Brand activation is an event, campaign, or any interaction through which a company drives customer actions. This technique aims to generate brand awareness, buildlasting relationships with thetarget audience, and develop customer loyalty. It helps engage more customers by enabling them to interact with a certain company directly. Why is brand activation important? In the times ofdigital marketing, it’s extremely hard to stand out among thousands of brands that do their best to achieve their goals. Marketers look for interactive and effective methods of attracting their target audience to make a brand recognizable. Different forms of experiential marketing, includingbrand activation, guerilla marketing, ambient marketing, and ambush marketing, come to the rescue. If you are just starting your business, you know your audience well, and yet they don’t know you. Brand activation is an excellent opportunity to present your brand and create emotional connections with your future buyers. Experiential marketing allows you to create something intriguing and related to your company that will generate interest even among those who don’t know you yet. Now that you know the reasons why companies often conduct various events, create unique campaigns, and directly interact with their customers, it’s time to learn more about this strategy. Brand Activation Strategy Determine what your brand stands for Define your audience Make a SWOT analysis Explore the tactics to reach your audience Think about management A dull and improper approach can’t attract more people to your brand. If you strive to make a buzz around your company, a brand activation strategy is a great solution. Let’s walk you through several necessary steps. Determine what your brand stands for. The first and foremost is to decide what you want to be known for and what you value. It’s not just how you position your brandbut more about what people think about it. Therefore, you need to ensure that your brand message is clear. Define your audience.Taking a wild guess and trying to meet the needs and wants of your audience without analyzing and segmenting it is not a good idea. According to the survey, 72% of customers prefer to engage with marketing messages tailored to their interests. That’s why you need to know the demographics, interests, and traits of your ideal buyers. You should find clients who will appreciate your products or services the most.For this purpose, consider creating buyer personas. Visit our blog to find out how to develop a customer profile. Make a SWOT analysis.Before planning various events, campaigns, and installations, you should be aware of your brand’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Do not forget that some brand activation campaigns can require a lot more resources, while some of them can be simple and cheap. However, you don’t necessarily need a lot of funds to launch a campaign since even something like a creative booth installation can attract the masses. Explore the tactics to reach your audience. Keep in mind that there are many ways to appeal to your prospects, includingproduct demonstration installation, mobile vans, games, and many other activities. Choose a suitable method to communicate your message to your target audience clearly. Think about management. The last step is to bring the previous ones together and form a great team to bring it all to life. Assign the responsibilities to the right people to engage everyone on your team. Now that you know about the necessary steps, let’s explore five ideas that will inspire you to create your outstanding event. 5Brand Activation Ideas Surprise your audience Make your event interactive Show the new features of your products Consider partnerships with other brands Promote your brand’s values If you aim to improve brand awareness and reach more people, brand activation is the right decision. We’ve prepared several ideas for you to get inspired for your next campaign and connect with your leadsand customers creatively and unusually. 1. Make your event interactive One of the keys to the success of your event is to make it interactive. Make the customers engage with your brand. Don’t forget to promote your event on social media to attract as many visitors as possible. According to statistics, 88% of brands use social media platforms to increase awareness. 2. Show the new features of your products If you have a new product or an old one with new features, go ahead and demonstrate them and highlight the benefits they can bring to your audience. 3. Consider partnerships with other brands It’s also a great idea to find a non-competing brand with a similar audience. You can collaborate and create something together: a product, campaign, event, or something else. You can find tons of examples all over the world. For instance, the “Soundtrack for Your Ride” campaign is the result of Uber Spotify’s cooperation. This campaign demonstrates good results— a wider audience and more leads interested in these brands. 4. Promote your brand’s values A successful campaign will help promote your brand values and turn your regular customers into admirers of your company. Consider presenting your values with the help of compelling visuals to reach more people and create a powerful impact. If your resources are not limited, you can always create something incredible and surprise your audience. Different brands prove that creativity and smart use of available tools can work wonders for your company. Yet after the interaction with your customers, you should know how to measure your success. How to Measure Brand Activation To figure out whether you did everything right during your brand activation campaign, you can look through your: customer acquisition (check whether the number of your customers, sales, and revenue increased); engagement on social media (find out whether you have more followers, mentions, comments, and likes on social media); live engagement during the event (you can easily measure your success if you see that there are many people involved during the event); metrics (track the performance of your campaign). Now you know a lot about brand activation, so it’s time to proceed to the examples to grab some inspiration. Brand Activation Examples Revolve Foster’s No Worries Motel Whether you are just starting your business, your company plans to launch a new product and needs some extra hype, or maybe your brand strives for more recognition, brand activation is here for you. Here you can see several outstanding examples. Let’s dive in. Revolve A famous brand of apparel, shoes, and accessories uses brand activation very often. Their “Revolve Around The World” campaign included influencer marketing to drive a bigger interest to their company. The brand sent opinion leaders on a trip starting with a “carnival” in L.A. to build a following, promote their clothes, and improve brand engagement. Foster’s No Worries Motel In partnership with Airbnb, the famous Australian beer brand set up a pop-up hotel at one of the country’s music festivals to reach young music fansin Finland. The hotel was created inside a blue shipping container. A ticket to the festival allowed visitors to book a room in this extraordinary hotel using the Airbnb app. To conclude, brand activation can be presented in the form of an event or any type of campaign to boost brand awareness. It’s interactive and creative, which is very important in attracting more and more people. It suits both startups and well-established companies. You can easily establish communication, maintain engagement, and boost sales with LIKE.TG’s chatbots, web push notifications, SMS, and bulk email service.

A bounce is the percentage of email messages that failed to send. In email marketing, it is acceptable to divide bounces into two categoriesbasedon the reason the email bounced. Hard bounces This group includes the following reasons why email addresses may bounce: "The domain name doesn't exist."This means that it is impossible to deliver the email to the recipient's email address. "The email address doesn't exist." This means that the delivery failed because there is no such email address on the current domain. "Spam by the server." This means that the recipient's server rejected receiving the message and considered it to be spam. This error can also be displayed if the recipient's email address is blocked. With the LIKE.TG Email Verifier, you can eliminate hard bounces. This tool checks whether your mailing list contains invalid email addresses. So, after the validation, you get a valid mailing list that helps you keep your sender reputation high. Soft bounces This group has temporary delivery issues. The following reasons are why email addresses may bounce in this case. "Temporarily unavailable." This means that the last email failed to send for a reason beyond the service's control; for example, the user’s server was unavailable, or it rejected the message. "Mailbox full." This means that the subscriber’s mailbox is full and can't receive any new email messages. "The email is too large." This means the contents of the email were too big to send. These details are found in your statistics report. Read about the reasons why email addresses may bounce in this article.

A behavioral email is an automated email sent to recipients based on their actions and behavior. These emails are sent after a user interacts with a business on social media, the company’s website, email, and other channels. They help increase customer engagement and sales. Unlike in traditional email campaigns, subscribers do not get emails out of the blue. With behavioral email, site visitors receive different types of emails, depending on their specific actions. Sending a behavioral email is an excellent tactic for boosting customer engagement. With LIKE.TG, marketers do not need much know-how or calculated marketing strategies to benefit from this type of email. Read on to learn how to use LIKE.TG to create and send behavioral emails. Why is behavioral email important? Helps you understand consumers’ needs Drives better results Supports continuous improvements Behavioral emails are useful to a business for several reasons. Let’s highlight them: Helps you understand consumers’ needs. By examining user behavior, marketers start to get a sense of their customer’s preferences. Eventually, they learn what the users need at this particular stage of the sales funnel to move further. Drives better results. Letting subscribers determine email frequency and desirable content is bound to deliver declining results with time. When marketers take charge by using behavioral email, they attain higher social media and website activity, better email engagement, more subscriptions, and so forth. Supports continuous improvements. With behavioral email, marketers can get useful insights on how to improve their product and customer support. Users’ actions may reveal brand weak points or everyday needs. Hence, develop the strategy immediately. To send different types of behavioral emails, you need to use a marketing service. It will help you automate sending without a programmer in staff. Send highly personalized emails! LIKE.TG helps you automateemails after a user joins your list. We take care of the technical side of things. Register and create a behavioral email! Types of Behavioral Emails Registrations Conversions Site or social activity There is a broad range of these emails. However, behavioral emails generally fall into the following categories: Registrations. These include welcome, FAQs, onboarding, and getting started emails. Their goal is to give a warm welcome and inform about the benefits of cooperation. Conversions. These are emails triggered by actions such as subscribes, events, purchases, sign-ups, downloads, and opt-ins. Their goal is to give thanks and notify about the details of a transaction for better credibility. Site or social activity. Triggers for this category of behavioral emails include viewed products, abandoned carts, shared posts, account activity reports, watched videos, posted comments, items added to a wishlist, etc. Its goal is to convert engaged users into buyers. Note, it is essential to identify the particular behavior of the visitor in the customer cycle. It helps marketers determine the type of behavioral emails to send, and the way to move down the sales funnel. How to Get Started with Behavioral Emails Onboard Educate Capture attention gently Remind Get feedback Want to get started with behavioral email marketing? Below are the things you should do: Onboard. Set up a triggeredwelcome email for all new subscribers that complete registration. Use this email to inform them about the value a business offers. Educate. Provide users with relevant information that will improve their experience of the interaction with your brand. Industry news, tips, new product features updates can help a business maintain a dialogue with its audience while also educating it. Capture attention gently. To reclaim lost revenue, marketers should nudge visitors to get back to their abandoned carts or wishlists with items in stock by using targeted emails with strong CTAs that won’t give a chance to ignore. Remind. Marketers should be useful to customers. Remind consumers when free trials are about to end; when there is a shortage of their favorite product; when an item from the wishlist is already in stock, etc. This way, you both care and increase sales. Get feedback. After prospects and customers take action, provide avenues where they can leave their feedback. With this information, marketers can improve user experience. How to Send Behavioral Emails with LIKE.TG With the Automation 360 feature, LIKE.TG allows marketers to send messages after a user performs a specific action. That said, let’s highlight the actual process of sending behavioral emails. Step 1: Create an event Before you send a behavioral email, create the event that will trigger it. Go to “Automations,” click “Add new event.” You can either choose a ready-made event or create a custom one. Then, you may add the necessary variables to send relevant campaigns to each subscriber. A unique URL will be generated for you. To send an event, request it. Follow this guide to create and send events. Step 2: Create an automation flow Go to “Automations” and select “Automation360”. Add the general information about the flow. Choose the event which will trigger the start of the flow. Select the necessary mailing list. Now add the email to the flow. Decide upon the time to complete the action, write an exciting subject, choose an email template, and apply. Below is an example of a behavioral email sent after a user joins your mailing list. Use a condition to send different offers based on subscriber behavior. For example, if a user left items in the shopping cart, remind them. If they purchase, send a thank-you email. If they still ignore, offer a time-limited discount. In this guide, you will find out how to combine email and SMS to send an abandoned cart campaign. This is an example of how to create a behavioral email campaign. You can create advanced email flows up to 50 blocks. Find out more in this article. So, there’s no need to send behavioral emails manually to each subscriber. Just set the automation flow once and monitor its performance! Examples of behavioral emails Below is a registration confirmation email from River Island. It is sent right after a user subscribes. Patagonia reminds users to buy a product left in the shopping cart right from the email. It’s an excellent chance to increase sales and customer loyalty. Here is an email sent by Uber after a user subscribes as a rider on their website. It shows the value of using the service (getting around is as easy as tapping a button) in addition to offering a guide on how to request a ride. Here is an account activation email from Grammarly. The brand sends it to activate passive subscribers. Send behavioral email

Black Friday is the largest sales day in the US that falls on the day after Thanksgiving and denotes the beginning of the shopping season in the country. The sales day starts early with retailers rolling out their shopping deals, coupons, bonuses, gift cards, and large discounts both online and offline to let customers save money and earn great revenue. In this article, we’ll unveil how Black Friday got its name, review its brief history, and find out why it’s essential for retailers. Then, we’ll explore some great tips and examples of successful Black Friday campaigns. Huge discounts on furniture, clothes, home decor, services of online platforms, and great offers that last for one day and appear a day after a famous US holiday — Thanksgiving. Companies delight their customers with bonuses, gifts, discounts, and special offers that will attracteven those who are not used to saving. How did Black Friday get its name? Some believe that the term denoted retailers who earned significant profits that day since a long time ago, there was a bookkeeping practice of writing down profits with black and red ink. People marked profits with black inkand their losses — with red. On the day before Thanksgiving, merchants strived to sell as much as possible to earn enough money for life for the whole year. However, many peoplebelieve that there isanother origin of Black Friday. The other story of “Black Friday” comes from the 1960s when a lot of suburban tourists arrived in the city for shopping. This process resulted in chaos and brought a lot of work to police officers in Philadelphia. They worked long hours and had to deal with accidents, shoplifting, and busy roads. Police officers used this phrase to describe the situation that happened at that time. The same happened in a few years when people came from suburbs for Army-Navy football games. It’s worth mentioning that the term had taken root in Philadelphia. It was later used by store workers who had to deal with chaos and long lines in their stores after the great American national holiday. In the 1990s, the phrase “Black Friday” was spread nationwide. It was in newspapers, magazines, and TV campaigns. Now it’s time to delve into the exciting history of this world-famous shopping day. A Brief History of Black Friday In 1951, the term was used to refer to workers calling in sick on Fridayto make their weekends longer. The next usage of the phrase dates back to 1960s Philadelphia. By “Black Friday,” police meant heavy traffic and lots of tourists from the suburbs on the day after Thanksgiving. Although the phrase was already used two times, it spread across the United States very slowly. Later, it appeared in The New York Times as the busiest shopping andtraffic day of the year. The meaning “the busiest shopping day”is still alivein the United States. The phrase spread nationwide in the 1980s but with different interpretations. At that time, merchants decided to promote the idea that retailers had suffered losses for most of the year and could make a profit only starting from the day after Thanksgiving when the holiday season started. Now that you are acquainted with the brief history of the phrase, it’s time to explore its importance. Why is Black Friday important for retailers? The story speaks for itself: a massive number of customers during the beginning of the shopping season and long queues led to significant profits for retailers. Every year online and offline stores prepare the best deals and biggest discounts for one of the busiest sales days of the year. They open their stores early, prepare a lot of offers, organize different events to attract new consumers, and increase their revenues. Online shopping has become very popular nowadays and amounts to21.3% of total retail sales as of 2020. That’s why all businesses adapt and provide a variety of tempting offers online. Brands send email campaigns, run paid ads on social networks, implement chatbotsandweb push notifications, and send SMS. This way, they reach great exposure, establish brand awareness, increase their customer base and sales, and gain huge profits. With the most effective marketing tools and attractive offers, companies manage to reach their customers, sell their excess inventory, and obtain the most significant revenues during the whole year. People spending huge sums of money improve both the condition of certain companies and the overall health of the retail industry. It’s time to jump into tips that will help retailers get the most out of this day. 4Black Friday Tips for Retailers Promote your sale in email newsletters Leverage advertising on social networks Make use of SMS Make your sale last longer Retailers apply different methods to lure customers into their online and offline stores, including limited offers, great deals, huge discounts, gifts, bonuses, and more. If the busiest shopping day is near and you want to increase your sales and revenues, get ready for this year’s Black Friday with our guidance. Promote your sale in an email newsletter Companies leverage email marketing,as it’s the most effective way to stay in touch with theirtarget audiences. This fact is supported by statistics showing that87% of marketers take advantage ofemail newslettersto receive discount updates. Since the number of email users amounts to4 billion, there’s a point in developing effective email campaigns for your customer base. Besides, it allows you to deliver targeted messages fast and reach customers and subscribers at a low cost. Create a catchy subject line that lures subscribers to open your email. You should also keep your copy short and sweet and use words that encourage people to purchase, like “limited offer,” “shop now,” and mention the amount of your discount. Let’s take Steve Madden’s Black Friday, for example. The email has an interesting subject line and a clear and short copy and shows what products are on sale. LIKE.TG enables you to create professional email templateswithout any knowledge of code and technical skills. You have the opportunity to inform your customers about Black Friday for free. With our drag and drop builder, you can design your own template from scratch. Leverage advertising on social networks As you know, social media engagement helps drive website traffic and rocket your Black Friday sale. By using special hashtags, paid ads, and influencer marketing, you can increase your audience and profits. People will spread this information by posting photos and videos, using your hashtags, and tagging your brand. For example, Target uses Facebook advertising to entice customers with its offers. Walmart informs about its deals on Instagram and lists all discounted items. Make use of SMS SMS might sound old-school compared to modern distribution channels like WhatsApp, Telegram, Facebook Messenger, and social networks. However, it’s still an effective way to reach your customers and update them about your Black Friday deal if you own a local store. That’s why you should consider using SMS campaigns in addition to your main marketing strategy. LIKE.TG enables you to send messages to your customer base and schedule your SMS campaign on a certain date and time, so you don’t need to worry about being late to announce your big sale. Make your sale last longer Since Black Friday is a wonderful time for customers to save money on products and retailers to earn significant revenues, give your customers a chance to enjoy it longer. It’s a great idea to allow consumers to continue purchasing your products at attractive prices and get additional gifts for some time. Let’s explore what Levi’s did. The famous brand started a season of sales that lasted for a couple of weeks. Put your ideas into work to gain excellent results, and review the following examples to get inspired. Examples of Effective Black Friday Campaigns You can explore many inspiring Black Friday campaigns to have some insights and learn something new. Some brands leverage email marketing, and some of them prefer social media platforms to be closer to their younger customers. Let’s see how these different approaches work. Charlotte Tilbury It’s a brandthat sells makeup, skincare, and beauty products. To reach theyounger generation, the company announced its Black Friday sales on social media platforms. The brand lures cosmeticsfans with a 50% discount and three new mystery boxes. Bath and Body Works The famous body care company uses email newsletters, publishes posts and videos on social media, and leverages pop marketingto entice customers to take part in its Friday Sale and enjoy its “buy 3 get 3 for free” deal of the year. Grammarly The well-known grammar checking service plays on people’s emotions and uses phrases that evoke the fear of missing out, such as “one day only.” With its attractive 55% off all premium plans and a one-day sale, the company lures customers to hurry up to grab the offer. Now you have some excellent ideas to implement when planning your Black Friday campaign. Make use of LIKE.TG’s marketing tools to simplify your work. Leverage email campaigns, chatbots, and web push to distribute your Black Friday messages.

Behavioral targeting is a type of advertising that enables marketers to display relevant ads to each user based on their browsing behavior. It relies on search queries, pages viewed, buttons clicked, time spent on a website, etc. In this article, we’ll tell you why companies use behavioral targeting, explain the difference between this type of advertising and contextual ads, and review some types. Why is behavioral targeting important? Since more and more brands go for a customer-orientated approach for their marketing strategy, behavioral targeting is just the thing they need. Contextual ads that were popular several years ago now give way to behavior-based ads. Brands collect significant amounts of data about their customers and site visitors from different sources to use it to the advantage of both parties. With this information at hand, they craft highly personalized offers for each user based on: pages they visit; buttons, links, and content clicked; items added to the shopping cart or a wishlist; time spent on each page; level of engagement; previous search queries; other interactions. All these data can be collected via tracking pixels and cookies and then processed with data management platforms. Behavior-based ads provide marketers with several advantages. Firstly, they drive a high number of clicks since users are shown items they have been interested in before. Secondly, this type of ad allows companies to convert site visitors into clients. It often takes a long time to walk a user down your sales funnel, so behavior targeting enables you to develop a relevant offer at the right place. Finally, this is an excellent opportunity to increase revenue. Behavioral targeting is sometimes confused with contextual targeting, even though they are based on different approaches. Let’s take a closer look at them in comparison. Contextual Targeting vs. Behavioral Targeting While behavioral ads are based on users’ actions on your site, contextual ads are based on context and are placed on a page relevant to their content. The most important thing is that a banner should look natural for a user where they see them. For example, placing an ad promoting a travel agency on a travel blog or advertising kitchen utensils on a cooking blog is a perfect choice. The choice of a site for an ad depends mainly on its topic and the keywords used. Every time a user clicks the ad, webmasters earn money. Now that you know the difference between the two, let’s talk about behavioral targeting types. Types of Behavioral Targeting There are two types of behavioral targeting, which are onsite behavioral targeting and network behavioral targeting. Onsite behavioral ads are placed on a particular website. They allow brands to discover the interests of their users and offer them the best solutions. This type of ad helps personalize and enhance user experience on a site. Collecting information about user behavior, their activities, and relevant attributes makes it possible to offer a user to take the next step. These ads are frequently used on home pages or product categories, where users can see products that can be interesting for them. This way, marketers slightly move prospects deeper into their site. Network behavioral targetingrequires collecting cookies and IP information but never any personal data like names, emails, and numbers. Algorithms interpret data about users’ interests and purchase intentions. Then, they’re divided into segments and shown personalized ads. For example, if a user views anti-age personal care products, an advertiser may assume that it is a female 30+ years old. Behavioral targeting is widely used in email marketing and is called email retargeting. You can convert your site visitor who added an item to a shopping cart without buying into a client by sending them an abandoned cart email. After users add a product to the shopping cart, they receive an email with a personal discount to buy it right now. This is an excellent opportunity to remind customers about the items they likeand increase sales. Below you can see an example of such an email. You can send retargeting emails automatically and for free with LIKE.TG. Follow these three steps. Congrats, now you know the benefits of behavioral targeting and its types and can increase sales right now with LIKE.TG Email Service.

A black market is an economic activity that involves people exchanging goods illegally and conducting all transactions through illicitchannels to avoid government price controls and taxes. Ithas a significant impact oneconomies since sellers don't pay taxes and provide customers with goods prohibited by law. In this article, we'll find out how black markets started and why they exist now. We'll also uncoverwhy they affecteconomies so negatively and how governments try to control them. Why do black markets exist? Black markets allow people to exchange products or services prohibited by their governments. They emerge when sellers want to evade taxes oncertain goods. As a result, these transactions are unrecorded so that both sellers and buyers don't need to pay any money to their government. Illegal trade arises when people don't have the right to work yet but still need money for a living. You can see black markets in countries where government-imposed price ceilings cause shortages. High levels of unemployment often provoke workers to look forany kind of job to make money. People who don't have the opportunity to find a job legally end up in illegal businesses. They don't report their occupation and salary to their governments and don't pay taxes. Some enter black markets because of the numerous licensing restrictions they can't afford to invest money in. Now that you know why black markets exist, let's find out how they started. How did the black market start? Black markets started their existence during wartime when countries imposed restrictions on resources essential for human life, primarily food. Products like gasoline, rubber, and metal also fell under these restrictions. Governments introduced rationing to provide everyone with a fair share of food. This step resulted in people getting involved in illegal activities like selling and buying on black markets. They peaked during World War II when the majority of countries enforced rationing and price control. People came up with different ways to sell their goods illegally. For example, farmers reported a lower number of births of new animals to supply meat to their buyers illegally. There was also a case when US supplies that were meant only for the US army got to the British black market. It's time to find out how black markets influence the economy. How do black markets affect the economy? Underground markets negatively influence legitimate businesses that can't compete with significantly lower prices on goods.As a result, they can even be driven out. Some illegal sellers deliberately create shortages of legal products and services to force people to buy from them. All transactions on black markets happen without governments' consent and permission. The shadow economy activities also don't involve the payment of taxes. This affects governments' revenue that could have been used to pay for itscitizens'services. Since underground market economic activity isn't mentioned in the statistics, it undervaluesa country's GDP (gross domestic product) as well. Let's have a look at the ways governments control the black market. How do governments control the black market? To stop theblack market activities is almost impossible. The majority of sellers offer illegal products or services in a way that bypasses generally accepted laws. Goods that make up the largest percentage of the black market are shoes, apparel, and accessories. Years ago, all illegal transactions were in cash so as not to leave a trace. Nowadays, when the internet allows using the dark web and digital currencies, black market transactions are conducted online. The US government tries to fight illegal trade. Customs and Border Protection authorities prevent illicit goods from entering the United States while the Drug Enforcement Administration and the FBI do everything possible to reduce drug trafficking. The shadow economy has a long history and continues its existence until today. There are still a lot of sellers and buyers involved in black marketsonline.

Bait-and-switch advertising is a deceptive pricing technique that involves promoting a product at a surprisingly low price. However, when consumers contact a store to purchase it, they’re told that this item is no longer available. In this article, we’ll explain how this technique works and provide some examples for you not to fall for this trick. How does bait-and-switch advertising work? Sellers using this technique promote their too-good-to-be-true deals via newspapers, email campaigns, and television. Their target audienceincludes consumers who like to save money, so marketers don’t hesitate to promise them that. Companies offer to buy an item, the price of which is several times lower than the market price. When potential clients visit their stores or contact them, they’re told that this bargain is no longer available. Marketers can tell that it was a time-limited deal, that the last item has been just sold, or that the price is low if this product is sold in a bundle with a high-priced item. When they see that a client is disappointed, they try to convince them to buy a much more expensive product. This technique is called upselling. They promise that this product will outperform the initial one and that its price is reasonable. As a result, the company gets a high revenue, while a consumer may not even figure out that they were deceived. We have some tips for you to avoid falling for this trick: always check your desired product’s relative market price; read the terms and conditions carefully, especially all the tiny footnotes; buy only from authoritative sellers; check the physical address of a company; ask for a raincheck (if a discounted item has run out of stock, ask the seller to purchase it at the same price once it’s back in stock) Remember that you shouldn’t buy something if you are not satisfied with the conditions. In the next section, we’ll share examples of industries where bait-and-switch advertising is a common practice. Examples of Bait-and-Switch Advertising This deceptive technique is widely used in the real estate industry. Agents often attract clients by offering the apartments they sold a long time ago or even those they don’t work with at all. They create profitable ads that promote spacious luxury flats at good locations and extremely low prices. When potential clients contact these agents, it turns out that this apartment has been just sold, so they offer other available options that are, of course, much more expensive, hoping that a client needs a flat urgently. Bait-and-switch advertising is also used when it comes to mortgages. Agents promote apartments at low mortgage rates to acquire more potential clients. When a customer visits their office, they find out that the interest rates are much higher. Then it’s up to an agent to convince this client. Lastly, it’s a widespread practice among recruiters. They place fake job offers to collect more resumes of potential candidates and offer available openings that have nothing to do with their initial offers. Now you know how bait-and-switch advertising works, have some useful tips and examples at hand, and can avoid falling for this deceptive technique.

Blacklist is alist of IP addresses that have been blocked by an email provider or spam filter for phishingand spam. If your IP address is on the blacklist, then the mailing will not be sent or will have to go through additional spam filters. According to Forrester Research, spam messages make up 67% of all email traffic. That is why ISPsshould protect their clients from these types of messages. This can be achieved by filtering messages and checking the legality of the mail delivery. Using blacklists, the ISPs can reduce the number of spam messagesin their networks. Email providers use blacklists that created based on publicly available information and internal ISP data. The blacklists use different spam identification algorithms, for example, "unwanted email." If you send "unwanted email"and it collects a lot of spam complaints, then there is a high probability that you will get onto the blacklist. ISPs use the most reputable blacklists – Spamhouse, Spamcop, and SORBS – to check the sending server IP addresses by requesting problem senders. If your mailing has a high percentage of subscriberswho mark your letter as spam, then the LIKE.TG server will get onto the blacklist. That is why, when using our server, you should follow the rules of our Antispam Policy. To increase your email deliverability rate, LIKE.TG offers Email Verifier. With this tool, you can check your email addresses before sending a campaign. After the verification, you'll receive a list of valid addresses. This will help you stay out of the spam folder and keep your sender reputation high.

Behavioral segmentation is a form of marketing segmentationthat divides people into different groupswho havea specific behavioral pattern in common. Users may share the same lifecycle stage,previouslypurchased particular products, or have similar reactions to your messages. Companies combine various marketing channels like email, SMS, messengers, push notifications to give their customers a more significant personalized experience at all touchpoints. Benefits of Behavioral Segmentation Improves targeting accuracy Helps provide better-personalized experience Sifts engaged users from uninterested Saves money Makes it easier to track success Helps build loyalty toyour brand Improves targeting accuracy.Behavioral segmentation allows companies to take advantage of behavioral differences, optimizing their marketing messages based on that data. For instance, it helps to pick up the right approach for loyal customers or newly subscribed users. It also clarifies groups of people that make up your audience: adults from 20-34, people keen on sports, or those who love traveling. Helps provide better-personalized experience. Mass emails with the same message for everyone are outdated practice today. Instead, you need to deeply analyze your audience and meet people’s demands in a personalized approach based on social groups they belong to. Sifts engaged users from uninterested. Marketers filter the target audience to work with by identifying the user’s level of engagement. It increases the chances that your products will be found by people who need them. Saves money. Behavioral segmentation helps prioritizecampaigns to make your marketing more cost-effective. It allows you to spend less time and fewer resources to warm up leads or trying to communicate with an uninterested audience. Makes it easier to track success. You can track metrics inside each segment and improve your results. Helps build loyalty toyour brand. Behavioral segmentation helps you realize how to support users along their customer journey and keep them engaged all the time. People that are treated personally are more likely to become loyal to your brand and be converted into brand advocates. Types of Behavioral Segmentation with Examples Based on a Purchasing Behavior Based on Benefits Based on a Lifecycle Stage Based on a Level of Engagement Occasion-based Based on Customer Satisfaction Based on Customer Loyalty You can combine various types of segmentation based on how relevant they are to your business and on specific characteristics of the products and services you promote. Let’s take email as an example for each type of behavioral segmentation since it works for any business from small to large. Based on a Purchasing Behavior This segmenttakes advantage of a users' behavior when they make a purchase. Check if they hesitate, if there are any obstacles on their way to make a decision. The answer to these and simple questions will help you simplify the buying process. Let’s point out some common situations when clients are about to convert into customers: Considering the best price. This is the most important factor in influencing the buyer’s decision. If you identify people who hesitate by waiting for a better price, you will dramatically increase your chances to make a sale to them during special occasions like marketing holidays, when the prices are reduced. Looking for social proof. These users are interested in a product, but they wonder if others are satisfied with the product. To dispel doubts, place customer reviews on your website or right in the email campaign. Having all the time in the world. These customers are interested, but they don’t hurry to buy your product. In this case, add a time-sensitive element like adding a countdown to an email, or come up with a time-limited discount. This creates a feeling of urgency. Below is an example of an automated email triggered when a customer abandons their shopping cart. It is designed to drive people back to the shop to finish their purchase. Based on Benefits This is a way to divide customers according to the benefits theyare looking for and motivate them to buy your products or services. For instance, there are many reasons to buy chewing gum: clean teeth, fresh breath, nice flavor, or anti-stress effect. Find out which benefits drive your customers towards the purchase and emphasize them. Here’s an attempt to identify what stops a subscriber from using a service — technical issues, lack of features, or not enough motivation. Based on a Lifecycle Stage Behavioral segmentation based on a lifecycle stage works well for selling products and services with a long lifecycle. It’s not easy to map user’s lifecycle stage because you can’t judge based on a single touchpoint. To cope with that, collect data on all touchpoints via every marketing channel you use — emails, social media, search engine, chatbot. When you determine the user’s lifecycle stage, move them closer to the purchase by sending more relevant and valuable nurturing materials and, eventually, offers. Below is an example of lead nurturing — the lifecycle stage where the company provides educational materials, showing how the product deals with the problems. Based on a Level of Engagement This segment is built on how often users log in your service or how many orders they make with your restaurant. Adjust your marketing messages based on this data and encourage user participation. Thissegment helps reduce the churn rate and improve sender reputation by dividing your target audience from unengaged people. Let’s check three basic levels of user engagement: Occasional.This means that users have a contact with your brand, but it’s not systematic. They may lack motivation or value from your side, so find out the reason with the help of a survey, for instance, and fix it. Regular. Users regularly interact with your service, but don’t use its functions to the full extent. Share how-to videos, highlight all features that might be handy for them, and offer a loyalty program. Intensive. These users integrate your service in their life, and that is the reason to treat them specially. Provide bonuses, invite to special events, congratulate on their birthdays, because these people may advertize your brand through word-of-mouth and become loyal clients. The example below is a reactivation email which aims to keep a user engaged. Occasion-based This issegmentation based on specific timing which is best to deliver your marketing messages. Utilize marketing holidays like Black Friday, Cyber Monday, or national holidays depending on the user’s location. Take advantage of special dates like theirbirthday or anniversary. Pay attention to the days of the week and time of the day that is most convenient for communication. To implement occasion-based segmentation, collect personal data from subscription forms, lead magnets, or surveys. These insights will help you improve the open rate of your campaigns and build a positive brand image. The example below is a way to use occasion — the end of the year — to upsell a pricing plan. Based On Customer Satisfaction This segmentation type is based on customer feedback. It helps fix issues when users are not happy with the product before they spread negative words about your brand. On the other hand, it helps build stronger relationships withother users who already like your brand. Based on Customer Loyalty Find out which customers you need to focus your loyalty programs on, and those who may lack value from your brand. Loyal customers are the most beneficial clients for any business since they have the highest lifetime value. It is cheaper to retain existing customers than acquiring new leads. Also, loyal users are more likely to become brand advocates, and promote your brand around their social circles. The example below is a way to celebrate cooperation and show a user’s interactions with your brand. Using Behavioral Segmentation Wtih email marketing. Send triggered emails connected with a purchase — abandoned cartemails, confirmation emails, email notifications, and more. Aside from that, try usingdrip campaigns to welcome users, reactivate them, upsell and cross-sell goods. With SMS marketing. Track how people react to your SMS advertising campaigns. Divide your audience into segments based on whether they used your promo codes or not, and try searching for other ways to contact unengaged users. With SMM.With Facebook advertising, for instance, you can tailor your ads to people based on how they engage with your posts. If users often respond, encourage them with a discount. With chatbot marketing. While users communicate with your chatbot, you can narrow their path towards solving the exact problem. When the conversation ends, you will identify the user's lifecycle stage, making it easier to find the right approach for the next touchpoints.

A backlink is an inbound link that redirects a user from one website to another. Site owners care about the smart placement of backlinks since Google uses them as a ranking factor and they, along with content, are an essential part of its ranking algorithm. In this article, we’ll find out the importance of backlinks for SEO, their types, and figure out how they work. We’ll also uncover the factors that influence the quality of backlinks, review the strategies to build high-quality backlinks, and how to check them. Why are backlinks important for SEO? You can often observe thousands of websites competing for top rankings on Google in a variety of ways. They add new content regularly, optimize it with relevant keywords, acquire backlinks to their sites, match search intent, optimize website speed, work on domain authority, etc. Backlinks are the second ranking factor for Google after content and are critical for SEO. That’s why site owners constantly exchange backlinks with relevant authoritative sites, consider guest blogging, provide users with quality content and update it regularly. Inbound links are essential for SEO because they are a signal for Google that a source is reliable and other companies within the industry recognize it as useful and informative for people. If many companies link to a specific website, search engines take this fact into account. So, earning quality backlinks is critical for ranking and website visibility. Now that you know about the importance, it’s time to proceed to the next section to unveil how backlinks work. How do backlinks work? A website with many backlinks is a good sign for search engines. They serve as reviews of web pages and inform users and Google that the content is trustworthy and valuable. Companies try to earn backlinks from authoritative relevant sites to show the value of the content and website in general. As a result, it can rank higher and obtain better visibility. However, check the websites’ content to ensure that backlinks are relevant to your site. Search engines give a higher rank to websites with many backlinks from reputable sources because they enable users to find the necessary quality information faster and solve their problems. Reputable sites also ensure the credibility of the website they refer to and approve that the web page is valuable. Let’s move to the types. Types of Backlinks Google constantly updates its guidelines to improve search results and the quality of content websites produce. It uses several ranking factors to define websites’ authority in search results. Backlinks are the second most important factor after content, that’s why site owners care about smart link building. So, if a trustworthy site with a good reputation links to your website, it will level up your company’s site. Let’s now review the two main types of backlinks and the influence they can have on your website. Do-follow links. This type of link doesn't contain any attribute. Do-follow links have an impact on your ranking and help get a higher position on Google. Let’s discuss how it works. Say, several high-ranking sites link to your site. Search engines see it, conclude that you have great content, and decide to reward your content with a higher ranking. This is done to deliver the most trustworthy and relevant information to users and help customers solve their problems. No-follow links. This type of link is necessary for a website to look natural and combine both do-follow and no-follow links. They also drive traffic and gain exposure. No-follow links include a special attribute in their code that sends signals to search engines about the type of a link. If you open the HTML source code of a web page and see rel=“nofollow”, it means that it’s a no-follow link and it doesn’t improve your page rank or affect a page’s placement in the SERPs. Links from forums, sponsored content, press releases, blog comments, and social media are often no-follow links. Let’s jump into the factors that influence the quality of inbound links. 6 Factors Influencing the Quality of a Backlink Now that you know about the importance of high-quality backlinks for SEO, you are probably interested in factors that define their quality. So, if you aim to improve ranking and online visibility, attract more visitors and boost traffic, then check out our list of factors. Domain authority. SEO tools like Ahrefs and Moz give websites certain domain authority. It enables site owners to gauge the potential of their website from 1 to 100 and find out how authoritative a specific website can be. It embraces links, content, technical SEO, and many other elements. Domain authority also includes factors such as the number of inbound links and root domains. The more high-quality relevant inbound links your website has, the better is the domain authority, prestige, and rank of your site. A great number of high-quality inbound links make Wikipedia a website with high domain authority and top ranking. Website credibility. Besides domain authority, the quality of backlinks is also influenced by the credibility of a certain website. Such sites should be secure, attract organic traffic, avoid Google penalties, and have low spam scores and bounce rates. Relevance. A website should put only relevant links. This is since Google cares about its users and strives to give them only relevant accurate results. To avoid problems with search engines and stay ahead of your competitors, include backlinks related to your niche. Ensure your backlinks look natural in your content and help customers solve their problems. Do-follow and no-follow links. Remember, do-follow links are useful for your website since they help your SEO, especially with ranking. At the same time, no-follow links can’t directly affect your ranking yet they help bring in more traffic. That’s why ensure that you have enough do-follow and no-follow links to improve ranking and generate more traffic. Anchor text. Although you might think that anchor text doesn’t play an important role, yet it does. It defines the value of the link provided and connects two different websites. To give a backlink the maximum value, anchor text should be specific, relevant, and contain appropriate keywords. As a result, search engines can identify the content of the linked site. The placement of a link. The position of a backlink also matters. Make sure that your inbound link isn’t in the footer or on a website’s sidebar because it will be considered an advertising link. As a result, your website reputation and ranking may suffer. Now that you are aware of the factors, let’s move to the strategies. 5 Strategies to Get High-Quality Backlinks If you want to boost your organic traffic, you should pay attention to building backlinks. By placing links on reputable websites, you can improve your reputation to look more attractive for search engines. We’ve prepared several strategies to help you build quality inbound links, so let’s dive in. Explore competitor’s backlinks. Searching for new link-building opportunities can be a challenging task. However, there’s one very simple and effective method. To get the new opportunities, get the list of your main competitors’ backlinks. Choose the top 5 rivals based on your main keywords. Once you make your choice, analyze their backlinks. You can use a special SEO tool to analyze the backlinks of your competitors. Keep in mind that you don’t need to replicate all links. Choose the ones with good authority. See the mentions of your competitors. Besides competitors’ backlinks, mentions on social media channels, forums, or websites also help obtain a list of backlinks. You can help people by answering questions and solving their problems on different channels and they can also help you in return, for instance, endorse your company on their websites and put a link to your site. Consider guest blogging. If you want to create buzz around your brand on the internet, guest blogging is the right decision. With its help, you can win new clients and communicate with people interested in your industry. It will enable you to increase your following on social media, boost traffic, and build great backlinks. However, make sure that guest posts are unique, relevant, and don’t contain spam to avoid penalties from search engines. Promote your content. If you have quality and informative content, promote it. Some great articles might draw the attention of authoritative companies in your niche and offer you backlinks. You can share your content in a variety of ways: social media, influencers, bloggers, and partners. Use the most popular channels to distribute information to find websites that might be interested in inbound links. Publish great ultimate guides. Guides are usually informative and long-form which is good for SEO. It’s a well-known fact that article length is an important factor for good performance in Google. When creating an ultimate guide, choose a relevant topic that includes keywords and complies with SEO principles. Create long enough posts for readers to understand and find a solution for their problems. Now it’s time to figure out how to find and check your backlinks. How to Find and Check Your Backlinks If you want to find backlinks to different websites, you can use Ahrefs. Go to Site Explorer. Paste in a domain of a specific website. Based on what you want to explore, in the drop-down menu choose “*.domain/*” for websites or “exact URL”, if you want to analyze a web page. Go to the Backlinks profile to see all backlinks of a necessary website or page and explore its data. In the Backlink profile, you’ll see newly lost, broken backlinks, anchor text, referring domains, first seen, and traffic. You can leverage other tools as well. There are many other useful SEO tools such as SE Ranking, BuzzSumo, Moz, Ubersuggest, Majestic SEO, and more. Make use of them to analyze the backlinks of your competitors, find the right for your website, and track the current situation with your backlinks. In a nutshell, backlinks are an integral part of any successful website. They help show the credibility and authority of your website and content. Moreover, inbound links help Google decide on the quality of content and rank it higher.

Birthday marketing is a marketing strategy used to nurture and strengthen relationships with the customers by giving something for free on the customers’ birthday or during a birthday month. Birthday marketing occurs as personalized and automated emails, triggered by each customer’s birth datethat provides them with a specialized positive experience. In this video, the LIKE.TG marketer considers milestone emails and birthday emails in particular. Find out how it helps boost customer loyalty! Why is birthday marketing important? It has high click-through rates Nurtures clients Easy to do Improves the brand’s reputation Increases revenue It has high click-through rates. Birthday marketing campaigns produce significant CTR, which gets to 13%. Nurtures clients. Birthday marketing is a useful tool for client nurturing. A high-quality birthday campaign results in loyalty to the brand, as it shows the customers that the brand cares. Easy to do. A birthday email campaign is produced once and then works automatically all year round. It can be edited anytime, if necessary. You can set up a birthday campaign with Automation 360. Improves the brand’s reputation. Birthday marketing naturally engages people to share their positive experiences with others verbally or through socials. It enhances the brand’s reputation and builds a trustful relationship with the audience. Increases revenue.Well-designed birthday marketing raises a brand’s income from a long-term perspective because it gradually turns subscribers into loyal clients, which are easier to communicate with and provide value to. How to Send Birthday Marketing Campaigns with LIKE.TG Choose a mailing list that has a Birth date variable Create an automation flow and choose the event Special date Fill in all the fields Create an email Send Building a birthday marketing campaign is not that sophisticated, because no knowledge of coding is required. You can easily set it up with Automation 360. Choose a mailing list that has a Birth date variable Mind that you can’t simply add this variable — the information has to come from the subscription, or it should be added to the mailing list in some other way. Create an automation flow and choose the event Special date Fill in all the fields Select the necessary mailing list, variable "Birthdate"and the time for sending. Create an email Send Birthday Marketing Tips and Best Practices Gather data beforehand Emphasize "birthday," not "marketing" Provide any positive experience Get maximum from celebrations Gather data beforehand. Apply birthday marketing in your general email marketing plan and gather data on consumers’ birth dates as soon as possible. If you haven’t collected data yet, but want to implement a birthday strategy in your business, use subscription formsto collect data. Emphasize "birthday," not "marketing." A 15% discount is not a gift, and it’s marketing. Remember, birthday marketing is intended to strengthen relationships with the customers, not toincrease sales immediately. Feel confident to give something for free. Provide any positive experience. It’s not necessary to present some material gift to a birthday customer. Just tell them how glad you are to have them with you. Wish them wealth and health; they will appreciate it. Get maximum from celebrations. Develop a long-term automated strategy. Besides birthday marketing, there is holiday marketing, which also increases loyalty and revenue during traditional celebrations like Christmas, Thanksgiving Day, New Year. Birthday Marketing Examples and Ideas This email lets recipients choose any item with a 25% discount. In this email, the brand offers a 20% discount for both in-store and online shops. This is how companies encourage subscribers to share their birth dates. This email is an example of how to present just good emotions without sales.

Behavioral marketing is a set of actions aimed at promoting and selling products based on users’ interactions with your brand’s ads, website, emails, social media pages, chatbots, etc. These digital marketing channels offer different tools to use people’s behavior patterns to your company’s advantage. You can enrich your marketing strategy by gathering and analyzing behavioral data, segmenting your audience, and implementing your findings in your future communication. Let’s find out why brands leverage user behavior in their strategies. Why is behavioral marketing important? It allows you to better tailor your ads It helps you attract more warm leads It helps you increase sales It helps you establish better relationships with your audience There are several reasons to keep an eye on users’ behavior in your marketing operations. Here they are: It allows you to better tailor your ads. Google Ads and Facebook Ads are designed to help you promote your brand and its products and services. These tech giants collect a large amount of personal and behavioral data so that you can better tailor your ads to audiences interested in your offers. It helps you attract more warm leads. Behavioral data can inform you about a user’s stage in the buyer’s journey, their preferences, and interests. With these insights on hand, you can find and attract leads who are likely to buy from your company. It will also take less effort and investment. It helps you increase sales. Behavioral marketing allows you to put your products in front of an interested audience when they need them. Your sales team can work more accurately and reach better results if they leverage user behavior patterns. It helps you establish better relationships with your audience. Behavioral marketing is not all about selling and advertising. The technology also allows you to provide your audience with more relevant content. User behavior tells you who your clients are, so you can use it to give people what they want when they need it most. Let’s learn about the mechanism that stands behind behavior marketing. How does behavioral marketing work? Data Collection and Analysis Audience Segmentation Applying the Data Behavioral marketing works when the three following activities are integrated: data collection and analysis, audience segmentation, and application of the data. Depending on the channel, these three phases may overlap. Let’s discuss them in more detail. Phase 1: Data Collection and Analysis Data that is used for behavioral marketing can come from various channels, including: social media; search engines; websites; mobile applications; emails; chatbots. Today, social media platforms, large online retailers, bulk email services, and mobile applications collect behavioral data from users. Because of that, businesses can use this data to serve more relevant content and better-targeted offers without investing time and money to gather behavioral information. Phase 2: Audience Segmentation This is a way to divide people into groups that have some common demographics and behavioral patterns. Without audience segmentation, you can only send the same message to the entire audience. With some channels, like Facebook Ads, this process is semi-automated. Meaning, you only need to choose the audience to show your ads to. Pick up users’ interests or behavior patterns and the algorithm will automatically segment your target audience. Google Analytics can collect data about your site’s users, how long they browse on the internet, and which queries they use. With this data, they can target their display and retargeting ads with great precision. You can easily segment your subscribers based on their engagement in your email marketing campaigns. You can send emails specifically to users who have never purchased from your brand or those who bought goods last month and deliver different messages to these audiences. Phase 3: Applying the Data In the last phase, you need to create ads, emails, or other messages based on the insights you’ve gained about your audience. Let’s see some examples of how brands apply behavioral data to benefit their businesses. Behavioral Marketing Examples Facebook Ads Google Search and Display ads Email Marketing Chatbots Let’s explore some brilliant examples of behavioral data usage across social media, search engines, emails, and chatbots. Facebook Ads Targeting is what makes Facebook Ads so effective. Muscle Road narrowed their audience down to California-based men aged 18 to 40 who are interested in bodybuilding. This ad is designed to promote the page on Facebook and attract local people to the gym. Google Search and Display ads Google collects a lot of behavioral data about users, which allows companies to create well-targeted ads. When users search something on Google like “apple iPad,” they will see shopping ads first, like in the screenshot below. If they clicked through these ads but didn’t purchase, they may see display ads on some news and entertainment websites from these stores. Such ads will remind users that they wanted to buy an iPad, and they will be more likely to make an emotional decision. Email Marketing You can send triggered emails based on user activities. For instance, abandoned cart emails are triggered when a user fails to finish shopping. It helps marketers encourage users to return and keep shopping. Here’s such an email from Adidas. You can also send reactivation emails to users who haven’t opened your emails in a while. Here’s a simple yet smart example form GrowthHacks. You can set up automated emails like these in LIKE.TG’s Automation 360 by following the next steps: Register with LIKE.TG; Create an event and send it from your site; Create a template; Create an email workflow. Here’s how an abandoned cart email sequence looks: the initial email is sent an hour after cart abandonment. If a user still doesn’t complete the order, another reminder is sent in 24 hours. The last email goes out 24 hours after the previous one, and it offers a 15% discount. In case a user makes a purchase, they receive a thank-you email with order details and the expected delivery date. The more you communicate with your subscribers, the more information you can learn about their behavior, engagement level, and demographics. Based on these insights, you can identify which kinds of content are more suitable for specific users. Here’s an example of a personalized email based on the location users log into their account. These two versions are built on one template but have different offers to fit users from distant climate zones. Chatbots Chatbots on Facebook and Telegram can help you segment users based on their replies and questions during a conversation. Having data about what they want to buy, or what they like helps you follow up with relevant content and offers right in users’ personal messages. The chatbot below helps users choose the best options available and book tickets. The company can leverage this information for creating targeted ads and content in the future. Let’s finish this guide with some pieces of advice. 4 Best Practices to Succeed in Behavioral Marketing Explain how you use people’s data Ask users for data Analyze the results and test new tactics Don’t overdo with segmentation We’ve collected some actionable tips to improve your behavioral marketing strategy. Check them out: Explain how you use people’s data. It’s okay to use behavioral data, but some users may find it strange that you know exactly what they want to purchase. To avoid any trouble, invite new site visitors to check your cookie and privacy policy pages. Ask users for data. You can ask users for more information using surveys and by collecting feedback. Analyze the results and test new tactics. Use Google Analytics and monitor email marketing statisticsto better understand which behavioral data brings your business money. Don’t overdo with segmentation. If you divide your audience into tiny segments, only a few people will meet your criteria. Focus on providing value in the first place, and only use segmentation as one of many tools to achieve that goal. Congratulations, you learned the basics of behavioral marketing, and you know how to use data to improve advertising and communication.

Business to customer marketing, commonly known as B2C marketing, is a set of strategies, practices, and tactics that a company uses to push its products or services to customers. B2C campaigns don’t just focus on the benefit or value that a product offers, but also on invoking an emotional response from the customer. B2C marketing works on the basis that customers look for goods or services to meet an immediate need. Therefore, they tend to purchase without doing much research on the product or service. With B2C purchases, users typically complete their purchase within the first hours or days of becoming aware of a product or service.For a successful B2C campaign, a business owner should understand their customers’ buying habits, trends in the market, and what strategies the competitors use. B2C promotions should be bright, easy for consumers to understand, and focused on solving the precise problem faced by their customers. With this information and the right tools, it is easy to create a campaign that triggers the right reactions from customers and as a result, drives sales. Why is B2C marketing important? Boosts website visits Helps brands grow their subscriber list Offers more refined interactions with customers Gives businesses better rankings on search engines Increases conversion and brand awareness B2C marketing is vital for all businesses that sell consumer-based products or services. These include restaurants, drug stores, car companies, fashion businesses, software companies, grocery stores, and so forth. Today, however, the internet has become the most preferred channel for B2C brands to promote their goods or services and for conducting market research. Almost every B2C company wants to get a share of the$2.3 trillion e-commerce industry and shift its marketing outreach online. B2C e-commerce sales stood at $1.5 billion in 2013, with forecasts showing steady growth to 2.35 billion in 2018. These figures show that B2C marketing is worth the investment for higher ROI and business growth. B2C marketing is beneficial in the following ways, it: Boosts website visits: B2C campaigns are created to wooprospective customersinto visiting your brand’s website to earn more about your brand. Helps brands grow their subscriber list: when the number of leads that visit a business’s website increases, the number of new subscribers also goes up. Offers more refined interactions with customers: with knowledge about your target audience, B2C companies can send more specific messages at strategic times. Here segmentation proves to be useful. Gives businesses better rankings on search engines: by using targeted keywords, a website can increase its position in search results. As a result, there are more chances for users to find YOUR company. Increases conversion and brand awareness: B2C marketing strategies enable businesses to reach and connect with large audiences through bulk emailing, social media outreach, and other channels. As a result, a brand becomes popular, and conversion rates increase. Features of B2C Marketing B2C marketing can be characterized by a list of features that makes it stand out. Look below. A short sales cycle. Unlike B2B marketing, in which the sales cycle is much longer, B2C clients don’t spend hours on research, hesitating, and comparing every single feature. B2C customers usually buy products that were advised by their friends so the entire process is less intimidating for clients and sellers. Domination of an emotional element over the rational one. B2C customers look for instant solutions to their problems based on their desires. They rarely think strategically over the purchase. They are just looking for a fast solution that will satisfy their needs here and now. So if a brand manages to provide them with this solution, they will definitely return to for the same emotional experience. Working with the end-user. B2C companies usually deal directly with the consumers of their products. This makes it easier to convince a person, find the right words, and use special techniques. While in B2B, a salesperson needs to negotiate with multiple influencers who make decisions on behalf of the entire company. The high importance of social media. Working with the end consumers is impossible today without investing in social media marketing. While choosing a product, people desperately look for customer feedback. They investigate each channel they know to make the right decision. They not only look for reviews but prefer Facebook and Instagram to talk to the brand via chatbots. You will hardly find a person who will give a call or visit the company’s office. So, brands create chatbots to provide clients with 24/7 support, collect reviews, share updates, and run retargeting campaigns to bring in new customers and maintain relationships with them. B2C Marketing vs. B2B Marketing B2C and B2B marketing differ significantly; therefore, understanding these differences can make a brand’s marketing campaigns more relevant and successful. The following is a comprehensive comparison of the two: B2C Marketing B2B Marketing Sells to the final customer directly. Targets a company or business. Customers are impulsive and want to see all the information about the product at once. They will rarely do more research to understand the product. Customers are likely to do more research before purchasing and compare the product with competing options. Targets the emotional drive associated with purchasing a product. Focuses on the features and value of a product. Works around benefits and desires. Is more about the characteristics and logic. The goal of customers is a personal improvement. The aim of target customers is to power their business. Makes small-scale sales for personal use. These are low-volume sales spread across many consumers. Sales are large-scale. The customers are limited, but the purchasing volume is large. Consumers make purchases instantly after seeing the product ad or within a very short time. They look for immediate results. Customers typically go through a much longer buying process. They want to fulfill long-term goals. B2C Marketing Channels Email marketing Mobile marketing Web push marketing Social media marketing SEO Paid Search Advertising B2C marketing has been in existence fora longtime and relies on various communication channels to reach the final customer. Just like other types of marketing, growth in technology has also increased the number of marketing channels in B2C. The most important channels for B2C marketers include the following: Email marketing Email marketing is a popular and effective way for consumer brands looking to increasetheir sales to reach the target audience. It primarily involves sending out email blasts or personalized promotional emails to new leads or loyal customers. Email marketing, however, is only useful if it is relevant to the recipients. Mobile marketing It is estimated that over half of all internet shoppers buy things from their mobile devices. Therefore, successful B2C companies should work on reaching mobile users through interactive and mobile-optimized promotions. Mobile marketing aims to reach mobile users through websites, apps, SMS, MMS, and social media. Web push marketing Push notifications are a way to deliver messages about sales, discounts, or offers to customers in real-time when they visit a website. Push notifications usually pop up on users’ computers or mobile screens and help elicit an immediate response from the viewer. Social media marketing (SMM) SMM is the use of social media networks like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to promote goods or services directly to customers. It entails creating and sharing marketing content on social media platforms. Usually, B2C businesses use social media as a channel to market their brands' potential target customers, loyal clients, and the general public. SEO Search Engine Optimizationis a natural or organic marketing process for increasing the visibility of a site or webpage on a search engine’s non-paid results. Good SEO practices and tools help businesses drive more traffic to their websites and consequently increase sales. Paid Search Advertising This form of marketing is a type of pay-per-click advertising where brands pay for their digital advertisements to appear on the results page of a search engine like Google or Yahoo. The placement and frequency of these ads depend on one’s quality score and bid. B2C Marketing Tools Email marketing SMS marketing Web push marketing Messenger marketing Combination of an online chat + behavior-based scripts + chatbots B2C marketers, sales executives, and business owners can benefit from marketing tools offered by services such as LIKE.TG. Here are the most prominent services: Email marketing Email marketing tools with LIKE.TG can be used to build and segment mailing lists, create and send personalized email campaigns, automate email sending, analyze subscriber activity, and monitor results. This channel assists marketers with user onboarding and moves users down the sales funnel. Let's increase your income! Send segmented email campaigns to convert leads to clients. We offer a free plan, ready-made templates, marketing automation, and even more. Register and create an email campaign! SMS marketing SMS marketing tools enable brands to reach prospects and loyal customers on their mobile devices. With LIKE.TG, brands can send bulk promotional or non-commercial SMS messages to 800 mobile networks in more than 190 countries worldwide. You can schedule SMS sending to a specific date and time or choose gradual sending atdefined times. You can perform B2C marketing with LIKE.TG at speeds of up to 500 SMS messages per second. Web push marketing LIKE.TG helps brands send browser push notifications about sales, exciting updates, new content, and products that get the attention of visitors and drive traffic back to websites. They are easy to set up and work on most browsers, including Chrome, Opera, and Firefox. Messenger marketing You can promote your products via messengers as well as answer users' frequently asked questions, help them order, and register for events using a chatbot. With LIKE.TG you can create a chatbot for Facebook Messenger and Telegram and send up to 10,000 messages every month at no cost. Combination of an online chat + behavior-based scripts + chatbots It is important for brands to use an omnichannel approach to be successful in B2C sales — after all, potential customers are looking for products and services in a convenient channel and at a convenient time. It is necessary to involve uncommunicative visitors in your dialogue, promptly answer questions, help with order placement, advise on prices, and motivate them to buy and come back to your website in the future. LIKE.TG allows users to create a live chat for a website for free without any coding skills. This way, you'll convert more site visitors into clients, assist users and start building long-lasting relationships with your audience. Test launching a scripted online chat based on the behavior or actions of your website visitors. In order not to lose calls from visitors outside of working hours, invite them to chat and subscribe to your Facebook chatbot. You can customize the look of your chatbot to make it match your corporate identity, or change its position and format on the website — minimized or expanded. B2C Marketing Strategies Content marketing. You've definitely heard the quote published on Microsoft's site "Content is King." Every famous brand invests in content marketing. This strategy helps businesses generate leads, increase their target audience, boost engagement, nurture leads, build brand awareness, blow up sales, and raise customer loyalty. Different content formats help effectively reach these goals. You can start a blog both to drive traffic to your site and educate your audience about your products. Search Engine Optimization. Now, that you're in content marketing, it's high time you take SEO seriously. This strategy means optimizing your site pages to rank high in the search engine results page. In short, this is a set of techniques that enables the search engine robots to make your content visible and help people find it. This is a long-term strategy that implies working with users' search queries, the load speed of your pages, and building links to your website. Paid advertising. This strategy is similar to SEO, the only difference is that you have to pay for it. It includes PPC, ads on Facebook, and Instagram, retargeting campaigns. All these ads help drive users who are already interested in your product to your site. Depending on the ad format, you can either pay for views or for clicks. Email marketing. With a well-thought email marketing strategy, you can increase your outreach, build long-lasting relationships with your audience, increase brand recognition, and boost sales. Combine promotional emails with transactional campaigns to perform better. With LIKE.TG's Automation 360, you can send emails triggered by users' actions automatically. Social media. People spend hours per day on social media channels and they DO use them to buy products online. They look for reviews and customer feedback on Facebook and seek more behind-the-scenes information about brands on Instagram. Besides, they tend to share content they liked with their friends, so you can both increase sales and user engagement. In addition, you can use Facebook and Instagram to talk to your audience, find out which improvements will make you brand the best choice. Influencer marketing. Find the most popular bloggers in your niche. They will help you promote your brand to their vast audience in favorable terms. If they enjoy using your product, you’ll get the benefits of long-term cooperation and increase sales significantly. You only need to carry out research to find the right influencers. Membership and rewarding programs. Your loyal clients let your brand prosper. They not only increase your ROI but bring in new clients, spread a good word about your brand, and can help you improve. Create programs to reward their loyalty. Offer them to collect points that they can change for a product or a discount. How to Start B2C Marketing with LIKE.TG Register in LIKE.TG Choose the optimal channel or mix them Upload a mailing list or grow your current list Send your marketing campaign Monitor results and improve strategy Consumer-based companies can achieve B2C marketing success with LIKE.TG for free. Follow these steps to create and send B2C campaigns. Register in LIKE.TG. Sign up on the website and start using marketing tools to reach and connect with prospects for free. Choose the optimal channel or mix them. Choose a suitable channel for your new campaign.You can choose email, SMS, web push, Facebook Messenger, and Telegram app. LIKE.TG also lets you combine multiple channels in one campaign for better outreach. Upload a mailing list or grow your current list. You can add a mailing list if you have one already or create a new list of contacts. With the help of a subscription form or a script for push notifications — which you can make and segment with LIKE.TG — brands can grow their mailing list without much effort. Besides, you can create multichannel formsto communicate with your audience via messengers. If you upload your existing mailing list, we recommend your verify the addresses with our free tool. This check will help you stay out of the spam folder and keep your sender reputation high. Send your marketing campaign. Create the content for your campaign, add the list of recipients, and send it. Alternatively, schedule a date and specific time for automatic sending. Monitor results and improve strategy. With LIKE.TG reports, track how the campaign performs. Analyze delivered emails, opens, clicks, delivery errors, unsubscribes, spam complaints, and improve your marketing strategy. B2C Marketing Automation Marketing Automation is essential, especially for B2C companies, as it simplifies and optimizes most marketing tasks. With LIKE.TG Automation 360, you can automate marketing campaigns across multiple channels. This automation tool lets you send triggered messages after customers perform actions such as making a purchase, registering on the website, abandoning products in their carts, or any other event you specify. To get started with Automation 360: Sign up. Add an event to be tracked, such as a «Add subscriber,» when a visitor joins your mailing list. Create an email, SMS, or web push message to send when the event is triggered. Start the automation flow. Track conversions. B2C Marketing Examples See how Habitat tempts its customers to buy the products at reduced prices. Check out another example of the B2C tactic to increase sales. Skiphop offers a free shipping day for all the orders. Look how True Citrus takes advantage of Valentine’s Day. They offer generous, time-limited sales to push clients to make a purchase. B2C Marketing Tips and Best Practices Ethically collect recipient addresses to avoid being blacklisted. A permission-based marketing approach is the choice of a good marketer. Categorize your leads and keep detailed buyer profiles. Create catchy headlines on landing pages to pull in the potential buyer. Create personalized, interactive, and engaging content to attract and enhance the customer experience with the help of segmentation. Optimize marketing messages and web pages for mobile. Start B2C marketing, grow brand awareness, and increase sales with the help of LIKE.TG today.

Business-to-business (B2B) marketing is a process that involves selling a product manufactured by one company to another. It helps companies promote products to other businesses, establish brand awareness, educate brands about specific products or services, generate leads, and retain existing customers. In this article, you’ll find out how B2B marketing works, the difference between B2B vs B2C marketing, and the best strategies. We’ll also explain what B2B content marketing is, review B2B marketing trends in 2024, and provide tips and examples. How does B2B marketing work? Before diving into the more complicated definitions and processes, you need to understand how B2B marketing works. In this section, we’ll tell you about it in short. B2B marketing starts with identifying the target audience. Unlike B2C marketing, B2B marketing focuses on building awareness among decision-makers of specific businesses. It usually involves online communication across channels like LinkedIn. Marketers build connections and educate decision-makers about products and services to achieve the necessary results. The strategy varies depending on your industry, business type, and product. For effective results, B2B marketing implies using quality content to prove that your product or service is a perfect fit for specific businesses. Blog posts, social media posts, and email marketinghelp you reach prospects and demonstrate your expertise, encouraging them to take the desired action. In addition to the target audience, you can differentiate B2B marketing using other factors. In the next section, we’ll provide you with a table comparing B2B and B2C marketing. B2B vs B2C Marketing Although B2B and B2C marketers often follow the same guidelines and practices, there are some crucial differences between these terms. Having a complete understanding of each type will improve your business, attract new clients, and boost your income. B2B B2C Target audience Markets to other companies Markets to consumers directly Examples Ad agencies, office furniture manufacturers, etc. Restaurants, hotels, retail stores, etc. Communication Uses special industry jargon and terms Provides consumers with easy-to-understand information Audience needs The audience is looking for professional expertise The audience is looking for entertainment and a good deal Decision-making process The decision-making process can take a lot of time Consumers don’t need a lot of time to make decision Products Products are designed for various types of businesses Products are created for personal use Price tag B2B companies usually have a high price tag for sizable budgets B2C companies usually have cheaper products, but some of them can also be pricey Selling cycle The selling cycle usually takes a lot of time and effort to complete The selling process is fast and often with repeat purchases As you can see, in B2B marketing, you work with specific individuals or small groups of people within a given industry. Your main goal is to establish relations with office managers or other higher-level employees of the business you want to cooperate with. After all, these are the people who decide whether the company will purchase your products. Additionally, consider that, as a rule, B2C customers want to get valuable information about this or that service or product as quickly as possible. When choosing a company, they rely on reviews and social proof. At the same time, in B2B marketing, people learn more about the services or products that interest them. As soon as they discover the potential benefits, they start searching for more specific details about your company and compare it with competitors. Also, these people may look for third-party reviews and similar products your competitors provide. It’s time to explore some of the best B2B marketing strategies to help you convert more decision-makers into clients. 11 B2B Marketing Strategies Email Marketing Content Marketing Social Media Marketing SMS Marketing Web Push Marketing Messenger Marketing Search Engine Marketing Webinars and Online Events Influencer Marketing Referral Programs Customer Success Stories Numerous B2B marketing strategies can help you attain your goals. Here, we’ll unveil the most effective ones suitable for various industries and business sizes. Email Marketing It’s a no-brainer that emails provide a great chance to reach prospective clients. You need an email if you want to maintain relationships with your partners and inform them about the news and deals. The statistics show that about 93% of B2B marketing specialists use this strategy to establish new business relations. Your emails should include useful information to provide your partners with reasons to start cooperating with you. Tell users about the benefits of your product that will help your clients solve their problems. Consider adding some attractive offers, discounts, and rewards to encourage purchases. When relevant and personalized, these promos will entice subscribers and convert them into customers. For example, Asana sends special emails to its prospective clients. They introduce the platform and show how it can help with business task management. There is a CTA button that gives a prospect the opportunity to start their project right after reading the email. Content Marketing All B2B customers want useful information from your website or emails not only to discover something new but also to assure themselves of your expertise. If you want to satisfy your partners' needs, it's better to mix useful content with SEO to ensure the clients will certainly find your website. The majority of prospective customers prefer to get new knowledge from articles over ads. That's why it's a wise decision to create a business blog with topics related to your industry. This way, you will not only provide your clients with valuable information but educate and promote your products along the way. A good example of a B2B content marketing strategy is one developed by STR Software. This company constantly tries to attract large organizations with big budgets and complex sales cycles. To get more leads, specialists from STR created "BI Publisher University." This website includes tons of useful information for businesses. Each page has a subscription form to collect the data necessary for lead nurturing. Social Media Marketing Social media is an integral part of modern business. According to statistics, 82% of B2B marketers use Facebook. With the help of social media marketing (SMM), you can increase your number of leads and establish fruitful business relationships. Furthermore, you may encourage your employees to create accounts on LinkedIn for B2B marketing. There, they can share information about your company and business achievements. And, of course, it's a great opportunity to increase the level of engagement with potential partners. For example, Hyatt Hotels Corporation employees post news and interesting offers on their personal LinkedIn pages, mentioning Hyatt establishments. This allows them to establish relationships with customers and provide them with useful information in a friendly manner. SMS Marketing According to Mobile Marketing Watch, this type of message has an open rate of 98%. Given these impressive statistics, you should definitely implement an SMS marketing strategy. Text messages allow you to establish direct contact with potential customers, improve engagement, and deliver time-sensitive offers. Since SMS are more visible to prospects, they help you attain wider reach and better conversion rates. Web Push Marketing Push messaging has revolutionized the modern marketing industry. According to Marketing Land, these messages have a high click-through rate (CTR), especially when personalized and sent at the right time. Your web push notifications should be relevant, concise, and engaging to attract decision-makers and make them explore your offers. They should be straight to the point so that businesses can directly figure out what your product is about. Messenger Marketing Messenger marketing has already become popular in the B2B sector. As seen on Adlibweb, messengers have nearly 80% open rates and 20% click-through rates. And in case you don't know which messenger to choose, you should start with Facebook, as it is the most popular with business people. You can also consider using a chatbot to help your decision-makers explore your product and provide more detailed information about it, as BDC does on its website. Search Engine Marketing Search engines invite you to implement various types of ads to boost your brand visibility and awareness. You can use pay-per-click campaigns on Google Ads to attract more traffic to your site and generate more leads. Besides PPC campaigns, consider incorporating retargeting, allowing you to re-engage with decision-makers who have already interacted with your site or content on various platforms. For example, when companies search for something in Google, they might come across your product when you use sponsored ads. For example, once you look for website builders, you’ll instantly notice Wix, which will be at the top of search results. Webinars and Online Events Consider incorporating webinars and other online events to provide decision-makers with insights and solutions to industry challenges they might be facing in their companies. When doing online events, add QA sessions to communicate with prospects in real-time and identify their current issues. It’ll make it so much easier for you to resonate with their needs, find the right approach, and choose the right words when communicating your marketing message. Below, you can see an example of a free webinar provided by BDC to other businesses. This particular webinar focuses on using AI for business. Influencer Marketing With opinion leaders, it’ll be easier for you to reach the right people with the right message promoting your product or service. If you manage to find influencers in your industry that have a big influence on their audiences, you can expand your reach and educate potential clients about your product. When being recommended by an opinion leader, you can get the credibility and trust of users. It contributes to more people exploring your brand and considering purchases. Referral Programs By offering discounts, special offers, and rewards, you encourage existing customers to refer new clients. These incentives will help you expand your reach without investing much in ads. When you turn your existing customers into your brand advocates, you can allocate costs on ads to some other areas of your B2B marketing strategy. This ensures that new customers will definitely perform a buy while optimizing some other points needing your attention. Customer Success Stories Sharing your customer testimonials allows you to demonstrate the usefulness of your product and the real change it brings to customers. They can describe the benefits, establish trusting relationships with leads, and build credibility. Below you can see Amazon Business sharing customer success stories on its website to drive more conversions. These are the most popular and effective strategies, yet it's impossible to describe all of them because marketing is constantly changing. New methods appear while the old ones lose their edge, so it is vital to keep a finger on the pulse. Now, let’s delve into creating a B2B marketing strategy for your company. How to create a B2B marketing strategy? Developing a B2B marketing strategy implies a structured plan covering your target audience, goals, and ways to reach them. Below you can find a detailed guide on creating the strategy for your B2B company. Develop a vision. Your business goals should be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Timely). Then think about the B2B marketing strategy that will help you achieve them. When developing a strategic vision, answer the following questions: Who is your target audience? Where will you engage your audience? Who will hold your marketing campaign? What tools will you use? How can you increase engagement? How will you measure your success? Identify your primary goals. Define the objectives you want to attain when implementing your B2B marketing strategy. These objectives can include brand awareness, lead generation, and an increase in sales and income. Make sure that your goals are SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Timely) so that your business can achieve them. Understand your target audience. Consider researching the market, industry trends, main companies, and market size. Divide your target audience into segments based on their industry, business size, location, and requirements. Then, create buyer personas representing your ideal customer. Outline their pain points, decision-making process, and channels for interactions. Conduct competitor analysis. Determine your main competitors, their strengths and weaknesses, positioning, and marketing strategies. Consider using this data for your further analysis and marketing efforts. It will help you out with the best marketing strategy and stand out competition. Establish your unique value proposition. Think of the points that make your product unique and the reasons customers prefer it over competitors. Afterward, outline messaging that will help you effectively communicate the benefit your product brings to other businesses. Create a content strategy. Determine the content types you want to use to successfully deliver your marketing message and encourage decision-makers to take the desired action. Depending on your product, you can publish blog posts, whitepapers, case studies, or videos. Consider developing a content calendar to effectively map out the creation and publishing dates for your content. Besides, when creating content, ensure that it meets SEO standards to take top positions in search results. Identify the best communication channels. Consider using online or offline marketing channels or a combination of them. Identify the most effective platforms for communicating with your target audience. In addition to traditional channels like conferences, trade shows, and other events, consider incorporating effective online channels, including sites, social media platforms, ads, email marketing, etc. Use lead generation and nurturing approaches. Add lead magnets to your website to encourage action from those who visit it. It can be eBooks, webinars, free trials, or something else providing value to your site visitors. You can also incorporate email marketing solutions like LIKE.TG to send personalized email campaigns with offers that might be interesting for your subscribers, guiding them down the sales funnel. With marketing automation, you’ll be able to run lead nurturing and follow-up on autopilot. Align your marketing and sales efforts. Give your sales and marketing team all the necessary tools, content, and information for proper communication between these departments. This will help you provide prospects with consistent information and move them through the sales process. Evaluate your key performance indicators. Determine metrics that help you evaluate the performance of your B2B marketing strategy. They might include lead conversion rates, ROI, customer acquisition cost, and many more. You should also find the right analytics tools for your convenience, including Google Analytics, CRM, and marketing automation solutions. They will help you track and analyze your strategy performance easier and faster. Launch your campaign. When your plan is ready and you've chosen the best strategies, it's time to take action. Make sure that your team members do their best to satisfy prospective clients. It is vital to get acquainted with the best marketing practices and implement some tips in your strategy. Also, remember that you should focus on targeting the right audience. Your main task is to create messages that provide information to a specific group of people who may become your business partners. Improve your strategy based on performance. Once you obtain data from analytics tools, use it to your advantage when optimizing your strategy. A/B testing will help you compare several campaigns and identify the best-performing one for your business and audience. Now that you understand the process of developing a B2B marketing strategy, you need to find out how B2B content marketing matters for higher conversions. B2B Content Marketing Content plays a crucial role for all businesses, including B2B companies. It educates about products and influences decision-makers. In this section, we’ll explore B2B content marketing in more detail. B2B content marketing is the process of creating and distributing useful content that draws attention and helps engage with other businesses. This content focuses on addressing the problems, needs, and preferences of business clients and decision-makers. Now that you know the definition, let’s proceed to the importance content marketing carries for B2B companies. Why is content marketing important for B2B? B2B content marketing plays an important role in attracting prospects and converting them into paying customers. In this section, we’ll unveil even more reasons for you to consider it for your B2B marketing strategy. Content marketing for B2B is essential because it: Helps establish authority and trust. High-quality, valuable content allows you to show your expertise and establish authority in the industry. When you have a lot of useful content helping customers solve their problems, you are more likely to gain site visitors' trust. Generates leads. With informative content that provides real solutions to users, your company can attract more potential customers interested in your product. By addressing site visitors’ concerns and pain points, you can communicate reasons for potential customers to consider your product. Nurtures relationships with potential customers. Useful, high-quality, and consistent content allows you to nurture relationships with prospects. Various content types help interest leads and move them down the sales funnel. Improves customer retention. By consistently providing valuable information and following up with potential customers through email campaigns, social media posts, blog posts, and other content, you can establish trusting relationships with prospects and retain existing customers. The right marketing messages and attractive offers encourage customers to re-engage and take the desired action. Boosts brand visibility. Content optimized based on SEO standards enables you to stay in the top results. High-quality content with relevant keywords improves your site visibility, driving more organic traffic to your website. It results in more potential customers. Increases sales. Subscription forms with lead magnets, including case studies, whitepapers, and webinars, encourage site visitors to subscribe to your email newsletter. After obtaining prospects’ contact data, you can keep in touch with them and offer useful content. This can encourage leads to purchase from your brand. Now let’s take a look at B2B content marketing strategy to understand how it works. B2B Content Marketing Strategy Your B2B content marketing strategy should be developed depending on the stage of the buyer journey customers are in. So we’ll review each stage and the type of content you can use to effectively reach your business clients and lead them down the sales funnel. Awareness stage. At this stage, consider creating blog posts, infographics, social media posts, short informative videos, podcasts, e-books, and whitepapers. They will all help you outline the pain points of your target audience, their common challenges, and solutions. Consideration stage. At this point, prospects assess different products allowing them to solve their problems. You should use the right content to show that your product is the best solution to the challenges they face. For this purpose, consider using webinars, research reports, email campaigns, case studies, online events, and whitepapers. Decision stage. This is when leads are ready to take action. They compare all the possible options to choose the best one. To become that one solution, your company should provide product reviews, testimonials, detailed product information, consultations with specialists or customer support, free plans, trials, or demos. Retention stage. After customers buy your products, you need to follow up with them to ensure that everything works properly and they are satisfied with your brand. Provide them with onboarding documents, FAQs, and links to your knowledge base, and send them emails confirming that they successfully use your product. Advocacy stage. At this stage, you need to encourage your happy customers to promote your product to other business clients. Numerous incentives, such as referral and loyalty programs, special offers, and discounts, can help you achieve this goal. Consider encouraging your clients to create user-generated content and provide you with reviews, testimonials, and success stories. Now let’s jump into B2B marketing trends your company should use to stand out. B2B Marketing Trends for 2024 Standing out in the increasingly competitive environment is crucial for every B2B company. That’s why in this section, you’ll find the main B2B marketing trends for 2024. Chatbots and virtual assistance. Chatbots are widely used for various purposes, including lead generation and nurturing, customer support, product recommendations, booking management, and many others. By incorporating chatbots and virtual assistants on your site, you can provide instant support and assistance for all of your prospects and customers. Predictive analysis. With its help, you’ll be able to analyze customer behavior and predict their needs. It results in a well thought out targeting and campaign optimization. Personalized content. By using technology for personalization, you can make your content more relevant and targeted to specific audiences and their needs, challenges, and requirements. The insights you receive will help you take the right actions to convert these leads into clients. User-generated content. User-generated content contributes to a higher trust in your brand. After exploring positive testimonials, case studies, and customer reviews, prospects might decide to purchase your product. Video streaming. Various video content formats, including webinars, product demos, and live-streaming events, enable you to interact with your audience and address their concerns regarding your product. Live streaming will help you educate your target audience about the product and unveil all its benefits to businesses. Omnichannel marketing. It’s a must to ensure seamless customer experience across various marketing channels because it contributes to the competitiveness of your business. You can combine different channels based on your customer’s preferences. It can be email marketing, messengers, websites, events, and many more. Eco-friendly practices. Showcase the proof that your business is sustainable and eco-friendly. People caring about the environment will be pleased to find out that your brand is environmentally conscious. LinkedIn dominance. Start or continue actively using LinkedIn to communicate with your business clients. Consider sharing content, establishing networks, and generating leads. Industry-specific opinion leaders. Collaborate with influencers with a wide reach in your industry. You’ll be able to quickly expand your reach and establish credibility. AI content generation. Consider using AI to create high-quality content, personalize it, and optimize it for your social media, website, and other channels. This way, you’ll resonate with your audience’s needs and address their pain points. Virtual networking. With virtual event platforms, you can ensure networking opportunities and engaging experiences for participants. Interactive events encourage decision-makers to consider your product. Short videos. Creating short informative videos is perfect for educating audiences on social media. They are easily digestible and quickly shareable, encouraging users to send them to their friends on social media. These videos contribute to brand awareness, recognition, and visibility. Advocacy programs. Happy customers are the best way to promote your brand to other companies. By encouraging satisfied clients to become your brand advocates, you are more likely to bring more customers who are really interested in your solution. It will help you expand your customer base, boost conversions, and increase revenues. By staying up to date with technology, your company will have an advantage over others and automate repetitive tasks. One more aspect you need to consider for better efficiency is B2B marketing automation, which we’ll discuss in more detail in the next section. B2B Marketing Automation To automate the processes and eliminate human error, it’s useful to incorporate B2B marketing automation. In this section, we’ll tell you what it is and how to use it to your advantage. B2B marketing automation is the process of using software and technology to automate and streamline marketing efforts to reach business clients and their decision-makers. It allows companies to boost efficiency, apply personalization, and improve the effectiveness of marketing campaigns by using the received information and running processes on autopilot. B2B marketing automation is useful for various types of businesses and industries. Enterprises of all sizes, technology companies and startups, manufacturing and industrial companies, B2B ecommerce companies, educational institutions, financial services, healthcare, and marketing agencies can use automation to run marketing campaigns automatically, improve lead management, and boost efficiency. B2B marketing automation platforms help businesses generate and manage prospects, send personalized email campaigns, keep track of customer relationships, personalize and publish content, send follow-ups, retain existing customers, and analyze campaign performance. Platforms for streamlining your marketing processes include LIKE.TG, HubSpot, Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, Eloqua, and many others. These platforms combine multiple marketing products and help manage various processes. Now that you know the details of B2B marketing automation, it’s time to find some ideas and tips for better sales. Let’s jump in. 11 B2B Marketing Ideas and Tips to Improve Sales Boosting sales in the B2B segment requires you to take effective steps and strategies. Here you’ll find the best B2B marketing ideas and tips. Create a well-thought-out content marketing strategy. Pay close attention to the content you create. It might vary in formats and cover blog posts, whitepapers, eBooks, and case studies addressing customer problems and providing solutions. Consider creating video content for product demos, customer testimonials, and educational webinars for more interactions and visualization of your products or services. Implement account-based marketing. B2B marketing often depends on the key players you want to partner with. For more effective marketing efforts, you need to identify high-value accounts and craft content based on their needs and pain points. Your campaigns should be personalized to each one. For this purpose, you can use data and insights to align with their preferences and problems. When you target high-value accounts, make sure that your sales and marketing departments collaborate for aligned marketing and sales efforts. Use social media platforms. Consider using LinkedIn to find business clients and collaborate with them. Share your content, establish leadership, and interact with potential clients directly. If your budget allows, use paid advertising. It will help you reach prospects who are looking for similar products. Encourage your sales team to effectively use social media networks for selling because more and more people use them for this purpose. Optimize experience with your website. When optimizing your site, make sure that your unique selling proposition is clear. Site visitors should instantly understand what problems your product can solve. Consider building dedicated landing pages for offers or campaigns with visible CTAs for more conversions. Evaluate user experience with your site, including site speed, mobile-friendliness, and optimized images to reduce bounce rates. Incorporate marketing automation. Using marketing automation will help you score prospects and identify high-quality leads you can contact immediately and follow up with them. Besides, automation allows you to create email workflows to nurture leads with targeted content and personalized offers based on their behavior and buyer journey stage. With integrated CRM, you’ll be able to have all customer data at hand and align the work of marketing and sales teams. Conduct webinars. Consider hosting educational webinars in your industry concerning industry trends, best practices, and product demonstrations. They will help you introduce your product to a wide audience and educate prospects about it. Wth engaging QA sessions, you can address prospects’ concerns and answer all their questions related to your product or service. Virtual trade shows let you demonstrate your product and establish a network of leads. Use email campaigns. Use a special email marketing solution like LIKE.TG to apply segmentation and personalization. They will help you divide your audience into groups based on similar criteria and send email campaigns relevant to each of the segments. It will help you consistently engage with your audience and provide them with attractive offers. Consider influencer marketing.By collaborating with opinion leaders, you can increase your reach and improve brand visibility. As an option, you can invite famous experts in the industry to your online or offline events to become speakers and promote your product. This way, you’ll attract their followers who might be interested in your solution. You can also partner with influencers to develop co-branded content ensuring value to social media users. Encourage success stories. Case studies, success stories, and testimonials are useful tools for showing your products and how they can help business clients attain their key goals. Ask customers for testimonials and share them on your site or social media platforms so that potential customers can find out more about the products’ value. Take steps towards customer retention. Customer success programs, consistent post-purchase communication, and loyalty programs will help you keep existing customers and encourage repeat purchases. Show your customers that you care about each of them and appreciate their choice. Focus on providing relevant solutions to customers. When promoting your product, make sure to identify prospects’ pain points and provide solutions. Instead of focusing on your features, find out whether leads have financial, productivity, or support issues. After determining the problems, you’ll be able to come up with a relevant and personalized solution. Before developing a strategy, you should explore some examples to implement all the steps right. In the next section, you’ll find some inspiring examples. B2B Marketing Examples Some companies use amazing B2B marketing strategies. It's definitely a great idea to get acquainted with some of them if you want to find a spark of inspiration and come up with your own method to attract new clients. Adobe Adobe, software used for graphic design, video editing, web development, and photography, has everything needed to attract businesses to its products. On its website, you can see the solutions designed for business teams, consult with experts, and choose the right plan. HubSpot HubSpot encourages companies to buy its products in various ways. One of them is offering small businesses a demo of its premium marketing software. This way, teams can try the platforms and their products before purchasing to find out whether they suit the business’s needs and requirements. Besides the demo, HubSpot provides all the necessary tools for customers to test the service, including free HubSpot Academy, 24/7 support, and various apps. Open Loyalty Open Loyalty shares customer success stories on its website, establishing trust and credibility. It allows the company to show that many influential businesses already used the service and had incredible results. With their help, Open Loyalty demonstrates that its product is worth the try. Amazon Amazon, a large ecommerce company, focuses on developers and decision-makers. On its website, you can find information necessary for both. The platform provides all the needed information for organization leaders to consider the company’s tools. Canva Events Canva Events allows brands to attract new business clients and provide decision-makers with reasons to consider Canva. Potential customers can join real-time online events unveiling specific topics, including business presentations, internal communications, pro-designer workflows, and many more with Canva. As you can see, a B2B marketing strategy is essential for any company that works with other organizations. Sometimes, it plays the main role in business growth. That’s why it’s important to carefully consider the tips and thoughts expressed here. Register with LIKE.TG and implement them right now!

Business-to-government (B2G) marketing is promoting and selling products to government institutions. Companies obtain grants from federal, state, and local agencies to complete orders. In this article, we’ll uncover the difference between business-to-government and business-to-business marketing and review 5 marketing strategies for B2G. B2G vs B2B We can break down marketing strategies into three main types: B2C, B2B, and B2G. You can use one of the three business models based on your client. Let’s compare B2G and B2B to find out the main difference. B2G is marketing and selling products to government agencies. Federal, state, and local agencies request proposals and give grants to companies that are considered the most suitable candidates for governmental tasks. Businesses provide various types of services to government agencies. They ensure IT support services, construct aircraft, and supply missile defense systems. B2B is targeting other companies as consumers. In this business model, a company sells products and services to small, medium, and large businesses. They include startups, enterprises, small brands, etc. The process is longer since customers need more time to make buying decisions. So, the main difference between B2G and B2B is the agency that orders a product or service. In B2G, the buyer is a government institution, while in B2B, the buyer is a business. Now when the difference is clear, it’s time to explore marketing strategies for B2G. 5 Marketing Strategies for B2G If you work with governments, you need to develop an excellent product and marketing strategy. We’ve prepared 5 tips for you to consider to make your business more attractive to customers. Define your target audience. The first thing you should do is to determine the governmental institutions you want to target. Explore their preferences, missions, posts they share, and products they choose. Once you finish with the task, you can create an accurate buyer persona. This will help you understand how to present your company and product to these prospective customers. Create an engaging website. Before writing any grant bids, you need to build a quality website with your offer. Your site should communicate your brand identity and address customers’ needs. Consider optimizing it in terms of SEO, user experience, and usability. Companies should always pay attention to the creation of main landing pages. These web pages should have a responsive design, good website speed, compelling copy, and a visible call to action button. Include unique pictures, infographics, and videos that showcase your product. Work on your content marketing strategy. Establishing credibility and trust requires businesses to provide customers with quality content. By showing your expertise, skills, and knowledge in the industry, you can prove that your company is the best choice for the project. You can reach prospects through different types of content like blog posts, educational videos, demos, photos of completed projects, and email newsletters to make them choose your company. Leverage CRM. CRM tools automate your communication with leads. With their help, you can gather contact information and collect feedback. As a result, you’ll be able to qualify your customers. LIKE.TG’s CRM allows you to do it for free. Our service enables users to accept orders, create a customer list, and launch marketing campaigns. Provide virtual reality experience. Interactive experiences and the possibility to explore the peculiarities of a product mean a lot for governmental decision-makers. Customers can test a product before buying it and decide whether it suits their purpose. If yes, you will win the grant and work with government agencies. Congrats, now you know the main features of B2G marketing. Make use of our strategies before bidding for a suitable grant.

Automated emails arecarefully planned emails to be sent to subscribers at specific time intervals or as a response to the actions of users on a particular website. These emails can be sent individually or as part of a drip email campaign. Marketers can set the conditions that trigger automated emails being sent. After that, each time a subscriber fulfills the trigger, they will receive the pre-written email. Automated emails shine in onboarding new customers. For instance, instead of sending a single email to a new customer, marketers can send an entire series of emails, thus guiding customers effectively as they interact with a brand. Email marketing services allow you to send emails based on subscribers' actions, according to events such as an abandoned cart, account registration, purchase, or other custom events. LIKE.TG takes care of the technical side of things, thus, marketers don’t need to hire a developer. What are the benefits of email automation? Email automation allows marketers to save time, reduce potential errors, boost sales, warm up leads, and create highly targeted offers. Let's take a closer look at these advantages. Saves time. Marketers do not need to hire someone who will click “send” every time they have to send specific emails. Instead, they only have to specify the criteria to trigger the emails and leave the rest to email automation. Helps succeed in lead nurturing. Automated emails nurture leads by sharing useful information at the right time. If the messages are relevant and engaging, recipients will reach out to learn more about a business, and its products or services. Hence, they will be closer to the end of the sales funnel. Boosts sales. Automated emails assist sales teams to determine the most engaging content for their leads. In turn, this enables salespeople to reach out to prospects with appropriate products or services. Meets customers' needs. With a professional email service, you can send automated emails as a response to the client's actions, for example, after they make an order, reserve a ticket, abandon their shopping cart, or take any specific action on your site. This way, each user receives personalized and segmented offers. Allows marketers to develop a thought-out email strategy. Instead of sending single, inconsistent, and bulk emails, you can set up an automated email flow that will lead a user from getting acquainted with your brand to becoming your loyal client. It will help you evaluate the effectiveness of each step so you can make changes whenever it's necessary. How does email automation work? The algorithm is quite simple. Every email is sent right after a user performs a certain action on your site. These actions are called events. Before launching an automation flow you should create an event you want to track. It may be registration, purchase, abandoned cart, or any other custom event. From now on, users will receive an email every time they perform certain actions, for example, leave a product in a shopping cart, register for a webinar, or make an order. This is how the event is triggered. An email flow is sent automatically without your interference. You can monitor the performance of each email and extend the flow. Now, let's find out which emails you send automatically. Types of Automated Emails Welcome emails Thank-you emails Abandoned cart emails Order confirmation emails Customer feedback request emails For effective marketing, every business should consider adding automated emails that respond to customer actions. There are more than 30 types of automated emails that marketers can use to engage with target customers. They include: Welcome emails. Welcome emails are usually the first direct contact a business makes with a customer. It makes a recipient feel special andcan boost engagement. Brands usually tell newcomers about the benefits they will get while cooperating with their brand. Thank-you emails.Thank-you emails are sent to users automatically after they subscribe, convert, download something or attend an event. It is an excellent way to establish customer relationships. Abandoned cart emails. An abandoned cart email is sent as a follow-up to a customer who has left items in the shopping cart during checkout. Abandoned carts account for the biggest leaks in the sales funnel. So, sending this automated email helps recover lost revenue and drive traffic back to a website. Order confirmation emails. Once a customer orders something, it is always best to send an order confirmation email. The email should communicate the shipping details and payment receipt. It’s a nice way to show that your brand deserves trust. Customer feedback request emails.Feedabck from actual users is an excellent way to find out how to improve a service. An automated email survey or feedback form can do just that. Other types of automated emails include product review emails, product recommendation emails, blog updates, event reminders, reactivation emails, follow-up emails, birthday emails, and so many more. How to Send an Automated Email with LIKE.TG Go to Automation 360 Specify General Information about Your Flow Create Your Automation Flow Step 1: Go to Automation 360 In your LIKE.TG account, go to “Automations” tab. Click “Create new automation”. Step 2: Specify General Information about Your Flow Fill in all the fields. Step 3: Create Your Automation Flow Firstly, choose the event that will start the flow. You can create your own event and add variables in the Events manager. Follow this guide to do that. You’re welcome to combine email, SMS, and web push notifications within one flow. Thus, you will increase your outreach and subscriber engagement. Use filter to send different content to your mailing list segments, for example to men and women, users from different cities, and more. Condition allows you to send a message based on user behavior. For example, if a subscriber hasn’t opened your emails for 3 months, send them a reactivation email. With action, you can perform various operations regarding recipients: move to another list, delete, copy, etc. You can stop your automation flow right after your goal is reached. Now, when you are ready, click “Save” or “Save and launch”. After your automation flow starts, track statistics. Automated Email Examples Below are some excellent examples of automated emails: A welcome email from Nira Rubens. The brand gives a discount to engage new subscriber to buy. A thank you email. With this email, marketers drive visitors back to their website. It is a feedback request email. The brand asks clients to estimate their buying experience. Automated Email Best Practices To take full advantage of automated emails, here are some best practices: never miss a welcome email in the automation flow; provide VIP customers witha loyalty program; segment the mailing list based onuser behavior; re-engage inactive customers; focus your automation strategy on building relationships and improving customer experience. Send automated email

A BASHO email is a personalized B2B email that aims at reaching decision-makers. It helps companies increase response rates and start conversations with potential customers. In this article, we’ll uncover why send BASHO emails and how to write them. We’ll also unveil how to send a BASHO email for free. Why send BASHO emails? BASHO emails aim at reaching decision-makers of businesses who decide whether to choose a specific product or not. Emailing a company’s manager doesn’t always end in a sale. To increase the likeliness, brands use various strategies, including BASHO emails. A high level of email personalization enables companies to get more responses from potential clients and build communication with them. If a sales rep manages to establish connections with prospects, it can lead to a phone call or a meeting. This is the right time to discuss the details and lead a prospective customer toward a sale. Many businesses send BASHO emails because they help establish communication with decision-makers of different companies; improve email open rate; boost click-through rate; increase conversions; partner with bloggers. Now that you know why to send BASHO emails to your potential customers, it’s time to find out how to write an effective email that converts. How to write an effective BASHO email? Consider prospects’ pain points and desires to create a successful BASHO email. In this section, we’ll unveil a step-by-step guide on how to do it effectively. Identify prospective customers’ problems. Writing a relevant and effective BASHO email requires you to conduct short research. The main aim is to figure out the pain points of prospective clients. You need to find them to provide a targeted solution in your email. Once you finish with this quick analysis, you'll be able to identify your discussion topic and deliver your best solution. Add specific personalization. Social media accounts of your prospects can also come in handy when personalizing emails. With their help, you can find interests, points of view, and opinions your leads can recognize. It will make your emails more targeted and interesting for potential clients. The number of opens will increase. You can start communication with clients and build trusting relationships with them by raising the topics of their interests. Mention relevant events. You can grab prospects’ attention by promoting your product and with related events. Conducting specific events and unveiling them in your emails can be a great occasion for meeting and communicating with your potential client online and offline. Conferences will be a new source of information for your leads, where they will find out more details about your product. You can communicate its value, pricing, features, and benefits. Use customers’ feedback to show that your product helps. Comments, feedback, and reviews of your current customers will always help you establish trust in your company. If they are satisfied with your product, it will help you win more new consumers. Use their feedback in your emails to show prospects that your product works and brings good results. Find the best way to communicate this information to your leads through emails. Conduct research to find out interests. Besides discovering potential customers’ challenges, pay attention to their interests. This way, you’ll be able to grab your prospects’ attention and encourage these people to open and read your email. Start with something intriguing and eye-catching to make sure that your receiver will open your email. Be as targeted and personalized in your email as possible. It will help you bring in new people and win sales. Now that you know how to write an effective email, let’s discover how to send a BASHO email for free. How to send a BASHO email for free with LIKE.TG? You can implement personalization and create an effective BASHO email for free. We’ll show you how to do it within minutes using LIKE.TG email service. Follow this guide to create your email in no time. 1. Register with LIKE.TG Visit LIKE.TG’s website to sign up and create your email campaigns for free. Our service enables you to design and send BASHO emails in no time. Register to start your journey with LIKE.TG right now. 2. Add your mailing list Click “Create mailing list” to add your contact and be ready to send email campaigns to your subscribers. Give a name to your new list and click the “Create” button. You can upload all your contacts to the system, copy past them or import them from the previous platform. Use email verification to check whether the email subscribers provided to you are valid. You can also collect contact information with the help of subscription forms. This way, users’ data will come directly to the system, and you can use it for email campaigns. Select “Subscription Forms” and click “Create.” Design your form from scratch or choose from a library of predesigned templates. Select a mailing list and insert the necessary information into the form. 3. Create segments To make a new segment, go to the "Mailing list" section, choose the required mailing list, and go to the "Segments" tab. Click “Add segment” and set the segmentation conditions. 4. Segment your mailing list Choose the necessary mailing list and tick “Use segmentation.” Name your segment and select relevant variables to target a specific group of people based on gender, country, name, etc. 5. Personalize the subject line When customers open their inboxes, they instantly see the subject lines of emails. A catchy and tailored subject line encourages receivers to open emails and read their content. That’s why it’s crucial to write it well and include the receiver's name. If you include your subscriber’s name in your emails, you can succeed in establishing trust. Personalize your subject line by adding criteria. Click "Add criteria'' and choose the most relevant criteria to include the name of your potential clients in your subject line. Click the “Insert” button to save the changes. This step is necessary for applying smart personalization. It helps address all the contacts on your list regardless of whether they have their name mentioned in the form. Customers with names, cities, and countries inserted will receive a personalized message, while others will get a generic one. 6. Personalize your email body To make your BASHO email more targeted, consider using smart personalization in your email body. You can add different variables to address specific prospective clients. In the drag-and-drop editor, create an email from scratch or use ready-to-go templates, click “Variables,” and select a specific variable. Below we’ve created a template with the “Name” variable in the email body. Consider using different variables to design personalized emails for various cities, countries, hosts, subscriber IDs, etc. It will help you create emails that enable you to interact with clients and encourage them to read the content of your emails. LIKE.TG allows you to create BASHO emails for free in no time. Sign up or log in to your free account to start sending email campaigns with no fee right now! Congrats, now you know what a BASHO email is and why it’s critical. Hope that our guide will help you design effective emails that convert leads into customers. Use LIKE.TG to build professional, personalized emails and make sure that your campaigns are a great success.

Email authentication allows ISPs(Internet service providers) to properly identify the sender of an email, and it helps to ensure high delivery rates. Authentication focuses on reducing spam, which makes up 67% of all email traffic (according to Forrester Research). It means that when receiving 10 emails, only 3 of them are worth the user's time to read. Below is a video guide that will walk you through authenticating your emails with SPF and DKIM signatures in LIKE.TG. In order to overcome the problem of spam, IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) accepts several versions of authentication technologies. Two of them are used in LIKE.TG for phishing prevention and also spam blocking. Authentication Technologies 1.DKIM(Domain Keys Identified Mail) This technology allows companies to vouch for the email messages they send. Technically this is done with the help of a cryptographic signature linked to a domain name instead of a traditional IP address. To determine the sender’s reputation, “whitelists” and “blacklists” are used. 2.SPF(Sender Policy Framework) This technology allows companies to identify the sender of an email and check whether the flow of emails includes spammessages. In this way, emails can be divided into “permitted” and “not permitted” depending on the recipient’s or sender’s domain. In our service, your emails are authenticated automatically with the digital signatures of LIKE.TG, but it is possible to set up your own DKIM and SPF authentication. In this case, LIKE.TG displays your domain’s information in the email’s header. To implement this, you should add your DNS records. Set up email authentication by following this guide, which will help you to edit your DNS records.

An average order value (AOV) is a critical SaaS metric. It allows businesses to find out how much money a user spends making an order on a website. AOV enables marketers to get insights into consumer behavior and make informed decisions. In this article, you'll get to know why an average order value is an important metric. You'll also learn how to calculate and increase it, so stay tuned. Why is an average order value important? Each business owner should monitor this metric regularly, especially in high-competitive industries. It informs them about the income from an average order during a specific period. If the indicator is low, users are not willing to spend much money for some reason. So, marketers try to attract new customers, implement new strategies that will help them increase income from existing customers, or change their pricing. Acquiring new customers quickly requires significant investments and doesn't guarantee the flow of orders. Besides, you'll also need to work on increasing your website traffic. That's why marketers often choose another alternative. They try new strategies to make existing customers spend more money. They apply segmentation, personalization, loyalty, affiliate programs, etc. Hence, improving an average order value builds long-lasting customer relationships and maintains brand loyalty. While implementing different strategies, marketers will analyze their customers' behavior, competitors, and market trends. They'll get valuable insights that will help them better understand their client's pain points, desires, and preferences. Later, they will be able to create segments based on this data and approach each consumer individually, resulting in high conversions and trustful relationships. Now that you know the benefits you can reap by monitoring and improving your average order value, it's time to learn how to calculate the metric. How to calculate an average order value? It's to find out this metric for your business. Open your CRM system and check out the revenue and number of orders made per specific period. Then, use the formula below. Average order value = Total revenue/Number of orders For example, you have a clothing store selling T-Shirts and jeans. The price for each item varies from 20 to $60. During the previous month, your store sales were $25,000, and you had 720 orders. Let's calculate your average order value for the last month. 25000/720=35 So, your AOV was $35. So, you can draw the following conclusions. Firstly, your customers tend to buy low-price items, most likely T-shirts. Secondly, something is wrong with the sale of jeans. Thirdly, you don't use upselling and cross-selling strategies, and your clients don't buy multiple items. Based on this information, you can already get a hint at increasing your average order value. So, in the next section, we'll share some effective strategies. Read on. How to improve an average order value? If you consider increasing prices for your products an incorrect strategy, check out other tips that will help you earn more without big investments. Segment your customers. To sell more, you need to know the people you're selling to because you can't treat all consumers the same way. Create different segments for your buyers based on their purchasing history. For example, low, medium, and high spenders. Then, you can approach each group individually. For example, you can offer your low spenders to buy two items at a reduced price. Medium spenders can be offered free shipping when reaching a certain threshold. And high spenders can be rewarded with a loyalty program that will stimulate them to spend more. With LIKE.TG, you can segment customers and send them personalized emails for free. Implement cross-selling, upselling, and bundling. These are highly effective sales techniques that customers like. With cross-selling, you can recommend a complementary product that will make using the initial item with much more pleasure. Upselling lets you advise buyers to choose a more advanced and upgraded item instead of their initial choice. Bundling enables consumers to save money by buying several products at a reduced price. You can use these technics on your product cards, in the checkout, or via an email campaign. Provide free shipping. If you work in an oversaturated niche, your customer will choose your competitor, providing this option. So, to offer free shipping without going broke, you need to set affordable spending for your business that will cover shipping expenses. Inform customers about free shipping on orders over a certain dollar amount at checkout. This way, this purchase will seem an excellent bargain. Consider using different thresholds for different shipping zones. Otherwise, you can lose money. Give coupons. This is another selling trick that works. Receiving a discount makes clients feel valued and important to the brand. You can offer a coupon after buying for a specific dollar amount. For example, let your customer spend $60 and get $10 off their next purchase. It acts like a game and motivates users to buy more to reach another level. Then, you can provide them with additional personalized perks. Encourage clients to join a loyalty program. It is a win-win for both parties. Companies can increase sales, reduce customer acquisition costs, reward loyal customers, and build long-lasting relationships. Clients can reap additional benefits like purchasing with a significant discount and getting gifts. There're lots of options for launching a successful loyalty program. You can stimulate your customers by giving them points after each purchase, encouraging them to participate in a subscription-based program, enabling them to get cashback, or offering them to reach a VIP tier with exclusive individual discounts. Increase prices based on adding value. If you work in a competitive industry, setting higher prices may not seem relevant since customers can easily switch brands. Still, you need to analyze your competitors to determine their weaknesses and act on them. For example, if they have lower prices but have no refund or return policy and don't provide a guarantee, do that. Clients appreciate excellent service. If your competitors offer such perks, go further and offer assistance with your product a month after the purchase. You need to know your clients' difficulties with your product and solve them to your advantage. People are ready to pay more to companies that care. Congrats, now you know how to calculate and improve your average order value. Use LIKE.TG promotional tools to boost sales without much sweat!

An email autoresponder is a series of messages sent automatically to a mailing list based on specific rules at defined intervals. The process may start after a user subscribes to the sender’s email list or when a particular condition is met. Marketers use email autoresponder functionality to send both promotional and educational content at the right time without much work. With each email series, the sender should set out to address the concerns of theirprospects and emphasize the benefits of their businesses, products or services. How about an example? A marketer can set email autoresponders so that 5 minutes after someone joins the mailing list, they receive a welcome email. Then, if subscribers shared their birthdates, the company sends them a birthday email with a unique offer. Besides, marketers use email autoresponder to send emails predefined by subscribers’ action. What is the purpose of an email autoresponder? An email autoresponder series enables companies to build trust with their prospects. Email autoresponders get a recipient to open promotional emails, visit websites, and eventually make a purchase. Most sites use email autoresponders to provide their subscribers with the most relevant offers at the right time. Besides, this automation tech helps eliminate mistakes caused by human error when email scheduling is needed. Advantages of email autoresponders Turn new visitors into subscribers Establish stable and long-term relationships with subscribers Ensure continuous advertising without hiring new staff Offer immediate follow-up Create repeat sales Direct customers to websites or blogs Help marketers access measurable results Ensure better delivery of marketing emails Help marketers increase brand awareness Email autoresponders come bearing gifts for marketers. Here is what they can do: Turn new visitors into subscribers.Email autoresponders offer an excellent communication line with new visitors on a website. Marketers provide valuable offers in these email series that entice the visitors to submit their names and email addresses. In exchange, users receive exciting offers, including free reports, trial offers, no-obligation consultation, and more. Establish stable and long-term relationships with subscribers.Email autoresponders allow marketers to create automated messages and schedule them to go out to their subscriber lists on specified dates. This way, subscribers hear from the company frequently and look forward to future communication. This anticipation creates a unique bond between a business and the prospective customer. Ensure continuous advertising without hiring new staff.Email autoresponders take care of regular marketing email delivery to customers and prospects. And given that the process is entirely automated, there is no need to hire new people to do the job. So, a business has no extra expenses and earns a better return on investment. Offer immediate follow-up. With email autoresponders, a marketer can diligently follow-up with customers without leaving any of them out. These emails are automated, thus eliminating the possibility of missing customers or prospects who are on the mailing list. Create repeat sales.Email autoresponders ensure that there is constant communication with existing customers. Marketers use cross-selling and upselling to cause repeat sales. Direct customers to websites or blogs. Marketers use email autoresponders to direct subscribers to video channels, blogs, websites, discussions on socials and so forth. These different channels display information regarding a company and help the prospects or customers better understand the products or services offered by a brand. This results in both traffic and conversion increases as the users have access to facts that influence their buying decisions. Help marketers access measurable results. Marketers can gain a variety of meaningful insights from email autoresponders that help evaluate their strategies better. For instance, they help senders find messages that are read most, the time when most messages are read and so forth. In turn, marketers can tweak their email campaigns to ensure that content is personalized and higher engagement is achieved. Ensure better delivery of marketing emails.Email autoresponders eliminate any guesswork from email delivery. They are designed to ensure that all messages in the system are sent on time to all subscribers on a mailing list. Help marketers increase brand awareness. Marketers can brand their email messages by adding their taglines, logos, physical addresses, and phone numbers to ensure that they emphasize their products or services to prospective customers. How does an email autoresponder work? Marketers that use autoresponders have a lot of their email marketing automated. Email autoresponders consist of two individual components that work together to achieve the primary goal. The first is the automated email campaign which includes marketing messages that are sent to subscribers when specific events or actions are triggered. Then there are the automation rules. These are triggers or actions the sender puts in place to determine when particular automated messages are to be sent. For example, a business wants to follow-up on customers who made purchases by cross-selling and upselling. So, a sender creates a particular message and sets a trigger such as the purchase of a specific product. When a customer buys the item, the action is triggered, and the automated email is sent. Businesses and websites can set up email autoresponders to inform customers about special offers or new posts, send welcome emails or gifts to subscribers who have just signed up. One can also use them to send other email messages that keep the subscribers engaged. To get started, register and set up an email autoresponder in LIKE.TG. How to create an email autoresponder series Set up an event in Automation 360 Create the necessary email templates Connect emails in a sequence LIKE.TG allows you to create or upload mailing lists and send email sequences to subscribers when they perform particular sets of actions. Here’s how to create a custom event-based autoresponder using LIKE.TG’s Automation 360. Step 1: Set up an event in Automation 360 Decide which user action will trigger email sending. Actions like shopping cart abandonment, registration, subscription, purchase, etc., are called events. Go to the “Automations” tab in your LIKE.TG account, open the Event Manager, choose the type of event, and add the generated code to your website. Here’s a detailed guide to creating events. Step 2: Create the necessary email templates Design email templates to include in your autoresponder sequence. With LIKE.TG, you can do it in three different ways: Create email templates from scratch with a convenient drag and drop editor; Take templates from our free library and customize them to your liking; Use our Chrome extension to save any email from your Gmail inbox as a customizable template in your LIKE.TG account. You can create an email template, like in the one in the screenshot below, in half an hour. Step 3: Connect emails in a sequence Use the event you’ve just created as the start of your autoresponder. Then, connect your email templates with the “flow start” element and with other elements to create the automated flow. Enter the subject lines and schedule the sending time for each element in the flow. Here’s an example of an abandoned cart autoresponder series created with LIKE.TG’s Automation 360. Now, that you're acquainted with the technical side of things, let’s check out some inspirational examples. Email autoresponder examples Here are some examples of common email autoresponders: A subscription confirmation email. This email is sent right after a user leaves their email address on a website. Marketers use this method to build a high-quality mailing list. A welcome email. This is an onboarding email for new subscribers. Marketers usually send it to give a warm welcome and shoe what their brand is engaged in. A birthday email. This is a good chance to congratulate subscribers on their special day, increase sales and raise customers loyalty. Brands usually create special offers and give discounts. Register and send an email autoresponderwith LIKE.TG! Send an email autoresponder

An authorized dealer is an individual or company authorized by a manufacturer to sell its products. This dealer has a franchise to represent a well-established brand and distribute its products. Some manufacturers require your company to only sell their products, while others allow you to provide customers with other products or services. Why become an authorized dealer? Whether you’re starting your business or want to be a reseller to supplement your current company, becoming an authorized dealer has several advantages: it allows you to receive certification from experts; it provides you with financial support; it enables you to sell products from a famous brand; it allows you to use an established brand name. You can sell products from well-known brands in large quantities to commercial customers online or in retail outlets if your company meets certain requirements. The manufacturer or service provider will inform you about the requirement you’ll need to fulfill. Now that you know the pros of becoming an authorized dealer of an established brand, let’s explore the difference between authorized and unauthorized dealers. Authorized Dealer vs Unauthorized Dealer When it comes to buying and selling products, it is essential to understand the difference between authorized and unauthorized dealers. Authorized dealer Becoming an authorized distributor has several advantages: a contractual relationship with a manufacturer; official rights to sell the brand’s merchandise; recognition from the brand; a good reputation as the manufacturer verifies its merchandise is authentic; the products are covered by the manufacturer’s warranty. Famous brands prefer authorized dealers as they ensure supply chain transparency, pricing consistency, and greater revenue. Unauthorized dealer On the other hand, unauthorized dealers have no official rights to sell the products of a specific brand. These dealers usually get genuine merchandise from overseas and bring it to the country to sell. However, such products are of low quality because of the damages and defects which appear on the product during improper shipping. Also, they can be acquired from unreliable sources which can result in you selling used or stolen goods. Although buying from unauthorized dealers doesn’t guarantee high quality products, customers still do it because of the lower prices. Grey market goods affect the sales price. As a result, authorized retailers have to sell their merchandise for less to compete with lower-priced authentic products. To alleviate any confusion with the process, we’ve put together a step-by-step guide to becoming an authorized dealer. Follow the five steps below. How to become an authorized dealer Choose the industry Find the right location Handle the documentation Get enough inventory Launch your distributor platform An authorized dealer is a company that has official permission to sell products from a particular brand. It allows you to provide customers with products or services of an established brand and access their built-in consumer base. To become a distributor, you’ll need to register your business like any other startup. If you’re giving a thought to becoming an authorized dealer, here are five steps to consider. 1. Choose the industry Decide what industry you want to tackle and what the best fit for you is: electronics, food, apparel, or shoes. There are dealers in almost any retail industry, so there is no limit for you to choose. Let’s take the world of sports, for example. The National Hockey League enables businesses to become commercial licensees and sell their official merchandise. However, if you decide to become a beer distributor, you’ll need to get a permit from the United States Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau. 2. Find the right location Different distributors have different strategies that result in different functioning. Although you can start your business from home, you’ll still need to have a warehouse to store your products. First of all, choose inexpensive warehouses that are close to your customers. Some manufacturers even require it from their sellers. For example, Katun, a manufacturer of printer and copier toners, asks its distributors to provide local delivery. 3. Handle the documentation Research which licenses and permits are necessary to get started with your reselling business. You’ll need a wholesale license to act as a middleman and purchase products wholesale from manufacturers without paying sales tax. Additionally, you will need to contact the manufacturer to discuss product distribution. Start by filling out an online application form or contacting the local sales office. For example, Apple asks its authorized dealers to use Apple-certified repair technicians. So your technicians will have to go through the certification process. 4. Get enough inventory The industry you choose defines the amount of inventory you’ll need to have. Calculate the approximate required number of products that you should have in stock. Keep in mind that if you don’t have enough inventory when your customers need it, they may use your competitor’s service or if you buy too much, you run a risk of not selling all of it. 5. Launch your distributor platform Once you have all the necessary documentation and enough inventory, run your platform. Many businesses open shops on eBay or Amazon. Tech resellers prefer these platforms as they allow different types of businesses to enter the market whether it’s an established brand or a startup. For example, with Amazon, you need to select a selling plan, consider a strategy, and create a selling account to start reselling products. Whether you decide to start a new business or add to your existing portfolio, becoming an authorized dealer is a great idea. You can start this business in any industry you wish. Ensure that you have enough inventory, a license and permit, and a place to store your products to start your new business.

An average fixed cost (AFC) defines how much it costs to manufacture one unit. It helps measure the breakeven point of a certain company, analyze the expenses of a business and reduce them to make it more beneficial. Why is calculating an average fixed cost important? Different brands sell their goods or services at a fixed price. Entrepreneurs have to be aware of the number of funds spent on production and estimate a profit margin by using fixed and variable costs formulas to set those prices. Companies use the AFC formula for several reasons: analyze their expenses to find ways to reduce them and make their business bring more revenue; measure the breakeven point (the point at which a company starts to generate profit). Investors and entrepreneurs can’t understand the whole picture of their company’s performance just by looking at the costs. If you aim to know, for example, how a particular business operates, you need to look at the relation between the fixed costs and the number of manufactured goods. You need to divide these two measures to obtain the average fixed cost. This will help you define the efficiency of production and the economies of scale (financial benefits your company can reap). Salaries of permanent workers and payments for plants and equipment are examples of fixed costs. Companies can’t operate without paying for equipment and appropriate building. Besides, you should define the number of units your company needs to produce by yourself. Hence, with the help of AFC, you can find out the number of funds you should allocate to produce one unit. Let’s find out how to estimate this metric. How to Calculate an Average Fixed Cost You can use two different methods to estimate an average fixed cost for a business. Further, we’ll discuss each of them in more detail. In case you want to define how total fixed costs influence the fixed costs per unit, it’s advisable to use the division method. Firstly, you need to determine the time frame since fixed costs are estimated over a set period. It enables you to figure out when you’ll start breaking even and obtaining a profit. Secondly, add all the fixed costs (costs that remain the same even when the number of manufactured units changes). Thirdly, get the total number of goods produced during a certain period. Finally, after adding all the fixed costs and obtaining a total fixed cost, you should divide it by the number of products manufactured by your company during this specific period. Below you can see the AFC formula. When you use a subtraction method, the first thing you should do is estimate the total cost. Afterward, you need to determine two indicators: average total cost and average variable cost. The final step in this method is to subtract the average variable cost from the average total cost. Below you can see the necessary formulas to estimate these measures. If you need these calculations, choose the method that suits you the most. Now let’s proceed to the differences between average fixed and average variable cost. Average Fixed Cost vs. Average Variable Cost Average fixed cost is the cost required to manufacture one unit of products. This cost decreases as the number of goods produced increases. This is because the same amount of fixed costs needs to be spent to produce a larger number of units. You can calculate the cost this way: divide the sum of all fixed costs by the number of manufactured units. By calculating this measure, you have an opportunity to analyze your firm’s expenses and to reduce them, and identify the point where your business begins to generate revenue. The cost helps you obtain the information necessary for your production decisions. If you want to maximize your revenue, it’s critical to control this cost. You should know how it alters when there’s a change in the quantity. Average variable cost (AVC) is a sum of all variable costs divided by the number of goods produced. It is a critical factor that helps a company decide whether it’s worth continuing the production of its goods. A company can continue only if the marginal revenue is bigger than the AVC. If the average revenue of a company is lower than the AVC, it would be better to shut down this business. Since manufacturing anything wouldn’t help obtain a profit big enough to offset the variable costs of production, minimal production would also add losses to this firm. Therefore, it is better to stop operating and lose only the fixed costs. On the other hand, when a business obtains costs bigger than the AVC, it can cover some of the expenses, including all the variable costs and some of the fixed costs. Fixed costs,like the money you pay to rent a space for your business, aren’t influenced by production. For sure, they don’t alter when the number of units you decide to produce changes. As long as your revenue is higher than the AVC, you can continue to produce your goods. Let’s move to the next part to review several examples and understand how to estimate this measure accurately. Average Fixed Cost Examples Let’s imagine that there is a company engaged in the cultivation of coffee. The firm’s team has hired five permanent employees and has to pay $5,000 per annum to each worker. Besides, they have to pay for the necessary equipment $70,000 per annum. They also spend $15,000 to rent a building to store coffee. The company’s total output is 1000 tons. Let’s estimate their average fixed cost. The coffee company’s total fixed cost will be $110,000 ($5,000*5 = $25,000 for labor, $70,000 on equipment, and $15,000 to rent a building). AFC = $110,000 / 1000 = $ 110 per ton. Therefore, with the help of this formula, we were able to calculate the AFC for this coffee company. Let’s look at another example, a company that manufactures sneakers. If the quantity of the output varies from 7 to 12 pairs of running shoes, the fixed cost would be $49. To estimate the AFC, you need to divide $49 by 7 sneakers. It would be 7. Simply put, to manufacture 7 pairs of sneakers, you need to spend $49 (fixed cost) and obtain a pair of shoes that would cost $7. To sum it up, AFC enables entrepreneurs or investors to determine the number of funds necessary to produce one unit of products. It helps them define the breakeven point of a business.

ARPPU (average revenue per paying user) is a metric that indicates the average revenue a paying customer generates during a certain time. Owners of mobile apps often use it to identify audience segmentsthat actively spend money inside their apps. In this article, we’ll uncover the difference between ARPPU and ARPUand find out how to calculate and increase ARPPU. ARPPU vs. ARPU If your business is related to mobile apps or advertising, you’ve probably heard such acronyms as ARPPU and ARPU. These two metrics aremainly used for measuring app revenue. Let’s now find out what makes them different. ARPPU is a metric that measures revenues from paying users. In this case, paying users are people who actively spend their money on a specific service. The measurement focuses on customers’ activities that make up a recurring revenue, for example, in-app purchases and freemium games. Business owners should know the recurring revenue a product generates during a month and the number of customers who actively use and pay for it to correctly estimate their profits. While ARPPU pays more attention to paying users and the money they bring to businesses, ARPU (average revenue per user) is about the profit SaaS, subscription-based services, or app owners earn from paying and non-paying users. Entrepreneurs divide their total revenue by the number of customers to accurately estimate the necessary measure. The metric is also used to determine the performance of a product or service: in a particular region, during a certain month or week, or the number of paid and organic installs. Moreover, it helps figure out whether a specific campaign was successful. To do it, companies compare the ARPU of different campaigns to detect which advertising managed to attract more paying users. Now that you know the difference, let’s find out how tocalculate the measure. How to Calculate ARPPU To estimate your average revenue per paying user, you need to have two essential indicators: monthly recurring revenue and the number of active paying users. Divide your revenue by the number of paying users to get your company’s ARPPU. Let’s imagine that your app brings $2000 every month. The revenue you obtain comes from your active visitors. Say, you have 20 paying users. Now when you have the necessary measures, let’s calculate the ARPPUof your product or service: $2000 / 20 = $100 The result demonstrates that one paying user provides you with $100 revenue per month. Now that you are acquainted with the estimations you need, it’s time to move to the next section to explore the ways to improve this metric. How to Increase ARPPU Having a high ARPPU iscrucial since it defines your number ofloyal users who bring stable revenue every month. Besides, it indicates that your business, sales, and marketing proposition are in good financial condition and obtain value from users. Use our effective tactics to improve your ARPPU. Consider cross-selling and upselling. A great idea to increase your revenue and APPU is to offer users some additional features. For this purpose, you need to determine your users’ key pain points and put your efforts into upselling(try to persuade your customers to upgrade their accounts) or cross-selling (let users explore your additional services, for example, if you have another subscription type, encourage your customers to switch to it). Update your content. Even the most value-driven apps, services, and other products eventually bore regular users or leave them unsatisfied. With this course of events, you should always be ready to offer your clients something new to stay up-to-date. To do everything in time and according to your plan, create a schedule of content releases to stick to it. Don’t forget about non-paying users as well since your content should be engaging and interesting for all your clients. Sell premium services. If you have a lot of valuable experience, understand the market, and have long and strong relationships with your paying customers, consider offering them premium services. For this, you need to focus on your main active paying customers to understand their wants, needs, and preferences. Offer them a special membership, premium support, or some other services available only for VIP clients that will meet their desires. Increase the price of your product. The easiest way to improve your ARPPU is to increase the price of your product or service. However, it might have some negative consequences, which means that you need to increase your price wisely. Show your clients that your improved product is worth a new cost. Otherwise, your customer churn rates might increase drastically. Inform your users about new releases through app store updates.If you aim to reactivate your users, it’s better to distribute your new content as an update in app stores. It allows clients to notice and explore your releases. With this metric, you’ll have a full understanding of the level of customer loyaltyyour business has, its financial performance, and how much money each paying customer brings into your company each month.

Audience segmentation is the process of dividing your entire audience into segments — groups that have something in common, like gender, age, location, interests, behavior, etc. to better tailor your marketing offers, ads, and products. Back in the day, setting up segmentation was an uphill battle that used to give marketers a headache. Today, thanks to simplified tools in email marketing, SMM, messenger marketing, search engine marketing, and other digital marketing channels, have made it that even an entry-level marketer can effectively segment their audiences. 3 Reasons to Segment Your Audience It helps you provide your audience with personalized treatment It helps you overcome competitors It helps you build meaningful relationships with the audience There are several reasons you should segment your audience, so let’s review them. Segmentation: Helps you provide your audience with personalized treatment. Today, customers seek personalized experiences, and they want super-relevant offers at the right time, too. This became possible once social networks and search engines started collecting a lot of behavioral and demographic data about people so that brands can divide people into segments and tailor their messages more precisely. Helps you overcome competitors. Fierce competition in online marketing makes it hard to market your products today. However, if you are smart with your segmentation, you can tailor your ads, nurture and convert leads into customers better than your competitors. Helps you build meaningful relationships with the audience. To satisfy modern customers, brands need to educate and entertain them. With segmentation tools on hand, companies can create thought out content marketing strategies that appeal to every customer. Let’s analyze the ways you can segment your audience. 3 Crucial Audience Segmentation Strategies Demographic Segmentation Behavioral Segmentation Segmentation Based on the Buyer’s Journey Stages There are three primary segmentation types: demographic, behavioral, and buyer’s journey segmentation. Let’s review each one closer. Demographic Segmentation This type of segmentation helps you divide your audience based on typical marketing demographics. Let’s look at some of the most popular ones: Age. It’s a crucial segmentation variable since people’s preferences are continually changing throughout their lifetime. People of various age groups communicate with brands in specific ways, so you need to conduct research and consider these differences when you do your marketing. If you run an apparel business, you need to target different collections to different age groups: children, teens, and adults. Gender. Each gender has a specific thinking process, needs, and desires. For instance, men and women often want different body care products. However, you should carefully avoid advertising on gender stereotypes because it will offend some of your prospects and makes your brand look sexist. Location. This segmentation variable is vital because people use different languages and have different cultures, climatic conditions, time zones, etc. Aside from this, it’s necessary for businesses in specific areas to target their messages to the local audience. There’s no need to waste your budget on marketing to people that will never make it to your store. Income. Based on your customer’s estimated salary, you can tailor different classes of products to the right people. For example, in the automotive industry, there is little sense in advertising first-class sports cars to people with lower incomes. In this case, it’s best to promote used vehicles or offer new cars with low APR. And vice versa, people that earn a lot of money are more likely to buy luxury brands. Occupation. Some niche products are tailored based on employment: medical equipment, woodworking tools, fitness training equipment, software, etc. Ethnicity. It’s essential to know about the cultural differences and conflicts between neighboring nations. Think of Armenia and Azerbaijan, or Spain and the Catalonian crisis. Target your communication paying attention to the situation in your customers’ countries. Also, conduct research as you grow your business internationally. Family structure. Think of “family pack” products in the supermarket. It’s best to tailor such products to families with three and more members. With the data about family structure at hand, you can quickly identify the target audience for such products. Behavioral Segmentation Behavioral segmentation is based on users’ shopping habits and the way they interact with your brand. Let’s review the most common ways to segment users by behavior: Purchasing behavior. Look for any obstacles that keep users from making a decision. People hesitate to purchase for three reasons: they are waiting for the best offer, they are looking for social proof, or some of them are “just looking around” and are not in a hurry. Use shopping holidays to convert the first type, collect feedback from happy customers for the second type, and don’t spend much time and effort on the third type since they aren’t likely to buy anything. Benefits. This is a way to divide customers based on the benefits they are looking for. You can motivate them to buy your products or services by stressing the best parts and benefits of your products. For instance, chewing gum gives people clean teeth, fresh breath, a nice flavor, and even an anti-stress effect. Find out the benefits that drive your customers towards making a purchase and emphasize them. Engagement level. Some users occasionally contact your brand, so you can survey them to find out if they see a lack of value or motivation from your side. The others regularly use your service but don’t use its functions to the full extent. Share how-to videos and highlight all the features that will be handy for them. Lastly, people who integrate your brand into their lives require special treatment. You can provide them with bonuses, loyalty programs, and greetings on birthdays and anniversaries. Special occasions. This segmentation type helps you deliver your messages at the right time. Utilize events like Black Friday, Cyber Monday, national holidays, etc., to add more reasons to go shopping. You can implement occasion-based segmentation by collecting data from subscription forms, lead magnets, or surveys. These insights will help you build a positive brand image. Segmentation Based on the Buyer’s Journey Stages There are three buyer journey stages: awareness, consideration, and decision. In each stage, prospects need different kinds of treatment. If users have just found out they have a problem, they usually use Google to find a solution. So in this stage, it’s best to have helpful content that will provide answers to your future customers’ questions. It can be an article that outlines how to deal with the problem in different ways. If a user already knows what kind of product can solve their problem, they will want to learn more about its characteristics and determine which exact product they need. It’s a great idea to show reviews like “best tools for...” Once they know exactly what they need, users search for the best price. It’s best if your brand is visible in shopping campaign ads, which is a great way to stand out from your competitors. If users still doubt, you can nurture them with precisely targeted ads on Facebook or Google, based on their search queries and interests. Other Types of Audience Segmentation Here are some additional segmentation types to enrich your strategy: Segmentation based on previous interactions. This type of segmentation allows you to provide super relevant content and ads based on customers’ previous behavior. Segmentation by device type. This allows you to send optimized messages to people that use smartphones, desktops, or tablets. Customer loyalty. Loyal customers are the most beneficial clients for any business since they have the highest lifetime value. These people earned their right to be treated with exclusive content and offers. Besides, it’s cheaper to retain existing customers and nurture their loyalty than to acquire new leads. Loyal clients are more likely to become brand advocates and promote your brand in their social circles. Customer satisfaction. This type of segmentation is based on customer feedback. It helps fix issues when users are not happy with the product before spreading negative words about your brand. On the other hand, it enables you to strengthen your relationships with users who already like your brand. Let’s apply some audience segmentation to different marketing channels. How to Use Audience Segmentation in Online Marketing Email Marketing SMS Marketing Facebook Advertising Chatbots Even entry-level marketers can use this technology for the benefit of their business. Let’s try to perform audience segmentation on every major digital marketing channel. Email Marketing Bulk email marketing services, like LIKE.TG, MailChimp, ConstantContact, etc., allow you to collect data about your subscribers with the help of subscription forms, surveys, feedback, and email analytics. Each subscriber you collect with subscription forms brings you data for future segmentation. The more fields you ask subscribers-to-be to fill in during subscription, the more information you will receive. However, asking for too many details isn’t smart because people don’t have a lot of time and don’t know you well enough to share a lot of data. Here’s how an email list looks with LIKE.TG. Each column represents a piece of data that you can use as a variable for segmentation. It can be subscription date, user rating, gender, location, and more. After you send email campaigns to your audience, you can segment it based on their behavior: how often people open your emails, click on the links, etc. With those insights in mind, you can send better-tailored offers, develop your content strategy, send re-engagement campaigns to retain subscribers, and clean your mailing list. Here’s a personalized email based on one template that shows different content to audience segments from different locations. SMS Marketing Similarly to email marketing, you need to opt-in your audience before sending SMS campaigns. It’s harder to segment mobile users because brands can’t collect a lot of data about them. However, SMS marketing works great with loyal customers if you gather information about them. It allows companies to upsell, cross-sell, and promote discounts. With LIKE.TG, you can select variables for segmentation similarly to email campaigns. Here’s a text message from Domino’s targeted at people who haven’t visited the restaurant for a while. Facebook Advertising Facebook Ads technology allows entry-level users to create powerfully targeted ads, boost engagement with your Facebook page, drive new leads to your site, and much more. Facebook collects data about users and provides you with simplified segmentation tools, so you don’t need to do anything except creating content and boost it with the Ads feature. To segment your audience on Facebook, you need to choose your target audience’s gender, age, location, interests, and behavior patterns. You can narrow your audience down to San Francisco-based men interested in bodybuilding, aged between 18 and 40 y.o. The service also estimates the potential audience that you can reach, which is 210 thousand people for this particular example. Chatbots Chatbots can help you move subscribers down the lead funnel. During their conversation with the bot, users choose different questions and reply differently. Here’s where segmentation takes place — you can add users to different segments based on their interactions with a chatbot and send well-targeted offers right in personal messages. A wisely built chatbot can identify your leads’ place in the sales funnel, their level of interest, preferences, as well as demographics like age, gender, location, etc. Based on these insights, you can divide your audience into segments and use this information for further communication and advertising, building long-lasting and productive relationships with your audience. Here’s an example of a travelling industry bot that segments the audience by location from the start, and then moves the user to the ticket ordering. Let’s finish this guide by reviewing some tips to help you master audience segmentation. 4 Best Practices for Audience Segmentation Success Don’t overdo it Set clear goals Test and improve Segment audience on each channel We’ve collected a few best practices that will help you segment your audience in the right way. Don’t overdo it. Audience segmentation is all about balance. If you narrow your audience down too much, it will stop bringing you money because only a few people will meet all of your segmentation criteria. It’s best if you aim at providing every member of your audience with exciting and personalized content in the first place and use segmentation as a supportive tool to help you achieve that goal. Set clear goals. It’s better to not use segmentation at all than it is to segment at random. To segment your audience effectively, you need to develop a buyer persona, create your buyer's journey, and identify your target audience first. Only then will you be able to set realistic goals for your audience segmentation strategy. Test and improve. It’s important to monitor how your audience changes and adjust your strategies to meet these changes. Sometimes, you need to revise segments that were effective before, do some more research, and tests to create better segments. Your audience is an everchanging living organism, so there’s always room for improvement. Segment audience on each channel. Every digital marketing channel has segmentation options, and it’s a great idea to make use of them. This may be beneficial for your business. For instance, the insights you gain about your audience from Facebook can help you better segment your audience on other channels and allows you to save money and effort. Congratulations, you’ve learned the basics of audience segmentation, so it’s time to start segmenting your email, chatbot, and SMS audiences with LIKE.TG!

Analytics are a feature that help you evaluate the effectiveness of your campaign. You will have access to tables and charts that show key indicators for the effectiveness of your mailing list: number of subscribers; delivery rate; delivery errors; emails opened; conversions; devices used by recipients; geographical location; and much more