Category: Sales & Marketing

Article Contributed by Kay Ackerman

Your carefully crafted marketing email won’t even have a chance to impact your mailing list unless it includes a well-crafted subject line. People are inundated with emails, and, even if they subscribed to your mailing list, they may not be interested in hearing much of what you have to say. The subject line is your one chance to convince people that it’s worth their time to open your email. Consider the following guidelines for the perfect subject line as you craft yours.

1) Make it clear and relevant: Generic and confusing subject lines don’t attract readers. Take a hard look at your email and craft a subject that clearly encompasses what’s in the email. Don’t leave your readers guessing what the email is about, because they’ll see it as junk. Don’t make readers guess who it’s from, either. The from portion of the subject line should contain a consistent brand identifier. Develop a consistent set of tags and choose one to enclose in brackets at the beginning of the subject line to indicate what type of email it is.

2) Include a call to action: People are responsive when you give them something to do. Come up with an actionable step and frame it in the subject line. This gives the person something tangible to respond to, in addition to a better awareness of what content they’ll find inside. Include a relevant deadline to put some urgency behind the action and increase the chance of having your email opened now rather than a week later.

3) Make it local: If location matters to your business, use relevant information about the user’s location in the subject line. For example, you may be opening a new store in Chicago, so send an email marketing campaign to subscribers, noting that it pertains specifically to the Windy City. This helps people see at a glance that the email is relevant to them.

4) Keep it short and sweet: Your subject line should never contain more than 50 characters. If it does, the last portion will be cut off, both on computers and mobile devices. In fact, data compiled by MailChimp suggests that the most successful subject lines contain between 28 and 39 characters. Make every word count, and cut anything that’s not adding to the message.

5) Be descriptive, not sales-focused: Although it sounds counterintuitive, you don’t want a sales-oriented subject, even when people know you’re trying to sell something. Rather than selling what’s in the email, just tell what’s in the email and leave it up to the reader to make the decision to buy what you’re offering. This makes your subject line clear without being pushy.

Within these general principles, keep in mind that every audience is different. People on your mailing list may respond better to some subject lines than others, so manage your email marketing campaigns to identify the most successful subject lines in terms of open rates and click-through rates. As you gather data about your mailing list, you’ll be able to fine-tune your approach to reach your audience with relevant, interesting subject lines.

Article Contributed by Randal Whitmore

Trade show season is underway which means you and your competitors will be journeying nationwide to impress attendees with your company’s offerings to drum up some new business, raise brand awareness, and put faces to your company’s image.

Alongside the representatives of your business, print plays a vital role in displaying your company brand at a trade show and increasing the likelihood of a response from attendees once the show has ended.

You could have the best salespeople in the world promoting your company but in a situation such as this where other businesses are adding to the advertising noise you need to make an impression that stands out and captures the attention of your target attendees.

So you’ve decided to be an exhibitor…

… and by now you might have a space booked at a business convention of some kind and you’ve identified which employees will be attending to represent your business in the best light possible. The next step is to organise your printing, which is why we’ve provided three printed must-haves required by trade exhibitors to help make a great first impression with potential new clients and increase the likelihood of an aftershow response.

1. Exhibition Stand

When exhibiting at a trade show you’re usually provided with a space that includes 2-3 walls made of chipboard coated in felt so that you can hang photos, banners, or some other kind of advertising material. If you’re on a tight advertising budget then this might be your preferred option.

On the other hand, if you’re looking to make an impressive appearance then having a custom printed exhibition stand will allow you to completely personalise that space with your branding.

As you can see in the image above there is a collapsable lectern, which can act as a good addition to your stand if you intend on running a mini-seminar within your booth to promote the products or services you offer.

Tip: provide seating and allocate seminar time slots to make your seminars appear more official. Try providing information of value that your visitors can use when they leave the show rather than using it as a hard sell opportunity. Not only will it capture your visitors’ attention but it will also show that your company is an expert in its field.

Collapsable exhibition stands come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes so before having one printed you should ensure that:

• the exhibition stand fits within the dimensions of the exhibitor space you have booked (some event organisers dislike exhibitors whose displays spill over the perimeter of their allocated space);
• it is easy to construct (there is nothing worse than toiling over an exhibition stand before a show. Purchasing an easy-to-construct stand will help with keeping you calm);
• the stand allows space for other advertising materials, such as a pop-up banner, and for visitors to move around within (you want to invite attendees into your exhibition space, away from the distracting traffic that flows in between the stands).

2. Pop-up Banners

A pop-up banner is a must-have piece of advertising material for trade show exhibitors that can break down your company’s products or services in bite-size chunks of information. A pop-up banner should a) attract the attention of passers-by of your stand, and b) match or compliment your company’s brand identity in message and visuals.

If you can’t afford a custom exhibition stand then the pop-up banner is a much cheaper printed alternative that will customise the space you’ve booked. It can, however, be used in addition to an exhibition stand if your budget permits one e.g. your custom stand would display your company’s brand name, logo, colours and graphics with a pop-up banner nearby displaying the products and services you offer.

Most pop-up banners come in two parts (the banner and the stand) and are very easy to construct. The main difference between providers is the quality of print, therefore, you will want to choose a professional printer that produces the highest quality possible to aid your design in creating a great impression with trade show attendees.

3. Professionally Printed Flyers

It is always a better idea to have your flyers printed by a professional flyer printing company because the quality will be much higher than what you can produce in-house, plus you can choose from a range of finishes, customised cutting options, and other personal touches that can be produced on a large scale. It is also a much lower cost to outsource this kind of promotional activity.

Once your employees have spoken to, and hopefully impressed, a potential new or existing client it is a great idea to hand that visitor a flyer that displays your company brand, products, services, and contact details. This will give them something to take away that will remind them of the experience they had at your stand when sorting through the materials they have picked up from the show.

To increase the likelihood of a response from your flyer you should include a hook of some kind e.g. a trade show exclusive offer. Providing an exclusive voucher code will allow you to measure the ROI of your trade show exhibition activity and give the client an additional reason to re-visit your company (the first being the experience that your representatives provided).

Enjoy the Trade Show

Exhibiting at a trade show is a rare opportunity for your company to be displayed face-to-face in front of your target market so the first impression you will want to make with potential clients is a good one.

By organising these 3 trade show exhibitor products you can be sure that your company brand will be displayed to attendees in a positive way that makes you look professional and stand out from your competitors who may not take advantage of such an opportunity in the same way.

About the author:

This article about impressive trade show print was written by Randal Whitmore who regularly contributes articles related to graphic design and business to Solopress – a high quality printing company based in the UK.

Every prospect wants to know why they should buy from you. They want to know the outcome they will experience before they want to know how you will create those outcomes. Let’s start with four basic facts …

1.    Every prospect has a problem. This problem creates some negative emotions.

2.    Every product has features: Features are merely objective facts about a product (or the company behind it). In three-dimensional products, features include size, shape, weight, construction, color options and more. You need to be able to tell your prospect the feature of your product or service that will solve the problem. In information products, features include number of pages, size, frequency of publication (for periodicals) and the types of information that are presented.

3.    Fortunately, most features are there for a darned good reason: Prospects don’t want features. They want you to change their lives for the better. Product features are merely the means to that end. That means features can have a place in ad copy – like telling prospects how many issues they’ll get per year … how many big pages are in your book … or that your widget is made from carbon steel for strength or carbon fiber for lightness.

Beyond that, features are a yawn because they’re about the product; not about the prospect. Or, as in the examples above, they can help demonstrate how your product delivers a benefit. The good news is, just about every product fact – every feature – is there to provide a benefit that your prospect IS willing to pay for. Tell your prospect in no uncertain terms the benefits of a particular feature. But we do not want to stop there.

4.    Each benefit has a positive emotional outcome for the buyer. Many time there are more benefits associated with each product feature than are obvious to the average buyer. Each benefit or combination of benefits producing one, two, three or more new benefits you never thought about before. The secret to selling and marketing and most any other revenue generating activity is to identify each and every benefit a product provides – and the emotional outcome your buyer will experience.

5.    Your prospect is buying emotionally first, then they intellectualize & justify the purchase. Connecting the feature, benefits and outcomes makes it very easy for the buying to understand why you are the right and safe choice.

Outcome that sing and soar – in five simple steps

Here’s a little exercise to help you drill down to the outcomes prospects are willing to pay for and then connect those benefits with powerful response-boosting emotions that your prospect already has about those benefits (or the lack of them) in his life.

By the time you’re through, you will have a complete list of company and product features … you will have squeezed every possible benefit out of those features … you will have fully defined the outcomes of those benefits and you will have connected each one to a powerful emotion your prospect has about each one of them.

In short, you’ll have a comprehensive “features/benefits/emotional outcome” inventory you can refer to as you create your marketing message, write your copy, build your sales presentation or create contents for your website.

Going through this exercise can go a long way towards finding new themes and adding power to your sales and marketing.

To begin, create a spreadsheet with these headings:

• Problem
• Negative Emotional Outcomes of Problem
• Feature that Solves the Problem
• Tangible Benefits of that Feature
• Positive Emotional Outcome Prospect with Experience
• Rank

Write until all know problems are identified and documented. Document how they feel when they experience this problem. Next write the feature of your product or service that solves the problem and document the benefit of that feature. Finally, describe the positive emotional outcome the buyer will experience.

When complete, rank them in order of importance.

He is an example of what your table should look like.

Problem: Sales have plateaued

Emotional Impact of Problem: So frustrated because no matter what I do, I just can’t figure out how to take the sales to the next level. And I’m always the one having to do the sales

Feature: Learn how to build a sales and marketing system

Benefit of Feature: You can stop being the only “sales guy” and start leveraging your marketing and sales processes so that customers come to you to purchase, instead of you chasing them. You will grow sales!

Emotional Outcome: You’ll feel a great sense of relief … no more anxiety about “where is the next sale going to come from?” and you won’t have to be chasing prospective customers all the time … prospects who are hiding from you.

When you complete this process you will have all the material you need to write a great sales letter, create compelling web copy, and build a powerful sales presentation and some much more.

This process is where increase profits and grow sales begins. You need to understand your prospects better than they understand themselves. When completed, you can tell them exactly what they can expect when they work with you.