways to engage with potential customers on each social platform your business has a presence on. Keep an eye on updates. Instagram changes pretty frequently, and there are features your small business shouldn’t ignore that will help you sell your brand and/or products. Make sure you advertise. Whether it’s on Instagram or Facebook, getting your brand out there with target social media ads is crucial. Be prepared to listen to your audience and answer questions that prospects and customers may have about your products or services throughout the sales process. People love going to social to reach brands directly, so don’t neglect that channel for supportive interactions. 3. Personalized AI Tools Personalized AI tools are becoming more popular in small businesses. These tools deliver optimal customer experiences in real time, targeting the individual’s needs instead of grouping your audience into broad categories. AI-powered personalization is driven by the increasing availability of data and the need for businesses to better understand their customers for improved customer-business relationships and client satisfaction. Small businesses can implement personalization using AI in their business in different ways. One is the use of chatbots. Chatbots simulate human conversations, and they can improve customer support and experience by providing quick responses to common questions about your products or services. Data analytics is another aspect to capitalize on for your small business. Data analytics helps you understand your customers better so that you can make more informed decisions about your marketing and product development strategies. By better understanding your customers, you can improve your business’s chances of success. In email marketing, you can use personalized AI tools to deliver personalized content and product recommendations. This helps to keep customers engaged with your brand and increases the likelihood that they will make a purchase. BenchmarkONE’s marketing automation and CRM tool is powered by AI, so you can tap into how your customers interact with your website and content, where they are in the buyer’s journey, and their social profiles. These features enable you to tailor your outreach and add them to personalized drip campaigns that will convert them over time. If you haven’t already, use these tools for your small business and get your message to those interested in it. Get started today with BenchmarkONE’s free plan! 4. Hybrid and Remote Work Foundry’s Future of Work study found that 71% of companies will keep their remote and hybrid work policies permanently. The pandemic caused a significant shift to remote work, and now, many employees who want to maintain a good work-life balance are keen for remote/hybrid work to be the new status quo. With flexible working arrangements increasingly popular, companies want to retain talent. Many businesses are offering employees the option to work from home part-time (hybrid) or full-time. With this setup, you can provide employees and team members with the flexibility they need to maintain a healthy work-life balance and save on office space and costs. However, you’ll need to prepare to manage employees who are spread out across different locations. Ensure that all employees have access to the necessary resources and remote work tools, and put in a system to maintain communication and collaboration among team members. 5. Leveraging Digital Tools For small businesses, time is money. By adopting digital tools, small businesses can save time by automating tasks that would otherwise need to be done manually. To stay ahead of the curve, leveraging digital tools is necessary for your business’s success. You can use online appointment scheduling software to automatically schedule appointments and send reminders to customers. You can free up employees’ time to focus on other important business tasks. Digital tools can also help small businesses reduce business costs and save money. Online invoicing and payment software can help you save on paper and postage costs. Digital marketing channels are also less expensive than their traditional marketing counterparts. As mentioned above, the rise in remote and hybrid work needs the support of digital tools to become successful. With the right digital tools, employees and team members can work remotely without issue. This ensures that operations can continue, and employees can access all business resources without needing to be physically at the office. Plus, you can automate business processes and have centralized storage that you and your employees can remotely access from any location. 6. Outsourcing Business Tasks In the past, businesses would have to hire somebody full-time to handle specific business tasks. With the rise of the gig economy, businesses can outsource some tasks by hiring somebody on a per-project basis. This is a great way to save money and get expert help for your small business when you need it. With outsourcing, your business can leverage the expertise and skills of professionals for important tasks, allowing you to focus on your core competencies and leave the non-essential tasks to those who are better equipped to handle them. When you outsource tasks, you cut costs and save money, improve the efficiency of your workforce, and free up time for important tasks that will enhance your small business’s bottom line while getting the right help your business needs. However, when outsourcing, choosing a reputable and reliable service provider is vital. Otherwise, you may end up with subpar results that may cost your small business more. As a small business owner, prepare yourself and your business for whatever changes come your way so you can thrive in 2023. Keep an eye out for these small business trends and be prepared to take advantage of them to help your business succeed.
What is Upselling and How Marketing Automation Can Help You Use It Posted on December 28, 2022December 22, 2022 by Tegan Arnold If you’ve ever shopped on Amazon, noticed a suggestion for a more expensive version of a product in your cart, and then replaced your cart item with the more expensive version, congratulations. You’ve been upsold. Businesses in every industry include upselling in their marketing strategy. Ever been asked if you want to make your burger a deluxe? Or noticed that for just a small amount more, you can add a few more features to that software you’re purchasing? All of these things are examples of upselling, and all of them work. Quite well, in fact. But let’s take a closer look at upselling and how you can put it into practice. What Is Upselling? Upselling is a powerful and effective marketing technique through which you target a customer who is already prepared to buy from you and then offer a more advanced product, service, feature, or upgrade. When it’s done right, upselling can dramatically improve your bottom line by increasing the size and profitability of each sale. In a nutshell: the goal of upselling should be to increase the order value for the seller and create more value for the buyer. When putting this into practice, it’s important to strike the right balance so that customers don’t feel pressured into spending more than they’re comfortable with. If they do, they could lose trust in your brand, and you’ll ruin any chance of them being a future customer. What Is The Difference Between Upselling And Cross-Selling? People often use the terms “upselling” and “cross-selling” interchangeably, but there is a big difference between the two. Upselling focuses on convincing a customer to buy a more expensive version of the product they were originally interested in. For example, convincing a customer to purchase a deluxe version of a product instead of the basic version. Cross-selling, on the other hand, focuses on convincing a customer to buy related products in addition to the product they were originally interested in. For example, convincing a customer buying a dress to also buy shoes and a purse to match. Some businesses use bundling as a cross-selling strategy. This involves selling two or more products together at a discounted price. For example, many cell phone companies encourage customers to buy phones and plans together by offering discounts on both items. Or, when buying a new computer, you might be offered a special deal on a printer to go with it. Both cross-selling and upselling are effective selling techniques that can help boost your sales, and you can use both in your sales process. Why Should Upselling Be A Part Of Your Strategy? When it comes to driving sales and increasing revenue, upselling is a key strategy that you should be employing. Here are a few reasons why: Upselling allows you to make more money from each customer that you serve. And since it costs far less to sell to an existing customer than to acquire a new one, this is a great way to increase your business revenue. It increases your average order value (AOV). By offering customers additional products or services, you can increase the amount they spend per transaction. This can be especially beneficial during slow periods when you need to make up for lost sales. It helps to build customer trust, loyalty, and retention. When customers see that you’re interested in assisting them to get the most out of their purchase, they’re more likely to stick with you in the future. This often leads to repeat business and higher customer satisfaction rates. It increases the chance of getting referrals and word-of-mouth marketing. By offering customers additional services and add-ons that complement their original purchase, you’re providing them with value they’ll appreciate. Customers who are happy with their purchase will likely tell others about your business. Best Practices For Upselling Now that you know what upselling is, the next step is figuring out how to apply this concept to your own business. The beauty of upselling is that it’s not industry-specific, so regardless of what product or service you sell, certain universal strategies apply. Here are a few such strategies to keep in mind. 1. Know Your Customers In-depth knowledge of your clientele is critical to the success of any upselling initiative. To get people to bite, you need to really understand their wants, needs, preferences, and pain points. Think about a waitperson at a local high-end restaurant. He might take note of the wine preferences of his regular customers so that the next time they come in, he can suggest they try a bottle of a new (more expensive) brand. Not only does this boost profits, but it also creates a more personalized experience for the customer. 2. Be Strategic You may think that the more upsells you offer your customers, the better the outcome, but that’s not necessarily the case. In fact, too many offers can end up confusing and even possibly drive away your customers. When developing upsell ideas, focus on providing a solution without creating more questions. For instance, don’t offer many different options when providing upsell and cross-sell recommendations. Stick with a few well-targeted ones. This will increase the likelihood of a successful sale. 3. Stick to the “Rule of 25” Research indicates that for upselling to be successful, the additional products/services/features should never be more than 25% of the original order. In other words, if you’re selling cars and a customer comes in to purchase a Hyundai, trying to upsell to a Lamborghini probably wouldn’t be very effective. Instead, you should only try to sell a vehicle that costs 25% more than the Hyundai. Likewise, if you are cross-selling, you shouldn’t try to sell anything additional that costs more than 25% of the original order amount. 4. Be Customer-Centric Getting caught up in trying to sell the most expensive option as an upsell can be easy, but this is not always what the customer wants. By taking the time to understand their needs, you can offer them a tailored solution that they are more likely to be happy with in the long run. And if they say no, let it go. Do not be so focused on the upsell that you become pushy. In the end, it’s more important that your customer leaves happy than you end up with a better sale. 5. Get Creative If you can find new and innovative ways to sell your products or services, you’ll be much more successful than if you’re just going through the motions. Create a unique angle that will capture your customer’s attention. This tip can go hand-in-hand with a personalized marketing approach. When you approach a sale with the willingness to make it a unique process that is more catered to the individual’s needs, then it will be remembered positively. Your customer will remember how you listened to what they wanted and offered them a solution, especially if you didn’t take a straight path to get there. 6. Be Transparent No one wants to be tricked into spending more money, and when salespeople neglect to share all the information, that’s how the customer will feel. Instead, be clear about what you’re offering and the benefits; don’t over-promise when you know your products will underdeliver. Don’t try to hide any costs or add on extra fees at the last minute. If the customer feels they can trust you and that you’re being as transparent as possible, they’ll be more likely to say yes to your upsell. How Marketing Automation Helps You Facilitate Effective Upselling Opportunities With marketing automation, you’re able to track how your customers interact with your website and your content so you can better understand their needs and identify and take advantage of upselling opportunities. This sounds like a 24/7 job; however, by automating tasks like sending follow-up emails and pairing that with contact segmentation, you’re able to send your customers tailored messages and offers, all while you’re busy getting other things done. Pairing your marketing automation with a CRM means you can store all this crucial customer data and use it to know more about them. By examining this data, you can automatically provide targeted offers that align with your customer’s needs, improving the customer experience. These targeted offers can include upsells or product recommendations that are at a higher price point and drive more sales, all while providing more value to your customers. With marketing automation features, like segmentation and personalization, you can ensure each upsell is relevant, so your customers are more satisfied. Upselling, when done correctly, can help strengthen relationships with your customers while boosting profits simultaneously. It’s a win-win. By using marketing automation software, like BenchmarkONE, you can craft automated email campaigns focused on upselling and give your business the best chance of securing more lucrative business with your existing customers. Sign up for a free plan here!
6 Tips to Get Your Small Business Through a Recession Posted on December 22, 2022December 14, 2022 by Jonathan Herrick Did you know that the nearly 100,000 small businesses that shut down temporarily during 2020’s economic slump caused by the pandemic are now out of business? It’s a scary statistic to hear, but the reality is there are things your small business can do to avoid being another statistic. We’re here to help with tips about how you can be proactive to keep your small business afloat. While Bloomberg predicts that there is a 72% probability of a recession, there won’t be a sudden halt to the global economy. However, we may experience an economic downturn or slowdown, and it’s worth thinking about how you could be impacted. How can your small business thrive during it and beyond? Below are actionable tips you can implement to keep your small business together and even see some great wins in 2024. 1. Conduct a Cash-Flow Analysis Knowing how money comes in and goes out of your business allows you to identify needless expenses that can be eliminated and focus instead on revenue-generating activities. You can: Scan your budget for unnecessary spending. Are there products and services your small business will do fine without? If you use software or services that require subscription packages, review to see the ones you can consolidate to serve the same purpose or alternatives that don’t cost as much. Look for opportunities to renegotiate prices and terms of some of the services you use as part of business operations. 2. Focus on Building and Nurturing Customer Relationships A strong relationship with your customers can foster brand connection and loyalty, which boosts customer retention and increases the possibility of repeat purchases. Hence, you should focus on building and nurturing relationships with your customers and providing excellent customer support. In a PWC study, 73% of consumers say that customer experience is an important factor in choosing businesses to purchase from, yet only 49% of consumers in the U.S. agreed to have had good customer experiences with businesses. Give your business an edge by prioritizing your customers, making them feel seen and heard, and looking to help them solve their problems with your products and services. A great tool to help with this is your small business CRM. It helps you recall previous experiences with clients and access as much information about them as possible, including how they’ve previously interacted with your team and content. With all that data, you can draw insights and make informed decisions about possible ways to give tailored care that will improve your customer relationships, build trust, and encourage future business. 3. Save and Explore Multiple Financial Options One of the ways to thrive when there’s an economic downturn is to be proactive rather than reactive. If you have not started saving yet, begin to do so now. Inculcate the habit of setting aside a certain percentage of your income in a savings or separate account. Your savings may come in handy during an economic downturn. Also, consider applying for low-risk loans and grants ahead of time. It’s easier to look for other ways of financing your business now that there is stability rather than waiting until you feel threatened by a recession. Work on getting a loan approval or business grants that may serve as reinforcements for your business. Websites like The Small Business Administration (SBA) and Grant.gov are committed to helping small businesses overcome challenges. This includes sourcing for loans, active grant programs, and grant eligibility. 4. Invest in Marketing While the ultimate goal of marketing is sales, it also helps you understand your target audience better, gives you better business reach and visibility, and maintains brand trust, which keeps your customers interested in your products and services. Some businesses will be cutting down marketing budgets to stay lean. This means fewer players in the advertising space, which may translate to lower ads cost and less competition. Take advantage of the lack of stiff competition to drive benefits for your own business. Take time to study optimal marketing channels that drive the best results for your business. For example, email marketing remains the most effective marketing channel for small businesses. It provides an impressive ROI, and owning your email list means you have more liberties when it comes to utilizing it. 5. Focus on the Most Profitable Part of Your Business You may have brilliant ideas about new products whilst also desiring to keep older products on the shelf, but you cannot afford to keep pumping resources into products/services that do not bring in revenue for your business. Assess your products and services, and identify the ones that are thriving and the ones that are barely surviving. Are there ways to improve the non-performing ones and improve sales? If yes, spring into action. If not, do not feel guilty about letting them go. You can trim your budget and product expenditure and keep expenses lean by focusing on products/services that are thriving in the market. 6. Use Marketing Automation One of the game-changing factors for businesses to thrive during an economic downturn is to focus on growth and think long-term, not just on cutting down on business expenses and focusing on short-term struggles. If you can balance both as a small business owner, that is a big win, and that is what marketing automation can do for you. With the right marketing tool, you can take advantage of marketing automation to automate repetitive tasks without spending extra effort and resources. You can increase efficiency, increase conversion rates, keep track of your clientele, and get accurate reports for your activities. Implementing marketing automation helps you save costs while improving your business’s workflow. Having saved the extra work from doing the same tasks repetitively, you can begin to look at other aspects of your business and devote time to other areas for the success of your small business long term. Tap into the power of marketing automation without spending a dime. Request a free BenchmarkONE account today! Harvard Business Review’s study of U.S. public companies with greater than $50 million in annual sales across the last four economic downturns saw that 14% of these companies reported accelerated growth and profitability. The deciding factors – acting early, planning, and being prepared. You can get proactive; position your business for success, and the economic downturn won’t spell the end for your small business.
Retargeting Ads: Why and How You Should Be Doing it (and Tools to Help) Posted on December 21, 2022December 21, 2022 by Jessica Lunk If you’ve ever cruised a retail site, without buying anything, then seen the items you were looking at everywhere over the following days, you’ve been on the customer side of a retargeting advertising strategy. Retargeting ads do exactly what they sound like: they target prospects a second time. It can feel like you’re having your mind read, but there’s actually a clear technological process to retargeting. How Does Retargeting Work? Using website cookies, companies are able to (anonymously) track visitors to their website, and then follow their movement around the internet, which enables them to target very specific ads to prospective customers, wherever they go. So if you were looking at a pair of Birkenstocks on a retail site, then decided you didn’t want to make the purchase, you might find ads for those exact shoes, from that exact retailer, in the margins of the online magazine you’re reading or on your social media platforms. Image credit: retargeter.com And if you’ve ever bought something based on what you now know was a retargeting ad — so many of us have — you’ll understand how effective this kind of advertising strategy is! With first-time website visitors generally maxing out at a 3% conversion rate, retargeting provides businesses with a way to increase brand awareness and recapture a potential customer’s lost attention. Retargeting vs. Remarketing Retargeting and remarketing are often confused, no doubt because they sound similar and mean similar things — but they don’t exactly mean the same thing. Retargeting is an advertising strategy that refers to showing ads to previous website visitors while remarketing is the act of collecting contact information from prospective customers in order to send them outbound marketing campaigns. When You Should Retarget Your Ads Retargeting is considered a long-term strategy, meaning it’s most valuable for established brands whose websites get at least 100 unique visitors a month. If that’s you, here are some situations that are ripe for retargeting: Increasing brand awareness. The more a prospect sees your brand, and especially the items or services they were initially interested in, the stronger your presence will be in their mind. Boosting already-high sales. Popularity and bestsellers are part of a virtuous cycle, and retargeting (especially when using power words to excite FOMO) can help remind prospective customers to jump on something before it’s gone. Spotlighting slowly-selling products. If you have inventory that’s not moving quickly on its own, retargeting can be a great way to bolster those sales. Introducing new products or collaborations. Like brand awareness, this is about getting your new inventory out there and improving word-of-mouth sales. Retargeting vs. Prospecting When it comes to digital marketing, there are two key strategies that businesses use to reach their target audiences: retargeting and prospecting. These terms mean different things entirely and shouldn’t be confused as one. Retargeting allows businesses to show ads to users who have already visited their website or interacted with their brand in some way. This is done by placing a piece of code, called a pixel, on your website that tracks users’ behavior. Once you have this data, you can then create ad campaigns designed to get them to return to your site and convert. Prospecting, on the other hand, allows businesses to target new potential customers who have never interacted with their brand. This targets people based on demographics, interests, and behaviors. Prospecting can be an incredibly effective way to reach new customers and grow your business. How Does Retargeting Fit into Your Marketing Strategy? Picture this scenario. You see an item you want, whether it’s a new pair of shoes or a piece of furniture, and you talk yourself out of it. “I don’t need that. I have enough shoes/furniture already.” Then, a few days later, you start seeing ads for that same item everywhere you go online. It follows you around like a lost puppy, and before you know it, you’ve clicked on the ad and made the purchase. That, my friends, is the power of retargeting ads. This scenario isn’t far-fetched because about 70% of your audience who view your retargeted ads convert. Here’s how retargeting can fit into your marketing strategy: Use retargeting to reach people who have already shown an interest in your product or service. The more times someone sees your ad, the more likely they will remember your brand when they’re ready to purchase. Use other marketing channels to generate interest in your product or service, and use retargeting to drive conversions from that interested audience. Use retargeting to keep your brand top-of-mind with people who may not be ready to convert immediately. Use retargeting to create custom audiences for more targeted campaigns. Use retargeting to test different messages and call-to-actions to see what works best with your audience. How Much of a Budget Should You Allocate to Retargeting? When retargeting ads, there is no one-size-fits-all answer for how much of your budget you should allocate. The amount you spend will depend on several factors, including the size of your target audience, the platforms you are using to reach them, and the objectives of your campaign. That said, a good rule of thumb, according to AdTriba, is to allocate around 20% of your overall ad budget to retargeting and 80% to prospecting. This will give you enough resources to test different strategies and tactics and see what works best for your business. You can then adjust your marketing budget accordingly when you have more resources at your disposal. Ultimately, the key is experimenting and finding what works best for you. There is no magic number when it comes to retargeting ads, so don’t be afraid to experiment until you find the right mix for your business. Retargeting Best Practices Here are some best practices to keep in mind when creating your retargeting campaigns: 1. Keep Your Messages Relevant Ensure the ads you serve to your retargeting audience are relevant to their interests and previous interactions with your brand. Irrelevant ads are more likely to be ignored and can even damage your brand reputation. 2. Use Dynamic Creative Dynamic creative is a tool that allows you to serve different versions of an ad to different people based on factors like their past behavior or demographics. This helps ensure that your ads are as targeted and relevant as possible, increasing the chances that they’ll be noticed and acted upon. 3. Consider Frequency You don’t want to bombard your audience with too many ads, but you also don’t want them to forget about your brand altogether. Strike a balance by keeping your ad frequency at a level that’s neither too high nor too low. 4. Create Eye-Catching Ad Designs Make sure your ads are well-designed and eye-catching. You want them to stand out from the rest of the online noise. Use strong visuals to grab people’s attention and make them want to learn more about what you’re offering. 5. Test As with any marketing campaign, it’s important to test different aspects of your retargeting approach to see what works best for your business. Try different messaging, creatives, targeting criteria, and frequency levels to find what performs best with your audience. When You Should Retarget Your Ads Retargeting is considered a long-term strategy, meaning it’s most valuable for established brands whose websites get at least 100 unique visitors a month. If that’s you, here are some situations that are ripe for retargeting: Increasing brand awareness. The more a prospect sees your brand, and especially the items or services they were initially interested in, the stronger your presence will be in their mind. Boosting already-high sales. Popularity and bestsellers are part of a virtuous cycle, and retargeting (especially when using power words to excite FOMO) can help remind prospective customers to jump on something before it’s gone. Spotlighting slowly-selling products. If you have inventory that’s not moving quickly on its own, retargeting can be a great way to bolster those sales. Introducing new products or collaborations. Like brand awareness, this is about getting your new inventory out there and improving word-of-mouth sales. Retargeting Tools We Love Once you’ve decided to retarget your ads, it’s worth investing in a tool to help you get the most out of your strategy. Here are some of our favorites: AdRoll AdRoll is the #1 retargeting tool on the market, with over a decade of experience and many thousands of users. With extensive functionality and tons of great metrics for tracking your success, AdRoll is an excellent tool for large-scale projects. It can take a bit of time to learn, but AdRoll provides plenty of educational content to get you over the curve. Image Source: AdRoll Meteora Meteora uses geofencing for retargeting ads — this is the process of targeting ads based on a user’s geographical location, using data like cellphone GPS or Wi-Fi. This makes Meteora a great choice for small businesses looking to target local prospects, or any business looking to target a location-based demographic. Image Source: Meteora LinkedIn With 675 million users each month, LinkedIn has become one of the largest, most widely-used social networks in the world, and their retargeting tool is perfect for businesses whose customer base is other businesses (B2B) or professionals. Plus, it’s a pay-per-click (PPC) model, which means you’ll only pay if your retargeting ads are successful. Criteo Another popular PPC retargeting tool is Criteo, which promises to deliver users around 13x ROI via its machine learning-enabled content. From static images to video ads, Criteo’s software uses your customer data to craft personalized advertisements that are optimized to retarget each individual prospect. Image Source: Criteo Google AdWords Another extremely popular ad retargeting tool is the one built into Google Ads, which enables businesses to target users of any Google platform, including, of course, the search engine but also YouTube, Chrome, and Android phones. This is especially convenient if you’re already a Google AdWords user for other marketing or SEO strategies. Image Source: Search Engine Watch Facebook Facebook is the third most visited website on the Internet, so the advertising potential on their site is astronomical. Like Google’s built-in retargeting tool, Facebook Advertising has a tool called Custom Audiences, which enables you to retarget any Facebook user who’s interacted with your business — both on your Facebook page and outside the platform, on any website where you’ve added the required pixel. Image Source: Facebook SharpSpring SharpSpring Ads (formerly Perfect Audience) is our absolute favorite retargeting tool, which is evidenced by the fact that we use their services for our own business (full disclosure). But we recommend SharpSpring because we love them, not because they’ve asked us to (they haven’t). The best thing about SharpSpring’s retargeting tool is the width of its reach: not only do they place ads across the wider Internet, in banners and sidebars, but they also cover social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, to extend your audience. Image Source: SharpSpring SmarterHQ Another smart tool, SmarterHQ, uses advanced behavior analysis to help you get the most out of your retargeted ads. By analyzing the way that users engage with your ads, the platform provides you with tools to engage across multiple platforms to make sure that they see your ads at exactly the right time to land the conversion. Image courtesy of SmarterHQ Of course, we can’t cover every possible tool out there — so if you’re looking for something super-specific, check out software review sites like G2Crowd or Capterra to see what other people are using and find the perfect solution to fill those gaps. Retargeting Campaign Examples Here are some examples of retargeting campaigns that some businesses have used successfully: 1. Spotify Spotify uses retargeting ads to encourage freemium users to upgrade to the pro packages. Customers will likely take this offer because the introductory price to the premium packages comes with a discount. 2. Expedia Expedia uses retargeting ads to target users who had visited the site but did not book a trip, specifically targeting those who had searched for flights but did not book them. The ads offer discounts on airfare and hotel rates, which significantly increased bookings for the company. 3. Wayfair Another excellent example of a retargeting campaign is from online home goods retailer Wayfair. In this case, the company retargets shoppers who visit their website but do not purchase, specifically serving ads for products they viewed but did not buy. The results were impressive, with increased sales and revenue per visitor. Using retargeting ads is a highly effective way to increase conversions and sales. By targeting the people who have already visited your site or shown interest in your product, you can dramatically improve your chances of getting them to take the next step and make the decision to buy something from you.