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ariel lim consulting

Month: July 2018

3 Examples of Lead Nurturing Campaigns: An In-Depth Analysis

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3 Lead Nurturing Examples from Philippine Companies

Great lead nurturing campaigns are what separates effective marketers apart from the mediocre ones.

In this article, I’ll be sharing some email marketing examples from local international brands. I’ll include some background about the email, explain what’s good about it and some areas for improvement.

Just to be clear, I’m sharing only about lead nurturing emails.

These emails are sent after a certain trigger or condition is met. I won’t include newsletters or one-time sends. If you’re not familiar with the distinction, read the 12 different types of marketing emails you should be sending.

Microsoft Office: Welcome Email Series to Office 365

Background about the email

I recently started using to Office 365 — the subscription-based model of Microsoft Office’s suite.

Part of my work includes analysis and reporting. I wanted to know if MS Excel is the right spreadsheet tool for me.

They offered a 30-day trial. Yey!

Microsoft Office 365 Welcome Email Series 1 of 2

So, after filling out the necessary forms and entering my credit card details, I receive this email from them.

Then, I received this email after a couple of days.

Microsoft Office 365 Welcome Email Series 2 of 2

I won’t include the entire email series here. Rather, I only wanted to highlight that upon subscription — the trigger — a welcome email is sent. Then, another email is sent after a few days. This corresponds directly to the 7-step process in the lead nurturing campaign article.

Email 1 from Microsoft Office

What I love about this campaign

There are two things I love about this email.

First, it tells you exactly what you need to know to completely use MS Office. They highlighted that my trial ends on a certain date.

Microsoft Office 365 Email 1 – Free trial

While they didn’t include that I can cancel my trial anytime, Microsoft hinted that I can do so in the billing section of my account. They even provided direct link to it. This is very important because it shows that they are confident in their product.

They are giving me quick access should I decide to cancel. They are not hiding this section in some corner of their website.

Makes you start to wonder where the unsubscribe/cancel links are in that email, huh?

Also, this email was sent last April. So, if I’m viewing it now in May, that means my subscription might have already started. By including that piece of information in the email itself, they are making it easy for me.

If you are not sharing these types of information easily with your customers, it only shows how much you don’t care about their experience. The message you’re sending is that you want to make it harder for them to do business with you.

Microsoft Office 365 Email 1 – Steps

Next, they gave a top-level overview of how to use Office 365 fully by sharing a 3-step process. This is very important. Remember, I just subscribed. Meaning, I’m a new user.

The marketer behind this email series didn’t assume that I know what to do next after subscribing. Also, unless you’re not familiar with how software selling goes right now (especially SaaS), everything is done via the internet.

What that means is you pay AND download the software over the internet. No need for CD-ROMs or USBs.

As a side note, that’s also the reason why I opted to buy the new MacBook as an upgrade from my MacBook Air. Despite having only a USB-C port, I really don’t need to connect anything to it apart from power.

SUGGESTED READING: 5 Examples of Ineffective Email Marketing

One of Microsoft’s strategies is a unified platform across all devices — Universal Windows Platform. With that in mind, they subtly shared that by downloading the desktop apps and mobile apps, it will all just be connected with each other.

Microsoft Office 365 Email 1 – Share Subscription

Lastly, the package I chose allows me to share it with 4 other people. So, they also highlighted this in the email and gave me a link that leads me directly to share it.

Again, this only shows that Microsoft believes in its product so much that they actually tell you what you can do — in this case share the software with 4 other people — so I will have more reasons to actually continue with the subscription.

Areas for improvement

The only thing i see that is worth improving here is the image used.

There is a Microsoft Philippines. Meaning, they are catering to the local market. But the images used are definitely not Filipinos.

Of course, there might be some limitations here as to what they can do. But given that they have a local presence here in the country, it’s better if they used Filipinos in their images.

Email 2 from Microsoft Office

What I love about this campaign

Email 2 is all about One Drive. Microsoft is telling me in this email that I have a whopping 1Tb of space included in my subscription.

Microsoft Office 365 Email 2 – One Drive

It’s great because, like the first email, the marketer didn’t assume that I know what OneDrive is.

In fact, it’s very new to me. I’ve been a Dropbox and Google Drive user since the early 2000’s. I actually haven’t used OneDrive yet since I already have my workflow setup using Dropbox and Google Drive. So, this is just good FYI for me.

Perhaps I can use it as extra storage later on when my accounts are full. The other great thing about this email is that they included a video (link) that will help you understand more about how OneDrive works. If you’re not familiar with the concept of cloud storage and syncing, viewing the video will help you understand this better.

Areas for improvement

Apart from the image like I mentioned in what to improve in email 1, I couldn’t find anything else to improve.

Power Mac Center: Service Email Update

Background about this email

I bought a new MacBook last December while I was traveling to the US. However, a few days after I came back to the Philippines, I noticed that whenever i pressed the letter “t” on my keyboard, it is making a double input.

So all words that has a letter “t” ended looking like tthis. Itt’s annoying!

I had my laptop checked. They took it in. The next day, I received this email as a confirmation that my laptop was with them.

Power Mac Center Service Update Email

What I love about this campaign

There were a couple of things that I liked in this email. First, it acknowledged that I recently went to them to have my laptop serviced.

Despite this email being automated, it shows the person who just parted with their device (me) that they have it and will do their best to exceed my expectations.

The other thing I liked about this is it was “timely.” This email was sent the day after i went to have my laptop serviced. While it may have been great to receive this email right away, there might be some operational nuances that could have prevented this.

On a separate note, I also received SMS updates about this service repair. First, they said it’s being diagnosed by a technician, and another with the results of the said diagnosis.

Power Mac Center SMS Updates

Areas for improvement

Of course, there are simple things Power Mac Center can do to further improve this email.

Unfortunately, it didn’t include the details of the actual service nor said anything about it. Apart from the service promise stated in the email, they could have included a summary of the issue I had.

As a little background, when you go to have your device fixed, they make you fill-up forms that includes all these information already. So, why not make use of them?

For example, they could have included the laptop, model, issue, etc. in the email body itself. This way, it’s an additional assurance that they really are working on my device.

For the contents of the email, modern business communication dictates that you forego communication like a robot.

Would you talk to another person in front of you using the words “Warm greetings”? I don’t think so.

Unless you’re Sheldon Cooper, you don’t talk (or write) like that. It makes you sound insincere. Also, I’m not a Mr./Ms.

It’s easier to either remove this or make sure you can toggle this properly in your email marketing software. You can use personalization variables to do this.

Next, I’m not a fan of using ALL CAPS — especially in subject lines, much more in an entire sentence. As I said before, using all caps letters is tantamount to shouting. This might not be the intention, but from the reader’s side, they look desperate — trying to hard to be noticed in the inbox.

Another area of improvement I can see here are the images (the photo and the social sharing icons). I tried different browsers and internet connections, but they don’t seem to load.

It’s best to double-check the images you’re using. Since this is an automated email, PowerMac might have overlooked this when they changed something that’s why the files aren’t loading.

SUGGESTED READING: 4 Common Email Marketing Malpractices

Airbnb: Email Reminder About Upcoming Trip

Background about this email

I recently went on an overnight trip to Tagaytay with my wife and some friends. We booked an Airbnb. This email was sent a few days before the actual stay.

AirBnb Reservation Reminder Email

What I love about this campaign

It’s a short email but has all the necessary information you need to know. It includes who to contact, how to contact them, and the things you need to know beforehand (house rules).

The email also includes how you can contact Airbnb — 24/7, anywhere in the world. For me, this email basically says Airbnb cares about it’s guests. They know their role — a platform that connects hosts from travelers.

Areas for improvement

The only thing I can see that is worth improving in this email is to include the address and directions to the place in the email itself. You can actually see this if you click on the “view full itinerary” button.

But it would have been great if everything is already listed in the email. That way, you don’t have to navigate elsewhere.

I wasn’t able to verify this, but it might have something to do with some security settings. I’m only one of the guests in this trip. I wasn’t the one who booked the trip itself. So, I may be seeing something different from the person who booked the trip itself.

So, what are you going to do next

These are 3 examples of great lead nurturing emails I recently came across with.

Again, i didn’t include one-time sends. I will tackle those in a separate post next time. Now that you have seen real-life examples of lead nurturing emails — what’s great about them and what you can improve — it’s time to do your own.

Read my post on how to create a simple lead nurturing email campaign and start delivering real value to your leads.

What Is Email Marketing Automation

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What is Email Marketing Automation

Email marketing automation is the use of email marketing to efficiently communicate with your prospects and customers after they meet certain criteria and/or performed some action.

As digital marketers today, we all have a lot of stuff on our plates. Aside from email marketing, we also handle social media, advertisement, content creation, maintaining the website, SEO and keyword research, and many more. With more and more technology creeping up each day, we are expected to learn and master all of them.

Sadly, marketing budgets and salaries don’t increase at the same rate as these demands. It’s as if our bosses want us to work 24/7 without extra pay.

How Organizations Use Email Marketing Automation Today

Organizations use email marketing automation are through:

  1. A thank you email
  2. A cart abandonment email.

The thank you email is sent after the person fills-up a form on a landing page on your website to download or register for something. It’s used to deliver your marketing offer and/or inform the person about the next steps. The best practice of this is to use it with a thank you page.

The cart abandonment email is sent after the person adds some items to the cart but does not continue with the checkout. As its name implies, it is an email that reminds a person that they have something in their cart.

From these two examples, you can see that email marketing automation saves you time by doing things that are repetitive and, looking from the grand scheme of things, low-value.

Other Uses of Email Marketing Automation

There is, however, a marketing tactic that a lot of organizations in the Philippines don’t take advantage of — and that is lead nurturing. Unfortunately, a lot of marketers think that email marketing is limited to newsletters.

To put it simply, lead nurturing is a series of email that are sent after a certain trigger/event with the end-goal of moving the lead to the next stage in the marketing and sales funnel.

There is a lot expected from digital marketers today. The only way to achieve tangible results — and increased workload — is to work smart. Automate some repetitive activities, but at the same time, bring in the results we need.

So, what are you going to do next

I’ve written about lead nurturing in the past and how you can start creating a simple lead nurturing email campaign.

I also analyzed how some Philippine companies are using lead nurturing. I highlighted the parts that are great and the areas for improvement.

If you’re not using lead nurturing emails, you’re already behind. Imagine the marketers who do. They now freed up some time and are now learning new skills and technologies.

Are you using email marketing automation in your organization? Let me know what you think in the comment section below.

5 Stages of Awareness You’re Probably Not Aware Of

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Creating content that your target audience will love reading is one of the prerequisites in modern digital marketing. People go through the 5 stages of awareness — and you’re probably not even aware of it!

The problem is, content creation doesn’t come naturally for most digital marketers.

Why?

Because most courses in college are teaching old school techniques — where the more interruption you create, aka wow factor, the better you are. But that type of marketing doesn’t work anymore.

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I’m sure you noticed how a lot of organizations are now shifting their spend on more storytelling through articles and videos. Remember the Jollibee and McDonald’s commercial series? Or for big international brands, you have the likes of Nike and Adidas who continually show the struggles and perseverance of athletes but never mention their own products.

Then again, those are huge brands with huge budgets.

But what about us working for ourselves? What about the small businesses? How can we start creating content that people will want to read? How do we get started?

5 Stages of Awareness: A Different Perspective

The easiest way to start creating content is to start with your customer’s FAQs.

I also shared my workflow earlier this year about getting started with video content in less than 30 minutes.

If you’re looking for more ideas on content creation, the next thing you do is to change your perspective — instead of looking inside-out, start looking at your organization from the outside.

I’m sure you already know this — the best perspective to look at your organization is from your customer’s eyes. No matter what your industry or product/service offering, your customers go through the different stages of awareness.

Let’s take a closer look at the 5 levels of customer awareness. This is another way to look at the buyer’s journey.

Stage 1: Unaware

People at this stage are not necessarily in need of anything at this point. Looking at this differently, people are unaware of and don’t care about you. They don’t know you. And most importantly, people at this stage won’t buy from you.

Imagine you are a local pet shop who just opened last week. As you can imagine, there are a lot of people who don’t know you: your relatives, your neighbors, and definitely a whole lot of pet parents. They are all part of this group. Obviously, they don’t know you so it’s practically impossible for them to buy from you at this point.

Stage 2: Pain Aware or Problem Aware

These are people who are aware of their problem but not any solutions.

What that means for our pet shop is this group are those who realized they needed something for their pet. Of course, this can change since the pet store offers a lot of things and there’s a lot of challenges a pet parent might have. For example, one day they can suddenly realize they don’t have enough dog food. Another day, they might decide on getting a large dog, so that means a different dog food, a bigger harness, etc.

The point remains is that at this stage, they became aware that they have a problem (that is related to what you can solve — in this case — as a pet shop).

Stage 3: Solution Aware

People at this level of awareness know solutions exist for their pain but don’t know about yours.

Assume you are the sole distributor of this Super Awesome Dog Food Brand. Obviously, no one else knows about that brand, only you.

People at this stage know they need “food” for their dog. But obviously, there are a whole lot of alternatives out there.

  • Other dog food brands
  • Raw meat diet
  • Human food

Stage 4: Product Aware

People know you offer solutions they may need but they have yet to choose your product.

At this stage, people have narrowed down their options. From our example, since you are carrying the Super Awesome Dog Food Brand, you are inclined to your target audience buying dog food, rather than other the alternatives like feeding raw meat.

But don’t forget, within the dog food category, there are still a lot of other options — Pedigree, Royal Canin, Holistic, etc. You’re simply one of their options.

Stage 5: Most Aware

Visitors know and trust your brand.

People at this stage are fully aware of you, your brand, and what you have to offer.

Putting It All Together: How the 5 Levels of Customer Awareness Works

Using this framework, you’ll immediately notice that there are a lot more people who don’t know you and your products.

If you map them out using circles, you’ll get an image that looks something like this.

5 Stages of Awareness – Graphical Representation

Here’s what you learned in this article:

  • People go through different stages of awareness.
    • Stage 1 refers to people who don’t know anything about you
    • Stage 2 refers to people who became aware of their problems/needs/challenges that you can solve with your products/services
    • Stage 3 refers to people who became aware of potential solutions to their problems/needs/challenges but haven’t chosen on a particular one yet
    • Stage 4 refers to people who have narrowed down their options to a specific category/option to solve their problems/needs/challenges.
    • Stage 5 refers to people who know you and trust you.
  • There are specific content that is more effective at certain stages.

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So, what are you going to do next

If you’re having a hard time creating content for your organization, you’re probably looking at your market too narrowly.

For example, you might only be focused on creating content ABOUT your product (Stage 4). You’re missing out on stages 1 to 3 — with each circle representing a bigger audience than the previous one.

  • What types of content can you create to attract those who don’t know you?
  • What can you share with people who are exploring their options related to what you’re selling?
  • How do you develop trust with these people?

These are the questions you should be asking yourself.

Another application of the stages of awareness is fine-tuning the messaging and targeting of your campaigns. For example, when you use a stage 4 or stage 5 content to target people who are at stage 1, don’t expect that campaign to meet your objectives.

Both content and context aren’t aligned.

I’ll share more examples about this in future posts. In the meantime, let me know in the comments what you think. Are you focused on creating stage 4 and stage 5 content? How can you think differently about creating stage 1-3 content? Are you using bottom-of-the-funnel content to target top-of-the-funnel audiences?

How to Perform Content Mapping in 5 Easy Steps

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How to Perform Content Mapping

Content mapping is a digital marketing tactic that allows you to build an effective content marketing strategy. It’s where you align content with your target market and display it visually.

It’s simple and easy to do.

I broke it down in 5 easy steps below.

Content Mapping in 5 Easy Steps

Step 1: Create a Table

All you need to do is create a table of your own like the one below.

No need for fancy software.

When I do this process, I usually just draw on my notebook. Content Mapping | Mapping Content to the Buyer's Journey Step 1

You can plot it out like the example I used above — where the buyer’s journey is on the y-axis.

Or you can do it where the buyer’s journey is on the x-axis. It really depends on your preferences.

Step 2: Identify Your Target Market

This step can be as simple or as complicated as you like.

In most cases, you’ll hear marketers use the word personas. But that is an entirely long topic by itself, so I’ll keep it simple and use “target market” here.

Since we’re an e-commerce pet store, I’ll choose first-time dog parents as my target market. Obviously, there are a lot of different groups you can sell to if you’re a pet store like a full-pledged dog owner, or it can be a veterinarian or a first-time cat owner. The list goes on.

But the point of having personas or a clear target market is so you avoid generic content.

Generic messages are ineffective.

They don’t resonate with anyone. While the intent is pure — you want to target a lot of people — it actually hurts your brand because it is unappealing.

Untargeted content is the work of lazy marketers.

Lazy is not effective.

You don’t want to be that lazy marketer.

Content Mapping | Mapping Content to the Buyer's Journey Step 2

Step 3: Identify ONE Problem or Opportunity Your Target Market Needs Help With

The next step is to identify ONE thing that you want to solve. Naturally, this has to be something that is related to what you do.

Continuing our example, let’s use the problem of choosing the right dog food.

Content Mapping | Mapping Content to the Buyer's Journey Step 3

Again, there are dozens of options here even if you’re targeting the same persona. For example, for first-time dog parents, some topics you can write about are as follows:

  1. Potty-training your puppy
  2. Exercise for your puppy
  3. Training your puppy to learn basic commands.

You can tackle these topics later on.

But for now, just choose one so you don’t get overwhelmed.

Step 4: Brainstorm Content Ideas per Stage in the Buyer’s Journey

This is arguably the most complicated step in this process.

Now is the time to squeeze all the creative juices you have and plot out some content ideas for each stage in the buyer’s journey.

Let’s start with the awareness stage.

Content Mapping | Mapping Content to the Buyer's Journey Step 4

If you noticed, the topics listed in the example are stuff our target market will ask if they are starting their buyer’s journey — they know they need to feed their puppy, but don’t know what to look for or even use.

Stepping back a bit, the fundamental lesson in the buyer’s journey is not everyone who interacts with your brand is at the same stage. So, if you only talk about dog food, you could be alienating those who are used to feeding their dogs leftover human food, or those who want to try out the raw meat diet.

Of course, there are pros and cons with each of these methods. You can choose to ignore those groups as part of your content strategy. But you have to be prepared of the consequences of that decision — the biggest one being those who are searching for raw food won’t be interested in you. You’ll have zero chance of convincing them later on that dog food is better.

Content Mapping | Mapping Content to the Buyer's Journey Step 4: Consideration

The next stage is the consideration stage. After learning about what goes into dog food and what puppies need, our target market has now decided that dry dog food is the best.

Now, they are left with dozens of choices of dog brands. For some brands, there are even special kinds of diets and formulations.

This will leave our first-time dog parent confused.

But they have you to guide them through this stage as well. You create content that educates them on the popular and trusted brands.

You even included what criteria they need to know before choosing the right dog food for them.

They are now in the decision stage. This is the time where you can use content to convince them that your products are the best out there.

Content Mapping | Mapping Content to the Buyer's Journey Step 4: Decision

They have narrowed down their choices to a handful. It’s now time for them to actually look at specific product reviews and what other pet parents are saying about them.

If you look at the content examples, they are product-focused. It shows a head-to-head comparison with your competitor (or in this case, a product you probably are not carrying).

Stepping Back A Bit

If you noticed, it’s only at the consideration and decision stage that you talk about specific product/service details.

And if you look at it closely, in the consideration stage, you’re only talking about your product/service category in general. Or you’re comparing it to the other alternatives and substitutes.

It’s really only in the decision stage where you get to talk about yourself or your product/service offering.

You can use the 5 stages of awareness framework to learn more about this.

Contrast this to a lot of content that you see out there. Almost all of them follow a certain theme and it goes like this.

Here are our products/services. We’re awesome. Buy from us now. Here’s a discount. Still don’t want to buy? Here’s some free shipping!

This is the biggest mistake a lot of marketers make. They don’t consider the buyer’s journey. They only look at it from the perspective of the organization.

No one likes that — especially if that is the only content you have.

Your customers are not dumb. If the only content you produce is about you, they’ll soon realize that all you care about is their money.

A good rule of thumb is to keep your salesy content to 20%, while your helpful and educational content to 80%. Using the buyer’s journey, that would look like something like this:

  • Awareness – 50%
  • Consideration – 30%
  • Decision – 20%

Step 5: Create the Content Starting from the Awareness Phase

Once you racked your brains in the previous step, now comes an easier but more time-consuming step — creating the actual content.

Why start with the awareness phase? Because if you’re like most organizations, you already have a lot of decision-type content. Also, when you create awareness-type content, you slowly become an authority in your industry. You’ll also reach a wider audience.

Think of creating content at the awareness stage as small deposits to a bank. The more you do it — in terms of frequency and amount — the higher the payoff later on.

When we ask for our customers’ money, we withdraw from this “bank.” As with any bank, you can’t withdraw more than what you deposited.

So, what are you going to do next

You just learned how to map your content to your target market and buyer’s journey. Now, you can start creating content that your target market will actually want to read and find helpful.

Have any questions? Don’t know how to get started? Let me know in the comments below!

This site contains affiliate links to products. I may receive a commission for purchases made through these links. However, this does not impact my reviews and comparisons. I only recommend products I’ve reviewed, and in many instances also use, in order to help you make the best choices.

Copyright © 2024 Ariel Lim

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