We’re excited to announce a lineup of new product features marketers around bound to love! Over the past several months the Sigstr Product team has been focused on a new campaign type, the latest and greatest Outlook Agent, employee API, and Salesforce opportunity lists. Check out the full details below!
Alternate Banner Campaigns
This campaign type provides employees with the flexibility to select which banner ad displays in their email, from a list of approved banners in Sigstr. This stand-alone campaign type is created in Sigstr and will only display when an employee decides to change the banner in the message they are composing. Alternate banners are great for use cases that are persona based, industry based, and much more!
This new campaign type is supported for Gmail Sync (with the Chrome Extension) and Outlook Agent customers. For more details on this new campaign type, check out the help article.
Outlook Agent v6.0
The latest version of Sigstr’s Outlook Agent is the most powerful one yet! With a number of improvements, and now, support for Alternate Banners! Upon installation, employees will now see a Sigstr button in their Outlook ribbon. While composing a message, employees can click the Sigstr button to see a side menu of Alternate Banners to choose from. It will apply that banner directly to the message being composed!
Employee API v2
Our latest iteration of our Employee API is more flexible and nimble than ever! This RESTful API can accept employee data from a variety of HR systems in order provision, edit, and delete users automatically based on the data being fed.
SFDC Opportunity Lists
As your accounts progress through the sales pipeline, the type of messaging that you want to deliver to those accounts may change. Sigstr has the ability to create dynamic ABM lists based on your Opportunity pipeline! Set up different Targeted campaigns based on the stage(s) of your Salesforce Opportunity lists. It is a powerful tool to deliver pertinent content at key stages in the sales process.
Sigstr Integration Options
From Outlook to HubSpot and even Uberflip, our API integrates with dozens of sales, marketing, and email platforms so you can bring email signature campaigns and relationship data into your marketing program (no matter what your tech stack looks like).
For a full list of integrations and ways Sigstr can connect with your platform of choice, check out the Sigstr Integrations page.
Have we missed something in our latest round of product updates? Let us know! The Sigstr team is here to build a platform that our customers are excited to use. Use the chat in the bottom right of your screen to request early access to these new features.
Whether you are in B2B or B2C the corporate email system that you sign into every day is one of the most powerful tools at your disposal as a marketer, but is also seen as a nuisance. For years it has been predicted that this platform will be dead by 2020, but long lives the age-old email. Every year we see new platforms arrive that have the potential to take out the employee inbox, but what we’ve seen is that these turn into either complements of the inbox or take on a completely different use altogether. So while it’s still the largest communication platform, why don’t we harness the power and leverage already owned white space.
HubSpot notes that 93% of B2B marketers use email, and you are probably one of them. The transition from newspaper to newsletters was a sure sign of where content distribution was headed. Outside of email being the largest communication platform used today, it’s important to highlight two key advantages of the employee inbox that at this time, can’t be replicated at scale elsewhere.
Here are 3 reasons why you should consider a new email marketing in 2020:
Email Is Everywhere
Various social channels are sweeping the nation, but still aren’t always the best means to foster a business relationship. LinkedIn is a great breeding ground for sharing thought leadership and content, but it’s hard to educate specific targeted accounts on how your product can specifically help your intended audience. If we simply break this down to a numbers game in the world we live in today, not everyone lives on social media just yet and if they do it’s most likely in hopes to have one personal aspect of their life. But everyone has email as an avenue of communication.
Personalization
The hottest topic in sales and more specifically, tech sales, is personalization (also known as account-based marketing). Being able to speak the language and to the pain points of each of your accounts is very important. Marketing automation is a great platform to use to keep the pulse and attention of your audience, but when it comes to building value in the sales cycle, ABM is the way to go. We see this done so well with display ads on the internet. If you type into google right now that you’re looking for new shoes, chances are you’ll soon see a display ad that magically appears to make the buying process much easier. Sigstr + Terminus help guide these exact principles in the 1:1 inbox every single day.
Account-Based Sales Approach
Personalization and Account-based sales go hand-in-hand. Reaching out to targeted accounts takes time and the initial outreach is just the tip of the iceberg. Most deals are done primarily through email and by phone once they are engaged in the buying cycle. It’s important to share the right content at the right time every time we engage with them. The main focus here is to build an end-to-end relationship with your accounts so that the working relationship post-sale is seamless. Outreach.io does a great job of explaining the pros and cons of this approach in this “The Challenger Sale vs. Account-Based Sales” blog post.
For example, our ADR team is always promoting the latest content or event for initial outreach. Beyond that, our email signature banner sometimes includes messaging specific to the region or account we’re emailing. And as they move throughout the buyer’s journey, from one opportunity stage to another, they will see different banners along the way. After a demo they might see…
If we are going through the technical evaluation process they might see…
And lastly, after a sale, we welcome them to the family. Communication through the sales cycle is the foundation of your relationship. So why not build it during this time? Tell them who you are, always be a helpful resource, and celebrate when appropriate.
Does your company have a product release, new ebook, or event coming up? There’s a channel that you already own that can help your team promote any important initiative in a personalized way.
We are thrilled to announce that Sigstr has been acquired by the #1 Account Based Marketing platform in the market, Terminus. Together, Terminus and Sigstr will deliver the most complete, full-funnel ABM solution in the market and it will be brought to you by the most talented and formidable team in marketing technology.
We are over-the-moon excited about this outcome and are already hard at work combining our teams and technologies. While we’ll be #oneteam, Sigstr will remain a discrete brand under the Terminus umbrella and our office in downtown Indianapolis will become the midwest hub as Terminus continues its stratospheric growth.
We believe we are at the outset of a massive change in how revenue teams go to market and we are super excited to join forces with Terminus to create the future of how B2B businesses operate. Here’s Terminus CEO, Tim Kopp, and Sigstr CEO, Bryan Wade, sharing more on what this means for the category and our customers.
Hear that? Data, data, data. The average employee spends 6.3 hours a day in their inbox and 86% of business communication is done over email. Email is the lifeblood of business and is absolutely brimming with data. Now Terminus will be able to fully layer in relationship data and buying-intent signals to their already robust set of intent and engagement data. This means revenue teams will have the most comprehensive set of data available, giving them the ability to make smart, fast decisions and orchestrate sales and marketing activities at scale.
Thank you, Terminus, for your years of partnership and friendship. We can’t wait to charge into this next chapter with you as #oneteam!
“The best way to spread holiday cheer is building new Sigstr features for customers far and near.” Okay so maybe this is a slightly revised version of Will Ferrel’s famous Elf quote, but we’re making it our own with this Product Update. In this December lineup you’ll find shiny new campaign types, advanced analytics reports, our newest integration, and much more! So grab your hot cocoa, curl up by the fireplace, and read about all of our new features below.
New Campaign Types
Shuffle Campaigns
Another highly requested campaign type is here – Shuffle! Shuffle provides marketers the ability to use up to 5 different banners for a campaign, where each one can promote something different (and point to different URLs). Promote an ebook, webinar, and the latest blog post all with one campaign. The banners are randomly rotated so email recipients will see fresh content each time. Sigstr provides analytics for each banner so you can see the performance of each ad over time.
This campaign type is ideal for marketers who have multiple initiatives to promote all at the same time, and each with the same priority level. Now you can keep the call-to-action fresh with each email your team sends out and execute a balanced promotion strategy. Learn more details and how to create a Shuffle campaign here!
Click on the screenshot to see enlarged version.
Default Campaigns
That little piece of digital real estate below your email signature is valuable, so you never want it to be blank in any email your team members send out (especially if it’s to an important customer or prospect). Ensure that you never miss another marketing opportunity by setting up a Default campaign. Think of this campaign type as a “fallback plan” in case you accidentally forget about a scheduled campaign ending or miss assigning an employee group to another campaign. Rest easy knowing a Default campaign will always be there, ready to display in case something happens. Learn more about Default campaigns here.
Click on the screenshot to see enlarged version.
Analytics
New Campaign Reports
What marketer doesn’t love analytics and reports? We now have 4 downloadable CSV reports that you can find on the Campaign Details page. These different reports provide views into analytics by day, analytics by employee, most engaged recipients, and a detailed view of every campaign click.
Do you prefer to have these analytics via API? We’ve got you covered with Sigstr’s Campaign Analytics API.
New “Targeted” Campaign Workflow
Over the past few months, we have been updating our campaign workflow to make this process easier and more intuitive. With the new Targeted campaign workflow, it has never been easier to sync and assign contact and account lists to campaign banners to ensure that your audience is getting the most relevant content in every email sent by your team.
Pardot Integration
If you are a Pardot user, then you’ll definitely want to check out this new integration! Sync Prospect Lists directly from Pardot to Sigstr to use for targeted campaign banners (by account, location, industry, vertical, or even persona). Synced Prospect Lists will stay up to date in Sigstr as prospects are added or removed.
Sigstr admins also have the choice of creating new prospects directly in Pardot if they don’t already exist. If an email recipient clicks on a Sigstr campaign banner, Sigstr can create a new prospect for you! This is another great way to see who is interacting with content while generating new prospects. Find more about our Pardot integration here!
Personalized Salesforce Opportunity Matching
If you are a Salesforce power user, you are undoubtedly interested in how marketing activities, like Sigstr, are impacting your team’s open opportunities. And when you connect your Salesforce account to Sigstr, we can show you how Sigstr has influenced your pipeline. Not only that, you can now customize which accounts and domains show up (or don’t show up) in this section of your campaign analytics. Organize your data are the accounts that matter most and hide the ones that are less important! Learn more about connecting Sigstr with your Salesforce Opportunity data here.
Click on the screenshot to see enlarged version.
Auto SSL Certificates
Provisioning and managing SSL certificates can be a hassle and costly endeavor. Sigstr now provides a way to automatically provision and manage your secure traffic. One less thing for you as a marketer to worry about when using Sigstr!
Have we missed something in our latest round of updates? Let us know! We want to build a platform that our customers are excited to use. Use the chat in the bottom right of your screen to request early access to these or other features.
Hey you, reading this. Thank YOU in particular for an amazing 2019. You were a part of the community we’ve grown here at Sigstr and allowed us to accomplish amazing things. That’s what it’s all about for us and we’ve got endless gratitude for it.
We know there are a thousand other “year-end review” blog posts out there right now, so thank you for taking the time to read this one. In no particular order, here are the things we’re most stoked about achieving this year.
B2B Choice Award: Best Content of the Year
Our inaugural Sigstr September Issue, dedicated to all of the amazing work our customers do with a subtle nod to the annual Vogue publication, took home the top award at the 2019 B2BMX Killer Content Awards.
Uberflip: Tech Partner of the Year
We were exceptionally proud to be named Uberflip’s tech partner of the year. You can read all about the award here, but the tl;dr is: we have an awesome integration, we traveled all over the country together, and now have dozens of mutual customers.
Ooh, Numbers!
Our customer put some big numbers on the board this year! In the past twelve months, our customers…
Created 10,102 unique campaigns that racked up a total of 1.9 million clicks for an average of 192 clicks per campaign. Over the course of Sigstr’s existence, our customers have launched 30,000 total campaigns that have captured 3.2 million clicks!
And of the customers leveraging our relationship and buying intent analytics, they’ve mapped a collected 25 million relationships! And you thought your friends list was out of control!
Planes, Trains, and RVs
Including the #Conex roadshow that sent us across the country with Uberflip, Sigstr participated in 45 events in 3 countries. Add in things like VIP events and guest webinars and we averaged 1.2 events every week in 2019.
We heard our customers loud and clear: they want to bring their employee’s email into every part of their tech stack. We developed a boatload of partnerships and integrations this year. Here’s the list:
Customer Stories, September Issue Volume II, and an “Otter-Biography”
Sigstr’s content marketing philosophy goes something like this: “Will a marketer be a better marketer when they’re done reading this?” We put our hearts into helping marketers become better marketers this year, not only through blog posts and case studies, but every single email we sent out. In fact, we were thrilled to be called out as a best-in-class lead nurturing program by our friends at Uberflip!
Sigstr’s September Issue Volume II
From No ABM Program to Award-Winning ABM Program in One Year
Total Economic Impact Report: Kforce Finds an Effective New Marketing Channel
Case Study: Sigstr Driver’s Snowflake’s Award-Winning ABM Program
Case Study: Scale Computing Uses Sigstr to Prioritize Top Tier Accounts for ABM Success
Case Study: Terminus Takes ABM Program to Next Level with Sigstr
Podcasts on Full Blast
Our VP of Marketing, Justin, had the huge honor and opportunity of hosting four episodes of Sangram Vajre’s FlipMyFunnel Podcast. A few of us were also grateful for the opportunity to share our thoughts about the current state and future of B2B marketing and sales on some absolutely amazing podcasts.
The FlipMyFunnel Podcast: A Tale of Two ABM Programs with Jess Engel and Bre Gaul (link)
The FlipMyFunnel Podcast: Sales Development – The Unsung Heroes of ABM with Sarah Tosh and Mavis Norwich (link)
The FlipMyFunnel Podcast: Breaking Through the Digital Noise to Create Magic with Sruthi Kumar (link)
The FlipMyFunnel Podcast: ABM For Humans and Relationship-Based Marketing with Justin Keller and Sangram Vajre (link)
Sunny Side Up Podcast: The Future of SaaS and Email Marketing with Bryan Wade (link)
The Humanize What You Buy Podcast: Why It Takes a Village to Execute Intentional ABM with Justin Keller (link)
The Andy Paul Podcast: Increase Your Sales Velocity with Email with Bryan Wade (link)
The Unleash Possible Podcast: The Over-Automation of Marketing with Justin Keller (link)
The Predictable Revenue Podcast: The Power of Aligning Brand with Outbound with Sarah Tosh (link)
The VP Marketing Podcast: SDRs, ABM, Investing in Relationships & More with Sigstr’s Justin Keller (link)
And while we weren’t on it, we were flattered to bits to be mentioned on Drift’s Conversational Marketing Podcast about brands who “get it.” Sigstr mentioned alongside Wendy’s and Glossier? Are we dreaming?
The “Sigstr Chapter” in ABM is B2B
Alright, maybe it’s just pages 46-49 and not a whole chapter, but being written about in an actual published book makes everything seem really real. Sangram Vajre (aka the guy that literally wrote the first book on ABM) covered our ABM journey in his follow-up book, ABM is B2B. Even if we weren’t mentioned in it, we would still be gushing its praises as a resource for teams trying to become more intentional with their marketing. Buy it on Amazon here.
All New UX and Workflow
It hit us earlier this year: Customers are using Sigstr as an advertising channel, so why doesn’t it function like one? After that eureka moment, our team sat down to redesign and recode our entire user interface to make it more streamlined and powerful. Along with it, they introduced hyper-useful features like A/B Testing.
Full-Funnel Analytics
In addition to a new UX and workflow, we made it easier than ever for users to understand how their campaigns are performing with new ways of understanding views and engagement. Proving out ROI is a snap now, too, with our Salesforce Opportunity Analytics.
Accelerate Pipeline with Stage-Based Campaigns
We heard from our customers that orchestrating content across their revenue cycle was tough. Really tough. So we made stage-based campaigns a default part of the Sigstr application. Simply associate content with Salesforce opportunity stages and your sales team will be promoting timely and relevant content in every email sent to their most important prospects.
We Knocked Our SOCs Off
Email is important stuff. Sigstr takes security incredibly seriously and this year we achieved certification for both SOC 2 Type 1 and SOC 2 Type 2. We’re the only player in the space with this level of security, which has helped us earn the business of some of the most respected enterprises in the world. Learn more about our commitment to security in this post from our security officer, Brent Mackay.
Moving from “Onboarding Software” to “Accelerating Success”
When we passed the 500 customer mark, we realized we needed to shake things up to keep everyone happy and successful with Sigstr. We reformed our customer success team to do three things:
Get customers up and running faster.
Coach them into leveraging the marketing tsunami that is their employee’s email.
Make sure they know how much we care about them.
To do that, we introduced the Client Strategy role. This team member provides coaching and best practices to our customers so that Sigstr is an integrated part of our customers’ entire marketing strategy. As one of our favorite customers put it, “Sigstr has become the connective tissue that we build all of our campaigns around now.”
The CS team has started passing around a Lorax (who cares a whole awful lot) and a bottle of Hot Damn to the teammates who best support our customers.
SDR Love Day
Whether you call them SDRs or BDRs or Inside Sales or Outbound Marketing – the team that serves as the front line of your sales and marketing team has one of the hardest jobs in your company. We respect the hustle and determination these professionals bring to their job every day and we wanted to celebrate them with our first ever SDR Love Day.
At a good number of those events we mentioned earlier, we had a SigStar speaking. We don’t have an exact number for this, but we conservatively spoke in front at least 10,000 people in the audience this year and told them about the wonders of Sigstr.
The Sigstr Art Gallery
What started as a cute giveaway has become a major brand asset for us. Who would have thought that something as simple as a sticker would become a viral brand builder? Brimming with pride about our adhesive joy, we changed a wall in our office into the Sigstr Tiny Art gallery to display our beautiful (and sticky) heritage.
👨🎨 We spruced up one of the walls in our office this weekend…
Introducing the Sigstr Tiny Art Gallery! Come visit us and we’ll give you the tour. pic.twitter.com/YhXhZKgsCg
Here’s another customer request we were thrilled to fulfill! A very favorite customer of ours was on a mission to bring gender inclusive pronouns to the fore by including them in all of their employees’ email signatures. Soon after, gender pronouns became a universal optional signature field for all of our customers.
In honor of International #PronounDay our team lovingly developed a new “pronoun” signature field.
It’s immediately available to all our users that want to include their pronouns in their emails. 🤗 https://t.co/9Fw305SRwB
Like any business, we have our ups and downs, but we’re happy to say this has been Sigstr’s best year yet. The camaraderie, teamwork, and spirit that’s reflected in our values shows up to the Sigstr office day in and day out. We’re truly lucky to work with people whose enthusiasm and work ethic propels us all to be our best. And, as we always say, “the harder you work, the luckier you get.”
From all of us at Sigstr, we hope you have an absolutely amazing 2020. We’ll be here rooting for you! If you want to go even further back (a year), check out Sigstr’s 2018 year in review.
We’re calling it now: pipeline acceleration is about to become the obsession of B2B marketers everywhere. With more B2B marketers responsible for their company’s revenue (70% according to our pals at 6Sense), the focus is quickly shifting from the top of the funnel to actively driving the entire funnel. Pipeline acceleration is also the easiest place to develop sales and marketing collaboration that unites revenue teams because everyone has a stake in it. The key to unlocking this partnership and speeding deals along is intelligently delivering the right content to the right audiences at the right time.
Delivering the right content at the right time is pretty basic marketing theory, but extraordinarily difficult to do in practice. Deploying the right content across a variety of mediums to the correct recipient right when they need to see it is tough, but doing it at scale across all of your salespeople and all of their active opportunities is nearly impossible. This is an area where Sigstr really shines! It allows marketing teams to automate and orchestrate content delivery with pinpoint delivery with pinpoint accuracy without your customer-facing teams having to lift a finger.
It’s so powerful that when we (the Sigstr team using Sigstr) started doing this ourselves, our sales velocity increased 15% (an average sales cycle of 45 days to 40 days). That’s like giving our team an extra two weeks to run deals per quarter! If you’ve ever been in an EOQ pinch, you know how valuable that time can be.
Everyone’s sales process and associated sales stages look different, so we’re going to break up the revenue journey into three chunks and give you a few ideas for Sigstr campaigns. Reminder: stage-based targeting is built right into Sigstr, so setting these campaigns up is a snap.
Pro-tip: If you’re using an ABM advertising tool like Terminus, 6sense, Demandbase or Rollworks, you can accomplish similar advertising tactics across the open web for an ever better surround-sound experience!
Awareness
This is where it all starts; keeping your most important audiences consistently and passively informed about whatever it is you’re trying to promote at the time. Just like with any advertising channel, the more relevant the content is to the recipient, the better it will perform. Here are a few ways Sigstr banners can help drive more activity and engagement at the top of the funnel.
Type: Default Campaign Banner
Speed: Slow
“Default Campaign Banner” is actually a new feature inside of Sigstr. Think of it as a general, evergreen banner that will automatically show in case you don’t have a targeted campaign running. This is also how you should think about your awareness campaigns – promoting something with broad appeal.
Type: Industry Specific
Speed: Medium
If your CRM hygiene is in good enough shape, you can launch a Sigstr campaign that is specific to a certain industry, persona, or geographical location. Simply organize a list in your MAP or build a campaign in your CRM and match it with a banner that promotes a specific message just to that audience.
Type: Account Specific
Speed: Buckle up!
This type of campaign has become the gold standard for our customers running all-star ABM campaigns with Sigstr. In the world of ABM, there are only a few ways of starting a conversation: personal email or phone call, or getting them to come to you through targeted account-specific content. Some of the world’s best account-based marketers love Sigstr campaigns because it checks both of those boxes at once. From our own account we have found that these banners achieve 5x more engagement versus a regular default campaign.
Meeting Booked
Whether you label this as a demo, appointment or meeting, this pipeline milestone is important because have successfully scheduled time with a future customer to talk about their needs and see how your solution or service can help. This is when Sigstr can really start to aide your pipeline acceleration at scale.
Type: Anticipation Campaign
Speed: Medium
This campaign is two-fold. First, including a time-sensitive campaign in your sales teams’ communications with a future customer lets them know that their time is important to you. Or, at least important enough to have the right message in your sales teams’ email signatures. Secondly, you can link this to a destination that helps build anticipation and trust. For example, after the email recipient clicks on the banner, they can be sent to a fun brand page, your “about us” page, or a special page letting them know what to expect.
Type: Info Collection Campaign
Speed: Fast
A degree of difficulty higher than the “Anticipation Campaign” is the “Getting To Know You” campaign. Depending on when and how deep your discovery process is in sales, you can link this stage-specific banner to a form or survey that will allow you to collect more information about them. The expert move here is to link them to a questionnaire that will allow you to get to know the recipients better as people. This allows you to have more personal things to talk about and get a head start on a super thoughtful direct mail campaign later.
Value Presentation or Proposal
Alright, now things are getting serious! Your discovery and needs analysis went well and it’s shaping up to be a perfect fit for both sides. Now it’s time to play defense. Your team needs to back up the proposal you’re about to give them with proof that there’s some serious ROI behind it. That means customer stories, social proof, or perhaps content about your company’s values.
Type: Case Study
Speed: Medium
A great case study is a powerful mid-to-bottom of funnel piece of content– especially if it’s relevant and recent. Automatically delivering a case study to a prospect who’s deep in evaluation mode can instill confidence in their decision. Sigstr’s ability to target on multiple dimensions (e.g. sales stage and industry) means that you can run multiple case study campaigns at once, ensuring the most relevant one gets in front of your opportunity. No longer will the salesperson go over to your content team, asking what the best case study to send to their prospect is!
Type: G2
Speed: Medium-Fast (and extra insightful!)
One case study is great, but there’s nothing better than an overwhelming amount of positive feedback about your company. Especially when it’s directly from your customers. Sending mid-funnel prospects to your G2 reviews and profile is a great way to impress them and, if you’re a G2 customer, gives you the opportunity to show off your company’s profile you worked so hard to build. Pro-tip: now you can always be promoting your G2 profile with our new integration.
Type: Value Prop
Speed: Depends
Savvy buyers will be weighing your solution against your competitors. This is the perfect time to promote differentiation or prove how you’re different. It can even be (and, we can’t stress this enough, factual) “fear, uncertainty, and doubt” content about your competitive set and where you fit in. Making sure your customer is evaluating your product or service based on your strongest criteria can help short circuit competitive conversations that can grind sales velocity to a halt.
Technical or Cross-Departmental Evaluation
We realize this may not be relevant to EVERY company, but as far as software is concerned, there’s a good chance a prospect’s IT department will enter the sales process. And we don’t blame them! It’s their job to make sure everything is safe, secure, and won’t create any technical or security liabilities. Or, maybe a separate team within your prospect’s organization is now evaluating your product or serve. Either way, there’s a Sigstr banner for it!
Type: Departmental Targeting
Speed: Fast
Just like you were targeting personas in your awareness campaigns, you can automate your targeting with specific individuals based on their job title. At Sigstr, we do this by targeting just people with “IT,” “information,” or “security,” in their title and pairing them with a campaign about how robust our security is (SOC2, Type 2 btw) at the “Technical Evaluation” sales stage in our CRM.
Type: Departmental Targeting
Speed: Fast
If your product or solution doesn’t necessarily need buy-in or approval from another department, but it will impact them (just like when Sigstr gets rolled out to an entire company) there’s an opportunity to get everyone excited about what’s coming. For example, you can use a Sigstr banner to direct non-buying committee individuals to a landing page that gets them excited about what’s coming. This is a great way to gain influencers and champions within a company.
Closed/Won or Closed/Lost
You did it! You got to the end of the sales cycle. Whether you won or lost the account, the relationship isn’t over. Remember: the best marketers are obsessed with the entire customer journey! If you didn’t win the account, you can automate your way to re-opening an opportunity. If you won the account, it’s time to get them prepped for success with you!
Type: Closed/Won
Speed: N/A
Once the ink on the contract is dry, the race is on to start delivering value to your new client. While on-boarding is being coordinated and rollout plans are being formalized, you can start to prep everyone at your new customer with what to expect by targeting them with a campaign that directs them to a new-client resource center. This will reduce the friction of on-boarding and stem any errant questions that might slow down their on-boarding.
Type: Leave a Review
Speed: N/A
Right after a successful implementation, your product or service will be top of mind the customer. Especially if it’s starting to deliver value right away. This is the most critical time to ask for honest feedback on a review site like G2 or Capterra. At Sigstr, we listen for an “Implementation Complete” signal in our CRM and automatically target our admins and champions with banners asking them to leave us a review. This helps keep a steady stream of positive reviews flowing in and makes our mid-funnel G2 campaign work even better!
Type: Closed/Lost
Speed: N/A
You won’t win every deal – that’s just life. But that doesn’t mean it’s over. You can set a timer in Sigstr for a campaign to start running after a given period of time (maybe next quarter or a sufficient amount of time before their next contract cycle). So when your sales team does reach back out, the prospect is delighted with a message like the banner below. At Sigstr, we point these campaigns to our product release content stream so they can see all of our new features and product functionality since the last time we spoke.
The most important part with all of this is that you’re delivering the right content at the right time. There are endless ways of hacking together methods of content deployment so that your team is able to effectively do it. But with this approach, there are two main reasons why it’s superior:
It’s responsive, not prescriptive. You can’t force someone onto YOUR buyer’s journey. They’re going to take their own every time. By delivering content based on discrete sales stages, you’re delivering the content when they need it, not when you want to send it.
It’s pre-orchestrated. You don’t have to put your sales team through endless enablement sessions and force them to read every single word your content team has written. Your sales team can do what they do best, listen and respond, while confidently knowing their rockstar marketing team has their back.
Now what are you waiting for? Go turn on stage-based campaigns in your Sigstr account! And if you want to get even more advanced and learn how you can orchestrate this across your entire tech stack, start a chat in the bottom right and we can set up some time.
We are over the moon excited to announce our official partnership with Intelligent Demand, an award-winning B2B revenue growth agency that offers a suite of account-based marketing services.
This new partnership brings together best-of-breed technology with expert services to help even more marketers drive better engagement and revenue impact.
If you’re already working with Intelligent Demand, reach out and see how Sigstr can be added to your recommended tech stack! And for more details on the partnership and recent announcement, check out this press release.
So excited to welcome @sigstr – the leaders in email signature marketing – to our partner ecosystem! Email is such an important channel for #B2B marketing and sales teams, so we are thrilled to be partnering with the experts in this space.https://t.co/6xXCwL8jW4pic.twitter.com/l4YpyF08c0
Email is the lifeblood of every B2B company. Professionals send between 10,000 to 20,000 emails every year which, for a 100 person company, totals between 1 to 2 million emails every year. We know email isn’t going anywhere, but how much would our inboxes be spared if we were able to move those back-and-forth conversations to chat? Wouldn’t a customer experience be so much better if you were able to click in an email and instantly be connected to the right person? Our new integration with Drift allows you to just do that and much more. With the Sigstr + Drift combination, you can do some pretty magical stuff.
Run Hundreds of Simultaneous Campaigns
Many of our customers run dozens or hundreds of simultaneous campaigns, and oftentimes they’re 1:1 campaigns targeted at specific accounts. This is a key part of Sigstr’s ABM strategy, where we connect our Tier 1 ABM accounts to campaign banners that connect them with their dedicated Account Executive.
This becomes especially important for pipeline acceleration. Once your team is actively working a deal, delivering content relevant to a specific stage in the buyer’s journey and having instant, real-time conversations can help speed up your deals. Ready for an example? When an account in our own pipeline completes the “demo” opportunity, the targeted banner assigned to the account automatically updates to a “thanks for seeing a demo!” message. Not only that, when the email recipient clicks on the banner, they will be led to a Drift landing page that displays the content and their Account Executive, standing by and ready to chat.
Outlook Support
While only a little over 10% of all email goes through Outlook and Outlook.com, it represents an overwhelming share of email activity in the enterprise. Now our shared customers can start Drift conversations in every email that’s sent through Outlook.
“Chat with Me” or “Chat with Us”
You can also find a new option in the Sigstr’s signature builder that allows specific users with Drift accounts to include a “chat with me” or a “chat with us” button in every email they send. How is that different than a campaign? With Sigstr, campaign banners are dynamic and always changing depending on who’s opening or sending the email. Alongside these campaigns, teams can also include a “chat” button that provides a conversational opportunity for every single email sent by their team.
In fact, this is exactly how our friends at Lessonly are using this integration. Their CMO, Kyle Lacy, had this to say about the integration:
“I’m a huge fan of this integration. We’re never going to stop emailing, but sometimes you just want to get the conversation going in real time. With Sigstr, we can target who we want to chat with and move the conversation from email to Drift instantly.”
– Kyle Lacy, CMO, Lessonly
Click and CQL Analytics
And of course you can also get performance analytics out of this integration! Understand how many chats and chat qualified leads your team has generated through your company email signature. In fact, we’ve already had one shared customer generate 31 conversations and 10 CQLs in just one week using this integration.
Learn more by chatting with us on sigstr.com! We’re happy to share more about this new integration and all of the possible use cases. Or, grab a free ticket to HYPERGROWTH SF (use the code “SIGSTRFREE”) and hang with the Sigstr team to see the integration in action.
It’s hard to believe that it has been over a year since the GDPR enforcement date back in May of 2018. As the tech and marketing industries are just now getting a grasp of the new privacy regulations in the EU, the United States has been to making changes of its own. Back in September of 2018, California passed the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), which will be enforced starting January 1, 2020. These new privacy regulations closely mirror GDPR, but there are distinct differences. Unlike GDPR, the CCPA is a bit more prescriptive and less ambiguous. Unlike GDPR, there are minimum business thresholds to qualify for regulation under the new regulations.
Companies need to prepare for CCPA if they meet any of the following requirements:
Your company has a gross revenue of $25 million or more
Possesses the personal information of 50,000 or more consumers, households, or devices; or
Your company earns at least half of its income from the sale of consumers’ personal information
What this boils down to is, if you are a marketer and work for a company that stores and/or processes a lot of personal data about consumers, you need to pay attention to these new regulations.
What Is CCPA?
CCPA is intended to protect the rights of California residents by helping consumers know what data is being collected about them and the right to access/modify it. Here is a summary of the rights of consumers:
Right to own your personal data – companies are to disclose what data points they collect and who they sell data to. Consumers also have the right to say no to the sale or collection of their data. This does not apply to anonymized data.
Right to control the personal data that companies store – should a consumer opt out of the sale of their personal data, companies cannot discriminate against them by charging more or denying services.
Ensure companies secure your personal data – it is the responsibility of companies that store/process personal data that they have reasonable security measures in place.
All of this sounds very familiar to GDPR’s regulations, but there are differences. Websites that collect and sell personal data will need to provide an opt out on every page that collects personal information.
So What Does CCPA Mean for Marketers?
California isn’t the only state that is making its own privacy regulations – there are over 10 other states that are in the process or have passed new regulations around internet/data privacy. That means that until the US government creates a unified regulation on data privacy, the burden will be on marketers to monitor and understand the landscape.
As you may have expected, non-compliance with the CCPA can result in pretty steep fines. Unlike GDPR, consumers have the right to sue companies who are not abiding by the new regulations. Intentional violations of CCPA can cost companies $7,500, while unintentional infractions will still cost companies up to $2,500 as well. A big difference between GDPR and CCPA is that it gives the right for California residents to sue companies for damages for losing or exposing their personal information without the resident’s consent. Fines can range from $100 to $750+ per infraction. This means that if you accidentally expose PII of 10,000 people, fines can reach (or exceed) $750,000.
Very recently, California passed 4 new amendments to the CCPA. This proves the need for marketers to continuously monitor data privacy regulations. The new amendments help to remove some of the ambiguity from parts of the regulation as well as add in a 1 year exception for B2B contact and employee information. The assumption being that California will pass a separate privacy act around employee data within the next year.
At a high level, to help comply with CCPA, companies should do a few basic things:
If your company sells personal data, there needs to be a link for consumers to opt out of the sale of their personal data.
Maintain an up to date privacy policy that outlines what personal data is collected and what it is used for. This should include a method or workflow for users to exercise their “right to be forgotten”. For those who already comply with GDPR, this step should be taken care of.
Have contracts in place with your vendors that clearly outline each party’s responsibilities. Data Processing Addendums (DPAs) or other contract addendums are a great way to do this.
How Sigstr Is Preparing for CCPA
Sigstr has created a California Service Provider Addendum to append to all new contracts going forward. This document further solidifies the responsibilities of Sigstr and its customers to abide by regulations and obligations set forth by our terms of use. Sigstr’s GDPR features are very relevant for CCPA – the ability to delete, export, and modify data about specific consumers will be very useful for CCPA requests.
Sigstr is also SOC 2 Type II compliant in all 5 AICPA Trust Principles, including Privacy. An independent auditing company tested and confirmed the controls we have in place around privacy, data governance and GDPR standards.
Similar to what we discussed in our GDPR blog post a year ago, compliance is an ongoing activity and not a project with a start and end date. Since regulations change almost weekly, it is more important than ever to research and understand the current and future standards of data privacy.
It’s fall, ya’ll! In addition to trick or treating, pumpkin spiced latte sipping, and leaf raking, Sigstr customers can spend this fall enjoying many exciting new features. In this October lineup you’ll find even more options for you to create the perfect email banner campaign, including A/B testing and an improved targeted campaign workflow. Not only that, we’ve also been working hard on multiple integrations, some of which are already in the hands of our customers.
So grab your hot apple cider and let’s make a toast to hay rides, spooky haunted houses, and using employee email in even more ways as your new favorite marketing channel. Find all of our new features and details below!
New Campaign Types
A/B Test Campaign Type
Unsure of which banner will convert more clicks? No need to guess anymore – upload two banners and test which one achieves a higher click rate with our new A/B Test campaign type. See side-by-side analytics of each banner’s performance over time and which one comes out on top! This is a great new way to find out how to best optimize your campaign banners and what types of messaging and graphics resonate most with your audience. Find more details on how this new feature works here.
(For Windows Desktop deployments, Outlook Agent v4.1.0 is required to enable this campaign type)
New “Targeted” Campaign Workflow
In our August Product Update, we announced a new and improved UI workflow to create new Sender and Internal campaigns. With this release, you can now have the latest and greatest experience when creating Targeted campaigns! It has never been easier to sync and assign contact and account lists to campaign banners to ensure that your audience is getting the most relevant content in every email sent by your team.
New Integrations
Outreach Integration
Does your sales organization send emails out of Outreach’s platform? Ensure that all Outreach emails contain Sigstr banner ads with this new and improved integration, regardless of the implementation type you use. Whether you send messages via Segments, in Gmail, or Outlook, you can now have the most relevant call-to-action included in all of your messages! Read more details about the new integration here.
Pardot Integration
Our newest Marketing Automation integration is here! Sync Prospect Lists directly from Pardot to Sigstr to use for ABM targeting with your Sigstr campaign banners. Synced Prospect Lists will stay up to date in Sigstr as Prospects are added or removed.
In addition, Sigstr admins have the choice of creating new Prospects directly in Pardot if they don’t already exist. If an email recipient clicks on a Sigstr campaign banner, Sigstr can create a new Prospect for you! This is another great way to see who is interacting with content while generating new Prospects. Find more details on how this new integration works here.
Drift Integration
Whether your customers and prospects prefer email or chat, now you can accommodate both with the Sigstr + Drift integration. Seamlessly connect your Drift conversational landing pages with Sigstr campaign banners. Guide your audience to take a specific action or ask them strategic questions based on which Sigstr banner they click on. Find more details on how this new integration works here. More to come in the coming weeks – stay tuned!
Azure Active Directory Integration Improvements
We have continued to iterate and improve our Azure AD integration to make it even more powerful. Download Sigstr’s AD integration from the Enterprise Applications section of your Azure admin interface to provision users directly from AD.
Once connected, admins can pick and choose which AD groups to sync with Sigstr and we will mirror those selected groups in Sigstr! Those AD groups will update in Sigstr if alterations are made, so no need to re-sync if changes are made!
Have we missed something in our latest round of updates? Let us know! We want to build a platform that our customers are excited to use. Use the chat in the bottom right of your screen to request early access to these or other features.
This is a guest blog post from our friends at Sagefrog Marketing Group, a top ranked B2B marketing agency with specialties in healthcare, technology, industrial and business services.
It’s a known problem in business: marketing teams are tasked with generating as many leads as possible, and sales teams are challenged with closing the leads they receive. Meanwhile, the two teams don’t look beyond their own duties to understand how they can best support each other’s success.
This breakdown in communication and alignment can be detrimental to your company’s brand trust. Who trusts a brand that generates buzz, but can’t close deals?
Once a lead is generated, the clock is ticking to build trust with that individual. Content offers, personalized emails, and chatbots can be a great way to start, but how that conversation looks to the lead is your biggest challenge.
To improve your internal communication and external conversations with leads, let’s look at how these two successful companies have achieved marketing and sales alignment to build brand trust.
1. Follow HubSpot’s Lead and Align for Better Communication
HubSpot ranked near the top of the 2019 Trusted Brands Report, and one look at their marketing and sales program could tell you why. Just last year, HubSpot disrupted the industry when it announced that marketers should ditch the traditional marketing funnel, and look to the flywheel to nurture, generate, and convert leads.
Unlike the funnel, the flywheel shows how marketing, sales, and service departments need to work together to surround the customer with helpful information and touchpoints. It teaches that different teams need to collaborate to keep customers moving through the buyer’s journey.
When teams collaborate, the biggest thing to pay attention to – according to HubSpot – is ensuring teams don’t overlap and repeat one another. If a prospect already visited your company’s website, for example, and used a form to request a consultation with sales, they shouldn’t then receive an impersonal marketing email that introduces your company. This type of overlap reflects poorly on your company’s internal communication, which is devastating to brand trust.
Storing extensive lead information in your CRM before leads are passed to sales is the first step in improving internal communication. When your sales rep can jump into the conversation without the prospect needing to retell their story, it builds brand trust by demonstrating that your company is fully attuned to what individual prospects need and want.
2. Follow Caterpillar’s Lead and Align for Efficiency
Marketing departments obviously don’t intend to pull in leads that aren’t useful to their sales counterparts, but it’s a natural consequence of using marketing tactics that cast too wide of a net.
Looking at a highly trusted brand like construction giant Caterpillar, we observe that even companies with marketing dollars to burn know that bigger isn’t always better.
Caterpillar has considerable resources to make elegant, interesting marketing content, but they only bother reaching leads through specialty sites and targeted content offers and campaigns. This way, the only leads their marketing efforts generate are those that represent the genuine possibility of a sale. That’s how Caterpillar aligns the needs of its sales team with the tactics of its marketing team.
As your company generates leads, using CRM platforms like HubSpot and Salesforce can help you capture and analyze data on which marketing tactics bring in the most qualified leads for sales. By tracking this information, your marketing team can spin up what’s working and turn off what’s not to ensure no time or dollars are wasted. How does this relate to brand trust?
Word travels fast in the modern marketplace. Constantly pitching to people who aren’t interested can garner a reputation of being overeager to make sales. To gain brand trust, your company needs to appear professional, sought-after, and in control. That appearance comes from careful, targeted communications with prospects who you are genuinely interested in, and similarly, who are genuinely interested in you.
The Takeaway
Being a successful marketer isn’t about how many leads you generate. Being a successful salesperson isn’t about chasing down sales leads because you don’t know where to find eager prospects. Successful marketing and sales is about collaborating towards the common goal of finding quality, qualified leads and guiding them all the way through the buyer’s journey and into a long-lasting, trust-filled partnership.
About Mark
Mark Schmukler, CEO and Co-founder of Sagefrog Marketing Group, LLC, brings more than 30 years of global marketing and consulting experience to the agency, leveraging his B2B background to lead brand strategy and business development.Based in Doylestown, PA and Princeton, NJ, Sagefrog Marketing Group is a full-service B2B marketing agency with specialties in healthcare, technology and business services. Founded by Mark Schmukler and Suzanne Morris in 2002, Sagefrog’s mission is to accelerate client success through integrated marketing including branding, digital, public relations, social media and traditional services.
Sigstr is ecstatic to announce our advanced integration with Outreach, the market leading sales engagement platform. Starting immediately, our joint customers can include targeted email signature ads in every single email they send from Outreach. The combination of a beautifully written sales email coupled with targeted Sigstr ads has become the de facto outbound sales and marketing play– and now it’s freely available for all joint Outreach and Sigstr users.
Your employees are sending a lot of emails– about 10,000 every year, according to the Radicati Group. Solutions like Outreach turn your customer-facing teams into email monsters. Let’s say that you have 50 people using Outreach, that group alone is sending about 1 million emails every year. The new Sigstr + Outreach integration turns that email volume into 1 million targeted ad impressions by putting a Sigstr banner in each email sent out by Outreach.
Sigstr ads outperform traditional display ads, with unique clickthrough rates averaging around 6.5%. Research conducted by Sigstr and EyeQuant revealed that Sigstr campaigns command extraordinary engagement because they exist alone in an email, in comparison to traditional display ads that compete for attention on noisy websites.
What’s more, Sigstr’s ability to target recipients with relevant content drives brand value and sales velocity. According to Marketo, 63% of respondents are highly annoyed by the way brands continue to rely on the old-fashioned strategy of blasting generic ad messages repeatedly. However, Rapt Media found that 63% of consumers said they’d think more positively of a brand if it gave them content that was more valuable, interesting or relevant. This integration accomplishes that personalization at scale.
With a single click from a Sigstr admin, all Outreach emails will include a dynamic banner ad that automatically adapts based on who is sending the email. Users can create as many sender groups and personalized banners as needed to fit your business needs. For example, if you have SDRs assigned to certain territories, you can then create territory groups so that every sent email includes an invitation to a field event in that region. Or, if you have separate outbound reps for SMB and Enterprise accounts, you can automatically share the most relevant content with each email sent to their segment.
“I am elated that this next-level integration is finally here,” said Ryan Grable, VP of Global Demand Generation at Genesys. “Our teams have seen tremendous success with both Sigstr and Outreach separately, but now that we’ve combined them they have become force-multipliers.”
“Outreach customers have loved Sigstr for years now,” said Manny Medina, CEO of Outreach. “ Sigstr’s deeper integration with Outreach allows marketers and sellers to better utilize email as a core channel as part of an effective account-based engagement strategy.”
To learn more about this integration, visit Sigstr’s listing in Outreach Galaxy and stay tuned for a webinar featuring Ryan Grable, VP of Global Demand Gen at Genesys, Sarah Tosh, Sr. Director of ABM at Sigstr, and Stephen Farnsworth, at Outreach. This integration is available now and free to joint customers. Sigstr customers that are interested in full targeting capabilities through Outreach and Sigstr One should contact their customer success manager.
Peanut butter and jelly. Burgers and fries. Milk and cookies. Uberflip and Sigstr.
We are thrilled and humbled that Uberflip recently named Sigstr their Tech Partner of the Year at this year’s Conex Conference in Toronto. Over the past year with Uberflip, we’ve been lucky enough to build things together, travel all over North America together, and even drink beers and play with dogs together (another awesome combination!). If we had a Tech Partner award, we’d give one right back to them.
What is Uberflip and how does it work with Sigstr?
If you’re not familiar with Uberflip, here’s the quick version! Uberflip takes your content game to the next level by creating beautiful, immersive, and binge-able content experiences that ignite B2B relationships. Sigstr’s ability to turn employee email into a high-volume and hyper-targeted B2B ad channel seemed like the perfect way to promote relevant Uberflip content streams to precisely the right audiences. In December of 2018, we launched an integration that connects targeted Sigstr banners with Uberflip streams accompanied by rich analytics.
How are people using Sigstr + Uberflip?
The moment the integration launched, Snowflake’s ABM team began connecting hundreds of their 1:1 targeted campaigns in Sigstr to personalized, account-specific Uberflip content streams. When they started boasting stats like, “100% engagement on target accounts” and “50% of all content consumed through 1:1 campaigns,” people took notice. In an account-based environment, there are really only three ways to directly engage with your audience: 1:1 email, direct mail, or an old-fashioned phone call. Of those mediums, only email provides the opportunity for a targeted, clickable call-to-action that puts them directly in front of a tailored content experience.
How did Sigstr win Tech Partner of the Year?
It started with a powerful integration – one that solves real problems and makes a techstack better than the sum of its parts. The opportunities to partner with other companies is endless, but if there’s not a shared goal and “skin in the game” from both partners, it’s difficult to turn a partnership into revenue. Luckily, Uberflip’s team went above and beyond to dedicate the technical resources required to build a killer integration.
After that, we made time for our respective customer-facing teams to get fully enabled. Booking your entire go-to-market team for 30-60 minutes is tough, but absolutely critical to get a busy team to learn about another solution, how it works, what the use-cases are, and notable customers using it. It’s important to point out that neither of us spiffed the others’ sales teams to bring deals to each other. Rather, the main motivation was to create more value for our respective customers and maximize their investment.
Beyond the construction of the integration, arguably the most important part is bringing it to market and getting it in the hands of customers. We have found that, beyond the initial hype of announcing an integration, continuing to get opportunities to tell stories in front of each others’ customers is critical to making a partnership bear fruit. This took form a few different ways. First, a joint-customer webinar featuring our integration and the top use cases. Then, we tagged along with the Uberflip team during their roadshow spanning across 8 cities. As our teams grew closer, it became easy to rely on each other for field events, co-marketing campaigns, and even the occasional retweet.
The Results
This partnership helped both Uberflip and Sigstr acquire some significant customers. The initial announcement campaign alone influenced over $1,000,000 in recurring revenue and the subsequent roadshow influenced an additional $785,000. This is in addition to the incalculable “soft value” marketing power like amplifying each other’s brand with our respected audiences.
For marketers looking new ways to enhance their outbound strategies, drive more engagement with their target accounts, and breathe new life into their content program, look no further. The Uberflip + Sigstr integration is a great addition to your tech stack. Learn more about it here.
About 8 months ago, we announced Sigstr’s SOC 2 Type I with a commitment to continue moving our security program forward. We are very excited to announce Sigstr’s SOC 2 Type II certification! Sigstr went through a rigorous third party audit to receive this prestigious status among SaaS organizations.
What is a SOC 2 Report?
SOC stands for System & Organization Controls and the standards are set forth by the AICPA. The AICPA developed SOC 2 as comprehensive evaluation of a company’s controls, processes and policies when it comes to Information Security, privacy, confidentiality, risk management, change management, and more.
There are varying levels of SOC 2 audits, based on the Trust Service Principles you are audited against. The 5 Trust Service Principles are:
Security
Availability
Processing Integrity
Confidentiality
Privacy
Just like Sigstr’s Type I audit, our SOC 2 Type II was also against all 5 Trust Service Principles. Most organizations choose to be audited against 1 or 2 Principles, but Sigstr made the choice to be audited against all of them. With new InfoSec and privacy laws coming into effect (like GDPR and CCPA), these audits are becoming more and more crucial.
The difference between a SOC 2 Type I and Type II is that a Type I is a snapshot of the controls and measures in place at a given time. A Type II audit is proving that those controls are effectively in place over a minimum duration of 6 months, showing ongoing adherence. Evidence that controls have been running effectively are reviewed over the audit period, which is why a SOC 2 Type II is typically the more desired audit report.
What did we learn?
Several people have asked us what the audit process is like and what things we can share about our experience. These are our 3 main takeaways from our Type I and Type II audits.
There is a LOT of preparation
Before going into a SOC 2 audit, you should research what it entails and measure your company’s preparedness. There are dozens of controls and policies that need to be in place prior to starting the audit, and it would be daunting to try to write and implement them during an audit. Many audit firms offer a “gap analysis” for such a thing, but that will cost time and money. It may be worthwhile if you have no experience in audits or don’t have the time to do the many hours of research yourself. An easy place to start is to document the processes and controls you currently have in place.
It takes longer than you think
It is easy to underestimate the time the audit will take end to end. Audit timelines will vary based on your company size and scope of the engagement, but know that it is a full time job for a few people for approximately 3 months. Your security team should allocate their time appropriately, since the majority of the work will be on them.
Set yourself up for success
When going through the process of creating controls and policies to govern your InfoSec program, it can be very tempting to embellish and add aspirational controls. This can come around to bite you, because controls that you put into policies will be audited. Whatever you put into a policy, you will be asked to furnish evidence of that during your Type I and Type II audit. If you fail to do so, it will show up as an exception on your report. One InfoSec representative told us a simple phrase that is easy to remember: “Do what you say and say what you do”.
We aren’t stopping here…
An important part of SOC 2 compliance is ongoing adherence and improvements made to security systems and processes. The standards for SOC shift as the tech ecosystem changes, and ongoing improvements to controls are needed in order to stay up to date. Sigstr plans on annual SOC 2 Type II audits as a mission for customers to have confidence that their data is safe with us.
If you ever have questions for Sigstr’s Security Team, you can reach out to us directly at security@sigstr.com.
The late Summer months are here and back-to-school season is in full effect! The Sigstr Product team has been hard at work in the classroom all Summer long, putting in the library hours and drinking gallons of coffee to bring you a brand new Campaign experience and many other exciting features. See what’s new by checking out the details below!
New Campaign Creation Flow
A new Campaign experience is here, bringing additional Campaign types, increased functionality, and more! We’ve also renamed ABM Campaigns to “Targeted” to be inclusive of:
1:1 contact-based targeting
Opportunity stage targeting (with your marketing automation smart lists)
Traditional account-based targeting
Define Your Audience
It’s now easier than ever to pick your audience for Targeted Campaigns. You can quickly sort, filter, and search for any existing list. Or, if you need to add a new list, easily import any type of list during this process with just a few simple steps.
Banner Management and Tracking
In addition to more audience options, we’ve also completely redesigned the banner management experience. Easily upload multiple banners at one time while giving each individual banner its own name. Add mailto: links or custom URLs to your banner, or select a landing page from your favorite marketing automation platform. And don’t forget – you can also easily add custom UTM parameters for all of your tracking needs.
Review and Test Before Activating
We understand the importance of feeling 100% confident with a Campaign before it’s officially launched. That’s why we’ve put a lot of work into our new Review step! Curious about what each banner will look like with your email signature? Flip through each uploaded banner in the preview box or send yourself a test email to see how your Signature and Campaign appears in an actual email. Double check your work by reviewing any missing attributes and easily schedule a start or end date if it’s time-sensitive. Use all of the options above to ensure the right message is showing to the right person at the right time!
Save a Campaign in Draft Mode and Launch It Later
Marketers are busy, we definitely get it. And sometimes another priority comes up, or you need to start something now and finish it later. Whether you have competing priorities or you’re simply just planning ahead, it’s now possible to start and set up a new Campaign, save it as a draft, and then return to it and launch at a later time.
Coming Soon in September
“But wait, there’s more!” We’re also teasing out the following new Campaign types, which we’ll be launching next month in this experience.
A/B Testing: Test and measure multiple banners to determine which is most effective.
Default: A fallback Campaign will display when no other rules apply.
Shuffle: Add up to 5 different banners to you Campaign, each with their own unique URL.
Real-Time Banner Updates
When composing a new email, the sender can now see their Campaign banner update in real-time when selecting a recipient. Sigstr’s latest and greatest Chrome Extension now supports this handy feature (only available to Gmail customers using Sigstr’s Chrome Extension). Just type in the recipient’s email address and automatically see which banner will appear in your email based on your existing sender-based or audience-based rules.
Salesforce Integration: Revenue Analytics
Measure the impact each Sigstr campaign has on your most important revenue goals! With our new Salesforce integration, you can pull all of your opportunity data into Sigstr to show how much revenue your Sigstr campaigns are generating or influencing. You can find this data on a newly redesigned Campaign Details page, which also includes total and unique click data, engagement trends, and time-based analytics.
Have we missed something in our latest round of updates? Let us know! We want to build a platform that our customers are excited to use. Use the chat in the bottom right of your screen to request early access to these or other features.
True story: there was a time in my career where I would spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on pure lead generation. Those leads would get thrown over the transom to sales, who would then sort through them and throw them into highly impersonal sales cadences. And it wasn’t just me doing this. I stole the idea from much smarter and more successful marketers. Looking back, that seems like such an obviously awful way to run a marketing program.
Thankfully that was just a phase and the best marketers in the room have all moved on to better practices where we put our audience’s desires and our brand’s integrity before mass lead generation. Now high performing revenue teams have moved towards creating powerful customer experiences through a tightly integrated tech stack. Even the best managed MarTech stack, though, can’t build the relationships that 98% of revenue teams agree are crucial to closing new business. That’s why, even today, personal emails are the number one tactic used by US account-based marketers, and over 86% of all business communication is done over one-to-one email. When we’re focusing on quality over quality, there’s just no substitute for direct, personal interaction.
So if email is the core of every B2B revenue strategy, let’s talk about how marketing can use those emails to influence and measure the entire revenue journey with Sigstr.
Opportunity Stage Inbox Ads
Using Sigstr’s targeting capabilities, you can align inbox advertisements to every step of your buyer’s journey and drive potential customers closer to making a purchase. By taking charge of the content your sales team is sharing, you control the narrative. Take a look at your various opportunity stages and ask yourself what kind of content speaks to prospects at each stage, then build a content matrix to align your Sigstr campaigns accordingly.
How does this work in practice? After you’ve had initial contact, serve a campaign that promotes a short overview video of your company, making a positive brand impression right from the start. After your first meeting, pique your audience’s interest with new content (like an ebook) that keeps them engaged. During evaluation, give your prospects confidence in doing business with you by promoting customer stories & testimonials. When you’re in negotiation, remind your prospects of the value your products and solutions offer. Then, at the very end, once you’ve won someone’s business, use every email communication as an opportunity to set your new customer up for success.
By leveraging Sigstr, you can be sure every email your employees send move opportunities forward. Something as simple as an email ad can make the difference between closed won and closed lost.
Inbox Advertising Attribution
If you’re not sold on the idea that inbox advertising can truly impact your bottom line, prove it to yourself.
With Sigstr’s Salesforce Integration, you have visibility into how Sigstr is impacting key opportunities in your pipeline. Sigstr has the ability to track which accounts and contacts are clicking on your inbox advertisements and can align that information with the opportunities that live in your Salesforce environment. With this level of attribution, you can instantly see which open and closed opportunities have been influenced and generated by your Sigstr campaigns. ROI has never been easier to track.
Relationship-Based Intent Data
Aligning inbox advertisements to your opportunity stages may give you the influence you’ve been searching for, but what about visibility? After handing leads over to sales, marketers are usually left in the dark. Without 100% transparency between departments, it’s difficult to know how deals are progressing.
Sigstr Relationships gives marketers the pipeline visibility they’ve been searching for. By analyzing your company’s relationships by account, contact, and region, Sigstr Relationships provides a central source of truth for marketing and sales teams. With a quick search, you can see when the last time an account or contact has been contacted, which sales rep owns the relationship, and how that relationship is growing over time. As a bonus, you can access this information not only in Sigstr, but in your CRM and ABM platforms of choice.
With this new level of insight, you can trigger marketing actions according to an account’s relationship status, select the best fit accounts for your ABM efforts, gain alignment with sales around key opportunities, and monitor how sales is activating key relationships.
It has never been more important for B2B marketers to show how they are making a positive impact on the all important “bottom line”. This evolution means that marketers must find new tools and strategies to gain influence and visibility. Employee email is the perfect avenue to achieve both! Sigstr can make it easy.
There’s a common misconception in marketing that you can only use one strategy at a time, but in reality, a comprehensive demand generation strategy includes a large variety of tactics and strategies working together.
Inbound marketing and account-based marketing (ABM) in particular are often seen as at odds, since ABM is typically classified as an outbound approach, but ABM can be done in an inbound way.
What is Inbound Marketing?
Inbound marketing is a strategy that focuses on attracting, engaging and delighting high-fit prospective customers through means of contextually-relevant and personalized content.
Inbound focuses on attracting individuals at a company and then getting buy-in from the rest of the company through those individuals.
The inbound methodology rose to popularity in the early 2010s and has gotten more sophisticated with the evolution of technology. Data analytics tools and smart content have allowed for increasingly customized buyer experiences well before leads are passed to sales.
What is Account-Based Marketing?
Account-based marketing (ABM) flips the inbound approach and targets specific companies instead. You might have specific contacts in mind, but the initial point of contact is less specific with an ABM approach since the main goal is to make progress converting the company itself.
Sometimes ABM is written off as costly and hard to measure ROI for because it’s associated with tactics like sending gifts by direct mail. However, effective ABM is done in a much more targeted manner.
Mentioning and linking to target accounts in your content
Events marketing
ABM efforts are typically done by BDRs and sales reps since they’re one-to-one communications as opposed to the one-to-many communications sent out by marketers.
Taking an Inbound Approach to Your Account-Based Strategy
If your version of ABM involves sending random gifts to businesses without fully looking into how much they can benefit from your offer, then it is at odds with inbound marketing. However, ABM can be done in a personalized, contextually-relevant, timely way that aligns with the inbound methodology.
While you technically are sourcing leads in an outbound way, identifying target accounts is different than buying an email list. You’re narrowing your search by industry, company size, location and other factors so you’re only reaching out to companies that can benefit from your product or service.
A core tenet of the inbound methodology is to add value before you extract value, and as long as your ABM efforts are guided by that tenet, you can do ABM in an inbound way.
Additionally, ABM can be incorporated into your inbound efforts too. For example, when working on blog posts, you can use target accounts as examples and then link to them. Then on social, you can tag the company when you promote the blog and use it as a starting point to build rapport.
The Takeaway
The “best” marketing strategy for your business is one that contains a healthy mix of tactics that complement each other. Utilizing multiple tactics also decreases risk for you because if one tactic decreases its effectivity, the other tactics can compensate.
The bottom line is that ABM can be personalized and contextually-relevant and inbound marketing can be specifically targeted to individual accounts. Each strategy is more effective when they’re used together.
We live in an increasingly digital world where buyers spend almost 70% of their journey researching online before even contacting sales. Forging better relationships with your B2B buyers through content is more important than ever. But making those meaningful connections is also harder in today’s landscape. There are more brands competing for your buyers’ attention and more content for them to sift through than ever before. The truth is, simply marketing at people as we have in the past just won’t cut it anymore. What truly drives meaningful engagement is building relationships on a foundation of trust.
The Sales and Marketing teams that achieve this are the ones who will rise above the rest. But how can you cut through the noise and establish real connections with your buyers? Here are 3 ways to build trust with your buyer in order to establish long-lasting relationships.
1. Enable your buyer with less fluff and more meat
To earn your buyers’ trust, you must prove a deep understanding of who they are and what their specific challenges and needs are. Delivering high-value, relevant content is the best way to show your understanding.
However, many B2B vendors fall short when it comes to delivering consistently high quality and relevant content. According to PathFactory and Heinz Marketing’s report, Inside The Head Of A Marketing Leader: The Buyer’s Journey, over half of the marketing leaders say they find vendor content to be too fluffy and jargon-y. And 47.5% reported they find vendor content to be irrelevant to their pain points, challenges, and responsibilities.
Serving your buyers unhelpful content at the wrong time not only erodes trust, but it also encourages your buyers to look elsewhere for a solution to their problem (read: your competitor.)
Here’s where the proper use of personalization can give you a leg up. In order to stand out from the ever-growing B2B vendor crowd, it’s more important than ever to create hyper-personalized experiences for your buyers. And I’m not just talking about personalizing the front door with a {first.name} in a subject line. I’m talking about going beyond traditional macro-personalization techniques and aiming for personalization on a 1 to few, or 1 to 1 scale. To achieve this, you need an in-depth understanding of your buyers’ interests and level of intent at an individual level. Collecting the right kind of data is the key to making this happen.
2. Don’t just collect data. Collect the right kind of data
With the consumerization of today’s B2B buyer, collecting the right data is more important than ever because it will allow you to give your customers a better experience. The modern B2B buyer brings B2C expectations to their buying process. They are used to hyper-personalized, seamless, on-demand experiences in their everyday lives—ones they can truly see themselves in. Just like Netflix always knows what show to recommend or how Amazon tracks browsing and purchase history to suggest the best next purchase. This consumerization of B2B buyers means these experiences are—not just nice-to-haves—but must-haves in order to gain the trust of your buyers.
Brands like Netflix and Amazon aren’t just really good at guessing. They are collecting volumes of consumption and behavior data, in addition to user metadata, to understand the interests of their consumers and make highly relevant recommendations. B2B marketers must follow suite.
One of the most powerful ways to gain a deep understanding of your buyers’ interests and pain points is to collect content consumption data. Content consumption data reveals important information like the topics your buyer is interested in, how long they spend consuming specific assets, and how many assets they consume in a single session (we call this content bingeing).
Content consumption data impacts your marketing in 2 powerful ways:
It helps you understand what topics your buyer is interested in and what stage they are at in their journey so you can serve them more of what they want at the moment they want it
It is information Sales can use to have more productive and efficient conversations with prospects based on their actual interests and intent (more on this in the next section.)
Content consumption data allows you to enable your buyer with more of the information they crave. When you consistently meet (and exceed) buyers’ expectations in this way, the trust will follow.
3. Redefine what “sales and marketing alignment” means to you
Sales and marketing alignment can be an enigma for most B2B organizations. Marketing works hard launching campaigns and building content strategies to generate MQLs ‘til the cows come home. Yet sales teams often feel they aren’t receiving quality leads they can have good conversations with and go on to close. Why is there such a disconnect?
One reason is there is often a discrepancy as to what ‘qualified’ truly means. Qualification should directly relate to the level of interest a prospect has in your products or services. As mentioned in the section above, the most accurate way to identify true interest is by measuring the amount of time spent with content.
Once Marketing and Sales are aligned as to what qualifies as qualified, marketing must ensure Sales is equipped with the right information so that any momentum marketing builds through content is maintained once the prospect is sent to sales. Yet, according to a recent report by Sigstr and Heinz Marketing, The State Of Relationship Marketing, only 15% of sales reps are actually satisfied with the level of information they have on their accounts. This represents a huge opportunity for Sales and Marketing teams to redefine how they see alignment.
True Sales and Marketing alignment will only happen when both teams are speaking the same language and sharing the right information. Only then can you can create a cohesive conversation with the buyer and nurture a more trusting relationship all the way through the funnel.
This idea of building better buyer relationships is at the heart of an exciting webinar hosted by Sigstr’s VP of Marketing, Justin Keller, PathFactory’s VP of Marketing, Elle Woulfe, and Matt Heinz from Heinz Marketing. In How Sales And Marketing Can Work Together To Better Understand The B2B Buyer, we dive deep into how Marketing and Sales can better understand the interests and needs of their buyers and build better relationships through content.
G2 has democratized a historically walled garden of company profiling, reviewing and recommending. Every B2B company’s G2 profile page is the culmination of their employees’ every day work– from the product development, go-to-market activities, customer experience, and even the back office work that goes on to support a thriving business. That effort manifests in the form of a company’s G2 profile, where their customers review their experiences and their prospects go to evaluate a potential partnership. Now, with Sigstr’s new integration with G2, you can make sure every email your employees send includes a way to direct your most important audiences back to your G2 profile.
Over the past year we’ve seen a massive swell in customers using their targeted Sigstr ad campaigns to solicit reviews from their customer base, encourage prospects to check out their customers’ reviews and experiences, or both. They’re doing it because Sigstr gives them a passive but persistent way to drive their audience to G2. But with more of our customers running multi-stage, account-based, or other deeply segmented campaigns, things can get complicated. So we made a brand new section in your employees’ signatures that allows your G2 profile to always be promoted.
“Running Sigstr ads to customers asking them to leave us reviews has been awesome,” said Stephanie Kelly, director of marketing operations at Terminus. “We see a consistent flow of reviews when we run the G2 campaigns, meaning we always have recent customer feedback and ratings. It’s one of the reasons we’ve achieved such a positive reputation on G2!”
Here’s a quick video showing you how quickly and easily you can use this integration:
Your average employee sends about 10,000 emails every year, according to the Radicati Group. According to our math, your sales people are sending about twice that many every year. And according to HubSpot, 86% of professionals prefer to communicate over email. If you care about your G2 profile, why wouldn’t you want to open employee email as a channel to drive reviews and visits?
We’re excited to announce that this integration is live and available as of today. If you’re not using Sigstr to promote your G2 profile (and dozens of other marketing initiatives ) get in touch with us here and we’ll tell you how turning your employee’s emails into a targeted advertising channel can have a huge impact on your business. If you’re already a Sigstr customer, you’re awesome and you can drop a quick note to your CSM and they’ll show you how to set this up yourself.
One new Sigstr integration is fantastic. Three is even better (with two more coming soon)! For the past few months, Sigstr has been hard at work developing integrations with key ABM and content partners as well as creating a brand new campaign experience! Check out our June product updates below!
Campaign Updates
Campaign Folders & Filters
Sigstr’s Campaigns page has been completely reimagined! Now you can organize your campaigns into customized folders and filter by status, campaign type, and more! As your Sigstr strategy evolves, the new Campaigns page will help keep you organized and ready for action. The new Campaigns page is currently available upon request and will go live for all customers on June 10. Learn more here.
Campaign Analytics API
Sigstr offers a goldmine of data and now you can tap into that data in a powerful way. Sigstr’s Campaign Analytics JSON API pushes all campaign metrics – clicks, views, recipient analytics, opportunity influence, and more – into whatever data platform you choose! Sync your Sigstr campaign data to your data warehouse to gain advanced reporting and data analysis capabilities. Learn more here.
Account & Contact Recipient Analytics
Get ready to view recipient analytics on a contact and account level! Depending on which metrics are most important to your business, toggle back and forth between the two views to see which accounts are clicking on your Sigstr ads and which contacts within those accounts are the individuals engaging! Learn more here.
Automated Notifications
Start leveraging two new notification options to ensure you get the most out of Sigstr. The first is an automated engagement report that details campaign views, clicks, and recipient data across your entire company. You have the option to receive the report on a daily or weekly basis.
The second notification option is an install reminder. You can now send recurring reminders to all employees who have yet to install their Sigstr signatures. The reminders will be sent automatically based on your selected frequency until each user has successfully installed his or her signature. Learn more here.
Hi-Res Signature Fields
Sigstr is thrilled to introduce hi-res signature fields to compliment your hi-res campaigns. Now when you upload a social media icon, your company logo, or another image to a signature field, you can choose to have Sigstr constrain the image to ensure a high density of pixels. Those using hi-res functionality will need to upload their images at twice the intended size. Learn more here.
New Integrations
Demandbase Integration
Demandbase allows Account-Based Marketers to build sophisticated audiences and target them with hyper-relevant display ads. With the help of Sigstr’s Demandbase Integration, those audiences are now available in Sigstr.
With your Demandbase audiences living in Sigstr, you can target your top accounts through every email your employees send. As Demandbases’s selection criteria updates the members of various audiences, those changes will automatically be reflected in Sigstr’s campaign targeting, creating a brand new channel for ABM initiatives. Joint customers can deliver a 100% consistent cross-channel experience to their most important audiences. Learn more here.
SalesLoft Integration
Sigstr’s SalesLoft integration keeps getting better and better! Now, you can leverage the power of Sigstr’s ABM functionality in SalesLoft email cadences. Start targeting your most valuable prospects and customers with personalized email signature ads in every 1:1 interaction.
By combining Sigstr’s targeting capabilities with SalesLoft’s email volume, you can be sure that your marketing content will get the exposure it deserves. Expand your ABM efforts beyond Gmail and Outlook and start targeting specific accounts and contacts through SalesLoft. Learn more here.
Eloqua Integration
Sigstr’s integration with Eloqua gives marketers the opportunity to enhance their digital efforts with the power of targeted email signature ads and relationship intelligence. Eloqua customers can now seamlessly connect Sigstr to Eloqua contact segments, landing pages and reporting through a new set of easy to use, point and click user interfaces.
The integration ensures that marketers are communicating with prospects and customers on a 1:1 level, using targeted content that is perfectly timed to each individual. In a matter of minutes, align Sigstr to your Eloqua environment to ensure a cohesive digital marketing presence. Learn more here.
As our summer of integrations continues, stay tuned for two more integrations coming very soon! And if you’re interested in seeing these updates in action, register for this month’s Sigstr Session!
Have we missed something in our latest round of updates? Let us know! We want to build a platform that our customers are excited to use. Reach out to feedback@sigstr.com with your feedback!
Terminus helps B2B marketers run efficient ABM programs at scale. They offer an end-to-end ABM command center for targeting the right accounts with dynamic data, engaging them with unified multi-channel campaigns, activating sales by separating signal from noise, and reporting on the revenue outcomes that matter.
As a pioneer and thought leader in the ABM space, Terminus is always on the lookout for new and better ways to execute effective ABM strategies. It is that drive that led Terminus’s marketing team to Sigstr.
Selecting the Right Fit Accounts
For most marketing teams, the hardest part of executing an ABM strategy is step #1 – selecting the “right fit” accounts. Where do you even begin? It’s difficult to know what criteria to use or even how many accounts to zero in on.
By leveraging Sigstr’s relationship intelligence alongside their own technology, Terminus was able to create a foolproof account selection process . With the help of Sigstr, their marketing team analyzed the email and calendar patterns of all Terminus employees to score the company’s relationship with every inbound lead. They were then able to use this data as a component of their account scoring model, a model that guides their entire ABM program.
“We use a Datafox scoring model to select the best fit, most likely to buy accounts for our ABM efforts,” explains Ryan Vitello, Sales Development Manager at Terminus, “That model is constantly evolving. Now that we have access to Sigstr, relationship scores account for around 10% of the overall scoring model. That’s a huge impact!”
With a newfound confidence in their ABM targets, Terminus was able to focus on the second pillar of account-based marketing, engagement.
Leveraging a New ABM Channel
Terminus has always been a pro at executing ABM campaigns through a number of ad and marketing channels. After all, that’s the philosophy their business is built on! However, when the marketing team came across Sigstr, they realized there was an ABM channel they hadn’t yet tapped into; employee email.
“The addition seemed like a natural extension of our ABM playbook,” explains Stephanie Kelly, Director of Account-Based Marketing at Terminus, “Once we realized that employee email represented an untapped ad channel where we could reach target accounts on a personal level, we were all in.”
Sigstr’s targeting functionality gives marketers the ability to align email signature campaigns to specific audience lists. Terminus already had their ABM lists ready to go so it was just a matter of targeting those accounts through 1:1 email interactions. Adding Sigstr to the mix was an easy way to deliver a 100% consistent cross-channel experience to their most important audiences.
Tracking Key Opportunities
A huge obstacle in tracking the success of Terminus’s ABM initiatives was that the data available to their marketing team was limited to the top of the funnel. They didn’t have a lot of visibility into what was happening in late stage sales opportunities.
With the help of Sigstr’s relationship-based intent data, that all changed. Terminus was able to understand how their most important contacts were engaging through the entire customer lifecycle. They gained visibility into their pipeline by understanding how relationships were trending inside target accounts which enabled them to make the best strategic decisions to maintain sales momentum.
“Once accounts are selected and passed over to our Sales Development Reps, it’s extremely important for our leadership team to understand how relationships inside those accounts are progressing,” explains Vitello, “Ultimately, the KPI we’re tracking against is opportunity creation. It’s not calls or emails or some other vanity metric. We need to have a view into the signals of intent that directly impact our bottom line.”
An added benefit for Terminus was the fact that Sigstr offers a Terminus Account Hub Integration. By leveraging the integration, the marketing team was able to pull account scores directly into their Terminus Account Hub. With access to a single source of truth, Terminus was able to unify their sales and marketing teams through deeper, full-funnel account intelligence and shared insights for accountability.
Ultimately, adding Sigstr to their tech stack made Terminus an even stronger ABM player. They were able to add a brand new channel to reach and measure their target accounts while creating a stronger bond between Sales and Marketing.
Sigstr’s SalesLoft integration keeps getting better and better! Now, you can leverage the power of Sigstr’s ABM functionality in SalesLoft email cadences. Start targeting your most valuable prospects and customers with personalized email signature ads in every 1:1 interaction.
Enhance your marketing efforts within the SalesLoft cadence application by appending a Sigstr signature and campaign to every SalesLoft email communication. Whenever you make a change in Sigstr, the update will automatically be reflected in SalesLoft. Your marketing team will never have to lose sleep over the thought of your sales team sharing stale or irrelevant content again.
By combining Sigstr’s targeting capabilities with SalesLoft’s email volume, you can be sure that your marketing content will get the exposure it deserves. Expand your ABM efforts beyond Gmail and Outlook and start targeting specific accounts and contacts through SalesLoft.
Target Top Accounts & Contacts
Sigstr’s ABM functionality gives marketers the ability to align email signature campaigns to specific audience lists. Whenever an end user emails someone on an audience list, the specified campaign banner is served. With the integration enabled, this same functionality is applied when communicating via SalesLoft.
You can use Sigstr ABM to create a relevant content experience for specific accounts, or you can target by region, persona, industry, opportunity stage, and more. Have a regional event coming up? Encourage prospects in the area to register via Sigstr. Releasing a case study about a customer in the retail space? Promote it to prospects in the same industry. Launching an ebook geared towards CEOs? Make sure top executives can find it in every employee email signature that comes from your company. The options are endless.
Influence the Entire Revenue Journey
According to 6Sense, 70% of B2B marketers say they are measured on the amount of revenue generated from marketing campaigns and lead-generation activities. In today’s day and age, sales and marketing teams own a single revenue number together and marketing is responsible for more than just the top of the funnel.
The problem is that more often than not, marketers feel like they don’t have influence over the entire revenue journey. Many times, they lose control after handing leads over to Sales Development Reps. Luckily, with Sigstr’s SalesLoft integration, that narrative is changing.
Your SDRs are the link between marketing and sales efforts – and they’re sending more emails than anyone else in the company. By leveraging Sigstr’s SalesLoft integration, your marketing team can finally control the message and content that is promoted throughout every stage of your sales cycle, all without your SDRs lifting a finger. You can create a content journey to help accelerate prospects and customers through your pipeline. And bonus, tap into Sigstr’s analytics to know when key accounts and contacts are engaging with your content and how deals are progressing.
When you think about how many emails your SDRs are sending through SalesLoft to your most important prospects and customers, it only makes sense to use the opportunity to promote timely, relevant content. Something as simple as an email signature banner can make the difference between Closed Won and Closed Lost. Start leveraging Sigstr’s SalesLoft integration today!
Account-based marketers love Demandbase because their technology allows them to build sophisticated audiences and target them with hyper-relevant content through their ad networks. Demandbase’s ability to create audiences of best-fit accounts tailored to your company’s ideal customer profile is second to none and, as of today, those audiences are now available in Sigstr as well.
With your Demandbase audiences now available within Sigstr, you can use the same ad creative to target your top accounts and contacts through Demandbase’s publisher network and within every email your employees send as well. As Demandbases’s selection criteria updates the members of various audiences, those changes will automatically be reflected in Sigstr’s campaign targeting, creating a brand new channel for ABM initiatives. Our joint customers can deliver a 100% consistent cross-channel experience to their most important audiences.
The average employee sends well over 10,000 emails every year, meaning a company with 1,000 employees is sending over 10 million emails every year. And with the average employee spending 6.3 hours of their day in their inbox, there’s perhaps no better point of engagement between brands and their target accounts than in the 1:1 emails exchanged between them. The Demandbase and Sigstr integration allows account-based marketers to turn those 10 million emails into 10 million perfectly targeted display ads.
I’m thrilled about the capabilities of the integration providing a seamless and consistent brand experience between web and inbox, and the ability to keep Demandbase and Sigstr campaigns automatically in sync. Imagine orchestrating personalized, stage-based campaigns across your two biggest ad channels – web and 1:1 email – throughout the entire customer lifecycle. With perfectly targeted ads are hitting their intended audience on the web and in their inbox, marketers can achieve unprecedented awareness and engagement.
85% of business is done over email– especially in later-stage opportunities where revenue teams are exchanging information, booking meetings, and sending contracts. This creates a massive challenge for the 70% of B2B marketers who are responsible for revenue. After the handoff, from marketing to sales, almost all interactions happen via email. Because of this, marketers lose visibility into the rest of the customer journey and, with it, their ability to influence revenue. Until today that is…
We are over-the-moon-excited to announce that both Sigstr Relationships and Sigstr’s Opportunity Analytics are now available within our new integration with Salesforce. With these two powerful analytics sources flowing in and out of Salesforce, marketers gain account-specific and aggregate buyer intent data along with the ability to see how Sigstr is influencing revenue throughout the entire customer journey.
Sigstr Relationships in Salesforce
Picture this scenario. Your marketing team has mapped the organization of an incredibly valuable target account and identified the champion and key stakeholders. Highly customized ads have been deployed and content has been created across a variety of mediums. You’ve just received confirmation that the (surprisingly expensive) box of cookies with your respective company’s logos on them have been delivered to the champion in that account. And then you finally, officially, hand that account off to the sales person.
If this is the only account you’re handling like this, it should be easy to keep tabs on how that opportunity is developing from that point forward. However, if this is scaled to hundreds or thousands of accounts, it becomes impossible to understand contact and account engagement (especially if more individuals are being added to the buying committee). If contact and account engagement is hard to see, that means it’s also difficult to get a true sense of how likely that opportunity will close.
With Sigstr Relationships, revenue teams now have access to account-based insights and buyer intent at the contact and account level, as well as in the aggregate. With this data at their fingertips, marketers gain visibility into the “dark funnel” – which allows them to take action to drive revenue faster than ever before.
Salesforce Opportunity Analytics
One of the biggest challenge for B2B marketers is proving their impact on revenue. When it comes to Sigstr and using your company’s biggest communications channel to drive marketing ROI, we’ve got you covered. With our new Salesforce integration, you can pull all of your opportunity data into Sigstr to show how much revenue your Sigstr campaigns are influencing and how much won revenue they have helped your team close. In addition to our new suite of Sigstr analytics – which includes our unique audience click through rates – marketing teams can see Sigstr’s impact on your most important revenue goals.
This is the first of several large integrations we’re planning over the summer. They all align perfectly with our ongoing mission of helping teams bring employee email into every part of their tech stack. We’re grateful to all of our amazing customers who have helped guide our vision and established Sigstr as a critical component of their revenue strategy. Stay tuned for what’s next! And if you’re not already using Sigstr, you’re about to be green with envy.
So, you’ve gotten to know a member (or two!) of our fabulous Sales team, seen a demo of the platform, have all of your front-end questions answered, crossed the t’s, and dotted the i’s (lower case j’ for all you Wayne’s World fans out there). Congratulations! You are now a member of the Sigstr family! We’re delighted to have you with us.
And after the dust has settled, the digital ink has dried, and the streamers have been swept up, you’re probably asking yourself: What now?
At Sigstr, we love onboarding new customers. And we understand that you likely have some questions about how you’re going to go from new customer to expert Sigstr Admin. Use this blog post as a guide on “what to expect” from our wonderful Customer Success team! We are here to make you look like a Sigstr rockstar.
The Kickoff Call
Once you’ve passed along a few creative assets to your assigned Sigstr Account Executive (needed for your shiny new email signature and first Sigstr campaign), he or she will schedule a 60-minute kickoff call.
This conversation is a favorite milestone for your AE, your Implementation Manager, and your Customer Success Manager. It helps everyone on the Sigstr team get acquainted with you, our dear customer, and your IT and Marketing teams!
By the end of this kickoff call, all parties will be aligned on the steps needed for completion from both the IT and Marketing sides. Also from this call, the first of many you will have with your CSM, you will get the “creative wheels” turning. That way, when implementation is complete and you’re ready to launch your first Sigstr campaign, you and your team will know exactly which important marketing initiative to promote first. Boom! Look at that?! At this point you will already be on your way to becoming a Sigstr pro.
Implementation
After the Kickoff Call has commenced, we’re off and running! Our Implementation team will consult with your team to help manage your organization’s implementation process with a goal of full adoption by the end of the 45 days after kickoff. Throughout the project, we will advise you on best practices and a clean order of operations to roll Sigstr out, while highlighting three key principles along the way:
1. Time to Value
“The ultimate goal of our team is to find the perfect balance between time to value and delivering an excellent customer experience. We’ll work hard to find a process that works best for our customers in the most efficient way possible. We try to limit implementation to hours and days, rather than weeks.” – Joe Godsil, Director of Implementation
2. Adoption
“Full adoption ensures a higher yield of results with campaigns and therefore, a higher return on the revenue that Sigstr can drive. The best way to reach full adoption with your users is to start with the end in mind. Put in the effort up front to build out the changes in your organization with our pre-built communication templates and best practices. The more planning your team does up front, the more successful and cleaner the results!” – Tanner Brumbarger, Implementation Specialist
3. Customer Experience
“In today’s digital landscape, mediocre transactional customer service can’t happen. I love being a part of Sigstr because even during the implementation process, we strive to create a customer experience that makes the implementation stage run as smoothly and seamlessly as possible.” – Nate Tyler, Implementation Manager
Once we have completed the 45-day implementation process, your Implementation Manager will roll off the account and your CSM will be your full-time point of contact for all things Sigstr.
Customer Success
The primary goal of Sigstr’s Customer Success Managers is to help you see the value of your investment. As we like to say around the office, our goal is to get you promoted! We do so by helping you set and achieve goals with Sigstr, keeping you informed on new product updates, ensuring that you’re equipped with best practices, and applying our expertise to help you get the most out of your partnership with Sigstr. Your CSM is here to make you and your team successful, and each of us has a favorite part of the Sigstr Customer Experience.
Brooke, Kelly, and Heidi are a part of Sigstr’s customer success team (and visit corn mazes during their free time). They’re cool human beings and love helping Sigstr customers succeed!
“I love being able to help our clients with their campaign strategy! Being able to help teams get creative and promote their most important initiatives with Sigstr is both fun and rewarding.” – Brooke Boys, Customer Success Manager
“I am super passionate about working together with my customers to identify goals and a plan of attack! The customer should always feel like a superhero and Sigstr is the sidekick.” – Heidi Jones, Customer Success Manager
“We’re here to make sure that you’re empowered and ready to leverage all of the amazing capabilities Sigstr has to offer. Throughout the implementation process – and beyond – we’re here to train you and guide you on new features, best practices, and strategy.” – Kelly Smith, Customer Success Manager
“There is nothing that makes me happier than watching my customers blow away both personal and professional goals! I love getting to be a part of creating those goals and setting them up for success.” – Emma Jensen, Customer Success Manager
“One of my favorite parts of working with Sigstr customers, especially new ones, is seeing them achieve early success. Helping customers get that first big win is so exciting because it’s the gateway to even more use cases and becoming more sophisticated with tracking and targeting. This inevitably leads to surpassing the goals that we set and celebrating their success time and time again!” – Zane Anderson, Customer Success Manager
At Sigstr, our goal in onboarding is to help you get up to speed as soon as possible. Not only that, we want you to stay at that speed for the long haul, so you can celebrate your wins time and again. We know it can feel like there’s a lot to learn once you become a customer, which is why we want you to know we’re here every step of the way!
If you’re already a customer and this has brought up some new ideas, feel free to reach out to your CSM, or reach out to customersuccess@sigstr.com! If you’re interested in becoming a Sigstr customer, start up a conversation in the lower right of your screen and a friendly Sigstr team member will chat you back in no time.
Spring has officially arrived and so have new Sigstr features! We’re excited to announce several advanced analytics offerings, an integration to help you better manage employee data, and Sigstr Relationships features that play nice with Salesforce. Check out the details below!
Signatures
Real-Time Campaign Updates
See campaign banners update when selecting a recipient
Sigstr’s latest and greatest Chrome Extension now supports real-time campaign updates*. When crafting an email, end users will now have a view into the banner that will be served to specific ABM targets. Once an end user notes the email address of their end recipient, the campaign will update in real-time to display the campaign that will be served to that individual.
*Please note that this feature is only available to Gmail customers using Sigstr’s Chrome Extension.
Unique Views & Clicks
Gain a more granular view of campaign engagement
Finally, the granularity you’ve been waiting for! In addition to total views and clicks, Sigstr will now begin calculating the unique views and clicks associated with each of your email signature campaigns. With increased visibility, you will have a better understanding of the impact Sigstr has on your marketing and revenue goals.
Campaign Details Page
Take campaign analytics to a whole new level
Sigstr is thrilled to announce a brand new campaign details page! You asked for better analytics and we’ve delivered. Now, when you click on a campaign within Sigstr, you’ll be taken to a page that displays total views and clicks, unique views and clicks, engagement trends, time-based analytics, recipient analytics, and associated Salesforce information. And this is just the beginning! New analytic offerings will be available in the coming months.
Admin Engagement Reports
Weekly engagement reports sent straight to your inbox
On April 15th, Sigstr will begin delivering weekly engagement reports to you and all of the other admins in your account*. Delivered every Monday, the report will detail campaign views, clicks, and recipient data across your entire company from the week before. The report cadence will automatically be set up to run on a weekly basis, but you will have the ability to change your settings to receive the reports daily if so desired.
*Please note that Admin Weekly Reports are only available to customers leveraging Recipient Analytics.
Relationships
Salesforce Contact Creation
Surface new contacts and sync them to Salesforce
Do all of your most important customers and prospects reside in Salesforce? Use Sigstr Relationships to ensure that every contact in communication with your sales and service teams is captured in your CRM. Surface new contacts through employee email and create them in Salesforce with the click of a button. Keep up-to-date without any added effort and never lose a connection as the result of employee turnover.
Salesforce Opportunity Data
Understand how key deals are progressing in your pipeline
Due to lack of visibility, many Sales Leaders struggle with forecasting and opportunity management. Luckily, relationship strength is a key indicator of deal progression. You can now view Salesforce’s opportunity data directly within your Sigstr Relationships environment so that you can keep tabs on your pipeline. Leverage Sigstr Relationships as your central source of truth so that you can make sure your goals are met quarter after quarter.
Operations
Azure Active Directory Integration
Streamline the management of employee data
Backed by a powerful integration with Azure Active Directory, you can now streamline the management of employee data within your Sigstr environment. Automatically create and delete users in real-time and ensure employee information is kept up-to-date with no added effort.
AWS Partnership
Put trust in Sigstr’s highly rated security and performance
Sigstr is thrilled to announce our official Amazon Web Services (AWS) Digital Customer Experience Competency status! Achieving this status differentiates Sigstr as an AWS Partner Network (APN) member that provides specialized demonstrated technical proficiency and proven customer success with specific focus on workloads based on account-based marketing, relationship intelligence, and email signature marketing. To receive the designation, APN Partners must possess deep AWS expertise and deliver solutions seamlessly on AWS.
Hoping to see these features in action? No problem! Make sure to register for our upcoming Sigstr Session, Spring Forward with Sigstr. The webinar will be held on April 23rd at 1pm EST.
Sigstr is thrilled to announce our official Amazon Web Services (AWS) Digital Customer Experience Competency status! AWS is enabling scalable, flexible, and cost-effective solutions from startups to global enterprises, and established the AWS Competency Program to help customers identify Consulting and Technology APN Partners with deep industry experience and expertise.
AWS DCX Competency Partners support all phases of the digital customer acquisition and retention lifecycle. This includes content management and marketing automation to engage prospects and customers with the right experience; effective and secure commerce solutions to create seamless buying experiences, and data analytics to support your decisions and retain customers.
Sigstr, the leading Relationship Marketing platform, announced today that it has achieved Amazon Web Services (AWS) Digital Customer Experience Competency status. Sigstr turns the millions of emails that your employees send every year into a targeted marketing channel and scores email and calendar engagement to give revenue teams new visibility into the sales pipeline. By giving marketers control and visibility into their company’s biggest untapped channel they can keep sales teams aligned and influence the entire revenue journey.
Achieving the AWS Digital Customer Experience Competency differentiates Sigstr as an AWS Partner Network (APN) member that provides specialized demonstrated technical proficiency and proven customer success with specific focus on workloads based on account-based marketing, relationship intelligence, and email signature marketing. To receive the designation, APN Partners must possess deep AWS expertise and deliver solutions seamlessly on AWS.
“Sigstr is proud to achieve AWS Digital Customer Experience Competency status,” said Bryan Wade, CEO of Sigstr. “Our team is dedicated to helping companies achieve their revenue goals by leveraging the agility, breadth of services, and pace of innovation that AWS provides.”
AWS is enabling scalable, flexible, and cost-effective solutions from startups to global enterprises. To support the seamless integration and deployment of these solutions, AWS established the AWS Competency Program to help customers identify Consulting and Technology APN Partners with deep industry experience and expertise.
B2B marketers are experts at driving and measuring digital demand at the top of the funnel, but as opportunities are handed off to sales, their ability to track engagement and control the message diminishes. That handoff represents a massive blind spot for marketers who are neither able to understand their audience’s engagement with sales, nor control the content and messaging they are distributing at scale. Now with Sigstr, marketers the visibility and control they need to influence the entire revenue journey.
“Sigstr is one of the first platforms that our sales reps are excited to use,” states Hermi Ruiz, Account-Based Marketing Specialist at Snowflake Computing. “It’s usually so hard to get synergy between departments, but Sigstr has helped our marketing team foster a true relationship with sales.”
Here at Sigstr, we have an outstanding product, and we have great faith in what we’ve created. In any buying process, that product can sometimes overpower all other aspects of the user experience. We don’t think that should be the case, however, because we are proud to offer a best in class customer experience on top of that quality product. Customer Success is a value that everyone at Sigstr takes seriously, and every department plays a role in making sure that you are successful once you join us as a customer.
We encourage you to think through the post-purchase experience. How will you learn to use the product? Who will train you? How will you know if you’re successful? What resources do you need to meet your goals?
Here at Sigstr, we are committed to providing a Customer Success experience that makes you a rockstar. Our team will rally around you to help you perfect your campaign strategy, achieve return on investment, and blow away your personal, professional, or team goals.
The How
After you’ve signed with Sigstr, our Customer Success team is there to welcome you to the family. First, our Implementation team works closely with you and your IT team to install Sigstr across your organization and go live. They collaborate closely with your Account Executive to understand your needs and ensure a smooth transition.
After Implementation, one of our Customer Success Managers serves as your main point of contact to make sure we understand your goals, help with training, and guide you in strategy. Finally, our Support team is available to answer any questions or solve any possible issues in a timely and efficient manner.
These three components make up our Customer Success Team, and we work hard to provide a cohesive, seamless experience for you from the moment you join Sigstr. Your success is our success!
Brent Patrick, Sr. Marketing Manager from Scale Computing, explains how his team has worked with Sigstr to development a successful long-term partnership.
The Who
The CS team at Sigstr is close-knit and collaborative group with extensive experience. I’ve served in Customer Success leadership roles for 14 years, and our team comes from a variety of backgrounds and industries. We’re all united around a common goal of helping you do incredible things.
At Sigstr, you’ll never feel a lack of personal connection. Our team is made up of dog lovers, concert addicts, Arsenal fans, avid readers, football coaches, and more – you’ll always know you’re dealing with a human, and we’ll always treat you like one, too.
Sigstr’s Core Values
Signature Rule: We intentionally place the interests of our customers, our communities, and each other before our own.
Believe Big: If something we’re working on seems impossible, it means we are on the right track.
Celebrate Success: We focus relentlessly on helping our customers and employees achieve success. When we succeed, we celebrate.
Stay Authentic: We show how much we care by being honest and transparent in everything we do.
These Core Values define everything we do here, and they’ve informed our own CS team “values” as well.
Enriching Experiences
Customer Success works with each and every customer to enrich their experience and ensure they see value. Our product can do a lot – we’re here to train you on how to leverage it best, to advise you on strategy, and to set goals alongside you. Our team has experience with hundreds of accounts, and we see day in and day out what works, what doesn’t, and how we can help you maximize your investment. Our expertise is at your service to help you in any way that we can.
Listen to the Voice of Customers
As the closest point of contact to current customers, our Customer Success team takes feedback from you very seriously. We serve as a conduit of that feedback to the rest of the business, relaying your insights to the Product team, Leadership, Sales, etc. We are constantly asking for feedback from our customers. As the people living in our product every day, your suggestions are key and we work hard to make sure we’re providing an experience that’s optimized for your success.
Make Our Customers Heroes
Our final CS value is perhaps the most important. We want to make you look like a rockstar. You, the human on the other end of this screen, who’s perhaps thinking through whether Sigstr is right for your business. We are trained guides – but you are the hero of the story. Sigstr is here to help you be successful, look amazing, and reach your goals, whatever those may be. We’ll help you set up campaigns and lay out a strategy. We’ll set goals with you and track toward those together to make sure you’re seeing ROI. And you can be sure that we’ll celebrate success with you when those targets are hit.
At the end of the day, Sigstr is about people. That’s what the Signature Rule is there for – to remind us to focus on helping each other succeed. We want everyone in the Sigstr family – employees, partners, and customers – to be empowered and enabled to blow away their personal and professional goals. Our Customer Success team is here to make sure that you’re on the right track to do just that.
Customer Quotes We’re Gushing About
“Aside from having a great email signature platform, Sigstr’s service and customer support is second to none. I really appreciate that Sigstr is extremely responsive and always eager to help. When I felt like I had hit a stall with my campaigns, my customer success manager helped me brainstorm some unique campaigns and facilitated some design help. I was able to get started with the new campaigns much sooner with Sigstr’s help. Sigstr isn’t just a platform, they are a partner in email signature marketing.” – Emma Sepke, Protexture
“I love how responsive the sigstr team is to questions that I have or those that come from our users. It really makes me happy to see sigstr take the user experience so seriously!” – Kristen, Symplr
“Sigstr is super easy to use and their support is top notch!” – Caitlin Bitts, California Closets
As a Sales Development Representative, my job is to set our company up for success by sourcing great deals, building relationships, and helping close deals. I was given the task to start booking onsite meetings for a trip into our Atlanta territory 5 weeks in advance. The task of booking these meetings sounds simple, but understanding which specific accounts and contacts to reach out to in a city of 450,000 people is difficult. So, what better place to start than with existing relationships using Sigstr? Sigstr Relationships is able to identify and quantify the entire universe of relationships that your employees have, enabling you to drive better engagement and more business. Here’s a play-by-play of how I used Sigstr Relationships to book 10 meetings in 10 days.
Step 1
First, I was able to use location intelligence to pull a list of every single relationship Sigstr has in the city of Atlanta, regardless of where that individual’s company is headquartered. From there, I narrowed it down to 300+ scored relationships (ranging from moderate to strong) based off of bidirectional email frequency and recency alongside CRM data. The list contained their company, email, title, personal relationship score, and company relationship score.
Step 2
300+ contacts seems like an overwhelming list, but not all of these initial relationships scored are the right persona or fit based on our ideal customer profile. So, the next task was to filter this list by persona, correct territory location, and number of employees. With those filters in place, the list of 300+ contacts shrunk down to 150 ideal relationships that made sense to meet with during our time in Atlanta.
Step 3
Knowing that someone on the Sigstr team has an already existing relationship with every contact on this list, I decided to dig a bit deeper and discover a few details of each relationship within Salesforce. I later realized how crucial it is to take the time to do this – being able to reference a mutual connection or past interaction doubled my response rate during my outreach (compared to the average response rate across our Sales Development team).
Step 4
Although I had an understanding of each relationship, I understood that not all marketers or salespeople care about the same thing (content, account-based marketing, sales and marketing alignment, etc.). Therefore, the next to-do item was to meet with the Sigstr Marketing team and come up with a plan to determine to most relevant content and resources to send to each of these contacts.
Step 5
From there, I had a list of 150 contacts who fit our ideal customer profile, were all located in the same city we’d soon be visiting, have an existing relationships with Sigstr, AND I was equipped with the right content to send each person. Next up? Crafting a personalized message that referenced our connection (relationship, past interaction, warm introduction from a teammate, etc.) and asked for an onsite meeting within a specific time range. Something like this…
“Hi John, it’s been awhile since you and my colleague, Kelly, chatted about account-based marketing goals for your team. The Sigstr team will be in Atlanta in a few weeks so I was wondering if it made sense to stop by your office while we’re in the area? Let me know – thanks!”
Step 6
Rinse and repeat! I continued to build out the rest of my outreach based on existing relationships and personalized messages with a call-to-action for an onsite meeting. The result? 2 weeks before our plane left for Atlanta, we had 10 meetings lined up for our Account Executive and leadership team.
Top Takeaways
From this exercise, I learned the true meaning of something our Founder, Dan Hanrahan, says every day: relationships drive business. The corporate inbox is where all business communications occur and relationships grow. Having the ability to identify and quantify every relationship your company has is a powerful asset – especially for territory trips like this one. As marketers and salespeople, we’re provided with an endless amount of digital engagement data (clicks, impressions, downloads, etc.). Sigstr Relationships allows teams to bring in the human engagement side for a more holistic view in the accounts and contacts that are most important to you.
With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, the Sigstr team wanted to highlight a few product updates that marketers are bound to love. Over the past several months, the Sigstr Team has been focused on integrating Sigstr Relationships with third party platforms, introducing new email signature campaign features, and ensuring our policies support the needs of our customers. Check out the details below!
Sigstr Signatures
Signatures Chrome Extension (Version 5.9)
Give employees the power to pick their own email signature campaigns
Sigstr is thrilled to announce a bigger and better Chrome Extension that gives employees the power to select their own email signature campaigns via Employee Banner Selection. With the update, employees are able to click on the Chrome Extension to view the campaign options your marketing team has selected as well as a recommended, default campaign.
Please note that the update requires end users to accept additional permissions, even if you do not plan on using the new functionality.
For global teams, Sigstr now offers localization of the Employee Preference Center. When you invite employees to update their signature data, you can now be sure there will be no communication barriers. Out of the box, Sigstr offers both English and Spanish, but if there are other languages you would like to incorporate, we are happy to build out those options.
Allow relationship insights to inform your ABM strategy
Bring the power of Sigstr Relationships into the Terminus Account Hub to execute and measure smarter ABM campaigns. Sigstr’s relationship intelligence analyzes the communication patterns of your entire company right within Terminus, making sales teams more involved and accountable in your ABM program than ever before. With a shared source of truth, account-based marketing and sales teams can align on the strategy, campaigns, and messaging that will help them drive opportunities at scale.
Score your company’s relationship with every account and contact in Salesforce
Sigstr’s Salesforce Integration allows you to score your relationships with every account and contact in your Salesforce environment based on real, human interactions. By analyzing the email and calendar patterns of all your employees, Sigstr identifies and quantifies the entire universe of relationships that reside in your CRM, all without any added effort from your employees.
Use these scores to select the best fit accounts for your ABM efforts, gain alignment with sales around key opportunities, identify the best contacts for marketing activities, and monitor how sales is activating key relationships.
Bring the power of relationship insights together with your CRM data
Start leveraging Salesforce’s account, contact, and opportunity data within your Sigstr Relationships environment. By bringing together historical data from Salesforce and real-time relationship data from Sigstr, you gain a holistic view of the contacts and accounts that your business depends on. Within Sigstr, understand where opportunities are in your sales process, and see how relationship trends can predict upcoming wins.
Gain authentic relationship insights on every record
Sigstr’s updated Connect Extension now offers Salesforce insights. By running the updated extension, you will see a Sigstr tab when viewing any contact or account within Salesforce. Gain a real-time view into how strong your company’s current relationship is with any account and understand which contacts you truly know at each company. See which coworkers are best connected and plan territories accordingly.
Sigstr is thrilled to announce the support of the SAML 2.0 authentication framework. SAML is an open standard for exchanging authentication and authorization data between an identity provider and a service provider. Most notably, it addresses web browser single sign-on (SSO) for enterprise companies.
Sigstr is now a Privacy Shield compliant company! You can find our Privacy Shield listing here. This certification confirms that we follow strict guidelines for importing data, have robust security measures in place, and only process and store data that is needed for our service offerings.
Updated Privacy Policy
Put your trust in Sigstr with peace of mind
Sigstr takes the privacy of our customers seriously and has taken steps to update and redefine our privacy policy. Changes made to the policy include new language around our Privacy Shield certification and updates to product naming conventions.
If you’re interested in learning more about how Sigstr Relationships integrates with Terminus and/or Salesforce, join us for this month’s Sigstr Session! The webinar will be held on February 26th at 1:30pm EST. Register here.
Did you miss December’s Product Update? Check it out here.
Scale Computing offers an IT virtualization infrastructure platform that is changing the way IT runs from the ground up in the data center and at the edge. Combining servers, storage, hypervisor, and backup, Scale Computing helps IT administrators transform infrastructures to be more scalable, more highly available, and more affordable.
Scale Computing’s Marketing team turned to Sigstr to take control over a new channel opportunity and to inform their ABM strategy with account insights.
Scale Computing’s Marketing Philosophy
With a focus on the bottom line, Scale Computing’s Marketing department runs a lean team for maximum efficiency. They are measured on pipeline generated, inbound leads generated, cost per lead, and lead conversion. Over the past year, the team has focused on building out an advanced ABM program to help them meet and exceed their goals.
“For our business, inbound leads are usually really expensive to create. It was my job to find a way to create more inbound opportunities at a drastically reduced cost per lead,” explains Brent Patrick, Senior Marketing Manager at Scale Computing, “Traditionally, we are a 100% inbound organization. We turned to ABM because we wanted to keep our Business Development Reps busy chasing the best fit prospects at a lower cost.”
In order to build a successful ABM strategy, Scale Computing created a Business Development role dedicated to ABM efforts, hired Account-Based Marketing Strategists, worked directly with Sales to establish processes, and began building a world class ABM tech stack (with Sigstr included).
First Came Signatures…
“When we first came to Sigstr, it was because we saw the value in signatures as an owned channel,” explains Brent, “As an inbound organization, the idea of controlling the content and message shared by our sales team was too good to pass up. Plus, the fact that Sigstr campaigns support advanced targeting lined up perfectly with our ABM initiatives.”
Honing in on the philosophy that all roads should lead to a product demo, the Marketing team first rolled Sigstr out to 50 users to start driving more demo requests. The boost in traffic sourced from Sigstr doubled the number of demo registrations. And within 90 days, they saw a return on their investment. With so much success, Scale Computing rolled out Sigstr out to their whole team, taking full ownership of the channel and disseminating their message through every employee.
Then Came Relationships…
As Scale Computing built out their ABM program, they realized there were some key challenges. Putting account-based marketing in action means personalizing outreach to top tier accounts, but the Sales and Marketing team didn’t know who their top tier accounts were or how to prioritize them.
“We realized early on that we needed more data to decide which accounts we should be targeting with ABM efforts,” explains Brent, “We had an extremely powerful tech stack for ABM execution, but without knowing how to prioritize our top accounts, it was useless.”
It was during this time period that Scale Computing learned of Sigstr’s relationship intelligence functionality. By analyzing the email and calendar patterns of all employees within an organization, Sigstr Relationships identifies and quantifies the entire universe of relationships that a company’s employees have. Teams gain a true understanding of the quality of relationships they have within target accounts, locations, or customizable segments.
“When I first heard about Sigstr Relationships, I immediately recognized it was something we needed,” says Brent, “The functionality works by providing insight into information you already have, email and calendar data. By analyzing and scoring relationships, we finally knew which accounts and contacts we should be prioritizing.”
Scale Computing’s ABM Tech Stack: Sigstr, Terminus, Bombora, and Salesforce
With the help of Sigstr Relationships, Scale Computing developed a whole new approach to tiering accounts. By leveraging Sigstr alongside Salesforce, Terminus, and Bombora, Scale Computing’s Marketing team was able to understand who they should be targeting, which accounts were easiest to penetrate, and what methods they should use to do so. They were able to take a list of 70,000 accounts and narrow it down to the top 125 companies that were ready to buy.
The Scale Computing team had great ABM tools, but Sigstr Relationships is what brought everything together. By integrating Sigstr with Terminus, Scale Computing was able to create a single Account-Based Marketing user interface to organize and prioritize accounts as well as monitor how relationships within those accounts changed over time.
“Prioritizing accounts is the most important part of an ABM strategy and Sigstr Relationships is the best tool to help you identify which accounts will be easiest to penetrate,” says Brent, “As a marketer, how can you not understand the power of scoring your company’s relationships? Relationships are at the core of every major business decision.”
The Scale Computing team has done something that many marketers strive for, but few achieve. They’ve developed a successful ABM program. In addition to the Scale Computing team’s many talents, part of that success can be attributed to Sigstr.
Snowflake is the data warehouse built for the cloud, with a mission to enable every organization to be data-driven. They combine the power of data warehousing, the flexibility of big data platforms and the elasticity of the cloud to help companies make better, quicker decisions that advance business.
As a leader in the ABM space, Snowflake turned to Sigstr to target their top accounts with personalized email signature campaigns and to gain relationship insights.
Launching an ABM Program
When the concept of ABM was just starting to make a buzz in the marketplace, Snowflake recognized a key opportunity. Realizing that traditional marketing efforts weren’t cutting through the noise, Snowflake’s marketing team decided to start targeting key accounts using a more direct approach.
In close alignment with the sales team, Snowflake’s marketing team created an ideal customer profile that helped them identify high-value prospects. From there, they assigned each sales rep to fewer than 100 accounts, divided up regionally, so that they could focus all of their energy on the best opportunities.
With their target accounts identified, the marketing team began to change their channel strategy to align with ABM principles. They first turned to Terminus to run account-specific display ads. From there, they started looking for new tools to help take their efforts to the next level. They realized ABM would only be effective if they were creating a consistent message at every angle. That’s where Sigstr came into the picture.
Targeting the Right Accounts with the Right Message
When Snowflake first learned of Sigstr, they realized that the platform was a natural extension of their ABM tech stack.
“Our goal with our ABM program is to create unintrusive touch points,” explains Daniel Day, Director of ABM at Snowflake. “Combined with platforms like Terminus and LinkedIn, Sigstr fits in seamlessly. We can ensure each email has a targeted email signature campaign that aligns with our ABM strategy.”
By leveraging Sigstr’s ABM functionality, Snowflake is able to ensure that every time someone in sales emails a prospect, they are promoting the right call to action via a personal touch point. Snowflake’s marketing team aligns Sigstr campaigns to specific ABM targets, industries, and regions. Regional events are a huge part of Snowflake’s ABM playbook, and with Sigstr, they can promote events to accounts located in each hosting city.
“Sigstr creates a great connection between physical ABM, like field marketing, and digital ABM,” explains Daniel, “As any marketer can attest, it can be difficult to create alignment between the two. With Sigstr, we are able to create a unified experience.”
Creating a Content Experience
Another key element of Snowflake’s ABM strategy is the creation of content experiences designed specifically for target accounts. Since embracing ABM, Snowflake has created over 1,000 different content journeys using streamed, displayed, and sponsored content. With Sigstr, they ensure that these experiences stretch into personal communication as well.
By leveraging Sigstr’s integration with Uberflip, Snowflake connects signature campaigns to Uberflip-powered content streams. Without asking for employee input, the marketing team can control the entire content experience of every email recipient.
“The Uberflip integration streamlines our entire process,” explains Hermi Ruiz, ABM specialist, “We can use Sigstr to pique an account’s interest, and then lead that account down a path with Uberflip that gets the company that much closer to making a purchase. We are effectively using Sigstr to jumpstart a content journey.”
Aligning Sales & Marketing Through Relationship Data
With the introduction of Sigstr Relationships, Sigstr has become an even more integral part of Snowflake’s ABM program. By analyzing the email and calendar patterns of Snowflake’s employees, Sigstr Relationships allows Snowflake to see when and if their sales team has followed up with specific ABM targets, how those relationships are growing, and how strong the company’s collective connection is with key accounts.
“One of our goals as a marketing team is to understand how our relationships with key accounts are progressing and then share those insights with the sales team in a digestible manner,” explains Hermi, “With Sigstr Relationships, we can import a list of our target accounts and instantly understand relationship dynamics.”
Sigstr scores Snowflake’s relationship with each of their target accounts, shows when the account was last contacted, and analyzes which contacts within an account Snowflake is best connected to. With a shared source of truth, Snowflake’s marketing and sales teams can build, track, and perfect their account-based engagement strategy.
Sigstr Relationships’ integration with Terminus helps to bring Snowflake’s ABM strategy full circle. By bringing together the power of both platforms, Snowflake is able to score their relationship with every account in the Terminus Account Hub. Terminus measures how close a future customer is to consideration while Sigstr enables Snowflake to understand how their most important contacts are engaging through the entire customer lifecycle.
Reviewing Key Successes
Since launching Sigstr, Snowflake’s sales team has completely entrusted marketing to take over their email signatures and are thrilled to have a common source for relationship insights. They now have users across the globe in EMEA, the US, and Australia.
Beyond aligning marketing and sales, Sigstr has helped Snowflake make their ABM program a smashing success. They’ve experienced 5x the number of views on their event landing pages and uberflip streams alone. And their success hasn’t gone unnoticed. They have won numerous awards, including “Best ABM Program” at both Conex and FlipMyFunnel.
The rules of marketing are constantly changing, but Snowflake has managed to stay ahead of the curve by embracing new marketing channels and understanding that real relationships drive business. We can’t wait to see what they accomplish next.
This guest post is brought to you by the amazing team at OneCause. Joshua Meyer brings over 14 years of fundraising, volunteer management, and marketing experience to his current role as the Director of Marketing for OneCause. Currently, as a member of the OneCause sales and marketing team, Josh manages all of the firm’s marketing efforts. He has a passion for helping to create positive change and loves that his current role allows him to help nonprofits engage new donors and achieve their fundraising goals.
At OneCause, our expertise is in nonprofit fundraising, and today fundraising means finding the best tech solutions.
Nonprofits, schools, community groups, and all kinds of other organizations need to raise support at the ground level. Building a comprehensive fundraising tech stack is easier than ever thanks to the diverse range of digital fundraising solutions on the market. This new level of flexibility and freedom of choice can seriously empower organizations that are ready to update their toolkits and raise more funds!
Just look at the end of the year fundraising season. Every year nonprofits rush to prepare themselves for this crucial period, but investing time in building out a comprehensive tech stack ahead of time can streamline your entire fundraising process from top to bottom.
There are three core categories of nonprofit tech tools that organizations should focus on when adding to their digital toolkits:
CRM or other database
Fundraising software
Marketing and web tools
Within each of these categories you’ll find a wide variety of other tools, platforms, and systems designed to address specific needs. Let’s walk through some of the most essential tools we recommend for tech-savvy nonprofits:
CRM or Other Database
A nonprofit’s CRM is probably the most important tech investment it can make. To put it another way, a donor database, or CRM, is the foundation that should support the rest of the nonprofit’s toolkit and technology strategies.
Your database should serve as a central location for all of the donor data, donation records, marketing engagement, and other metrics your campaigns generate. There are tons of options on the market, from lightweight database tools for small nonprofits, to more heavy-duty standalone software, to ultra-flexible cloud-based CRM platforms.
Whichever type of CRM is best suited to your nonprofit, just make sure it allows you to customize your donor profiles and focus on relationships, not just donation data.
Customization is key. Salesforce has quickly become one of the most popular database platforms for nonprofits because of its highly customizable structure. Check out Re:Charity’s top Salesforce apps for nonprofits for an idea of what we mean.
Additional Tools within Your CRM
Your organization’s database platform will most likely include at least a few additional built-in tools, especially if it’s designed specifically for nonprofits. App and plugin-based platforms might not contain as many extra tools right out of the box, but they can always be customized.
Some of the most useful tools to look for include project management or workflow systems, accounting capabilities, and other web-based tools, like email tracking and management.
Having all your tools in one place, whether through built-in features, apps, or software integrations, goes a long way to streamline your efforts down the line!
Fundraising Software
With a sturdy, customizable CRM platform as your base, it’s time to begin building our your tech stack! Fundraising software is essential for any nonprofit today, so we’ve picked some of the most important and effective tools that you should be using:
Event Planning Software
Look for planning tools that double as event fundraising software. The right tools should help you plan your event from start to finish and host your online marketing materials, event websites, and registration forms.
Donation Processing Tools
Every nonprofit needs online donation processing tools. Other software you use might offer online donation features, or you might use a standalone service to host your donation pages. Either way, make sure you have an easy way to collect all the data you generate in addition to the donations themselves. This should preferably be done via a direct integration with your CRM platform.
Event-Specific Fundraising
Fill out your toolkit with event-specific fundraising software and platforms, too. Text-to-give software and auction management tools are great examples. Extra tools like these can support all kinds of events that you might host going forward. Mobile bidding tools, for instance, are a perfect addition to golf tournament fundraisers.
Match Gift Database
One of the more overlooked nonprofit tech resources, matching gift databases and services can significantly boost the returns of all your other campaigns. Double the Donation reports that 1 in 3 donors say they’d give a larger gift if they knew it would be matched by their employer, so invest in tools that make it easier to spread the word.
Online Fundraising Platform
Selling merchandise or having a year-round online fundraising site is a must have in today’s fundraising world. If hosting your own eCommerce site isn’t in the cards just yet, explore your other online options. Custom merchandise platforms make it easy to sell t-shirts and other branded items through no-risk crowdfunding style campaigns. Or, if you’re looking for more comprehensive solutions, there are also a slew of great options on the market. While choosing an online fundraising platform can seem like a daunting task at first, don’t get overwhelmed! With a little bit of research on which nonprofit fundraising solution is right for your organization, you’ll be able to assess your goals, analyze the capabilities of each platform, and settle on a solution that’s perfect for your budget.
Peer-to-Peer Fundraising Software
Peer-to-peer fundraising has quickly become a dominant technique in many nonprofit spaces because it engages large segments of your base while also expanding your audience. If you regularly host this type of campaign, investing in dedicated peer-to-peer fundraising software is a smart move.
Marketing and Web Tools
Raising awareness and visibility of your mission is an essential part of nonprofit work today. Smart marketing software and web-based tools can take your fundraising efforts to the next level. Using smarter tools and strategies during your year-end giving campaigns, for example, will help you more effectively target audiences all year long by giving you new insights.
Email Management and Marketing Tools
Email remains one of the most effective and direct ways to reach your supporters online. Use email marketing software to set up automated campaigns, and explore ways to boost their impact. Perfectly designed signature banners from Sigstr are a great way to start! Just make sure your email tools properly record and report your engagement data.
CMS Platform
Your organization’s content manager system, more generally referred to as a website builder (like WordPress or Squarespace), is a central tool for your online marketing efforts. Focus energy on optimizing every part of your website, and explore options for boosting your SEO marketing strategies on your blog posts, too.
Google Analytics
This tech tool is free and invaluable. Take the time to set up Google Analytics on your website and familiarize your team with how it works. Track the performance of your campaigns and measure the traffic flows to and around your site, easily identifying problem areas that need more attention. Measuring performance is the single best way to better target your marketing efforts going forward.
Nonprofit fundraising requires a specific set of tools, and many organizations are chronically underequipped. Building out your tech stack is always a smart move for organizations of any size, and more cost-effective solutions are constantly being developed.
Take the time to periodically review your current tech infrastructure to identify areas that could use a little improvement, then start exploring your options!
Sigstr continues to be extremely committed to keeping its customers’ data and accounts very secure. With that said, we are extremely excited to announce that Sigstr recently attained SOC 2 Type 1 certification.
SOC 2 is an independent audit of internal controls and policies in place that keep Sigstr secure. SOC stands for Service & Organization Controls and is overseen by the AICPA. These audits measure organizations based on the AICPA’s Trust Criteria and include:
Security
Availability
Processing Integrity
Confidentiality
Privacy
SaaS companies can choose which Trust Criteria to be audited against and Sigstr was audited for all 5. SOC 2 audits include an extensive review of internal policies that pertain to information security, software development, logical access, monitoring controls, human resources, and more.
Why should you, the marketer reading this, care? It seems every day there is another major data breach being reported in the news. Data breaches are on the rise and the need for industry-leading Information Security practices is at an all-time high. Employee email is incredibly sensitive, so we go above and beyond to secure it. Plus, we are the only company in our space that has gone through a SOC 2 audit.
Have a security question? We’re here to help.
We aren’t finished there! We strive for the best in-class security practices. Information Security is an always-moving target and Sigstr is committed to staying ahead of the curve. As more companies go to the cloud, it is becoming increasingly important you choose the right companies to partner with, making things like SOC 2 more important than ever. If you have additional questions about Sigstr or our security practices, reach out to us anytime!
Today we’re excited to officially announce that Sigstr Relationship data is now available in the #1 rated account-based marketing (ABM) execution platform. Terminus and Sigstr’s new partnership will help align sales and marketing teams, improve segmentation, and empower better execution of marketing strategies that drive meaningful engagement.
A Quick Introduction from Bryan Brown, Chief Product Officer at Terminus
Measure Digital Engagement Now with Relationship Data
Teams can now understand and score their company’s relationships with every account in the Terminus Account Hub. By using AI to analyze the email and calendar patterns of employees, Sigstr quantifies the entire universe of relationships for a company based on real, authentic interactions. This translates to a relationship score, which feeds directly from Sigstr into the Terminus Account Hub. So now account-based marketers have a full scope on not only the digital engagement of their top targeted accounts, but also relationship trends and scores.
What This Means for Sales and Marketing Alignment
Healthy, positive relationships are defined by communication. Sigstr’s relationship intelligence analyzes the communication patterns of your entire company; making sales teams more involved and accountable in your ABM program than ever before. With a shared source of truth, account-based marketing and sales teams can align on the strategy, campaigns, and messaging that will help them drive opportunities at scale.
“We’ve been talking about sales and marketing alignment for what seems like 15 years now. To actually be able to now measure and quantify this is phenomenal and is something I think everyone should be excited about. For anyone who is interested in ABM or looking to get to the next level, this new Terminus and Sigstr integration is a huge step forward and makes it all possible. This will make it really easy for marketers to measure both sides of engagement and help their sales team be more effective and win more business.” – Bryan Brown, Chief Product Officer, Terminus
For more details about the announcement, read the press release below.
Terminus and Sigstr Partner to Help Customers Bring Relationship Intelligence to Account-Based Marketing
New capability drives improved ABM results by helping sales & marketing teams align efforts on ideal customers based on better insight to overall relationship within accounts
ATLANTA – (Jan. 9, 2019) –– Terminus, the #1 rated account-based marketing (ABM) execution platform and leader of the ABM movement, today announces it has formed a strategic partnership with Sigstr, the leading relationship marketing platform that powers Sigstr Relationships. The two companies have joined forces to unify sales and marketing teams through deeper, full-funnel account intelligence and shared mechanisms for accountability. Sigstr Relationships uses artificial intelligence (AI) to score and quantify the relationships a brand has with its customers and prospects. The partnership between Sigstr and Terminus brings sales deeper into the ABM conversation, making sales teams even more of a stakeholder in ABM efforts, and giving them a way to measure their progress in an account-based way.
“Sigstr Relationships perfectly aligns with Terminus’ account-based platform, as both exist to empower sales and marketing to get better results with ABM,” says Bryan Wade, CEO of Sigstr. “When customers use Sigstr Relationships and Terminus together, they’ll be able to leverage a new signal of engagement, the Sigstr Relationship Score, to power ABM. They’ll also have the insight they need to ensure the sales and marketing alignment that will help them move forward as a company.”
Bringing Sigstr Relationships into the Terminus account-based platform enables organizations to better recognize opportunities to drive revenue across their target accounts. Understanding overall engagement at an account level has always been a key capability in the Terminus platform. With Sigstr Relationships as a native data source, customers are now able to understand how decision-makers are engaging through the entire customer lifecycle and drive more strategic relationship development. With powerful technology that scores the strength, spread and scope of the human-to-human connections within each account, Sigstr and Terminus can help align sales and marketing teams, improve segmentation and empower better execution of marketing strategies that drive meaningful engagement.
“Enabling marketing and sales teams to apply the right resources and focus on their best-fit accounts has historically been a huge source of friction in many companies,” says Bryan Brown, chief product officer at Terminus. “ABM has been a massive help in bringing these teams together around an aligned strategy and plan. This partnership with Sigstr allows us to provide even better intelligence at an account level to not only understand overall engagement, but to also see the human relationship strength across the account. Armed with this added capability, marketing and sales teams can better identify the right tactics to accelerate pipeline and drive revenue with ABM.”
Last fall, sometime between August and October, Sigstr released our first ever “September Issue” – a compendium of the best email signature marketing campaigns from our customers created over the course of 2018. With a deliberate nod to Vogue’s legendary issue of the same name, and what started as a clever idea some months before, this resource has quickly emerged as my favorite piece of B2B marketing content that I’ve ever had a hand in during my career.
I’m so proud to say that Sigstr’s September Issue has been nominated for this year’s Killer Content Awards taking place at the annual B2B Marketing Exchange (happening this February in Scottsdale, AZ). We’re a bit of an underdog in the category, as we’re up against massive brands like Google, NBC, and the very talented team from PathFactory. In spite of the fierce competition, I really think the Sigstr team and, specifically, our Marketing Director, Brad Beutler, and designer, Anna Zimmerman, deserve to come home with a “Finny” at this year’s B2B Choice Awards. Here’s why:
1. It Cuts to the Heart of Sigstr’s Message
One thing our team constantly tries to establish in the market is that email signature marketing isn’t about the signature itself, it’s about the channel. Sigstr provides its users with an immense and targeted advertising channel by including a relevant call-to-action banner in every email (which just happens to live in the email signature section of the email). Said differently, marketers aren’t flocking to Sigstr because we standardize the business card information of every employee in their email. That’s easy. The main driver of Sigstr’s growth is our ability to give marketers a dynamic and unique ad channel. I say unique here because the scalability, volume, and ability to personalize within this channel isn’t available in any other medium.
By abstracting the campaign banner from the email signature, our September Issue is able to celebrate the purest aspect of what makes Sigstr so powerful:
Relevant marketing impressions to a company’s biggest and most important audience, delivered passively through a B2B business-person’s most frequent daily activity.
At an average of 6.5 hours per day, business professionals spend the vast majority of their time working in email. The September Issue recognizes the marketers who are viewing those 6.5 hours (multiplied by number of employees) as thousands upon thousands of marketing opportunities.
2. It’s All About Our Customers
The ultimate goal of a marketer is singular – grow the business. And the activities a marketer can adopt to achieve that goal are limited (account-based marketing, events, expansion, education, etc.). But from there, the email signature marketing possibilities are endless. We set out to create a piece of content that grouped together the most important initiatives of our customers by studying, analyzing, and hand-picking the most beautiful examples of those initiatives.
Our customers launched nearly 10,000 Sigstr campaigns last year! And while most of them met the beauty standards to qualify for the September Issue, we wanted to find examples that moved the needle on the most common activities shared by modern marketers. As a result, we’re both giving our current customers examples of the kinds of campaigns that made a material impact on their peers’ businesses while inspiring other marketers about the possibilities of a marketing channel they hadn’t fully considered. It helps existing customers, prospects at every stage of the funnel, and even our own team (all without wasting a pixel or keystroke).
3. It’s Simply Beautiful
While every piece of content we produce requires hours of effort and creativity, no other resource we’ve done before has stolen the limelight quite like the September Issue. It’s our highest performing piece of content of all time in terms of views, downloads, shares, and social mentions. And thank goodness for that, because we put in many hours of time, thoughtfulness, and examination of approximately $40 worth of high fashion magazines for inspiration. We passionately wanted to celebrate the creative work of our customers with a sophisticated level of style and pizzazz.
If you have ever clicked “send” on an important marketing email to your entire database, been tasked with driving hundreds of registrations for a large event, or signed a vendor contract where return on investment isn’t guaranteed – then you’re familiar with the lump of marketing anxiety that forms somewhere in your thorax. Email signature marketing campaigns, like the ones in the September Issue, come with that same pressure.
An average 500-employee company using Sigstr will generate nearly 5 million campaign impressions every year. That campaign image will show up next to the name of every employee in your company, including his/her boss, their boss, and the CEO. Our customers recognize both the possibilities and pressures of that opportunity, so they pour their hearts into developing beautiful, relevant, and irresistibly clickable campaign banners. They do it because they’re responsible for their entire company’s brand and marketing reputation every time an employee clicks “send” on an email.
Sigstr users are working hard to generate amazing content, events, experiences, and more. And all that work culminates into a beautiful design that’s used in a Sigstr Campaign. We understand that and we respect the hell out of it. It’s worth celebrating in the most elegant way, and that’s what we tried to accomplish with the September Issue.
Vote for Sigstr!
Please join us in celebrating the amazing work our customers are doing with Sigstr by checking out our first September Issue here. And if you think we’re worthy of bringing home a Killer Content Award, click here and vote for us.
See You in Scottsdale?
Having attended B2BMX before, I can attest that it’s an incredibly well-organized event stacked with fantastic content. Because Sigstr is a sponsor of the conference this year, we get a nifty discount code that you can use to attend. Click here to learn more about B2BMX and if you want in, use the code “25SIGSTR” to get 25% off your pass.
2018 was a monumental year for Sigstr full of team growth, customer milestones, and margaritas (lots of margaritas). Tequila aside, our entire team is beaming from ear to ear right now as we start the new year and reflect back on these last 12 months. Many miles were traveled, campaigns launched, and new customers implemented – so we wanted to take a minute to list out the highlights and express our gratitude. On behalf of our leadership team, board, and every Sigstar on every team, thank you to our families, friends, and customers for supporting Sigstr. We wouldn’t be here writing this blog post if it wasn’t for you all. Sláinte!
Customer Success and Product Milestones
Company Growth
38% total team growth
31 new Sigstars onboarded
Secured $4 million investment, led by Edison Partners, to fuel continued growth of new products and market expansion
48 bottles of champagne popped while celebrating success (one of our core values)
8 dents in the ceiling from popped champagne (each one marked for the occasion)
Awards and Recognition
Email Marketing Innovator of the Year
In August, MarTech Breakthrough honored Sigstr with the 2018 Award for Email Marketing Innovation. MarTech Breakthrough is an independent organization that recognizes the top companies, technologies, and products in the global marketing industry today.
ABMie Award Winner: Best Pipeline Acceleration Campaign
At FlipMyFunnel’s 2018 ABMies, an account-based marketing and sales community hosted by Terminus, Sigstr was awarded “Best Pipeline Acceleration Campaign” for a sequence of email signature marketing campaigns with progressive targeting.
ZoomInfo’s Champions Award
At ZoomInfo’s Growth Acceleration Summit, Sigstr won The Champions Award, which highlights organizations who have demonstrated exceptional growth over the past year.
EXPY Award Nomination: Best Content Experience
Although we didn’t bring home the trophy for this one, we were still pretty dang proud about being nominated for “Best Content Experience” at Uberflip’s EXPY Awards.
Killer Content Award Nomination: B2B Choice
This award technically extends into 2019, but we’re way too excited not to talk about it. Sigstr’s September Issue of Email Signature Marketing was recently nominated for the “B2B Choice” Killer Content Award.
Employee Focus
Selected for Indiana’s Best Places to Work
87% employee retention rate
St. Baldrick’s
2 suicide prevention events
Blood drive
Million Meals
Angel Tree
IPS Bags of Cheer
Orr Fellowship LaunchpadSigstr team members participated in severals events this year related to philanthropy or fundraising initiatives they care about most:Helping the Indianapolis homeless community
Other Fun Facts
4,429 Sigstr stickers passed out (if you want to make it 4,430 you can request a sticker here)
6,867 margaritas ordered at our All ‘Bout Margaritas parties
23 dogs in the office (well documented on our Instagram!)
Guest speakers at:
5 Marketo User Group events
2 HubSpot User Group events
HubSpot INBOUND
Impact LIVE
FlipMyFunnel
2 Sales Assembly events
2 Marketo Launchpoint events
New and extended integrations announced with:
Salesforce
Marketo
HubSpot
Eloqua
PathFactory
Uberflip
We’re coming for you, 2019!
We’re truly thankful for the support from Sigstr friends and customers. 2018 was a monumental year for our team, but we’re just getting started. Cheers to an even busier 2019 and thanks again to everyone for making this year great!
Since its debut in 1989, many things have been said about Seinfeld. Reviews run the gamut from “the greatest sitcom in history” to “I don’t get it,” and while certainly polarizing, there’s one thing that’s for sure: Jerry, Elaine, George, Kramer & their host of friends or enemies (looking at you, Newman) are certainly characters.
In this edition, we take a look at what the email signatures of the Seinfeld gang, their acquaintances, bosses, and roommates would look like.
Jerry Seinfeld
Our protagonist, Mr. Jerome Allen Seinfeld, is the kind of guy that probably hates emails. But, as we all know, in this day and age, email is as inescapable as Crazy Joe Davola after his script gets rejected. Jerry’s always been a ladies man (emphasis on the plural there). And sure, he’s still in the observational comedy game, but things aren’t quite as lucrative as they were in the Night Club days. However, not to worry, as we like to think that Jerry’s entered into the age of the side-hustle in style by starting his own dating service. While it’s unclear whether he can remember any of his customers’ names on his own (ahem, Deloris), we’re optimistic Jerry’s dating service is getting some serious benefit from Sigstr’s email signature marketing and relationship data.
Elaine Benes
Speaking of Jerry’s ex-girlfriends, we like to imagine that Elaine is much more email-friendly. After her stints at Pendant Publishing and J. Peterman (more on him later), Elaine finds herself in between jobs.
After some downtime, Elaine has examined what she’s really qualified for and turned to the entrepreneur life. If you guessed a school of dance, you’re right, as she likes to think “refined” and “classy” email signature marketing is the best way to promote her unique dancing technique. Her sender-based banners are super effective in promoting upcoming dance classes, and she’s even begun using ABM functionality to target past dancers for new classes.
George Costanza
In his lifelong quest for happiness, love, parental approval, and whatever else he actually wants in life, our dear friend George is certainly not short on resume entries. After stints (of varying levels of success and reality) as a latex salesman, a hand model, a marine biologist, and even a sales rep on the Penske file, George finds himself living the dream (again).
Somehow, even after faking another disability to try and get his own bathroom, the younger Steinbrenner has given old Georgey boy a second chance, and he’s back playing for the winning team in ticket sales. Luckily, the Yankees’ marketing team is killing it with their email signature campaigns, promoting upcoming games and special events at the Stadium.
Even better, their efforts have helped put George near the top of his sales team, bringing pride to the Costanza name and finally redirecting his classic realization: “Every decision I’ve ever made in my entire life has been wrong. My life is the opposite of everything I want it to be. Every instinct I have, in every walk of life, be it something to wear, something to eat…it’s all been wrong.” Play ball, Cant-Stand-Ya!
Cosmo Kramer
Ever the enigma, Kramer has shown that he has quite a few “professional” talents over the years. From golf, to acting, to driving a bus, the Seinfeld character who never seems to have a job at least makes one thing clear. Whatever Cosmo does, he does it in style. That’s why, after the gang disperses, he finds himself taking the entrepreneurial route and starting his own men’s clothing shop.
Just like the store’s stock, ranging from upscale undergarments (The Bro™) to everyday threads (puffy shirts) to formalwear (Technicolor Dreamcoat, anyone?), Kramer’s eye for style is exhibited in his email signature. He’s found great success with campaigns promoting upcoming sales and incoming inventory. The best part? He’ll never have to worry about being fired for missing work on Festivus.
Newman
After all his time in the “service” (the postal service, that is), Newman’s hard work has finally paid off! In spite of his inability to talk to people, his status as a company man has earned him a couple of promotions, and we find our fair villain in a desk job at the all-powerful USPS.
While he’d have never been able to install his own email signature by himself, the Postal Service’s marketing team has him covered with a handy, centrally-controlled email signature and dynamic campaigns to boot! Now, instead of sending terribly sinister emails with nothing but his name as the sign-off, Newman’s presumably diabolical and mail-zealous emails are brand standard and show off some the latest USPS best practices! Who would have thought Newman would actually help people ship things to their family and friends right in time for the holidays!
J Peterman
After Elaine’s old boss started feeling the decline of catalogs, Jacopo Peterman and his team resorted to some new-age marketing techniques. Competing with smaller boutiques (like Kramer’s) has been tough, but in an effort to rev up their strategy, team J Peterman has elected to get hyper-specific in their persona targeting.
Now, even from Burma or while meeting the bushmen of the Kalahari, J. Peterman can get the word out about new band-collar shirts, updated vests and, of course, the Urban Sombrero.
Art Vandelay
The ever-elusive importer/exporter (and, on the side, latex tycoon) has maintained his success all these years. But as content marketing has hit its stride (especially in the B2B space), Vandelay Industries’ bottom line has responded favorably to the influx of content being produced. While nobody has actually met the guy, his name is on everyone’s email, and he’s using the piece of digital real estate to promote ebooks, reports, and blog posts.
So there you have it. Even though the best email signatures of this post are about “nothing,” luckily, they all prove everyone has something worth promoting in their email signature.
This guest post is brought to you by the amazing team at OneCause. Joshua Meyer brings over 14 years of fundraising, volunteer management, and marketing experience to his current role as the Director of Marketing for OneCause. Currently, as a member of the OneCause sales and marketing team, Josh manages all of the firm’s marketing efforts. He has a passion for helping to create positive change and loves that his current role allows him to help nonprofits engage new donors and achieve their fundraising goals.
The end of the year brings a lot of things (hello Black Friday and holiday parties!), and for nonprofits, it also means deadlines.
When you’re working towards a goal, whether it’s financial, donation-based, or even simple brand recognition, nothing looms so large as the end of the year.
Luckily, the end of the year is also a time of incredible opportunity and generosity from donors. Thanks to a combination of advertised campaigns like Giving Tuesday and good old-fashioned holiday spirit, the end of the year typically means a spike in nonprofit donations: nearly 30% of all charitable donations come during the month of December.
While nonprofit teams have their donors and are ready to get started, the actual logistics of a year-end fundraiser are another thing altogether. With so many promotions, greetings, and messages hitting your audience from all angles throughout the end of the year, breaking through this noise can seem somewhat impossible.
We’ve rounded up a quick list of 5 essential tips for marketing your end-of-year fundraisers:
1. Know your audience
You’d be surprised how many nonprofit teams blindly assume people will donate or support their cause just because. Unfortunately, that’s just not the case. You need to show your audience why your cause should be important to them. Ask questions like:
What is the value you’re bringing to your community?
What benefits are you providing?
What is a personal anecdote connecting you and your donors?
You can jump-start your personal messaging by leveraging a detailed CRM platform that houses all sorts of supporter information including how they heard about your organization and how they have been involved in the past.
2. Pay attention to location
When it comes time to reach out to donors (both returning and new) to promote a fundraiser or drive donations, you need to have a good sense of where these engagements are coming from.
While a local 5K might sound like a great idea, if a majority of donors are from out of town, then this might not make that much sense. Consider these location-specific aspects of your fundraise:
First, think about the location of your supporters, as well as the past campaigns and events you’ve hosted.
Then, go back through feedback and results to see what worked and what didn’t, and allow this to be the basis of your marketing strategy.
Make sure you’re a using top event management platforms designed specifically for nonprofits. More generic software might not provide easy access to data like past engagement metrics that you’ll need to plan an engaging, location-specific event.
3. Have a clear CTA
Too often, nonprofit organizations want (and need) so much from their supporters that they ask for it all instead of narrowing their focus.
While end-of-year giving is all about meeting goals, there should be a clear message in your marketing efforts to actually spark action from your supporters.
If you’re trying to drive ticket sales for an end-of-year gala, for example, then ask people to ‘Buy Tickets Now’ in your CTAs. Designing a bold, interesting design for your email signature banners will always be a smarter move than using vague, forgettable messaging like ‘Get Involved’ or ‘Learn More’.
While there are always ways to cross-promote your campaigns (such as providing a donation field on your registration page), choose a main CTA and stick with it across your marketing efforts. This will help streamline your internal team and keep all of your supporters on the same page.
4. Make it personal
While individuals crave an emotional, personal connection with a nonprofit, they also want to be able to share this personal experience with others. As you’re marketing your end of year campaign, share stories of donors and supporters who have created lasting relationships with your organization. Consider:
Showcasing how these special people got involved with your team and your mission to help hit on a personal note for others.
Making it easy for your supporters to help you out and share their stories with others.
Putting these tips into action involves becoming more active on social media, including share links in all communications (such as your email signature), and maintaining a candid public image.
5. Make it modern
When you think of an end-of-year charity event, what’s the first thing that comes to mind?
If you’re thinking posters in a coffee shop bathroom, you’re not the only one. But, as technology and solutions for nonprofit teams have evolved, so too has the technology in place to help market and promote these campaigns.
Online giving is just the tip of the iceberg. There are solutions in place that make it easy for donors to get involved, to actually make donations, and even to promote your organization to their networks.
Nonprofit marketing channels have stepped their game up as well. From innovative direct mail to email signature marketing, there is nothing but opportunity. It’s just important to know where to look.
Take your nonprofit marketing to the next level
Emails aren’t just for sales anymore. As more and more businesses enter the world of corporate giving, email has become one of the most well-used (and well-received) channels to promote fundraising efforts. With the right segmentation, the right message, and the right design, your team can break through the noise this holiday season.
Don’t be afraid to share amazing content, drive your supporters to engaging, exciting landing pages, and really deliver unique nonprofit experiences. Whether you’re a nonprofit or corporate charity, email marketing can help take your fundraising efforts to the next level.
Santa came early at the Sigstr office! We’re thrilled to announce four new integrations, an updated end user experience, and expanded relationship intelligence features. Check out the details below.
Email Signature Marketing
PathFactory Integration
Link Sigstr campaigns to PathFactory content tracks with just one click! Identify who clicks on your email signature banners and track content consumption with no added effort. Using these insights, optimize your email signature campaigns and content offers, while simultaneously identifying highly engaged prospects.
Eloqua Integration
Enhance your digital efforts with the power of relationship intelligence and email signature marketing. Seamlessly connect Sigstr to Eloqua contact segments, landing pages and reporting through a new set of easy to use, point and click user interfaces.
Uberflip Integration
Connect your Uberflip-powered content to every email sent by your employees. With the Uberflip URLs automatically tagged with the appropriate parameters, you will be able to measure how many views, form submissions, contacts, and customers won are sourced from Sigstr.
Employee Banner Selection
Give employees the power to select their own email signature campaigns. Provide users with a number of choices as well as a recommended, default campaign. Employees can then choose the campaign that is the most relevant to the customers and prospects they are emailing.
Sender-Based Campaign URLs
Personalize your Sigstr campaigns even further by aligning URLs to individual employee links. By dynamically updating campaign URLs to reflect who is sending the email, you can ensure your employees are connecting with top customers and prospects through WhatsApp, Calendly, and more.
Signature Backup
For any new G Suite user, Sigstr will automatically save a copy of the user’s original signature before overriding it with Sigstr content. In the event that you would like to roll back Sigstr signatures for a specific user or group, we will be able to restore the original signature with no problem.
Sigstr Relationships
List Enhancement
Marketing programs are built on the backbone of meaningful lists – ABM lists, event invite lists, event lead lists, prospect lists, customer lists, and the list (pun intended) goes on. Sigstr Relationships lets you import lists directly into the application to instantly understand your relationships with every contact or account. Track account to account scores and see how relationships are trending. Specify list favorites to find your most important segments with ease.
Salesforce Relationship Integration
Enhance your Salesforce data with the power of Sigstr Relationships. Within Salesforce, leverage relationship scores to remove the guesswork around opportunities, see which coworkers provide the best path to every contact and account, and ensure all of the customers and prospects your teammates are emailing are captured in real-time.
Contact Activity Feed
The contact section of Sigstr Relationships has been completely revamped to provide a live feed of relationship activity. View and understand key connections to prospects and customers, understand how your efforts are influencing account penetration and development, and take action to drive key contacts through the sales funnel.
Sigstr Platform
SOC 2 Type 1 Certification
Rest easy with Sigstr’s increased data security! Sigstr recently achieved SOC 2 Type 1 certification which defines criteria for managing customer data on 5 trust principles – security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality and privacy. This certification ensures that Sigstr has industry leading security protocols and procedures in place when it comes to data security.
Office 365 SSO
Tired of remembering lengthy passwords for every application in your team’s repertoire? Use our SSO feature, and login to Sigstr with just one click! The feature is available to all Office 365 users and simply requires employees to sign into Sigstr using their Outlook credentials.
Employee Preference Center
The Employee Preference Center now gives end users the opportunity to update notification and signature settings. Give employees the control they need to turn on or off click notifications, weekly relationship recommendations, personal email signatures, and campaign banners.
Outlook 3.0
Take advantage of Sigstr’s latest Outlook Agent! Once installed, employee signatures will continue to exist on each user’s machine, even if Outlook is closed, internet connectivity is not available, or the add-in is disabled. If an email is able to be sent, signature images will be visible to end recipients – even if they are not loaded for the sender.
Ready to put these new features to use? Request access here or by reaching out to your Customer Success Manager.
If you’re an Uberflip user today, or you’re at least thinking about making the investment, it’s safe to assume your team is committed to delivering a top-notch content experience for your customers and prospects. It’s a commitment we highly respect, and one we have made ourselves as Uberflip customers.
Once a team is confident in their ability to deliver a stellar content experience, the next priority is to direct more traffic to the Resource Hub and get their content in front of the right audience. (Clears throat)…allow us to introduce your new favorite channel for promoting content.
Everyday Email: The Perfect Channel for Personalized Content
Think of the billions of emails you and your employees send out of Gmail or Outlook every year. Not only are these brand impressions with your most important audience, they also represent thousands upon thousands of opportunities to promote your best content. Teams today use email signature marketing to turn these missed marketing opportunities into a brand new channel for content distribution. And with Sigstr, you can now connect your Uberflip-powered content into every email sent by your employees.
Easily Connect Uberflip Content to Email Signature Campaigns
While creating a new email signature campaign in Sigstr, users can select “Connect To Platform” and see their Uberflip content right within Sigstr. Simply select the stream you want the banner to promote and launch within minutes.
Deliver Account-Specific Content to ABM Targets
Shared customer, Snowflake, is using the integration for their award-winning ABM program. Their account-specific email signature banners lead to personalized content streams tailored to the target account.
A Trackable Distribution Channel for Your Content
By connecting both platforms, Sigstr will also automatically append UTM parameters so users can track traffic and conversions sourced from their employees’ email signatures in Google Analytics. For us, as everyday users of both platforms, email signature marketing has emerged as the third leading source of traffic to our Resource Hub (just behind search and direct traffic).
More on Today’s Big News
We couldn’t be more excited to partner with Uberflip’s great team and innovative platform. This integration has already brought tremendous value to our own email signature marketing strategy (as you can see in the GIF above). With the power of employee email joining forces with Uberflip’s Content Experience Platform, this integration is sure to become a game-changer for content marketers and ABM execution.
Uberflip and Sigstr Integrate to Bring Personalized Content into Every Employee Email
Leading Email Signature Marketing Solution and Content Experience Platform Partner to Provide Brand New Distribution Channel to Deliver Personalized Content
Toronto and Indianapolis, November 28, 2018 – Uberflip, the leading content experience platform, and Sigstr, the leading email signature marketing platform, today announced an integration that allows B2B marketers to easily and accurately deliver personalized content streams into every email their employees send. This integration gives marketers a brand new distribution channel through the corporate email system that personalizes content based on who’s receiving the email.
Billions of one-to-one emails are sent by companies every year, but too often these emails are overlooked as an effective content distribution channel. By assigning content streams to segments like target accounts, personas, or geographics, shared Sigstr and Uberflip customers can be sure that every email contains a relevant call-to-action, regardless of who’s sending it. By providing cross-platform click-through and conversion analytics, marketers can understand who’s engaging with Uberflip content experiences.
“Content is the fuel of every B2B marketing team, but all too often that content collects dust as distribution channels become saturated and segmenting becomes too time-consuming,” said Sigstr CEO, Bryan Wade. “I am so excited about this integration because it delivers Uberflip’s amazing content experiences to a massive audience via Gmail, Outlook, etc.— whether you’re promoting content to the entire world or delivering account-specific content through your ABM strategy.”
Shared customer, Snowflake Computing, is using the integration to deliver account-specific banners in employee emails that lead to personalized content streams tailored to their target accounts. “You can’t use mass emails in an account-based strategy. Personal one-to-one emails are the best way to deliver content and using Sigstr and Uberflip together has become one of our most effective ABM channels,” said Daniel Day, Director of ABM at Snowflake.
“Delivering personalized content experiences is key to any business,” said Yoav Schwartz, Co-Founder and CEO at Uberflip. “Our customers will now be able to take their content a step further, by connecting these two technologies to distribute their experiences straight to the inbox in a very personalized, targeted way.”
At Sigstr, one of our core values is to “Believe Big”. This applies to everything we do. The leadership team awards us the freedom and encourages us to bring our big, crazy ideas to fruition.
In one of our weekly company meetings, someone said, “we should have Dog Days of November and let one employee every day bring in their pup. I think it would make everyone so happy.”
And so we did.
From November 1st to the 30th, we had dogs in the office almost every day. And guess what? It made everyone so happy. If you’ve been around this blog before, you know that we like to have a little extra fun with our content sometimes. This is one of those times. We wanted to do something special to commemorate all of the Sigstr pups that visited this past month, so we took a page out of the WeRateDogs playbook.
You can check out some of our favorite pictures from Dog Days of November on Instagram @Sigstr!
Day 1: Sonne
This is Sonne. She is the most well-behaved girl but she’s got a flair for the dramatics. 6-star performance. 14/10 good pup.
Day 2: Willow
This is Willow. Willow was a little shy but all she needed was a nap and to cuddle with her human to make her feel better. 13/10 extremely relatable.
Day 3: Toast
This is Toast. Toast came in because he heard we had good snacks. Then he had too many snacks. 13/10 for this snack coma snooze.
Day 4 & 5: Java & Mochi
This is Java. He’s half golden retriever and half corgi which equals one whole cute goob boy. 12/10 perfect combo. 100/10 smile.
This is Mochi. Mochi treats are notoriously hard on the outside but soft and gooey on the inside. A 13/10 perfect name to describe this perfect pup.
Day 6: Blue
This is Blue. We thought he would be so hyper that he would tear up the office. Instead, he was so sleepy and cuddly he tore up our hearts. 13/10 good boy.
Day 7: Tux
This is Tux. Tux wants to remind you that you are awesome and if you need him he’s only a pidder-padder away. 13/10 for Tux check-ins.
Day 8: Stretch
This is Stretch. Stretch was rescued from Utah, hiked some of the Appalachian trail with his human, and enjoys long walks in the woods. 14/10 for this adventurous and smiley pup.
Day 9: Nala
This is Nala. Nala’s dad raised her right and taught her the importance of a firm handshake. 12/10 for this professional pupper.
Day 10: Ramsay
This is Ramsay. This is clearly a fox, not a dog. We only rate dogs. It’s Dog Days of November not Fox Days of November.
Day 11: Lemmy
This is Lemmy. Lemmy moved here from sunny California. He gives Indiana -1/10 for weather. We give him 12/10 for manly facial hair.
Day 12: Willow
This is Willow. Willow had a really good day. She learned that coming into the office isn’t scary at all and even wandered around to say hi to everyone. 13/10 for this courageous doggo.
Day 13: Lucy
This is Lucy. Lucy was so happy to come with her dad to work that she couldn’t stop wiggling. 13/10 for this wiggle monster.
Day 14: Dug
This is Dug. Dug decided he wanted to help the custodial staff during his day. Although he didn’t communicate this with management, we do appreciate Dug’s dumpster diving skills and eliminating leftover bagels for us. 12/10 and 2 thumbs up.
Day 15: Ramsay
Ramsay again! We were wrong, he brought in his certification papers and he is, indeed, a dog. 12/10 for proving us wrong.
Day 16: Chloe
This is Chloe. Chloe wanted to show you that she can fit her whole tongue around her nose. 13/10 hopes you’re impressed.
Day 17: Cooper
This is Cooper. Cooper wanted to take a picture with his dad for their annual Christmas card. Cropped out his dad. 12/10 needs your address.
More and more marketers are realizing something we’ve known at Sigstr for a long time: employee email is a valuable marketing channel and email signature marketing (ESM) is the secret to unlocking this channel. For many teams, ESM has become a main source for promoting events, driving engagement, and bolstering initiatives.
Whether you’ve been following along with our content proving that email signatures draw attention and drive clicks, or you’ve come into the space on your own and are looking for tips, tricks, and best practices, we’re here to help you understand how to best drive engagement – but also help you know if (and when) purchasing email signature marketing is the right choice for your business.
Just by virtue of reading this, the great news is – you’re on the right track! It may be that you’re currently either using or thinking of implementing a manual solution for your company’s email signatures. This is a fantastic way to dip your toes into the world of ESM, and we encourage marketers to pursue this option.
Employee time = real money
If you’re sending an email to everyone in your company featuring the correct branding guidelines for the email signature and a banner to copy/paste at the bottom of messages, that’s a great sign that you’re on the right track for harnessing your employee email. But think about it – we’ve all seen the email that marketing sends to everyone at the company with 10 to 12 steps on how to update their email signature (which takes time away from the marketer’s day).
If it takes each employee 8 minutes to walk through that process of setting up their email signature and campaign, and they make an average of $30 per hour, what does that math look like? For a company of 1,500 employees, that comes to 200 hours, or a $6,000 hit in productivity to your company EVERY SINGLE TIME you want to make adjustments to that marketing message. Our best practices suggest switching out a marketing campaign every 4 to 6 weeks to keep the messaging fresh. If that 1,500-person company changes out a campaign once a month, they’re losing $72,000 in productivity over the course of the year.
That’s not to mention other time-wasters and hiccups with the manual process. If you’re looking to segment different email signatures based on teams or departments, that’s even more time spent changing out campaigns. And there’s always the inevitable employees who won’t follow directions and will be off-brand, even after countless follow-up emails and check-ins (time wasters themselves). In short – this process can get messy, and it can get expensive.
Save time for your employees while adding value
That’s why Sigstr is here to help. If you’re a marketer looking to implement standardized email signature marketing across your company – you’re clearly already a rockstar! We want to work alongside amazing people like you and help make the process simpler, less expensive, and more effective.
Sigstr gives central control of company-wide email signatures. We work with your IT team to deploy across your entire organization in a seamless implementation process. Once completed, you as the marketer have full control over the email signature and call-to-action banner. There will never again be the need to take your employees’ time (and your company’s money!) to ensure that your latest initiatives are being promoted.
In addition to the centralized control, Sigstr offers advanced functionality that simply isn’t possible in a home-grown solution. Our scheduling feature lets you plan out campaigns months in advance, and switch to a new campaign depending on when time-sensitive events begin and end. Targeted campaigns allow you to switch out campaigns based on recipients, so that you can ensure that your top prospects, key partners, and current customers are seeing exactly the right message at the right time. The level of personalization allowed with Sigstr is unprecedented, and adding a new campaign takes no end-user time. Think of a company like Lumavate – they’re using Sigstr as part of their ABM strategy, implementing hundreds of targeted campaigns to key accounts. Can you imagine them asking their end-users to switch out campaigns every time they compose an email based on the recipient? With Sigstr, the marketing team has full control over that messaging and targeting, and they’re saving time and money by centralizing the management.
Additionally, Sigstr allows you to track concrete numbers, attribution, and ROI. If you’re doing ESM on your own, hopefully you’re measuring performance with UTM parameters to understand how valuable the space can be! We’re able to go beyond that, offering CRM integrations, recipient analytics, Google Analytics tracking, in-app analytics, end-user notifications, and more. We work hard to give you visibility into what Sigstr is doing for your business.
Free up IT resources
Building your own ESM solution is not one-and-done. As with everything in computing, there a million ways to get all your employee email signatures looking the same. If you’ve talked to your IT or engineering team about solving this, they’ve probably got some ideas! But as with anything in the IT world, a project is never truly done.
Email client compatibility, HTML, content rendering, template design best practices, email deliverability – centrally controlling email signatures is a deceptively complex task. If you choose to build your own ESM solution in house, your IT department should be aware that they’ll be expected to maintain it over time, fix it when it’s broken, and tackle new projects in the future when you want to improve things. Sigstr has years of industry experience building and supporting all of this for hundreds of customers – each with their own unique tech stacks and use cases – and we’re always adding more!
If you’re ready to take ESM to the next level, Sigstr is here to help
Of course, Sigstr comes at a cost, and we work hard to determine the best packaging and pricing for your company. We want to be sure to give you exactly what you need to succeed, at a price point that makes sense. And we’re confident that you’ll see a clear return on investment.
Experimenting on your own with ESM is great, and we highly encourage it! By setting up standardized email signatures and campaign banners, you’re already halfway there. We’re here to help take what you’re already doing and save you time and money, in addition to delivering more options for central control for your marketing team. We hope you’re ready to work with us – because we’re ready to work with you.
This post is brought to you by our friends at Sendoso, the Engagement Delivery Platform. Source, send, and centralize direct mail, swag, and gifts all from one platform with Sendoso. Guest author: Brianna Valleskey, Sr. Content Marketing Manager.
Strategic marketers aim to deliver the right message to the right person at the right time.
But rather than pushing a demo after three nurture emails or calling a prospect two minutes after downloading an ebook, I think we should interpret this idea to mean personalizing your outreach so that you’re talking to the right person about the right things at a time that makes sense.
And I’d venture to say that we should be instructing our sales teams about this level of personalization across the funnel. Our buyers are telling us they want personalized experiences, and we know that targeting them on a one-to-one basis increases response rates by 50% or more.
This doesn’t mean simply using a CRM field to add your prospect’s first name, company name, or title into an email subject line. That’s customization. Personalization is about connecting with them in ways that are relevant and meaningful—understanding who they are as a person, what their goals are in their role, where they are in your sales funnel, why they’re talking to you, etc.
More importantly, we can (and should) educate, reinforce, and equip our sales reps with methods for implementing this level of personalization at scale; turning them into micro-marketers, if you will. There are a number of ways to do this, but here are a few ideas we can use to start.
How to Turn Your Sales Team Into Micro-Marketers
1. Leverage Sales Email Touch Points
Your sales reps send and receive a whopping 10,000 emails a year. And every single one of those email touch points is an incredible opportunity to sprinkle in marketing messages. But we’re not talking about the email text itself. Research shows that when someone receives an email, the majority of their attention goes to the email signature! That means your sales reps can drive awareness for events, promote new marketing materials, share product updates, and more all without taking away from the actual email message.
Of course, you don’t want to have to bother your team to update their email signature every time you’ve got something new to promote. But an email signature marketing platform like Sigstr enables you to centralize the entire process and autonomously update email signature templates for your entire sales team. Plus, it works. Sigstr found that email signature marketing campaigns achieve 1,500 more clicks than traditional marketing email clicks. You can even add an extra layer of personalization to each email sent by your sales team with dynamic templates that automatically display specific banners based on a recipient’s industry, account, and even sales stage.
2. Initiate personalized Direct Mail Sends
A prospect’s email inbox is one way to drive personalized communication, but a package on their desk is an opportunity to engage them in a tangible way. So, complement your sales team’s personalized email sends with powerful and relevant direct mail touchpoints! After all, direct mail is more likely to drive behavior than digital media, and I don’t just mean postcards. Encourage your team to send physical gifts, handwritten notes, swag, wine, or even cupcakes. Studies reveal that even sending a small gift can significantly impact the success of a negotiation in sales (increasing revenue by more than 300% in some cases).
Direct mail sends have traditionally been a batch function run by marketing that could take up to 20 hours of work for a single campaign. But fully integrated direct mail and gifting solutions like Sendoso give individual reps the autonomy to send anything—including the examples listed above—at any time on a one-to-one basis (without all the grunt work). Salespeople can even use an Amazon integration to send hyper-personalized gifts specific to their prospects’ interests. Companies have seen up to 60% response rates for packages sent and generated $1,000 in pipeline for every dollar spent. Plus, there are hundreds of ways to get creative and rise above the noise with prospects.
3. Train Reps on Storytelling for Events
Live events can be a critical leverage point for your sales reps, both in terms of discovering new prospects and accelerating current deals. More than 91% of over-performing businesses place a greater emphasis on live events as a marketing channel than their counterparts. Conferences and trade shows account for one-fifth or more of planned meetings activity as well. But the key is to arm your sales reps who attend these events with a toolbox of powerful stories they can tell, personalized to each of your buyer personas.
Empower reps with the right stories: What is the most important thing each of their target prospects needs to know about your product or service? Why should they care? At events, they must be able to answer these questions on the fly. As stated in SmartBug Media’s SaaS Marketing Strategies report, this requires training and enablement. You can host your own internal training sessions on a regular basis (perhaps weekly or monthly, depending on your bandwidth), or consider leveraging a learning management system like Lessonly to train everyone in detail, but at scale.
Executing these small, yet powerful strategies doesn’t mean sales reps will be operating at the level of your actual marketing team, but rather supplementing the campaigns already in action. And you don’t need to stress over sales team adoption. Each of the tools mentioned will help streamline the process and make these interactions as easy as possible for your reps.
This is the first in a series of blog posts where we recount the Sigstr sales and marketing team’s transition to using relationships as our key performance indicator.
BFFs Are the New MQLs
Don’t get a marketer started on their lead scoring framework and qualification process. Setting them up is complicated and often require a consultant’s help to make them function correctly. After that, weighting the behavioral and firmographic attributes is guesswork at best, and they require constant tinkering to keep them consistent with their sales team’s objectives.
And for all that work, what do we get? A sales team that’s either complaining that leads aren’t warmed up enough because the MQL (marketing qualified lead) threshold is too low or they’re not getting enough leads because it’s too high. But that’s not the worst part. After all that scoring, nurturing, flow-chart making, and eyebrow furrowing, those MQLs only turn into customers 6.2% of the time.
While MQLs are important for managing your funnel, they’re statistically crummy predictors of customer win rates. A more predictive indicator of customer win rates is relationship development. 98% of sales and marketing pros agree that an authentic relationship is a critical element of customer acquisition, according to research recently conducted by Sigstr and Heinz Marketing. But you didn’t need a statistic to believe that developing relationships is important to growing your business.
The Importance of Developing Relationships
Relationships have been important to businesses ever since the first shiny rock was traded for a sharp rock. But in the past ten years, relationship marketing made a huge resurgence in the form of Account-Based Marketing (ABM). ABM is, by definition, figuring out the people with whom you want to develop a business relationship with and then making it happen. A whopping 92% of companies consider ABM “extremely” or “very” important to their marketing program. To further the point, consider these additional statistics below:
81% of companies are going to be investing more in brand (which is the most difficult of all marketing ROI to track) over the next five years.
The number of SDRs in existence has quintupled over the past ten years.
Two thirds of companies are dedicating more than a quarter of their annual budgets to events and that amount is going to increase for 70% of companies next year.
What do all these things have in common? They’re all about developing relationships. Between your brand and your audience, and between your employees and the humans in your most important accounts.
This is why marketers need to spend less time driving MQLs and more time driving BFFs (best friends forever). But more than that, in an era where we’re oversaturated with brand messages and spammy communication, it just feels like putting relationships first is the right thing to do. This is something we put a finer point on in our Relationship Marketing Manifesto.
Measuring Relationships
Sigstr is beginning to orient our entire marketing program around relationships. Using our new B2B relationship intelligence platform, Sigstr Relationships, which leverages AI to quantify relationship strength based on recency, frequency, velocity and volume of communication. All with a dash of CRM data.
We’ll be monitoring relationship development across our 120 Tier One accounts and 1,500 Tier Two accounts, trying to understand what marketing campaigns move the needle across a variety of cohorts. We’ll be aligning sales and marketing efforts against these relationship scores to better understand pipeline development and to be more accurate around close rates. Lastly, we’ll be analyzing patterns and trends in relationship development to inform our ideal customer profile and account scoring framework so that we’re even better at making friends next time.
But first things first, if you’re going to scale anything, you need to know how to measure it. The Sigstr marketing team has identified four metrics to measure when trying to quantify a B2B relationship.
Spread
Definition: How many of “them” do “we” know (e.g. across all of Sigstr’s employees, we know 47 people that work at Oracle, so our spread is 47).
Why is spread important? Think of it as account penetration. The more people at a target account that know people at your company, the greater the mindshare, the easier to navigate the org chart, and the more influencers you’ll have in your corner.
How does marketing influence spread? Targeted display advertising through an ABM platform like Terminus lets you target specific companies (and even specific departments within those companies) with relevant messages to drive your awareness and lead gen efforts. A mass direct mail send addressed to a department or several specific people you haven’t contacted yet through a tool like Sendoso is also a sure way to gain some attention.
Scope
Definition: How many of “them” do “we” want to know (e.g. a buying committee or department within a target account).
Why is scope important? The average B2B buying committee has 6.8 people, which is up from 5.6 just a year ago. 84% of those committees have a “champion” who holds about 59% of the influence on that buying decision. Knowing who is in your buying committee and making sure you’re developing relationships with them is key. Fun fact: This topic was well covered in a Terminus webinar from last summer.
How does marketing influence scope? This varies largely depending on what your typical customer looks like, but let’s look at Sigstr’s case: We sell to marketing teams, so our champion is typically a marketer. However, IT also needs to get involved to evaluate and implement and there’s generally an executive or two that wants to be part of the decision. We spend a lot of time analyzing and understanding the various personas in our scope so that we can deliver relevant content to them (we automate this through Sigstr).
Depth
Definition: A count of how many of “us” know an individual “them”.
Why is depth important? The more and stronger the connections between individuals in target accounts have with your company, the better they’ll understand your culture, have an easier time communicating, and have more support.
How does marketing influence depth? Because depth takes dedicated time from multiple personalities, this is more challenging to scale. Rather than trying to operationalize depth across the entire funnel, start to build workflows that trigger tasks assigned to certain people at certain opportunity stages. For example, when an account reaches a late opp stage (“budgeting” for example), set up a simple workflow that assigns a task to key executives on your team requesting that they send a personal message to the champion or committee.
Strength
Definition: This is a subjective measure of leverage and influence “we” have over an individual “them”.
Why is strength important? This one should be pretty obvious, but the more influence and rapport you have between people, the easier it is to help each other get what we both want. Strength is arguably the most important metric, but also the most difficult to quantify. How exactly do you make it measurable? If you take a step back and think about what makes a relationship successful, communication is the answer more times than not. So, measuring the amount of communication is a good place to start. While we’re measuring all of these metrics in Sigstr’s relationship intelligence platform, this is the metric we’re most excited to track.
How does marketing influence strength? To be honest, we’re not sure. We know how to track relationship development with Sigstr Pulse, but the best practices around deploying marketing campaigns with the goal of influencing relationships is something we’re in the process of figuring out. Stay tuned as we learn more in this area!
We’re going to spend the next three months pouring over the metrics mentioned above as we compare their movement to the sales and marketing tactics we use to influence them. We’ll be updating this series with what we’re learning along the way.
In the interim, tweet us @sigstr and tell us what, specifically, you’d like to better understand about this experiment. What tech we’re using? How we’re attributing relationships to campaigns? How we developed our account scoring model? We’d love to share!
Effectively distribute your content in a high-volume channel and access valuable insight about how your audience consumes that content. That’s what the Sigstr + PathFactory integration is all about! Today we’re thrilled to announce this new integration and join forces with PathFactory, the Content Insight and Activation Platform.
Now marketers can take advantage of everyday email (think Gmail or Outlook) sent by their employees and turn it into a new channel that promotes their most important content. Then, after an email recipient clicks on the email signature banner, teams can see how their audience consumes and engages with that content.
Armed with data from both sides, marketers can then optimize their content strategy and future email signature marketing campaigns. Salespeople can deliver a more relevant and personalized buying experience. And customer success teams can identify adoption and up-sell opportunities.
See how else this integration provides value to marketing, sales, and CS teams by watching the overview video. Or, learn more about today’s big news in the press release below.
Today PathFactory, the Content Insight and Activation Platform, announced an integration with Sigstr, the leading email signature marketing solution, to allow B2B marketers to deliver personalized content experiences in every email their employees send, and access valuable insight about their recipients’ consumption of that content.
With the rise of privacy regulations like GDPR and the seemingly never-ending deluge of marketing emails flooding inboxes everywhere, 1-to-1 emails sent by salespeople and customer-facing teams are becoming an important channel through which B2B marketers can reach prospective buyers and current customers with content. This new integration makes it easy for PathFactory and Sigstr customers to link PathFactory Content Tracks to email signature banners within Sigstr with just one click, as well as deanonymize recipients who click on those email signature banners and consume content.
“People are more likely to engage with calls-to-action from someone they know than a broad-based marketing email. We’re excited to partner with Sigstr on this integration because it gives marketers new capabilities for personalizing email signature marketing like they do other channels, and better data about how prospective buyers and customers are engaging with their email signatures,” said Mark Opauzsky, CEO of PathFactory.
PathFactory tracks the email recipients’ content consumption to give the entire revenue organization insight into which senders, banners, and content offers generate the highest-quality engagement with key audiences. This insight empowers marketers to optimize email signature campaigns and content strategy, salespeople to identify fast-moving buyers and deliver a more relevant buying process, and customer success teams to identify adoption, advocacy, and up-sell opportunities.
PathFactory’s proprietary dataset and account-based solutions automatically updates Sigstr banners with personalized Content Track destinations based on visitor behavior and firmographic data, helping B2B marketers deliver a more relevant, on-demand experience expected by business consumers – even in 1-to-1 emails. The integration will also give customers the ability to kickstart the banner creation process in Sigstr with images from their PathFactory content library.
“Our team is excited about the marketing possibilities created by this integration between PathFactory and Sigstr,” says Jen Rios, Senior Manager of Demand Generation at Invoca, an industry-leading call tracking and analytics solution, who is a customer of both platforms. “We already distribute new content campaigns via email signatures with Sigstr, and now we can track the content consumption on the other side of those clicks and better align our email signature marketing efforts with our account-based marketing strategies.”
As a sales development rep slowly being introduced to field marketing responsibilities, I am learning firsthand both the awesome benefits and unique challenges of planning an event in a different city. Constantly changing circumstances, difficulties with prioritization, and (occasionally) unresponsive sales reps are all circumstances a field marketer has to deal with on a daily basis. When done right, however, putting your team in position to be face-to-face with your top customers and prospects can pay major dividends. I’m here to talk about how Sigstr can help with that.
Choosing Your Cities
Each organization, marketer, and salesperson likely has processes for deciding which cities are ripe for a field marketing event. Some of these are sure to be more effective than others, but an excellent place to start is by identifying which cities contain your company’s best relationships. Say, for example, you have limited budget and you’re unsure whether to send a rep to Phoenix, Vancouver, Boston, or Atlanta. With the “Top 10 Locations” feature, you can immediately see where your company’s strongest relationships lie to help you determine where your event might be successful.
Your Best Relationships by Location
You’ve identified the location of your next field event. You’ve booked a venue, plane tickets, and hotel rooms. Great work! Now how do you decide where your team will spend its time to drive the right people to your event?
Sigstr’s location intelligence helps align sales and marketing around which customers and prospects to invite to their next event by providing an idea of how strong a team’s relationships are, both at a personal and company-wide level.
But what if your opportunities in your CRM aren’t entirely updated? That’s okay, because Sigstr’s relationship data is based on email and calendar invites, too. Now you can ensure that you never miss an opportunity to strengthen these relationships face-to-face to help you close deals faster.
Targeted, Dynamic Email Signature Marketing
Your ideal city has been chosen, the venue is booked, and invites are out. You’re killing it! Now how do you maximize event promotion? Don’t worry, Sigstr helps with this one, too.
With email signature marketing, field marketers have the ability to segment and build lists around location, making sure that any time someone from your company emails a prospect or customer in that area, they’re seeing a targeted email signature banner. You can link your event registration landing page directly to these signature campaigns, helping you stay top of mind, drive registrants, and measure ROI.
Here’s an example from our own account, which is promoting our upcoming Indy-based “All ‘Bout Margaritas” party.
Go Rock Your Next Field Marketing Event
We just threw a ton at you, so let’s sum it up as simply as possible.
Step 1: Utilize the “Top Locations” feature to choose the best city for your next field marketing event.
Step 2: Strategically use “Location Intelligence” to find your top relationships in that city and ensure they get invited.
Step 3: Target your customers and prospects with an awesome, dynamic email signature banner inviting them to your event.
Step 4: Win more deals. Get promoted. Be loved by everyone at your company (okay, I can’t promise that, but you get the point).
When trying to convince friends and family that they should watch The Good Place, it can be a hard sell.
“It’s this show about these people who are dead, and they are in this place that’s like heaven, but not heaven. And there is a point system. And this lady named Janet who is not really a lady, but the source of all knowledge. And there are lots of philosophy discussions. And fro-yo. And that guy from Cheers.”
You end up sounding like a lunatic. But watch a few episodes, and you’ll be hooked. Now in its third season, The Good Place has achieved an almost cult-like following, and with good reason. It’s hilarious, smart, and well-acted. What’s not to love? So in an effort to get into The Good Place ourselves, Sigstr decided to honor our favorite characters by imagining the best email signatures of each character.
Warning… spoilers ahead.
Eleanor Shellstrop
Eleanor Shellstrop, our leading lady, may have been a selfish, rude, and dishonest person during her life on earth, but she’s grown into a kind and compassionate human being over the course of three seasons (and hundreds of resets). Although Eleanor is deemed the most morally corrupt of the four humans, she has shown the greatest ability to grow and improve herself. This is likely because she has no delusions of what kind of life she lived and is able to tackle her negative aspects head on. Selfishly, we hope Eleanor doesn’t lose ALL of her bad traits. They are too entertaining.
Chidi Anagonye
Chidi’s indecisiveness can give anyone an anxiety attack. JUST PICK A HAT ALREADY, MAN. While he’s kind-hearted and giving, Chidi is practically incapable of making quick decisions. As a philosophy professor, his need to analyze the moral implications of every decision he makes often causes him to obsess over whether even his most insignificant actions are deemed ethical. Luckily, Eleanor seems to be helping Chidi overcome his struggles. Can you say, match made in heaven? But literally.
Jason Mendoza
Jason Mendoza, TV’s most lovable idiot, may not offer the best ideas when it comes to getting the group into The Good Place, but he’s sweet and optimistic. He means well, and it could be argued that most of his bad decisions are the result of ignorance rather than malicious intent. Despite his lack of intelligence, Jason is the show’s heart throb. At one point or another, he earns the attention of every female character, including Janet’s! What a charmer.
Tahani Al-Jamil
Tahani Al-Jamil may be materialistic and egotistical, but you can’t help but love her. She exudes class and confidence. During her life, Tahani was overlooked by her parents and overshadowed by her younger sister, Kamila, which resulted in bitter jealousy and the need to upstage others. This is punctuated by the fact that she is a relentless name dropper. But honestly, can you blame her? Anyone that makes out with Ryan Gosling at the Met Ball has the right to brag about it.
Michael
Besides Eleanor, Michael has grown the most over the course of three seasons. In the beginning, Michael was the show’s main antagonist, putting all his time and effort into torturing Eleanor, Chidi, Jason, and Tahani. Entertaining? Yes. But the show couldn’t have survived on endless reset attempts. Gradually, Michael’s interactions with the humans led him to care about each of them deeply. He’s now willing to sacrifice himself to help the gang reach the real Good Place.
Janet
If only everyone had a Janet in their lives. Janet is a supercomputer who is the source of all information and knowledge for humans within The Good Place. She is perpetually cheery, courteous, and non-judgemental by design. In seasons two and three, we’ve seen Janet start to develop emotions, a supposedly impossible feat. Because of this, she has grown attached to the humans, particularly Jason. We can’t wait for that weird love story to unfold.
Bad Janet
Bad Janet needs no introduction. She’s bad. You get it.
Trevor
If we didn’t already know that The Good Place had the same creators as Parks and Rec, they added Adam Scott to the character pool just to drive the point home. And we’re not complaining. Trevor may not be a series regular, but his cameos are always delightful. Like Michael, Trevor is an immortal being, however, he has zero compassion for the human race. He’s aggressive and rude and takes sadistic pleasure in torturing those sent to The Bad Place. He’s pretty much the best character ever.
Although we included a “vs.” in the title of this blog post, we first want to mention that we recommend doing both traditional email marketing and email signature marketing (ESM). As you may have noticed from our sticker collection, we’re big fans of email in general, no matter how you approach it with your marketing strategy.
This post, rather, is intended to show how ESM is a new innovative form of email marketing (and award-winning according to MarTech Breakthrough). As a marketing team here at Sigstr, we have strategies for both sides. And based on what we’ve seen so far this year, we had a “hunch” that ESM was racking up more clicks. So we put on our math nerd hats and crunched the numbers, and what we found was pretty amazing.
Collectively, our email signature marketing campaigns have achieved 1,500 more clicks when compared to traditional email marketing total clicks.
Before we determine the why behind the numbers above, let’s back up and start with the basics of marketing email.
“Any email sent that primarily contains a commercial message or content intended for a commercial purpose (i.e. nurturing leads through the funnel). Marketing email is generally sent to groups of contacts that are prospects or customers.”
For our team, this includes the following tactics:
Bi-weekly newsletter
Lead nurturing
Event follow-up
Customer-focused announcements
Webinar promotion and follow-up
New content promotion
New product or feature announcement
Traditional email marketing still has a place in our overall marketing strategy and is something we’ll still continue to do. However, we’re also adjusting to the recent trends. While open rates are currently trending up for mass email, click rates continue to decline (according to SendGrid’s Global Email Benchmark Report). On the flip side, everyday one-to-one email (think Gmail and Outlook) is a different story. That’s what separates email signature marketing from mass email marketing.
Why Email Signature Marketing Is Different
Think about the thousands of emails your employees send to your most important customers and prospects every year. For some companies, each employee averages 10,000 sent emails a year. If you start to do that math across all of your employees, you’ll quickly realize that everyday one-to-one email represents just as many marketing opportunities as traditional email marketing (if not more).
Unlike traditional mass email marketing, employee email provides your team with millions of continuous impressions to your most engaged audience. How engaged? Science proves that email recipients not only pay attention to your employees’ email signatures, the majority of their attention and focus shifts to that area.
Some Sigstr customers call this “passively acquired attention” – which is a gold mine for marketers. Email signature marketing can yield better results because these are emails that are, for the most part, almost certainly going to be opened and read. Email signature marketing allows marketers to inject a call-to-action into an email in a non-intrusive way, and get a message in front of someone who is far more likely to open and engage with that CTA.
In addition to the volume, engagement, and attention employee email provides as a channel, it also represents the most pointed way of targeting (according to Sigstr customer, Lumavate) for account-based marketing purposes. Based on the email domain, teams can mix and match personalized banners with specific industries, vertical, accounts, and even sales stages (here’s a few examples from our own Sigstr account).
What’s Your Email Marketing Strategy for This Year?
How are you feeling about your 2019 email marketing strategy? If your open and click rates aren’t where you want them to be, we encourage you to test a new form of email marketing. An approach that is high-volume, super targeted, and for us, much more effective.
Founded in 2015, Lumavate is an enterprise platform for building progressive web apps (PWAs) at scale. Through the Lumavate platform, companies deliver highly-personalized mobile experiences throughout every stage of the customer journey.
With the knowledge that PWA is the future of mobile consumer engagement, Lumavate turned to Sigstr to not only help establish the company as a thought leader, but also reach key accounts with personalized messaging.
Establishing Lumavate’s Brand with Every Email Sent
When Lumavate was just starting out, the marketing team realized that in order to disrupt the mobile tech industry, they needed to establish a solid brand presence.
“PWAs was and still are a new concept,” explained Stephanie Cox, VP of Marketing, “We knew that in order to get attention, we had to establish credibility. And a consistent, recognizable brand was a great step in that direction.”
Lumavate wanted to establish a unified signature style with their entire team from the start so that as they continued to grow, their brand would remain strong. The marketing team started using Sigstr to create a consistent, professional brand presence through the employee email signature.
“Once we teamed up with Sigstr, we made sure that every new hire was set up with an email signature on day one,” said Jillian MacNulty, Senior Marketing Specialist, “It’s a practice that we still maintain to this day.”
With their brand gaining traction, the Lumavate marketing team started focusing on some of their more long term goals, most notably the need to find leads and drive them through the sales funnel. That’s where Sigstr’s ABM functionality came into play.
Using ABM Targeting to Connect on a Personal Level
One of the features that attracted Lumavate to Sigstr was the ability to align Sigstr campaign banners to specific accounts and contacts. Stephanie and Jillian wanted to be able to promote infographics, videos, case studies, and whitepapers to the right people at the right time.
“We were already taking an ABM approach in other marketing channels,” explained Stephanie, “Using Sigstr’s account-specific targeting was a natural extension of our strategy.”
Since Lumavate was already leveraging paid social ads, adding Sigstr to the mix didn’t create any added effort. “A lot of times, an ad someone sees on LinkedIn is the same one they’ll see in our email signatures,” said Jillian, “We think of Sigstr as an ad channel and being able to drive consistent messaging from multiple touch points gives us a huge advantage.”
Even though they were leveraging a multitude of marketing channels, the Lumavate team quickly realized that email signature marketing was by far the most pointed way they could expose their brand and message to target accounts.
“As a team, we’re sending over 300,000 emails a year,” said Jillian, “Each one of those emails is sent on a 1:1 level and promotes an ad that we, the marketing team, control. What more could you ask for?”
Analyzing the Results
Since implementing Sigstr, the Lumavate team has taken advantage of all the platform has to offer, running over 180 email signature campaigns at once and adopting new features like GIF campaigns immediately.
When asked about their best performing campaign, the marketing team called out their “Whiteboard Wednesday” campaign. The campaign promotes a 60 second video released weekly that discusses mobile technology, customer experiences, and general tech trends. With all the effort that goes into developing the content, the marketing team has been thrilled to see the amount of traffic Sigstr drives to their user channel. What they’ve found interesting is that when they re-launch the campaign banner every week, customers keep coming back and their subscriber base continues to grow.
But it’s not just customers taking notice. With the help of Sigstr, Lumavate has established a reputation of professionalism and care with prospects. In a world where mass email marketing rules, companies have appreciated Lumavate’s attention to detail and personalization.
“People really appreciate our approach,” said Stephanie, “The VP of Digital Marketing at a really large CPG brand told me that he gets 200 prospecting emails a day and that nobody reaches out to him in a more personalized way than Lumavate. We have Sigstr to thank for that.”
Teaming up with Sigstr turned out to be one of Lumavate’s best decisions as a young start-up in the mobile marketing industry. They were able to establish themselves as a brand and reach their targeted audience in a unique and personalized way. Most importantly, Sigstr is SOC 2 compliant and partners with AWS to provide a highly secure and available application, which provides even more trust for this successful partnership.
Alright ghouls and gals, it’s time to pumpkin spice up your life with a bit o’ Halloween cheer! From fake cobwebs to haunted houses, we are 100% into this haunted holiday. Creepy corn maze? We’re in. Costume party. What time? Hay ride. We’re driving. That being said, let’s Trick o’ Treat ourselves and imagine how fangtastic it would be if our favorite Halloween characters had Sigstr email signatures. Ok then! Let’s scary on…
Ichabod Crane
Let’s be honest, Ichabod Crane was the original substitute teacher. Unassuming and gullible, he looked like a scarecrow and couldn’t quite see that – in the end – the joke was on him. If it’s a been a hot minute since you read The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, here’s the SparkNotes: Ichabod comes to town and falls for a pretty girl named Katrina. His affections are challenged by the town bro (Abraham “Brom Bones” Van Brunt) who spooks him with tales of a headless Hessian soldier/ghost. The story ends with Ichabod having a dramatic meet up with this Headless Horseman who runs him out of town by throwing his “head” at him (99.9% sure this was just a pumpkin chucked by Brom Bones).
Scooby Doo
One part Nancy Drew, three parts scaredy cat, Scooby Doo is the answer to all your ghost, monster, or paranormal problems. Joined by a psychedelic team of teenage investigators and the flower power of the Mystery Machine, Scooby Dooby Doo uses a bit of dumb luck and canine courage to unmask creepy culprits and save the day. Need to rid your house of Casper? Who ya gonna call? Four guys with vacuums, or a snack-happy Great Dane?
Dracula
Ah-ah-ahhh…the Prince of Darkness himself. Equally aristocratic, refined, and fixated on your neck, this historical figure has ruled the night and costume aisles for decades. Inspiring endless classic films, and sparkly, swoony vamps alike, Count Dracula is synonymous with Halloween…and very much undead.
It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown
We have very fond memories as kids on Halloween. Hopped up on sugar, surrounded by candy wrappers, watching Linus, and waiting excitedly for The Great Pumpkin. Here’s what we can’t remember…does the mythical pumpkin actually appear? Wikipedia is telling us no, so we must have been in too much of a candy cloud to stay focussed. Regardless, this classic Peanuts film plays every year to kick off the fall season (sorry, Charlie) and celebrate the magic of Halloween night.
The Addams Family
[Cue the synchronized snapping] This classic American family is – as they say – creepy, kooky, mysterious and spooky. They love all things macabre, are blissfully unaware of their weirdness, and make no apologies to their neighbors. Before Gothic was a fashion trend, they rocked it. Not to be confused with The Munsters, The Addams Family is a staple for all things creeptastic and make disembodied hands, hairballs with hats, and awkward family photos unforgettable and all together ooky.
Jack Skellington – The Nightmare Before Christmas
Brought to you by the master of all things cinematically spooky, this claymation creation from Tim Burton centers on the King of Halloween Town, Jack Skellington, who longs for a world a bit less ghoulish. Thus begins his desire to jingle his way into the pure festivities of Christmas Town. In a Grinch-like twist, things don’t go quite as he envisions (cue the screaming children) and Jack inevitably returns to where he belongs, but with a sprinkle of snow and a bit of Christmas magic.
Frankenstein
Live. Live. LIVE!!! Halloween doesn’t quite seem complete without an ode to lightning bolts jolting an extra large creature to life. More gentle giant than monster, Frankenstein is really a story of “be careful what you wish for” and – sadly – loneliness. Not to be confused, Victor Frankenstein is the scientist responsible for the famous monster, and his creation is the sad soul just looking for love (we’re not crying, you’re crying).
Hocus Pocus
A cult classic that remains popular in its basic witchiness, Hocus Pocus follows a villainous trio of witches who come back to haunt a modern Bostonian neighborhood for a spell. Armed with enchantment, musical numbers, and 90s effects, this Halloween gem starts playing on October 1st and doesn’t stop until ABC Family starts up 25 Days of Christmas. So sit back, grab a spiked cider, and go amuck, amuck, amuck!
Here at Sigstr, we often get asked about our own bold, eye-catching campaign designs. Our bright colors, unique sticker-style illustrations, and cohesive branding have helped us “drink our own champagne” by achieving great engagement with our email signature marketing banners. Our designer extraordinaire, Anna Zimmerman, sat down to share a few secrets and tips on how she approaches designing campaigns. Her five-step approach is summarized in the infographic below.
Be in Tune with Your Marketing Team
Every piece of content I create starts with an idea or request from our Marketing team. I work closely with them to understand their needs and feedback as I design, and we collaborate on creating content to promote our most important initiatives – whether that’s a webinar, internal event, blog post, content piece, etc. Being in tune with their needs allows me to deliver high quality designs that will serve their intended purpose.
Start with the Basics
When I’m sitting down to create an email signature banner, I start with a blank art board and have our Sigstr company color swatches open. Having clear Sigstr brand guidelines makes my job that much easier. With our Sigstr colors available as a base, I start to look for ideas depending on the content of the campaign. I use a website called dribbble – a community of designers sharing their work – and search for keywords based on the content of the campaign. Sigstr’s Marketing team usually supplies me a few bullets, key words, or a quick summary sentence of what the campaign should convey. I also search Google Images to look for a spark of inspiration or to learn more about how to visually convey the content of the campaign. Icons, color combinations, and shapes give me ideas on how to create a stand-out banner.
Copy is Key
Clear messaging and purpose is essential for an email signature design. A strong headline is key, and as a rule of thumb I try to not go over 8 – 12 words. Any additional context can be placed in the subtext, but I try to keep that as concise as possible. I always have the copy as well as the call-to-action typed out beside my art board to guide my work.
Add Additional Elements
I almost always use an illustration or image to help draw attention to the campaign. Our State of Email Signature Marketing Report confirms that icons and illustrations are popular in helping drive engagement, and our fun icons and sticker-style illustrations have definitely become a key part of our own branding. I bring in the illustration or image as well as the text and place those elements inside the campaign, keeping in mind that the eye naturally reads left to right. The CTA usually goes on the far left side or bottom of the campaign layout, to keep in line with that natural movement.
Size, Finalize, & Export Your Campaign
We’ve experimented in the past with a few different campaign sizes and shapes (and our customers use a variety), but, as our Science of Email Signatures ebook proves, short and wide is the most effective shape. We design campaign banners to fit into a 384×96 container (with the original design exported as a 768×192 .png file since it will be uploaded as a hi-res image). I make sure to fit all content in the dimensions of my art board, keeping the design elements consistent and creating a cohesive, eye-catching banner to help drive engagement.
Infographic: Best Practices for a Successful Campaign
The Sigstr team is always here as a resource for ideas, inspiration, and examples. Just reach out to support@sigstr.com – we’re happy to help however we can. And be sure to read our new September Issue of Email Signature Marketing for even more ideas and inspiration from our most creative customers. Finally, we put together this infographic to summarize the five steps above. Feel free to use this as a guide when designing your next email signature banner, and check out my five quick tips at the bottom!
As the admin of Sigstr for Sigstr, I’m often asked about our email signature marketing strategy and best practices to drive engagement. Amongst customers and prospects, I’m most commonly asked this question:
“How do you drive higher engagement and click-through-rates across Sigstr’s campaigns?”
I actually love answering this question because that’s what we’re all about here at Sigstr. We don’t just hand over the keys after implementation and say, “good luck!” We’re here as a resource for every step of the way. Need campaign design ideas? Great, we can help with that. Want to talk through a specific use case? Happy to help there as well. We pride ourselves on doing everything we can to make our customers successful.
With all that said, let’s go back to the question above. Below is a summary of how I would answer this FAQ with recommendations and best practices. Within this list is an important first bullet point which is what this post will be focused on.
Use Sigstr’s ABM functionality with more targeted content, especially for specific accounts.
If you can, try launching a new campaign every two weeks. If that’s a challenge for your content or design team, at least try switching around sender groups with different campaigns every one to two weeks. We launch a new campaign or switch around campaigns and sender groups everyday.
Use Sigstr’s multi-banner campaign feature (upload 4 to 5 different variations of the same call-to-action banner) to keep your content fresh and extend the runtime of your campaign.
Include a headline that clearly explains the promotion with a strong call-to-action that prompts them to click.
Short and wide banners work better than tall and narrow. Eye-tracking tests prove this to be true.
If you haven’t already, try incorporating more photography into your campaign designs. The data says it’s a good idea.
We have always believed this to be true, but wanted to prove out this theory ourselves. So we ran the math within our own account and compared average click-through-rates between sender-based campaigns and ABM (targeted) campaigns. Before we dive into the numbers, here’s a quick refresher on what we mean by ABM campaigns.
Because Sigstr has the ability to recognize the sender and recipient of every email sent by your employees, teams can assign specific campaign banners to defined audiences. Whether it be by persona, industry, vertical, opportunity stage, or even location, teams today are using this functionality for many targeted use cases. Here are a few examples from Sigstr’s account:
The Impact:
Based on data from Sigstr’s own account across all 2017 and 2018 campaigns, we found that our ABM campaigns achieved 2x higher engagement compared to general sender-based campaigns. In this case, we define “engagement” as average click-through-rate. But wait…it gets better.
Account-Specific Targeting = Best Engagement
Amongst all of the ABM use cases you see above, the one we execute the most is account-specific targeting. This means every time we email a particular top target account, any Sigstr team member’s email signature will dynamically update to a personalized banner we have assigned for that account. For example, when we email Klowd Software, they will see this banner below. When they click, they are sent to a personalized microsite that shows how Sigstr can add value to their sales and marketing teams based on their goals and what’s most important to them.
The Impact:
After crunching the numbers on all of our 350+ account-specific campaigns, we found that the total average click-through-rate was 5x higher compared to our general sender-based campaigns.
What We Have Learned and What We’re Trying Next:
Targeted email signature marketing leads to higher engagement. And the more targeted you get, the higher your click-through-rates will trend. We proved this to be true with our own account-specific campaigns.
By now you have learned that Sigstr allows you to target personalized banners with defined industries, personas, sales stages, locations, and accounts. But did we also mention specific contacts?
Imagine what a click-through-rate could climb to when the email recipient sees an email signature banner that speaks directly to him or her? It could include their first name, favorite sports, team, or specific job title. For example, “Hey Brad! Just like the Chicago Cubs, we want to see your marketing team win in 2019.” I don’t know about you, but if I saw an email signature campaign like this, there’s no way I wouldn’t click.
Use every email sent by your team as an opportunity to stand out to the email recipient. Email signature marketing helps you do just this, and targeted ESM takes it to the next level.
With the recent devastation of Hurricane Florence, our team here at Sigstr has been reflecting upon how marketing technologies can help make a positive difference in the world around us. That being said, we’re proud to see so many of our awesome customers doing this already with email signature marketing. Whether it be philanthropy, fundraising, or natural disaster relief, there are many ways to use employees’ email signatures for a good cause. Below are a few of our favorites examples.
Holiday Philanthropy
With the holiday season fast approaching, companies all over the world are thinking like us and looking for ways to give back to their local communities. Brooksource, a staffing company also located right here in beautiful Indianapolis, used everyday email as an opportunity to do just that.
Giving Back on Another Continent
Herff Jones decided that they wanted to utilize the employee email signature to not only promote the sale of their frames, but also to plant trees for families in Africa. Their Sigstr campaign promoted that with every frame sold, one tree would be planted in Sub-Saharan Africa by the organization Trees for the Future. All-in-all, this campaign saw over 330,000 total views, a 300% return on their investment in Sigstr, and ultimately 84 new trees planted. Great work, team!
Disaster Relief Efforts
The aforementioned Hurricane Florence may have been the driving factor behind this post, but utilizing the one-to-one emails that employees send to raise money for disaster relief wasn’t our idea! In 2017, the staffing company Kforce (based out of Florida) had seen firsthand the damage that hurricanes can do to a city, state, and region. This prompted them to pledge one million dollars in hurricane relief donations, with the employee email signature as a main source of promotion. The awesome team at Net Health also had the same idea with Hurricane Harvey relief.
Internal Company Fundraisers
Here at Sigstr, we’re super proud of our culture and desire to do good in our community. Each quarter, our “Spread the Good Committee” chooses an overarching initiative for that quarter, with one flagship event surrounded by smaller events around that theme. With our focus in Q3 of this year being mental health awareness, we decided to make the Out of the Darkness Walk, a suicide prevention fundraiser, our main focus. Sending out constant reminder emails can be tedious and ineffective, so we decided to utilize our own internal email signatures to raise money and awareness for the event. Anytime a Sigstr employee emailed another employee of Sigstr, they saw this campaign banner. In just two weeks, our team was able to raise nearly $3,000 for suicide prevention causes as a part of the total $200,000 raised by the Indianapolis Walk alone.
Email Signature Marketing: Beyond ROI
Here at Sigstr, we’re proud of the fact that we have a unique platform that allows companies to promote awesome content and drive traffic to their website, events, videos, etc. All of this aside, I’m proud of the fact that I not only work for a company that places community service and philanthropy within its core values, but also that we have created a product that can help our awesome customers “spread the good” within their own community. Thanks for everything you do!
Also, seeing as Hurricane Florence was the catalyst for writing this blog post, you can find awesome charities doing great work with relief efforts here.
In the video above, Sigstr’s Relationship Marketing and Event Marketing Manager, Bailey Roberts, shares what relationship marketing means to her from the events side. Also, how our team approaches pre-event and post-event execution so we make the most of our time spent at the conference.
Learn more by watching the video above or reading through the script below.
When I think about a successful event, there are the tangibles and there are the intangibles. The tangibles would be number of leads, return on investment, awareness, social media interactions, or landing page visits. Things like that are easily measurable. The things that are not as easily measurable are people’s experience with our brand or their relationship with our brand. But those are the things that I really care about because I want people to walk away thinking, “Wow! That Sigstr team. Those are some amazing people.” It really gives you an opportunity to humanize your brand. But how do you really measure how human your brand is?
Events help brands connect with people and interact with people on an entirely different level. The hard part of events goes beyond just the logistics. We’re trying to figure out who we know that’s there, or who are our biggest targets, or who are our closest friends in that area. That’s really hard to do at scale, so it’s really hard to determine who are top prospects are in different cities and different locations. Or, who will be at the event? Or, who are the biggest influencers at events? Or, who are our buddies? If we want to throw a party in the area, who do we want to invite to co-sponsor?
So that’s the really hard part about the planning stages. In terms of when we’re at the event, it is still back to the relationship front. We’re making sure our team is meeting the right people, spending time with the right people, getting the right audience at any speaking opportunities, or getting the right audience to any field marketing event. We want them to be in the room and engaged.
In terms of after the event, it’s the follow-up. We’re making sure we stay relevant and that people walk away remembering our brand and wanting to learn more.
The long awaited May 25 enforcement date for GDPR has come and gone and the digital marketing world didn’t come to a grinding halt as some speculated. While marketers didn’t stop marketing, the landscape has changed — collecting any and all user data and storing it indefinitely is no longer permitted and can carry some hefty fines if companies continue these practices.
GDPR has presented challenges for companies by forcing them to trade development cycles of shiny new features for data management and GDPR features, but the tradeoff is worthwhile (and a competitive advantage) in the long term.
For those who think that new privacy and data laws won’t impact them, that is very likely to change.
California is already working on implementing new regulations around data privacy, and the rest of the U.S. will be likely to follow.
What does this all mean for marketers? After many companies sent out a re-opt in campaign and updated cookie policies, they are left with a smaller list of leads and less raw-data to manage.
Marketing’s Continued Challenge
Leadership still has the expectation that the marketing department will continue to produce valuable leads, so what can you do?
It’s important to first note that it is ok to still collect user data, as long as it is done in a transparent manner, is documented, and can be actively managed or deleted. Knowing the personas of the people in your lead pipeline and serving personalized and valuable content is already the way the industry is trending. This poses another challenge of understanding how to make the most of the data that you already have.
When recently speaking to some marketers at enterprise-level companies, the common theme of leveraging relationships in the sales pipeline came up. Leveraging relationships isn’t something new by any means, but giving marketers insight into relationships is where there is an opportunity.
Enter the Known Marketing Strategy
Pursuing a strategy of “known marketing” is not only a best practice from a GDPR perspective, it’s a best practice from a revenue perspective.
What most companies don’t know is the amount of untapped, owned data that they sit on — existing personal relationships across the company. Being able to map all the known relationships throughout a company’s employee-base and not just the CRM or MAP activity of your audience is a vital step in building your brands defense of GDPR practices.
There are several tools on the market that enable both marketing, and security and compliance departments to analyze the communications that can instantiate opt-in compliance. Everyone knows that healthy relationships are based on communication, and the ability to measure relationships through company-wide one-to-one communication, and not just the one-to-many communications so many marketers are familiar with, allows them to best understand their true, known audience.
What Can Known Marketing Do?
If leveraged properly, known marketing can help marketers and sales leaders predict which leads will convert into customers.
While many practitioners perceived GDPR compliance to be a database-demolishing hassle, there’s an abundance of upside. For a long time, marketers have employed practices to flood their funnels with volumes of unknown and ambiguously acquired personal records. That practice has led us to a world where fewer than one percent of leads become customers, prompting sales and marketing teams to waste cycles on nurturing leads that will not only never become customers, but compromise personal data compliance.
GDPR should be seen as a welcome catalyst to encourage teams to focus on known marketing. That is, identifying the accounts and contacts that are most important to a brand and are actively engaged with your company and its employees. The data around B2B acquisition metrics are pointing sharply away from the “spray-and-pray” inbound practices, towards a new focus.
Whether you call it account-based marketing (ABM), relationship-marketing, or simply business as usual, GDPR and the changes to marketing that followed are an appropriate response to the spammy practices that weren’t doing marketers any favors anyway.
“Eat your own dog food” (ew) or “drink your own champagne” (better!) are idioms that we often hear in sales, typically referring to an organization’s ability to utilize its own products or services. With Sigstr existing in the MarTech space, one may not consider how a sales rep can truly leverage the potential in their email on a day-to-day basis. So I, Sigstr sales development rep, am here to tell you how our team takes full advantage of our Relationship Marketing platform.
Email Signature Marketing
Email signature marketing (ESM) – the foundation on which Sigstr was started – is a simple enough concept. Give marketers the ability to centrally control their employees’ email signatures (no more of those “please copy and paste” emails? Hallelujah!) while using the email signature to turn employee email into a marketing channel.
Relevant, Personalized Content
The first key benefit of ESM in my role is simply knowing that each email I send every day is promoting content that will be relevant to my prospect. Our rule of thumb here at Sigstr is that the average employee sends ~10,000 emails a year. In fact, in the past year as an SDR, I have sent 26,000 emails. It’s comforting to know that each and every one of those emails featured consistent branding and a clickable call-to-action banner promoting various types of content. Not only that, it’s invaluable for event outreach.
Sigstr Engagement Data
Click notifications are another cool feature of email signature marketing. Anytime I send a prospect an email, I’m notified via Sigstr the name of the person that clicked on my email signature banner, along with their email address. Aside from real-time click notifications, I also receive a “Sigstr Engagement Report” every morning that sums up which accounts and prospects have engaged with my content in the days prior. It can be super helpful when keeping track of who is engaging with your content (which allows for effective follow-up).
Account-Based Marketing
The ability to utilize the ABM functionalities of Sigstr when doing quarterly account planning is incredibly helpful. It allows me as a rep to work directly with our marketing team to ensure that my priority accounts have targeted messaging in every email I send to them. The ability to provide a specific event registration banner or account-specific campaign turns each of these emails into a highly personalized marketing channel.
Sigstr Relationships
Before Sigstr Pulse, we had not yet found a platform that allowed us as sales reps to understand how to map the relationships that existed within our company. Now, we are able to leverage the relationship intelligence side of the Sigstr platform to make warmer, stronger connections which helps us be more efficient with our time. Warmer connections are always the best path forward, and Sigstr Pulse allows reps to see what relationships exist in their company like never before.
Territory and Account Planning
The first area we, as a sales team, were immediately able to identify as a key use case for Pulse was territory account planning at the beginning of each quarter. It allows my Account Executive and I to simply dive into the “Location Intelligence” tab, click the city I’m working in, and bam! Pulse is able to spit out a list of our company’s strongest relationships in that area while showing my best paths to a warm introduction.
Event Outreach
Whether it’s Dreamforce, INBOUND, or a field event that you’re planning in conjunction with marketing, events can be stressful. And identifying who to target can be tricky. With Pulse, we’re able to not only see what contacts we have in that city, but also upload event lists with company info and immediately see what our relationship scores with those accounts. This helps to streamline the prospecting and guesswork that goes along with pre-event outreach.
Warm Introductions
With open rates on emails generally under 40% on average, cold outreach can be painful and fruitless for reps. Decision makers are being bombarded with this type of messaging. And some of it may be relevant, but an overwhelming amount is generic and irrelevant to their role or company. With Sigstr Pulse, not only can I see my strongest connections in order to plan out target accounts, I’m now able to ask those within my company with the strongest relationships to provide a warm introduction. This allows for higher response rates, more relevant messaging, and ultimately more meetings.
Relationships and Email Signature Marketing = A New 1-2 Punch for Sales
In a world where folks are more bombarded with messaging than ever before, relationships have become more important than ever. Whether we’re targeting marketers, IT folks, or other salespeople, account planning can be incredibly difficult and getting ahold of the right person even more so. Now, with Sigstr’s Relationship Marketing Platform, reps are able to leverage the relationships within their own company to gain warmer and more meaningful connections while providing relevant content to every prospect. People drive relationships, and relationships drive revenue.
In the video above, Sigstr’s VP of Marketing, Justin Keller, talks through the meaning of relationship marketing. Also, how teams today are using authentic relationships for ABM success.
Learn more by watching the video above or reading through the script below.
ABM is all about focus. Focusing on the kinds of accounts that will ultimately be your favorite customers and engaging with people within those accounts. And really connecting with them on a human level so they understand and internalize your brand’s promise and that you are a trustworthy person that can bring that to life for them.
In an account-based sales and marketing program, alignment is really tough. It’s crucial between those two teams because marketing is there to try and engage and support the sales process but more than ever, marketing is involved throughout the entire funnel. They’re there to help drive that sale.
To do a really good job of it, you need to have a good set of metrics that you’re sharing with sales. Whether that be engagement metrics, sales metrics, or a relationship score. Then, it requires a lot of open communication between the leaders of those teams and the teams themselves.
Authentic relationships are everything when it comes down to it, in terms of ABM. It used to be like, “Hey let’s see how many people we can get into our funnel and count on closing one percent of them.” And now it’s really about finding the people that we really want to engage with and we can win with. At the end of the day, that’s all about relationships.
We actually recently ran a survey: 87% of the world’s best sales and marketing people believe that relationships are absolutely critical to their revenue success. Digital marketing for the past 15 years has gotten lost and now I’m really really glad that it’s coming back to the forefront for marketing teams to really focus on relationships.
We spend so much time building out lead scoring frameworks trying to understand the buying behaviors, firmographic, and demographic traits we really like to engage with. But at the end of the day, they don’t matter in a relationship-based sale. It’s really about how you’re communicating and engaging with the human. Sure, lead scores are helpful but measuring relationships is what I think is going to become really important for marketers.
It’s less than a week away. The leviathan of all tech conferences: Dreamforce. For most conferences contained in a convention center, coordinating meetings, creating buzz and awareness, and going home with a bunch of new business is a daunting but doable challenge. Dreamforce, though? Dreamforce brings in almost 200,000 attendees scattered across the Financial District and SoMa areas of San Francisco. This includes several “lodges” located blocks apart from each other, unofficial sub-conferences vying for attention, and companies trying to woo you to countless VIP dinners and parties. Dreamforce is impermeable for brands without hundreds of thousands of dollars to spend.
At Sigstr, we often say “if what you’re working on seems impossible, you’re probably on the right track.” So when it comes to a scrappy, midwestern startup running the table at Dreamforce, we have one thing to say: “Hold our beer.”
One of the reasons we built Pulse was to help marketers align with sales to fuel revenue. There are few other places where this collaboration is more essential than events. Here’s how we’re using Pulse to squeeze every last ounce of ROI out of events like Dreamforce.
Pre-Event
B2B event marketers obsess over the pre-conference. What’s booth draw? Is our swag cool enough? How do our promotions break through the wall of noise surrounding #DF18? We do it because we want to create awareness to meet new potential customers. Think about the amount of time, effort, money, and planning you’re putting into this part of your event journey. Now consider this stat: only 1% of leads typically become customers.
If your ACV on a 1% lead-to-customer conversion rate is higher than your event marketing spend, T&E, and human capital costs, you should be in good shape. But that’s not typically the case for most SaaS companies (Sigstr included). The net-new lead game is risky business and that’s why we start with our known universe of relationships.
Accounts
It’s pretty easy to spot what brands are directly or peripherally involved with Dreamforce. If you know which brands you want to meet, you can search for them directly in Sigstr Pulse and find out who from your network knows the contacts within that account. This is huge for warm introductions, which have 86% more favorable business outcomes. Rather than falling into the “spray and pray” approach, Sigstr gets very intentional about who we want to meet. Then we cut straight to the chase to meet them through people we both trust.
Locations
As a former San Franciscan, I know first hand that if you’re not directly involved with Dreamforce, you try to stay the heck away. Even still, we use Pulse to find our universe of friendships that live in San Francisco for a few reasons:
Which of our teammates has the strongest network of relationships in San Francisco? They’re probably who we should send out there.
Who are the local influencers that can help us promote our presence in San Francisco? They can help us make new friends.
What relationships in San Francisco do my teammates have that I haven’t explored? What relationships do I have in San Francisco that I’ve neglected and need to nurture?
Are there local friendlies that can give advice to our sales and marketing teams around events, places to stay, etc.
Lists and Contacts
Lastly, I can pull up the list of everyone we met at Dreamforce last year and observe how those relationships have developed over the past year. I know who at Sigstr has the best relationship with these contacts, so I can easily distribute this list to my teammates for outreach. We’ll then let them know where Sigstr will be, encourage them to stop by our booth, and maybe even invite them to dinner or a party.
Pulse makes it easy to analyze the universe of relationships Sigstr already has. By the time we’re done cruising through our target accounts, local contacts, and friends we met last year, the pre-event anxiety around driving new leads has decreased substantially because we already have so much opportunity with our existing friends.
Mid-Event
Sigstr’s Chrome Plugin
“Hey, it’s great to meet you! Oh – you know Tucker on our team. Yeah, I also know this person, and this person, and this person…”
Imagine having the ability to know not only everyone you’ve ever had a business conversation with, but also everyone your coworkers have had a conversation with. All in an instant. With our Chrome plugin, you can automatically understand your universe of relationships with every webpage or LinkedIn profile you visit. But, unlike LinkedIn, this actually tells you who you really know and how strong your network of relationships are. This is the perfect way to break the ice and establish a stronger connection with the people that come visit you at your booth.
Post-Event
The post-event follow-up strategy varies wildly for B2B Marketers, but it is always a top priority, and often times filled with ambiguity, best guesses, and ever-evolving processes. It is also one of the activities that illuminates the fissures (or lack thereof) in sales and marketing alignment.
In the past, this has been a major point of anxiety for me personally. I’ve gotten leads loaded into our CRM, assigned the appropriate person to do follow-up, maybe even added people to a nurture campaign, and then sat back hoped for the best. In this situation, the “best” meant that my sales team was hustling and scoring new opportunities sourced from the event. If you have ever gone back into an event list and realized that only half of your leads have been effectively followed up with, you’re not alone. I’ve gone through that horrifying scenario more times than I’d like to admit.
Now, though, I have Sigstr Pulse. It gives me a perfectly transparent view into our event follow-up. I sync my leads into our CRM, seamlessly pull that campaign into Pulse, and have an almost omniscient view of who we met and how they’re being followed up with.
Top Paths
By looking at the “Top Path” of the contacts in our post-event “Booth Leads” list, I know instantly who at Sigstr should be doing the follow-up. This is because I know they’ve got the highest relationship with that contact or that contact’s account.
Last Activity
When I’m looking at Last Activity, I can see if our sales team has actually followed up on leads since the event. It’s also super useful to our sales team as they’re able to see when the last communication was, and who it was with, so they can pick up the conversation where it left off.
Tying It All Together
Sigstr Pulse makes our email signature marketing side of the platform better than ever. Before our team begins their event follow-up, we’re going to align our various Dreamforce lists to custom, personalized email signature campaigns. We’ve seen our engagement rates skyrocket when we tailor our banners to an event, persona, funnel stage, or all three. Our founder, Dan Hanrahan, recently wrote more about how Pulse and Sigstr Signatures make each other better.
If you write me an email right now, and you’re a tech marketer, sales person, we met you at Dreamforce last year, or you live in San Francisco, I’ll write you back and you’ll automatically be targeted with this banner ad in my email. Sigstr Pulse gives you a unique and powerful way to look at your audiences, and Sigstr Signatures allows you to align them to perfectly targeted content.
On August 8, Sigstr made perhaps the biggest announcement since the company started back in 2015. With the launch of Sigstr Relationships, we solidified ourselves not just as an email signature marketing (ESM) product, but as a Relationship Marketing platform. Pulse is a game-changer for relationship-based sales and marketing, and its addition to our platform actually made us better at ESM!
We all worried that Pulse would distract us from email signature marketing. How could we build and introduce a new product to our customers without distracting our services, product, and go-to-market teams? How could Pulse actually make ESM better across all functions? In short, we wanted to be sure this was a 1+1=3 for our customers, and we worked hard to be intentional about the decisions we made to ensure that this launch would have that effect.
We asked these questions to smart people who had done what we were doing. Brad Coffey, Chief Strategy Officer at HubSpot, offered advice that stuck with me. HubSpot became a platform very intentionally, and along the journey they wanted to be sure each new product had a few things in common with the existing products. This includes:
Unified brand
Same tech stack
Same buyer or ideal customer profile
The decisions we made for Pulse and ESM were always guided by these three criteria. It is so easy to get distracted, and I’m proud that our team made ESM stronger with the building of Pulse. Let me dig into each topic to provide some examples.
Unified Brand
Sigstr created the email signature marketing category. Other solutions existed for IT, but nobody was as determined to unlock marketing value from employee email like Sigstr has been.
Pulse builds further value on top of the channel Sigstr knows best: employee email. Your employees email the companies and contacts most important to your business everyday, and with ESM, marketing can deliver content at scale to the perfect audience. Relationships are built on communication. These same employee emails plus calendar meetings can also predict business relationships, which have been impossible to quantify (until now).
Former ExactTarget CMO and current Sigstr investor, Tim Kopp, describes marketing through your employees as “marketing from the inside-out”. Our team and culture are already committed to helping our customers do exactly that. The Sigstr Green has always been about putting the needs of our customers before our own – none of that is changing. We’re looking to help our customers win through human-to-human marketing, and the addition of Pulse to our platform allows our customers to take that even further.
Same Tech Stack
ESM and Pulse are built on a common tech stack. Customers can use either product independently or use them together. They share a single log-in experience and both build value on top of email platforms like G Suite and O365. Both products share common objects or themes such as customer segments, employees, accounts, and contacts.
Our next-level integrations with HubSpot, Salesforce, Marketo (and more coming soon!) allow users to sync segmented lists of targeted contacts and accounts. These lists can be used both in the ESM product for account-based marketing targeting, and in Pulse for relationship intelligence.
As we’ve worked to make the product experience the best that it can be for both ESM and Pulse, both sides have benefited. Improvements to the user experience, such as “log-in with Google”, were built to simplify logins for Pulse. However, this also instantly made the lives of ESM customers easier. Enhancements like this will continue to make our UX best-in-class as we work to provide a seamless, easy-to-use experience for our customers.
Same Buyer
We wake up every day thinking about ways we can make our customers look like rockstars. We want to help them get a promotion or earn a bigger budget so they can help their sales team drive revenue faster. With Sigstr, marketers can market through their most valuable asset: their team.
As such, our ideal customers are those work most closely with sales. They are typically focused on events, field-marketing, account-based marketing, and marketing operations.
Think about these roles for a minute. Each is tasked to build relationships with the right accounts and contacts. Everyday these marketers, and the sales people they serve, wake up and think about relationships: “Which accounts and contacts should I focus on today?” Pulse and ESM together are a relationship marketing platform. We help marketers look like heroes for their sales and service teams. We give them powerful ways to provide air cover on key deals, drive more meetings at events, collaborate on lead follow-up, and promote new offerings to current customers.
Wrap Up – TLDR
The Relationship Marketing Platform provides a foundation to do more than we ever have before, and for our customers to do the same. ESM is stronger because of Pulse, and vice versa. With our two products working in tandem, the Sigstr platform allows marketers to to make their employees more productive, ensure that their marketing teams dominate their strategy, and blow away their personal and professional goals.
Our amazing customers were a huge part of making Pulse possible. Before our launch on August 8, we already had over 30 customers using the product and guiding us to build what was most valuable for them. We’re continuing to gather feedback and learn how we can take both products, and the platform as a whole, to the next level. Stay tuned – we’re just getting started!
Today we have the honor of announcing a $4m acceleration round led by rockstar investor, Edison Partners, and followed by all of our past investors.
In the past year, the Sigstr team has more than tripled its headcount and tripled its revenue. With the addition of our revolutionary app, Pulse, we’ve transformed Sigstr into a platform that helps marketers do more with their employee email. We’re using email signatures as a high-volume, precision-targeted marketing channel, and leveraging artificial intelligence to map, quantify, and segment every relationship that’s ever existed in a company.
Our flagship email signature product is the commanding leader in the space. We’re chomping at the bit to make it even better and bring it into the inboxes of millions of employees around the world. Paired up with Pulse, our AI-based relationship intelligence tool, Sigstr now gives marketers previously unimagined ways to understand and engage their most important audiences. These funds will help us build these solutions faster and capture the market quicker.
All of this is made possible by one of the fiercest teams in tech. Every single day our SigStars come to work ready to hustle, have fun, and “ring the bell” (or cowbell, airhorn, gong, etc. depending on their department). We’re all deeply grateful for the support of our customers and investors. Here’s to a bigger, faster and stronger Sigstr!
Read the full press release below.
INDIANAPOLIS — Sigstr, a SaaS platform for employee email signature marketing and relationship intelligence, today announced significant new growth milestones. The company’s annual revenue has nearly tripled in the last year, powered by new customer wins, strong retention and a three-fold expansion in staff. Sigstr has also secured $4 million in new growth investment led by Edison Partners, a leading growth equity investor. Funds will be used to further advance new product development and enterprise market adoption.
The company’s growth comes on the heels of the launch of its relationship intelligence application, Sigstr Relationships, which uses artificial intelligence to map and quantify the collective networks of all employees in a company, providing sales and marketing alignment and better account-based marketing. Adoption of Sigstr Pulse and the Sigstr Signature Campaigns solutions have also helped Sigstr to nearly triple its customer base with the addition of notable brands such as Amazon, Experian, Snowflake, AT&T, and GoHealth.
“Sigstr’s vision is to help marketing and sales unlock the value of employee email. The high-growth plan we’ve put to action isn’t slowing down, as we plan to hit one million Sigstr users by 2020. We have an incredible team in place to support the vision and growth plan,” said Bryan Wade, CEO of Sigstr. “People are waking up to the realization that they need to foster relationships with key customers and prospects to make a real business impact. Sigstr makes the process of building relationships easier and more efficient than ever. People drive relationships and relationships drive revenue. At Sigstr, we are bridging the gap between relationships and revenue.”
“For Sigstr, an exceptional management team, clear market fit for ESM and Pulse, and significant account-based marketing growth trends are all colliding to speed customer adoption,” said Ryan Ziegler, General Partner for Edison Partners, who led the investment. “Bryan and team bring a dynamic culture, competitive focus and intensity to the business, which is immeasurable. We’re excited to partner with Sigstr and apply our integrated investing and operating platform to continue to drive value and growth.”
Snowflake Computing is a rapidly-growing, cloud-based data-warehousing solution that uses Sigstr to harness the power of relationships in their sales and marketing efforts. “Sigstr has completely aligned with our belief that relationships should be at the center of sales and marketing decisions,” said Daniel Day, Director of Account-Based Marketing at Snowflake Computing. “With Sigstr Pulse, we receive a relationship score for every contact and account. This score shows us which employee has a relationship to get us in the door. Sigstr Pulse is taking our marketing program to the next level.”
In addition to current growth, Sigstr was also recently recognized as a marketing technology leader as a winner of the 2018 Martech Breakthrough Awards for Best Email Marketing Innovation, ZoomInfo’s “Champion Award” and “Best Pipeline Acceleration Campaign” at the ABMies.
Relationships are more important than ever. They shape the world around us, each one unique with its own intricately-woven web of connections. And as connections are made, those networks only continue to grow. But a network isn’t solely about quantity – it also relies on the quality. In fact, over 80% of sales and marketing professionals, and nearly 90% of those reporting strong revenue, understand that developing authentic relationships within target accounts has a direct correlation in revenue generation.
So how do you start bridging the gaps from relationships to revenue? Heinz Marketing and Sigstr put together this handy infographic to show the different stages of Mount Revenue and the best path to scaling Relationship Marketing.
Check it out below (click on the image for an enlarged version), and if you’re interested in seeing how Sigstr Relationships can help, find out more here.
When employees, customers, and key partners of LookBookHQ woke up on May 8th, a lot had changed. LookBookHQ had launched a brand new Content Insight and Activation Engine, a massive undertaking in itself. Additionally, alongside that launch – with the knowledge that the name “LookBookHQ” no longer reflected the value of their platform – the company was completely rebranded as “PathFactory”. The transformation was seamless and all-encompassing – the website was new, PathFactory signage adorned the office walls, employees had new on-brand email signatures and business cards, and a booth at SiriusDecisions Summit made the launch and new name official.
May 8th, however, was just the culmination of a long and exciting process to transform LookBookHQ to PathFactory. The rebrand took months of hard work and execution behind the scenes. We sat down with VP of Marketing Elle Woulfe, who spearheaded the initiative alongside her team, to discuss the main highlights from this successful project.
Question #1
Before we dive into PathFactory and the successful execution of this rebrand, can you provide a short history of LookBookHQ and the main motivation behind the transformation to PathFactory?
The idea of rebranding was always sort of lurking in the background. We knew that LookBookHQ no longer suited our vision or adequately reflected the value we provide our customers, but it also felt like a huge and daunting task. We had certainly talked about it on the leadership team, but we hadn’t considered it very seriously.
As we went through the process in Q4-2017 of refining our messaging, we started to develop the courage to believe rebranding was not only possible, but important. The rebrand was actually secondary to the launch of our Content Insight and Activation Engine. The new Engine redefines the value we bring to the market so we knew the name “LookBookHQ” and our playful branding just wasn’t going to cut it anymore – it was time to professionalize the brand and the image.
Question #2
What were the first steps you had to take as a team to start turning this idea into actual execution?
We worked with an amazing agency, Velocity Partners (VP), to help scope what rebranding would look like. We didn’t actually commit to rebranding in the initial stages – we just committed to exploring it.
We kept the initial group involved very small, but after we had explored a short list of possible names and the decision was made to move forward, it became important to keep the rest of the management team and our board in the loop. We were never seeking permission or even consensus on the rebrand but we did want to make sure everyone was really well educated about why we were doing it and how the process was going to work.
The initial list of names was endless and there were only three of us involved in coming up with the short list. I knew it had to be a manageable subset and nothing would be gained by trying to get a large group of people to align on a huge list of names. Once we narrowed it down, a list of about 20 names were pitched to our two co-founders, Mark Opauszky (CEO) and Nick Edouard (CPO).
I had everyone send me their favorite and least favorite names and I plotted them out so we could see where we were aligned. While we weren’t in 100% agreement, there was a lot of overlap in terms of the names we liked. We then did the same exercise with the rest of the Senior Leadership Team. That gave us a lot of confidence that we had selected a name that made sense for us.
Once we were settled on a name, we went through several rounds of identity exploration to make sure we really nailed what the brand would look like and even sound like to some extent. We ended up combining two ideas from the identity work to land on our final creative treatment and logo.
Question #3
From there, did you develop a timeline for the rebrand? And if so, what did that look like? How long did it take from the initial idea to the day of the announcement?
We knew that to make the launch of the brand successful, we needed to tie it to something big and for us, that meant SiriusDecisions where we were already planning to increase our presence and launch the new Engine. But, by the time we went through the arduous process of deciding on a name and fleshing out the brand identity, we only had about 2.5 months to get everything launched.
The first step toward executing on this new vision was to meet with stakeholders in every area of the company to create a giant masterlist of things that needed to be done. Then, we prioritized everything and created a 3-phased approach based on that. After all, we knew we couldn’t do EVERYTHING in just two months so we had to be very calculated in our approach and fairly ruthless in our prioritization. That master list became our Bible and we met constantly over the next 2 months to review where we were against the timeline. We did much of the execution in-house but we also worked with several outsourced vendors to bring many of the final launch deliverables to life.
Question #4
Walk us through the announcement day. What made you choose this particular day to announce the rebrand and what was your favorite moment?
SiriusDecisions Summit in Las Vegas was the perfect stage to showcase the new Engine, brand and message since the majority of our audience and B2B ecosystem would be there.
However, there were certain groups of people we wanted to loop in before the “big day”.
The first group to learn about the rebrand was employees. We wanted to get them on board early to give them time to warm up to the change and get excited about it since it would be impacting them significantly. We divulged new aspects of the rebrand at our weekly Friday all-hands meetings: Everything from the logo to reasons behind the name changes (and the names that ended up on the cutting room floor) to the SiriusDecisions Summit booth design to the new swag… this way, by the time launch rolled around, employees had their new branded swag and were pumped about becoming PathFactory.
The next group we communicated the rebrand to was customer advocates and key partners and influencers. For this, we wanted to make a bigger splash than just an email communication. We took a more personalized approach. We turned our events manager, Kristen’s, garage into a PathFactory storage unit for a week and she hand-packaged about 100 swag kits. Each kit had a variety of premium swag and an insert card revealing the upcoming launch (and encouraging them to help keep the secret). Those were emailed to our VIPs and the kits were followed up by an email as well.
Lastly, we let our customers in on the exciting news. We did this in a couple different ways. For those who were at the SiriusDecisions Summit, we held an event the night before launch to share the news. For those who weren’t at the event, we sent an email the night before. We wanted to make sure they heard the announcement directly from us. The timing was perfect because we also hosted a customer event the day before SiriusDecisions so we got the chance to tell several customers in person. That event actually started with LookBookHQ branding and half way through, everything was flipped so customers could see the new PathFactory brand.
Launch day itself was a crazy and exciting time. Members of the product team along with our director of Content Marketing and Content Marketing Manager burned the midnight oil at the office until about 11 pm the night before making sure the change from lookbookhq.com to pathfactory.com went smoothly. We arrived back at the office at 6am the next morning to make sure the press release went off without a hitch, start migrating our social accounts, and prepare employee communications to make sure everyone knew what to do. When people arrived at the office on launch day, the website was up, we had new PathFactory signage on the walls, the announcement was out and staff emails reflected the new brand – including some beautifully branded signatures with help from Sigstr. That signature has still seen more engagement than any other we have ever launched.
There was a lot of exciting energy inside and outside the office. The day kicked off in Toronto with a little celebration and the team on-site at the event event beamed in to say hi and show off the booth. There was a ton of booth traffic at SiriusDecisions Summit with people curious about the colorful new old kid on the block and eager to discuss the new Engine that drove the launch. Social was blowing up with shout-outs, and employees were constantly coming through to congratulate us on the ease and success of the launch.
It mattered a lot to us that employees felt informed and comfortable with the rebrand. Getting social love from customers was also a highlight. You can have the best new brand in the world, but if it’s not communicated properly, your audience won’t digest it and your announcement will fall flat.
Question #5
Did you have a “checklist” of items to update? If so, what did that look like? What was your biggest challenges (if you had any)? And I’m sure it was a team effort – who was all involved?
Yes, there was a massive checklist of things to do! All the way from big projects like designing a new website, creating a new explainer video and shooting a bunch of new customer testimonials to smaller details like ordering a new nameplate for our office building, getting business cards for everyone at the show and writing new scripts for our BDRs to be prepared to talk about the news… the list goes on… and on…. and on. There were so many moving parts to manage and think about!
On top of that, we also had to build communications plans as to how we’d roll out the news to employees, customers, partners, and of course, the rest of the world. There is a long list of incredibly talented people to credit for all the hard work that went into this. Velocity Partners was instrumental in developing the new brand and vision and developing key pieces of content. Also, the amazing contractors and a stellar team of Pathies (which we now affectionately refer to ourselves as) that owned key tasks in each functional area.
It was also important to us that employees felt their voices were heard throughout the process. We circulated a Google Form so they could submit any suggestions, concerns, or questions anonymously and made sure everything was addressed.
Question #6
Which technologies or platforms did you use to help with the rebrand and announcement?
For project management we used Asana. It was essential to keep track of tasks, owners, timelines, and have an easy point of communication with everyone involved.
The announcement itself involved a coordinated effort across multiple channels including email, social, live events, direct mail, ads, and sponsored content – and of course email signatures with Sigstr. We assembled the press release and new content (including a blog post, videos, and an eBook) into a Content Track using the PathFactory platform and used the Content Track link anywhere we promoted the launch. This way, we could track visitors and measure how many assets they consumed as well as how long they spent with it.
The social strategy included both an organic and paid element. We used Sprout Social to monitor all the launch buzz and make sure every single message was responded to. We also purchased some third party media to distribute the news via email.
We used Marketo to send tailored emails to our customers, database, and partners and all emails featured a customized Sigstr email signature banner to promote the launch.
Question #7
Any advice or tips for teams thinking about or currently going through a rebrand?
Find an agency partner who really knows what they’re doing. We were incredibly fortunate to work with Velocity who just “got us” and felt like an extension of our team from the get go.
Don’t get stuck in the weeds. Adopt a “disagree and commit” mentality and make a conscious decision to commit to choices along the way. It’s rare you’ll ever get 100% buy-in and waiting for that will just hold you up and slow the process down.
Have a solid communication plan for employees, customers, advocates, partners, and the world. Make sure key people are brought into the fold early on for buy in and to help build buzz and excitement. You will rely heavily on them to help amplify your message when it’s time to spread the word!
From a content perspective, make sure not only to create net new external content but also internal content. Equip sales to ensure they know how to talk about the new brand and have easy access to talk tracks and new assets (so they can avoid using old ones).
Prepare for the unexpected. Have a back up plan for known ‘risks’ and expect some things to go wrong (they inevitably will and that’s okay). Just be prepared to handle it!
PathFactory continues to stand out as a platform that can have a massive impact for B2B marketers, and their new branding fully encompasses the power and professionalism of their solution. The path to that new branding took a lot of preparation, collaboration, and focus – and Elle and her team absolutely knocked it out of the park. Over at Sigstr, we can’t get enough of the new PathFactory branding, and learning the methodology behind the process only makes us more impressed with this strong example of a well-planned and well-executed rebrand.
Amber first began her career at Sigstr as our Office Coordinator. We envisioned the role being a little bit of everything and she was up for the challenge. She shared an interest in helping the business and applying her talents wherever needed, and with that, she was hired. Amber’s role has span the gamut of administration, legal redlines, collections, invoicing, HR, finance support, reception, event planning, moving coordinator and whatever else that has been thrown her way. In addition to her responsibilities, Amber has also become a trusted friend and resource to our team. Her willingness to support Sigstr and its employees is a true testament and perfect representation of our Sigstr culture.
During a one-on-one meeting we had back in 2017, she told me she wanted to become our Salesforce Admin and planned to get certified. I spent several years working at Salesforce, and fully understand the power of Salesforce Admins or “Trailblazers” as they like to call them. I also have a sincere appreciation for the career opportunities that are out there for those who are skilled Salesforce Admins. They can literally transform the way you run the business. We fully supported her decision as we agreed that it was an important initiative for the success of our business. Amber started doing research into the world of Salesforce certification, networked with other admins online, and started signing up for free training. In no time she was hooked. The role is a great match for Amber as she has always served as a “go-to” for SigStars, enjoys seeking out solutions to make others’ jobs easier, and has an incredible ability to figure things out.
She has worked hard over the past few months to obtain her Salesforce Administration certification. She put in hours of studying on her own, working with other local aspiring admins in the area, and partnering with our sales, customer success, and marketing teams to identify their needs. I have walked by her desk and witnessed her focus firsthand when building out workflows, processes, dashboards, and reports. She has done a phenomenal job of figuring out the best way for the system to be manipulated to accomplish our desired outcome.
Amber’s work allows us to maximize efficiency and capitalize on Salesforce features and benefits in a way we haven’t been able to before. She has stepped up her technical chops in a big way and proven her Salesforce expertise. With her effort, our sales team has been able to better follow deals in the pipeline, our customer success team has had better tracking, our leadership team has more accurate, readily available reports, and the operations team can rest easier knowing it is all in Salesforce.
Thank you, Amber, for all of your work and effort. You are a Trailblazer and SigStar at the same time! Happy Birthday and here’s to your continued success of helping teams run their business on Salesforce!
Sigstr is honored to be recognized today by MarTech Breakthrough, proving what Sigstr users have known for years. Employee email is one of the most powerful channels in a marketer’s arsenal! Typically people think of email marketing as one-to-many email blasts coming from an ESP– but when you’re marketing through every email that leaves your every employee’s inbox, isn’t that kind of the ultimate innovation in email marketing? MarTech Breakthrough thinks so and we’re delighted to agree with them as Sigstr accepts their award for Email Marketing Innovation of the year.
Even more thrilling, Sigstr is excited to be listed along valued partners and customers like Marketo, Uberflip, Cvent, AdRoll, HubSpot, Certain, and more who have won MarTech Breakthrough Awards this year.
Click here to see what kind of magic can happen when you use Sigstr to turn every email your employees send into a marketing campaign. Read the full press release below.
Sigstr Honored with 2018 MarTech Breakthrough Award for Email Marketing Innovation
INDIANAPOLIS, Aug. 22, 2018 – Sigstr, a SaaS platform for employee email signature marketing and relationship intelligence, today announced that it has been selected as the Email Marketing Innovation Award winner by MarTech Breakthrough, an independent organization that recognizes the top companies, technologies and products in the global marketing technology industry today.
“The MarTech Breakthrough Awards have long been viewed as a credible judge of ability in the MarTech space, and we’re thrilled to be recognized as the 2018 Email Marketing Innovation Award winner,” said Sigstr CEO Bryan Wade. “Email marketers are always looking for ways to drive engagement, but as technologies evolve and laws like GDPR roll out, it’s becoming more and more difficult to fight for attention in the inbox. Little did those email marketers know that their most powerful, high-volume and engaging channel has been in front of them this whole time. Sigstr has given them the power to turn every email that every employee in their organization sends into an email marketing campaign.”
The mission of the MarTech Breakthrough Awards is to honor excellence and recognize the innovation, hard work and success in a range of marketing, sales and advertising technology related categories, including marketing automation, market research and customer experience, AdTech, SalesTech, marketing analytics, content and social marketing, mobile marketing and many more. This year’s program attracted more than 2,000 nominations from over 12 different countries throughout the world.
“Sigstr captures the spirit of the MarTech Breakthrough Awards perfectly, providing an innovative solution that helps companies enhance their content marketing and account-based marketing efforts in what has traditionally been an untapped marketing channel,” said James Johnson, managing director at MarTech Breakthrough. “Sigstr’s solution empowers not just marketers, but all employees, with the ability to insert dynamic call-to-action banners in their email signature – a truly innovative email marketing solution worthy of our 2018 MarTech Breakthrough Award. Congratulations to the entire Sigstr team on their well-deserved industry recognition.”
In addition to email signature marketing, Sigstr recently announced the newest application of their relationship marketing platform. Sigstr Pulse uses artificial intelligence to map the collective networks of all employees in a company, putting the power of their relationships at marketer’s fingertips. With email signature marketing and now relationship intelligence, Sigstr is continuing their mission of helping customers do more with employee email.
About MarTech Breakthrough
Part of the Tech Breakthrough Awards organization, the MarTech Breakthrough Awards program is devoted to honoring excellence in marketing, ad and sales technology companies, products and people. The MarTech Breakthrough Awards provide a platform for public recognition around the achievements of breakthrough marketing technology companies and products in categories including marketing automation, AdTech, SalesTech, marketing analytics, CRM, content and social marketing, website, SEM, mobile marketing and more. For more information, visit http://martechbreakthrough.com/
What separates today’s most successful account-based marketing programs from those that are inconsistent and unpredictable? And more importantly, how are those organizations training and arming their sales and marketing teams to drive meaningful, scalable results with their most important accounts?
The answer lies in their ability to build, nurture, and leverage their business relationships.
Though technology has made it easier to connect with others than ever before in history, it comes with the caveat that we must also try harder to make a good first impression. Gone are the days of sifting through directories and company profiles, setting and forgetting automated sales and marketing tools, and relying solely on a social media connection to generate pipeline. In an age of automation, one needs to bring more to the table: the power of a relationship.
So the question is: how are today’s organizations developing, nurturing, and leveraging their business relationships to drive more meaningful engagement, more predictable pipeline, and more consistent, reliable revenue? That’s what we wanted to find out.
To better understand how today’s organizations bridge the gaps between relationships and revenue, and more specifically how they do so to find success in their ABM programs, Sigstr and Heinz Marketing conducted a survey over two weeks in June 2018. The responses gathered came from 256 sales and marketing professionals from organizations that range from SMB to large enterprises.
Key Findings
The Power of Authentic Relationships
Relationships are more important than ever before. Where technology gives us the ability to connect with people across the world in an instant, it’s up to us to build and nurture those relationships in a meaningful way.
From our research, over 80% of sales and marketing professionals, and nearly 90% of top performing companies, agree – developing authentic relationships is very important to generate revenue.
A Stalled Relationship
Leveraging and developing relationships are foundational to any successful organization, extending their advantages well-beyond the initial steps to get your foot in the doors of high-value target accounts. The right relationships with the right people have the potential to accelerate the sales process, facilitate buy-in from other buying committee stakeholders, and reinforce the value you bring to the table from the inside.
While it’s not always easy to ask for favors, it was surprising to see that less than 20% of sales and marketing professionals are very confident in how they move prospect relationships forward at-scale, and only 29% of respondents with an ABM program report the same level of confidence.
Tools, Technologies, and Measurement
While new tools and technologies can make our lives a whole lot easier, it doesn’t mean that everyone has the same access to these tools – plus, having a tool is very different from having the right tool.
While 56% of sales and marketing professionals may have a tool that helps identify the network of relationships within a target account, only one-third of those tools can actually measure the strength of those relationships, and less than half of the people who use them are very confident in their accuracy.
And for the remaining respondents without a tool? Less than 9% are very confident in how they manually measure the relationships with their prospects, leaving over one-third of respondents who are not confident at all in how they manually measure their relationships.
Knowledge is Power
Knowing who you’re targeting, especially in ABM, is critical to your success. However, just 15% of respondents are very satisfied with the level of information they have on their targeted accounts and prospects, with only one-quarter of respondents with an ABM program echoing this confidence.
When it comes to moving a deal forward, or even getting your first meeting set, lacking those relationships, and more importantly, the insights and knowledge about your targets, their needs, wants, and pain points, presents a mountain of challenges to overcome before success can be achieved.
Let Me Introduce You
Introductions are a powerful tactic when it comes to relationship-building in sales and marketing, and rightfully so. Think of the quality of a message when it comes from someone you’ve been formally introduced to. It’s likely you actually read it as opposed to a cold email from a name you don’t recognize at all that you probably sent right to the trash.
Yet while 46% of all respondents, and 1 in 2 ABM users, reported that their outreach is very effective following an introduction, 84% of people reported they sometimes or never make those introductions on behalf of their team members.
While there’s something to be said about being connected to the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, if they don’t actually know who you are, you might as well be cold calling.
Meet Your Champion
A relationship with a key stakeholder or internal champion can facilitate your sales process tremendously, and 96% of all sales and marketing professionals agree that a strong relationship with key stakeholders plays a major role in the outcome of a sale. However, only 36% on respondents report being very reliant on these champions to actually move the deal forward.
While there’s something to be said about not wanting to be reliant on others to get the job done, the reality is that no deal happens in a vacuum. Having an internal champion to rally the buying committee and vouch for you and the value you bring to the table can be the deciding factor that determines whether you win or lose.
So What?
The ability to develop, nurture, and leverage relationships are what separates today’s most successful account-based marketing programs from those that are inconsistent and unpredictable. It’s not just being able to understand the importance of relationships, nor is it being able to identify them that brings success. Rather, it is the capacity to build authentic, meaningful relationships that bring success.
While the core of a relationship might not have changed – trust, value, authenticity – the number of ways in which we’re able to form those connections has multiplied. But while new tools and technologies make meeting new people easier than ever, it also means we must do more work to ensure that we don’t misplace quantity for quality.
We each possess a vast network of relationships. How will you use yours?
INDIANAPOLIS – August 8, 2018 – Sigstr, the leading email signature marketing solution, today announced the launch of its new relationship marketing platform, Sigstr Pulse. The platform uses artificial intelligence to map the collective networks of all employees in a company, putting the power of their relationships at marketer’s fingertips.
With Sigstr Pulse, marketers can monitor sales’ engagement with marketing leads, review which accounts have growing relationships and measure how tactics are assisting sales teams in garnering new relationships at key accounts. By tracking and scoring the strength of relationships through analysis of employee email, calendar patterns and CRM data, business leaders can gain valuable and scalable insight into how their marketing and sales efforts are performing at the contact, account, and geographic level. Sigstr Pulse makes it easy for individuals to find and request warm introductions from trusted peers through a global search tool. Additional upcoming integrations with CRMs, marketing automation platforms and account-based marketing platforms like Terminus, allow marketers to easily target specific audiences and analyze how business relationships flourish.
“Sigstr Pulse gives our team a new way to calculate the most important metric in business: relationships,” said Sangram Vajre, co-founder of Terminus. “As marketers, everything we do is in effort to create authentic connections with our audiences and Sigstr Pulse helps provide guidance on the best strategies to accomplish that. Sigstr Pulse is ABM on steroids.”
In addition to the launch of the relationship intelligence application, Sigstr released today new research on the importance of 1:1 relationships in sales and marketing in partnership with Heinz Marketing. The findings show that less than 14 percent of marketers are satisfied with the level of information they have on account-based marketing (ABM) targets and contacts — and although relationships are most important to ABM outreach, only 30 percent of companies use their existing network to mine relationships.
“Relationships are the lifeblood of every business, and no other system tracks who has relationships with whom better than a corporate email system. Sigstr Pulse allows marketers to effortlessly solve a problem everyone knows they have; making it easy to understand your organization’s complex web of relationships and take action on them. One practical example is in event marketing, as brands can send invitations to potential attendees based on the hierarchy of relationships within an organization,” said Sigstr CEO Bryan Wade. “Our platform is already in the email flow of hundreds of thousands of employees at some of the world’s largest brands, which means they can flip a switch to turn on relationship marketing via Sigstr Pulse. As we’re marketing in the era of GDPR, tapping into coworkers’ existing business relationships means less cold calling and more productive marketing.”
The report also found that 87 percent of respondents from high-performing companies cited authentic relationships as critical to their business success, but only 30 percent feel confident in their ability to develop authentic relationships at scale.
“Sigstr has expanded the opportunity for marketing and sales teams by allowing them to make the person-to-person connections they need through existing relationships within the organization,” said Matt Heinz, president of Heinz Marketing. “Email is at the center of nearly every professional’s daily workflow, and now they can use those interactions to build their business beyond just the conversations they’re having.”
Sigstr CEO, Bryan Wade, shares more in the video below
People drive relationships. Relationships drive business.
A simple question: “What would B2B marketing and selling be like if we were able to understand and quantify all of our company’s relationships?”
Would we prioritize accounts differently? Would our sales teams change their outreach strategies? Would we run marketing campaigns entirely differently? Could we better forecast sales based on relationships? Would our field events take us to different locations? Would we factor that data into our fit, intent and lead scoring frameworks? If we focused our business’ collective energy on helping relationships flourish, would revenue follow?
We think the answer to all of those questions is a resounding, “yes.” If we could put the power of relationships at our fingertips, it would catalyze a much-needed change to traditional B2B sales and marketing.
B2B marketing has become noise.
The practice of B2B marketing has forever transformed because of our access to an abundance of data. Data has single handedly transformed marketing from the Mad Men days of “art and copy” to one of revenue performance and optimization. And with marketing teams responsible for revenue, it means that they’ve used any and all data at their fingertips to build defensive walls against missing business goals. Out of this, a vicious cycle begins to surge…
Marketers need more channels to generate more revenue, followed by more budget to spend through those. With more money gushing out through channels, marketers have turned to the arcane arts of attribution, sacrificing significant amounts of time at the altar of a spreadsheet in exchange for an opaque view into performance. It’s led us to a world where marketers spend too much time analyzing the performance of leads that become customers less than 1% of the time and too little time creating meaningful experiences for our audiences.
To be clear; measurement is vital, but not at the cost of the customer experience. Our audiences have turned into CRM records, their value defined by demo/firmo/technographics, and their experiences being delivered on our terms, not theirs.
Relationships matter most.
Truly successful marketers realize that in order to stand out from the noise, they need to create meaningful connections that lead to authentic relationships. Their obsession with the customer journey puts brand, experience, and authenticity first. Even though it runs counter to everything marketers have been doing for the past decade – they’ve proven it works. Tim Kopp of Hyde Park Ventures refers to this kind of marketing as not Business-to-Business (B2B), but rather Business-to-Human (B2H).
Shifting the focus from B2B to B2H is the key to relationship marketing. Marketers must get back to the root of what they are hoping to achieve; creating a meaningful, mutually beneficial relationship with the human on the receiving end of their brand. Lead scores and conversion analytics have become the primary focus for too many marketers when they should equally be thinking about how to create something magical for their audience (their human audience). We need to stop treating leads like numbers, and start treating them like they have souls.
Businesses don’t buy products – people do.
Today’s buyers want to feel connected to the company, the brand, and the humans with whom they do business. This is terrifying to marketers because responding to this leaves them without a shield of data to defend themselves. But a business that fails to connect with their audience on their terms and their turf will fail to turn them into customers, leaving all that funnel data for naught.
Scott Dorsey, co-founder of ExactTarget and High Alpha, recognizes the importance of investing in these connections. “Marketing is a relationship game,” he says. “Companies need to programmatically build and leverage their relationship networks to win in the digital age.”
Your audience is more omniscient than ever. They know they’re being cookied, they know what phone calls to avoid, and their bullshit detector is more finely tuned than at any point in history. A marketer’s only defense, then, is authenticity and developing relationships. Deeper, meaningful connections require time, care, and investing in relationships. Prospects and customers will only give their valuable time and engagement to companies with whom they have emotional connections and relationships.
Welcome (back) to the era of relationship marketing.
It’s time to acknowledge that the landscape has shifted and adjust the approach to growing business. The tools and tactics necessary to scale relationships don’t all exist yet – and maybe they never will – but the need for them is apparent. What’s old is new again– and it’s time for marketers to be the beating heart of their brands, focused on building meaningful experiences that translate into the ability for your employees to develop authentic relationships.
People drive relationships. Relationships drive business.
Last Wednesday, I had the pleasure of hanging out with the Baltimore HubSpot User Group thanks to the fine folks at Groove Commerce. After touring the Groove office and meeting a few team members, I jumped on stage and shared more about employee email, email signature marketing, and how they can both impact account-based marketing.
Check out the presentation’s main highlights below or watch it here thanks to Groove’s Facebook page.
A New Channel for ABM Engagement
After a quick intro to account-based marketing and what’s typically required from a team with the strategy and execution, we dove into how employee email can help. You see, employee email is the perfect channel to use when starting your ABM journey. It doesn’t disrupt what you’re already doing (sending email and promoting marketing initiatives) and is a quick-win in a sometimes overwhelming ABM world.
What makes the “perfect channel” for ABM? As discussed during the presentation, it starts with volume. Then teams need to consider attention, engagement, and targeting opportunities. If a channel can check off all of those boxes, you have a winner. Here’s why teams today are achieving ABM success with employee email.
Volume
Employee email is big. Like, really big. When compared to other channels, there’s no question to who the winner is in terms of daily interactions. 274 billion emails are sent and received everyday! Not only that, the average time an employee spends in their inbox is 6.3 hours.
After learning about the magnitude of employee email, we encourage customers and prospects to think through some math with this question.
“How many emails do my employees send every year?
A Sigstr customer recently went through this exercise and realized they were sending 96 million emails a year as a company. 96 million! And what do each of these emails include? The email signature of course. Once teams see how email signature marketing can unlock this high-volume channel, their thinking shifts from “96 million emails sent” to “96 million marketing opportunities that we may be missing out on”.
Attention and Engagement
Volume? Check. But what about attention and engagement?
Look no further than the “Science of Email Signatures” report. According to dozens of EyeQuant experiments and tests, not only do recipients pay attention to the employee email signature, it can actually make a big impact during one-to-one email interactions. Prominent colors, specific dimensions, calls-to-action, and other design elements can help catch the attention of your email audience. Who knew the employee email signature represented so many layers of engagement?
Targeting
With all that said, what good is an account-based marketing channel without targeting? ESM actually offers a number of targeting opportunities for sales and marketing teams to reach their most important audience. This includes:
By vertical
By account
By persona (pictured below)
By opportunity stage (by syncing Sigstr with your CRM)
Syncing any other smart or static lists found within your marketing automation platform of choice
Because Sigstr understands the sender and recipient of each email, teams can ensure relevant and personalized content is delivered in every email sent.
Thank You, Baltimore HUG!
As you can see above, Baltimore HubSpotters learned how employee email checks all of the boxes required for an effective ABM channel. Volume, attention, and even targeting.
A big thanks to the Baltimore HUG for showing up to the Groove office to learn more about this new ABM channel. I sincerely enjoyed the discussion. And a special thanks to the Groove team – I hope to see you all again soon!
One year ago, Sigstr launched account-based marketing functionality. With the ability to use Sigstr Campaigns based on recipient email domain targeting, marketers began to target their most valuable accounts or contacts with personalized content. Soon after that, we announced new integrations with CRMs and MAPs, allowing marketers to get even more dynamic with their targeting and timing capabilities with Sigstr Campaigns.
Today we’re opening a new chapter of account-based targeting to marketers. Now Sigstr can deliver custom content to all of your target accounts (and the contacts within) through every stage of their buyer’s journey.
Why Employee Email for ABM?
Before we dive into that, let’s set the stage. Email is the highest volume channel, ever. Even if you bought out Google’s entire inventory of display ads, it would only be a drop in the ocean of emails that ebb and flow out of organizations every day. Email is also arguably the most engaged channel ever. It’s easy to disregard, or even block, a display ad. Social media is great, but not everyone is active or involved. Email is the workhorse of every company with open rates approaching 100% for your most important contacts and accounts.
The scale and targeting of employee email makes it a vital ABM channel for marketers. Sangram Vajre recently talked to us about that and told us the following:
“Every single organization is using email. The question for marketers is: what are you really doing with it? The ability to get the right message internally and externally to the right audience is immensely helpful and game-changing for a lot of organizations.”
Sangram is right. The ability to consistently but passively engage your audience through Sigstr Campaigns is game-changing. Imagine turning on a firehose of Campaigns, perfectly timed and targeted to your most important audiences. That’s what you get with Sigstr’s new ABM functions. Here’s a look at what you can do when you turn your employee email into a high-volume ABM channel.
Multi-Campaign Creator
Align personalized banners to your target accounts list (no matter how big it is) with our new Multi-Campaign Creator. Using this feature, you can upload your target accounts and associate them with customized banners in a single click.
Multi-Dimensional Targeting
Take your targeting a step further with multiple dimensions. Now you can hit your target accounts with custom content and target specific individuals or personas within those accounts with customized banners as well.
Progressive Sigstr Campaigns
Accelerate your pipeline with progressive Sigstr Campaigns. By aligning your Sigstr Campaigns to campaign and opportunity stages, you can progressively promote content that will speed up your sales cycle with every email your employees send.
Sigstr + The Rest of Your ABM Stack
Sigstr is an official Marketo Launchpoint Integration Partner, HubSpot Connect Partner, and Salesforce AppExchange partner. When you’re able to target and track every email your employees send, you acquire thousands of useful data points for automation. Are you investing in your content activation and experience? Sigstr is the perfect way to consistently direct your audience to them. Are you using targeted display networks? Duplicate that creative for Sigstr to create a seamless brand experience.
Your company is already engaging with your target accounts thousands of times every month. Sigstr gives account-based marketers the ability to transform every one of those engagements into a targeted marketing campaign that speeds up your pipeline velocity.
Two years ago the average B2B buying committee was 5.4 people big. Skip to today, that number is 6.8, according to Harvard Business Review. On its face, that’s not a particularly big increase, but in the age of ABM where personalization and intense focus are everything, it’s a massive jump. At Sigstr, we target roughly 600 accounts at a given time, which means over the past two years, there are an additional 840 people we need to consider in all of our account-based sales and marketing efforts. We’ll let Maya Angelou tell you exactly why those 840 people matter so much.
All the feels
As marketers, we obsess over every single word on our website, in our email blasts, and in our tweets, but people will forget what was said. We stress endlessly over our event strategy, our swag, our follow-up campaigns, but ultimately those things will go unnoticed. However, the overall feeling you’re able to create when you demonstrate that you care about every individual through a beautifully orchestrated ABM campaign creates an indelible brand impression. That’s why every member of that buying committee matters. And as those buying committees scale, so too does our need to scale ABM content and campaigns.
The elusive ABM quadrant
The most impactful things your marketing team can do aren’t scalable and they’re seldom measurable.
Given all the time and money in the world, we could all put together phenomenal campaigns that filled our pipeline to the brim. Unfortunately, lack of resources is the biggest obstacle to success for B2B marketers, according to BrightTALK, which is why we all spend too much time in the lower left quadrant.
Occasionally sales and marketing will, with herculean efforts, pull together a top-right quadrant campaign. The holy grail for ABM marketers is how to land in that bottom right quadrant.
Choosing the right type of ABM
According to ITSMA, most teams start begin their ABM journey in the middle tier – “ABM Lite.” I would posit that the reason is because of bandwidth constraints. “Strategic ABM” requires large investments of both time and money. And “”Programmatic ABM” requires a heavy reliance on well-integrated (and typically expensive) tech stacks.
No matter where you are on your ABM journey, it’s imperative you consistently spend time in the “Strategic ABM” quadrant. The more time you spend there, the more you’ll develop the calisthenics necessary to make those efforts more scalable and more measurable. To be sure, this requires a little leap of faith and it may not even work the first time you run a super targeted and tightly orchestrated campaign. Here are some tips we’ve learned at Sigstr to help you get where you need to be.
Data, data, and more data
Doing some serious research on your top-tier accounts – and the people within them – can feel a little unnatural. Understanding the firmographics, initiatives, and brand values of your target accounts requires a lot of hard, manual work. Understanding the demographics, personalities, pain-points and passion-points of the individuals in each account requires even more hard work. At Sigstr, we take two hours a month enriching our account and contact data with information that we use to inform our personalized campaigns and to help our Sales team craft more engaging communications.
Create a content matrix
Here are some amazing stats from B2B Marketing: 84% of all buying committees have a “champion” and that champion holds 59% of the purchasing influence over their committee. Fully two-thirds of every champion cites “content, research, and expertise” as their primary consideration when making a purchase. Juxtapose that with this stat, from that very same study, that shows that 97% of champions have already made their purchasing decision before the committee is even formed!
That means B2B buyers are pulling together their coworkers, pouring over your content, and looking for your sales and marketing team to make them believe that the decision they’ve already made is the correct one. If you can provide a well tailored content experience that directly addresses their needs and roles, you’ll come off as an expert that the committee – and especially the champion – can trust.
How do you provide that tailored content experience? We obviously use Sigstr for it and align our content to the recipient’s persona (tracked in our CRM) and their sales stage (also tracked in our CRM). With these two known dimensions, Sigstr is able to intelligently and automatically insert a call-to-action banner in any email that any employee sends to the target account’s domain.
Sigstr is great for this because it persistently but passively promotes the right content, so you can be sure that your audience is seeing it but they’re not getting spammed. For those not lucky enough to have Sigstr though, here’s a workaround: Create a multi-dimensional content matrix that you can share with your sales team. Align your content to the dimensions most important to your company, for example, “Role” and “Industry”.
With your content organized this way, you take the guesswork out of sales’ hands and show where your content gaps are so you can write or repurpose for them. One other benefit is that it focuses the content to be the right piece for the right person. Don’t be that person that sends five blue links to content that may or may not be relevant – that’s a good way for none of your resources to be consumed.
The time is now
If you’re wondering when the right time to start scaling your ABM efforts is, the answer is now. Getting it right isn’t the most important thing, getting it started is. Put the contacts in your target accounts on a pedestal, become obsessed with the journey you’re about to take them on, and find out what happens. The more you do it, the better your ABM campaigns will be and the faster you’ll be able to execute them!
And so begins the season of sweaty backs sticking to lawn chairs, families grilling out, and the neighborhood kids firing off a few too many fireworks past bedtime. We are reminded of the historic figures that helped get us to where we are today and their iconic contributions. But what if these Founding Fathers had the power of email to spread the word? Our team took a stab at what those email signatures may have looked like.
John Hancock
John Hancock (not to be confused with Herbie Hancock) was the President of the Second Continental Congress and is well known for his absurdly large signature. When John wasn’t busy overshadowing his fellow signees, he was serving as an immensely popular Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Fun fact: John Hancock was actually the founder of the modern-day email signature.
Thomas Jefferson
Tommy Jeffs, often best remembered for the phrase “all men are created equal” proves that NOT all email signatures are created equal. As the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson had a monumental impact on the language used within the document and penned most of it himself. To date, many countries have looked to this document as a partial framework with which to form their own, so we thought his signature should reflect that.
Alexander Hamilton
When not being the star of Broadway, Alexander Hamilton (of “Hamilton” fame) is notorious for founding the U.S. financial system as the first Treasury Secretary. The “ten dollar founding father” who “got a lot farther by working harder” was instrumental to the founding of the United States before his untimely death at the hands of sitting Vice President Aaron Burr.
James Madison
Standing at 5’4” and approximately 100 pounds, Madison was the tiniest president in U.S. History to date. His impact on our nation, however, was no small feat. Madison was one of the only presidents to go into battle, was the last-living signer of the Constitution, and for a brief stint appeared on the $5,000 bill (petition to bring that back, by the way!). Finally, his contributions to The Federalist Papers ultimately helped lead to the ratification of the U.S. Constitution.
George Washington
The big man himself, George Washington, needs no introduction. Well…not today anyway. But back in the days of the Revolutionary War George needed all the help he could get! As the supreme commander of the Continental Army, Washington would’ve loved to have had a way to bring more fresh troops to the cause. He may have lost more battles than he won, but he’ll always be a winner in our eyes (much like his email signature).
Ben Franklin
Big Ben (no, not the clock) had more knowledge crammed into his head than you could shake a stick at. He was a polymath excelling in many areas and studies, and perhaps the most well-known experiment was Franklin’s foray into electricity. Believing that lightning in storms was electricity, Benjamin took to the skies with a kite, a key, and a dream. After sailing the skies and confirming his series, we thought it only natural that he would want to share his newest area of expertise.
Dan Hanrahan
Last but certainly not least, our very own Founding Father: Dan Hanrahan! Without his vision, drive, and passion, Sigstr wouldn’t be here today. He may not have crossed the Delaware River, but we’ve seen him traverse the rush hour traffic on Delaware Street and that is impressive enough in it’s own right.
Our founder, Dan Hanrahan, put it best in a blog post way back on St. Patrick’s day of 2017: “Family comes first – always. To take care of our families, we pour our hearts, minds and resources into building an incredible product and company to delight our customers.”
We work hard every day to make our customers successful, to make each other successful, and, as Dan mentioned, to take care of our families. At the same time, we owe so much to those families – families who care for us, love us, make the tough days better, and make the good days great.
Whether it’s our significant others who have stood by us through the years, our kids who can bring a smile to our face at any time, or even our pets who are always there for a snuggle (no seriously, Sigstr employees have the cutest, fluffiest, goodest dogs in the world), these groups make all the difference. Working at a fast-growing company isn’t always easy, and we pour a lot of heart every day into making our product the best that it can be. It’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of working at Sigstr, but it’s always important to take a step back and recognize the bigger picture reason for why we’re doing what we’re doing.
So much of who we are, and, by extension, what this company has become, is because of the people (and dogs) that we come back to each night.
Sigstr’s First Annual Bring Your Loved Ones to Work Day
Last Friday, we had the chance to gather our families in the Sigstr office and celebrate our first ever “Family Day.” That morning, our office was bursting at the seams with dozens of kids, significant others, and pets. Our lobby buzzed with activity – and overflowed with food – as we enjoyed donuts, coloring, conversation, and even the chance to name our ABM piñata mascot (details coming soon on the winning submission). It was an incredible morning, and it was a reflection of our larger culture.
Here at Sigstr, we often talk about our core value known as the “Signature Rule” – we intentionally place the interests of our customers, our communities, and each other before our own. We put each other first. We work hard to make our clients, and each other, successful. We hold each other accountable, and we celebrate together when we’ve succeeded. We share in the ups and the downs, and we are united under a common goal. In short – we are a family.
Looking around at the joy and excitement of that morning, it was easy to see that bigger picture. It was easy to see the love everyone had for their own families, and the way that our employees have come together to form a family of our own. The Sigstr family isn’t confined to the walls of our office, or to the business relationships we’ve formed. It runs much deeper than that – we care profoundly about each other, about our clients, and, especially, about the people that stand by us every day.
Thank you to our families, to everyone who makes our jobs worth it – you are the reason we do what we do. Join the Sigstr family today.
Last week, ZoomInfo held their annual Growth Acceleration Summit where a lineup of incredible thought leaders shared insights and inspiration to hundreds of marketers and salespeople. If you weren’t able to make it, you can live vicariously through 42 tweets from the event.
While speakers like Magic Johnson, Jay Baer and Neil Patel were surely high points of the three days in Boston, our favorite moment came towards the end of the summit during the ZoomInfo Growth Awards. Sigstr was nominated for – and won – The Champions award, which highlights organizations who have demonstrated exceptional growth over the past year.
“The ZoomInfo B2B Growth Acceleration Awards were created to recognize B2B salespeople and marketers that are making significant contributions to revenue growth and business success,” Hila Nir, CMO, ZoomInfo, said. “We are pleased to award Sigstr with The Champions Award and are excited to see their continued excellence in driving growth in their organization.”
Sigstr is humbled and honored to receive this recognition. Our team nearly doubled in size last year and over tripled our number of customers. ZoomInfo was instrumental in our sales growth and we’re also very grateful for the partnership we’ve developed. Especially for helping us bring to life the first ever SDR Wars, where, alongside 14 other remarkable companies, we set out to challenge our sales dev teams to knock their goals out of the park and share best practices and learnings along the way.
You can get the Top 10 Takeaways of the Modern-Day Sales Development Team here. And it’s not too early to start getting ready for ZoomInfo’s 2019 Growth Acceleration Summit. You can get updates on that right here.
80% of marketers believe that live events are critical to their company’s success. What’s more, nearly one third of everyone surveyed said that it’s their single-most effective marketing channel, according to this study. Whether it’s tradeshows and conferences, field events and meetups, or webinars and hangouts – marketers are insisting on more and bigger live events and are dedicating more and more budget to them every year. And therein lies the challenge.
With more marketers throwing more money at more events every year, savvy marketers are going to have to find different and better channels to promote their events in order to maintain their edge. That’s why Sigstr is thrilled to announce our next-generation set of event marketing capabilities that will help you drive awareness, registration and attendance better than ever before.
Using Sigstr to promote events has been a longtime favorite amongst our customers. Why? Because they’ve seen such a tremendous boost in performance when using employee email as an advertising and awareness channel. According to our recent State of Email Signature Marketing report, 38% of all campaigns deployed last year were focused on promoting events.
Event Marketing Rockstars: Invoca and SalesLoft
For example, call center intelligence vendor, Invoca, ran a five-month Sigstr campaign to promote their 2017 Summit. Invoca’s Marketing Operations Manager, Jen Rios, said, “Before the conference even began, Sigstr had already influenced much more in pipeline, which ended up translating to a 477% increase over the previous year.”
Likewise, sales automation leader, SalesLoft, ran a similar Sigstr campaign to promote their annual conference, Rainmaker. Over a five-week period, their Sigstr campaign racked up 271,000 impressions. Salesloft CEO, Kyle Porter, told us that “One out of every eight clicks on a Sigstr campaign turned into a new registrant for Rainmaker.”
Some of our customers even use animated GIFs to drive meetings at conferences.
With customers already seeing such phenomenal success using Sigstr to promote events, we’re absolutely ecstatic to introduce Sigstr’s next generation of event marketing capabilities that will bestow even more powerful tools and tactics to event marketers. And it will give them the edge they need to stand out in an increasingly cramped channel.
Countdown Timers
Keeping anticipation and excitement for an upcoming event is tough for event marketers to do without becoming spammy. With countdown timers, you can schedule campaigns to progressively display event deadlines within every employee email that’s sent. This passive campaign keeps the cadence of reminders going without ever become annoying. In fact, the world’s leading event management software vendor, Cvent, uses this functionality to promote discounted early-bird registration for their own live events.
Registration Segmentation
It’s bad form to keep promoting an event to those who have already registered for it. Now you can use Sigstr to display “Register Now” messaging to people that haven’t signed up yet and “Reminder” or countdown timers to those who have registered. Similarly, you can easily make your post-event promotion more targeted by assigning people who registered and attended your event with “Thank You For Attending” campaigns. For those that didn’t make it, use “Sorry we missed you!” messaging that promotes your event recap or webinar replay.
Sigstr Viral
Combining forces with other companies to host events is a great way to lower event costs, mitigate risk, and create a bigger presence and registration list. When you’re creating an owned event with partners, however, it can be challenging to ensure they’re doing everything they can to help promote the event.
Sigstr Viral easily allows you to make sure that every person at your partners’ company is promoting the event – and they’re getting the proper attribution for the registrations they’re driving. Create a single page where your partners can copy and paste the HTML code to drop directly into employee email signatures or your ESP. The HTML code comes complete with the configurable parameters you need to track registration attribution. Your partners – who don’t need a Sigstr subscription – will love you for it, and you can rest easy knowing they’re promoting your event with every email sent.
Geographic Targeting
Let’s say you’ve got an upcoming field event in Denver. Why on earth would you want to promote that event to everyone in the world? With geographic targeting, you can align your regional events promotion to only those people in a given area (you’re welcome, everyone that doesn’t live in Denver!). Even if you’re doing a multi-city roadshow, you can run multiple geographic campaigns at once to keep your promotion targeted to those areas while still promoting other content everywhere else.
Industry and Persona Targeting
Like Geographic Targeting, keep your event promotion ads limited to only the individuals in a particular role or industry to ensure the content is relevant. This targeting isn’t just limited to events – your vertical-specific content can be targeted to your industry segments as well! You can count on your click-through and conversion rates peaking way up when you’re delivering hyper-targeted content with Sigstr.
When you combine ad targeting functionality with scheduled countdowns and registration segmentation, you’re able to create highly personalized campaigns that touch every point in the event’s lifecycle. Learn more about how Sigstr can help your events rock, see more promotion examples, and get in touch with someone from Sigstr.
Employee engagement affects every team member inside your organization. And every team member inside your organization affects your bottom line. When employees feel connected to their team and the larger organization, are self-guided, and have opportunities to invest in personal and professional development, good things happen! And according to this McKinsey Global Institute report, the most engaged employees are the most productive.
That’s why it’s important to effectively promote internal initiatives and company news with the whole squad. But besides the “all@” email (which may or not be read half the time) – how are teams doing that today? They’re using employee email in a different way.
Email signature marketing allows corporate communications and HR teams to promote internal announcements within every email sent from one coworker to another. How is this all possible? With employee targeting, Sigstr recognizes when you are emailing a coworker and when you are not. So if you send an email to someone with your company’s email domain, an internal banner will appear. When you send an email to a prospect, customer, or someone outside of your organization, the banner will default to an external promotion (like a new case study, video, or upcoming event). Pretty cool huh?
We’ve been using this functionality within our own account for over a year now and have quite a few examples to share. If you’re looking for ideas or design inspiration for your own internal campaign strategy, feel free to use the list below to get the creative juices flowing!
Company culture
Culture is important to us, no doubt. And we do whatever we can to cultivate this culture into a family-like environment where you’ll find warm welcomes, team member recognition, and of course pictures that capture all of the above. Email signature marketing definitely plays a big part in this (as you can see below).
Side note: If you want to learn more about Sigstr’s culture, check out this blog postwritten by our Founder and President (you’ll learn to appreciate the St. Patrick’s Day campaign even more after reading).
Company meetings or events
Much like how we use email signature marketing in our webinar promotion ideas we do the same for internal events! Company outings (like a baseball game at Victory Field), quarterly meetings, holiday parties, and dinners are all popular use cases for us.
Philanthropy or fundraising event
If there is a fundraising opportunity or philanthropy event that is near and dear to a Sigstr team member’s heart, we use ESM to encourage other employees to join! All the way from donations and haircuts to volunteer sign-ups.
Enablement and education
We take content seriously around here – as you can see in this post . Not only do we use employee email to deliver relevant content to the appropriate external audience, we also use it for enablement with internal team members. Any time a new case study or ebook is published, we launch an internal campaign that brings employees straight to a library of resources. That way they can become familiar with the new content first – then comfortably and confidently talk about it during demos and customer calls.
Other
In addition to the examples above, there are many other use cases for internal campaigns. This includes payroll, benefits, brand guidelines, an employee blog program, Glassdoor reviews, and more!
A new way to rally employee engagement
Up to this point, corporate communications teams have relied on social media, company-wide emails, and even the kitchen thumbtack board to get the word out about company news. But if your team is looking for a new and creative way to promote internal initiatives – email signature marketing might be your answer.
It’s been a tremendous asset for our own team and culture so we’re always happy to share any ideas or designs for inspiration. And if you’d like to see even more banner examples, check out Net Health’s story and their collection of internal campaigns (jump to 5:19).
Most marketers have a love/hate relationship with marketing technology. On one hand, it allows us to do our jobs better by improving communication methods, providing comprehensive tracking and performance metrics, opening up new channels to reach prospects and customers, and so much more. On the other hand, it’s sometimes difficult and leads to overlapping and competing priorities. With so many marketing technologies at play, it can be hard to establish a cohesive, integrated marketing program. The good news is that with the right strategy in place, marketing technology is not only manageable, but game changing.
One of Sigstr’s priorities is to fit in seamlessly with your overarching marketing program. Whether you use HubSpot, Marketo, Salesforce, Pardot, or any other combination of CRM and marketing automation platforms, Sigstr can easily align with your marketing team’s goals and objectives. With HubSpot in particular, you can not only track the performance of email signature marketing efforts, but you can use Sigstr to trigger specific actions in HubSpot and vice versa. Intrigued? Just wait until you see how this all comes together.
Using Sigstr to Trigger HubSpot Workflows
One of Sigstr’s main analytics features is the ability to tell you which email recipients have clicked on your Sigstr campaign banners. This is better known as “recipient analytics”. Recipient analytics are tracked in the native application automatically, but with the help of the HubSpot integration, you can push recipient analytics directly into your HubSpot environment. If one of your HubSpot contacts has clicked on a Sigstr campaign banner, that activity is tracked in the same way as any other engagement. You can even create new contact profiles based on Sigstr engagements.
What’s great about this functionality is that you can use Sigstr clicks to trigger specific HubSpot workflows or to move contacts to the next step in a workflow. Need an example? Think about your marketing content. Perhaps you’re running a Sigstr campaign that promotes your latest case study. You can build out a workflow in HubSpot so that in the instance that someone clicks on your campaign, they are entered into a workflow that (1) looks to see if that person did indeed download the case study and (2) based on that answer either alerts a sales representative or enters the person into a nurture stream. It’s a marketing nerd’s dream come true.
Also worth mentioning – you don’t have to have a Sigstr engagement trigger the start of a workflow. You can also use a Sigstr click to simply take a contact to the next step in a workflow. Anything is possible!
Using HubSpot to Trigger Sigstr Campaigns
On the flip side of the coin, you can also use HubSpot workflows to trigger specific campaigns in Sigstr. Sigstr’s ABM functionality allows you to target email recipients with content tailored to each individual. How? You can either import a list of recipients you’d like to target or – the easier method – import contacts from a third party platform. The HubSpot integration allows you to import smart and static lists straight to Sigstr to align to campaigns now and in the future.
So how does this tie into workflows? You can build workflows to automatically move contacts on and off HubSpot static lists and those lists can be aligned to specific Sigstr campaigns. A great example of this is tied to opportunity stage. Most marketers align their content strategy to the stage of an opportunity a prospect or customer is in. For example, at Sigstr, we know a new prospect is likely more interested in an overview video of our application while a customer cares more about product enablement. Your Sigstr campaigns should reflect these differences and using HubSpot workflows, they can! Let’s see how it’s done.
In HubSpot, you can set your enrollment trigger* and then specify which static list the enrolled contacts should be moved to. As long as that static list is tied to a campaign in Sigstr, everyone on the list will automatically start seeing new Sigstr campaign banners in your employee emails. You can specify the period of time you’d like the campaign to show by moving the contacts off of the list after a certain number of days. Or if you really want to go wild, you can automatically move them to a new static list.
If using the opportunity stage as a trigger doesn’t excite you, don’t worry. There are countless activities you can use as enrollment triggers. We’ve even compiled a list to get you started.
Potential Enrollment Triggers
Attended Event
Completed Demo
Downloaded Content
Met with Sales Team
Completed Implementation
Upgraded Services/Product
Watched Video
Attended Webinar
Main takeaway? The opportunities are endless! Evaluate your various marketing initiatives and think about how email signature marketing should fit in. Once you have a strategy in place, building out the workflows is easy!
Connecting your assorted marketing platforms can be a daunting task, but the results are worth the added effort. If you can create a true marketing ecosystem where all your platforms are connected and working together, you’ll magnify your marketing efforts exponentially. Plus, with all that automation, you’ll have some extra time in the break room!
You can learn more about the Sigstr + HubSpot integration here. And let us know if you have any questions about tying Sigstr, HubSpot, or any other platform together! Our team would be happy to chat!
*If you’re using the HubSpot/Salesforce integration to dictate the opportunity stage, make sure contacts are listed within the Salesforce opportunity.
We have mad respect for you, Silicon Valley fans. And we want you to know there are some spoilers ahead – so proceed with caution if you aren’t through season five yet. For those of you who are 100 percent caught up – please enjoy! We hope we made you proud (and lol) with this blog post.
From TechCrunch Disrupt to the official launch of a decentralized internet, the Pied Piper boys have been through a lot in five seasons. They’ve made many friends, a few enemies, and countless mistakes along the way. But that’s what we’ve come to love about this hilarious crew. Even when the odds are against them, they find a way to make it work.
With the conclusion of season five a few weeks back, we wanted to honor our favorite cast members the best way we know how. These guys are in tech, so we know they send their fair share of emails. Yet the show has never revealed an email signature for any of these characters. So we thought we’d take matters into our own hands…
Richard Hendricks
Much like his character in the show, Richard’s email signature is sort of awkward yet comical. He asked Erlich back in season one to design his signature based on what a CEO’s email signature should look like. As you might expect, it’s a little much. At least his campaign has been updated since then as he’s using it to promote the PiperNet announcement. Within the banner you’ll find a hilariously weird mashup between new tech and the “folktale” theme of Pied Piper. Richard insisted on using this font for the headline because “everyone loves it” – along with the old Pied Piper logo.
Gavin Belson
Gavin Belson represents many traits of a stereotypical Silicon Valley titan. He wants to make the world a better place (better than anyone else) and is always seeking spiritual council while trying to demolish the competition. The top half of his email signature aggressively promotes his personal brand (because that’s what benevolent leaders do). Gavin also uses the real estate below that to showcase the Box III Gavin Belson Signature Edition. He personally stands behind the SAS/SSD/NVMe drive bays, 24-core processor, ECC DDR4 SD-RAM LR-DIMMs…and email signature marketing.
Laurie Bream
Laurie’s email signature describes her personality perfectly. All business, not much flash, and professionally stiff. Although we don’t see much emotion from Laurie (like ever), she surprises us at times with admiration towards her colleagues – like calling Monica her best friend. She’s using email signature marketing to teach others her ways in what we can only assume to be a very exciting and uplifting workshop.
Monica Hall
Not bad, Monica! Pied Piper’s newest CFO put together this email signature template for the entire company to adopt as they continue to add more and more employees. It’s clean, sharp, and up-to-date with Pied Piper’s current brand. However, there is some backlash from the guys (mostly Gilfoyle and Dinesh). Mainly due to the politically correct yet aesthetically unpleasant disclaimer at the bottom.
Dinesh
Season four and five are the main sources of inspiration for Dinesh’s email signature. It pays homage to PiperChat and his days as CEO of Pied Piper. At the same time, it also represents a few of his new obsessions. He insisted that his name be in the Tesla font and colors (even though it clashes with the green). And he’s still out to prove that he’s a better coder than Gilfoyle.
Gilfoyle
As you can imagine, Gilfoyle likes to keep things simple and isn’t keen on being too flashy with email signature marketing. He did however use a gothic style font for his name to represent his dark side. And although he isn’t big on titles or providing contact information within the signature area, he’s excited to promote the PiedPiperCoin announcement with a campaign banner that shows the trend line and current value.
Jared Dunn
Jared always means well and did put together a relatively professional (and somewhat normal) email signature template up top. But the campaign is where things go severely wrong. Remember that awful-looking jacket he debuted in season three? It lives on in his email signature! Buy yours today!
Erlich Bachman
RIP, Erlich. Although he is “technically” dead on the show, you can’t write a post about Silicon Valley email signatures and NOT include him. As you can see below, the theme of Erlich’s signature area still revolves around Bachmanity Insanity (and yes that is a palapa in his name). The campaign banner resembles his Aviato car and is a call-to-action to watch the new “success story” documentary. Hopefully the “Phoenix that shall be known as Bachmanity” will rise again.
Let’s keep this party going! Check out Sigstr’s best email signatures from the “If [Blank] Had Email Signatures” blog series:
According to Kapost’s B2B Marketing Playbook, 65% of content goes unused in B2B organizations. 65%! Getting the use out of every single piece of content is incredibly difficult nowadays. Your audience sees hundreds if not thousands of marketing messages every single day, so ensuring you content call-to-action stands out is difficult to achieve. If your team uses the same channels and messages as your competitors, how is your content differentiated?
That’s why content marketers are now using employee email as their new go-to channel. And email signature marketing is the secret weapon to unlocking the value of this channel. Teams today are using ESM to deliver personalized and relevant content to the right audience (and at the right time). This includes ebooks, white papers, reports, case studies, videos, infographics, one-pagers, and blog posts.
Data from The State of Email Signature Marketing report revealed that “resources and collateral” is one of the most popular use cases for ESM. For our own account, we found it to be THE most popular use case. We take content seriously around here, and use employee email to get more eyeballs on that content. This includes any of the resources you see in the blue list below.
Within this category, we have a few favorite banners to share from our own Sigstr account (okay more like 34). This includes campaigns for case studies, ebooks, reports, videos, press releases, and blog posts. If you’re looking to up your content distribution game with email signature marketing, use the list below for some ideas or design inspiration!
Case study
For every new case study that we publish we launch a Sigstr campaign to get the promotion started. You’ll find CTAs like “Read it here” or “Download now” in the majority of our case study banners. The main goal here is to clearly communicate who the story is about and put them in the spotlight. We love sharing how awesome our customers are and all of the cool things they’re doing with email signature marketing.
Ebook or report
Resources like white papers, reports, and ebooks usually take the most time and energy to create. They’re longer reads that include a fair amount of research and data. We challenge ourselves every quarter to publish content like this so we can continue to build up our credibility as a thought leader and go-to source. At the same time, we’re just as thoughtful with the promotion because we want to capitalize on all of the hard work put into the resource. We make sure we’re using every channel possible to deliver our newest piece to the right audience. This includes employee email!
Video
I’m sure our friends at Vidyard agree with this statement: Video is a powerful form of content. It might be the most powerful. We use video primarily for customer stories and product tutorials. And when we promote video content with email signature marketing, we always try to include a play button as a part of the call-to-action.
Press release
A consistent stream of press activity can help build up a brand and boost team morale. Whenever we have a big announcement coming up, we publish a press release to provide more details. ESM is a standard checkbox in our press promotion to-do list and is an easy and quick way to get the word out to your audience.
Blog
Blog content can be useful a number of ways. SEO, product education, thought leadership, and connecting with customers are the big ones for us. Sometimes we’re serious and down to business (example: this blog post), and sometimes we’re more casual and fun (example: this blog post). A balanced variety of topics and types of posts is important – and it does take some time to build up a blog program. That’s why we view every published blog post as an opportunity to share something new in our employees’ email signatures.
The sales development representative (SDR) role is arguably the most important job in sales. And according to The Bridge Group’s Sales Development 2018 Metrics and Compensation Research Report, demand for SDR candidates continues to rise. There’s no denying that the importance and demand of this position is high, but so is the difficulty. SDRs are tasked with generating new opportunities for their sales team and representing the company’s brand as a whole. That’s a lot of pressure, and sometimes it can be a grind. That’s why SDR teams are always looking for tips, tricks, and common trends to better themselves.
To find the top trends from the modern-day sales development team, you have to go straight to the source. The SDR Wars presented that opportunity, bringing together a community of teams and leaders to compete in a bracket-style tournament for bragging rights as the best SDR team in the land (and a pretty sweet trophy). The competition was fierce, no doubt, but it also cultivated a network of like-minded SDR all-stars who have an appetite for constantly improving and a willingness to help others.
With this in mind, all competing SDR squads (and even a few thought leaders) were open to being interviewed after the tournament. Each individual interview included a series of questions about the team’s experience in the SDR Wars and how they see the sales development landscape today. The group then put together a plan to turn these interviews into a new go-to source for all SDR teams and leaders.
Introducing – “Top 10 Trends of the Modern-Day Sales Development Team”
This new ebook includes trends and sound bites from the best of the best SDR teams in B2B. 16 teams. 28 sales development leaders.
The official list
Some takeaways are tactical, while others focus on the bigger picture. However, all of them offer nuggets of SDR gold that your team can start using tomorrow. The top ten include:
Consistent personalization and being relevant
The phone isn’t dead – calling still works!
The importance of coaching, role playing, and team feedback
The SDR’s tech stack
Team motivation and knowing your why
Common KPIs and going beyond the numbers
Account-based marketing in the SDR world
Personalization at scale
Video takes personalized outreach to the next level
Account Executive and SDR alignment
Thank you to those who participated in The SDR Wars and provided insight for this report! It was amazing to hear from so many motivated sales development teams who are all doing phenomenal work. Download the full report here or check out the preview below to get a sneak peek!
Engagement is the bread and butter of account-based marketing. Not only that, measuring the touches happening with an account is vital for assessing the effectiveness of your strategy. But it’s not always easy. Teams are constantly trying to break through the noise so the right people engage with their brand. And it’s not always successful, as passively acquired attention is a gold mine for marketers nowadays.
That’s why teams are considering a new channel for ABM engagement. Employee email presents a huge opportunity for ABM marketers. They can now add personalized, but scalable, content resources into the billions of organic conversations that are already happening. How? Through each employee’s email signature.
Email signature marketing makes a dent in the “Engage” section of an ABM operation. Most interactions with targeted accounts will be in either Gmail or Outlook. Now each exchange from your email domain can have powerful banners that are relevant and personalized.
Sigstr ABM functionality
Sigstr is able to identify the sender and recipient of each email, allowing marketers to execute crazy cool targeted campaigns. Teams can import lists directly into the application or connect to the smart and static lists in other platforms. Sigstr provides simple and reliable targeting so the right content is delivered to the right audience every time.
Audiences can vary from industries and verticals all the way down to specific accounts and contacts. Recipient lists can even be built by triggers from your CRM or marketing automation platforms. This includes opportunity stage.
There’s a lot you can do with this functionality and some might be asking, “Where do I even start?” That’s why we’re showing you how Sigstr uses Sigstr for ABM targeting! The highlight reel above and full list below shares ideas and inspiration for your own ABM email signature marketing campaigns.
Industry or vertical
We promote our Pacers case study with the “Sports Franchises” list we built within Sigstr. This includes the Miami Heat, Chicago Cubs, or Detroit Red Wings (you get the picture). When someone from Sigstr emails these domains, recipients will see this relevant resource that highlights what’s most important to them.
We use the same playbook for nonprofits. Email signature marketing is a great use case for recruiting volunteers and asking for donations, so we wrote a blog post about it and use this banner to promote it. This time, we built our target list via a Salesforce campaign, which then we synced to our Sigstr account.
Rinse and repeat for digital marketing agencies. We have a blog that highlights a few of our agency customers and use this banner to promote the post to our list of other digital marketing agencies.
Net Health is a rockstar customer and best-in-class example of a healthcare technology company using email signature marketing. We want to make sure other healthcare tech brands see their story, so this case study shows up when we email a domain included in our “Healthcare Tech” target list.
Sales stage
Top tier accounts (with three engagements or less) will see this banner introducing Sigstr in a personalized way while inviting the email recipient to learn more.
Other top tier accounts (with four or more engagements) receive this message as the relationship continues to build. At this point, we know their business a little bit better and can map certain features of Sigstr with their pain points or goals.
Once a prospect has seen a demo, our Account Executive will send a follow-up email recapping the call and laying out next steps. And within that email, the recipient will see this message. To make this happen on our side of things, the Account Executive just adds the contact to a HubSpot workflow (via the contact view of Salesforce). The recipient will then be removed from the workflow ten days later and see a new campaign banner when the next email is sent.
Similar to the demo stage, contacts will see this banner if they are a part of an opportunity that is currently in the “Technical Evaluation” stage. At this point their IT team is involved so we want to show them how serious we are about security.
If a qualified prospect “goes dark” or we haven’t engaged them with in a while, they will see this campaign. It leads them to a personalized microsite that shows them how email signature marketing can bring value to their business (based on their top priorities and goals).
Finally, we want to show our customers how much we appreciate them choosing Sigstr. Especially new customers! Emails to those contacts tied to an opportunity in the “Closed/Won” stage will see this banner. We want them to know they’re not just starting another vendor partnership. They’re jumping into a community of like-minded marketers who are constantly sharing ideas and stories about this new owned marketing channel. It’s a great way for new customers to learn about other current customers and read about Sigstr’s core values.
Current customers
In addition to in-app messages and customer emails, the Sigstr Support twitter is a great way to stay up-to-date with new Sigstr features and releases. All customers may not know this, so we target them with this campaign to get the word out.
Whenever we publish new release notes or write about a new feature, we use a banner like this to share it with our “Current Customers” recipient list.
We also share with customers which specific features they can expect in the coming months or quarters during “Roadmap” webinars like this one.
G2 Crowd is a great way to gather customer feedback and showcase positive reviews with current prospects. We use email signature marketing to help build up our collection of reviews and ratings.
Tech stack
Prospects who use HubSpot are added to the “Tech Stack: HubSpot” recipient list so they can see this message. It leads them to a resource page that shows all of the cool ways you can use HubSpot + Sigstr together for inbound greatness.
We teamed up with the fine folks at Uberflip and Terminus to show our audience how you can use these three platforms together for ABM success. The webinar registration and recording targets our “Tech Stack: Uberflip” and “Tech Stack: Terminus” lists.
See a theme here yet? We use our “Tech Stack: Salesforce” recipient list with campaigns like this one.
And finally, our “Tech Stack: Marketo” list pairs up Marketo-specific content, like this press release.
Event, conference, or trade show
We launched this campaign and assigned it to a list of contacts attending this year’s HubSpot partner day. If you have a good idea of who will be attending a specific event, this is a great way to schedule a meeting before it even starts.
This strategy also works for large conferences. We hosted a happy hour to catch up with Sigstr customers and friends during SaaStr. We got the word out to those within our network who were planning on being in San Francisco.
Whether it be a conference, trade show, regional dinner, or webinar, all types of events are essential for engaging customers and prospects. According to Endless Events, an overwhelming majority of C-Suite executives (87%) plan on investing in events more in the future. 86% of event marketers believe technology can have a major positive impact on the success of their events, and 40% agree that email is the most effective channel for promotion.
Statistics aside, there’s no denying this growing trend: more and more teams are using email signature marketing to drive registrations, increase attendance, and improve post-event follow up. Employee email presents a huge opportunity for event promotion ideas within the billions of organic conversations that are already happening. How? The employee email signature.
Events is the perfect use case for email signature marketing. After analyzing 1,000+ campaign banners from Sigstr’s top 120 customers, we found events to be the most popular use case (check out the graphic below) and one of the most effective (read the full report here).
In addition to our customers, it’s also a very popular use case for our own account (only second to content resources). So we decided to share all of the event-related campaigns we have launched within our own Sigstr account up to this point. That way, if you ever have an event coming up and need some ideas for an email signature design, we have you covered!
Check out the highlight reel and full list below for some design inspiration.
Regional event or happy hour
Our sales and marketing team coordinates certain events around defined territories, which is why we invest a lot in regional happy hours or dinners. They’re great for building relationships with current customers and starting a dialogue with new prospects. For teams who don’t have territories, these types of events still work great when you’re in town for a bigger conference. Why not host your own micro event after hours?
Bonus: We use Eventbrite, HubSpot, and Sigstr together to sync our registration lists with specific email signature banners. So if you’ve already registered for our ABM party, you’ll see a new banner with a “thanks for registering” message that also points you to relevant content.
Conference
We also sponsor larger conferences like INBOUND and Dreamforce where we’re always looking to make the most out of our investment. This means getting the right people there and making sure they stop by our booth. We use email signature marketing to let our audience know who from our team will be there. Most of our banners also include a call-to-action that prompts the email recipient to schedule time with our team.
Webinar
Face-to-face time with prospects or customers is at the top of our list, but sometimes that’s not always possible. So we host digital events, like webinars, as another way to engage with our audience. When thinking about webinar promotion ideas, it’s important to include key pieces of information. This includes the topic, a sub-header, date, and time of the webinar. A call-to-action is also important so they click on the banner to learn more and register.
Internal or company event
Email recipients with our domain receive internal campaigns, while those who don’t see external content. That’s how we’re able to intuitively align internal events with HR and marketing. This includes company outings (like a baseball game at Victory Field), quarterly meetings, holiday parties, and dinners.
This post was originally published on the ABM Leadership Alliance blog.
Decision committees are on the rise and they’re only growing, according to Harvard Business Review. The number of people involved in B2B buying decisions has increased from an average of 5.4 two years ago to 6.8 today. Not only that, those within the group have a wide range of roles, functions, and geographies. All of this is making life tough for both your sales and marketing teams.
Marketing has plenty of challenges in supporting an account-based sale, but the account executives have the steeper task of developing relationships, understanding group dynamics and managing personalities in ever growing buying committees. Marketers should keep this in mind, trust their sales counterparts, and set them up for success before and after handing off warm and engaged accounts.
Here are four ways marketing can help sales rise to those challenges:
1. Focus on the individuals, not the group
Remember, you’re selling to a company, but it’s actual human beings that are doing the buying. And each human being has a unique ego, so keep track of each one and figure out how to service these aspects. That means focusing on an individual’s needs while not losing track of the group’s needs. That’s why marketing should support sales with personalized content, a variety of case studies and customer examples, and developing a brand that individuals can identify with.
2. Know your champion
84% of all buying groups have a champion and that person is the key influencer in 59% of the cases. This is the very reason you need to focus on all of the individuals because the balance of the buying group holds half of the influence.
That said, 66% of champions cite content, research and expertise as the primary considerations in purchasing. If the champion trusts that you are the expert in the room, you can get the group to follow along.
3. Right target, right time
Persona-based content is crucial for successful account-based sales and marketing. Different industries and personas have different ways of talking, and the ways they define success can vary. Make sure you’re taking the time to talk to disparate audiences differently. A helpful way of identifying what content you need to produce is a matrix with your target industries on one axis and the buying committee personas on the other. Are you able to check off every combination?
Once you’ve developed your set of content, being able to deliver that content at the right moment is crucial. One thing the Sigstr team does is trigger content based off of sales stages in our CRM. When sales changes a stage, marketing automatically updates our email signature banners. Sales and marketing alignment is great and automated alignment is the best!
4. Don’t be afraid of emotion
You’ll probably be surprised to learn that 95% of purchasing decisions are done subconsciously. Not only is great research and content crucial to your account-based sale, it also helps your buyers justify their emotions.
That might be why 97% of B2B marketers say that their decision is made before the buying committee is even formed! People want to buy from brands they trust and enjoy. They rely on your expertise, content, and fellow committee members to help convince themselves that the decision they’ve already made is the right one.
Build a brand that prospects identify with and respect. That’s how marketing can help with all of the above. Of course this doesn’t happen overnight and isn’t something you can learn from a single blog post.
However, this final thought might be a good starting point. Forget B2B and B2C – never sell to an account. All marketing is H2H, so always sell to a human being.
We’d love to keep this conversation going in Las Vegas and discuss how your team is using H2H marketing. Mix and mingle with very savvy marketers and the ABM Leadership Alliance at the ABM Royale party on May 9th. See you there!
Karrie Wozniak is an expert on mobile fundraising. She is Vice President Marketing at OneCause, the leading mobile fundraising software company that helps nonprofits engage more donors and raise more money. Since 2008, OneCause has helped nearly 2,800 organizations raise more than $1 billion and connect with over one million unique donors.
2017 was an instrumental year for our company, OneCause, as we undertook a comprehensive rebranding project. After a decade, we felt our name (BidPal), limited us as a mobile bidding company, and we wanted a new brand to better reflect the full suite of fundraising solutions we offer nonprofits. The rebrand project took just over 12 months, and involved everyone in the company.
A successful rebrand project starts with getting buy-in; galvanizing everyone around the new brand takes good planning, excellent communication and finding innovative ways to bring your new identity to market. Having gone through this process, there are core lessons learned to help guide any rebrand initiative.
Here are seven tips for creating a successful new brand launch.
Tip 1: Start with why and get executive buy-in
Rebrands by nature are high profile efforts, so it’s necessary to get the support of the C-suite and the board. Involve key executives, build alignment and secure the strategic support you’ll need to rollout the rebrand company wide. Start by asking management to confirm the “Why”: 1) why we exist as a company, 2) why we think we add value, 3) why the rebrand is important to the business?
Tip 2: Gather input and keep an open mind
Next get your teams involved. Use discovery exercises to ask stakeholders for their views on the current name, what they think your brand stands for and what is limiting you now in sales, product innovation, recruitment, and employee engagement. Keep an open mind; you can’t be sure what feelings or feedback your employees will have about the rebrand. Listen, acknowledge input and provide clear timeframes for key brand milestones to keep everyone aligned and bought into the rebrand project.
Tip 3: Listen to your customers
Next take the time to talk to customers. Customers can help clarify what they value and perceive in the current name, what they see as the company’s strengths and weaknesses, and how the company compares with competitors. It’s important to understand the level of customer loyalty and intimacy with your existing name.
We found that our original name BidPal was viewed favorably by our customers; it was a brand they recognized, trusted and identified with, so we decided to keep it as the brand name for our flagship product.
Tip 4: Crystalize the new vision
Next, it’s time to turn the discovery feedback into a new brand vision. Develop position statements and reasons to believe that detail who the company is, what it does and why it matters. Present these findings along with potential new corporate names and taglines to all stakeholders. Listen to their reactions, emotional commentary and feedback. From here, you can begin to refine your top choices.
The vision phase takes patience, multiple iterations and can last months. Hearing what people like and don’t like in new names, is important to moving closer to a final decision. It can be challenging but this is where you need to rely on the strategic vision, the why and the consensus you’ve built in the organization. Stay the course!
Tip 5: Create the new brand
Once a name is chosen, the new brand comes to life. Work with your creative team to finalize the new brand elements, the style, voice, key identity markers. On the design side, this is the time to finalize color palettes, type fonts, logos, taglines and marks. If someone doesn’t like part of the logo or creative design, probe to find out why. That person may see something in the design or color palette that you never considered.
Tip 6: Develop a strong rollout plan
A company name and logo touch every department in the company. It’s important to have representatives from each department involved in the rollout planning and launch. The rollout needs to be coordinated, launching internally first to get your teams comfortable with the name and then training them on the new brand guidelines. Aligning your teams prior to public launch ensures that everyone in a customer facing role, is prepared to support and champion the new brand. At OneCause, we used an Operational Readiness Plan to detail each step, deliverable and team involved in the rebrand initiative.
Tip 7: Employees – Brand Ambassadors & Email Marketing
Finally, employees are front line advocates for the new brand. Find ways to engage your employees as brand ambassadors. One way we created individual brand exposure and a broader reach quickly was through Sigstr, ouremail signature marketing solution. It provided us a unique way to increase new brand awareness through individual personal email interactions. By using email signature marketing, each employee email became a mini-rebrand announcement. Every communication from our marketing, support, customer success and sales teams created a customer rebrand touchpoint. The callouts were an easy and effective way to create brand visibility by using personalized call-to-action banners in employees’ email signatures. These callouts also allowed customers to redirect to our new website and interact with OneCause. This simple communication strategy was important to our public rollout.
Finally, realize that a rebrand takes significant resources and time to complete. If done right, you will come away with a brand that all your stakeholders can rally around. Using a methodical approach that involves stakeholders and employees from throughout the company will help ensure a successful and seamless transition.
Sigstr is at it again! From exciting campaign creative enhancements to needed updates in compliance and security, we’re thrilled to announce our latest product release! Check out the details below.
Animated GIF Support
Ready to liven things up? Sigstr’s campaign functionality now supports animated GIFs! Using an animated GIF adds an element of surprise to email signature marketing that typically isn’t possible with static campaigns. Beyond engagement, you can also use GIFs to explain or demonstrate a new product or service. It’s an excellent way to illustrate complex concepts in an easily digestible manner.
Now if only we could all agree on the pronunciation…
Multi-Banner Campaigns
Ensure your content never goes stale! Upload multiple banners under a single campaign to ensure your email recipients stay engaged. Promote the same call-to-action using numerous tactics and compare the results! The first version of multi-banner campaigns will drive all banners to a single landing page. In future versions, we will introduce the option to link each banner to an individual landing page.
Multi-Campaign Creator
Manage your ABM efforts seamlessly with Sigstr’s Multi-Campaign Creator. Import contact data from a single CSV file to create multiple recipient lists at once. Cut time by streamlining data management and email recipient segmentation. Deliver personalized campaign banners to hundreds of accounts with a single click!
Google SSO
Tired of remembering lengthy passwords for every application in your team’s repertoire? Use our ‘Sign in with Google’ feature, and login to Sigstr with just one click! The method uses Google’s OAuth 2 to ensure your connection is safe and secure.
Enterprise Workspaces
Manage multiple brands, branches, and regions under one, unified Sigstr account. With enterprise workspaces, dictate multiple organizations under a single parent account. Each organization functions independently and has its own campaigns, signatures, and user base.
To manage the various aspects of enterprise workspaces, account owners are able to assign two different admin roles – Parent Admins and Organization Admins. Parent Admins have access to all underlying organizations while Organization Admins only have access to a single organization.
HubSpot Meetings
Alleviate the confusion of scheduling by automating the process with HubSpot. Use HubSpot Meetings to include a link below your signature inviting email recipients to “Schedule a Call” or “Schedule a Meeting”. It’s an easy way to ensure human connection outside of email.
Click Notifications
Get real-time notifications in your inbox anytime someone engages with one of your Sigstr campaigns. Click Notifications let you (and perhaps more importantly, your sales team) know when customers and prospects are interacting with your brand, allowing you to reach out when it’s most relevant!
Click notifications are available to all customers on the Advanced or Professional plans. Sign into the Employee Preference Center to opt-in and get started! If you have yet to install Sigstr’s Chrome Extension, you will need to do so in order to enable the functionality.
GDPR
Establish GDPR compliance! Aside from an increasingly popular buzzword, GDPR is a sweeping change to Europe’s out-dated privacy and security policies. The new regulations require companies in the EU (or companies that have customers in the EU) to meet new regulations around the methods of collecting, securing, and deleting personal information.
Sigstr’s new data management features can be configured to meet GDPR and specific customer needs, including tools to view and delete user information on demand. Sigstr also appointed a Data Protection Officer (DPO), which is a requirement for data processors. The DPO is responsible for being the main point of contact for data privacy needs, and for ensuring that Sigstr is following best practices.
Every month, the team gets together and recognizes a team member that went above and beyond in the previous month. Today, we celebrate our awesome Data Protection Officer & Director of QA, Brent MacKay! #SigStaroftheMonthpic.twitter.com/ARAxqKJk5P
Understand who in your organization has Sigstr’s Chrome Extension installed! The Chrome Extension enables Sigstr ABM and recipient analytics. A user’s extension is marked as active as soon as his or her campaign has been clicked on by an end recipient. In later versions, the active status will be dependent on campaign views.
Ready to put these new features to use? Log in to your Sigstr accountand get started! If you’re new to Sigstr, let us know! We would be more than happy to provide a demo of all the above features and more!
Event season is upon us. That means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. Some people love conferences because they give them extraordinary opportunities to meet and connect with other like-minded professionals. Others love attending sessions and nerding out over data and content. But, most love the evening networking events – especially when that conference is theSiriusDecisions Summit that’s being hosted in a city like Las Vegas. Finding the best networking events to attend always involves a level of guesswork. So we’re going to make it really easy for you.
All ‘Bout Margaritas Party
If you’re a planner and like getting to town a little early to get settled before a big conference, you’ll be in good company. Grab some good grub and amazing margaritas with the most fun people at Sigstr, Terminus, Brightfunnel, PFL & Uberflip on Monday, May 7th.
If you’re interested in ABM (Account-based Marketing or All ‘Bout Margaritas – whichever you prefer), come join in on the fun. No sales pitches. No presentations. Just a room full of like-minded marketers getting to know and learn from each other. Want to talk shop? Go for it. Just want to come and snack on some chips & guac and throw back some margs? Great – we’re here for that, too. You can join in on the margarita-fueled funhere.
ABM Royale Party
We’re all about ABM here at Sigstr. It’s a core part of our sales and marketing strategy, and if you didn’t already know, ABM targeting functionality is available within Sigstr.
Because of this, we’ve made friends with a lot of other marketers that are very passionate about Account-Based Marketing, like theABM Leadership Alliance. This group includes 11 industry-leading technology partners who educate B2B marketers about ABM. The ABM Leadership Alliance is throwing an awesome party on Wednesday, May 9th calledABM Royale.
The event is being hosted atSkyfall Lounge – so if nothing else, come for the view. Same deal as with the All ‘Bout Margaritas Parties – no sales pitches or presentations. Just killer cocktails and gourmet grub. You can register for thathere.
These are the top two events that are on our radar now – we’ll be sure to update the post as we learn more!
Fearless (def): without fear; bold or brave; not afraid at all.
A fearless marketer is daring, heroic, courageous, and confident. They’re also creative, and find ways to extend the power of marketing automation across multiple channels. Enter: Marketo.
The theme of Marketo’s Marketing Nation Summit this year is “The Fearless Marketer.” A pretty cool theme, if you ask us. And we think a certain integration can help fearless marketers become even more…fearless. Enter: email signature marketing.
Imagine every single email your employees send suddenly becoming powerful, targeted data points that can inform your smart lists, lead scoring frameworks, nurture campaigns, and more. Employee email is a channel worth connecting to your marketing automation platform, and it can easily be done with Marketo + email signature marketing.
The power of Marketo + Sigstr together
What exactly happens when you hook up Marketo to email signature marketing? So glad you asked! We’ve colorfully illustrated a few of the thousands of amazing things you can do when you connect these two in Sigstr’s Guide to Marketing Automation.
Watch the video below for an overview on the Marketo + Sigstr integration.
A perfect integration for your ABM operation
What’s better than intelligent account-based targeting with employee email? By aligning email signature banners with Marketo smartlist memberships, marketers can ensure timely and personalized content in every email sent to targeted prospects. This makes a dent in the “Engage” section of an ABM operation. Most interactions with targeted accounts will be in either Gmail or Outlook, so why not take advantage of the conversations your team is already having?
Align your Marketo lists to email signature banners by specific contacts, account, industry, or even sales stage.
The example below illustrates how a trigger in Marketo, like sales stage membership, can sync with Sigstr to populate a specific banner in the account executive’s follow-up email.
We’d love to keep the conversation going at Marketing Nation Summit! How else are you fearlessly connecting Marketo to your digital channels? Are you already using email signature marketing for other initiatives? Swing by Sigstr’s booth or grab some margs with our team!
Here at Sigstr, we wake up every day thinking about how to do more with email signatures. That often underutilized space at the end of an email can be a powerhouse for brand consistency, marketing, employee engagement, and scheduling meetings. We’ve unlocked incredible value from email signatures by turning them into ways for you to segment messaging across departments, promote events or increase pipeline, and target specific recipients with catered messaging. Our rich integrations – and partnership with HubSpot – have taken our product to the next level. And we’ve helped power 52 million marketing impressions per month by allowing marketers to unlock the employee email channel.
Sometimes, however, it’s good to get back to the basics. The email signature, in its most simple form, has always been a way for the recipient to learn more about you, the sender – your name, title, your company’s website, and, crucially, ways that they can reach you. Phone numbers and social profiles allow them to reach out to you outside of the world of email, to connect in other ways and to build relationships. And now there’s one more element to add to that list.
Schedule More Meetings with HubSpot + Sigstr
One of the most obvious but underutilized uses of the email signature is giving recipients the opportunity to schedule a meeting. How many times has an entire email thread been devoted to just finding time on calendars that works best for everyone? A button below the contact information in an email signature inviting recipients to “Schedule a Call” or “Schedule a Meeting” alleviates all of that confusion.
To that note, we’re excited to introduce yet another new feature of the HubSpot + Sigstr integration! In addition to directly connecting landing pages, tracking conversions, and syncing lists to Sigstr Campaigns, teams can now add the HubSpot Meetings feature directly within Sigstr.
Sales teams can now get on the phone with prospects without spending their day coordinating times. Support teams can set up a troubleshooting screen share with zero hassle. HubSpot Meetings makes it easy to streamline scheduling and encourage more frequent engagement.
It’s so simple, but so effective and important. Now long back-and-forth emails of throwing out times and navigating schedules can be avoided. All by typing a few simple words: “feel free to click the ‘Schedule a Call’ button in my email signature to find a time that works best for you!”.
The HubSpot Meetings field is available in every Sigstr account. Not only does this feature make employee’s lives easier, it drives success across the entire organization. People build relationships, and those relationships drive business – and as big as email is, it’s the touch points formed outside of it, on calls and video chats, that drive the powerful connections that make an organization successful.
Don’t miss out on those touch points. Use HubSpot + Sigstr together to schedule meetings more frequently and more efficiently – because those are the engagements that make your business grow.
Aside from an increasingly popular buzzword, GDPR is a sweeping change to Europe’s out-dated privacy and security policies. GDPR stands for General Data Protection Regulation and it’s going into effect on May 25, 2018. The new regulations will require companies in the EU (or companies that have customers in the EU) to meet new regulations around the methods of collecting, securing, and deleting personal information.
Some other main themes of the new regulations include data transparency, increased scope of responsibility for those who process personal information, and consent to collect and process personal information. GDPR empowers its residents to better understand who is processing their data, why their information is being processed, and the ability to have their information deleted from specified sources. Failure to comply can be met with very steep fines.
In a nutshell, if your company (or your company’s employees) email EU residents or companies, these regulations may apply to you.
How GDPR Applies to Sigstr
Part of the GDPR is increased scope of responsibility. Companies who process data (like Sigstr) are jointly responsible for following the new regulations’ practices. This is why Sigstr is taking a proactive approach to help educate and prepare for the new changes.
Under GDPR, there are two different entities – data controllers and data processors. Data controllers own and control what information is being collected, and why the data is being processed. Processors are responsible for exercising control of the data they process and the security of that data.
In the case of Sigstr’s email signature marketing platform and its customers, Sigstr acts as the data processor and customers act as the data controllers.
What is Sigstr doing to prepare for GDPR?
Over the past several months, Sigstr senior leadership has consulted with experts, hired a Data Protection Officer, and conducted thorough reviews of its processes and documentation to prepare for the new GDPR.
Under GDPR, it is no longer acceptable to store more personal information than what is needed (of EU residents), or to store information indefinitely. Sigstr is developing data management features that can be configured to meet GDPR and specific customer needs.
The “right to be forgotten” is one of the more talked about key changes – it states that users can request to have their information deleted at any time. Sigstr will provide tools to view and delete user information on demand to fit this requirement.
Sigstr also appointed a Data Protection Office (DPO), which is a requirement for both controllers and processors. The DPO is responsible for being the main point of contact for data privacy needs, and for ensuring that his/her company is following best practices.
Data Protection Agreements
A large part of GDPR is documenting what data is being processed and why. Data Processing Agreements (DPAs) outline and set expectations between Sigstr and its customers when it comes to processing data. This allows for transparency and, as a data processor under the new GDPR, Sigstr is willing to sign DPAs with our customers. Every industry has a different set of regulations and Sigstr will ensure that we align to those requirements.
Not sure what a DPA should look like? Reach out to us at security@sigstr.com and we can help provide examples of what one should look like.
Why is this important to you?
One of the biggest changes under GDPR is joint responsibility for data processing and privacy. Companies are now responsible for the data they send to their third party vendors, and what the vendors do with that information. Sigstr’s GDPR features and transparency make us one less thing to worry about with the sweeping privacy changes outlined by GDPR. As the new regulations continue to evolve, Sigstr will be ready for them!
If you have any questions for Sigstr’s Data Protection Officer or Security Team, email security@sigstr.com.
Joshua Meyer brings over 14 years of fundraising, volunteer management, and marketing experience to his current role as the Director of Marketing for OneCause. Currently, as a member of the OneCause sales and marketing team, Josh manages all of the firm’s marketing efforts. He has a passion for helping to create positive change and loves that his current role allows him to help nonprofits engage new donors and achieve their fundraising goals.
Your nonprofit organization already works hard to optimize its campaign marketing and continuously refine its donor outreach strategies. You even take the time to segment your donors and target their communications in specific ways.
If you also host major events for your donors, members, or community at large, though, it’s crucial that you take a look at your overarching marketing strategies and continually think about ways to amplify their impact.
That’s because nonprofit event marketing requires a more unified and comprehensive approach to spreading the word and engaging potential attendees.
You can find the perfect new fundraising ticketing system, for instance, but its ease of use won’t make a difference if your event attendance is low anyway! Good nonprofit event marketing revolves around finding effective tools and incorporating them into your marketing messages.
Follow these 5 tips and best practices for boosting the impact of your nonprofit event marketing:
Offer and market comprehensive registration tools
Create intuitive email marketing engagement
Fully connect your event to your campaign
Market diverse giving channels and options
Use integrated software to market and manage your event
Read through these best practices for some actionable advice and useful resources that can help make your nonprofit’s next major event an unprecedented success!
1. Offer and market comprehensive registration tools
The very first stage of your attendees’ experience should be perfect.That means that you have to offer an intuitive registration platform.
Importantly, though, top-notch event registration software will include features that can greatly simplify or augment your marketing strategies for the event as a whole.
If your organization has never used a dedicated registration platform for its events, or if it’s time for an upgrade, definitely check out this event fundraising software guide by OneCause.
For instance, the ability to create and publish dedicated microsites can be extremely important for your event marketing strategy. These sites will give you an organized place to host all your important event information, social media sharing tools, ticketing systems, and seating arrangements.
Most importantly, your event site will be a single, dedicated outlet to include in your event marketing material. Streamline your marketing by directing readers to this unified online destination for information and tools.
Additionally, great event registration platforms will give you ticket package customization options, which can become important marketing elements in themselves. Think of the ticket packages your different types of donors might find appealing:
Standard admission packages with options to buy extra food or drink vouchers
VIP of member packages including special receptions and promotions for other events
Early promotional packages that encourage early registration and ticket upgrades
Always keep marketing in mind when considering how you’ll let attendees register for your event since great registration tools will not only create an immediate positive impression but also include features that double as strong marketing assets.
2. Create intuitive email marketing engagement
Even in the age of social media dominance, tried-and-true email remains the most effective communication and marketing tool for nonprofits.
We’re all used to quickly deleting spam ads and clickbait emails from random companies without giving them a second thought, but emails from nonprofits are different. When a recipient recognizes your nonprofit, either through their past involvement or awareness of your work, they’ll take the time to fully read your subject line and then act from there.
Nonprofit email marketing tends to be effective, but smart nonprofits know that fully optimizing their emails that promote upcoming events or confirm registration means they need to implement email engagement best practices.
Embedded content and optimized email signatures with direct links to registration forms or event microsites provide intuitive ways for your readers to immediately act.
When optimized with embedded content or an email signature marketing platform like Sigstr, your event marketing emails will become extremely useful for converting potential attendees into registered donors.
You already follow general email marketing best practices, like segmenting your communications to different types of donors for different purposes. Now think about how you can best optimize your event marketing messages for each particular type of email you send, including:
General mailing list newsletters
Personal messages with major donors
Invitations to new prospects
Member and volunteer updates
Targeted campaign appeal messages
Email marketing, especially when promoting an upcoming event, is all about brevity and efficiency.This includes providing intuitive ways to immediately convert recipients into registered attendees or upgrade their involvement in your event. Write compelling calls to action and track your conversions to amplify the value of every email you send about your event!
3. Fully connect your event to your campaign
Organizations and business that conduct marketing of any kind must always remember to keep their messages human-focused. At this point in our digital culture, it’s a major turn-off for consumers or donors when they’re never given a human-oriented face or voice of your work.
Striking the perfect balancebetween marketing efficiency and human experience can be difficult, certainly, but nonprofits marketing their events typically have an easier time of it.
This is because, by continuously reconnecting the purpose of your events to your overarching campaigns or projects, your messages will stay entirely donor, volunteer, and stakeholder-oriented.
The purpose must not only be consciously connected to your organization’s campaign and mission, it also needs to be clearly communicated to your attendees and prospective attendees. Sure, your event looks fun in and of itself, but why are you hosting it?
Using your event marketing to remind donors of the real human connections that define your organization is the key to successful nonprofit event marketing. For instance:
Campaign competition events and grand finale ceremonies should all be clearly tied into the goals and progress of that specific campaign when you market those events. For ideas on the kinds of campaigns that lend themselves perfectly to engaging, small-scale events, check out the ultimate guide to peer-to-peer fundraising.
Major galas are typically held for annual fund drives, as year-end wrap up events for major donors, or as kick-offs for major new campaigns. Always clearly communicate the scale of your new projects or your gratitude for donor support for your completed campaigns when marketing these events.
Auctions and raffles are often elements of ongoing campaigns. As extremely engaging events for donors of all types, make sure to segment your communications and clearly communicate how your auction fits into the overarching fundraising campaign and its goals. Auctions are fun, but remember to explain why you’re hosting one.
Remember, human-centered (not donation-centered) events drive continuous donor engagement. Your event marketing strategies should reflect this fact.
4. Market diverse giving channels and options
Let’s face it, no matter how flawlessly you market and promote your nonprofit’s upcoming event, some donors or members will simply not want to attend. They don’t have any ill will towards your organization, it’s just that they have a prior commitment or perhaps couldn’t resist having a quiet night in.
Since this is a fairly unavoidable element of any event planning, be sure to highlight all of your giving options in your event marketing material.
This way, you can provide channels for those invitees unable to attend to show their support while your organization is still on their mind. Particularly dedicated supporters will likely even feel guilty that they won’t be in attendance, so be sure to give them some options.
One of the easiest ways to do this is to include intuitive links to your event site or ways to give page in your marketing emails. Always ensure that any links in an email direct to a well-designed landing page. This will greatly reduce the bounce rate of visitors looking to learn more about how to support even without attending an event.
Provide and market your other unique giving channels, too, like:
Text-to-give. Supporters who won’t attend your event but still want to show their support can very quickly text you a donation. Letting them donate impulsively and efficiently is the key to making the most of the donor’s attention that your marketing has earned.
Mobile bidding. This solution is perfect for organizations that regularly host auctions. Set up mobile bidding capabilities for your events so all your supporters can participate through their mobile devices without necessarily being present at the auction itself.
As with other nonprofit tools, these giving options double as excellent marketing assets and unique features to incorporate into the live events themselves.
Giving both present attendees and remote supporters the ability to donate in new ways is a great way to build engagement and market a fun twist on your events.
5. Use integrated software to market and manage your event
Staying organized is key not only to a successful event but also to simplifying your entire event marketing strategy.
Having all your data and plans right where you need them goes a long way to keeping your marketing messages consistent and on brand.
You likely already use an event management system of some sort. Larger fundraising events would be logistical nightmares without them, after all. However, it’s important to find management software that can work seamlessly to incorporate all of your donor, attendee, and marketing data.
For example, check out Fonteva’s guide to Salesforce event management. In a comprehensive CRM like Salesforce, you can find the apps and tools you need to cover every aspect of your event planning and management. Plus, since the management is native to your CRM, all your donor and marketing data will be easily accessible.
Simplifying your event management process is crucial for successfully marketing your event.That’s because streamlining the event’s planning and logistics gives your team more time to consider the best ways to target invitees and tailor communications.
A top event management software solution will include a number of features that will boost your event marketing efforts, both directly and indirectly:
Salesforce or other CRM integration
Native registration and seating arrangement tools
Event microsite hosting
Automated email marketing and messaging
Customizable forms and donation pages
If your organization is in the market for a new event management system, remember that marketing tools should be a major priority when making a decision. The right software will simplify managing your entire event, including how you promote it to donors.
By consciously thinking through how your attendees will register, how they’ll interact with your emails, and how they’ll donate, you can market your event to them in ways that best align with their priorities and with your campaign’s goals.
Remember to take a broad view of both your overall marketing strategies and event tools. This way you’ll find the best points to intersect them and create some real buzz!
Teams everywhere are doing incredibly creative things to open up employee email as a new owned marketing channel. How so? By mastering email signature marketing (ESM).
What appears to be a straightforward concept at first, ESM actually represents layers of design, targeting, and marketing ROI possibilities. Just how many layers? Enough to fill 26 pages of The State of Email Signature Marketing report.
The Sigstr Marketing team surveyed over 1,000 campaign banners from our top customers to bring together a lineup of trends and best email signatures that will serve as the ultimate guide to your ESM journey.
Amongst the many discoveries you will find within the report, here are three that stood out to us:
Product and event use cases
From ticket sales to customer support, there are endless use cases for email signature marketing. To keep things simple, we narrowed it down to six main categories. Here’s a breakdown of ESM’s most popular use cases in 2017:
14% of the campaigns we analyzed were focused on promoting the organization’s product or service. This includes specific use cases like a free trial, app download, services or offerings, sale, discount, and scheduling a demo. Collectively, this group achieved the highest engagement rate, with events (the most popular category) coming in at a close second place.
ABM targeting
Of the three different campaign targeting techniques, sender-based was the most popular and ABM proved to be the most effective (highest average click-through-rate). When we say “ABM” we mean campaign banners that target specific contacts, accounts, industries, or regions. Account-based marketing functionality allows you to assign a NBA case study campaign to a targeted list of sports franchises, for example.
SendGrid represents our best-in-class example for this type of targeting. They published several different versions of their essential email guide, and used email signature marketing to deliver each version to the appropriate audience. Each campaign banner includes specific messaging for the targeted vertical, including ecommerce, media & publishing, travel & hospitality, and more.
The popularity of blue and power of purple
In addition to targeting and use cases, we also analyzed specific visual elements within the campaign design. One of these elements was the main or prominent color of the banner, and we tallied these numbers based on the primary colors of the traditional color wheel. Here’s what we found:
We discovered that blue was a popular color, to say the least, and shades like white, grey, and black were surprisingly more common than bright choices likes green, purple, and orange. Purple proved to be the most effective, however, with the highest average click-through-rate.
In addition to prominent colors, use cases, and targeting, The State of ESM report also shares data around call-to-action placement, design best practices, banner dimensions, and more.
The possibilities with ESM are endless, so we’re here to be a helpful resource and take out some of the guesswork for you with data, trends, and best practices. That’s exactly what this report is intended to do, while inspiring you with customer examples and design ideas. Click below to download your copy.
As a member of the ABM Leadership Alliance, Sigstr was proud to be present at last week’s Optimzing ABM Impact event held in partnership with ITSMA. Over 300 people registered to join us in San Francisco to learn how the best of the best are overcoming real-world ABM challenges. The day also consisted of industry best practices and some amazing cocktailsafterwards.
If you weren’t in San Francisco or you missed the invite, don’t sweat it. Here were my six big takeaways from this event.
Relationships matter
Us B2B marketers say it dozens of times every day: “account.” But how often are our sales and marketing teams talking in depth about “individuals” in an account. You might be running an account-based program, but unless you’re focusing on the real human beings in those accounts, you’re probably not going to experience as much success. The good news is that this isn’t news – ITSMA found that marketers are seriously investing in building and sustaining relationships. Budgets have increased by 65% for better engagement and advocacy.
Remember: you’re marketing to an account, but it’s a human that’s buying. And on that note…
ABM focus and ROI are positively correlated
ITSMA found that a company’s top 20 accounts are responsible for 50% of new revenue. That’s not an accident. It’s a function of the attention, focus, and love you put into nurturing that campaign. In addition to explaining the value you provide and gaining the trust of those accounts. It would be wonderful if all your accounts were treated like top accounts, but there are only so many hours in the day. That’s why it’s so crucial for companies to get systematic about identifying what constitutes a top account. Hint: it’s probably a combination of account “fit” and potential revenue.
Sales and marketing alignment is everything
At this point, the strongest thing that sales and marketing are aligned on is that they need alignment. But beyond that, it’s up to every member of the sales and marketing teams to own and display their commitment to alignment.
As Jessica Fewless from Demandbase eloquently stated:
“If Sales isn’t committed to that [target account] list, it’s not gonna work. If Marketing isn’t committed to that list, it’s not gonna work.” –@jfewlessB2B#OptimizingABM#ABMLA
Take it from us – we spend literally all day every day building solutions to make custom tailored, precisely targeted content scalable – and it isn’t easy. The biggest single challenge for ABM is developing campaign assets that are mass customizable, followed by personalizing marketing content to key personas in accounts. This is such a tough challenge to overcome that Sigstr is teaming up with Uberflip and Terminus on an upcoming webinar to discuss exactly that.
It’s okay to rethink territories
If you’ve really committed to an ABM program, you’ve already made a number of decisions that make you a little nervous. Maybe even outright queasy (more on that shortly). So if you’re in for a penny on ABX, you’re in for a pound and you should take the time to rethink how non-marketing disciplines could or should shift. One thing I really appreciated was hearing how Sigstr customer, Snowflake, assigns territories. Each account executive gets 100 accounts and, boom, that’s their territory. From there, Daniel Day, Director of ABM at Snowflake, says that everything his marketing team does is to help support and coordinate their AE’s with those accounts. And clearly it’s working for them – Snowflake has achieved unicorn status.
B2B marketers are just now coming off a 15-year talk track about how we need to optimize for inbound. And now we’re all supposed to suddenly accept that inbound isn’t a priority? That’s a tough pill to swallow to be sure. But once it’s down, that pill makes you feel amazing (this is a vitamin reference, I swear). When you’ve committed to a coordinated account-based approach where your display ads are seeing off-the-charts performance because they were timed perfectly with your direct mail send and your sales dev reps are making warm connections with perfectly suited content, it’s absolutely blissful marketing. (Hey… new acronym!)
See you In Vegas?
The ABM Leadership Alliance is going to be gathering at the SiriusDecisions Summit in Las Vegas this May for a blowout event. Follow the ABM Leadership Alliance and/or Sigstr on Twitter and you’ll be sure to get an invite.
Personalized marketing messages and relevant content all help convert leads into demos or meetings for your sales team. But what about after the demo? It’s usually up to the account executive to send a sales follow up email that (hopefully) helps progress the deal to the next stage.
Just like your company’s website, collateral, and newsletter, these one-to-one emails with prospects leave a lasting brand impression. As a result, it’s important to compose these messages in a way that proudly represents your entire company while also encouraging a clear action and standing out amongst the crowd. In this case, the “crowd” being the hundreds of other emails the prospect receives on a weekly basis.
All easier said than done, right? We agree. That’s a lot to pack into one email.
If you break down this type of message into each of its components, however, you’ll find tons of opportunities to transform “just another email” into a personalized and authentic brand touchpoint. Here are five ideas for your next post-demo email:
1. Restate one fun fact you learned about them during the call
Who says it has to 100% “down to business” all of the time? The prospect on the other end of the line is also a human being, so going out of your way to relate to him or her shows that you’re not a robot and that you actually care. And it doesn’t always have to be about the weather! Here are a few examples:
“You mentioned on the call that you’re headed to New Orleans next week for vacation. I was just there last year and really enjoyed eating at GW Fins (the lobster dumplings are amazing). Happy to recommend any other go-to spots if you need ideas! Just let me know :)”
“I noticed that you’re a big Chicago Cubs fan. Are you going to any games this summer? I’ll be there in July to see them take on the Cardinals. Let me know if you have any favorite spots my family and I should check out before the game!”
2. Recap their main objectives, goals, or desired business outcome
A lot can be discussed during demos or slide deck presentations, especially when it extends to an hour. So be sure to record it, go back and review main talking points, and list them out in the follow-up email. Recap the call in a way where their most important initiatives line up with your product’s value prop. For example…
“I know we talked a lot about customer education and how that’s a top priority for your team this year. Sigstr’s ability to promote tutorial videos, knowledge base articles, and user group meetings within employee email can help get your resources in front of the right customers.”
3. Be appreciative of their time and the opportunity to help
Yes, this may be a simple one, but it goes a long way. Always be sure to thank the prospect for their time and show your excitement for the opportunity. Everyone is busy and sometimes spread thin across many different responsibilities, so time is valuable. They didn’t HAVE to take a demo with you, so let them know how much you appreciate and value their time. And if you’re not genuinely enthusiastic about how your product or service can help them achieve their goals, then they won’t be either. Excitement is contagious and it starts with you!
4. Provide clear next steps with a timeline
It’s always important to view every interaction as a way to progress a prospect relationship or sales cycle. Laying out clear and concise next steps with a proposed timeline can help you stay in the driver’s seat. These open-ended questions do not…
“So when do you want to meet next?”
“Are you interested in buying soon?”
“When can I expect to hear from you?”
Instead, be more specific and make it easy for the prospect to take the next step by providing options.
“Based on what we covered today and what else we need to learn around IT requirements, I think it makes sense to schedule a quick 15-minute call early next week. Does Monday at noon or Tuesday at 2pm EST work for you?”
5. Use email signature marketing to stand out
In addition to the recommendations above, email signature marketing will also help you stand out amongst the other hundreds of emails hitting your prospect’s inbox. Data shows that email recipients are attracted to branded email signatures with call-to-action banners within the first three seconds of opening an email. So if you have their attention, why not take it one step further and include messaging that is personalized and specific to the email recipient?
Here’s how we’re using email signature marketing with marketing automation today to make it happen:
1. An account executive runs a demo for a particular prospect.
2. After the demo, the AE immediately opens up Salesforce and goes to the contact view of that particular prospect. Within the contact view, the AE will scroll down to the HubSpot Intelligence section and click “Add to post-demo email follow-up workflow.”
3. Behind the scenes, the prospect will be added to a HubSpot workflow that automatically adds them to a target list. Note: this is because we have HubSpot synced with Salesforce. HubSpot is also integrated with our Sigstr account, so we’re able to sync that same HubSpot list and assign it to a specific email signature campaign.
4. This is all possible with Sigstr’s ABM functionality, where teams target accounts or individual contacts with specific content that is most relevant to the email recipient. So, when the Account Executive sends the follow-up email to the prospect, they know that their email signature will automatically display the “Thanks for seeing a demo!” banner.
5. Timely messaging leads to a higher chance of engagement, so let’s assume the prospect does in fact click on the account executive’s email signature campaign.
6. The prospect will then be taken to a page that shares more about email signature marketing with Sigstr’s top content resources.
7. Because this banner is specific to a time-based event, we set up a rule within the HubSpot workflow that automatically removes the prospect from the targeted list after five days.
8. When the AE emails the prospect again in the future (assuming it’s after five days), his or her email signature will automatically update to a new campaign banner.
Bonus: Want even more automation? Assign specific email signature banners to different sales stages set in your CRM or marketing automation. When the prospect is moved to a different sales stage, they will also move to a new target list.
Are there any ideas or techniques that we missed? Let us know how you personalize demo follow-up emails by tweeting @SigstrApp.
“Sure, that sounds interesting. Tell more more.” A positive response! And a booked meeting.
What did I do differently? Why does this person want to talk to me? Was it my tone? Timing of the call? Who I called? What I said?
Sound familiar sales development superstars? This job is hard and the community is small. Alongside the team at ZoomInfo, we’re making an effort to connect that community to accelerate training, build trusted networks, make friends, and have fun by rallying around our profession. Introducing…The SDR Wars!
We’re beyond excited to kick off the first ever head-to-head sales development competition. And it will be all be moderated and emceed by Morgan Ingram, founder of The SDR Chronicles and Director of Sales Execution and Evolution at JBarrows Sales Training.
Bi-annually, we will be showcasing sales development teams from some of the world’s best sales organizations to see who has the best outbound team in the business. The winner of The SDR Wars will take home a killer prize and bragging rights as the hardest hustling team out there.
The competition will include 16 sales development teams going against one another in a friendly bracket-style competition to develop and elevate their sales development skills. Participating teams include: Terminus, TINYpulse, ZoomInfo, Vidyard, SalesLoft, Zoom, Everstring, Emplify, MINDBODY, Return Path, and more. Our first competition will start on Tuesday, March 13th.
Additional perks include access to the sales development slack channel and some good ol’ swag.
Interested in joining? You’re in luck! Additional team slots are still available. To enter your sales development team for the opportunity to take home The SDR Wars trophy, find the team in green at this year’s Rainmaker event. Or, visit SDRwars.com for more information.
Here at Sigstr, we honor our team’s favorite shows, movies, and celebrities by creating their hypothetical email signatures. And during the month of March, we highlighted 64 of those email signatures with a little friendly competition. We put together a bracket-style tournament and asked Sigstr friends and family to determine the winners for each round. Thus, the Tournament of Fictional Email Signatures was born.
And the winner is…
Michael Scott! Round by round, the “World’s Best Boss” proved why he has the world’s best fictional email signature.
Thank you to everyone who voted throughout the month of March! Over 200 voters and 500 total submissions helped us determine the first-ever Fictional Email Signature Champion (well deserved, Prison Mike)! We couldn’t have done it without your participation, so thanks again for making this tournament so much fun.
It’s a shame there isn’t a Dundie for “best email signatures” so Michael Scott could present it to himself. After defeating the mighty Darth Vader in the Final Four, this Regional Manager of Dunder Mifflin Scranton has punched his ticket to the Championship. Awaiting him in the main event is an over-achiever from Pawnee, Indiana who racked up so many votes against Chris Traeger it literally wasn’t even close.
“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take,” a few wise men once said (Wayne Gretzky and Michael Scott). Is this Michael’s shot to become a Fictional Email Signature Champion? Or will the “Knope she can!” campaign earn Leslie enough Championship votes to win it all?
See how they got here in the bracket (above), round-by-round results (below), or the Final Four results report. And submit your Championship vote to decide their fate.
Final Four matchup results
Michael Scott (57%) defeats Darth Vader (43%)
Leslie Knope (68%) defeats Chris Traeger (32%)
Final Eight results and highlights
It’s been a long winding road all month long to the Fictional Final Four and now we’re finally here. All thanks to an exciting round 4 that sent half of the email signatures home, and the other half to the promise land.
The left side of the bracket had 2 dominating performances from Darth Vader and Michael Scott, setting up a “World’s Best Boss” vs. “Galaxy’s Ultimate Villain” matchup in the Final Four. The right side included 2 gutsy performances from a couple of Pawnee government employees who now find themselves in a Parks and Rec showdown with a trip to the championship on the line.
You know the drill – use the bracket (above), matchup list (below), or round 4 results report to catch up on all of the fictional email signature action.
Final Eight matchup results
Darth Vader (59%) defeats Joyce Byers (41%)
Michael Scott (67%) defeats Tom Haverford (33%)
Chris Traeger (52%) defeats Tyrion Lannister (48%)
Leslie Knope (53%) defeats Buddy the Elf (47%)
Round 3 results and highlights
16 email signatures and 8 head-to-head matchups entertained fans this round as we saw an Elf from the North (pole) take down the King in the North, 52% to 48%. Pawnee’s fearless leader from the Parks Department won in convincing fashion against Kylo Ren as her voters continue to shout, “Knope she can!” And how about that Star Wars showdown between Darth Vader and Han Solo?
Each of these round 3 winners have earned their right into the prestigious Fictional Final 8. Catch up on all of the action in the bracket (above), matchup list (below), or round 3 results report. The drama continues to build as the stakes get even higher in round 4. Who will the voters pick to move on to the Final 4?
Round 1 set the tone, but round 2 certainly did not disappoint. Some are saying this is the most competitive fictional email signature action they have seen in decades. It’s hard to argue with that statement when 8 of this round’s 16 matchups ended in a 50% something to 40% something result. This included a couple of 51% to 49% buzzer beaters, where Kylo Ren defeated Joey Tribbiani and Tyrion Lannister took down Luke Skywalker in the much anticipated “daddy issues showdown”.
On the flip side, we also witnessed total domination from Jim Halpert, Joyce Byers, Buddy the Elf, and Darth Vader. And now we’re onto the next round where 16 email signatures and 8 hilariously entertaining matchups await our votes. Check out the bracket (above) or matchup lists (below) to catch up on all of the early round action. You can also view the full round 2 results report here.
Bracket 1
Joyce Byers (76%) defeats Luna Lovegood (24%)
Jim Halpert (83%) defeats Nancy Wheeler (17%)
Darth Vader (70%) defeats Kevin McCallister (30%)
Han Solo (53%) defeats Andy Dwyer (47%)
Bracket 2
Prince (51%) defeats Dustin Henderson (49%)
Tom Haverford (57%) defeats The Grinch (43%)
Michael Scott (67%) defeats Eleven (33%)
Leia Organa (53%) defeats Dwight Schrute (47%)
Bracket 3
Chris Traeger (52%) defeats Rachel Green (48%)
Homer Simpson (62%) defeats Frosty (38%)
Tyrion Lannister (51%) defeats Luke Skywalker (49%)
Hermione Granger (65%) defeats Katy Perry (35%)
Bracket 4
Leslie Knope (65%) defeats Andy Bernard (35%)
Kylo Ren (51%) defeats Joey Tribbiani (49%)
Buddy the Elf (73%) defeats Lady Gaga (27%)
Jon Snow (56%) defeats Phil Dunphy (44%)
Round 1 results and highlights
Wow! What a round it was to kick off the tournament. 140+ voters determined who advanced and who went home. We saw unexpected upsets, lopsided victories, and even a few nail-biting matchups that came down to the last few votes.
Highlights included a a dominating performance from Michael Scott with his 88% to 12% win against Ron Weasley (the biggest margin of victory in round 1). And how about that Homer Simpson vs. Harry Potter matchup? Just a few votes proved to be enough as Homer squeaked by with the 51% to 49% win. Speaking of 51/49, our favorite hairy co-pilot made it interesting against the King in The North.
Check out the bracket (above) or matchup list (below) to see all of the round 1 results. Or, view the full results report here.
Bracket 1
Joyce Byers (51%) defeats Chandler Bing (49%)
Luna Lovegood (55%) defeats Goldie Wilson (45%)
Jim Halpert (68%) defeats Daenerys Targaryen (32%)
Nancy Wheeler (55%) defeats The Incredible Hulk (45%)
Darth Vader (82%) defeats Carl Winslow (18%)
Kevin McCallister (57%) defeats Phoebe Buffay (43%)
Han Solo (65%) defeats Beyoncé (35%)
Andy Dwyer (66%) defeats Wolverine (34%)
Bracket 2
Prince (58%) defeats Doctor Emmett Brown (42%)
Dustin Henderson (66%) defeats Brienne of Tarth (34%)
Tom Haverford (74%) defeats Danny Tanner (26%)
The Grinch (60%) defeats Star-Lord (40%)
Eleven (60%) defeats Monica Geller (40%)
Michael Scott (88%) defeats Ron Weasley (12%)
Leia Organa (77%) defeats U2 (23%)
Dwight Schrute (52%) defeats Hodor (48%)
Bracket 3
Rachel Green (54%) defeats Santa Claus (46%)
Chris Traeger (52%) defeats Kevin Malone (48%)
Homer Simpson (51%) defeats Harry Potter (49%)
Frosty (57%) defeats Madonna (43%)
Tyrion Lannister (56%) defeats George McFly (44%)
Luke Skywalker (74%) defeats Lucas Sinclair (26%)
Katy Perry (54%) defeats Professor X (46%)
Hermione Granger (60%) defeats Arya Stark (40%)
Bracket 4
Leslie Knope (74%) defeats Ross Geller (26%)
Andy Bernard (72%) defeats Fred & George Weasley (28%)
Joey Tribbiani (52%) defeats Will Byers (48%)
Kylo Ren (62%) defeats Deadpool (38%)
Lady Gaga (51%) defeats Tim Taylor (49%)
Buddy the Elf (72%) defeats Donna Meagle (28%)
Phil Dunphy (64%) defeats Marty McFly (36%)
Jon Snow (51%) defeats Chewbacca (49%)
All posts from the “If [Blank] Had Email Signatures” blog series can be found here:
We are so pumped to be joining 900+ marketers next week at the B2B Marketing Exchange in Scottsdale, AZ. This must-attend conference brings together the top thought leaders and practitioners in content, demand generation, and sales. Real-world case study examples, actionable takeaways, content awards, and beautiful weather. How could you not be excited?
A full agenda (50+ sessions!) packed into just 3 days will leave you with plenty to do. And, the Fairmont Scottsdale Princess is sure to provide plenty of scenic views to inspire and energize you throughout the week.
So rest up, fill your calendar, and get ready for an awesome week. Here are 5 tips from the Sigstr team that will help you get the most out of #B2BMX.
1. Know thy agenda
Did we mention there are over 50 sessions to choose from? The #B2BMX Agenda is so big that it even has 13 filters to help you narrow down your choices. Stretching from morning to evening across all 3 days, the agenda is a great place to start if you want to plan out your days ahead of time. From account-based marketing to digital strategy to channel marketing, this event offers 6 thought provoking tracks that can help guide you.
Use this week (or the flight in for you last minute planners) to study up and pick out what will bring you the most value during your time there. And don’t forget to leave some time on the calendar for eating and sleeping (and maybe a few margaritas).
2. Connect with the Finny winners
Get an exclusive look at some of the most innovative marketing campaigns of the year. Then, network with the geniuses behind them over lunch. #B2BMX’s Killer Content Awards luncheon is always a must-attend event every year. Best of all, you’ll be entertained by Second City Works, who brings some humor and creative flair to the show experience.
This year’s categories include video content, buyer-focused content, sales enablement, channel partner marketing, measurable ROI, and more.
3. Join the #B2BMX Fun Run / Walk
Kick off the week right and join hundreds of marketers running (or walking) the resort’s 65 acre property. Get some exercise, take in the views, and maybe even get to know a few of your fellow attendees. The race starts at 8:30am Monday morning.
PSA: don’t forget your sunscreen! And stay hydrated before and after the race.
4. Get ready to take notes from this amazing lineup of speakers
In addition to the activities and facilities, we’re excited to learn from dozens of industry analysts, authors, and thought leaders. Whether you prefer pen-to-paper or you can’t go anywhere without a laptop or mobile device, have your equipment and materials ready for pages of notes.
Learn about native advertising from Edwin Wong or see how to humanize the B2B buyer’s journey with Brian Solis. The Sigstr team is especially excited to hear from content marketing rockstars like Jen Spencer, Matt Heinz, Julia Stead, and Sangram Vajre. Whichever topic or type of speaker fits your style best, this lineup is sure to have it. So bring on the note-taking…
5. Follow the conversation
Stay in loop with updates and announcements by following @B2BMX on twitter or scrolling through the #B2BMX hashtag. You won’t miss a thing throughout the week with either of these bookmarked on your mobile device. What’s a content marketing conference without social media, right?
And of course, don’t forget to stop by the Sigstr booth and chat with these friendly faces. We can’t wait to see you there!
Account-based marketing provides a strategy for B2B companies who want to grow revenue by focusing on the best-fit prospects. Most marketing strategies include a broad approach to lead generation with the goal of capturing as many leads as possible. However, 63 percent of marketers still say generating traffic and leads is their top challenge. ABM is a different approach in which marketing and sales teams work together to target best-fit accounts and turn them into customers.
The rise of account-based marketing
ABM is powerful because it can market to specific companies instead of wasting time (and money) on unqualified or unideal prospects. And believe it or not, it has a higher ROI than any other marketing activity, according to 97 percent of marketers in a survey by Alterra Group. Above all, account-based marketing is a framework of efficiency for your marketing and sales team.
Companies like Terminus have emerged as leaders in this growing category. Their platform allows teams to execute on this strategy and measure the impact. And the CMO of Terminus, Sangram Vajre, leads a #FlipMyFunnel community that helps teams all across the nation with ABM use cases and strategies.
Direct mail, retargeting ads, micro sites, field events, etc. There are many activities and channels that coordinate together within a team’s ABM plan, all of which help progress deals faster and win key targets. And employee email is no exception.
The power of employee email
6 hours. That’s the average amount of time most American workers spend in their inbox per day. Employee email presents a huge opportunity for marketers. It gives them the ability to add personalized, but scalable, content resources into the billions of organic conversations that are already happening. How? The employee email signature.
Email signature marketing is a natural addition to any team’s account-based marketing lineup. Users can now assign an email signature campaign to specific contacts or accounts. So when your employees send an email to a specific recipient or organization included in any target lists, the clickable call-to-action banner will dynamically update and serve personalized content.
Adding ESM to your ABM lineup
We sat down with Sangram to talk more about this powerful duo. And how his team uses email signature marketing for their own ABM efforts.
Full transcript:
Employee email is a big opportunity. If you think about it, every single organization is using email. They’re sending thousands of emails every single day. Everyone gets an email, everyone knows and reads email.
The question really is…what are you doing about it? Optimizing the email signature and figuring out if you are getting the right message internally and externally to the right people. This is going to be immensely helpful and game-changing for a lot of organizations.
With Sigstr, and having email signatures very well brand represented, I think it changes the way you think and perceive a brand. So, I look at it and think that internally, when we have a campaign going on, let’s make sure that our message is front and center of everybody. Well how do you did that? Well, everybody sends email. So email signature marketing makes sense.
When you think about reaching out to your customers, or even investors, what is the brand message you want to say without overly talking about yourself? Email signature marketing can really help you do that. So when it’s branded well, and when it’s put together well, it can really make you stand out.
I think ABM and email signature marketing really go well together. If you think about organizations and how they buy, they are so many more people a part of the decision making process. So it’s 5, maybe 10, maybe 15 people, all a part of the decision making process. And they’re all not going to download an ebook, so how are they going to know more about you and your brand? How are you going to stand out?
They’re probably going to look at your email signature, and that becomes the first place from a brand identity perspective. Then, they might click on it and go to your website and then spend more time on your website. Then they’re going to know more about what you stand for. So to me, account-based marketing and email signature marketing really goes well together. And I love what Sigstr is talking about, which is people drive relationships and relationships drive business. All of that is predicated on the fact that the people know what your brand stands for.
I remember the day that I was finishing up onboarding with our new VP of Customer Success, John Klein. We had just finished my typical (and I am sure very boring) presentation and were wrapping up when I asked him about his family. John stated that he has 3 children, 2 teenagers and a 10 year-old little boy named Jack. Jack was diagnosed with Burkitt’s Lymphoma and sadly succumbed to his illness February 6, 2016. John was incredibly proud of how much his former employer, Delivra, did and continues to do to honor Jack and hoped that he could continue to raise awareness for Jack’s Pack at his new Sigstr home.
Jack’s Pack began when Jack was diagnosed with his illness. His friends, family and community rallied around him, their slogan was “We have Jack’s back”. His bravery and joyfully infectious smile in the face of his disease, inspired people to live their lives more joyfully and purposely.
The Sigstr team also has Jack’s back. So if you receive an email from a Sigstr team member today, you will notice a new email signature campaign. This banner is not promoting our latest ebook, case study, or next big event. Instead we are asking that you take a few minutes out of your day to learn more about Jack’s Pack and the St. Baldricks Foundation. Jack’s Pack continues to raise funding for further research for Burkitt’s Lymphoma in hopes that others can benefit. Jack would have wanted to help others going through the same struggles that he did and would be proud to know that we all still have his back.
We at Sigstr encourage you to learn more about Jack’s Pack and the St. Baldricks Foundation. And if you and your organization would like to promote this in your email signatures, feel free to use the free campaign design below.
We also issue a challenge today, in honor of Jack. Pass on a random act of kindness to a stranger. And if you complete this challenge, please take a picture and tag #JacksPack on social media. That way, we can all pay it forward and inspire another act of kindness to honor a special boy who means so much.
As a football junkie, there are two things other than the action on the field that get me excited to watch the Super Bowl. The Commercials (duh) and the musical performances! This year, not only do I get to watch my favorite team the Philadelphia Eagles do battle with the New England Patriots, but I get to watch one of my all-time favorite performers do what he does best at halftime. That of course is the one and only Justin Timberlake.
That got me thinking…who has delivered some of the most memorable Super Bowl performances of all time? How would we give these iconic artists a standing ‘O’ in classic Sigstr fashion? By creating their hypothetical email signatures, of course. If you haven’t seen us do this for Star Wars or Game of Thrones, then you’re in for a treat! Sit back and enjoy as we celebrate some of our favorite Super Bowl super stars.
Michael Jackson
Let’s start with the halftime show that changed everything. In 1993, Super Bowl XXVI featured a Garth Brooks National Anthem, an OJ Simpson coin-toss (hindsight is 20/20) and the moonwalker himself, Michael Jackson. He delivered a halftime show that would go down in history as the first to get higher TV ratings than the actual game. The performance included smash hits “Jam”, “Black & White”, and 3,500 Los Angeles area kids helping him seal the deal with the epic humanitarian ballad, “Heal the World”. Who else could’ve pulled that off but the undisputed King of Pop?
Janet Jackson
If Michael Jackson’s halftime show was the one that changed everything, his little sister’s 2004 performance was the one that made everything stop. With an assist from this year’s headliner, JT, we can’t recall a more TiVo’d moment in history. In fact, this “incident” became the most searched event in internet history, birthed the phrase “wardrobe malfunction” and set us on a path that would eventually give us (wait for it) YouTube!
Madonna
For every king there is a queen and, as the reigning Queen of Pop, Madonna rode in on her golden throne and delivered one of the most memorable Super Bowl performances of all time right down the street from the Sigstr offices at Lucas Oil Stadium. Madge “Party Rock”ed with LMFAO and managed to overcome a poorly delivered ‘’We’re #1’’ sign from M.I.A. before teaming up with Mr. FU himself, Cee-Lo. She then closed the show with a spirited rendition of “Like A Prayer”. Super Bowl XLVI in 2012 had everything you’d want including an NFC East team, the New York Giants, triumphing over the New England Patriots. Eagles fans can only hope this year’s contest yields the same result.
Beyoncé
Two words: Queen Bey. Is anyone else picking up on the royal theme here? Dressed like a superhero in all black leather, accompanied by her fellow children of destiny Kelly Roland and Michelle Williams, and backed by her all-female band, dancers, and horn section, Beyoncé unequivocally answered the question who “Run The World”? For those of you who haven’t been paying attention, it’s girls (shout out to @GirlsWhoCode). This 2013 show was, in a word, fierce, drawing overwhelming praise from the entertainment community and prompting Rolling Stone Magazine to ask a different question: Why would you ever have a Super Bowl without Beyoncé? We couldn’t agree more.
Prince
Rounding out the royal family in the best way possible is the unmistakable falsetto of Prince. Some argue the 2007 halftime show was the best of all time. Why? Picture this…70,000 football fans packed into Miami’s Dolphin Stadium with actual rain falling from the sky as Prince delivers a master class in stage presence and chord stroking. Now imagine every one of those rain-soaked fans belting out the end of “Purple Rain” in unison. “Oooooo Oooooo Ooo Ooo! Oooooo Oooooo Ooo Ooo!”. Need we say more? *Tosses guitar into the crowd* “Game blouses!”
U2
U2’s 2002 halftime show was a special moment in American sports history. Super Bowl XXXVI was the first major sports event held in the United States after 9/11 and the New England Patriots made the most unlikely run to get there. It started one month before when a no-name, 6th round draft pick out of Michigan took over at quarterback for an injured Drew Bledsoe. U2 delivered an emotional tribute to everyone who lost their lives that day, scrolling their names behind them as they played “The Streets Have No Name”. Bono even opened his jacket to proudly reveal the bars and stars. The Patriots, led by that fiery, 6th round back-up we now know as Tom Brady, would kick a field goal as time expired to win their first Super Bowl. Hollywood couldn’t have written a better script!
Aerosmith
Alright folks, trivia time. What was the first hip-hop single to be a Billboard Hot 100 Top 5 hit?
Answer: The epic rock-rap collaboration “Walk This Way” by Run D.M.C. and Aerosmith.
In stark contrast to U2’s poignant post-9/11 tribute, this 2001 performance showcased just how much fun we were having in America pre 9/11. JT and his former bae Britney joined the rest of N’Sync and stood alongside Nelly and Steven Tyler to deliver the MTV version of “Walk This Way”. Maybe Justin knew his big day would come soon as he brought home the chorus of N’Sync’s hit “It’s Gonna Be Me.” We may never know. What we do know is this, those little headset microphones can’t possibly still be cool. Can they?
Katy Perry
Katy Perry rode into the 2015 halftime show on a 16 foot tall, 26 foot long, 1,600 pound golden lion. That’s right…a golden lion. Take that mother of dragons! If Super Bowl halftime shows were the Olympics, Katy’s effort would’ve earned her a gold medal. The California Gurl’s performance began with a “Roar”, ended with “Fireworks” and somewhere in-between, she was able pull off multiple 10-second wardrobe changes. She even made one half of a dancing shark duo an internet sensation. Her motto: sing like nobody’s listening. Love like you’ve never been hurt. Dance like #LeftShark.
Lady Gaga
Lady Gaga saw Katy Perry’s Super Bowl XLIX entrance and thought, “I bet I can top that!” How you ask? By singing “God Bless America” and “This Land Is Your Land” from the roof of Houston’s NRG Stadium as a patriotic red, white, and blue, 300-drone light show ensued behind her. The opening reached its crescendo following the closing lines of the “Pledge of Allegiance” as Gaga lept into the stadium. To be honest, anything she did after that was just icing on the cake. The entrance alone puts Gaga’s 2017 performance in the Top 5 for greatest halftime shows ever. Little Monsters everywhere rejoice. Paws up!
Whitney Houston
While Whitney Houston’s heart-pounding rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” wasn’t technically at halftime, it was so good we just HAD to include it in our list of top Super Bowl performances. In 1991, just 10 days into the Persian Gulf War, Super Bowl XXV was the first to be broadcast worldwide (reaching 750 million viewers). This was her moment and boy did she deliver. If that many people witnessed “The Voice” singing this song, imagine the number of goosebumps and tears that followed. Especially when she raised one fist into the air, and then two, while holding that final patriotic note.
We have learned a heck of a lot over the past two years from over 350 companies using email signature marketing. We even took it a step further and teamed up with EyeQuant, an AI platform that helps companies make faster and better design decisions, to find out what resonates most with email recipients. We want to share our research with you so that we can help you make the most of employee email as a marketing channel – so we turned that research into a #allkillernofiller webinar hosted by our VP of Marketing, Justin Keller, and CEO, Bryan Wade.
We conglomerated 25 minutes of killer information into these 3 takeaways:
1. Never underestimate the power of email.
Marketers have been trying to predict the Doomsday of Email for decades. “Email is dead” has been the headline of far too many blog posts for too long, and we are here to put that to rest. Justin opened the webinar with some pretty staggering statistics that support this thesis.
“Every day 1 billion songs are streamed on Spotify. 4.4 billion searches are done on Google. These are all make-your-brain-hurt size numbers but they all pale in comparison to email. Over 274 billion emails are sent every day. 3.2 million emails are sent every second.” – Justin Keller
Adobe’s 2017 Email Consumer Survey yielded some pretty substantial evidence that backs up these numbers. The report reveals that email still reigns supreme as the most preferential avenue for brands to communicate with their audience.
In fact, Adobe even went so far to say that millennials are “obsessed” with email. This is music to our ears. Think about the math…
“It’s not rocket science, it’s pretty easy to find out how many impressions your company can get every year. The average employee sends about 10,000 emails a year. If you have 100 employees that’s 1,000,000 impressions!” –Justin Keller
The beautiful thing about email signature marketing is that you don’t have to change what you’ve been doing – there is no crazy system that you need to implement or be trained on. As Justin said, it’s not rocket science! It’s simply a new way of thinking about the emails your employees send out on a daily basis. Every email is a unique touchpoint with an engaged audience. Your marketing team could be utilizing that as a highly-personalized and targeted marketing channel by simply adding a call-to-action banner in your employees’ email signatures!
2. Email signature marketing works.
Don’t just take our word for it – we brought in the big guns to prove the effectiveness of email signature marketing. After months of hearing “does this really work?” we teamed up with EyeQuant to put the questions to rest. The extensive and eye-openings results of that study can be found here. If you’re more of an auditory learner, Justin and Bryan did go over some of the most mind-boggling findings in the webinar (the recording can be found at the bottom of this post). If you’re more of a skim reader like me, here are the highlights.
We ran 3 different EyeQuant tests to compare an unbranded vs. branded signature:
Perception Map: Intended to show what the email recipient will see and miss in the first 3 seconds.
Hot Spots: Intended to show the 10 most attention-grabbing spots of the email.
Attention Map: Intended to show which elements capture the most attention.
“The science tells us that when you have a beautifully designed email signature, as well as an image with a clear call-to-action, it becomes an effective way to engage with your customers.”-Bryan Wade
The proof is in the pudding! Couple these results with the aforementioned results from Adobe’s Email Consumer Survey and you can’t deny it: Email is still the workhorse of digital marketing. Your most important contacts are engaging with employee email communications every single day and paying attention to the email signature. This piece of digital real estate is an extension of your brand – so use it to your advantage to drive conversions and distribute relevant content.
3. The key to effective email signature marketing is in the design.
Specific design elements can help engagement rates sway one way or the other. From colors to the call-to-action, there’s a lot to think about within a campaign banner design. The goal of this webinar was to share data that might take out some of the guesswork. A highlight reel of the “Art” section of the webinar is below. And if you’re interested in more best practices and data, check out this blog post that highlights our top 9 takeaways after analyzing our own email signature data during the 2017 year.
“One thing you want to make sure you’re really doing is clearly defining the CTA. This will get the attention of the email recipient and spur them to take action.” – Justin Keller
“Be clear and concise with your wording and description of the resource – but get a little crazy with the graphics! Go bold! Use unusual imagery. In this customer’s campaign example, we’ve got a llama on a tv and that definitely makes me want to click on something.” – Justin Keller
Thanks again to those who joined us for this #allkillernofiller webinar. The research (science) shows just how impactful email signature marketing can be, and design (art) plays a big part. Between the live presentation (find the recording below) and this blog post, hopefully we’ve inspired you to think of employee email as a new marketing channel that can provide value to your business. See you at the next webinar!
At this point, Sigstr has been included in several hundred million emails, so our team has learned a lot about email signature marketing. This small slice of digital real estate has become the most targeted and authentic marketing channel for almost 400 brands. Where else do you have the opportunity to see how your most important contacts, customers, and prospects are interacting with your content within everyday 1:1 interactions? Employee email provides a wealth of data and knowledge that can help all of us be better marketers and shape strategies for other channels, campaigns, and designs.
With this in mind, our team went back and analyzed every email signature marketing campaign that Sigstr launched in 2017. Here’s what we learned:
1. Targeting specific audiences with relevant content is important (internal education for the win!)
As a refresher, Sigstr offers three different targeting options for your email signature marketing campaigns:
Sender-based:Organize your employees by department or geographic location so you can assign specific content to each group (for example, Marketing can promote an upcoming webinar while Customer Success promotes a product release).
Internal:Email recipients with your company’s domain can receive internal campaigns, while those who don’t see only external content. This gives you the ability to rally employee engagement with initiatives like open enrollment, employee recognition, upcoming company events, and more.
Account-based marketing:Sigstr’s ABM functionality allows marketers to deliver 1:1 targeted content to specific contacts, accounts, industries, and regions. For example, assign a sports franchises recipient list to a NBA case study campaign.
We used all three targeting strategies throughout the 2017 year, with sender-based campaigns leading the way.
Although sender-based proved to be the most common, internal campaigns performed the best (in terms of average click-through-rate) as we used them for upcoming company outings and culture. Here’s our favorite internal campaign from last year:
2. From events to recruitment, there are many use cases for email signature marketing
In the coming weeks, we’ll be releasing the “State of Email Signature Marketing” report that analyzed 1,000+ campaigns from the 2017 year. We looked at data points and trends like prominent color, dimensions, targeting, visual elements, and specific use cases. Across those 1,000+ customer campaigns, we tallied 27 different use cases for email signature marketing. TA-WEN-TY SEV-EN! That’s incredible.
We counted 17 different specific use cases from our own account, which we organized into these main categories.
Events (conference or trade show, podcast, webinar)
Customer (review or rating)
Company (award or recognition, new website, news or press, brand, recruitment or culture)
Resource (blog, infographic, ebook or case study, video)
Product (services or offerings, request a demo)
Other (partner or referral program, philanthropy, fundraising or donation)
Here’s a breakdown of our most popular use cases from 2017:
3. Employee email is a powerful marketing channel for philanthropy and nonprofits
Of the specific use cases listed above, philanthropy scored one of the highest engagement rates. And we’re not the only ones to see success! We were excited and proud to share the Herff Jones story earlier this month, which shows how they achieved a 300% ROI and helped plant 80+ trees in Africa (all within 2 months after launching Sigstr). CrowdRise also agrees, as said best by their Director of Marketing, Gary Wohlfeill.
“That seemingly slight space at the tail-end of your email, if treated correctly, has the opportunity to be a real powerhouse for your nonprofit.”
4. We love the color green (big surprise there), but we see high engagement when experimenting with other campaign colors
Across the 70+ campaigns we launched in 2017, we analyzed the one prominent color used for each banner. By a landslide, green was the winner at 56%. And grey took home the silver medal (how ironic) at 18%.
Green may have been our most popular choice, but orange performed the best. We’re okay with this considering the fact green goes well with orange (woohoo St. Patrick’s Day is only 45 days away)!
5. Eye-tracking tests say CTA buttons matter, but our data tells us otherwise
We recently published an ebook that includes eye-tracking analysis and tests around dozens of different email signature examples. And within this analysis, attention maps and hot spots were used to show us which elements capture the most attention. Multiple tests revealed red hot areas around a clearly defined call-to-action (such as a button), so we thought our click data would tell the same story.
73% of our campaigns included a call-to-action button, yet these banners collectively had the exact same engagement rate as those without one. CTA button or not, it’s still important to include language that encourages the email recipient to take action. Request a demo, meet up with us, download now, and register here are a few of our favorites.
6. Be mindful of specific campaign design elements (like photography)
We also analyzed the different elements incorporated into our campaign designs, whether it be icons, photography, just color, or a combination of all the above.
While “illustration or icon” and “combination” proved to be the most popular, we saw the most engagement with photography. In addition to our account, photography was also declared the winner (in terms of click-through-rate) after analyzing 1,000+ campaigns from our customers. Here’s an example of what this might look like:
7. Account-based marketing and employee email is a powerful duo
At this point, you may be wondering, “what was Sigstr’s most successful email signature marketing campaign in 2017?” Well, we’re glad you asked!
When targeting specific audiences or verticals, good things tend to happen and engagement rates go up. This campaign was no exception, as we created a “Sports franchises” recipient list (think Cubs, Cowboys, Lakers, Red Wings, etc.) and paired it with the campaign banner below. What better way to show the sports industry how Sigstr can deliver value to their team than showing how we did it for the Indiana Pacers?
8. Email signature marketing and Sales Dev teams are BFFs
Remember…you can mix and match content with specific sender groups (see #1 for more). And across our 8 sender groups, the Sales Dev group collectively saw the highest engagement. Chances are, your sales team members are sending out the most external-facing email, so this is great news. Campaign banners in SDR’s email signatures (something that is included in every single one of their outreach emails) can serve as a subtle, yet effective, way to lead prospects to the next stage. Requesting a demo, signing up for a free trial, reading a relevant resource, etc.
Added bonus: if you’re looking to scale your email outreach (while keeping it personable, empathetic, and customer-centric), our good friends at SalesLoft can help. And they integrate directly with Sigstr, so you can easily amplify the success of outreach email and email signature marketing together.
9. Consistent activity and fresh content is key
We launched 71 total email signature campaigns in 2017. That boils down to about 6 a month or 1.5 per week. Consistent activity is important because engagement rates may diminish the longer a campaign runs. With that said, we recommend switching or launching a new campaign every 2 weeks. If you’re worried about your content supply keeping pace with this rotation, multiple variations of a campaign (that promote the same resource) can extend its shelf life.
Our goal here at Sigstr is to be a helpful and trusted resource as more and more teams embark on the email signature marketing journey. We want to be transparent and openly share what we have learned from our own campaigns. This post was intended to do just that (while also inspiring you with design ideas and entertaining you with “dad joke” humor).
Whether you’re a seasoned veteran or newbie, we’re always here to help and collaborate. Let us know what your team has learned from email signature marketing by tweeting @SigstrApp! And stay tuned for more trends, data, and best practices in our upcoming “The State of Email Signature Marketing” report.
In the past few months you’ve probably seen a “top marketing trends for 2018” list. No matter which list you read, you invariably saw some combination of the words, “AI”, “machine learning”, and/or “chatbots.” These innovations are becoming so prevalent that you can’t throw a rock at a marketing conference without hitting someone talking about predictive analytics engines or a “true” omnichannel approach – two of the many buzzwords that are underpinned by machine learning. AI has become commonplace in leading marketing teams who are leveraging it to inform and enrich their customer relationships, to make their workflows more seamless and optimized, their attribution more granular and predictive and their ad targeting more…creepy?
Customer experience vs. marketing efficiency
We’ve all seen an advertisement that was almost too well targeted at you, at a time that was almost too perfect and gave you an eerie sense that someone – or something- was listening to you. Perhaps you’ve visited a company’s website, navigated away from it, and a few minutes later received an email from that company asking why you left the site. Or maybe you’ve started chatting with a chatbot, only to try and find glitches in its NLP to make it say funny things. More and more, marketers are leveraging these technologies to better understand and convert prospects in order to lower human capital costs and create more personalized experiences at scale. For that reason, we’re going to leave machine-assisted optimization out of this conversation since it’s numbers driven and not about direct digital interactions.
To be pithy about what AI means for sales and marketing: We are using robots to better understand and connect with humans. And if you believe the hype, 85% of all customer interactions will be with a robot within 2 years. We’ve seen this in the movies, but in the real world, marketers are coming up on a real-life decision between customer experience and marketing efficiency.
Before we go any further, let’s make it clear that AI and machine learning are crucial technologies that will fundamentally transform our global economy and the marketing function is no exception. Human capital is expensive, and really smart human capital is really expensive, so it makes sense to augment our teams with the best technologies. Not only is there tremendous upside for well-crafted AI interactions, but there are already significant consumer expectations for it. 48% of US consumers expect brands to know about them and to help them discover new products and services. Intelligent targeting and ad optimization are amazing and have led me to purchase several things I never knew existed.
With a wealth of marketing opportunities comes a glut of pitfalls. Consequences from poorly managed machine interactions that could be damaging for your customer experience and your entire brand. With an outsize focus on making artificial intelligence work for marketers, it’s imperative that we don’t lose sight of what will really be driving conversions and closing business for your company: their (human) employees.
Brand authenticity and human connections
For marketers, the trend might be in AI, but the future is in making human connections more powerful. To that end, technology that helps us create better human-to-human connections is where marketers should be focusing. Creating customized content, scalable advocacy, and more powerful networking and sharing capabilities, just to name a few. Making your brand feel more human in the age of AI is more important than it has ever been.
Why?
Because if you’re reading this right now there are better-than-blackjack odds that your customers already don’t trust your brand. 54% of people simply don’t trust brands – and injecting artificiality into your brand certainly won’t help matters. Compare that to companies that are focused on creating custom content for their customers (only 22% of their consumers distrust them). Put another way, brands that are less trustworthy are also brands that are less human.
There are many content marketers reading this right now saying, “hey, I use AI to make my custom content experiences scalable!” and to them I say, “enjoy it while it lasts.” As consumers adapt to custom experiences, their expectations will quickly become unreasonable again. As technology advances, so too do our expectations, leaving marketers on the same treadmill of creating great customer experiences.
So what’s the answer? It has to be human. If your company isn’t actively trying to involve its humans in its brand strategy, it’s not only less likely to be trusted, but it’s leaving money on the table. People (especially millennials) prefer to interact with other people, not with brands. As shocking as it may sound, even digital natives prefer to pick up the phone to talk to a human at a business rather than interact with the business digitally. In fact, only 1% of those screen-obsessed millennials would prefer to deal with a brand over social media than in person. Add the fact that marketing messages reach 561% more people when they’re shared by humans than by brands and it’s pretty clear that, for marketers, the future is human.
Finding the right balance
As you’re making investments in this new wave of marketing technology, remember to keep things human, but more importantly – don’t try and fool people into thinking your robot is a human. We’re getting close to living in Blade Runner, but we’re not quite there yet. Chatbots, right-time communications, recommendation engines and the like are all transparently programmed. If you intelligently leverage AI, it can help you create great experiences. If you rely on them too heavily, they’ll make your brand feel as artificial as they are.
We put out this infographic a while ago, but it’s a good reminder that the main driver of your business isn’t Slack or your Facebook strategy – it’s simply email. Zapier recently published research that revealed an interesting trend: While team chat platforms like Slack have had a meteoric rise, email continues to grow at an even faster rate.
The reign of real, one-to-one communication appears to be aeonian. We should keep this top of mind as we embrace all of the fun and efficiency AI has to offer for our marketing programs.
Kate Riney is the Brand Storyteller at Calendly, an incredibly simple scheduling tool. She has experience recruiting for the nonprofit and education industries and focused on improving candidate relations.
Recruiters have to be great time-managers. No surprise there. You need to be good with people. Also, unsurprising. You’re a pro at this, so let’s cover some ideas for maximizing recruitment potential that you may not have mastered yet.
Let’s talk about improving the candidate experience.
It’s been shown that organizations that invest in a great candidate experience actually improve the quality of the hires they make by 70%. Yet, almost 60% of candidates report having a poor experience. And a large majority of those underwhelmed candidates share information regarding their experience online through employer review sites, social media or direct communication.
Which means, if you don’t focus on delivering a great candidate experience, you’ll not only decrease the quality of your hires, you’ll actually damage the employer’s reputation and their prospective candidate pool.
Yikes!
I’m betting those aren’t the results that are going to win you recruiter of the year and get you that sweet bonus. So let’s talk about some simple ways to improve relations and create allies out of candidates—yes, even the rejected ones.
Research the hiring team, not just candidates
The candidate experience actually starts before you ever reach out to a potential applicant. It begins during the research phase.
Remember that you’re always interviewing two groups of people: the candidate and the employer. So when you talk to the hiring team about their needs and expectations for the role, don’t just focus on the basic job description and compensation package. Company culture is also a huge factor in candidates’ job consideration, so it’s your responsibility to have a pulse on the employer’s unique vibes and communicate them accurately. Be sure to get the hiring team’s opinion of why the organization is an attractive place to work and its mission, vision and values.
Even if you’re an in-house recruiter with a handle on the organization’s overarching culture, it’s still essential to understand the hiring team and department’s unique culture as this will have the most immediate and sustained impact on a new hire’s success.
Warm up the candidate and then compel them when sourcing
When you’re ready to reach out to cold candidates, remember that you’re calling someone who is—likely—happily employed. Calling them at their office in the middle of the day should be treated delicately. Not everyone has a soundproof office and most will be hesitant to talk to a recruiter. After introducing yourself and explaining the intent of your call, always ask if now is a good time to chat or if there’s a better time to connect.
If you get an answering service, use your best judgment to respect the person’s current job status. Don’t be too detailed about your message with assistants or secretaries.
Even if you get a chance to talk with the prospective candidate, ALWAYS send a follow-up message with more details and incentivize them to start the application process. Including an eye-catching call-to-action within your email signature and linking it to the company’s job board or website is a great way to hook the candidate. If they’re clearly uninterested in the position, you can send them an email thanking them for their time, ask them to recommend anyone in their network they think would be a good fit for the role and link to your job board or LinkedIn page.
If they’ve already expressed interest in the position and are ready for a more in-depth conversation, use a tool like Calendly to include a scheduling link in your message so the candidate can quickly pick an interview time that’s convenient for them from your availability.
Simplify the application process
Whether you use a CRM or ATS for your recruitment efforts, it’s essential to invest in a compatible resume-parsing tool like CareerBuilder or RChilli. Submitting a resume and then being asked to fill out duplicate information in a detailed application form and questionnaire is very discouraging to even the most eager candidates.
Those who value their own time don’t want to spend hours on an initial job application. Respect their initiative and efforts by simplifying the process.
Explain the entire interview process
Once you start interviewing candidates, it’s vital that you explain what the entire process looks like—up front—regardless of the prospect’s potential. Many organizations prefer to only explain the very next step so that they maintain the flexibility to deviate from the norm for unique scenarios. While tempting, this method is ultimately more risky than it’s worth.
Just like sales teams are supposed to make a promise on what their product or service delivers, recruiters should make a promise to candidates about what kind of timeline they should expect and stick to it. While tough to do, this will also give you more leverage to move the employer along if they start dragging their feet or they come up with unrealistic demands. Confused or anxious candidates who feel like they’ve been forgotten or put on the back-burner will drop off, costing you some of your best talent.
Speed up the recruitment cycle
Similarly, don’t keep candidates waiting. Whenever possible, once you have information to share, share it. On average, it takes three interviews and 3–6 weeks to get out an offer. Time-to-hire is one of most important metrics recruiters must pay attention to. Why? Because the main reason job offers are rejected is that someone else beat you to the punch.
If you don’t want to go back to the drawing board and start the cycle over, speed it up!
Focus on building relationships
As you interact with the candidate, make them feel like a rockstar. A difficult and thorough interview process doesn’t have to be a cold, impersonal one. Too often interviews can feel like stress tests and give candidates an “us vs you” feeling. That’s no way to build a healthy working relationship.
Offering proper affirmation and positive feedback will give candidates the confidence to truly shine by showing you what’s true and important to know about them. A whopping 80% of people say they will take one job over another based on personal relationships formed during the interview process.
So…if you haven’t gotten this point yet: genuinely caring about the candidate is pretty important.
Ask candidates about their unique ambitions
Most interviewers make the process all about what the candidate can do for them. Successful recruiters will ask the candidate about their career aspirations and ensure the position is a good opportunity for them.
49% of employers believe that compensation is the most important factor to candidates, whereas 72% of candidates state advancement opportunities are the top reason why they would change jobs. For Millenials—the largest generation in the workforce—this is of utmost importance, with more than half of Millennials seeking more opportunities to develop their leadership skills.
You can win over candidates with the most potential if you know where their ambitions lie and take this into consideration as you interview and compose an offer.
Advocate for candidates
Your work doesn’t end once you’ve handed off the candidate to the hiring team. Consider yourself the broker between the employer and the potential hire. You are still responsible for their experience.
It may seem out of your hands at this point, but you can ensure that interviewers read all previous interview and reference notes. Make it easy for them by flagging or highlighting important info and offering to brief them.
This also means advocating for the candidate. It’s what sets truly incredible recruiters apart from simply competent ones. Know your candidate; build a relationship with them and have their back.
Did the candidate undervalue themselves? 69% of U.S. employees in the U.S. struggle to know what fair market compensation is for their position. You have compensation analysis tools they don’t have access to. Go to bat for gender-equal, industry-standard compensation for them. Salary is being negotiated by recruiters more than ever, so get the proper training to develop this skill.
Candidates will remember your efforts and become a great resource for future candidate referrals. Organizations will be thrilled to build their reputation as an equitable employer and desirable place to work.
Conclusion
Whether you’re an agency or in-house recruiter, a newbie or a veteran—you can always improve the candidate experience. Find ways to make a tedious and technical process more enjoyable and humane.
It’s the extra 5% of effort that will win you the most ROI. You’ll create allies out of candidates (even the ones that don’t get hired at first) and have more of a network to leverage as you continue your work.
The benefits of delivering a killer candidate experience are endless.
Last year was kind of a big year for us. We more than doubled our customer base. We now work with even more extraordinary companies of the likes of SendGrid, LA Galaxy, Iterable, Yext and dozens more. We announced a $5M Series A Funding. This raise has catapulted innovation for our product and allowed us to hire some serious rockstars, ending the year with an 87% bigger team. This includes some amazing new leaders on our executive team.
The product evolution has also been amazing – our offerings now include Account-Based Marketing (ABM) and Contact-Based Targeting Functionality, Sigstr ONE, Mac Desktop Agent, Campaign Scheduling, Threat Stack monitoring, and Who Clicked & Click Notifications. We ended the year having made some really extraordinary – and impactful – partnerships and friendships that brought about big time integrations with Marketo, HubSpot, Oracle, and Salesforce.
In addition to the press release and main highlights above, we also put together a timeline of 2017 company milestone and events. This provides an in-depth look into our culture, product advancement, and growth throughout the year.
February – Launched a new sigstr.com
March – Happy St. Patty’s Day
If you know anything about our team, you know that we love Sigstr green. Why is Sigstr green so important to us? Our founder, Dan Hanrahan, best describes that here. We also love anything and everything that allows us to celebrate as a team, and St. Patrick’s day is always a team favorite.
May – ABM & 1:1 Targeting product launch
With this product release, we brought marketers the first ever opportunity to tap into employee email to deliver 1:1 targeted content to specific accounts, industries, or regions. We brought ABM to your regular everyday email – and that was a really big moment for us. You can read all the hype around that release here.
April – Bryan Wade joins Sigstr as CEO
Like we said, we welcomed some serious rockstars to our team this year. This was a pivotal moment for not only our team, but for Dan as well. Dan’s post on Why I Hired My CEO explains why he felt it was time to bring in a CEO and how he know Bryan was the best man for the job.
July – Sigstr for Events product launch
July – The Sigstr team enjoys a day at the ballpark
One of our core values is to celebrate success. We celebrated all of the amazing product launches and growth in Q2 by taking the team out to the ball game!
August – Series A funding announcement
We were super pumped to announce our Series A this year, especially considering the heavy-hitters involved in the round. Led by Hyde Park Venture Partners, the round also included Battery Ventures, HubSpot, Grand Ventures and High Alpha Capital.
September – We moved into our new office
September – HubSpot’s INBOUND conference
We were so excited for our sponsorship at HubSpot Inbound this year considering our growing partnership with HubSpot with the introduction of our enhanced integration and their involvement with our Series A funding.
Bryan Wade, our CEO, was given the opportunity to host a session on The Power of Employee Email. We had a blast and can’t wait to get involved in an even bigger way in 2018.
November – Dreamforce
We had a blast sponsoring the Marketing Lodge this year at Dreamforce and can’t wait to be there again next year.
December – Accepted to ABM Leadership Alliance
We were selected to join the ABM Leadership Alliance, joining the likes of Demandbase, Optimizely, Engagio, LookbookHQ and others to further educate B2B marketers how to develop and deploy a successful ABM strategy.
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Wow! What a year it was for the Sigstr team as we continue to build momentum into 2018. On behalf of the entire Sigstr team, a heartfelt thanks to all of our customers, friends, and family for supporting us along the way. Cheers to ongoing growth in the coming year as we continue to lead the email signature movement. Sláinte!
Email is at the core of nonprofit communication. From partners to board members to dedicated donors, email is the main channel for providing relevant information. Statistics show that the average one-time gift from email fundraising is $57. Additionally, the percentage of donors motivated to give online by an email jumped 40% from 2015 to 2016, the latest in a continuing upward trend. However, these metrics are only the beginning. There is a part of nonprofit email that can supercharge efforts to drive awareness and donations, yet often goes vastly overlooked: the email signature.
CrowdRise, a crowdfunding platform that uses crowdsourcing to raise charitable donations, identified this space within their emails and quickly realized they could be taking better advantage of it. As a part of GoFundMe, Crowdrise has raised billions of dollars on their platforms and offers an unprecedented amount of social fundraising expertise. Trusted by some of the biggest nonprofits in the world, they felt compelled to pass their newfound knowledge of this simple yet effective outreach tactic on to their audience.
Take advantage of every email sent
Even beyond email blasts, email signatures are on every email your team members send – which represents thousands of engagement opportunities each year. For any nonprofit, maximizing these interactions with a group of people who are already accessible and primed for more information can have a tremendous impact. “That seemingly slight space at the tail-end of your email, if treated correctly, has the opportunity to be a real powerhouse for your nonprofit,” writes CrowdRise Marketing Director Gary Wohlfeill.
Using Sigstr’s email signature marketing platform, communication managers can both ensure brand consistency across their staff, and place a clickable call-to-action banner at the bottom of every single email. Specific fundraising campaigns or events can be highlighted by banners throughout the year. “By adding graphics, clickable moments, and a content forward approach, the once drab signature is now a tasteful billboard for any campaign or initiative that you want to push at that moment,” adds Wohlfeill. Additionally, the ease-of-use, customizability, and robust functionality make it the perfect addition to any non-profit’s engagement initiatives.
Research shows how important these digital touch points are for fundraising – on Giving Tuesday of this year, online giving jumped up by 28% from 2016 – and about 26% of donations were made from a mobile device. Having a compelling call-to-action at the end of an email that gives the recipient an easy option to click through and make a donation will yield impressive results. In fact, eye-tracking tests clearly reveal that an email with a branded emailsignature and a campaign banner attracts more attention than one without, with recipients focusing heavily on the call-to-action.
Show the right call-to-action to the right donors
The Sigstr platform allows your organization to assign different email signature banners across a variety of sender groups within your organization – if you want board members showing a different call-to-action than your volunteer coordinator, for example, you can ensure that will happen through Sigstr. Even more significant, perhaps, is the ability to target recipients of your emails. There are many players within the nonprofit sphere, and you wouldn’t necessarily serve the same CTA banner to all of them.
Sigstr’s account-based marketing functionality gives users the ability to target specific accounts or individual contacts with content tailored to each audience. You may want to show a different CTA banner to a first-time donor than you would a consistent donor. Additionally, you wouldn’t want to send the same call-to-action to someone on your volunteer list as you would to a corporate sponsor.
By leveraging these functionalities and keeping your organization top of mind in the most applicable way possible, you can turn your best supporters into Super Advocates, keeping them at the top of the “engagement ladder.”
Track conversions more effectively
Not only does Sigstr allow your nonprofit to take full advantage of an already owned outreach channel, it provides insights into tracking conversions so that you can understand what’s driving donations, ticket purchases, volunteer sign-ups, etc. Knowing which recipients have clicked a campaign can be a powerful metric for re-targeting efforts.
CrowdRise has already seen success using email signature marketing within their organization, and they’re eager to help their customers do the same. Learn more here about CrowdRise’s perspective on the importance of taking advantage of every email sent.
Sigstr is excited to announce our partnership and integration with Marketo this week. By integrating Sigstr’s email signature CTA banners with the Marketo Engagement Platform, every single email your employees send suddenly becomes a powerful, targeted datapoint that can inform your smart lists, lead scoring frameworks, nurture campaigns– you name it. It’s tough to overstate how powerful adding Sigstr to your existing marketing automation efforts can be, so we’ll just let Matthew McConaughey take this part of the blog post.
(that feeling when every email your employees send becomes a datapoint for your marketing automation tool)
“We are excited to have Sigstr join the Marketo Innovate partner ecosystem to support marketers’ ABM campaigns with enhanced content targeting capabilities,” said Shai Alfandary, vice president, global head of ISVs & LaunchPoint® ecosystem, Marketo. “Sigstr’s dynamic email signature campaigns open up a new method for customer acquisition through the thousands of emails employees are already sending each day. Joint customers have already seen effective engagement with customers from Sigstr signature banners in a short amount of time.”
What, exactly, can you do when you hook up Sigstr and Marketo? So glad you asked! We’ve colorfully illustrated a few of the thousands of amazing things you can do when you connect these two in Sigstr’s Guide to Marketing Automation. One of our favorite tactics is deploying progressive ABM campaigns: What’s better than intelligent account-based targeting with your email signature marketing? Aligning those signatures to every step of the target account’s customer journey. It’s easy to do when you have your email signature banners aligned with Marketo Smartlist memberships.
Beyond the horsepower Sigstr adds to your marketing automation platform, the entire Sigstr team is thankful for Marketo’s partnership. As Sigstr’s president and founder, Dan Hanrahan, recently said in an opinion piece in our local business journal, “We are building partnerships into every facet of our business strategy because we believe that being good partners and patrons in our ecosystem is a powerful and efficient growth driver – and because the right partners add tremendous value for marketers, our customer.”
Watch the video below for an overview on the Marketo + Sigstr integration.
To that end, look forward to more partnership announcements from Sigstr in 2018. Our customers are doing inspiring things with their MarTech stack and we want to make sure that Sigstr can be an integral part to all of them.
INDIANAPOLIS — Dec. 20, 2017 — Sigstr, a SaaS platform for employee email signature marketing, has joined the Marketo Innovate partner ecosystem, providing marketers with the ability to deploy dynamic email signature campaigns that integrate seamlessly with Marketo landing pages and lists, enhancing account-based marketing (ABM) efforts.
Integrating Sigstr with the Marketo Engagement Platform introduces thousands of data points to trigger campaigns. These data points intelligently interact with the rest of a marketer’s technology stack instantly. The integration makes it seamless to connect Sigstr email signature campaigns into Marketo workflows, smart lists, landing pages and email marketing templates through a new set of easy to use, “point and click” user interfaces.
“The Sigstr integration with the Marketo Engagement Platform has made it easier for G2 Crowd to target our audience with dynamic content through every stage of the funnel and customer lifecycle,” said Michele Aymold, Director of Marketing for G2 Crowd. “Through these dynamic email signature banners, we are increasing engagement with both new and existing audience groups.”
Furthermore, the integration enables marketers to track how and when contacts interact with Sigstr content, as well as automatically creates new contacts in Marketo whenever recipients click on Sigstr campaigns, creating a powerful new acquisition channel.
“We are excited to have Sigstr join the Marketo Innovate partner ecosystem to support marketers’ ABM campaigns with enhanced content targeting capabilities,” said Shai Alfandary, vice president, global head of ISVs & LaunchPoint® ecosystem, Marketo. “Sigstr’s dynamic email signature campaigns open up a new method for customer acquisition through the thousands of emails employees are already sending each day. Joint customers have already seen effective engagement with customers from Sigstr signature banners in a short amount of time.”
“Joining Marketo Innovate will enable us to better support marketers as they build their sales pipeline through targeted messaging and content,” said Sigstr’s Vice President of Marketing, Justin Keller. “Over the past year, we’ve built an impressive lineup of integrations that allow marketers using various technology stacks to harness the power of employee email personalization, and now we’re thrilled to be a part of Marketo’s robust partner ecosystem.”
Some of the most popular brands in the world today had interesting beginnings. Facebook was initially launched as “Face Mash”, a program that pitted Harvard student’s looks against one another after Mark Zuckerberg hacked the student directory. Avon originally sold books door-to-door, not beauty supplies. Oh, and Google was originally called “Backrub”.
We know the origin stories of countless brands just like these, but do we know where perhaps the most popular brand of all time during this Christmas season originated from? I’m talking about the big man himself – Santa Claus. As we enter December, the evidence around us is overwhelming; Santa Claus is no longer just a man, he’s a full-blown brand.
Santa’s History: A Long Journey of Many Different Looks
So how then, has this Santa Claus gotten a pass all these years? After all, the man asks us to take our children to the mall to sit on his lap and stick an envelope with our names and addresses on it into a completely fraudulent mailbox in the middle of downtown. Not to mention, he also lands eight tethered wild animals onto our roofs and kisses mommy under his beard so snowy white! I mean, what do we really know about this man?
For the sake of our children, and just in case that whole “naughty and nice” list is a real thing, I thought I would dive into the history of Jolly Old St. Nick to put all of our minds at ease. However, this is not just going to be any boring history lesson. Instead, I am going to journey into the evolution of Santa Claus the brand. That way, we can all see the genesis of the man all the way up to his current form splattered on everything from M&M commercials to the label on your neighbor’s seasonal basement microbrew.
We’ll have some fun along the way, and imagine what Santa’s email signature might have looked like through each phase. After all, the email signature is an extension (and possibly the most popular touchpoint) of any brand, right?
280 A.D: “Saint Nicholas: A Start-Up NFP”
Multiple sources agree that the origin of the Santa Claus we revere today traces back to a saint named Nicholas in an area near modern-day Turkey. The brand was founded on the ideal of philanthropy as Saint Nicholas was believed to be a man of substantial wealth who helped poor women.
What this stage of the brand lacked in visuals and design, it more than made up for in organic marketing through word-of-mouth referrals as Saint Nicholas was one of the most popular saints in all of Europe. I like to refer to this marketing as “Jay-Z and Beyonce’s Twins” marketing: I’ve never seen them, but I know I like them.
Early 1800’s: “Global Rebrand: Sinter Klaas”
The 1800’s contain the first vestiges of the Santa Claus brand going global and breaking out of Europe and into the United States. Under the name Sinter Klaas (a shortened version of the Dutch form of Saint Nicholas), the Santa Claus brand we know today gained in popularity, but lost its consistency. Authors and playwrights started including the character in their works, but they all seemed to have varying opinions on his appearance. Everything from a large man with a red waistcoat and large brimmed hat to a fit and healthy man in a three-pointed blue hat, yellow stockings, and finally something having to do with “Flunkish hose”. Not to mention in European tradition Sinter Klaas lives in Spain (not the North Pole) and travels to the homes of children on a steam boat (not a sleigh).
This version of the brand, while successful in its international growth, failed to remain consistent as it engaged with different audiences. Especially while expanding, a brand’s strength is vitally contingent upon its uniformity, lest we have Santa Claus walking around in yellow tights.
1822: “A Unifying Message”
In 1822, American writer and professor Clement Clarke Moore penned a poem entitled, “A Visit From St. Nicholas.” In this poem, Moore solidifies tons of swirling bits and pieces of the Santa Claus brand into the firm character of which all of our present-day illustrations are based. Everything from the eight reindeer to the bag full of toys (spoiler: no mention of Flunkish hose).
Think about when Apple’s longtime agency partner, TBWA/Chiat/Day Los Angeles, created the poem/ad “The Crazy Ones” (which ended up being the canon for Apple’s iconic “Think Different” brand). Similarly, Moore’s poem would serve as the dogma to which all future branding of Santa Claus would be portrayed. You might recognize Moore’s work under its more common title in today’s world: “The Night Before Christmas.”
1931: “Santa Goes Mainstream”
Although commonly credited, we now know (from the above) that Coca-Cola’s 1931 advertising campaign featuring our jolly friend was not the solidifying moment in the Santa Claus brand. However, it was still a pivotal moment in the brand’s timeline. The Coca-Cola company commissioned Michigan-born illustrator Haddon Sundblom to create the image for Santa Claus for their ads in hopes of boosting soda sales during the holidays. If you’ve ever been to the office of a once-trendy start-up that went public and has a visual timeline plastered in their entryway, this Coca-Cola moment would be the framed picture of the executive team ringing the NYSE bell.
Although both were obviously around, neither TV nor Radio were doing a great job of advertising on a national level. However, a brand like Coca-Cola could be found in every department store and diner from coast to coast. So effectively, the thousands of Coca-Cola billboards, magazines ads, and bottles featuring Moore’s Santa Clause imprinted the image in the minds of Americans nationwide.
Modern Day: “Santa is Americana”
Today, the Santa Claus brand rivals that of Disney, Amazon, and Nike. As we approach 2018, the love affair with Santa is only going to get deeper. After all, we ride in cars with strangers with Uber, we stay in strangers homes with Airbnb, and we swipe right on stranger’s photos in hopes of getting a date through Tinder — why then should we not continue to let a stranger into our living rooms using the chimney as an entryway?
The Santa Claus brand is the preeminent example of longevity and has now achieved the ultimate prize: Much like Kleenex, BandAid, or ChapStick, it is no longer even seen as just a brand, rather it is fully ingrained into American culture.
How Has Your Company’s Brand Evolved?
Has your company’s brand changed or evolved since day one? Much like Santa, it probably has, which requires coordination and time from your Marketing team to ensure all brand touch points are up-to-date and consistent. The employee email signature is included in this mix, and that’s where we come in. We make it easy to centrally control email signatures across your entire organization, so you know each employee email sent is beautifully branded and consistent with your new look.
See how Mapp Digital and Sandbox used Sigstr to do just this. And let us know your favorite Santa Claus email signature by tweeting @SigstrApp.
♫Duuh DUUH da da da DUUH Duuh da da da DUUH Duuh dun-dun-dun-duuuuh ♫… It’s back! With tomorrow’s premiere of Star Wars: The Last Jedi, people around the world are anxiously waiting to find out what happens next in the galaxy far, far away. A film series that has endured for more than 4 decades, Star Wars is nothing less than a pop culture phenomenon… and we at Sigstr are not immune.
Sigstr’s favorite way to pay homage to popular fictional characters is by creating their hypothetical email signatures, and Star Wars is no exception. Below, we’ve highlighted the best characters from the original trilogy and latest installment. Admittedly, we totally ignored the prequels, but can you blame us? Buckle up, and prepare to get one with your inner geek!
Leia Organa
Princess Leia, the cool chick from Alderaan, embodies class, character, and charisma. What’s more is that she does so without the typical princess frills. Instead of playing the damsel in distress, Princess Leia is a smart and feisty hero who just happens to have amazing hair. What’s more is that unlike her male cohorts, she’s never been tempted by the dark side. Rest in peace, Carrie Fisher, you were a true feminist icon.
Luke Skywalker
Luke Skywalker has come a long way since his days living on a moisture farm on Tatooine. He has blown up the Deathstar, trained with Jedi Master Yoda, become a Jedi Knight, discovered his twin sister, battled Darth Vader, and most recently, vanished into thin air. No one knows what his character will do next, but it is sure to be entertaining.
Han Solo
Han Solo, the original Ladies Man, has one of the most interesting arcs in the film series. He starts out cynical, arrogant, and self-centered, but turns into someone who is loyal, dedicated, and brave. The one thing that stays consistent is his spunky personality. Without Han Solo’s comedic one liners, Star Wars just wouldn’t be the same. It should be said, however, that if someone ever tells you that she loves you, you should never reply, “I know.”
Kylo Ren
Kylo Ren is easy to hate. The fact that he aspires to be as powerful (read: evil) as his grandfather, Darth Vader, is justification in itself, but he also had the audacity to kill the beloved Han Solo. He is cruel, spiteful, and unexpectedly, unpolished. He gives in to temper tantrums and emotional swings which is unlike any Star Wars’ antagonist we’ve seen before. His story is far from finished.
Rey
Getting abandoned on a desert planet would be enough to make anyone cynical, but not Rey. Despite growing up as a scavenger on Jakku, Rey possess a heart full of generosity and a willingness to help others in need. Relying on a strong moral compass, she believes in the importance of the Resistance and its fight against the First Order. But what about her family? Although we know she is gifted with the powers of the Force, much of Rey’s past remains a mystery.
Finn
Next to Rey’s serious disposition, Finn is a welcome relief. Who knew that a former Storm Trooper could be so much fun? Although plagued by his fear of the First Order, Finn comes to the rescue time and time again. A reluctant hero, Finn can’t seem to shake his conscience, which leads to bravery in even the most harrowing of circumstances.
BB-8
BB-8’s affection for his master, Poe Dameron, might just make him the cutest Robot in the Galaxy. On top of that, BB-8 is courageous and daring enough to put his existence on the line to aid his Resistance comrades. What’s not to love about the roly-poly robot?
Darth Vader
Darth Vader may be dead, but his legacy carries on. As one of the most complicated characters in the Star Wars franchise, it’s hard to know how to feel about Darth Vader – or should I say Anakin? To most, Darth Vader is the definition of evil. One could argue, however, that in the end, he saved the life of his son, Luke Skywalker. Good or evil? You decide.
Chewbacca
Han Solo’s trusty co-pilot, Chewbacca, is one of the most adored Star Wars characters. Despite the fact that nobody can understand a word he says, he sure does make a lasting impact. Perhaps it’s the hair? Known for his great strength, bravery and loyalty, Chewbacca never lets us down as Solo’s right-hand man – I mean Wookiee.
Yoda
Yoda’s odd way of speaking, short stature, and expressive ears definitely make him stand out from the crowd. After spending eight centuries training and tutoring generations of Jedi, he finally passed away at the ripe age of 900. As the wisest Jedi in the galaxy, it’s unfortunate that Yoda is no longer around to lend his guidance. Rey, Finn, and the rest of the Resistance could use the help.
R2D2 & C3PO
You can’t talk about R2D2 without mentioning C3PO, so why try? The robot pair are the definition of two peas in a pod. Always polite, C3PO frequently communicates on behalf of R2D2 who in return, saves the day time and time again. Together, they are often directly involved in pivotal moments of galactic history.
What are your predictions for tomorrow’s premiere? Will Luke help the Resistance in its fight against the First Order? Will we finally gain more knowledge of Rey’s past? Tell us what you think (@SigstrApp) and let us know which email signatures were your favorites. We’ll leave you today with the following question – what’s nerdier than a tech company blogging about Star Wars?
Salesforce’s recent “2017 State of Marketing” report states that 67% of “marketing leaders” currently use a marketing automation platform like Pardot, Marketo, Hubspot, Act-On, and several others. And a couple of years ago, Marketo found that 91% of the “most successful marketers” agree that marketing automation is “very important” to the overall success of their marketing.
These best-in-class marketing teams are leveraging these platforms to create lead scoring frameworks, attribution models, and brilliant workflows. Why? To segment and engage the right audiences at the right time. However, there’s one thing many of them have overlooked. Their most precisely segmented and engaged audience isn’t in their CRM or marketing automation database. It’s actually sitting in their employees’ corporate email inboxes.
If over two-thirds of the world’s best companies are using marketing automation, it’s safe to say that 100% of them are using regular old email. Personal email has off-the-charts open rates because the sender is trusted and the content of these messages is usually extremely relevant. And, from our recent research, we know that including a call-to-action in an employee’s email signature makes that email even more engaging and visually impactful.
Connecting employee email to your marketing automation platform
So why haven’t more marketers connected corporate emails to their marketing automation platforms? To be honest, there wasn’t a good way to make corporate email play well with marketing automation platforms (until now). Sigstr has the ability to insert relevant content and calls-to-action in every employee email. This means that every email your employees send is another datapoint for your marketing automation system. The average company with 100 employees sends over one million emails every year. And with Sigstr’s marketing automation integrations, you don’t miss out on all those chances to deliver content and drive conversions.
When your marketing automation system is able to dynamically work with your entire corporate email system through Sigstr, some pretty amazing things can happen. You can hyper-intelligently target email signature content based on smart list membership, automatically capture leads through signature banner clicks, and even build progressive ABM signature campaigns.
There are thousands of amazing things you can create when you connect Sigstr to your marketing automation platform. Download our new Marketing Automation Guidebook and get some clever ideas and instructions on how to do them all.
The number of email communications sent and received per day total over 269 billion, according to The Radicati Group Email Statistics Report. And on average, each of your employees will send or receive 122 emails per day. These are both eye-opening statistics, and make a case that no other marketing channels are as effective and efficient as employee email.
But how can you take advantage of this channel in a way that drives more conversions and distributes more content for your team? Now, with eye-movement technology and analysis, there is evidence that shows the most impactful part of these email communications. The email signature.
Exactly how does the employee email signature get noticed during these interactions? Do your contacts even pay attention to it? And if they do, is there a way to actually have it work in your favor?
To answer these questions and more, Sigstr teamed up with EyeQuant, an artificial intelligence platform that helps UX, CRO, and marketing teams make faster and better design decisions. EyeQuant’s design analysis technology instantly predicts how users are going to perceive any design. The predictions achieve between 85% and 90% accuracy when compared to large-scale human studies. Analysis includes a number of different tests, including the attention map, which shows which elements capture the most attention.
Test #1: Email with a non-branded email signature
First, we started with an email that includes a non-branded email signature. Standard in length, and with the typical information you would find in a traditional email signature. The recipient is naturally attracted to the sender of the email and body text. There is some acknowledgement of the email signature, but other than that, the reader pretty much ignores it.
Test #2: Email with a branded email signature and text call-to-action
So what happens when a few simple elements are added? Just by bolding the font and adding some color, the recipient not only notices the email signature, they also engage and spend the majority of their time in that area. However, they hardly acknowledge the text call-to-action.
Test #3: Email with a branded email signature and banner call-to-action
Including a call-to-action that is more eye-catching and visually appealing makes a big difference. Not only did the recipient engage with the email signature in the example below, the attention map shows that they also focused heavily on the headline of the webinar banner and “register here” call-to-action.
Email is still the workhorse of digital marketing. Your most important contacts are engaging with employee email communications every single day and paying attention to their email signature. This piece of digital real estate is an extension of your brand – so use it to your advantage to drive conversions and distribute relevant content.
Ready to see all of the tests and learn more best practices around email signature marketing? Sigstr and EyeQuant’s new ebook includes 10+ tests with analysis on how prospects and customers interact with everyday email. Not only that, the ebook also shares what’s most effective within an email signature banner design (dimensions, color, layout, etc.). Download the “Science of Email Signatures” ebook today to see more.
In this guest post, Cory Bray talks about how he sees email signature marketing fitting into the Sales Enablement Ecosystem, a framework that he and Hilmon Sorey outline in their book, The Sales Enablement Playbook.
Cory Bray is the Co-Founder and CEO of ClozeLoop, a platform for knowledge management for sales teams.
No matter where you’re at in a sales process, there’s probably something your prospect or customer is NOT doing that you wish they would. Maybe you want them to meet with you, buy your product, provide a referral, or something else. However, simply asking someone for what you need doesn’t usually work. They want to know what’s in it for them.
Is there a way to focus on the needs of your prospect or customer while driving towards your goals at the same time? Absolutely, and that’s where I see email signature marketing fitting into the Sales Enablement Ecosystem.
Prospective Customers: Add Value While Hitting Quota
The other day I received the following email from a software vendor:
They had sent a different email before, but it wasn’t included below this one. So, I had to go back and see what they were actually talking about. As a result, they wanted me to see a demo of their product, which I had already used as part of their free trial.
It’s widely acknowledged that vendors should always focus on adding value to prospects. However, asking someone to see a demo isn’t necessarily adding value. But if a salesperson doesn’t do enough demos, they won’t hit their goals and could lose their job. Wow – what’s someone to do? What about this approach:
In the above example, the salesperson understands my buyer persona, delivers value, and is able to promote what they want to talk about with their email signature. Pretty slick if you ask me. All else equal, this approach will likely destroy the alternative of just pushing for what the sales rep wants to accomplish.
New Customers
It really grinds my gears that “sales enablement” is often exclusively focused on new-logo sales reps. Think about the following attributes of your new customers:
They Love You: They just made a commitment to your company and you’re in the honeymoon phase. If there’s ever a time to ask for a referral, it’s now.
They’re Dangerous: If end-users are not trained on your product, the relationship could rapidly sour. Ensure that people know how to use what they bought and that they’re setup for success, otherwise buyer’s remorse will quickly follow.
They’re Future Prospects: You know how people change jobs a lot? Well, anyone who leaves your customer’s company will immediately become a prospect at their new company (if they love your product).
Creative email signatures that ask for referrals and encourage end-user training can help ensure the success of current customers. Not only that, it can also develop your future sales pipeline.
Established Customers
There are three types of established customers, and using custom email signatures can keep them moving in the right direction. Think about the following:
Champions: These customers love you and are your best source of referrals. You need them engaged with your market, and at a minimum, they should all attend your user conference.
Neutral Customers: How do you make them champions? Maybe you can promote the use of your product through tips, webinars, and other educational events. Remember that your “customers” are always hiring new employees who need to be trained on your product.
At-Risk Customers: Churn is bad for all businesses, but it can be a death warrant for a venture-backed company with high-growth expectations. You not only lose the revenue from the churned customer, but they also poison your name in the market, affecting new-logo business as well.
Again, remember that the Sales Enablement Ecosystem should extend across an entire organization and not just the new-logo sales team.
Deliver at Scale
How do you create a standardized set of email signatures that act as specific calls-to-action depending on the specific goal of the recipient? Well, that’s where email signature software fits into the ecosystem. They keep sales teams (and the whole organization) educated on the most up-to-date content. That way, every team member can easily become an ambassador for the company. Staying updated with the newest and most relevant content is a critical part of the Sales Enablement Ecosystem.
G2 Crowd is changing the way decisions are made. In the past, selecting new software, technologies, or services for your business has been difficult, sometimes risky, and inherently biased. G2 Crowd helps solve this problem. Their real-time and unbiased reviews help you and your organization objectively assess what is best for you.
Using G2 Crowd reviews to help progress your pipeline
On the flip side, as a B2B organization, a large collection of quality reviews from your customers can help your sales and marketing team fill the pipeline and close deals. For example, let’s say you’re currently targeting a hot prospect that is a mid-sized healthcare software company. The sales process is moving right along, and you’re ready to move the prospect to the next stage with a proposal and terms. A review or testimonial from a customer with a similar profile could be the perfect resource to use to progress the deal.
G2 Crowd makes it easy to do just that. The Account Executive can send his/her prospect a link to a review authored by another mid-sized healthcare organization. Now, the prospect has the ability to see firsthand how your technology or service has helped another organization with a similar profile. Let your happy customers do the selling for you!
In order for this to happen, the first step is to of course make sure your customers are happy and your technology or service is bringing value to their business. The second step is to ask (and encourage) your customers to submit a G2 Crowd review/rating about their experience with your organization.
Popular ways to get more customer reviews on G2 Crowd
There are many ways to ask your customers for a review. Here are a few we recommend:
Casually mention it at the end of customer “check up” calls or after a successful implementation
Send an email out of your marketing automation platform to a shortlist of your happiest customers
Share on social (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook)
Have it ready at your booth during a conference or trade show in case any of your current customers stop by (an in-person ask is sometimes the most effective!)
Add email signature marketing to the mix
In addition to the ideas listed above, teams are also taking advantage of employee email (think Gmail or Outlook) to rack up reviews. Email signature software (now officially a category on G2 Crowd!), like Sigstr, gives you the ability to include specific campaigns (clickable call-to-action banners located under the employee’s email signature) based on the sender or recipient. Think of it as smart CTAs for your employees’ email signatures.
With this approach, there are a few different ways to get the “Leave us a review on G2 Crowd!” call-to-action in front of your customers:
1. Sender-based campaign
By organizing all of your employees into groups or teams, you can assign specific email signature campaigns to each group and promote different content simultaneously. For example, your customer success team can promote G2 Crowd reviews while your sales team promotes an upcoming webinar. Deliver content that is most relevant to the audience your employees are emailing everyday!
2. Targeted list campaign
In addition to sender-based targeting, you can also activate targeted content based on the recipient. For example, you can pair your “master customer” list with an email signature campaign that asks for a customer review. Email signature software can now recognize the email domain your employees are emailing and serve the assigned call-to-action accordingly. Bonus: easily sync your lists from Marketo, Salesforce, or HubSpot right in Sigstr.
Here’s a G2 Crowd campaign banner we use in our own email signatures.
Other email signature marketing examples
Act-On
Lessonly
Sprout Social
G2 Crowd
G2 Crowd is a powerful platform for collecting and showcasing customer reviews. Use every employee email sent as an opportunity to encourage customers to leave a review and, on the flip side, showcase these reviews with your biggest prospects. Using G2 Crowd + Sigstr together can lead to more reviews and more conversions!
Let’s say you printed out every single email that is sent in a day (on average). And, to keep things simple, let’s say it was on a regular 8.5 by 11 inch piece of paper. Sure, some emails might be longer than that and some shorter, but let’s assume they average out.
Now, take those pieces of paper and tape them end-to-end (subtle nod to our Stranger Things 2 post last week!) on their short sides. That is one long chain of paper. Long enough to reach Mars (and then some)…
274 billion emails are sent every day. Mars is 33.9 million miles away – about 179 billion feet away. So, if my math checks out, that means it would take 195 billion sheets of paper to get there. You could travel to Mars AND 40% of the way back home.
*Side note: We will send a free Sigstr t-shirt to anyone who does the math for number of daily emails sent equal to beach size (in grains of sand)
Are you taking advantage of every employee email sent?
This whole “distance to Mars with paper” thing is a little abstract though. So, to give you an idea of the crazy amount of email being sent every day, we made this handy infographic that compares email sends to other common daily online interactions. Spoiler alert: Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Spotify combined can’t touch the sheer volume of email.
How big is email at your company? Our general rule of thumb is that the average employee sends about 10,000 emails every year. If your company has 100 employees, that’s 1 million emails annually. If you’re a modern company with a large sales and marketing staff – that number jumps dramatically as they’re interacting with your clients, prospects, and partners way more frequently via email. Just imagine how many clicks and impressions you’re missing out on by not using the email signature area as a call-to-action.
The idea of marketers helping other marketers is at the core of Mapp Digital, one of the largest independent digital marketing companies in the world. With more than 450 employees across 12 countries, the international company with headquarters in San Diego focuses on helping brands stand out and reach their potential.
Mapp Digital is the result of the 2016 merging of two digital marketing powerhouses. As a new company, the marketing team had a lot to accomplish, including the promotion of their new website, their new blog, and the new Mapp brand as a whole.
Frustrated by lack of consistency across employee email and looking for ways to push their brand, Mapp’s marketing team implemented an email marketing strategy centered around Sigstr. A custom uniform email signature template created brand consistency among employees and Sigstr campaign banners introduced a new channel for marketing promotion.
The first email signature campaign promoted a marketing study on e-commerce in different regions. Veronika Feriancek, Mapp’s Digital Marketing Manager, took advantage of Sigstr Groups and assigned the appropriate campaign, in the appropriate language, to employees in each region.
Seeing the ways that Sigstr has already allowed Mapp to navigate the various difficulties and caveats of promoting content across different regions has helped them launch many other email signature campaigns. These clickable call-to-action banners help promote their webinars, regional events, large conferences, and even company awards.
Check out Mapp Digital’s full story by downloading the case study or watching the “Signature Stories” customer interview.
It’s finally here! Eleven, Mike, Lucas, Dustin, Joyce, and even Steve. The whole gang is back for season three of Stranger Things and we could not be more excited.
In honor of this week’s big premiere, we asked ourselves the age-old question, “What if Stranger Things characters had email signatures?” Here’s what we came up with…
Steve Harrington
Initially, Steve was seen as the typical popular high school troublemaker who was friends with fellow bullies Tommy and Carol. But, Steve had a change of heart throughout season one, and proved that he truly cares for Nancy. He even came to his girlfriend’s rescue during a showdown with The Monster at the Byers house (Jonathan was there too). Spiked bat in hand, Steve fought off The Monster with a few home run swings.
He uses everyday email as an opportunity to promote his new “Protect Your Girlfriend From The Monster” starter kit, which includes a spiked bat, bear trap, and lighter.
Nancy Wheeler
Nancy is the older sister of Mike and best friend to Barb. Before teaming up with Jonathan to look for Will and fight off The Monster, she was distracted by her new boyfriend, Steve, and his rambunctious pool parties. That’s where she last saw Barb, who was taken by The Monster while sitting alone at Steve’s pool.
Nancy is still shaken up by her best friend’s disappearance and passing. But, we’ll never forget Barb, as Nancy has made it a point to honor her with a memorial candlelight service (#RIPbarb).
Lucas Sinclair
Lucas is one of the best friends of Mike, Dustin, and Will. When Eleven showed up, Lucas was the most skeptical, and even fought with Mike about it until Eleven used her powers to push him away. That did not help things, and a rift grew between Lucas and the other boys.
However, they all bonded together in the end as Lucas warned his friends about the “bad men” while camping out in a tree by Hawkins National Laboratory with his binoculars. With some help from Eleven, they all pedaled their way to safety and Lucas, El, and Mike got back on good terms.
Dustin Henderson
Dustin joined the boys’ friend group after moving to Hawkins in 4th grade. Throughout season one, he often resolved conflicts within the group (especially between Mike and Lucas) and always delivered the best quotes.
During a showdown with bullies Troy and James, Dustin became the main spokesperson for Eleven’s powers, and warned the bullies by saying, “Our friend has superpowers, and she squeezed your tiny bladder with her mind!” After El scared them away, he went on to say, “You better run! She’s our friend and she’s crazy!”
Joyce Byers
Poor Joyce. Everyone thinks she’s crazy, but all she wants to do is find her son. Her other son, Jonathan, and Police Chief Hopper end up helping her along the way. However, it took some time for both to be convinced that she wasn’t delusional about telephones and christmas lights.
Will communicates with Joyce through circuited phone calls, lights, and a painted alphabet on the wall. Now, she wants to teach others how to do the same in this upcoming workshop. She’s using her email signature to get the word out and is already up to 100 registrations (even Donald registered).
Will Byers
On the night of November 6th, 1983, Will was abducted by The Monster and brought into an alternate dimension eventually named the “Upside Down.” As family and friends desperately searched for Will, he ran and hid from The Monster as he creatively communicated with Joyce through electrical devices.
He was eventually rescued by his mother and Chief Hopper and returned home, but his time in the Upside Down changed him. Now he’s opening up about it in his new documentary, “How I Survived the Upside Down.”
Mike Wheeler
Mike was a prominent character in season one as he lead his best friends in the search of Will’s disappearance. He also formed a strong relationship with Eleven, providing her food (waffles) and shelter (a pillow fort in his basement). Mike is loyal to his friends and stood up to the bullies multiple times to defend them.
He also lead the Dungeons and Dragons Campaigns, serving as the host and Dungeon Master. How do you think the boys knew when and where to be for the November 6th Campaign? Mike’s email signature for the win…
Eleven
Born with crazy psychokinetic abilities, Eleven was raised in Hawkins National Laboratory and eventually escaped through a drain pipe. Found by Mike, Lucas, and Dustin, she was brought into their friend group as she helped them search for Will and defeat The Monster.
She liked Mike a lot, so it was hard to say goodbye. But maybe they will be reunited in season two? Until then, she’s thriving in the woods and even started a bulk order waffle ecommerce business.
What are your predictions for season two? Will there be new characters (and new email signatures) to write about? Tell us what you think (@SigstrApp) and let us know which email signatures were your favorites. Now, go turn on Netflix and get ready for season two!
And check out a few of our other favorite posts the from “If [ ] Had Email Signatures” series:
Last week, Sigstr CEO Bryan Wade had the opportunity to lead a breakout session at #INBOUND17 in front of an awesome group of savvy marketers. And speaking of #INBOUND17 – what a week it was in Boston! Four days jam packed with content, tips, and tactics for inbound marketers to take home and apply to their strategies. This session (in addition to the week’s lineup of other incredible presentations) aimed to do the same by educating the audience on the power of employee email.
Did you know an average employee sends 10,000 emails a year to the people you care about most? All of these emails are opportunities for inbound marketers to distribute relevant content and drive conversions. Email is still the workhorse of digital marketing – and there are no other marketing channels that are as effective and efficient as employee email.
Bryan spoke to this point during the breakout session. He also showed the crowd how to put this owned channel to work for their inbound marketing strategies. It led to some great dialogue from the audience, as well as some examples and customer use cases.
For those of you who missed it, we wanted to make sure we had you covered! Here are four main takeaways from last week’s INBOUND17 presentation:
1. Marketers must take control of the employee email signature
As mentioned earlier, employee email is becoming an owned channel marketers can take advantage of – but how? Through the employee email signature.
Email signature marketing is a secret weapon for inbound marketers because it allows them to tailor content delivery on a human-to-human level. This boils down to two elements:
A) Signature
Let’s face it, each and every email your employees send out becomes an extension of your brand. This can lead to a positive or not so positive brand impression with your most important contacts, customers, and prospects. It’s important for the marketer to standardize this piece of real estate to ensure company-wide brand consistency. Now, marketing and brand teams have the ability to centrally control the format of the company’s email signature across the entire organization.
B) Campaign banner
Inbound marketers are also now including clickable call-to-action banners (located underneath the email signature) as a way to deliver 1:1 targeted content. These campaign banners can dynamically update based on the sender (employee groups or teams) or the recipient (specific accounts, industries, or regions).
2. Employee email can help drive more registrations for your events and webinars
We all know how much time, effort, and resources marketers pour into first-party events, regional dinners, and webinars. Why not use employee email to get the right people there?
A big bold CTA in each email sent can lead to additional impressions and clicks that will help drive more registrations, increase live stream attendance, and improve post-event follow up.
Want to see it for yourself? Check out how Terminusand Canvas are using it today for their event and webinar strategies.
3. Maximize the HubSpot platform with email signature marketing
Marketers can now easily connect their HubSpot account to Sigstr with static or smart lists, email templates, contact timelines, landing pages, and workflows. For example, pair your “INBOUND17 booth visitors” list with an email signature CTA that reads “Thanks for stopping by our booth! Learn more by scheduling a demo.” That way, when any of your employees send an email to a contact included in that list, you will know which CTA they will see in the email.
In addition to 1:1 targeting, you can also track conversions sourced from your employees’ email signatures in the landing page or sources report. This includes overall traffic, new contacts gained, and total number of customers won. For example, when people click on our newsletter campaign banner, it leads them to a HubSpot landing page and sign-up form. We can then see how many contacts have signed up for our newsletter from our employees’ email signatures.
4. This is a natural channel for account-based marketing
Need a quick and easy to get your team started with account-based marketing? Consider employee email. If you think about it, it’s the perfect channel to get the right content in front of the right people.
Assign email signature campaigns to specific contacts or accounts so they see relevant content that adds value to the relationship. Have a case study related to a specific vertical or use case? Include it in all emails sent to prospects with a similar profile. Personalized and relevant content leads to great things for sales and marketing teams!
Email is still a huge part of our lives. And every employee email sent presents an opportunity for true, authentic marketing on a 1:1 level. See how HubSpot is helping deliver on this mission or schedule a demo to learn more.
Thanks to the HubSpot team and all attendees for making this year’s #INBOUND17 event so awesome – see you all next year!
Email signature marketing platform announces all new HubSpot integration and Connect partnership
INDIANAPOLIS — September 19, 2017 — Sigstr, a cloud platform for employee email personalization, announced today the expansion of its existing HubSpot integration that includes even more functionality and features. The company is also now a certified HubSpot Connect partner.
For the first time ever, marketers can integrate 1:1 email signatures in their inbound marketing workflows. The average employee will send over 10,000 emails a year through Gmail or Outlook. The new productized integration delivers dynamic content targeted to each email recipient in their inbox. HubSpot customers can now seamlessly connect Sigstr to HubSpot workflows, smart lists, landing pages and email marketing templates through a new set of easy to use, point and click user interfaces.
“Using the Sigstr and HubSpot integration, we’ve been able to increase the impact of our inbound marketing strategy by making sure the right eyes are on the right content at the right time,” said Label Insight, Inc. Marketing Manager Stephanie Casstevens. “The dynamic aspect of Sigstr’s email signature campaigns makes targeting our existing HubSpot lists with the right campaigns nearly hands-off, while still delivering impressive engagement.”
In addition to the expanded integration, HubSpot participated in Sigstr’s $5 million Series A funding round, announced last month as their third investment, and welcomed Sigstr as a HubSpot Connect Partner.
“We couldn’t be more excited by the relationship we’ve built with HubSpot, including the new integration and their investment in our recent Series A round,” said Sigstr CEO Bryan Wade. “HubSpot and Sigstr’s partnership helps marketers better engage with their customers and accelerate their sales pipeline.”
Wade will join HubSpot at INBOUND 2017 for a breakout session on Wednesday, September 27 at 3:30 p.m. The session will focus on why it is critical for teams to personalize every email sent and turn them into impactful, revenue-driving marketing opportunities.
For more information on Sigstr and its HubSpot partnership, watch the recent webinar on the updated integration or stop by booth S5 at INBOUND.
Last week, we were able to catch up with one of our amazing customers, Stephanie Casstevens, and walk through how she uses Sigstr and HubSpot together to fuel inbound marketing success at Label Insight. We had a blast. Stephanie rocks, and our team loves her. We especially love hearing how she has been able to unlock this new owned marketing channel to drive conversions. Stephanie is very passionate about HubSpot and the impact it has had on her marketing strategy. This is great, because we are also very passionate about HubSpot. You can read a little more about why here.
We conglomerated 45 minutes of information into these three takeaways:
1. Inbound marketers care a whole heck of a lot about analytics
Inbound marketers track everything. They want to know every single statistic about every campaign they’re running to see how it delivers value on overall company goals. The Sigstr + HubSpot integration enables your team to have further visibility into how employee email impacts inbound marketing initiatives. This includes driving more traffic to your website and increasing exposure to a specific piece of content. It could even be generating more leads for a Marketing campaign. According to HubSpot’s State of Inbound Report, 63% of marketers say generating more traffic and leads is their top challenge. Furthermore, Ascend2 found that 54% of marketers say increasing engagement is their top email marketing priority. This integration helps you kill two birds with one stone.
2. Personalized and relevant content drives conversions
There is power and value in knowing that the personalized content your team is creating is getting into the hands of the right people. If you are using HubSpot, you have all of the data you need to understand your prospects and customers. You have visibility into how they are engaging with your brand and where they stand in your sales pipeline. Hopefully, you have also invested time into creating smart lists. HubSpot smart lists are dynamic lists that allow you and your team to segment contacts based on properties that change frequently over time. If you want to set up a smart list but don’t know how, HubSpot has this awesome tutorial.
The Sigstr + HubSpot integrations allows you to deliver personalized content to your specific contacts and accounts through employee email. You can even see how prospects or customers interact with your email signature banners in the contact timeline view. If you want to learn more about this new integration and how it could be impactful for you, feel free to utilize the chat function (little pop-up on your right) and send Max a message!
3. Maximize your marketing automation investment by connecting to other platforms
Inbound marketers are passionate about their marketing automation of choice. Why? Because it makes their life easier! It also helps them drive conversions and pipeline for their sales team. Marketing automation platforms, like HubSpot, become even more powerful when marketers connect them to other platforms and tools included in their marketing tech stack. Multiple tools working together towards the same goal will reach that goal much more efficiently and quickly vs. one tool working alone. In last week’s webinar, Stephanie spoke to this point when showing attendees just how easy it is to connect email signature marketing to her HubSpot account. Here’s an overview on how you can use the Sigstr and HubSpot platforms together.
“Using the Sigstr and HubSpot integration, we’ve been able to increase the impact of our inbound marketing strategy by making sure the right eyes are on the right content at the right time,” Stephanie explains. “The dynamic aspect of Sigstr’s email signature campaigns makes targeting our existing HubSpot lists with the right campaigns nearly hands-off, while still delivering impressive engagement.”
If you’d like to learn more about this new level of our integration, stop by and see us (booth S5) at #INBOUND17 next week!
Hyde Park Venture Partners and Battery Ventures invest to fuel hiring, product innovation and record sales growth
INDIANAPOLIS — August, 22 2017 — Sigstr, a cloud platform for employee email personalization, announced today it has secured $5 million in Series A funding. The round, which will be used to fuel product innovation and hiring, was led by Hyde Park Venture Partners and included participation from Battery Ventures, HubSpot, Grand Ventures and High Alpha Capital.
Sigstr customers include notable brands, such as Angie’s List, California Closets, Terminus and United Way, that use Sigstr to unlock their employee email as a new owned marketing channel. Earlier this year, Sigstr signed its 300th customer, surpassed 500 million signature impressions and grew its team to over 30 employees.
“The future of marketing is authenticity. Our vision is to unleash the power of your employees and to help marketers leverage employees to market from the inside out,” said Sigstr CEO Bryan Wade. “We’re thrilled with our recent product innovations and are eager to continue to expand our product roadmap into areas that transcend the signature.”
The Series A funding will allow Sigstr to grow its product, sales and marketing teams, as well as further develop its offerings to meet the evolving needs of marketers across a range of industries.
“Sigstr is creating a new category in marketing. Employee email is the last marketing channel that has gone untapped. Your work email is the first thing you look at when you wake up in the morning and the last thing you check before you go to bed,” said Tim Kopp, partner at Hyde Park Venture Partners. “Everyday there are billions of interactions between employees and their customers, and Sigstr helps marketers take advantage of this channel to drive real marketing ROI.”
“HubSpot customers have seen impressive returns when using HubSpot and Sigstr together,” said Brad Coffey, Chief Strategy Officer at HubSpot. “Email signature marketing is such a natural way to deliver key content to customers and prospects. We’re excited to take this next step in our partnership and help fuel Sigstr’s continued growth.”
In addition to this new round of funding, Sigstr recently launched its Sigstr for Events package, which allows event marketers to tap into employee email to drive event registrations, increase event attendance and involve speakers and sponsors to drive event awareness. The company also recently introduced its Account-Based Marketing (ABM) functionality, which allows users to target specific accounts, industries and regions with content tailored to each audience, while communicating with individual prospects or customer accounts as markets of one.
For more information or to schedule a demo, visit Sigstr.com.
We have some pretty extraordinary customers. Some of these extraordinary customers put on some pretty extraordinary conferences and events. Sigstr helps promote these events with dynamic email signature banners, but our team also attends these events to learn from other smart marketers. This was the case with the Act-On I <3 Marketing Roadshow in New York City this week.
On Tuesday, August 8th in the epicenter of Time Square, we were fortunate enough to join Act-On and a group of amazing sponsors to host a group of 125+ of Act-On’s customers. The day kicked off with sessions training attendees on how to best utilize Act-On’s marketing automation platform, followed by sessions focusing on the latest tools, trends, and best practices shaping the marketing world today. There were sessions hosted by thought leaders on the Power of Personalization and how it has impacted the way marketers do their jobs. In between these thought-provoking sessions, we were able to meet and network with dozens of likeminded marketers that were looking to learn.
It was a fantastic day that closed with a lovely cocktail reception featuring an unbelievably talented violinist that performed covers of some of today’s most popular songs.
We want to thank Act-On Software for the opportunity to attend and learn from their customers. Are you interested in the I Heart Marketing Roadshow? Let us know and we will connect you with Act-On’s marketing team. They have an event coming up in October in London!
Picture this: A top prospect opens your latest email, clicks on the Sigstr campaign in your email signature, gets taken to a landing page, and…what happens next? The answer to that question determines the success of your entire email signature marketing strategy. Not only that, it determines the success of every marketing initiative you manage that has a source (Adwords, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) and corresponding landing page.
Whether you’re using a landing page to generate leads, drive event registrations, or collect data, ensuring a high conversion rate is key. All of us at Sigstr know that a email signature campaign is only as effective as the landing page it directs to. As such, we feel it is our duty to ensure your landing pages are the best they can be. That’s why we’ve taken it upon ourselves to analyze the 5 key elements of an effective landing page.
Headline
The landing page headline is the first thing a visitor sees after he or she clicks on a Sigstr campaign, Facebook ad, etc. As such, it must be easy to read, straightforward, and intriguing. Once a visitor arrives to your landing page, it’s your headline’s job to hold the visitor’s attention and reassure him or her that they’ve come to the right place. Otherwise, the person might leave before completing the task at hand, also known as the conversion goal.
To establish continuity, you should also ensure that your landing page headline closely matches the headline in your source campaign (#1 below). The same can be said for your call-to-action (#2 below). If your Sigstr campaign promotes an upcoming conference or webinar, your landing page headline should do the same.
Page Design
If the headline is what holds a visitor’s attention, it’s the page design that focuses the visitor on the action you want he or she to take. Every design element on an effective landing page should be aligned to a conversion goal. For that reason, it is important to use minimal patterns, contrasting colors, and a prominently placed form field. Remember to be clear and concise. Clarity is often lost when marketers try to make the landing page design ultra cool or edgy.
When designing your landing page, another thing to remember is that you need to establish trust. How well does the initial above-the-fold landing page experience deliver on the promise made in the Sigstr campaign, Linkedin ad, etc.? The color palette, patterns, fonts, and general vibe of the landing page need to align to the design of the source campaign. You don’t want to surprise the visitor or make him or her think they’ve come to the wrong place. On the contrary, if the campaign and landing page compliment each other, the visitor is much more likely to stick around. Here’s a great example from our friends at Return Path.
Form Fill
There are a number of strategies you can use with a form fill. Both short and long forms have been shown to perform quite well. The method you choose depends on whether you want to generate a high number of low quality form submissions, or a smaller number of higher quality submissions. Whichever strategy you choose, consider leaving form boxes unchecked. Otherwise, you’ll risk adding a lot of low quality subscribers to your contact base which can hurt your business.
When creating a form fill, make sure every action you request of your audience leads naturally to the next step. This is especially relevant in multi-step form fills which visitors have a tendency to abandon mid-way through. If you’re implementing a multi-step form fill, consider adding a status bar so that visitors have a general idea of the form length.
Supporting Content
With supporting content, it’s important to make sure your most important information comes first and clearly presents the value you’re offering. A source campaign, like Sigstr, can only offer a limited amount of information in the banner/ad. That means that the corresponding landing page has to make up for missing context. It should compliment the copy from your ad, but also expand upon it and continue to persuade.
And speaking of persuasion, all supporting content should align to your conversion goal. You may have 10-20 goals for your homepage, but an effective landing page aligns to a single action. If you’re trying to get a prospect to download an ebook, every piece of content on your landing page should be steering the visitor toward the download.
For that reason, it may be a good idea to remove outside links and social share buttons. They divert visitors from accomplishing the main goal. The same thing can be said for testimonials, sub-headers, and bullets. They can be great tools to establish trust and credibility, but if they do not aid in persuasion or conversion, they are not appropriate.
The last thing to consider with supporting content is SEO. The added benefit of supporting content is that it gives the page an SEO boost because search engines have more content to crawl. Use the same SEO best practices you would apply to your company blog or website to your landing pages.
Imagery
It’s probably not surprising to hear that the images you use on a landing page have a huge impact on your conversion rate. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words. With that said, don’t just use images that you know garner an emotional response (i.e. cute babies). Images on an effective landing page align to the company’s brand, campaign and conversion goal. You have to strike a perfect balance between eye catching and distracting. If images are too bold then they could pull attention away from your main call-to-action which is the last thing you want. Instead, choose images that complement or even emphasize your main objective.
Another thing to keep in mind is that including people in your images can be a powerful influencer. As human beings, we have a tendency to look at faces. Not only that, if the people in an image are looking in a specific direction, our eyes have a tendency to follow. Use this kind of directional cue to your advantage when choosing a landing page image and direct your visitors attention to your call-to-action.
When creating an effective landing page, it all comes down to outcome optimization. A great source campaign strategy means nothing if your landing page does not deliver. Use these 5 key elements to your advantage and watch conversion rates go through the roof. Our team is here to help you be successful in all of your marketing endeavors!
Here at Sigstr, we’re working hard everyday to become leaders in the next frontier of email marketing: employee email. We’re excited about our recent product innovations as we continue to expand our product roadmap into areas that transcend the signature.
See below for more information on each new update. As always, we’re here to help answer any questions about the platform or talk through your email signature marketing strategy. Reach out and let us know or request a demo.
Contact Targeting
Sigstr’s ABM functionality now supports targeting and tracking to individual recipients! Customers now have the power to target email signature marketing campaigns directly to individual contacts or entire email domains.
Recipient Management
For any marketer looking to incorporate email signature marketing into their ABM strategy, this new feature now makes it easier than ever. Sigstr’s new Recipient tab allows customers to manage their contact and account lists in an effective way so personalized content can be shared with specific audiences. Contacts can be imported from Salesforce, Marketo, HubSpot, and more!
SalesLoft Cadence ABM
Using SalesLoft and Sigstr together can be a powerful combination! Email signature marketing campaigns being used in SalesLoft now include full ABM contact and account targeting, so each Cadence email sent will serve content that is most relevant to the recipient.
Campaign Scheduling
Sigstr customers now have the ability to set start and stop dates for time sensitive campaigns. The functionality is particularly useful for event marketers who have specific content to promote before an event, during, and after. The three examples below show how we used this feature for our last webinar.
Cloud Signature Deployment
Power multi-recipient personalization and analytics, from any email client, on any device. No device installs required!
Coming Soon
CRM Integrations Package
One package that lets you connect Sigstr to your Salesforce, Marketo, or HubSpot accounts. You can automatically sync campaigns, reports, contacts, and smart lists with your Sigstr ABM campaigns. Best of all, real-time analytics will be pushed back to your CRM to track engagement.
Sigstr Promotional Installers
Include your branded Sigstr signatures in the promotional mail platform of your choice. Templates will be available for Salesforce, Pardot, Marketo, SalesLoft Cadence, Outreach.io, and more!
Employee Preference Center
Give your employees a secure, frictionless way to update their email signature data in Sigstr. Launch invites from Sigstr to empower employee updates – no login required.
Email signature marketing software helps event marketers drive more registrations, increase live stream attendance and improve post-event follow up
INDIANAPOLIS — July 11, 2017 — Sigstr, a cloud platform for employee email personalization, announced today the launch of its new Sigstr for Events package. With the new package, event marketers can now tap into employee email to drive event registrations, increase event attendance and involve speakers and sponsors to drive event awareness.
Using Sigstr for Events, customers can schedule an email signature campaign aligned to pre-event, during-event and post-event call to actions. When users email recipients who have registered for an event, they see different content than those who have not registered. The Sigstr platform dynamically serves personalized content before, during and after to drive event engagement.
“Earlier this year, #FlipMyFunnel and SalesHacker partnered up and hosted Revenue Summit in San Francisco. We wanted to get the word out about this partnership and exciting new event, so we partnered with Sigstr to help us do just that,” said Terminus CMO Sangram Vajre. “Sigstr Viral was the perfect way to get all of our sponsors and customers involved. They could quickly and easily inject our registration CTA into all of their email signatures, which resulted in tens of thousands of impressions.”
Sigstr for Events also enables event marketers to ‘go viral’ by providing speakers, sponsors and exhibitors branded content to place into their email signatures. The viral feature helps expand event promotion through leveraging each stakeholder’s individual network to drive more attendance and engagement for the event.
“Employee email is a natural marketing channel for brands who put on first-party events, webinars and seminars. The Sigstr platform knows the sender, recipient and timing of your event. Because of that, we are able to target individuals based on their involvement with the event, in time with the specific timeline,” said Sigstr CEO Bryan Wade. “Delivering personalized content accelerates the sales pipeline and engages your most important customers.”
Sigstr for Events is available through its Target plan, which also includes recipient-level reporting and time-based analytics.
Wait for it…a synonym roll. *Ba-dum-tshh* I know, I know, but come on! Everyone loves a good dad joke! Plus, it is a dad’s job to embarrass his children and this weekend is all about celebrating good ol’, embarrassing dad.
And speaking of dads, there are going to be a couple of new dads in the Sigstr family. My husband and I are expecting our first child in August and my colleague, Drew Kelley, and his wife are expecting their first in December. With that being said, I thought now would be the perfect time to contribute to this blog series and whip up an email signature style or two (or six) that represent our favorite TV dads.
Phil Dunphy
Let’s be honest, you clicked on this article and knew Phil Dunphy from Modern Family was going to be number one on the list. If you don’t know who this lovable, goofy dad is, let me “phil” you in on a few of the things I admire about him. He’s funny. This is something Phil himself discovered at his 12th birthday party, but something you pick up on immediately. He loves his family. Phil’s parenting Phil-osophy is what he calls “peerenting”. This is when you talk to your child like a peer, but still act like a parent. He takes his work seriously. Don’t mistake him for a real estate agent. He’s a Realtor®, a member of a national association, and has a very eye-catching email signature style.
Homer Simpson
Homer Simpson from The Simpsons is one of the most iconic TV characters in American television history. He is lazy, drinks a lot, and at work you’ll typically find him sleeping or getting snacks from the Springfield Nuclear vending machines. Flaws aside, Homer is a good guy. He tries his best to be there for Marge and their three kids, Bart, Lisa and Maggie. He even gave his father, Abe, one of his kidneys (even though he did back out of it a couple times first).
Carl Winslow
Another TV dad with a love for donuts, Carl Winslow of Family Matters is one of Chicago’s finest. I personally can’t relate to having a dad in law enforcement, but in his son Eddie’s words, “It’s time you stopped acting like a cop and start acting like my dad!”. Despite the rumors from earlier this year, the man who played Carl, Reginald VelJohnson, is still alive and well.
Danny Tanner
While he considers himself the “raddest, baddest” dad, we know otherwise. Danny Tanner from Full House is the epitome of the “uncool” dad (especially compared to Uncle Jesse). Like my dad, he’s the father of three girls. Looking back, I don’t know how my dad survived this in real life. Unlike my dad, Danny Tanner is a clean freak. “Clean is good, dirt is bad.” Unfortunately, he can never quite get his daughters to share his passion for Lemon Pledge. But with an email signature style that promotes his new podcast, he’ll recruit others to see the power of cleaning.
Tim Taylor
Another father of three! Tim “The Toolman” Taylor of Home Improvement is the father of boys, Brad, Mark and Randy. Side note: I’d be lying if I told you I didn’t own several JTT posters growing up. Tim co-hosts the TV show, Tool Time, with his friend, Al. No matter how hard he tries, Tim can’t seem to avoid mishaps when trying to showcase his vast knowledge of all things tools. Not everything needs, “more power”, Tim. Here’s a video compilation to prove it.
Ray Barone
Last but not least, we honor Ray Barone of Everybody Loves Raymond. You may be surprised to learn that Ray is also a father of three. In this case, I’m partial to Ray’s daughter, Ally, for obvious reasons. In his words, “When I dance, people think I’m looking for my keys.” This is one of the reasons you can’t help but love Raymond (at least a little, at times). While it’s completely acceptable on a day like Father’s Day, Ray seems to always be on the couch watching sports. I’d rather watch him dance.
Which of these is your favorite email signature style? Is there a particular TV show dad we left off the list? Let us know your feedback on twitter (@SigstrApp).
Cheers to bad dad jokes and dance moves! Happy Father’s Day!
Simply put, employee email is a natural account-based marketing (ABM) channel. Today, marketers are using a channel they already own with content they already have to deliver 1:1 targeted content to specific accounts, industries and regions. But before we get too far into that, let’s first define ABM and what it means for marketing teams today.
What is ABM?
Account-based marketing provides a strategy for B2B companies who want to grow revenue by focusing on the best-fit prospects. Most marketing strategies include a broad approach to lead generation with the goal of capturing as many leads as possible. However, 65 percent of marketers still say generating traffic and leads is their top challenge. ABM is a different approach in which marketing and sales teams work together to target best-fit accounts and turn them into customers.
ABM is powerful because it can market to specific companies instead of wasting time (and money) on unqualified or unideal prospects. And believe it or not, it has a higher ROI than any other marketing activity, according to 97 percent of marketers in a survey by Alterra Group. Above all, account-based marketing is a framework of efficiency for your marketing and sales team.
Employee Email = Owned Marketing Channel
6 hours. That’s the average amount of time most American workers spend in their inbox per day. Email is the go-to channel for most professionals for business-related communications. More than 215 billion emails are sent a day. People love email, but they hate that they love email.
Employee email presents a huge opportunity for marketers to add personalized, but scalable, content resources into the billions of organic conversations that are already happening. How? The employee email signature.
Marketers invest time into the email signature because it can’t be outbid. With 200 million people worldwide using ad blocks, email signatures can be a powerful way to get your message across to the people who matter most. Marketing departments are constructing a content distribution strategy drawn from the click-through rate of an email signature banner. They’re using recipient-level data and the engagement over time to help drive marketing ROI.
A Natural Channel for ABM
Users can now assign an email signature campaign to individual recipients with account-based marketing functionality. When employees send an email to a specific recipient, the clickable call-to-action banner will dynamically update and serve personalized content. Check out the video overview below to see more.
By adding employee email to your ABM mix, marketers can increase account relevance and align email signature marketing activity with account strategies. Also, marketers increase campaign engagement and inspire customers and prospects with compelling content.
Here’s what some of our customers are saying about this new functionality:
As marketers, we’re always looking for new channels to distribute content and drive conversions. Every business in the world runs a corporate email system. Pair the content you already have with a channel you already own. ABM with employee email can become a new secret weapon for your marketing team. Request a demo here to learn more.
At Sigstr, we’re divided. Now, I know what you may be wondering…can they not agree on the product roadmap? The company vision? The rate of growth? Unfortunately, what I’m referencing is a MUCH bigger deal. Our division stems from – cue the dramatic music – our inability to agree on the best sitcom of the 90s. That’s right, I’m talking about Friends vs. Seinfeld.
It all started a few months ago when I shouted, “PIVOT!!” when helping move a file cabinet in the office. The reference resulted in laughs from some and blank stares from others. I quickly realized that we had some non-Friends fans on our hands. That led to a five-minute monologue in which I explained, in detail, that Friends was the best sitcom of the 90s.* While I was catching my breath, some Sigstr colleagues of mine had the audacity to say that Seinfeld was and is the best sitcom ever made. An argument ensued. I contended that Friends was relatable with a charismatic cast. They claimed that Seinfeld had better writing with highbrow humor. A winner was never declared.
Since that historic day, the conversation has reemerged during company outings and breaks at the snack bar. Still, the divide is clear. So, in a quest to convert Kramer fans to Chandler enthusiasts, I’ve taken it upon myself to honor my favorite 90’s sitcom characters the best way I know how – through their hypothetical and unique email signatures.
Joey Tribioni
Who doesn’t like Joey Tribioni? His huge heart makes up for his lack of intelligence and cheesy pick-up lines. For some reason, whenever you watch him, you get… hungry? Pizza, meatball subs, chocolate cake – I want it all. Whatever you do, just remember that JOEY DOESN’T SHARE FOOD.
Besides his appetite, another great Joey characteristic is his inability to hold a job. If it’s wrong to find humor in Joey’s failing acting career, I don’t want to be right.
Phoebe Buffay
Phoebe is definitely the wackiest of the group, but her undying loyalty and pre-teen hair accessories make her a crowd favorite. The other five friends are somewhat predictable, but Phoebe never ceases to surprise. Whether she’s singing an outrageous song, raising rats in a shoebox, or unveiling an evil twin sister, she always keeps you guessing.
Rachel Green
It has been a few decades since throngs of young women were inspired to cut their hair into bouncy, square layered bobs. Rachel Green, however, is still an icon. What’s surprising is that in the pilot episode, Rachael is the least likable character. She’s selfish, spoiled, and superficial. Over the course of the 10 seasons, Rachel develops into a kind, humorous, career-driven woman. Every Friends fan ends up wanting to be a little bit more like Rachel.
Ross Geller
Before Big Bang Theory and all the other nerds of the 21st century, there was Ross Geller. What makes him so great is the fact that he’s undeterred by the fact that his friends share none of his interests. His obscure references to science, dinosaurs, and “unagi” never wane.
With three divorces under his belt, Ross’s love life is a bit of a rollercoaster. You’ve got to admit, however, that he and Rachel’s back and forth relationship is what keeps you coming back for more. But seriously, that one time? They were definitely on a break.
Monica Geller
Who knew that a neurotic, controlling, hyper-competitive clean freak could be so much fun? Monica may have the strongest personality of the bunch, but she’s also the glue that keeps the group together. Not only is Monica a wonderful friend, she’s also an accomplished chef, a loving wife and mother, and the world’s best house keeper. I’m still trying to figure out her eleven categories of hand towels.
Chandler Bing
I saved Chandler for last because, well, he’s everyone’s favorite. His steady supply of one liners and sarcastic comments are what make the show. Between his ex-girlfriend Janice, college flashbacks, estranged parents, commitment issues, and bad first impressions, Chandler keeps us laughing. Despite Chandler’s frequent self-sabotage, he ends up a happy father of twins – cue the tears.
If their unique email signatures aren’t enough to convince you of the genius that is Friends, perhaps a Netflix marathon is needed. You’ll come to agree with me one way or another. On the other hand, my colleagues may never admit defeat. It’s almost guaranteed that my declaration that Friends is better than Seinfeld will be met by another email signature blog dedicated to Jerry and Elaine. To that I answer, bring it on.
*I am aware that Seinfeld premiered in 1989 and Friends extended well into the 2000s. That is an inconvenient and inconsequential fact that bares no relevance in this argument.
It’s tempting – after you’ve invested hours upon hours into crafting the “perfect” email marketing message – to imagine your subscribers hanging on every word you’ve written.
Surely, you think, they read closely, picking up on every nuance and every clever twist of language you’ve employed.
Of course, your own email consumption behaviors likely disprove this theory right off the bat. If you even open a message – and that’s a big if – data suggests that you’re much more likely to skim its contents than to give it a close read. Here’s what the numbers say:
More than 20% of marketing emails never make it to a subscriber’s inbox.
Of the nearly 200 billion emails sent every day worldwide, 84% are considered spam. A full 55% of all email users admit that they don’t open and read messages regularly – whether business or personal.
According to a recent GetResponse study, 41% of all emails are now opened on a mobile device, and 42% of users delete emails that don’t display correctly on their mobile phones.
Only 11% of email campaigns use responsive design to optimize their email layout.
So what, in light of these trends, should marketers do? Interestingly, we may find answers and suggested recourse by understanding the way people consume content on the web at large.
In it, Slate contributor Farhad Manjoo and Chartbeat analyzed the way the digital magazine’s readers engaged with its content, finding that 38% of visitors bounced immediately, while a smaller number never once scrolled below the fold. Of those that stayed, only 50% scrolled more than a few hundred words into the text.
Over time, marketers have developed engagement strategies designed to encourage people to remain on-site longer.
“Readers are very likely to skim, so you want them to find what they need quickly. Use bullet points, numbered lists, or bold headlines for this purpose.”
“Fonts like Arial and Times New Roman (especially for headings) are staples because they are easy to read.”
“You will want complementary font and background color, with the font being many shades darker. Also, try to remember which colors clash and the psychological effects that different colors have on readers.”
If these suggestions seem familiar, it’s likely because so many websites adopt these standards. Email marketing messages, on the other hand, haven’t universally caught up.
What This Means for Your Email
Implementing the best practices above helps improve engagement with your email marketing messages, as well as your blog posts.
Think about the way you consume blog and email content. We skim not because we’re lazy, but because we aren’t sure whether or not the content we’re currently consuming will be helpful. Understanding this inherent challenge enables marketers to craft content that resolves this conflict as quickly as possible.
Your subject line is important in terms of your message’s engagement. So, you won’t be surprised to hear that 64% of subscribers say they are likely to read your email because of who it’s from. 47% of email recipients open an email based on the subject line.
There are different schools of thought when it comes to who the specific sender of your messages should be. Some marketers suggest attributing messages to the name of a specific person within your company. Others argue that placing your company’s name in the “From” field gives it an air of greater authenticity.
Ultimately, you’ll need to test different options to see which one drives the best results.
The question of subject line content can be answered a bit more definitively, according to the following data points:
A report by Retention Science found that subject lines with 6 to 10 words deliver the highest open rate, making 8 words an ideal number for a subject line.
According to research by Adestra, subject lines 70 characters and up tested to be most beneficial to engage readers in clicking through to the content.
Take, for example, the brief three-character subject line from one of President Barack Obama’s fundraising messages:
It’s quick. It’s to-the-point. And it’s effective.
Putting this all together, Copyhacker’s Joanna Wiebe offers a series of concrete suggestions for making email subject lines as engaging as possible:
Lead with an action word
Include your brand name
Avoid spam-trigger words, exclamation points and odd punctuation
Avoid being cutesy or clever
Again, testing is your friend. The suggestions above can be considered starting point guidelines. However, there’s no real replacement for data based on your own audience’s behaviors and activities.
Your Images
The days where email messages were composed entirely of text are long gone. Now, images and even embedded video files are being used more frequently, as they’re useful from both an engagement and information retention perspective.
Data shared by John Medina of Brain Rules suggests that, “When people hear information, they’re likely to remember only 10% of that information three days later. However, if a relevant image is paired with that same information, people retained 65% of the information three days later.”
In addition, images can engage people long enough to decide whether or not your message is worth a closer look.
In an article written for the QuickSprout blog, marketer Neil Patel shares data generated by PRWeb’s Director of Product Management. Thousands of press releases were examined to see whether or not including an image affected average time on page. What he found was that readers stuck around nearly 30 seconds longer when the press release incorporated at least one multimedia asset.
Yes, the data above pertains to web content, but its impact likely extends to email messages as well. Choose good images (read: not clip art or stock imagery) and you may see the same impact of greater attention.
Your First Sentence
According to Aaron Orendorff, writing for Fast Company:
“Your first line of text, following your recipient’s name, is often as far as the reader gets. If the message is short, not packed with nonessential junk, you’re more likely to get that reader to venture further.”
The way you do this will be different in different types of messages. For example, you might get people to stick around by asking a probing question subscribers will want to hear the answer to. In other cases, your first sentence might promise a discount, coupon code or free product, while requiring subscribers to read of for more details on how to claim it.
The only thing your first sentence shouldn’t do is bore readers. Review every message on this basis and do your best to punch up any opening lines that seem lacking.
Your Bullets
In an article on Wired, Paolo Gaudiano shared research from speed-reading company, Spritz:
“The folks at Spritz realized that, when we read, only about 20% of the time is spent processing content, while the remaining 80% is spent moving your eyes around to scan the text.”
Scanning behavior, it seems, is as common to email marketing as it is web reading. Here’s an example of AdAge.com’s Daily News email message, with a heat map to indicate where visitors’ attention was drawn:
“…the average time allocated to a newsletter after opening it was only 51 seconds. ‘Reading’ is not even the right word, since participants fully read only 19% of newsletters. The predominant user behavior was scanning. Often, users didn’t even scan the entire newsletter: 35% of the time, participants only skimmed a small part of the newsletter or glanced at the content.”
Bullets – along with other scanning, readability features – are your friend. Whether that be in your blog content, your email messages or both. Include them to help your subscribers get the most out of your email content.
Your P.S.
Finally, there’s the question of the post-script. It once reigned in popularity, but many marketers question whether it’s still relevant. Or, if past abuse has rendered it ineffective.
Marketer Richard Hayes may have the answer, based on a past experiment he carried out:
“I ran an email split test where 1,500 recipients received an email without a postscript note and another 1,500 received the exact same email but with a P.S. note in the footer of the email reminding them of the offer, which read:”
At the end of the experiment, Hayes experienced a nearly 13% click-through boost that could be attributed to his use of the P.S.
Split testing your messages will determine whether or not these guidelines apply to your audience. Times change, readers’ needs differ – and you won’t know what the right combination of elements and copy is for your audience without your own data.
Use these principles as a starting point only as you look for the most effective format for your own email marketing messages.
Do you have another data point to add to this compilation? Do your own experiences disprove these recommendations? Tweet @sujanpatel and @SigstrApp and let us know your thoughts.
SiriusDecisions helps marketers and sales leaders (wait for it…) make serious decisions by utilizing data to help drive intelligent growth for their B2B organizations. The Summit is four days, packed with data-driven best practices. It’s centered around discovering and unveiling new innovations across the B2B spaces, and even includes some killer networking opportunities.
The event opened with Jewel serenading all the attendees. A Counting Crows concert is also on tap, and live music from Rhett Price and the Jones Band. Needless to say, this event rocks.
Must-Attend Sessions
Account-Based Marketing: The Content Audit
Presenter: John Grozier, Practice Director of SiriusDecisions
More B2B organizations are adopting account-based marketing. ABM is a strategic approach that aligns demand creation and customer relationship programs and messaging against a set of defined accounts and goals. This is done in a way that is relevant and valuable to those accounts (and to the sales team). To demonstrate maximum relevance at an account-based level, these organizations require pinpointed content that truly resonates with buyers. This session is centered around how to conduct a content inventory and audit using the SiriusDecisions Content Inventory Tool.
Engagement Economy: Understanding ROI from Field Marketing Events to Large Conferences
Presenter: Dane Risley of Cvent and Brad Gillespie of Octiv
Curious about optimizing the attendee journey and capturing actionable insights? Marketers can increase engagement by fostering human connections and integrating event and marketing suite technologies to maximize ROI.
Is Your Organization as Good at Demand Creation as You Think?
Presenters: Monica Behncke, VP and Group Director of Demand Services at SiriusDecisions; Gil Canare, Sr. Research Director of Demand Creation Strategies at SiriusDecisions
When it comes to B2B demand creation, marketing teams often think they’ve done enough for their drip nurture programs or website. But the work isn’t done if you want to keep a competitive advantage. This session teaches marketers how to create a roadmap for continued evolution of a company’s demand engine.
Did someone say account-based marketing?
Again, all of the aforementioned sessions address a topic that is pertinent to our team. With the recent launch of ABM for employee email, account-based marketing is especially top of mind for Sigstr and our marketing team. Check out the overview video if you haven’t already.
In addition to the summit, the Sigstr team hosted a group of attendees at LAVO at the Palazzo. We had a blast, learned a ton from sales and marketing leaders, and also discussed ABM tactics. Thank you to all of our guests who took time out of their schedule to hang out with us – we appreciate it!
This spring season closes out on a high note, and we can’t wait to get back into the action at Content Marketing World and HubSpot’s INBOUND later this year. We’re always grateful for the opportunity to spend time with smart digital marketers and learn from them. These last few months did not disappoint. See you at the next one!
The Sigstr team is in the last leg of what has been a very eventful conference season. This has included the SaaStr event in San Francisco, the B2B Marketing Exchange show in Scottsdale, SalesLoft’s Rainmaker Conference in Atlanta, Revenue Summit (back to San Francisco), DOMOPALOOZA in Salt Lake City and Marketo Summit (back to San Francisco again). The busy season is wrapping up with the MarTech Conference this week and SiriusDecision’s Summit in Las Vegas next week.
By and large, MarTech is an industry expert on all things marketing technology. It’s the world Sigstr lives in, so it only makes sense for our team to congregate with the biggest and brightest brains in this realm and rub elbows for 48 hours. The MarTech Conference organizes its agenda based on five different talk tracks: Executive, Data & Analytics, Adtech & Social, Digital Transformations and Solutions.
Must-attend sessions
“How Pandora Leveraged Marketing Analytics to Make Real-Time Decisions that Drive Results”
Speakers: Mike Driscoll, CEO & Founder of Metamarkets; Lisa Sullivan-Cross, CMO at Art.com
“Delivering Business Results with Marketing Technology”
Speakers: Jennifer Chick, VP Marketing Execution & Operations at Hilton Worldwide; Scott Harris, Senior Director of Enterprise Marketing at Adobe; Liam O’Connor, Principal at Lenati; Praveen Palepu, Director for the Microsoft USA Central Marketing Organization at Microsoft
“Orchestrating an ABM Campaign with Advertising, Content & Direct Mail”
Speakers: Nate Hurst, Manager of Account-Based Marketing at DOMO; Sangram Vajre, CMO & Co-Founder of Terminus
Moderator: Travis Wright, Chief Marketing Technologist at CCP Digital
In fact, each one of these sessions focuses on a key element for Sigstr’s marketing team. While we make a vast majority of our decisions based upon analytics, it’s also great to understand how other marketers weigh the importance of different data points in their decision-making process. On the other hand, it’s awesome to see how large organizations like Microsoft and Adobe utilize their marketing tech stack to deliver results.
Wining and dining
The Sigstr team also hosted a dinner this week at Local Kitchen & Wine Merchant so that we could spend time with MarTech Conference attendees in a more intimate setting. We were lucky to have such an outstanding group join us and we learned a ton about what’s most important for marketers this year. Thank you to our customers and also friends (old and new) for hanging out!
Also, the first day of the MarTech Conference marks the release of MarTech’s Digital Marketing Landscape. The 2017 landscape has been dubbed the “MarTech 5000” as it now includes over 5,000 companies.
If you zoom in further, you can find Sigstr in the Email Marketing category!
All of these conferences and events have equally been beneficial for our entire team. Catch the Sigstr team on the road again next week at the Sirius Decisions Summit!
More than 82 percent of U.S. business executives have called corporate communications and employee engagement a top priority, according to a 2015 TalentKeepers survey. For good reason, too. This strategy directly links to improved company productivity, profitability and also engagement. Employees who feel connected to their workplace are more innovative and productive.
How are corporate communications teams getting the word out about company initiatives? For the most part, this includes social media, company-wide emails and sometimes even postings on the kitchen thumbtack board.
What about email signature marketing? ESM already helps teams distribute Marketing content and drive conversions, and is now used to share internal announcements. Clickable call-to-action banners, located within the employee email signature, dynamically update based on the sender or recipient (internal vs. external email domain). These campaigns can promote open enrollment, company awards or product release notes, while simultaneously promoting external content.
As a result, email signature marketing has become a secret weapon for Marketers and HR professionals. Here are four other ways it can help with corporate communications:
Sales enablement
According to SiriusDecisions, research shows that sales doesn’t even use 60 to 70% of Marketing content. Consequently, this means Marketing’s resources and time are going to waste. If your Sales and Marketing teams can relate to this statistic, making content easier to access (and find) can help turn this around.
By injecting it into the employee email signature, it gives Sales team members a quick and easy way to dig deeper. Use corporate communications to the advantage of your Marketing team. Keep every team member (not just Sales) informed on each new piece of content.
Employee engagement
Create employee advocates with recognition or awards programs. It’s important to celebrate team members that are making progress (and reward them). Include all employees in the voting and make it a friendly competition!
Company mandates
A focus on learning, quality, and teamwork can help large or small organizations succeed. This is driven by the way things get done and how they treat their employees. Company mandates and security protocol require buy-in from all departments and effective communication is key. This usually includes a company-wide email from your IT admin when things like phishing scams happen.
However, that email may or may not be read by all employees. Instead of drafting up an email as fast as possible, launching an internal email signature campaign can help get the word out quickly. Link it to a security best practices doc or more information about the threat, so now your employees are informed and equipped with the right knowledge to protect the well-being of the company.
Company news
Have an event coming up? What about open enrollment or a company-wide fundraiser? Give your employees the heads up on these announcements while keeping the dates top-of-mind with every email sent. When employees are more informed, they’re more likely to take action (and eat pizza).
Make it happen with Dynamic Campaigns
Dynamic Campaigns by Sigstr sends content based on your end-recipient, without any extra work from you. (And without any extra emails hitting the inbox!) It allows you to show internal corporate communications while, at the same time, sending targeted Marketing content to contacts outside of your email domain. Request access to this feature or learn more by watching the video below.
Email professionals can’t hop from planet to planet. They aren’t technologically-enhanced. Nor do they possess nigh-invincibility, augmented super human strength or precognition. (Though, I really wish we did.) They’re simple regular people, like you and me.
But in a cyber-world, chock-full of spammers, filters and phishers, brands across the galaxy are relying on these email professionals to improve and optimize their company email signatures and branded messaging. They’re calling for tailored content, cool calls-to-action, recipient-level insights and measurability in every send.
This year alone, business and consumer emails exchanged daily will reach over 269 billion. And that number is only expect to grow, reaching 319.6 billion daily exchanges by the end of 2021, according to the Email Statistics Report 2017-2021 out of The Radicati Group.
Email, and company email signatures, are more important in your corporate marketing plan than ever. According to Salesforce’s 2016 State of Marketing Report, some 80 percent of marketers say email is a foundational piece of their business strategy.
Email is harder today than ever
Email pros are tasked with reaching the right audience, at the right time, with the right content for every stage of the buying cycle – a mission marketing has never accomplished with email. Until now. By using company email signatures, your marketing message is in the +10,000 emails each of your employees send. For a company of 500, that’s 5 million new impressions on your content.
The Guardian working to tailor your company email signatures strategy should be agile, willing to adjust in a single moment. They should have superhuman resilience and laser focus the recipient. By understanding who’s receiving the email, they should strategically align content that dynamically updates based on recipient domain.
So as you work to bolster your company email signatures strategy, which Guardian would you hire to run your program?
After you take the quiz (a few times), check out our latest resource:
Marketing is hard. Audiences are finicky. Bosses are panicky. And our sales folks are all hungry (for leads). And increasingly, account-based marketing has brought sanity to our marketing department and success back to our lead gen universe.
Account-based marketing, and its success is rooted in an alignment between marketing and sales. And while the number of companies deploying account-based marketing programs has increased by a steep 21 percent, only 60 percent of companies say they’re somewhat aligned with sales.
Why should you care about account-based marketing?
In traditional b2b marketing, we use segmentation and personas, and then we target to find the right prospects that might be interested in our stows. It’s like putting out a specific variety of bird seed in your backyard because cardinals like that type of seed, and if you’re going to watch birds, they might as well be cardinals.
Here, your content marketing and targeting strategies are the seed and your prospects are the cardinals.
But in account-based marketing, you’re not trying to attract any cardinals in the vicinity that are fired up about your free buffet of seeds. Instead you focus on specific birds (some cardinals, others robins and still more are blue jays) that all hang out in the same stand of trees.
In other words, account-based marketing targets companies, not personas.
As technology expands and high-stakes deals happen more regularly, and in more departments, more people are involved in the decision-making process. In fact, 34 percent of b2b buyers have increased the number of stakeholders involved in the purchase process. For any given sale, anywhere between seven and twenty people are involved in the decision. And, the more people involved, the less likely a purchase will be made.
That’s where account-based marketing comes into play. Certainly, account-based marketing is powerful because it can market to specific companies instead of wasting time (and money) on unqualified or unideal prospects. (Seriously, how often do people request an ebook or register for a webinar, even though there is absolutely no way they’ll ever buy? All. The. Time.) Account-based marketing lets you nix some of that inefficiency.
Your four-step guide to account-based marketing:
Step 1: Know your whales
This minute you can probably rattle off a list of your top performing accounts, and then another full of your dream accounts you’ve set your sights on. That’s great! Hold tight to that list! But take a look at your data and make sure you’ve honed in on the right prospects. Dig deeper into your customer data to figure out exactly which attributes should be used to determine your target accounts.
This process should be a collaboration between sales and marketing, as it calls for data from both departments. Take a look at the firmographic data – which includes things like industry, company size, location and annual revenue.
Also dig into the digital behavior and strategic factors like market influence, likelihood of repeated purchase and expected profit margin.
Step 2: Research, research, research and research a little more
Once you’ve figured out your targeted accounts, then it’s time to research and strategize. Your goal is to treat these companies like big, organization-level personas. You should already have your personas for an ideal buyer, so remember that’s not what you’re doing here. Think bigger; broader. But use your buyer personas to build your company profiles.
Become familiar with all the elements of the company structure and who the key players are. Knowing the details can dictate how you market your wares – especially if you’ve already identified your signers and your champions. Sometimes this information is already available in-house. Maybe someone on your team previously researched this target but didn’t complete the account-based marketing process.
If the information isn’t readily available, however, prepare to dust off your old Nancy Drew skills with a little detective work. Unfortunately, much of this process is manual. So block off a significant chunk of time to dedicate to researching your whale. LinkedIn is an easy way to unearth gen on your target, but there are other technologies that can help prospect, too.
Step 3: Create kickass content targeted to your whale
By now you know your top accounts (backed up by data) and you’re familiar with the names of the key players inside each account. Next, it’s time to think about the content you need to create to attract your targeted accounts, the content you already have, and the gaps that exist so you can build a holistic content strategy. This content should serve up very specific solutions to the company’s unique pain points. Try using a content matrix to map what message you’ll use to reach your targeted accounts through the buying journey. Here’s an example from Marketo, published in the ebook, A Recipe for Lean ABM:
Now it’s time to create some personalized content. Before you get overwhelmed, realize that some of the content you’ll need for each stage of the journey doesn’t need to be created from scratch. Repurpose your existing content helps create personalization at scale. Circle back to your content library, and then figure out what can be tweaked to resonate with your whales. Then begin crafting inimitable content that’s tailored to your key accounts – and the key players in them.
Step 4: Choose your channels
You can have the best content in the galaxy, but it won’t do you a lick of good if no one sees it. It’s important to find the right channels to distribute your content based on what’s most effective for them and where they are in the sales journey.
Figure out where your prospects and the key players live online. According to the Pew Research Center’s 2017 Social Media Fact Sheet, seven-in-ten Americans use social media. Facebook is still the most popular channel, but other channels, like LinkedIn and Twitter are relevant for your marketing.
The Fact Sheet also gives a rundown of the user profiles, laying out statistics based on age, race, gender, income, community type and education.
Beyond social, owned media, like email signature marketing, can inject your content into your email signature, dynamically update to provide the recipient with tailored content and delivers a more personal experience in the most intimate channel.
Don’t forget to measure your results based on content type and distribution method. Test, optimize and repeat for best results.
Marketers are obsessed with numbers. How many views did we see on that blog post? What was the click-through rate with that CTA? How well did our campaign perform? No matter what type of marketer you are, we’re all curious about the numbers.
A popular resource for all marketers (and sometimes their main go-to for “the numbers”) is Google Analytics. From page views to conversions, we can see the full picture on how a specific channel is performing.
Just like LinkedIn or Facebook, you can use Google Analytics to see traffic and conversions sourced from employee email. Your employee’s corporate email signature can help distribute the right content (to the right people) and drive conversions. Sigstr and Google Analytics make it easy to track your success and compare your results with other channels.
Below is a step-by-step guide on how to set this up. But before we jump in, a few things will need to be in place. This includes:
1. One or more corporate email signature campaigns running in your Sigstr account (if you aren’t a Sigstr customer yet, let’s talk). Make sure they point to a page that is associated with your Google Analytics account and is collecting data. If you’re unsure about either of these, check out this Analytics Help article.
2. Based on the conversions that matter most to your business, you will need to create one or more goal conversions. This Analytics Help article can help you get there. Goal conversions aren’t required, and without them, marketers can still see how many sessions or views are generated from a specific source. However, if you’d like to see how your traffic is converting, setting up a goal conversion is necessary.
Step 1
Log into your Google Analytics account and shift your attention to the left navigation bar. In this case, let’s focus on the Acquisition dropdown, All Traffic, then Source/Medium.
Step 2
Pick your preferred time range (in the top right). A list of top sources/mediums will then populate. Look for “Email_Signature / Sigstr” as this will tell you the number of sessions and new users that have been generated from your employees’ email signatures. It can also show how this traffic has translated to conversions. This is all possible because the Sigstr platform automatically appends UTM parameters to your corporate email signature campaigns.
In this case, “Request a demo” is the conversion goal and “Goal 1 Value” is associated with a dollar amount. Our fictional company being used for this example (Klowd) assumes that for every four demos requested and scheduled, they can expect one new closed/won deal. Their current average contract value is $10,000, so each new deal won results in $10,000 ACV.
Step 3
The view above shows us how much we much we can attribute to employee email as a channel. If you’re curious about the success of each Sigstr campaign within this channel, click on “Email Signature / Sigstr” and go to the “Secondary dimension” drop down (pictured below).
After clicking on “Campaign” (use the search bar if needed), you now see a view that breaks down each Sigstr campaign. The title of your campaign in Sigstr (“New website launch” for example) will show up as the campaign label in Google Analytics.
Klowd’s “Request a demo and schedule a time” campaign generated 120 sessions to their website, which resulted in 9 goal completions and a goal value of $20,000. Coupled with Sigstr’s analytics around number of impressions, clicks and click-through rate, a marketer now has a top-to-bottom view on their corporate email signature campaign.
Step 4
Step back and analyze the data. Recognize what’s working and what can be improved. Map back to the campaign design and determine which of those performed the best. Is there a specific resource or call-to-action that resonates most with your audience?
By using Sigstr and Google Analytics together to recognize trends (and how they lead to conversions), marketers can learn as they launch each new campaign. Our world has never been noisier, so we need to be creative with the production of our content and how we deliver it to the right audience.
Employee email is a channel that can be used to reach the right people at the right time. With the corporate email signature and Sigstr’s platform, marketers have a secret weapon to deliver their content and track the results.
Today’s tech-enabled world thrives on content, digested through social, digital and mobile channels. One-time fads have either evolved into mainstays or disappeared into the abyss. And as the mainstays continue to evolve, they spur trends of their own. Some are a natural evolution, a continued emergence of staples in traditional marketing. While other underscore the changing scene of B2B marketing and the continued emergence of new and advanced content marketing and distribution methodologies.
Here are a few trends in content marketing (and distribution) that will extend your marketing reach:
Trend 1: Embrace visual storytelling
Telling a digital marketer today that video is important is like telling a blogger 10 years ago, “Words can be really helpful.” Thank you, Captain Obvious.
When execution is on point, video engages consumers. It brings tangible results and quantifiable ROI. Snackable videos – like livestreams, video blogs and client testimonials, are preferred by consumers as much as four times more than text content. Video is the most thoroughly consumed content format today.
But as this digital marketing trend becomes a focal point to our strategy, we need to look at the “why” of which we’re engaging people.
Enter storytelling.
Good nonfiction storytelling in the business arena has the power to make your audience crave to believe in your brand. It creates an insatiable desire to be in your squad.
In a Carnegies Medal acceptance speech, Philip Pullman once said, “We need stories so much that we’re even willing to read bad books to get them, if the good books won’t supply them. We all need stories, but children are more frank about it.”
But our stories must be lifted off the pages of our strategy. We must bring the stories that embody our brand to life. Don’t get me wrong, writing is still a foundational piece of your content marketing strategy. But video stories and visual engagement will boost conversions.
Trend 2: Start obsessing over your customer
No company sells to another company. Not really anyway. We sell to a specific person who works in another company, and who can benefit from your product or service. So get specific in both your content marketing and distribution, and market to that person.
We’ve hit a point in digital marketing where we’re not being swallowed up by wave after wave of big data. We can actually use the information we’ve collected! We can turn our data into actionable, meaningful interactions. (Wahoo!)
Digital marketers who put insanely personalized campaigns into motion this year will drive better results. The benefits of personalization are mighty: Higher responses, better conversion rates, brand loyalty, repeat customers, amplified reach and boosted relevance, to name a few. And by targeting our content marketing and distribution based on segments, or even as granular as individual recipients will reap higher results.
Trend 3: Content distribution needs to be intentional
Our audience’s attention span is a finite resource. And it’s pushed to the limit every minute of every day. Just take a peek at the crazy infographic from our friends over at Domo. More than 216,000 pictures are shared every minute on Facebook Messenger. Almost 10,000 emoji-filled tweets are sent, and Siri answers 99,200 questions – every minute! That’s a lot of content marketing and distribution, and somehow you must find a way to stand out.
Marketing teams are tapping into every resource they can to have the time, energy, brainpower and budget to create new and engaging content. But great content has to find its audience. Consumers are littered with mountains of mediocre content tangling the interwebs, making it almost laughable some marketers still just put their work into the world with hopes of getting it seen.
The way we distribute our content needs to be more strategic. We need to get smarter if we want people to see through the clutter of everything-ness, to realize what we have to offer. Sure, we’ll keep hitting up the usual activities. We’ll share to our social platforms and send out an email campaign to our already-collected list of loyal followers. Then we’ll encourage our employees to share. But what about new visitors?
We need to look at new channels, like email signature marketing. The idea is to put your content inside of your email signature so it can reach your most important contacts through human email at any stage of the funnel. The average worker sends around 40 business emails a day, according to a study from The Radicati Group. For a company of 500, that’s five million emails which can deliver branded content, tailored to who’s going to see it.
Trend 4: Go native
Native ads are the hipsters of advertising. In other words, they’re the “I’m not an ad,” of advertising. They look and feel natural in their environment but subtly position branded messaging internally. And they’re favored by consumers over the in-your-face hard sell tactics. In fact, a study from Sharethrough showed people respond 53 percent better to native ads than to traditional display ads. Ad blockers and a general foul flavor left in the mouths of our consumers after years of too many pop-ups and display ads have made it tough to reach customers with a hard sell. Push advertising is fading. Traditional digital marketing will soon be completely replaced by native advertising.
Native advertising is unobtrusive and delivers content (yes, real, valuable content) that could almost be mistaken for an organic post, yet are clearly marked by brands as sponsored. Consumers love ‘em because they’re not an annoyance or distraction in their daily lives. Instead the ads provide real value, be it education, entertainment or otherwise. Digital marketers are going nuts over them because they fit almost anywhere. And they’re more digestible.
Though advertorials in journalism have always been a popular mend between valuable content and advertising, brands like The Onion and BuzzFeed are paving the way for sponsored content in the modern marketing landscape. BuzzFeed’s primary business model is native advertising. They make money by selling posts, videos, quizzes and other kinds of content that match the tone of its editorial content. My favorite right now is this Mother’s Day gift guide disguised as a quiz, sponsored by Nordstrom.
Trend 5: Sales enablement needs a seat at the marketers’ table
A staggering 61 percent of enterprise buyers say the sales people they work with add no value to the buying process, as reported by research from Forrester’s sales enablement group. Now more than ever, sales reps need to rely on the right content, sent at the right time, to support their sales conversations. Low value sales reps aren’t going to be invited back in second calls. They’ll fail to gain trust and learn the pain points. And they won’t lock in the sale.
But one in every three sales reps say they struggle daily to find the right collateral to close a deal, according to a study from Brainshark. They’re weeding through hundreds (sometimes thousands) of posts to find something, anything, applicable. And when they finally find a piece, they lack the confidence to know it really is the right material for their particular situation.
We need to invite sales to the marketer’s lunch table and together craft stronger enablement to have cohesive messaging and positioning through sales, your business development team and through customer success. Every department needs to be on the same page and marketing needs to lead the charge.
Using corporate email for content marketing and distribution
Email has died a million deaths. It’s the internet’s read-headed stepchild, neglected and taken for granted. And yet, it’s still an integral part of how we communicate. Last year, more than 215.3 billion emails were exchanged each day. And research predicts we’ll be exchanging 257.7 billion emails a day by 2020.
Nearly three-quarters of adults say they prefer to communicate with companies via email, while 91 percent say they enjoy the promotional emails from companies they do business with. In the B2B space, 73 percent of companies agree email marketing is a core piece of their marketing strategy. And about a fourth of them rate email as their top channel in terms of ROI.
Not to mention, most business professionals in the U.S. spend around 6.3 hours a day in their email, according to The Huffington Post, based on research from Adobe Systems Inc. That’s about 31.5 hours a week or 1638 hours a year. Collectively, workers spend about 4.2 trillion (trillion!) hours in email each year, summed from statistics culled through the U.S. Bureau of Labor, McKinsey Global Institute and The Radicati Group, Inc. That’s an impressive number of hours spent shuffling a depressing amount of email.
There are no other channels that are as effective and efficient as email.
But are we using it well or only well enough for content marketing and distribution? Sure, you shoot out your latest or greatest content through a campaign or newsletter once a week, but is that really enough? Can’t we do better?
Employee email lets you distribute content to your coworkers for education and enablement. And it allows you to pass it on to your network of customers, prospects and leads.
Like it or not, you’re being judged. Every day, the people you work with – whether it’s your colleagues, managers, clients, prospects or stakeholders – are silently judging. They’ve each formed (or are forming) an opinion of you, and it’s largely based on how you communicate. Your email etiquette matters.
As business evolves through technology, the need to meet in person has become less and less important. It comes as no surprise that most of our interactions happen via email.
But the onslaught of social media has brought about a different type of prose to professional correspondence than business communications of years past. We’ve started importing abbreviated language of text and tweets, gotten a tad too liberal with our use of the exclamation point and some have even used emoticons – in professional emails. (Seriously, why?!)
The way you write in your email says more about you than you may realize. It’s worth understanding the impact of the words you write, as how you’re perceived, based on these contacts, can either build your reputation or kill it.
Here are 13 ways to perfect to your email etiquette to avoid sloppy sends:
Sure, proper sentence structure may sound overrated – better suited for formal essays in freshman English. But, think about it: After someone reads our email, do we want them to focus in on the message or the way we misused (or overused) an ellipsis? Here are 13 very specific lessons focused only on your punctuation and grammar in email.
Punctuation
1. Ellipses
An ellipsis is totally cool to use in your email to show a pause or break in your train of thought, according to several style guides. But just because it’s allowable doesn’t mean it’s always good email etiquette. Most people who use ellipses in email tend to overdo it – a lot. It shouldn’t replace normal punctuation. To quote the Grammar girl, Mignon Fogarty, “You should not allow the sweet lure of ellipses to muddle your ability to write a complete sentence.”
2. Parentheses
Parentheses are used to clarify a thought or as a side note. Periods and commas typically go on the outside of the parentheses, expect for when the parenthetical sentence stands alone. For instance: “Check out the report (you’ll be shocked)!” and “Check out the report. (You’ll be amazed!)” Also, commas are much more likely to follow parentheses than precede them.
3. Exclamation Points
Using an exclamation point can convey excitement, but overusing them can make you look cheap. Adding exclamation points too liberally is like putting lipstick on your prose. It’s cheap, fast and everyone knows it isn’t real. Instead, try to use a more vivid language and tone to get your point across.
4. Emoticons
As social media grows (and character count shrinks) these little pictorial representations of feelings are playing a pretty hefty role in communication. If your brand is using them in your social media that’s great! But the verdict is still out on if they meet email etiquette standards. If your brand is a little more casual, feel free to use them sparingly. Science shows no one really seems to mind. In fact, it may even strengthen their perception of you.
5. Colons
A colon can connect two independent sentences or statements, but should not be used as a substitute for a comma. Both the sentence leading into the colon and the one following should be capitalized in Sentence case. For instance: “She got what she deserved: She really earned that raise.” Note that you should never use more than one colon in a sentence, though you can tag in a semicolon and keep your Email Etiquette Master status.
6. Semicolons
Semicolons separate things. They break apart two main clauses that are closely related to each other, that could stand on their own as sentences if you wanted them to. Basically, they nix the pause between two statements without using words like “and,” “but,” “nor,” or “yet.”
7. Dashes
Like colons, dashes can be used to introduce the next part of a sentence, although they also have other uses. But a dash is stronger and more informal than a colon. A dash interrupts the flow of a sentence and tells your reader to get ready for some important or dramatic statement. It’s the Barney “Wait-for-it” Stinson of punctuation. A dash also brings extra or defining information into play, though it’s a rather dramatic marking, and should be used as such for proper email etiquette.
8. Commas
They’re everywhere – they’re rampant! And they’re so often wrong. Commas are like people on the subway: Just when you think you know them, they turn around and startle you with their complexity. Because they have so many different uses and those uses can differ depending on which style guide you’re writing from, comma rules are tough to pin down. Conventional wisdom has (wrongly) advised that we should add commas wherever our readers should pause. But that’s just bad advice. If you have a main clause – something that can stand alone as a sentence – put a comma after it. What comes after that comma, though, should not be able to also stand alone as its own sentence. If you want to join two independent, but related, clauses, try using a semicolon instead.
Grammar
9. Acronyms & Abbreviations
OMG! LOL! Btw… In our text-speak language of acronyms, we’ve become a touch lazy and let proper grammar fall to the wayside. As a rule for proper email etiquette, don’t use acronyms when you’re emailing external contacts or, say, your CEO. But, there are a number of acronyms and abbreviations that are A-Okay to use in the office. Those are: FYI, JK, EOD, EOW, ASAP, OOO.
10. Their, There, They’re (and other homophones)
Homophones are words that sound the same, despite their meaning or spelling. The most common offenders are: their, there, they’re; your, you’re; two, to, too; its, it’s; let’s & lets; peak, peek and pique; alot, a lot and allot. Here’s the difference between them:
Their: Describes something that’s owned by a group
There: A place away from here.
They’re: A contraction of the words “they are.”
Your: Describes something that belongs to you.
You’re: A contraction of the words “you are.”
To: Typically describes a destination, recipient or action
Too: Also.
Two: A number (2).
Its: The possessive of “it.”
It’s: A contraction of the words “it is.”
Let’s: A contraction of the words “let us.”
Lets: To allow or permit
Peak: A sharp point, like the peak of a mountain.
Peek: A quick look.
Pique: To stimulate or provoke – you know, like your interest.
Alot: A non-word that makes you look like an email etiquette fool.
A lot: A vast quantity.
Allot: Set a certain quantity (say, of money) aside.
11. Incomplete comparisons
One of my greatest pet peeves, incomplete comparisons drive me absolutely mad. When I see it in the wild, I immediately assume the person emailing me is incompetent. Sure, they may just have poor email etiquette, but I’m judging you when I see it. Can you see what’s wrong here?
Our product is bigger, faster and smarter!
Bigger, faster and smarter …than what? Your last model? Other products? A competitor? If you’re asserting a comparison, make sure you always clarify what you’re comparing to.
12. Me & I
Though most of your email etiquette should focus on your reader – therefore not necessitating the use of “me” or “I,” sometimes it’s simply unavoidable to mention yourself. But you should be careful how you do it. For instance:
When you get a chance, can you send the new deck to Michelle and I?
But that’s wrong. As a rule of thumb, I always try removing the other person and saying the sentence to see how it sounds. That’d be:
When you get a chance, can you send the new deck to I?
Doesn’t work. Here “I” is the object of the sentence, and “I” should never be used in objects. Instead use “me.”
13. Referring to your brand as “They”
I’ll admit, I’m guilty of this. I make this mistake all the time. And it’s wrong. So I need to work on my email etiquette. But a business is not plural, so the business is not they. It’s “it.” We don’t identify our brands as “he” or “she,” so “they” feels right. But it’s inaccurate. Our brand is singular and inanimate. It’s an it.
The Dalai Lama once said: “Our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can’t help them, at least don’t hurt them with bad email signatures.”
Just kidding, he never said that. But if he had, he wouldn’t have been wrong.
Email signatures, like those who create them, come in many shapes and sizes. Some are sharp and professional – bordering on brusque. Others are quirky, bringing in fuchsia-colored fonts and motivational prosaicisms. And still too many are overdone, an explosion of links, websites, social profiles, images and, callously, fax numbers. These bad email signatures hurt more than the eyes of your recipients. They can have some seriously negative impact on your brand, too.
More than 205 billion emails were sent and received per day in 2015, according to a study by The Radicati Group. That number is only expected to grow – with experts predicting it’ll reach more than 246 billion in the next two years. And the average worker receives more than 50 emails each day, while a quarter of us have more than 100 hit our inbox in a day, according to a 2012 study by Varonis Systems.
Many first impressions are made via email. And your email signature is your chance to shape that impression. A professional email signature is both visually appealing while it conveys your skills, experiences and contact details, while bad email signatures leave your recipients wondering what’s wrong with you.
Like any form of art (and yes, crafting email signatures is an art form) there’s a level of subjectivity involved. There’s also a bit of technical skill. Fortunately, when it comes to style and implementation, there’s a fairly short list of what’s acceptable – and no need to push the envelope too far to present a refined and professional email signature.
Here’s a list of the 15 worst blunders that make bad email signatures:
1. Comic Sans
Comic Sans was originally made for the little comic book-style help speech bubbles in Microsoft programs designed primarily for youngsters. Using it in your email signatures could damage your credibility as a serious professional.
2. Inspirational Quotes
Inspirational quotes belong on Pinterest and Tumbler, not in your email signature.
3. +10 Social Media Icons
People aren’t going to click every single media icon you have. So if this is you:
Stop. The more options you offer, the less likely any of them will be clicked – it’s a phenomenon called the Paradox of Choice. Instead, try focusing on the few accounts that matter the most to growing your business or building your personal brand. And limit your signature to include no more than three.
4. Fax Numbers
Most people don’t fax anymore. The technology is dated and has been widely removed from the office. Instead, people can simply scan a document and pop it into their reply.
5. “Sent from my iPhone”
Please read as: “So sorry for not proofreading. I’m completely capable of grammar and spell check, but I’m on my iPhone, so that means rules don’t apply to me.
“Oh and if I call you jerk instead of Jack, yeah, that’s totally autocorrect. Totally.”
6. Blank Signature
The only thing worse than including everything in your email signature is including nothing. You want to be professional and helpful in your email, so include the relevant information – like your name, your phone number and a call-to-action. Oh, and if you work with international clients, don’t forget the prefix for your country’s code on your phone number!
7. Too Many Font Colors
Okay this one’s a little more subjective. But the issue with adding in an abundance of color is that there are many more opportunities to get it wrong – using clashing colors, visual imbalance, over-complication and crowding your information. If you’re in a more creative field, feel free to use a few colors to add style and personality to your professional sign-off, but use the general rules of design.
8. Awkward Avatar Photos
People tend to remember visuals better than text. And according to a study from MIT neuroscientists, images that contain people are the most memorable. So leave a good impression with a quality avatar photo – one that shows your strengths, not your lazy eye.
9. Lengthy Disclaimers
Disclaimers like, “This email was intended for the recipients only,” or “Our company accepts no liability for this email’s content,” aren’t just annoying – they probably hold no legal weight either. Not to mention, they’re usually at the end of an email – after you’ve already read what you “weren’t supposed to read.” And often they take up way too much room in your company’s bad email signatures.
If you really must have a non-disclosure or legal disclaimer, it’s better to send that information via secure channels in an encrypted format.
10. Outdated CTA
Make your contacts happier, have better support, create meaningful conversations – whatever it is you’re trying to do in your company, there’s a piece of content that can help you do it better. So, including a CTA to the content is highly recommended (we can help). But make sure your content is relevant and current. Sending someone to a page that hasn’t been updated in months could send the message you’re not serious
11. Alma Mater
Oh wow! You’re a Mountain Goat class of ’12? By adding your alma mater and graduation year, you’re essentially telling your contacts that you’re just not to be taken seriously. Keep this information to your LinkedIn profile, not your bad email signatures.
12. Including Your Email Address
Imagine introducing yourself at a party, then reintroducing yourself when the conversation is over. Awkward, right?
13. Times New Roman
The seemingly innocuous (and often default) Times New Roman is a serious and formal font. It’s also insanely boring. Using it in your email signature is like emailing and saying that you didn’t put any thought into what you just sent – it’s like wearing sweatpants to the office. (Unless you’re in a home office, alone, in which case, I fully support sweatpants. Still have qualms with Times New Roman, though.)
14. Too Many Titles
Too many titles, or even titles you’ve just simply made up are maddening. Adding in every professional title looks cluttered and can come across a bit arrogant if it’s irrelevant to your current position.
Do you have a specialized degree or certification that’s relevant to your current position? Feel free to add it in – just don’t go overboard.
15. Excessive Awards
The information in your email signature should be relevant to your title, company, skills and contact details – you’re not sending out your resume via your bad email signatures. Excess text and logos are distracting and unnecessary.
Good writing is the foundation of good content that gets noticed, no matter what form that content ultimately takes. But the rules of marketing have changed considerably in the last decade – and maybe even more dramatically over the last few years. Google practically dictates how brands are found online, and so we must have a comprehensive b2b content marketing plan that prioritizes creation and distribution that directly, and routinely, engages with your targeted audience.
It’s time to wage war on mediocre content and be heard. Here are nine unconventional ways to get your b2b content marketing noticed.
1. Know your audience
Get out and actually talk with your customers and prospects. Too many times, marketing feels compelled to stay within the four walls of the office – very often, only customer success or sales talks to the customers. So, get out and ask customers what they think. Watch how they behave. Look for patterns.
I like to use social media to drive conversations. Twitter is a great listening tool, but so many companies only use it to listen for sales leads or (worse) they only use it to broadcast their own messaging.
Pay attention to context, too. Avoid grouping customers in an artificial setting like a focus group or cohort. Instead meet them in their natural habitat so you can get a more realistic perception of how they interact with your content.
2. Simplify your message
No one will ever complain you said something too simply. Find your point and make it. The key is to understand the one thing you’re trying to say. It should only be one thing! You shouldn’t have four or five calls-to-action, and you definitely shouldn’t have more than one idea you’re conveying.
Every piece of content you write should have just one key point. Boil your message down, not only to an elevator speech, but literally a tweet. I like to put the key idea of anything I’m writing in bold at the top of my draft. That way I can check back and I have a constant reminder to stay on topic. Once you have a clear idea about what it is you’re trying to say, figuring out the data, stories and messaging around it and not wasting the reader’s time is much easier.
3. Obsess over your first line
The first line in your content either makes people want to keep reading or stop dead in their tracks. And remember, readers are looking for reasons not to read your content.
Entice your reader by putting them into the story. Ask questions. Share a resource. Be surprisingly helpful. Dish out some crazy data tidbit. Tell an unusual story or anecdote. Whatever you do, make it interesting and absurdly authentic.
4. Appeal to primitive instincts
We are hardwired to look out for danger and problems. Just take a glance at your local newspaper – they’re selling sex and fear because that’s what people respond to. I like to think we’re so engrossed with danger because we’re constantly on the looking to learn how to react in situations. Maybe not.
Whatever the reason, we love hearing about problems – and learning the fixes. So an unconventional way to get your b2b content marketing noticed shifts messaging into a warning. Or highlights a problem in the industry that you may be facing (or might in the future) or emphasize the dangers. For instance, this article from Sigstr founder Dan Hanrahan on MarketingProfs is a warning on how to send your emails into your customer’s trash. He gives standard problems and mistakes people make when sending email and how to fix them.
5. Use keywords in your headlines
SEO and content marketing are BFFs. SEO seeks to create content that attracts love from search engines, where b2b content marketing aims to create content that humans love – or find useful, valuable, surprising or entertaining.
Key in to keywords, search engines and humans will love. But it’s not all about creating content that lets you get found online via search. Instead we all have an imperative to create content worth sharing.
The human brain is constantly on the lookout for keywords or phrases that intrigue us. Skip the overly clever headlines, and instead key into the words people are actually looking for – not just in searches, but while scanning the headlines.
6. Make your reader feel good – appeal to their ego
Good content serves the reader. It’s not self-indulgent. People love content that plays into their own self-interest. And this isn’t some crazy new idea. Publilius Syrus – a Latin writer circa 42 BC – said we’re just more interested in people who are interested in us.
So, swap places with your reader. Ask, “So what?” about each and every piece of content you create. Why does your content matter to your customer? What’s the point? Why should they care?
In Everybody Writes, Ann Handley said in writing, and in business, we tend to put ourselves first. We place our own agenda over the interests of those we’re creating for – and that’s a huge mistake! “Relentlessly, unremittingly, obstinately think of things from your readers’ point of view, with empathy for the experience you are giving them.”
Remember, no one has to read, watch or absorb the content you create. Ask (and answer) what’s in it for them and forge the trek to pathological empathy for your reader.
7. Find the right channels for distribution
Consumer behavior has changed. Customers are online looking for you. The question is, though, will they find you? And if they do, will they be inspired to do business with you?
Good content is only noticed if sharing is a key part of your b2b content marketing strategy. You can’t expect Google to do all the work for you – you’ve got to actively share and engage your audience. But where?
Social media must be a part of your distribution strategy. But no longer can you simply spam your Twitter feed and LinkedIn company page with your own content headlines. The algorithms hide your content from people who don’t regularly interact with your brand. Make sharing, and engaging, and building relationships with your communities, central to your b2b content marketing program.
Email signature marketing is another new(ish) place to put your content to get it noticed. The average American worker sends at least 28 emails a day (give or take a few). That’s more than 10,000 emails in a year, per worker. Which means, your company of 500 employees is sending 5,110,000 emails a year. And every single one of those emails has an email signature – usually clad with some sort of ridiculous disclaimer, made popular when faxes were still a thing, or inspirational quote. So nix the clutter and slide in your content that can provide real value to your recipient – and spread your message to a targeted audience organically.
8. Repackage your content
Reimagine your content. Don’t limit yourself to just one medium. Creating really good content is hard, so squeeze every drop of juice out of whatever you’re creating. Reimagine your content – don’t just recycle it. C.C. Chapman, who co-penned Content Rules with Ann Handley, said to treat each piece of content you create as a piece of a broader strategy. “Recycling is an afterthought; good content is intentionally reimagined, as its inception for various platforms,” he said. “Create content that comes to life in various formats, across many different platforms and that can address multiple audiences.”
In the planning stages, conceptualize all the pieces of content you plan to create as a part of a single, bigger idea. Or, alternatively, if you’re creating a large project, think about how you can create smaller chunks of digest-able content from that single asset. Have a new ebook? Break the sections down into a blog. Have some stellar stats inside of it? Design an infographic. Use the information you already have in a podcast or webinar – you get the idea. Repurpose your content into whichever package is required to reach a larger segment of your targeted audience in the space they live.
9. Go viral
If only it were that easy.
But you can help up the viral effect. Get your content into the hands of your colleagues, contacts, customers, prospects and friends. These are your seeders and sneezers – they’re the folks who’ll start the viral process. Ask people to share, email or retweet out your message. And then tell them why it’s important to share and exactly what they need to do. Make it as easy as possible. Remove barriers like opt-ins and logins and just give them the content and tools they’ll need to share it.
Several years ago, I led the promotions department of a radio conglomeration. I was in charge of finding the most efficient way to give people free stuff. What I learned was people want free stuff, they just don’t want to work for it. If a contest had more than three steps, people would disengage and I’d be left with a drawer full of unused concert tickets, jewelry gift cards and vacation vouchers. So, when we’re trying to give our content away to people who want to get better at what we’re helping with, make it as few steps as possible – one click is best. And make the benefits of sharing obvious. Your readers will take care of the rest.
In the age of Netflix and DVD (or BluRay) boxed sets, TV shows just don’t die like they used to, which is why it’s ridiculously hard to believe it’s been over 12 years since The Office first premiered. The dry humor paired with the realistic monotony of a traditional office pays nod to the British mockumentary of the same name. And today it becomes a piece of Sigstr history as it joins Game of Thrones, Parks & Rec, Harry Potter and a few Marvel Superheroes in sharing their would-be email content.
Apart from being nominated for a plethora of Emmy Awards and Golden Globes, it is a love story for the ages. The anticipation and development of romance in the first two seasons with Jim and Pam got you hooked, too? Nope? Just me? Okay, I admit it, I’m a romantic at heart. Apart from that, it hits home to everyone who has an office dynamic, no matter if you work for a paper company or an awesome martech company, like Sigstr.
So don’t be a Toby, kick back, grab a beet or two from Schrute farms and enjoy the read.
Dwight Schrute
Dwight Schrute is assistant to the regional manager, despite a lack in social skills and common sense. He’s a fascist nerd with a deep and abiding love for the system. He lives on his family’s 60-acre beet farm – the most successful beet farm in Pennsylvania – with his cousin Mose in a nine-bedroom farmhouse. The pair run the home as a bed-and-breakfast and sell their beets. His email content campaign is promoting his latest ebook, Benefits of Buying Local Produce.
Michael Scott
Michael Scott is the boss, which means he can get away with anything – and he does. He’s best known for his child-like humor and affinity for making people totally uncomfortable through song parodies (like “Beers in Heaven” or “Goodbye, Toby”), derogatory comments and admitting to hating his co-workers (well, just Toby). His email content reflects his love for the arts with his “Magic Tricks Webinar.” (Spoiler Alert: He doesn’t teach you how to do them.)
Creed
A former homeless man, hippie and deviant, Creed is, apparently, a quality assurance director. But even he forgets what his title is, as he never actually does any work. He’s oddly informed about drug culture and has been quoted saying, “I’ve been in a number of cults, both as a leader and a follower.” He’s just weird enough to be likable. We can expect that a majority of his externally-faced email content is used for his lucrative Face ID business.
Jim Halpert
Slim Jim is the resident “cool guy” in the Scranton Dunder Mifflin office. He’s well-liked, and respected, by pretty much everyone. When he puts the effort in, Jim can really move some paper. But Jim’s pride and joy at the office is not actually in his work at all. Instead it’s in his ongoing prank war with Dwight. His email content is a “Top Dwight Pranks Workshop” for other employees looking to prank their coworkers.
Kevin Malone
Kevin has a huge heart – and an even bigger stomach. Among his many talents, he plays in a band, Scrantonicity, as lead vocalist and drummer. He’s also surprisingly talented at shooting hoops, catching footballs and putting copious amounts of M&Ms in his mouth. Kevin’s most important CTA comes from his biggest accomplishment: Winning the World Series of Poker – Deuce-Seven Triple Draw Tournament in 2002. His email content campaign shows a case study on “How to Win the WSOP.”
Angela (Martin) Schrute
Angela is the worst! Honestly, she’s cold, heartless and judgmental. However, she does have a few fascinating interests and responsibilities. She loves her cats to the point of obsession, posters of infants dressed like adults and she’s the head of the party planning committee – a role she takes insanely serious. Right now, Angela is running a campaign to get folks to come to her cat, Bandit’s, birthday party.
Andy Bernard
The “Nard Dog,” and infamous singer in “Here Comes Treble,” Andy is the conniving, obnoxious, desperate for attention middle manager. He’s a corporate suck-up with a bit of an anger management issue. On the other hand, he wears his heart on his sleeve and has an enormous capacity to love. Overall, Andy is a glorious, vulnerable fool who just wants to be valued. He has a vast compendium of talents to appreciate as well, such as his musical aptitude for stringed instrument and vocals. Then there’s his overly-dramatic theatrical performances and a few calming techniques he picked up in anger management. His campaign offers you the chance to book him for acting gigs in his “Book a Meeting,” campaign.
Pam (Beesly) Halpert
Pam is the sweetheart of the show. Timid and friendly, she has an adoration for Jim and all things art. She’s Michael Scott’s biggest supporter, often letting him practice “trial run” performances with her before customer meetings – and sometimes dates. She also had the tenacity to leave Dunder Mifflin Scranton to join Michael’s company – the Michael Scott Paper Company – before returning and essentially promoting herself to office administrator. Pam’s campaign proudly promotes her most recent honor – the “Whitest Sneaker Dundie Award.”
In 2010, Birchbox launched their first shipped-to-your-door box of beauty product samples and became an overnight sensation. Seven years and a million subscribers later, the company has grown from a two-person shop to a beast with offices in five countries. Others, like ModCloth and Trunk Club, have also added to their roster, creating a need for consistent training and HR content, no matter where employees clock in.
So, they all turned to Lessonly.
Lessonly, a modern team learning software, lets teams translate important work knowledge into lessons to accelerate productivity. With the right training, most employees (69 percent) say they’ll stay put for at least three years. The platform has helped more than 500,000 learners at companies likeBirchbox and Trunk Club to effectively train and track their learners’ progress.
Hundreds of other companies are using Lessonly’s online training software (including us!) to onboard new employees and offer continued education to more-seasoned team members. And their clients love them – which has been made obvious by their top rank award on G2Crowd.
To let their prospects and customers know about the honor, the Lessonly crew added the HR content to their Sigstr campaign.
What We Love:
We’ve been obsessed with the Lessonly crew’s graphic design for months! Late last year, our marketing team went to a one-day seminar and I wound up sitting right next to their design lead, Jenny Tod. Jenny is the sweetest bad-ass designer (complete with a beautiful sleeve tattoo) you’ll ever meet. And she’s the mastermind behind Ollie the Llama, the Lessonly mascot. She finished the first draft of Ollie before she even started! That sort of proactivity with a side of quark is the standard for the Lessonly team.
And, of course, we’re huge fans of how they brought their campaign design to life outside of the rectangle. Not to mention, the clean typography keeps the HR content easy to read at a glance – which is just about the same amount of time they had to get their recipients’ attention at the end of their emails.
But what we really love is how they’re using the campaign.
By using their email signature space to announce their top rank on G2Crowd gave the folks at Lessonly a way to show connections how thrilled their clients are with the platform. And, they could inject the HR content into their emails subtly, without bragging.
The campaign had nearly 30,000 views in three weeks. And it brought in 100 additional clicks to the post on their blog detailing the honor.
What (else) We Love:
By sharing the news of their top ranking, the folks at Lessonly also brought awareness to the LMS category listing on G2Crowd. They made it easy for readers to make the leap to leave a review, while avoiding an actual ask. And for contacts who are still prospects, the HR content gave them an easy way to see what other people are saying about the platform, without being pushy.
What’s Next:
Lessonly typically rotates their Sigstr campaigns every three to four weeks. After the G2Crowd campaign ran, they launched a banner promoting HR content around the launch of their Salesforce integration. So far, the campaign has brought in around 40,000 views.
Other campaigns, like their 2016-17 Learning Trends Ebook and their Definitive Guide to Democratized Learning saw +74,000 and +45,000 views respectively.
Sigstr Shout-Out is a series that features the insanely talented and creatively driven Sigstr customer campaigns so you can see simple email signature best practices in action – and who’s nailing them.
An employee advocate can improve your brand reach, authenticity and trustworthiness.
Businesses pour colossal amounts of resources into creating positive chatter around their brand online. And while the sales teams may see a boost in return, marketing is stuck spending the time and money trying to identify the “what” and “how” to get people talking. Should we create an ebook? Maybe a video? Would this fit on the blog? Or maybe we should distribute it on social? Through email? Ads in the yellow pages? (Just kidding on that last one.)
While we’re scratching our heads, we’re totally overlooking our most powerful channel to get our content noticed – our employees! These are the people who know the company better than anyone else.
The human conduit refers to the notion that information conveyed by real people is way more believable than what companies say as a brand. In other words, employees are more credible than the corporate message. And, on average, your employees have about 10 times the connections than your brand has alone, according to a study from Social Chorus. That means, your company with 250 employees on payroll can easily reach some 2,500 more people than your marketing department alone.
But an employee advocate is born from culture, not technology
Companies today are impatient. The explosion of technology has allowed us to work faster. Companies expect results faster. Marketing faster. Sales deals to close faster. We’ve forgone the mindset of gaining our customers’ trust in exchange for gaining the customer, period. Now. We need to shift into a sales tour guide role – giving our audience what they need, when they need it. And that shift is rooted in company culture.
At the root of culture lies engagement. Employee engagement creates advocates. And an employee advocate then becomes an evangelist. They crave the chance to scream your message across their many networks online. And when they do, they’re spreading your marketing reach to all their friends, family, neighbors, business acquaintances, and so on.
If your employee isn’t your biggest advocate, your brand has bigger issues. It’s hard to make a culture shift. Not to mention, it’s tough to convince senior leadership to change “the way it’s always been.” And then if they do agree to change, it usually happens over a period of several years, so some of your best workers will have already left. If the C-suite sees employees fleeing, that might persuade them to embrace a more social business culture, but not always. On the other hand, though, if they see customers fleeing, that’s a whole lot more convincing.
Companies that are good places to work are good at creating employee advocates. People who love what they do will want to share their hard work with the people in their network because they’re proud of it.
An employee advocate gives your brand authenticity
The thing is, though, marketing has to relinquish some control over messaging. Your people have to actually be genuine and authentic when they post and share branded content. Marketing, in general, tends to get so excited about a new idea or tactic, so we push it really hard. Then we push it again. And we push it a little more. Leaving our employees to feel trapped into sending the exact message we send to their network, when we say to send it – or they just don’t do it at all.
To paraphrase Shakespeare, too much of a good thing is too much of a good thing. Instead, we must allow our employee advocate to feel empowered to share the content they like. With a message that actually sounds like something they’d say. Can we give them the tools to make it easy? Absolutely. And we should! But we can’t force them into participating. After all, if we coerce advocacy, is it really advocacy? (Hint: No. No, it’s not.)
As our friend Jay Baer said on the Social Business podcast, “Employee advocacy needs to be voluntary with guidelines, training and support. No good social media gets created at bayonet point.”
People trust your workers more than they trust you
Consumers want to buy from people they like and trust. And the people they like and trust sit in the cubical next to you. Employees are, by and large, the most credible voices you have regarding the company’s work environment and integrity. Content shared by employees creates a level of trust between prospects or customers and your brand. An employee advocate humanizes the company. And if a customer feels they’re talking to a real person, not a marketing bot, they’ll have a faster track to loyalty in your brand.
Today, an employee advocate is trusted twice as much as a CEO. Gone are the days of a CEO promoting their own brand. Instead, they want to hear from the people who work at the company. If the employees are happy, it’s obvious in their posts. And the brand becomes more trusted and more credible.
Social advocacy isn’t enough
The reality is, if you’re only using social to power all your employee advocacy efforts, you’re simply not maximizing the opportunity you have to use your employees’ connections and trust advantage to get your content consumed.
Not every employee on your payroll is on social – you know, it’s becoming trendy to go sans right now. And something I’ve struggled with, it mixes business with personal life. I love sharing my content with my friends and family on Facebook and Twitter, but if I share only work content all day, every day, they’re going to start tuning out. Or worse, they’ll unfollow me. They’re not going to trust that I’m sharing for their interest and instead they’ll think I’m only out to make a buck.
Instead, tap into the network you already own. Use corporate email signatures to share your branded content.
Email is to your marketing department as Belle is to finding the Beast’s castle. It’s always been there, you’ve just been overlooking it as an advocacy channel. Your team is sending a LOT of email every day, to people who are actually interested in what you have to say. On average, each employee sends more than 10,000 emails a year. For that company of 250, that’s 2.5 million unique views on your content.
Want more on empowering your employee advocates? Check out our new ebook, co-authored with Jay Baer.
Which content marketing tools help you create your best work?
I used to think tools alone were kind of numinous.
When I was in grade school, I was afraid to turn on the family computer without parental supervision. It was big and loud. And very expensive. And my little fingers had a tendency to break things. So, I skipped out.
That was, at least, until my mom bought me my first iMac.
Maybe she realized my love of storytelling through a pen and journal was causing juvenile arthritis in my hand. Or possibly she understood the world I was living in was rooted in technology and I was going to need a swift kick in the ass and get comfortable if I was going to be successful as a writer.
Today, content marketing tools are the life blood of marketing success. Some 88 percent of b2b marketers using content marketing right now as their overall strategy. And 62 percent of them have reported they were more successful with their strategy last year than in 2015. That’s a shift from the year prior, where a slim 30 percent of marketers said their content marketing was effective.
We’re producing more content, at a faster pace than ever. Tools help generate ideas, enhance performance and optimize delivery. So, what are the frictionless tools my team uses for content marketing? What do we use every, single day?
While skimming the depths of the interwebs, have you ever run across an interesting article or helpful video that’d be super handy … eventually? Pocket is a virtual pocket for collecting those treasures and saving them for later. At the click of a button, I can collect piece I want to research or reference later in a post, infographic or video. I used to email myself links, but I’d never actually get around to reading them because I’d lose track of what they were. Or where they were.
With Pocket, though, I can tag items so it’s easy to search a single topic, like social selling or interactive content. And, it gives a quick visual of the post, which helps jog my memory as to why I saved it.
Trello is the project management tool that has replaced the Post-It Notes that once lined my monitor and the scraps of paper in my Moleskine agenda. And it’s transparent, so the whole team can communicate on each step and move projects forward, together.
Blog posts, infographics, animations, ebooks, podcasts, microsites, webinars and pictographic ideas move from fuzzy notions through fruition on our Content board. Each is added to a card titled “Ideas” or (wait for it…) “Serious Ideas.” (The originality is poignant, I know.) And then the card travels the course to “Published.” From there, we can see where it’s scheduled to post, when and where it’ll be promoted.
I’m having a not-so-secret love affair with the Hemingway App. And I admittedly verge on the line of dependency.
Now don’t get me wrong, a human editor is essential for creating seriously amazing content. But for a first pass after writing, it’s a helpful content marketing tool to make any quick fixes. The algorithm picks up weak construction and passive voice to help building up your piece.
And, it assigns a readability level which has been insanely helpful while writing targeted content. Back when I was a newspaper reporter, rule of thumb was to write to a fifth-grade level. Now in the b2b content playground, I shoot for right around the middle of high school to keep language simple, but not simplistic.
CoSchedule is a content marketing tool that brings the entire marketing team together. Most days, we have someone writing, someone else editing video, another creating graphics, and still another writing up our social posts.
We used to coordinate all of this through physical meetings and Google Docs, which was okay, but cumbersome. And my biggest complaint was that working on a Google Doc had a huge passive barrier – my team had to proactively open the doc to figure out what was on their check list, and what everyone else was doing. And because many times one project is dependent on another, it led to a ton of confusion about who had to do what and when.
Then we met with Garrett Moon, the co-founder at CoSchedule. After an hour-long conversation, I’d already started envisioning my life on CoSchedule. It has templates and workflows. Tasks, metrics, automation, curation, built-in and email notifications, and it links to WordPress. It makes life beautiful – we even have time to plan ahead (gasp)!
The best search engine optimization plugin for WordPress I’ve found so far, Yoast helps bolster your website, and its content, to its fullest potential with all the major search engines. It makes it easy, with a simple stoplight-like guide to show you how the content ranks. And it gives you tips on post length, keyword density, keyword focus and readability scores. Yoast sits at the intersection of engaging the reader and making Google happy (or at least happy enough to rank you).
To be clear, no plugin in the world can magically rank your site, but Yoast helps you see where you can buff and shine your content to engage your reader and the search engines.
There are a plethora of content marketing tools at your disposal, but Google Analytics is still indispensable.
L’Oreal, for instance, used Analytics 360 to grow their Tokyo makeup brand, Shu Uemura. The marketing team used Analytics 360 to find and engage with makeup enthusiasts who share interests, from travel to yoga.
While our friends over at Marketo used Google Analytics to tailor remarketing ads for a 10X higher conversion rate with Marketo Real Time Personalization.
I live in the space to figure out what content resonates best with our audience, then craft more pieces around the same topic. And then to max out our search traffic, we’ve been working to study landing pages, search queries and geographical summary.
This is our own content distribution tool. Sigstr tailors content to your targeted audience by putting a clickable call-to-action banner into your email signature. Email is critical to engage your customers. But sharing the right content to the right person, at the right time can be hard.
Because it’s centrally managed, our marketing team can put a case study into the sales team’s signature or content on a new product release in the customer success’s email sign-off. We created it because in the ~10,000 emails each employee (on average in the US) sends in a year, there was a space that was either too crowded with ugly links, too many attachments or completely naked. It’s been a really successful, and unique, way to get our content noticed.
Until about a year ago, I was one of the 76 percent of Americans who didn’t listen to podcasts. I wanted to. And all of my friends did. And I knew the marketing inspiration gained could be substantial. But I just couldn’t find the time in my day to dedicate to listening. Then, last summer, while I was out to lunch with a few coworkers we got into a discussion about the Strange Brews podcast. They were investigating the real story behind Small Town Brewery’s Not Your Father’s Root Beer. One thing led to another, and we decided to grab a six-pack after work and listen to the 20-minute episode, then discuss our opinions.
Outside of my key takeaway that two of the hard root brews are more than enough to leave me with a substantial hangover, the experience also opened my eyes to the wealth of knowledge podcasts can bring. And in such a short amount of time.
Podcasts are like a sweet secret sauce to digestable knowledge, served up in bite sized bits. And, seemingly more people are getting in on the clandestine, too. According to the Infinite Dial 2016 report from Edison Research, podcast listening grew 23 percent between 2015 and 2016. The research also suggests a notable rise in bingeable content, like Netflix and podcasts. Meaning it’s totally normal to listen to 12 episodes in a series, just to catch up. Now, I download and listen on my morning commute to work to fuel my workday.
Here are 16 of my favorite marketing podcasts (in no particular order). Each offers actionable advice and real marketing inspiration you can put to use right away!
With guests like Richard Branson and Kate and Andy Spade (yeah, I mean that Kate Spade), How I Built This is a podcast about innovators and entrepreneurs, and the stories behind the brands they built. Each episode is told by a founder, and talks about the journey of pursuing a passion – triumphs and failures alike.
The NPR podcast hasn’t been around long, only hitting the airwaves last September. But host Guy Raz has brought some seriously awesome names in. My favorite episode talked with Beto Perez, an aerobics teacher from Columbia who mistakenly brought the wrong music to class. He just rolled with it and improvised a cardio-intense dance routine for his students, and they loved it! After the wild success that day, he began teaching it on the regular, and accidentally created Zumba.
Get tips and advice on starting a side hustle in less time than it takes to get your Starbucks. Chris Guillebeau hosts these daily 10-minute-or-less podcasts for people who want to start income-earning side projects. Each episode tells a story of a successful side hustler, and then breaks down the takeaways of why their work was effective. It’s quick and snackable – perfect to listen to on the walk from your parking garage, or yes, while you wait for your coffee.
Speaking of coffee: Marketing Over Coffee is a super chill chat between a couple friends geeking out over all things marketing. John Wall and Christopher Penn are marketing nerds in the best sense, talking about the latest marketing news with a focus on technology, analytics and data-centric hacks.
Fast – each episode lasts around 20 minutes – and to the point, Wall and Penn pack in a ton of information in a short amount of time. But it never feels rushed or overwhelming. And their tactics bring real, tangible results.
Easily one of my favorite marketing podcasts, John Jantsch brings his down-to-earth wit and straight-forward questions to some of the world’s brightest thought leaders. He’s talked to marketing juggernauts like Neil Patel and Guy Kawasaki to inspire his listeners to think harder, read more, try more, fail more and succeed more.
Episodes are quick, usually somewhere between 20 and 30 minutes, but they’re insanely insightful. And as a fly on the wall during a chat between the industry’s smartest marketers, you’re bound to pick up a tip or two.
The truth is, we no longer live in a world of six degrees of separation. Instead, we’re now down to about six pixels of separation – which changes everything we know about marketing and business development. In Mitch Joel’s long-running podcast, he chats with the experts in digital marketing, social marketing, personal branding, entrepreneurship, augmented reality, machine learning and predictive platforms.
Episodes are a bit hefty, usually running an hour or so, each week, which is an awesome way to dig really deep with the top thought leaders like Google’s Avinash Kaushik and ad legend Alex Bogusky.
Co-hosted by Salesforce’s Adam Brown and our very dear friend Jay Baer, Social Pros is all about the multifaceted and, at times, nebulous world of social media, and the people who shape it. Jay brings his signature fervent flare to the conversation while the guys chat with veteran strategists from Ford and IBM to Garmin and Kellogg. They explore what the experts are doing right – and what’s been a total bomb.
The brainchild of host Marcus Sheridan, the Mad Marketing podcasts is made to feel like an intimate conversation with your marketing mentor over coffee. His personable and conversational approach addresses the real challenges he’s faced, and how he’s overcome them. It’s more reflective than analytical, rarely interviewing other people. Instead he takes questions, answers them transparently and then talks about the takeaways.
Eric Siu and Neil Patel keep their lessons short, around 10-minutes, and offer up the Cliff Notes of each episode on the Single Grain site. Each daily episode brings actionable, valuable marketing tips you can apply immediately. Most of the time, they concentrate on just one marketing question.
And their unconventional brand of marketing gives you confidence to take a few risks while letting go of a few dated strategies that just aren’t the most effective anymore.
Tim Feriss is the author of “The Four Hour Work Week,” and his show is seemingly always rated the top business podcasts hitting the airwaves. He talks to big-name celebs with unique experiences to discuss unconventional success. Guests like Jamie Foxx, Maria Popova, Whitney Cummings, Arnold Schwarzenegger talk time-management, exercise habits, favorite books and, of course, positive and actionable tips to think a little different about your workday and marketing success.
Our friends at Unbounce host this fave. These folks are insanely focused on conversion optimization, so it makes sense their podcast is the same. Through candid interviews with digital marketing experts, they break down the “art and science of our craft.” And all the while, they’re giving you strategies to test and results from the experiments they’ve conducted. My favorite so far? “Why Dungeons and Dragons Can Make You A Better Marketer.”
As the content marketing manager for a SaaS company, I was drawn to the simplicity of User Magnet’s show. Every couple of weeks, host Pawel Grabowski talks to SaaS founders, CEOs, marketers and thought leaders to uncover the unique challenges content developers face. It’s a good one if you’re looking to enhance (or create – gasp!) your content marketing strategy.
I’ve had a content crush on Jason Miller since reading “Welcome to the Funnel.” So when I found out he hosted a bi-weekly podcast, I was on it like white on rice. Miller’s signature rock ’n’ roll flavor sets a vigorous pace for discussion, covering everything from storytelling in B2B to effective time management strategies.
From venture capital firm Andreessen-Horowitz, a16z podcasts are refreshingly genuine. While many VCs or investment firms offer promotional podcasts, they often tend to come across as scripted and overly corporate. In contrast, the a16z episodes are real human-to-human conversations. They often feature a portfolio company, which the hosts are not shy about mentioning. But they talk with marketing heavy-weights too. It’s pretty remarkable, for instance, to listen to Marc Andreessen talk about the cloud with Salesforce founder Marc Benioff.
The marketing inspiration lets thinkers from around the world listen in to the trends, tech and culture in the future.
Funny thing about marketing is that it isn’t always all about marketing. In fact, marketing inspiration can come from the buyer, or through tips out of customer success. And sometimes, you need to have a few sales tricks up your sleeves to really leave your mark. The Art of Charm hits everything from career to confidence, lifestyle and love from experts like Seth Godin, Gary Vaynerchuk, Tim Ferriss, Ramit Sethi and Olivia Fox. My favorite episode featured Dr. Carol Dweck on growing talents, intelligence and breaking out of your comfort zone.
Heike Young is a genius content marketer. And paired with Joel Book, who leads marketing insights at Salesforce Marketing Cloud, the Salesforce podcast is dynamic and actionable. Each episode focuses on real-talk marketing inspiration, trends, tactics, technologies, troubles and solutions. Their guests range from the big-league names to the up-and-comers. (Including our founder and principal Dan Hanrahan.)
B2B Nation is the TechnologyAdvice podcast for sales and marketing pros in the b2b industry. Hosted by Chris Klinefelter, the goal is to bring marketing inspiration to evolve our strategies from been-there-won-that pros. Hubspot’s Emma Snider talks about experimenting. While Joe Pulizzi talks about Nick Offerman as the ultimate content marketer. It’s a fresh take on blending old tactics with new marketing.
Last year, my colleagues at Sigstr started writing about their favorite TV shows. And more specifically, they detailed what it might look like if the characters from those shows had professional email signatures. The trend spiraled after a coworker’s obsession for Game of Thrones got the best of her. Shortly after, our senior marketing manager dove in with his own version, with a post about his favorite show, Parks and Recreation.
And then there’s me. I’ve loved every minute of reading my colleagues’ nerdy obsessions (which I share). I can’t even begin to tell you how excited my dad and I are for season 7 of GOT. Or how I’ve recognized Andy Dwyer is my spirit animal. Either way, this content has inspired my conversations with my own prospects. It’s given unique (albeit, pretend) use cases that can be translated into real campaigns that drive actual ROI. And, it spurred me to keep the trend moving with my own nerdy obsession: comic book superheroes.
To give a bit of an origin story, comic books based on heroic people with extraordinary or superhuman abilities rose to prominence in the 1940s. During that time, Marvel and DC dominated the market. Through the years, superheroes from these publishers have become iconic figures of optimism, showing up on lunch boxes, backpacks, t-shirts and some pretty spectacular movies.
Each superhero has their own set of values and individualized purpose. (Sort of like how Sigstr is out to save the world, one email signature at a time!) Seeing how I have a Deadpool Bobblehead and my own Baby Groot piggybank on my desk, it was really only a matter of time before I wrote about my favorite Marvel superheroes using email signatures to distribute targeted content for their latest adventures.
Iron Man
When Stark isn’t flying around the world in one of his indestructible suits of armor, he jets around as a self-proclaimed “Genius, Billionaire, Playboy, Philanthropist.” As the CEO of Stark Industries, it’s important for our favorite Playboy superhero to continue building the future of his late father’s name stake company, while saving the world and constructing the Iron Man brand. His flashy campaign banner in his professional email signatures is meant to drive event registrations from the “best and brightest men and women of nations and corporations the world over.”
Wolverine
Wolverine was notorious for his tough guy attitude, constant loner status and, of course, perfectly-manicured retractable claws. In recent years, his old adamantium bones aren’t as strong as they once were. And so, he’s welcomed retirement in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He spends his days watching his favorite college football team and fulfills his lifelong dream of owning and running an upscale nail salon. His campaign banner embodies the beauty and simplicity of a proper manicure, but I’d avoid booking an appointment during Michigan football games. He gets a little rowdy when his team’s losing.
The Incredible Hulk
Bruce Banner is a brilliant scientist, with an introverted personality but an overall pleasant disposition. But he has a real anger management issue. Make this guy mad and he turns into a giant green rage monster with a particularly limited vocabulary and an insatiable appetite for destruction. And, unfortunately for our ginormous green friend, being a scientist-turned-superhero can be quite stressful. Luckily, Bruce has found a productive outlet for the bellicosity. He’s started up his own demolition company. His simple campaign banner relays the perfect message to anyone who needs an entire town leveled to the ground, or an old skyscraper that needs to instantly be turned into a pile of rubble. Just don’t make him angry. You won’t like him when he’s angry.
Captain Marvel
The seventh Captain Marvel, Carol Danvers, has recently shown interest in retiring from a life of crime-fighting. Apply now, through this clickable call-to-action banner for the chance to be the next Captain Marvel. Benefits include: superhuman strength, endurance, stamina, flight, physical durability, a limited precognitive “seventh sense” and resistance to most toxins and poisons. Preferred experience includes: espionage, pilot training, hand-to-hand combat and marksmanship.
Deadpool
Seriously, what’s not to love about Wade Wilson? He’s notorious for breaking the fourth wall. He has a hilariously-dark sense of humor. And there was a comic book series where he killed every Marvel superhero, just because he felt like it. This anti-hero’s campaign is driving views to his newest ebook, in which he claims has a “Fourth wall-break inside of a fourth wall-break. That’s like – 16 walls!”
Captain America
Our country’s favorite son, Captain America was first introduced by Marvel on December 20, 1940. For reference, that was a year before the attack on Pearl Harbor, but a full year into WWII. The cover showed our patriotic pal punching Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. It sold nearly a million copies. Lately though, Steve Rogers is taking his talents to Broadway. He’s hitting the stage as the lead in the USO’s propaganda production, “Star Spangled Man with a Plan.” His red, white and blue campaign banner is sure to drive ticket sales from anyone who’s ready to save the American Way.
Star Lord
The half-human, half-alien leader of the Guardians of the Galaxy, spends a lot of his downtime flying around in his spaceship, The Milano. (Named after the 80’s actress, of course.) Seeing how the 80’s pop culture seems to be his only connection with Earth, Peter Quill (err, Star Lord) has decided to broadcast his love for the decade with weekly webinars showing aliens across the galaxy how to dance like it’s 1988. When his friends asked why he was doing it, he started rambling on and on about some legend from Earth called, “Footloose,” and some great hero named Kevin Bacon who apparently taught an entire city that dancing is the greatest thing there is in life. Ever heard of him? Me neither. People from Earth are weird.
Storm
Marvel’s weather witch has decided to take her weather-manipulating talents to the technology industry. As CEO of a new start-up SaaS company, she’s been taking the world by storm, quite literally. Her new on-demand weather app is putting her powers into the consumers’ hands. Her campaign has boosted downloads of her app, with the slogan, “If you don’t like the weather, wait 10 minutes!” We’ll see how successful her start-up becomes – consumers are requesting different weather for the same location.
Professor X at Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters
This unconventional institute is always accepting new and gifted students to enter its curriculum. So, to boost enrollment, Professor X has upped his marketing game by using his faculty’s outbound emails. This campaign banner is designed to attract scholarly mutants from across the globe to join the X-men. (And maybe learn a thing or two along the way.)
S.H.I.E.L.D.
The Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division (what a mouthful!), is a counter-terrorism organization that defends Earth against superhuman threats. When this agency isn’t aiding the Avengers with catastrophic threats, it’s running campaigns to drive awareness for what the civilians should do if they’re smack-dab in the middle of some super villain who’s trying to destroy the world. Most recently, the group is highlighting an survival guide ebook, written by Colonel Nick Fury. The long-form content piece, “Excuse Me, Did We Come to Your Planet & Blow Stuff Up?” provides 11 survival tips for an alien invasion.
The “just checking in” sales email is ineffective and totally self-serving.
Sales reps who send this type of email simply aren’t offering any value to their prospects. In fact, they’re interrupting a prospect’s path to purchase. They’re selfishly attempting to convince buyers into replying to their messaging and, eventually, purchasing, all on the rep’s timeline rather than their own.
But sales isn’t about the rep, is it? We’re here to be a real and useful resource to provide meaningful value to a customer through their journey. Buyers want to purchase from people they like and trust.
Today’s most successful reps are committed to building trusting relationships with their prospects. They know it’s important prospects see just as much return on their time invested in the sales journey as they will in the product or service. They understand empathy is at the heart of trust.
The more trust you can create, the more a prospect will share.
With trust, prospects will let you in on their pain points, their hopes and their needs. And when you know their needs, you can realistically evaluate if your product or service is, in fact, a good fit. When you’re honest enough to turn down a potential sale because it’s not in their best interest, you create an unbreakable trust. And you build a customer for life. They’ll still refer you. They’ll want to want your product. And they’ll make all their friends and colleagues want your product or service.
The first step to building trust is to allow your customer to see you as a valuable resource. To show them you understand them on an emotional level and that you’re able to provide answers before questions are asked.
The easiest way to provide consistent and meaningful value to a buyer in a sales email is to include helpful content. But sending too many sales emails to share content can get annoying. Instead, these seven companies used email signature marketing to subtly inject content into every single email, no matter what the subject matter was. Take a look! And for more information, check out our ebook for 28 total use cases on email signature marketing.
If companies want to be successful in navigating today’s corporate terrain, we need more from our employees. We need more imagination, more drive, more innovation. But how do we get employees, who are creating good work as it is, to do more and offer great work? How do we get more, without spending more? And then, how do we make sure our workers feel like their making a difference in the company mission? And how can employee advocacy tools help?
We engage our employees.
Employees who feel connected to their workplace are more innovative and productive. They want to do great work because they’re proud of what they do. And, they’re excited by who they’re doing it with. Business and engagement strategies should be intimately connected. The best companies build and sustain a culture of engagement. They’re led by CEOs who understand employee engagement isn’t just a “nice-to-have,” but instead is the foundation to success.
But technology has changed human behavior. Too many brands have written off employee engagement, leaving it for the social team to “manage.” Social teams have been built too much like the organizational charts that were created around the same time as the US railroad system and expected to operate all communication efforts for the brand in a decentralized modern 21st century culture.
It hasn’t worked.
Brands have pivoted into using these outreach channels as an extension of their advertising campaigns. It’s left these platforms riddled with ads and branded content. And it’s left little room for people to engage with other people – dehumanizing the essence of what connects people in a global manner in the mobile era we live in.
Because brands have abused the channels they’ve lived on, treating them like an ad network rather than a connection platform, companies have been left scratching their heads why they’re not seeing engagement.
Geoffrey Colon, who wrote Disruptive Marketing said, brand will continue to be ignored while the influencers you pay are starting to run into the same issues of all paid endorsements. It’s time to pay attention to your employees who can be the most transparent, authentic and trustworthy advocates for your brand.
Your employees have, on average, around 10 times more connections on social media than your brand has alone, according to a study from Social Chorus. That means your company of 500 employees on payroll can easily reach some 5,000 more people than your marketing department alone by creating engaged brand advocates.
If advocacy is part of your content strategy, here are five seriously helpful employee advocacy tools you may (or may not) know to get you started.
1. Oktopost
Our friends at Oktopost own the B2B social media management realm with lead scoring and nurturing programs, social data and marketing automation. And now they’ve added an employee advocacy arm. Teams that already run on Oktopost for social media marketing, adding in the advocacy piece is a cinch. And because the platform integrates with Salesforce, HubSpot and Marketing, they support closed-loop reporting.
In collaboration with other types of employee advocacy tools (ahem, like email signature marketing), social employee advocacy can boost your reach by 800 percent. Check out this 20-minute webinar we co-hosted with the group last month.
2. DynamicSignal
DynamicSignal is one of those employee advocacy tools out to change the world. And they’re actually doing it. How? They’re helping companies connect with their employees using creating a more personalized message. In other words, they let enterprise-level companies connect like real people, to the real people in the organization. This kind of real-talk helps employees actually want to use it. Their user dashboards tailor content to individual roles, locations, seniority levels and interests. And, team leaders can add internal-only content for more customization.
3. Structural
Using Structural, every employee can build and maintain a profile that details their professional accomplishments and personality. So, if you’re a kickass writer with several industry awards under your belt, but also hate being the center of attention, your coworkers (and superiors) can still see your accomplishments. While leaders can find and nurture talent within the organization to use your current systems to create new value.
And, the employee advocacy tools help companies get to know their people better, lets employees create deeper connections (read: loyalty) and maximize your team’s effectiveness. Coworkers can find common interests and feelings about the company and culture. And, managers can deliver questions to employees to get their feedback on the important issues that shape your foundation.
By creating a deeper connection with your employees, they’re more likely to pay attention to your content, sharing it with their network through email and social media. Building loyalty within your brand builds advocates, and advocates amplify.
4. Hootsuite Amplify
Data from the +10 million users on Hootsuite show an 8x jump on engagement when employees share social content and 24x more re-shares. Furthermore, some 92 percent of employees’ followers are new to your brand. Which means with every post they share, someone in their network discovers your brand. And employee advocacy tools and technology, like this one,
Hootsuite Amplify gives your employees options of content to share to their networks. And brands use the platform to optimize your content creation strategy because you can see which content is shared and engaged with most. You can also check out who’s sharing the most to track results, so recognizing high-achievers is easy.
5. Easy Advocacy
Easy Advocacy is one of the most user-friendly employee advocacy tools on the market. And it’s free! Although the tool is from Agorapulse, you don’t need an Agorapulse subscription. Simply log in with your LinkedIn profile and enter your distribution list. Then, create your campaign and send it on its way to your distribution list. As an admin, you’ll get stats on click-throughs and your most productive employees. It’s currently available in English and French. Double your advocacy pleasure!
My eyes welled up with tears this morning. Literally, a grown man, driving to work, and balling his eyes out. It happened three times this morning. It’s hard to explain, but that’s why Sigstr is green.
You see, it’s the greatest day of the year in the Hanrahan family. Not because of St. Patrick’s Day, per se, but because of what it represents. For me, it’s more than the Irish culture, it’s about our family and our roots – wherever those may be planted.
Family comes first.
My dad is 100 percent Irish. And because we were so rooted in the culture as a family, we always grew up celebrating together. And for the Sigstr team, family comes first. It certainly does for me.
Today, my daughter Bridget (named after the female patron saint of Ireland, though she spelled it Brigid) is in the St. Pat’s Parade with her first-grade class. My mom and dad, kids and wife will all be in tow to watch. We’ll have lunch together, and then listen to Irish music. And then my dad and I will head to the Golden Ace – the greatest Irish pub in the world – for more Irish tunes and a pint (or two) of Guinness. After, I’ll join the Sigstr team and a group of High Alpha friends for an amazing afternoon.
Family comes first – always. To take care of our families, we pour our hearts, minds and resources into building an incredible product and company to delight our customers.
We care.
We care about the time we spend with our family, with our friends and, yes, the time we spend in the office. Sigstr is about being genuine, passionate and the right mix of pride in what we’re building paired with humility that we need to continue learning and growing. But most of all, it’s about being optimistic and having a willingness to work to make the good happen. To spread the good.
To be Irish, or to work at Sigstr, or in digital marketing at all, you must be optimistic. The Irish endured centuries of hardships (the English, the potato famine, immigrating to the states). By focusing on family, craic, music and an unwavering belief in a benevolent higher power, we persevered. And, the same brand of optimism is required to join a scale-up stage tech company, or to believe you can make an impact in the digital world.
A quick aside, our customer, CoreHR is an amazing HR tech company, based in Dublin. Thanks for believing in Sigstr and for inspiring a piece of our culture.
We are green.
We have a team from all kinds of backgrounds and beliefs, but Sigstr green represents our roots. For me, that’s Ireland. And it’s a reason to wear all my green more than just one day a year. For all of us, it’s a reminder of where we came from, why we’re here and what we’re working for.
So, listening to Irish tunes, at full blast, on my way into the office may have spurred the tears to roll into my eyes. The music flooded my mind with memories of all the St. Pat’s Days past, and how my dad would dye the toilet water green (please don’t tell my kids that it’s dye rather than a visiting leprechaun using the facilities in our home!). The tears come thinking of the fiddle player in an Irish village. And realizing our optimism, our relationships and, ultimately, the good in people.
The below poem sums it up. Have a read and enjoy your family, your friends, your co-workers and, most of all, your day. Slainte!
About the Irish
What shall I say about the Irish?
The utterly impractical, never predictable
Something irascible, quite inexplicable Irish.
Strange blend of shyness, pride and conceit,
And stubborn refusal to bow in defeat.
He’s spoiling and ready to argue and fight,
Yet the smile of a child fills his soul with delight.
His eyes are the quickest to well up in tears,
Yet his strength is the strongest to banish your fears.
His faith is as fierce as his devotion is grand,
And there’s no middle ground on which he will stand.
He’s wild and he’s gentle.
He’s good and he’s bad.
He’s proud and he’s humble.
He’s happy and he’s sad.
He’s in love with the ocean, the earth and the skies.
He’s enamored with beauty wherever it lies.
He’s victor and victim, a star and a clod,
But mostly he’s Irish in love with his God.
ABM is a buzzword. Admit it. But are real companies thinking as much about their ABM strategy as the thought leaders, social influencers and vendors who are making all the noise?
Absolutely.
ABM provides a strategy for B2B companies who want to grow revenue by focusing on the best-fit prospects. The key metric shifts from the traditional lead generation to real revenue. And, it takes into account that most B2B buying decisions aren’t made by a single person, but rather a collective group within a company. If you’re only looking at one person, you’re totally missing half the picture.
Not to mention, ABM helps get your sales and marketing on the same page, which staves off lost productivity and lost opportunities, according to MarketingProfs. They found organizations with tightly aligned sales and marketing functions experience 36 percent higher customer retention rates and 38 percent higher sales win rates.
Around 90 percent of marketers see the value in ABM, according to a study from Sirius Decisions. But only 20 percent of companies have a full ABM program in place. The gap is mostly due to a lack of knowledge and total misunderstandings.
Here are seven misunderstandings and total myths about your ABM strategy blown out of the water.
Myth 1: Account based marketing is totally new
Actually, it’s not.
In its purest form, ABM has been around forever. History’s most predominate agencies, like Ogilvy & Mather, Leo Burnett and Young & Rubicam, have depended on an ABM strategy to close their whales for decades.
In the 60s, courting and keeping big accounts was a delicate affair. Copywriters, art directors, designers and account executives huddled to map out key stakeholders for each account. Personalized proposals were painstakingly crafted over several days – or even weeks. Then campaigns were run against targeted lists for each account.
There was no sophistication. Everything was done by feel, without any guarantee that accounts would stay loyal. Everything depended on keeping the accounts extremely happy.
Today, advertising has given way to marketing, but it’s the same old game. While it’s easier than ever to attract and close one-off clients, our whale accounts are still our lifeblood. And so we make sure they feel special using targeted content, tailored campaigns and focused outreach.
To paraphrase our friend Matt Heinz, ABM is shifting from fishing with nets to fishing with spears. We’re doing what we’re already doing, but more efficiently. ABM is tagging the prospects you want to do business with, and marketing very precisely and narrowly to them, directly.
“I think we have a renewed interest in ABM now, because there’s an advancement in tools and technology that make it a little easier to execute,” Matt said. “But the idea of doing target account selling and target account marketing is not new.”
Myth 2: I can’t focus on an Inbound and ABM Strategy
The modern B2B marketing-sphere makes it almost impossible to not take an account-based mindset. But what hurts marketers most is this antiquated philosophy of inbound versus outbound and the idea that somehow ABM is only an outbound strategy to go “fishing with spears.”
And yeah, the outbound piece is a huge aspect of ABM, but if we ignore inbound marketing, we’re missing at least half the value of our ABM strategy.
It’s not an “either/or” situation.
Most inbound marketing tactics will likewise apply to your ABM strategy. That means they can run in tandem. (And they should.) While ABM tends to be highly personalized and targeted several of the same content or offers will also attract potential customers to come to you.
Try reverse-engineering your content. Create pieces based on what your accounts are saying to your sales team on the phone. What you hear in the ABM strategy guides your content and inbound strategy. And then, that will reinforce and tighten the circle for reps to pursue their targeted accounts. The two strategies tend to work together holistically.
Myth 3: ABM is too hard
Any effective lead generation strategy faces challenges when a copy grows. ABM is no different. It’s hard! But marketing is hard.
ABM focuses company efforts. But even so, we’re still struggling with the challenge of gaining – and maintaining – insight on their buyers at scale. The more contacts you accrue, the harder it becomes to focus on targeting the right leads, or even figuring out who they are to begin with.
At first, it’s completely realistic to manually keep tabs on a small pool of contacts. And the information you don’t know about them can, in large part, be gleaned by scouring the web.
But have you ever tried Facebook stalking a mid-market business’ entire database?
In the past, there have been two things that have kept ABM from catching on. First, the widely-accepted notion that ABM is only something you do for really big accounts, where you have plenty of resources to work with. Treating each account as a completely custom go-to-market activity is expensive, and it’s hard to scale.
The second thing that makes people think ABM is too hard is that the technologies and systems marketers are using haven’t supported it. Marketers have been dealing with this infrastructure problem that made it too hard to align platforms.
But over the last few years, technology has improved to the point where some of those limitations have been eliminated. People are realizing there are different approaches to ABM that apply more broadly and can serve several companies and use cases.
Myth 4: ABM is the end-all be-all. It’s the only solution and it’ll solve all our marketing woos
It’s marketing, not magic.
ABM does have the potential to magnify pretty much any strategic issues your company faces. And 97 percent of marketers say ABM proves a higher ROI than any other marketing activity, according to the Alterra Group. But it’s not the only solution.
Let your ABM strategy work as a bridge with your inbound and outbound tactics. ABM is not interruption marketing. It uses the principles of inbound – offering something of value and creating an incentive to buy – but focuses them through outbound methods tailored to individual accounts.
Your success in ABM is more controlled than inbound marketing, because it’s so highly targeted. Because of the intense focus, you’re not going to see the “out-of-the-blue” wins that you’d get with inbound. Instead, your success is entirely dependent on how well you researched, tracked, connected and engaged with a very specific target.
Myth 5: ABM only applies to your marketing department
ABM is so smart, but the thing I hate about it is that it’s account-based marketing. It gives off the illusion that it’s for marketing, when, in reality, it requires the alignment of marketing and sales. By excluding sales, there’s a danger that they, and other departments, may be out of sight, out of mind.
Interdepartmental alignment is crucial to the success of an account-based strategy. The term “account-based everything” has gained some traction to stifle the one-sided marketing vantage. But not enough to surpass the buzzworthy status of ABM. (ABE just doesn’t have the same kind of ring to it, does it?) Even still, the idea of account-based everything – marketing, sales, customer success, product and the like, offers a practical lens on the needs for an effective ABM strategy. The goal is to establish priorities for leaders who are allocating resources and designing account-based workflows.
Myth 6: ABM is a neat tool
ABM is neat. It plays to the feel-good psychology that makes a prospect feel special. And when your prospect feels special, they feel more connected. They’re more trusting and, ultimately, more loyal to your company.
The thing is, though, ABM is not a tool. It’s a strategy.
B2B marketing, and particularly for our high-value, high-consideration deals, usually means we’re connecting with multiple stakeholders, influencers and decision makers. Which is great, because you can get more buy-in. But it also leads to dealing with several different viewpoints, concerns and approaches inside each account. So, an ABM strategy needs to look at individual accounts as entities that are just as complex and multi-dimensional as your traditional markets.
Now, there are several tools out there that can help your strategy. But, this should only be explored after you’ve determined what your goals are and how your current tools can be used to get started.
Myth 7: When we say ABM, we mean only the few high-valued accounts in the pipeline.
While you may be able to create very specific campaigns and collateral for each major deal you’re targeting, that’s just one way to use an ABM strategy. If you don’t have the bandwidth to target an individual company, or if you have a broader number of targets, try revamping your persona strategy. Then use a specific persona as your account.
Maybe you’ll run targeted nurture tracks or you could host a webinar for a specific buyer type or industry. You could even launch a microsite tailored to the preferences of your targeted persona. The key is to be as relevant as possible as you develop your ABM strategy.
How do you get started with your ABM Strategy?
I thought you’d never ask! Get rolling with your ABM strategy in six steps.
1. Identify your target
Finding and defining your target, high-value accounts should be a collaboration between marketing and sales. It requires information from both department, like firmographic data, which holds the notes on things like industry, company size, location and annual revenue. And, it’ll require strategic factors, like market influence, predictive index, expected profit margin and the like.
2. Research your internal players
Once you identify who your targets are, figure out how the accounts are structured. Research how decisions are made and who makes them – and who influences them. Remember, we’re not developing personas for individual people here. Though it can be helpful to have that sort of detailed information and representation of your ideal customer available.
3. Create your content and messaging
Now that you know the names of the key players inside each account, it’s time to start making content tailored to them. That content should speak to the pain points of the specific business. Connect the dots for your prospects to show how your product or service will address their challenges.
4. Choose your channels
Reach your targets where they live. You can have the best content in the world, but it won’t do a smidge of good if they don’t see it. Email signature marketing is one way, but there are others to use in conjunction. Use the Pew Research Center Demographics of Social Media Users to get a look at who’s using the five major social platforms – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Instagram. And, it gives a look at how they consume the content you’re creating for each of them.
5. Get started
You’ve found your targets, you’ve built out the specifics of their unique compositions, you’ve created killer content and you’ve picked the channels you’ll use to promote it. It’s go time! Well, sort of.
Coordinate your campaigns across the channels and align your marketing and sales team to ensure continuity. You don’t want to send different signals to the same persona within a target account.
6. Measure, learn and optimize
After you’re rolling it’s time to start testing, measuring and optimizing. Some of the questions to ask are:
1. Are you growing your contact list within the target account? Are you getting more names and more profiles of personas?
2. What’s changing in the way the accounts are engaging with your brand and its content?
3. How much revenue have we secured?
Look at the results of individual campaigns and trends at the account level and in the aggregate to get a more holistic view of how your ABM strategy is working.
We came. We learned. We scored a ton of free swag. This year’s Rainmaker conference was another runaway success, packed with insanely helpful sales development and engagement insights, deep dives into B2B Account Based Marketing and an even greater appreciation for our team back home.
Now that it’s over, we’ve rounded up the best and brightest ideas from the smart marketers and sales professionals we listened to. These are ideas you can apply to your sales development strategy today, and we’re pumped up to put it into practice!
Modern sales teams need more than the right technology. Today they need to know more, connect more, want more. And that’s just scratching the surface. Here are the best gems from Rainmaker 2017.
1. B2B Account Based Marketing is everything.
We live in a world where marketers are being inundated with cold outreach. The batch and blast approach has returned some effectiveness, but overall, it’s leaving too much to be desired. The quality of demos you’re booking simply isn’t the same as a targeted campaign. And, more importantly, trying to navigate an organization with a generic message in hopes of connecting with decision makers will, most likely, send your emails straight to the trash.
When reaching out, especially for the first time, a message should resonate with your reader. Personalize the content by tagging in content your prospect has written. Or try skimming through their Twitter or LinkedIn page to add a personalized touch. And it should be relevant. How can you (a real person) relate to the prospect, (another real, live human) and their needs within the organization?
Lastly, your message should include a product pitch and call-to-action. By doing this, you’ll acknowledge their needs and expand on how you can help. Then, work to engage them through as many channels as possible to gain trust and loyalty, and eventually advocacy, of your product.
2. Your team and your people are your most important asset.
Product is important, but your people and your service make your brand. We live in a world of perpetually growing and fascinating technology. That means, though, marketers simply expect products that allow us to work smarter and help customers in a more meaningful way. So, we need to listen to our customers, and move in a way that will help. Take, for instance, our friends at Salesloft. I spend hours upon hours in my Salesloft every day. They’ve helped me cadence, track and measure my outreach.
But (and this is a big ‘but’), the people at Salesloft are the assets that take the company from great to a rocket ship. (A phenomenal term borrowed from our founder Dan Hanrahan.) The Sigstr team owes a big thanks to Kyle Porter, Tami Mcqueen and the entire Salesloft team, for reminding us that every interaction is a brand impression. And every impression matters. Another quick shout out to my friends at Everstring, who live this, too.
3. To be more than great, you must constantly push yourself to learn and change.
It’s easy to do your job good enough. But conferences, like Rainmaker, shed light into what it takes to be more than good, and more than great. Success, at least in my opinion, isn’t the pursuit of perfection, but rather a constant improvement. To be successful as marketers and sales pros, we must continue to learn. There’s just way too much content and information living among us to stay stagnant.
On a more personal note, I’m lucky to live and work in a culture that promotes constant improvement. While I’m prospecting potential Sigstr clients, I use my email signature as an actionable, trackable, CTA that relates to the people I’m reaching out to. We have an amazing crew that I’m incredibly proud of. Our people are truly some of the best out there. Lastly, we’re all constantly learning. We’re absorbing what our customers are saying to better our product and better our sales approach. We’re learning from each other, and pushing one another to be better than we were yesterday.
And now I’m counting down the days until Rainmaker 18!
By all accounts, Sigstr had an incredible year in 2016. Revenue grew 5x, and we tripled the team to 25 amazing people. So the team was a bit surprised when I shared that Sigstr was bringing in a new CEO! As if unwrapping a present, the looks of surprise quickly shifted to expressions of sheer excitement as they learned who we had hired and also that I would remain fully engaged at Sigstr.
A driving force behind the new leader is the rare market opportunity Sigstr has. We can serve every company in the world. Every employee using email becomes more productive with Sigstr.
Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Nothing great was ever accomplished without enthusiasm.” I would add that enthusiasm is the critical first step to attract others to our mission. Truly remarkable opportunities are rarely realized by individuals. The enthusiasm Sigstr has generated to date has attracted a world class leader who will propel Sigstr to the next level!
A little history
Let me take you back to when the idea began to take shape. As 2016 was ending, I started thinking about how to accelerate Sigstr even more quickly. I am a builder and I love taking things from 0-60. I’m sales-driven. Given the massive market opportunity, I became certain we could go even faster with a product-driven CEO. Someone whose skills were complementary to mine and who could cover my blind spots while allowing me to focus where I am best. Someone with deep email expertise and experience scaling a product for a massive market opportunity.
I presented the idea of hiring a product-driven CEO to the board late last year. After a lot of conversation and questions, we agreed to explore the idea and consider options.
At critical junctures in my career, the perfect person has walked through my door at exactly the right time. When Bryan Wade expressed interest in Sigstr, I knew immediately that this was a one-in-a-million opportunity for Sigstr.
I am so thrilled to announce that Bryan is joining as the Sigstr CEO!
Bryan is the ideal blend of product, go-to-market and vision. He’s been where we are going, having been a key leader for two wildly successful SaaS companies, ExactTarget and then Salesforce. Bryan is an email evangelist. He’s the perfect leader to elevate this new channel. Enterprise marketers know and trust Bryan. He immediately lifts our brand, and most importantly, he’s a good person who I trust with Sigstr.
I love the team and culture we have built and feel a deep connection to what we’ve started. Bryan and I are complementary, and I get to serve Sigstr in a full-time role as a Founder, President. I get to focus on levers for growth in our go-to-market strategy and will always help Bryan grow the team and culture.
This has been an enlightening exercise in self-awareness. I am so much happier and more productive when I get to do what I am best at doing: testing new ideas, finding what works and building early teams around the biggest opportunities. At the same time, I don’t have first-hand experience in scaling a company and a product for thousands of customers. With Bryan, I know we have an incredible leader for where we are headed, and I get to do what I love. And I can’t wait!
A core value for us at Sigstr is Believe Big. We added an absolute all-star to the team to turn our beliefs into facts.Thank you to all the Sigstars; the entire Sigstr family of our team, our customers, partners, investors and advisors who have helped Sigstr along the way. You placed your trust in me to make the right decisions for Sigstr, and this adventure just got a lot more exciting. Please join me in welcoming Bryan to the team!
Today, I am so excited to announce my new position as Chief Executive Officer at Sigstr.
Last week I decided to walk away from one of the greatest software companies in the world with an opportunity to create something totally new. You see, over the last 12 years, Ive been blessed to have had the chance to build the rocket ship of email at ExactTarget. After which I joined the mothership at Salesforce. Ive built and led teams in sales, services and, most recently, in the product organization, as Chief Product Officer of Salesforce Marketing Cloud.
Ive watched, listened and learned from industry-leading CEOs like Marc Benioff and Scott Dorsey. Theyve created big visions for their companies, and for the entire SaaS industry. I’m inspired by Parker Harris and Scott McCorkle. These are some of the smartest product leaders in SaaS. These brilliant minds have worked with customers to build products that have a great market fit. And theyve created products that scale, products that actually fit what their customers, particularly at the enterprise level, need and want.
My next step is to build a product that creates the next frontier of email marketing. And, equally as significant, to provide career opportunities for young SaaS professionals, much like those that I had when I joined ExactTarget in 2005. It’s also a priority for meto build something in Indianapolis. Indy is becoming a major hub for software innovation.
I continue to be impressed by the team at Sigstr, the power of the technology and the way in which their customers are seeing real ROI (and how fast its recognized). Takea look intowhy I’m so pumpedabout this company.
Sigstr is an opportunity I couldnt pass up. Here area few of the reasons why.
Every business in the world runs a corporate email system
Every business in the world runs a corporate email system, but very few marketers are taking advantage of the channel in a big way to market to their customers.
The average employee sends more than 10,000 emails each year. Companies of just a few hundred are having millions upon millions of business interactions with prospects, customers, partners and employees. And Sigstr can personalize each and every one of those interactions. Each can drive sales, brand compliance and even employee behavior if, for instance, HR runs a campaign for open enrollment registration.
And because every company already has a corporate email system, marketers can be live in minutes. All it takes is a few configuration changes on the platforms youre already in, like Gmail, Outlook, Lotus Notes, Thunderbird, among others.
Sigstr is positioned to dominate a new category in marketing technology
Sigstr opens a new marketing channel that allows marketers to drive personalized content in one-to-one, corporate email. Today, personalization software is running on websites, in promotional email and in advertising. At its core, Sigstr helps marketers connect campaigns and a brands voice inside the corporate email. Theres significant potential to use corporate email to personalize content and drive a new level of marketing ROI.
Corporate email systems are moving the cloud with Gmail and Office 365. But personalization within the employee email just isnt done well today. Account-based customization and tailored email content still, for the most part, calls for manual copy-and-paste or legacy desktop solutions.But Sigstr has uniquely positioned themselves to take advantage of the the trends in cloud and personalization to open an entirely new channel for marketers.
Sigstr customers, a strong partnership ecosystem and talented employees
Sigstr is fortunate to work with innovative marketers at leading brands like Angies List, Return Path, Invocaand hundreds of others. These marketers use Sigstr because they want to create a seamless customer experience across channels. And they’re doing so by including the channel in their everyday use.
Part of driving a tangible ROI is providing the ability to plug email conversations into the technologies marketers already use. Sigstr has built a variety of partnerships and native integrations, like HubSpot, Salesloft, Terminus, Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Marketing Cloud. Sigstr allows marketers to gain additional value in and around the investments theyve already made. The softwareintegrates within theCRM and Marketing Automation platforms you’re already using. This sort of ecosystem is integral for growth. And Sigstr has a phenomenal set of partners helping make their customers successful.
Last, but not least, behind every growing startup is a group of talented and dedicated employees. Ive had the chance to work with many of the executives running Sigstr in the past. And now I’m meeting many new people who play big roles in the company. One thing is for sure, they have a talented group of software executives and employees. I have so much confidence in the Sigstr team and look forward to working closely with all of them.
If youre an existing Sigstr customer, thank you for your support! I look forward to meeting each and every one of you!
Interested in learning more about how employee email can strengthen your brand and boost your marketing results? Let’s chat!For more information on today’s announcement, view the full press release here.
Three things that put a marketer on edge: One, tagging personas; two, tailoring content to those personas; three, pressing send on an email campaign.
On the surface, email seems pretty straightforward, not least because the people you’re sending to have actually asked to receive your messages. You’re interacting with someone, by invitation, in the relatively intimate setting of your contact’s inbox. All you need to do is create a compelling message and boom – you’re done, right?
Or maybe not.
The cutthroat standard of your customer’s inbox roils with mixed marketing messages asking them to take action, giving them a new resource or pleading with them to respond. It’s congested with scores of attention-seeking previews and competitive subject lines. All the while, the delete response remains merciless.
A typical buyer gets around 100 emails hitting their inbox every day, give or take a couple. But, according to a study from our friends at Tellwise, they only open 23 percent of them. And that enrapturing buyer you’re trying so hard to woo with your hot content is only clicking on a measly 2 percent of the emails that hit their inbox.
Creating a compelling message for your email is only scratching the surface to get noticed in the noxious beast that is the inbox. There are a ton of moving parts in your email strategy. Get one wrong, and you might just jam up the whole apparatus.
Let’s be real
Your subscribers are your most loyal audience. They’ve invited you into their inbox because they want to hear what’s happening in your world. But the most compelling prose and an enticing offer isn’t going to do you a lick of good if you send it at a time that’ll leave it buried under the 99 other emails hitting their desktop today.
So what is the best time to send emails?
With wave after big wave of data crashing into the swash of studies that try to decode the magic send time and finally provide a real answer to when to send, the general consensus is: It depends. Now I realize that answer isn’t particularly helpful, but hang with me here for a minute. Because while the reality is you’re eventually going to have to bite the bullet and A/B test it to hone in on the exact best time to send emails for your list, it’s helpful to have an informed place to start.
What’s the best day to send an email?
Research from our pals at HubSpot analyzed the number of emails that were opened on each day of the week. They saw Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday had the highest volume of opens. Tuesday, in general, came out on top, with 20 percent more opens than average. Monday and Wednesday tied for silver, each logging 18 percent more opens than average.
Another study from MailChimp took a look at the aggregate patterns of more than 4 million users and several billion recipients logged by their internal send time optimization system. Their data shows Thursdays have the highest open rate, with a second peak on Tuesdays. GetResponse and Wordstream also suggest Thursdays, followed by Tuesdays, are the best days to send emails.
But the best time to send emails can shift depending on what type of content you’re sending. The type of content, after all, is usually a good indicator of who your subscribers are, and what their habits might look like.
According to Customer.io and MailChimp, stick with your Tuesday sends for informative emails or educational newsletters. Studies have found we experience the most professional and emotional stress on Tuesdays, when the “reality of work” sets in. And so, people tend to avoid making actionable decisions early in the week.
On the other hand, if your email has an impetus to act, shift your schedule to send on Friday. The weekend is when people finally have enough time to sit down and read their messages. So, they tend to read emails more thoroughly. And, the weekend sees the lowest volume of messages stock into the inbox, so you have less competition.
Your takeaways:
The general consensus among all the research shows most activity happens during the middle of the week with only minor outliers. Tuesdays and Thursdays are, by far the best days to send. Wednesdays didn’t rank first one a single study, but was mentioned several times. While Friday sends were a surprising addition to an actionable strategy. Personal preference puts Tuesday ahead because it gives recipients more time to share your content during the week before it becomes obsolete into the weekend abyss.
What’s the best time to send emails?
Mid-day, between 10 and noon, is the best time to send emails according to MailChimp’s research. It looks like there’s a peak just after 10 a.m. HubSpot backs this up with research tagging 11 a.m. as the hot time for email opens on every day of the week, except Sunday. Sundays saw a 35 percent higher open rate at 9 p.m. You know, right when people start getting ready for the week ahead.
Smart Insights suggests a later mid-day range, between noon and 4 p.m. for the prime open potential. The sweet spot between lunch and that mid-afternoon lull is the best chance to send if your goal is simply to receive the most opens. This, they say, is because your recipient is receiving a moderately low number of emails and has time to open and read the incoming messages.
If you’re out to get a response, though, send your email when they have time to care. That is, somewhere in the morning before they get to the office or in the evening after the kids are in bed. More specifically, between 6 and 8 a.m. or 8 p.m. and mid-night. If you send your message when they’re receiving the lowest number of messages, they’ll have all the time in the world to read their mail.
Your takeaways:
Late-morning send times are the most popular in general, with several studies indicating 10 a.m. (or just after) is the ideal send time. I typically find a net positive response in opens and engagement if I send a campaign just after 10 a.m. – say 10:05 a.m.
What’ve we learned?
If you send more than one email out a week, send them on both Tuesdays and Thursdays. If you’re calling for your recipient to take action, be it a response or a buy, send those emails on Friday when they can take the weekend to mull it over.
The best time, in general is mid-day, I favor the 10 a.m. hour, based on the research.
So that’s the advice. Now ignore it.
Okay, don’t completely ignore it. But don’t be led blindly. The research gives you a really great starting point, but you still need to test. Figure out what works in your market, for your recipients.
And think about how people are consuming your message. Traditional best time to send emails” statistics are being thrown to the wind as user habits shift across devices. The standard mid-week, mid-day send makes a ton of sense for desktop users who are opening their emails at work. While mobile users, like me, tend to check email in the weight room after work, in the sauna, after the kids are in bed and as I climb between the sheets myself. In other words, the way people absorb email has changed, and is likely to continue changing. So continued testing will always be needed to optimize when to send your emails.
Getting your content in front of the right people at the right time is hard. You have to be relevant and relatable, scalable and persistent without crossing the line to become annoying.
Jillian Wohlfarth, who heads up content at SendGrid, said in a conversation on B2B Nation, the TechnologyAdvice podcast, we need to be deliberate. We need to develop strategy around email and look to it as a set of meaningful customer touchpoints. We need to take care to send it at the right time, with the right message and to the right person.
“It’s really important to send the right message, to the right person, at the right time, with the right frequency,” she said. “This is a motto that was created by our VP of delivery, and he was really inspired by Seth Godin and (his) theory on permission marketing. That says getting into your customer’s inbox is really a privilege and not a right.”
So how do we create this really valuable experience and communication with our customers without adding to the insanity that lies within their inbox? And how does that experience, that content, help in your account-based marketing strategy?
How email helps your ABM strategy
Email is the channel preferred by most professionals for business-related communications. More than 215 billion emails are sent a day. People love email. But they hate that they love email. Because, most American workers spending an average of 6.3 hours a day in their inbox, and the productivity lost inside is substantial.
And because you’re already emailing your customers, clients and leads daily, you’re afraid of cluttering their space. (Which not only is annoying, but can actually discredit your hard work to date.) The problem is, though, you know the content you have will help them. It’ll provide a real and valuable resource. It’ll open the door to the utopia of upsells (or retention, or sale) – so long as you avoid aggravating them with yet another email.
Instead, use your signature to share the content. Email signature marketing is this enormous opportunity to add personalized, but scalable, content resources into the billions of organic conversations that are already happening.
Our friends at Salesforce said email signatures add an easy win for any marketing organization. We’re already spending so much time in our email, let’s make it count.
Savvy organizations are scaling targeted content in every employee email to give their accounts a unified message that’s both unique and highly valuable. They’re optimizing the channel by using technology so they’re making decisions based on the data, rather than on a whim. Marketing departments are crafting a distribution strategy drawn from the click-through rate of a signature banner. They’re looking at the recipient-level data and the engagement over time.
Marketers invest time into the email signature because it can’t be outbid. It’s owned. You have no other competition in the space. And it’s organic – you’re already engaging in daily email exchanges with these accounts. But the juiciest part is because it’s targeted.
Using technology to scale your ABM Strategy
Just like any marketing and sales best practice, relevant and targeted messaging is important for your ABM strategy. But without technology, being targeted is almost impossible to scale.
Paired up with though leaders in the #FlipMyFunnel community, founder Sangram Vajre has created a visual explanation to better understand the components of ABM. Vajre literally took the traditional sales funnel and flipped it upside down. Instead of fishing for leads, this inverted funnel allows you to pull your long-bow back and shoot for your whales.
Email Signature marketing makes a dent in the “Engage” section. Most interactions with targeted accounts will be in either Gmail or Outlook, and it’ll happen in the conversations you’re already having. You’re now allowing each exchange from your domain to have powerful email signatures that are relevant, specifically, to the individual accounts you’re talking to.
Marketers across the globe are already implementing dynamic email signatures – you know, the ones that change automatically, based on who’s receiving the email. Here are a few examples how email signature marketing is complementing the ABM funnel. (But if you want more examples check out our ebook, 28 Creative Ways to Use Email Signature Marketing.)
Webinars
Distribute webinar CTAs to increase registrants by specific industry or product offering
Engage accounts with latest product features, thought leadership or resources with your creativity and personal touch
Content has a purpose. Some pieces are tailored help your sales development team engage a lead into having a discovery call. Other pieces are customized to your account executive team, who are measured on filling pipeline and need to have multi-touch campaigns to introduce ways to meet, learn and understand. Still more content is used to help your customer success team share useful best practices, relevant to the account they’re emailing.
In another example, our friends at Invoca used email signature marketing to increase registrations for their Call Intelligence Summit.
With this CTA banner, they generated more than 260 clicks. All of the amplified engagement stemmed from a channel that wasn’t even measured before email signature marketing.
Want to learn more? Check out Revenue Summit 2017 and #FlipMyFunnel. Industry influencers like Bassem Hamdy, Julia Stead, Avi Bhatnagar and Megan Eisberg are leading a session called Building an ABM Playbook: Lessons Learned from the School of Hard Knocks. And I can bet it’s not one you’re going to want to miss.
Tis the season of love, and we’re spreading it around by sharing our very favorite digital marketing tools we’re crushing on right now.
Now sure, we realize people aren’t really capable of loving a brand – not really, I mean, if we’re going to define love as a timeless, permanent state of emotion, connection and devotion. But it’s definitely possible for people to crush on a brand. And a crush can get a brand pretty far.
Crushes are defined as an intense (and usually passing) infatuation. For these digital marketing tools, though, it’s important they stay relevant and crush-worthy as trends change.
Here are 13 brands we’re totally crushing on right now:
Litmus lives where we want to go. Their brand is clean and their value is unmatched. Let’s start with the blog – which talks about everything email. They’re one of the most reliable digital marketing tools to see statistics, quality information and entertaining content. Their website is user friendly and easy to navigate. And their platform helps to test, optimize, simplify and amplify your email marketing.
Interactivity served up with a side of simplicity, Asana is the total package. Clean aesthetics and intuitive design make this digital marketing tool a total stud in our eyes.
Design aside, we’re in love with what we’re able to do with the platform. We can see the whole team and work off the same platform. We can create separate boards, and see day-to-day tasks. We’re able to tag each other and customize how we work – so I can organize my tasks different than my teammate, but we’re still able to work together.
MailChimp’s model is to actually help their customers – and keep them by providing stellar service. As you’re building your email list, MailChimp isn’t going to charge you – in fact, the service is free if you have 2000 names or less. After the 2000th subscriber, the price bumps to about $15 a month. And the platform integrates with social media, showing it plays well with others. They’re totally under the impression email is a piece of your marketing strategy, not your entire marketing strategy, and they’re there to support your mission in totality.
Your custom analytics give a detailed look at how many emails were opened, what links were clicked, is your email working – and help you optimize it to work harder for you. Then several times a year MailChimp shoots out reports that show the best times to send, best ways to engage and overall email best practices based off the data you’re collecting.
We’re crushing on their writing team so hard. They’re so fun! The content is not only informational, but actually valuable. They produce the content we want to see and they do it so it’s fun to read, watch, see, listen to, etc. Even their prospecting emails are on point with helpful content that is sure to give readers a smile.
This digital marketing tool has a friendly user interface that uses simplicity as the ultimate sophistication. The illustrations in their design are fun and engaging, while functionality is equally as basic to help the user steer their own path.
Box’s design is informative, intuitive and pretty – for instance, the very slick gifs that slide in on the home page. On first look at their website, there is no question what they do. And they really want to make sure you understand their product. And then get to know you to make sure your user experience is simple and personal.
Another thing they do well that we love is on the pricing page. They segment by a user’s buyer persona by offering three options at the top: “Individual Plans,” “Business Plans,” and “Platform Plans.” Making it a personal experience for the user – after all, if you’re thinking about buying Box for yourself, there’s really no reason you’d need to see the business plans (and vice versa).
Touting a client list of Uber, Slack, Square, Facebook, Yahoo, Warby Parker, Airbnb, Lyft and about a bazillion others, the crew at Sandwich Video delivers an authentic personalized experience we’re obsessed with. The first step in working with Sandwich Video is shooting them an email. Give them all the details on your project and why it’s the next big thing. Then you wait for their response – which is from another human, usually within an hour. When they message back, they’ll ask you a ton of questions to really get to know you and your brand. As they say, they’re fans of “real talk.”
The full-service creative agency out of Los Angeles is so intent on getting to know you and your brand. They’re interacting with a single goal in mind, and it has nothing to do with their bottom line. In fact, on the contrary, it’s all about your bottom line, and helping you become successful. We love brands who build others up!
Built on laser-focused targeting and personalized messaging, BBDO is the group responsible for Snapchat-centric Lowe’s campaign, Snicker’s “You’re not you when you’re hungry,” which extended into the snacks packaging; haunting anti-texting, “It can wait” efforts for AT&T and the liberating “Imaging the Possibilities” campaign that helped reverse a three-year decline for Barbie, raising the sales by double-digit percentages, according to Ad Age.
In the business since 1891, BBDO has spent more than a century learning to embrace data strategically, without sacrificing their core creativity. As Omnicom’s largest portfolio, the agency has expanded to 289 offices in 80 countries.
Square is on a mission to make life easier – and that starts on their homepage. Starting at the top, navigation is sleek and the headline is interactive. They want to make the experience as personal as possible, which helps give users a customized journey through their website.
And their product is just cool. It’s something that actually helps people start selling faster. My salon uses Square, my neighbors at the Farmers Market uses Square, my favorite boutique uses Square. It’s a real product, that helps real people, with a real solution.
The home services industry is not a particularly sexy topic to market, but Nest has glammed it up. Starting with the awesome product, it’s a little piece of cool hanging on the wall – not just a beige box that gets overlooked. Because it’s more art-meets-functionality rather than a product you don’t pay attention to, consumers are often more aware of the energy they’re using, which is good for the environment and their pocket book.
And for the digital marketing tools inspiration, the design of the website is almost as sleek and simple as the product’s interface. The design is clean with stark contrasts. Oh and as a little bonus, the screwdriver comes in the box, so you don’t have to worry about finding the right size.
Rocking the product world in pink – Pendo, the analytics platform that helps your product development folks track user behavior to build more engaging software, does SaaS with style. Originally just an accent color in the product, the pink was so well received, the marketing department snagged it right up and made it their trademark. And it’s impossible to miss.
Add in their unique sense of humor – they brought a 6-foot dinosaur to SaaStr 17 this year – and obvious talent and we’re hooked.
What kind of Martech writer would I be if I failed to mention the king of digital marketing tools on our crush list? But why do we love them like Ross loves Rachel? Our reasons go far beyond the (drool-worthy) design. Apple understands consistency – no matter what platform you’re on, you know what kind of user experience to expect. And speaking of user experience, Apple knows good usability. It’s easy. It’s quick. And it creates trends, knowing what users are going to want next before they know they want it.
Every company, in every industry, should do customer service like Zappos. The world would be a happier place. The company (which is now a unit of Amazon) has been called “insane” and “fanatical” for the lengths they go to deliver happiness. Like that time sent flowers to a lady who ordered six different pairs of shoes because her feet were damaged by harsh medical treatment, or when they overnighted a free pair of shoes to a best man who had arrived at a wedding without his shoes (oops!).
They take personalized service to new levels by delivering consistent, user-friendly experiences 365 days a year. (Yes, even on Christmas.)
We love literally everything HubSpot does. The number one reason? Because it works. It works every time. It’s so stupid simple, the whole marketing team is able to use it. HubSpot drives real results and helps keep us on task and accountable. Not to mention, their team of a cool 1,000 (ish) employees are constantly working to improve their product. HubSpot didn’t just create a product, but it pioneered a movement to inbound marketing. And it’s leading by example.
And then, if you’re in a smaller agency or new to marketing, there’s a really great chance you learned the ins and outs of the marketing industry through reading their (auh-mazing) content.
Canvas increases webinar registrations by 48 percent in seven days using Sigstr
OPPORTUNITY
The buyer’s journey is changing. With mountains of high-quality information swirling across the internet, immediately available to prospects, many decision-makers delegate the buying process to someone else. And a new decision-maker enters the fray in the last 5 – 10 percent of the buying experience. Often, this person needs to be engaged, educated and sold from scratch, according to a study from TOPO. And as customers change their habits, marketers are left trying to find new ways to resonate.
For Canvas, that meant crafting tailored content and a strategy that targets the right people at the right time. Whether they’re top-of-funnel prospects or current customers looking to renew.
Canvas has been tagged one of the fastest growing mobile app services in the world. They’ve automated millions of manual tasks and replaced more than 30 tons of paper in business.
When Digital Marketing Specialist Keith Bateman was tasked to set up a year-end webinar featuring the major releases of 2016, he was met with some hesitation. The company had tried webinars before – most saw only a handful of registrants. They’d just never been worth the effort. But customer success insisted, saying a properly-run webinar would provide a real resource to customers and help gauge account health.
“We send thousands of emails every year and we have this big, blank space that we should be taking advantage of. But until Sigstr, it’s just been ignored. It’s there, ready to be used – people read our emails, and the space is on every single one. Just empty.”
– Keith Bateman, Digital Marketing Specialist
SOLUTION
Bateman was given the assignment in the second week of November. You know, right before Thanksgiving. Everyone was running around like crazy to wrap up the year before the holidays. So he developed an email and sent it to a few thousand of the company’s existing accounts, starting the webinar promotion.
That email saw about 70 clicks-to-register convert. But Bateman wanted more. He sent out another email, and returned a 1.39 percent click rate and saw a few more signups.
The week before the event, during the webinar promotion, a member of the sales team sent out an email to his accounts. The messaging was simple: “See what you might have missed this year. Just click my signature below and sign up for the Year in Review webinar.”
The targeted messaging matched with a tailored audience returned a 4.04 percent click rate – and a collective 1.24 percent across the board – which turned into real registrations. That week’s webinar promotion through Sigstr pushed the total up past 150 registrants. Even better, 64 percent of registrants attended the webinar, a percentage higher than any other Canvas webinar to date.
The right language in the email, the ease of use for the customers (and the sales team), and the clean design made it easy for the right clients to sign up. And the 4.04 percent click rate, Bateman added, killed every other channel of webinar promotion.
CAMPAIGN RESULTS
VISION
Because of the wide and targeted audience during the webinar promotion, the engagement was through the roof. With dozens of questions flowing in, the team was able to see what kind of educational material they should send out throughout the year. And with the targeted audience participation, they’ve since been able to tailor their content – even the website – to better answer key questions.
And, it opened the door for upsell conversations. The webinar brought in eight potential upsells sans the hard sell from customer success.
In the future, Bateman said the Canvas team will use tailored campaigns with Sigstr to promote and distribute other quarterly content initiatives.. And the company has started using internal campaigns to help with sales enablement. Bateman assigns tailored content to the sales team to ensure they’re seeing the right content at the right time, too, so they can provide the highest value to their customers and prospects.
“Our sales team is great, they’re all really awesome at what they do. But they’re busy. So we’ve been trying to figure out how we can use our content for our team more efficiently. And Sigstr is the perfect way for them to get education and the content pieces they need. And they’re able to have it without having to check Slack or having to remember to check the content library. It’s a subtle reminder every day that’s in their email.”
– Keith Bateman, Digital Marketing Specialist
OTHER CAMPAIGN DESIGNS
To view the full printable PDF version of this case study, click below!
Disclaimer: This post was written with Selective Jet Lag Disorder (SJLD). A disorder which affects those traveling west, but whose internal clock is set to EST. West coast by night, east coast by morning. While taxing to the patient, this schedule can be maintained for 72 hours. Lucky for me, that’s how long I’m in San Francisco for SaaStr before heading back to Indianapolis.
What Sujan Patel and Mark Roberge taught me:
A Quick Note: In digital marketing, anytime someone has their full name as their Twitter handle, they inherently command instant respect. (They’re not forced to put a number after their name à la @danhanrahan8. I couldn’t even be number two? But I digress.) When someone like Sujan (@sujanpatel) or Mark (@markroberge) gives me advice on Sigstr, you bet I’m taking notes.
Short time to value + High viral factor = Huge freemium potential
Sigstr has prioritized enterprise functionality to serve the largest companies in the world. We’ve kept the UX clean and intuitive, so the SMB marketer can quickly launch and see value. However, we have not prioritized the first-time, self-service experience.
Before we get too far, let’s detour for a quick rundown on the viral/value/freemium opportunities with Sigstr. Our platform lets marketers centrally control employee email signatures. It ensures every send closes with an on-brand signature and a crisp, dynamic call-to-action. Here are a few examples from SaaStr sponsors.
The average employee sends 10,000 emails each year. And, each email is looked at around two-and-a-half times. So for a company with just 100 employees, Sigstr is seen 2.5 million times! We include a simple watermark that displays in those signatures and it’s our single largest lead source. The viral component is absolutely unparalleled.
In SaaS, we do things that don’t scale in the early days. Often this involves high-touch service – basically, we do all the heavy lifting for you. We want you live as fast as humanly possible with a branded signature and compelling CTAs for every team. Email signature marketing is a new channel. And we know how to make it work. So we do it for our customers so they can see it work, too.
And while we do have about 10 percent of our Annual Recurring Revenue driven from self-service folks, it’s simply not as intentional as it should be.
But there is zero reason not to focus on the self-service model with the ideal free product. Because for us every user promotes our product 10,000 times / year!
One last thing I picked up from Sujan: Freemium does not necessarily mean you’ll only attract small businesses. If an enterprise signs up for the freemium product, you drop everything and engage that person just as you would any other inbound enterprise lead.
What I learned from Lauren Vaccerello, VP Marketing at Box
How to Market to Customers, Small, Medium, Large, Extra-Large: All at the Same Time from the Same Budget
Lauren has the same problem we have at Sigstr: Every company, of every size and in every vertical can be a potential customer. At the same time, every employee in a company gets value from the product. Box has 69k customers, including 60 percent of the Fortune 500.
So how the heck do you market without becoming generic and vanilla? It all starts by aligning your sales team on segments. And then crafting a strategy for each of those segments. Then, automation and the right technology tools can drive massive scale. Some notable recommendations from Lauren were Demandbase, Radius, 6Sense, Marketo and Optimizely.
Let’s review:
Step 1: Build segments with sales
S2: Measure everything to understand your segments
S3: Apply the right technology tools to automate relevant marketing
I learned so much on day one at SaaStr. I’ve met some incredible people and can’t wait for the next 48 hours. Sleep is overrated.
As marketers continue the search for new ways to get their information in front of their most important contacts, companies like Mimeo are paving the way for the future.
Mimeo is a B2B tech company that brings content to life through print and digital products. They were the first company to offer online printing and overnight delivery of complex documents like manuals, booklets, newsletters or posters. Training departments, for example, rely on Mimeo to distribute materials, whether they need digital training modules or three-ring binders.
The company started as a startup in the 90s with a mission to disrupt the print industry. They’ve since grown into a global company with more than 800 employees serving customers in 140 countries around the world. Their corporate HQ is in New York City. And they have offices in Memphis, Newark, Boston, and Seattle in addition to a growing international presence in the United Kingdom, Germany, India, and China.
From their roots, they’ve become the experts in content distribution for enterprise organizations. They reinvented the print industry and now aim to give customers a more efficient way to work.
We talked with Robert Byrne, content marketing manager at Mimeo on how content distribution – and specifically using email signature marketing – is boosting his content strategy this year.
Question 1: What are some of the biggest initiatives Mimeo takes on in a year?
Mimeo enables the transfer of knowledge across the world. What I mean is, we help organizations connect with their audience. Whether it’s a meeting with the executive board, or a training session for a new product launch, we produce the complex documents they need to be successful. Because we’re a cloud-based platform, we can be easily scaled. So our Fortune 500 customers share the same, effortless experience when building and distributing content for a global investor relations meeting as a small business owner would ordering a dozen training manuals.
(Platform Sigstr Banner, used by Mimeo’s Marketing and Sales Teams.)
Here’s a look at some of our platforms:
Mimeo Print – Build, proof and distribute on-demand print materials.
Mimeo Marketplace – Customizable storefront for audiences to access print, digital and non-print materials.
Mimeo Digital – Enterprise digital content distribution, streamlining users and admins ability to communicate and collaborate.
Mimeo HubCast – Centralized network of Print Service Providers (PSPs) for global marketers to produce and deliver print materials in-region.
Q2: What was most attractive to you about turning your professional email signature into a content distribution channel? And why Sigstr?
Our communication with customers is a core part of our business. This communication needs to go beyond simply supporting them; it needs to ensure that our customers are successful. Sigstr lets our team contribute to customer success by delivering relevant, targeted content in a tasteful manner.
We have customers in every industry, of every size. With email signature marketing, we’re able to share relevant and targeted information with each of them. As we continue to rollout new technology and product offerings that save them even more time, Sigstr gives us a channel to quickly, subtly share.
And we can do it in a conversation we’re already having with them – rather than sending more emails and risking being overlooked, or worse, ignored.
I think many organizations make the mistake of sending out generic content that only resonates with a fraction of its recipients, ultimately wasting their time. Since our mission is to give customers back their time through an effortless experience, I want to make sure our messaging doesn’t add clutter, but instead adds value.
The ability to group teams into various unique campaigns helps segment what we put in front of customers and prospects. It ensures that the content will resonate and add value that supports their business objectives. The dashboard lets me assess the effectiveness of a campaign immediately and make adjustments accordingly. Sigstr has helped us to achieve our goals in an efficient and simple way.
Q3: How are you using Sigstr?
We have many customers in the restaurant industry, and often these franchises need to distribute printed content to all of their locations for employee training or marketing. These customers use Mimeo Print because we let them send their materials to hundreds of locations in a few minutes, all by placing a single order.
(Mimeo Tracking: Used by Mimeo’s Retail & Hospitality Sales Team)
Recently, we released Mimeo Tracking. It’s a new feature of Mimeo Print that lets our customers track the hundreds of shipments all on one screen. It eliminates the need to check tracking numbers and instead provides a single visual representation of all of their shipments.
Mimeo Tracking has given our customers back a massive amount of time in their day. It’s something we’re just as excited about it as our customers are. We used Sigstr to tell them about the new release when it was added to all Mimeo Print accounts.
Mimeo’s story is an incredible one to tell. And with Sigstr, we’re given a channel that strengthens our narrative. There are more exciting developments on the way, and I’m looking forward to layering in Sigstr campaigns to our content strategy.
Here are a few more professional email signature designs we’ve created so far with Sigstr:
There is no such thing as instant gratification in b2b content marketing.
We’ve created an always-on, fast-paced, agile world where, as content consumers, we want to see everything we can, and then a little that we can’t, and we want it now. We want it on every device and we want it engaging enough to hold our attention until the next big whatever-it-is comes along in our newsfeed – in about eight seconds.
The speed at which the internet moves content through its search engines has become so fast – making the piece you poured your blood, sweat and tears into obsolete almost the instant you hit publish. (Cue more tears.) Brands are forced to keep a feverish pace just in an effort to keep up with their b2b content marketing competitors and the rising demands of our consumers. Not to mention covering, in great detail, all the trending topics that span across the Twittersphere.
We’ve conditioned consumers to anticipate the short-term gains as we push to deliver content on-demand. And in the process, we’ve come to crave the instant wins that give us an immediate sense of ROI. But we’re not getting them. Not really, anyway. Instead we bask in a false high, released when we achieve mediocre success with our b2b content marketing.
Of course, some nominal returns can be seen quickly, but the real payoff comes when we slow down – when we stay fixed in stronger returns for a long-term campaign. If your only goal is to increase top-line revenue more efficiently with b2b content marketing (read: a cheaper investment) than through the traditional advertising, then you’re missing out on the greater benefits content can offer. Slowing down allows us to achieve real results – faster.
We are impatient.
Modern technology and instant-communication social media platforms have conditioned content consumers to expect results instantaneously. My internet was down for 2 minutes while writing this post (gasp!) and my anxiety peaked. People – our readers, watchers, prospects, consumers, even ourselves – have lost the ability to wait. Tweets, Facebook, texting require no patience and they provide users with immediate gratification. And people have come to expect the same from the companies they buy from.
It’s no longer enough to give customers amazing service and competitive price points. Now they want all of that, but they want it yesterday.
We broke content by being good at it.
We’ve been insanely successful in making the case for content. Around 90 percent of companies are creating at least some form of content, according to Demand Metric. And 78 percent of CMOs have tagged custom content as the way of the future. Content engineers, signed on with a Near-Faustian promise of “More budget = More leads,” have actually made some pretty significant strides in ROI.
But the gain we made in the early days of content programs can be deceptive. In many cases these blog posts, ebooks, whitepapers and videos mark the first time our brands have delivered valuable content to our easiest-to-reach audiences.
As content powers ahead at the speed of Snapchat, we’re left still scratching our heads to figure out where it fits in the customer journey. Consumers are littered with mountains of mediocre content of everything that’s ever been published (ever!) tangling the interwebs. And some people still think it’s enough to just put their work up on a blog and hope for the best – bless their hearts.
Audiences are becoming harder to reach and connect with. They’re more demanding – and more discerning – as to what content they consider valuable. And as the content marketing operation matures, we’re having a harder time figuring out new ways to up the impact while keeping up with the increasing demand for higher high-quality content.
Turn off the instant gratification switch.
Human nature tends to take the path of least resistance. In other words, people are lazy. And slowing down isn’t for the faint of heart. It’s hard! Being strategic and intentional in your b2b content marketing strategy takes time, effort, resources and a whole lot of work.
We need to dig deep into purpose. And we need to figure out if we’re going to ground our marketing and content in something substantive so our strategies can find a place within the context of what our customers actually care about. When we slow down, and create items of value for our customers – consistently holding them at the center of everything we do – we’re left with more social shares, more engagement and, ultimately, more leads.
We’ve become so intent on finding the goal for our brand, we’ve lost touch as to why we’re creating in the first place. It’s not about us. Our attention needs to become intently focused on becoming a resource for our consumers. We need to make our conversations a two-way street. And becoming a trusted resource takes time. It’s a strategy of marginal gains that, if made daily, can result in a significant impact over time.
So what steps should you take to manage a content slow down? Here are four:
4 steps to slow(er) b2b content marketing
1. Figure out the “why”
Why are you making what you’re making? Specifically, are you looking to increase lead generation? Brand awareness? Brand authority? Are you working to shorten your customer sales journey? What’s the point? Step one is to figure out your company goal. And then set those goals aside.
Next, figure out why your reader will care about your content. Remember, no one has to read what you write, no one has to watch what you produce. So if you align your reasons for content creation to their priorities, you’ll gain more authority (and more leads). Before you even begin to make whatever it is you’re making, figure out why your piece matters, and how it’ll help you reach your ultimate goal.
2. Think about who cares
ID who your reader actually is – and know what their focus is. What stuff will resonate with them? Which resources will help them to be more successful in their roles? Align the customer experience to the journey they’re embarking on to get there.
Deliver an experience that your prospects and customers want to be a part of. And surprise and delight them along the way – and afterward, too.
Skip the corporate speak that focuses on what your brand does, how you do it and just how awesome you really are – even if you are, in fact, an awesome corporate player. Instead, focus on the reader. Be a real and helpful resource. Turn them into the hero of their own story and you’ll gain their trust – and ultimately win their business.
3. Don’t be afraid to experiment
Content creation is scary. It takes creativity served up with a side of nerve and a bit of grit. So don’t be afraid to get it wrong. Create content that doesn’t sound like everyone else. Market in a way that doesn’t feel like marketing.
Write. Play. Experiment.
Take time to create bigger, braver pieces of content. Write stories that resonate with a unique tone. Make stuff that’s actually engaging for your customers – not just your CMO. Be creative and embrace the uncomfortable. Don’t worry, you’ve got this.
4. Train for a marathon
B2B content marketing is a marathon, not a sprint. So train for it. Literally! Pace out your creation schedule like a marathon runner, in a three-day cycle. Each stress day is then separated by two easier days. For a runner, this pattern is used to challenge endurance, strength and speed.
For content, the cycle looks a little like this:
Day 1: Heavy writing – write multiple blog posts in one day or work on a large chunk of an ebook.
D2: Easy writing – write just one post or do client engagement on social.
D3: Easy writing – again, take it easy, but be productive. Maybe today is a research and outlining day.
D4: Heavy video – work on the mass of your next video project
D5: Easy video – brainstorm and edit
D6: Easy video – post-production edits and rendering
Of course you can play with this model to fit what you’re creating – post writing, video production, graphics, newsletters, webinars, podcasts, infographics, event promotion. Just use the pattern as a guide and then pace your schedule.
Content is a game changer. But, to paraphrase Hemingway, change happens gradually, and then all at once. In other words, slow marketing will lead to rapid results.
But in a marketing landscape as ephemeral as Snapchat, one where 140 characters qualifies as fully-formed thought processes, how can we possibly keep up with the shape-shifting terrain in marketing channels to distribute our content?
Of course, marketing needs agility. It requires a nimble combination of strategy served up with a side of creativity. But no one brain can be a conversion optimizer, detailed designer, content mastermind with time to test, measure and repeat, all at once. Instead, we look to the talents and skill sets of our peers. We follow the paths of marketers who have tackled the same customer journey challenges before us.
In the spirit of education, we’re shedding light on our distribution course. We’re bringing focus to our multichannel strategy, which highlights the need to prioritize and strategize each of your relevant marketing channels.
In the last year, we’ve implemented social media marketing through paid LinkedIn advertising, search engine marketing through Google AdWords and email signature marketing through our own platform here at Sigstr.
Let’s get real for a minute.
Now, we know the value of Sigstr, but just like any marketer – we wanted to prove it. So we ran an experiment using our own data. We wanted to know what $5,000 could buy us on these marketing channels in comparison to email signature marketing. We looked at the number of impressions and clicks. And then we measured the average click-through rate. Next, we tracked the cost per 1000 impressions and per click.
This isn’t someone else’s data. This is the data we collected in 2016, based on our campaigns for each of the digital marketing channels. We optimized each channel’s content for the highest performance possible. We are in marketing after all, and we want our content to be seen, clicked, read or watched. Here’s what we found:
Number of Impressions
Winner: Sigstr
The $5,000 budget is enough to implement 83 users at $5 a user per month for the whole year, so that’s definitely noteworthy when comparing the digital marketing channels. In comparison, the same budget paid for 4 weeks on LinkedIn and 8 weeks on Google AdWords. Using Sigstr, our content was seen 1,955,234 times in 2016. On LinkedIn we were able to garner 174,386 impressions and on Google AdWords our content was seen 46,250 times.
A couple things to note, though: With AdWords, we were seen just 46,000 times but the content was delivered to a targeted, and interested audience. That kind of targeted impression helped our click-through rates on AdWords, as you’ll see below. However, it did take a bit of time to tweak our campaigns to get the most benefit from the digital marketing channel. We were in it for about 30 to 60 minutes a day.
We were able to do some targeting on LinkedIn, but not at the same level. On the other hand, with Sigstr, the campaign is centrally managed, so our marketing department could set relevant, unique content for each department in the company. And it was delivered to a hand-picked audience through email.
Number of Clicks
Winner: Sigstr
This likely goes back to the fact we were able to run the Sigstr campaign for 52 weeks for the same budget we ran the 4- and 8-week campaigns on social and search media. Because the campaigns through email signature marketing were seen more often, by a more targeted audience, people engaged.
It was interesting to see the clicks did not correlate with impressions for the other channels. LinkedIn raked in more than 174,000 views but only grabbed 641 clicks. And Google AdWords, which had the lowest number of impressions, targeted 2,640 clicks.
Average Click-Through Rate
Winner: Google AdWords
Google AdWords came out on top of the CTR category with an impressive rate of 5.71 percent. By having a targeted, engaged audience, we could reach more of the people we actually wanted to reach. Sigstr had an average CTR of 0.46 percent and LinkedIn had a rate of 0.368 percent.
CPM
Winner: Sigstr
If we charged per 1000 impressions, Sigstr’s CPM would be $2.56. We don’t – but it’s a good, relatable metric that helps even the playing field for social and search media marketing. In comparison, LinkedIn’s CPM rate sits at $26 while Google AdWords is a whopping $108 based on the results of our use on the digital marketing channels.
CPC
Winner: Sigstr
Another metric simply to make the marketing channels comparable – Sigstr’s CPC sits at $0.56. We had almost 9,000 clicks on our $5000 worth of email signature campaigns last year. That’s in comparison to LinkedIn’s 641 clicks, at a CPC of $7.80 and Google AdWords’ 2,640 clicks at a cost of $1.89 per click.
So what does all of this data mean?
The bottom line is that your company will have natural growth levers – but it’s helpful to optimize when to pull and where to squeeze. A well-formed content distribution strategy is going to look at as many targeted marketing channels as possible. And then add new channels, like email signature marketing (<<shameless plug) to differentiate your brand and reach a high concentration of targeted contacts.
In today’s marketing landscape, an effective content distribution channel has become just as important as content creation. Some 88 percent of B2B marketers in North America already rely on some form of content marketing, and audiences have been struck by a sort of content shock. They’ve become numb to the mountains of mediocre content that corners them at every click. People today are more empowered than ever to simply ignore the pieces they have no interest in.
Content quality is, of course, the foundation of earning your audience’s attention. But even if you’ve created the Mona Lisa of ebooks, no one is going to care if they can’t find it. If you don’t know how to distribute it, your content isn’t going to be seen, clicked, read, watched or shared. That’s why an intelligent content distribution channel is so important. And that’s why a record number of users signed on to use Sigstr in 2016.
Last year was a record-smashing year for the Sigstr team. We grew our user base by a staggering 470 percent. And we powered more than 100 million signature impressions across our customer base with our email signature marketing platform.
This kind of new targeted connectivity through the employee email signature has promoted campaigns like HubSpot’s INBOUND 2016 event and became a foundation in creating unique partnerships with companies, like HubSpot.
The team at Bounce Exchange, Inc. 500s fastest growing software company, is using email signature marketing for content distribution to attract and recruit more talent. And NBA teams, like the Indiana Pacers are putting tangible benefits to corporate sponsorships using the owned marketing channel.
Why do we care so much about your content distribution channel?
Because simply creating good content isn’t enough anymore. Sure, your SEO strategy and best practices will help drive relevant traffic to your content, but it shouldn’t be the only tool in your content toolbox. You can’t build a house with just a hammer, can you?
Paid channels, like LinkedIn or Google AdWords can give you a boost if you’re willing to shell out the time and money for it. But 90 percent of all social clicks go to organic content. And on Google, organic content commands 80 percent of the clicks.
The people who find your content through organic search will likely be an audience to find your content helpful. (Whether or not they’re an ideal buyer is left totally up in the air, though.) But the chance of them returning to your content or sharing it after seeing the information they needed is probably slim.
How we’re targeting your audience
Marketers are looking to decentralize content, according to HubSpot’s State of Inbound 2016 Report. More of our peers are looking to target audiences intentionally and strategically. And that’s where we come in.
By injecting your content into your email signature, you’re hand picking an audience designed for your content. Have a new blog? Maybe it’s an event registration, or ebook you’re promoting. Perhaps you’d like to draw attention to a new product microsite. HubSpot, Bounce Exchange and the Pacers are all using email signature marketing for an efficient content distribution channel. And then they’re able to measure it to see which content resonates and what doesn’t. That kind of insight lets them optimize their content strategy based on data.
You’re distributing content without having to fight for your reader’s attention, because it’s in your email signature. You already own that channel. And you know your contact is a targeted persona. What’s more is, then you’re able to attract your customers to you. And you can educate them along the way. Especially if your product is particularly complex, with a complex set of features, or you have direct competitors who share similar features. It’s a great way to differentiate yourself.
To learn more about our growth news, read our press release here.
In an age of post-truth and fake news, wouldn’t it be great to have insight into marketing masterminds’ thoughts on what trends will take hold in 2017? Lucky for us, we’re in no shortage of guesstimations of marketing trends for the year ahead.
The problem is, with prediction after prediction (after prediction) made by some of the smartest people in our industry, how do you know which one to trust? We almost never look back to forecasts made years ago, so in most cases, you choose an authority on an educated whim.
To help you untangle the prediction webs, we’ve looked at three major marketing blogs: Hubspot, MarketingProfs and Content Marketing Institute. They’re the sources we look to all year for advice, inspiration and guidance, and so it only makes sense to see how their predictions faired last year. Who predicted 2016 best?
But here’s the deal, this analysis is completely arbitrary. We took a look at each prediction and decided whether we thought it came true or maybe not so much. There is absolutely no scientific value to it whatsoever. It’s just our own evaluation.
A note: The horseshoe category
You know how they say almost only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades? Well, I like to think almost fits in a few more gray areas. Not every prediction made was black or white. The almost-trends of 2016 have laid a foundation for this year. They got half way (or more) to becoming the next dernier cri of marketing, then shifted – either falling flat or taking on new, but different than predicted, life.
Nailed It
Here are the predictions that hit the mark square on the head in 2016:
Relationship marketing, Hubspot
Hubspot predicted an influx of personalized, data-driven marketing. All solid relationships, they said, are built on trust. And adding another layer of transparency between customer and brand has proven both popular and profitable.
Invest in content, MarketingProfs
Companies earmarked an average of 28 percent of total marketing spending for content marketing in 2016, according to the Content Marketing Institute. The most successful brands are allocating 42 percent of their budget, up from 37 percent last year. And while MarketingProfs was right on their prediction that content will hit the mainstream, more than half of B2B marketers still think we’re investing too little in content.
Broad-picture marketing, Content Marketing Institute
Brands want to enhance the entire audience experience, so they’ve prioritized user experiences online. This year, we’ve spent more time and resources to study the metadata and taxonomies and we’ve found our voice – making a consistent and cohesive tone and brand across all mediums.
Content distribution, MarketingProfs
Marketers spent 2016 finding new ways to get their content noticed. We can have the greatest piece of work in the world, but no one will care unless they can find it. With an influx of paid and earned media already on the terrain, owned channels, like email signature marketing, have come into focus as a differentiator. (<<shameless plug, but it’s true!)
Native advertising, Content Marketing Institute
CMI predicted native advertising would be trendy, but hard. And that’s exactly what happened in 2016. Every brand wants to try it, but few are really making a splash with it yet.
Organizational structure, MarketingProfs
More companies invested in content marketing in 2016 than ever before. Teams with valuable managers have been implemented in the most successful B2B brands. And they’re investing time and resources to strategize and produce. Businesses have seen content marketing’s cost is around 62 percent less than outbound marketing, but it generates more than 3X as many leads, so it’s finally getting the respect it deserves (<<says the content marketing manager).
Missed It
These predictions fell a little short:
Digital overload, Content Marketing Institute
CMI, we love you, but people just aren’t sick of digital yet. While a disconnect is appreciated every now and then, we’ve been trained to want what we want and want it yesterday. We need to work faster than ever. And we need to use the plethora of resources available in digital format to get the job done. Sure successful brands have cut their social presence to focus on creating only the best content to be distributed on their most important channels. But it’s because there’s so much information out there, we need to put more effort into making sure ours stands out. We do love your optimism for an uptick in publishing, though!
Search beyond search engines, Hubspot
The prediction of a 2016 shift into an all-in-one platform on social media is a step too far. Hubspot claimed advanced search would bring a more integrated social experience, but we’re just not there yet. We’re getting there, sure, but it didn’t take hold in 2016. Internet users still prefer to use Google, Bing and Yahoo – in that order – to find what they’re looking for.
Horseshoes
Here are the predictions that became our almost-trends of 2016:
Ephemeral Marketing, Hubspot
Snapchat is now the second most powerful social platform in the United States. It has more users than Twitter – and grew as much in one year as the Twitter did over the last 4. Yeesh! More than that, a whooping 10 percent of the entire nation’s population of social media-using 12-24 year olds have moved away from Facebook and onto Snapchat as their platform of choice. There is absolutely no doubt the ephemeral movement is real. But marketers are still trying to figure out how to use it. Some brands tried it in 2016, few succeeded. Maybe this year.
Slow marketing, Content Marketing Institute
Marketers have been so excited about the content marketing movement that we’ve jumped right in. We made all the content but put little thought into the strategy behind it. Content Marketing Institute said last year the brands who continued on this path would crash and burn. And while some have, most haven’t. But that’s not going to last much longer. With so much content flooding our industry, we need to think first, then produce. Strategize and be patient. Take time to create authentic, valuable content.
Internet of Things, Hubspot
Internet of Things has been couched as a tool for personalization. Marketers are saying it’ll be a platform for engagement and a way to create a new customer experience. And as much as this trend started to take hold in 2016, the foundation has only just been laid.
Measurement and ROI, MarketingProfs
So much of me wishes this were a trend right now, and we’re almost there. But 2016 was not the year of ROI. It was a year to learn how to measure, setting the groundwork for 2017 to be the year we use the data we’ve collected.
Virtual reality, Hubspot
Hubspot said virtual reality would undoubtedly cause some kind of shift in marketing ideology in 2016. VR is all about delivering an experience. From the second you slip on a VR headset, you’re immersed in the virtual experience. It has the potential to disrupt the entire marketing landscape. But that didn’t happen in 2016. Instead, augmented reality took strong hold with apps like Pokemon Go blending virtual experiences into the real world.
So who do we entrust as our trend-master in 2017? We’ll just have to wait and see.
Ever think your email signature is ignored or overlooked? Think again. This little slice of digital real estate is getting more and more attention (for better or for worse). When done well, it can be an extension of your company’s brand and serve as a new way to distribute content. But when it misses the mark, it could spur a variety of emotions (laughter, anger, distrust, judgment, etc.) from your audience.
Thumbing through examples of bad email signatures is fun (a lot fun actually). Reading the commentary about funny email signature fails is even more fun. And you can definitely get your pick in the Twittersphere. So we decided to scroll through the many tweets in 2016 about email signatures and share our favorites. As we gathered more and more tweets, a few themes started to form.
The Cause & Effect of Using Comic Sans
Effect: Your email moving to the trash bin
Effect: None (or a no-reply)
Effect: Loss of all credibility amongst your peers
Effect: Automatic disqualification from all future opinions
Effect: Trust issues
Misspelling Your Recipient’s Name
We feel you, Patrick. Trust has to be established before abbreviated names occur.
Bonus points to Kirthi for the perfect GIF reaction in this situation.
The Dreaded Inspirational Quote
Jason is right. It’s Monday…relax people.
Ally authored her own famous quote to show how she really feels about this issue. Well done.
We appreciate your honesty, Abigail.
The trust issues continue…
Valid question, Alexis.
We’re proud of you too, Texas Pro.
We sense some sarcasm here…
Other/Miscellaneous
1994 called. They asked if you could please remove your fax number…
We love Peter’s perspective above, but Craig took it to a whole new level.
We’re sorry, Charlie! We love the idea of central control over the company’s email signature (except when the admin starts playing pranks).
Credentials are important – especially grade school accomplishments.
100% agree. Take the time to remove “Sent from my iphone” from your mobile email signature.
This popular tag line doesn’t always work for certain types of businesses.
If you find out what Vikings like to drink, let us know. We’ll open a tab too…
Shelby-lyn, we hope you’re kidding.
As fellow Cubs fans, we fully appreciate and support this move.
We have never felt more #blessed reading about this funny email signature (and laughing). Now show us the actual picture!
Some people have zero tolerance for long email signatures.
Ever dream of funny email signature typos and wake up in a cold sweat? We do, too.
Attached images are the worst…
Make sure you take the time to build an email signature in your settings. Otherwise some people might get very offended…
This is one of the more outrageous examples we found, but we absolutely love it.
And finally…Margaret sums it up best.
Let’s face it, perfecting your email signature IS hard. Especially for those brand managers or marketing directors who are asked to manage their company’s email signature for 50+ employees.
That’s where Sigstr comes in! Let us know how we can help make your job just a little easier by standardizing company-wide email signatures (and bonus: using it as a new content distribution channel).
Business professionals in the U.S. spend an average of 6.3 hours a day checking and responding to email, according to The Huffington Post, based on research from Adobe Systems Inc. Collectively, that’s about 4.2 trillion hours in email every year, summed from statistics culled through the U.S. Bureau of Labor, McKinsey Global Institute and The Radicati Group, Inc.
But despite the impressive amount of email content people read and send each day, a huge majority of your messages are getting lost in filters. Nearly three-quarters of all marketers report having issues with email deliverability. Up to 85 percent of incoming mail is considered abusive. So mailbox providers (like Gmail and Outlook) are forced to blanket aggressive measures against all senders to deter spam and protect customers. As a result, marketers can get tangled in the filters. Senders need more control. They need more sophisticated tools to understand when emails deliver, and when they don’t.
Every email we send is meant to be opened, and 250ok helps you make sure it’s opened, with better inbox placement and engagement. The platform offers up real-time insights into brand reputation, DMARC compliance, and advanced engagement analytics to data-driven senders.
250ok has been a Sig-Star for almost a year, and they’re rocking their design and email content to inject into their signature. In November, the team saw an opportunity to add value with their latest whitepaper on the “9 Things Every Marketers Must Know About Email.”
WHAT WE LOVE:
The design grabs and holds the email recipients’ attention. Focusing first on the typography, 250ok designers amped up the intensity levels through each line of text by making each line larger than the last. And they kept the design simple. The clear call-to-action was easy to read and understand.
To really make the CTA pop, the 250ok designers played with a little buyer psychology by using the color red. To start, red is a warm and positive color. It encourages action and immediately catches the eye. In color psychology, read means energy, passion, action, strength and excitement. The color creates a sense of urgency to read the content. NOW. And, it has a physical effect on the reader, too. Because red is stimulating and energizing, it affects your nerves and the circulation of blood by raising blood pressure and heart rate. Cool, right?! Who knew colors could have such an intense impact on how we internalize email content?
This campaign was served up more than 16,000 times. And because of the simple design, it engaged 350 targeted readers.
WHAT (ELSE) WE LOVE:
We know the design is on point with the 250ok clickable CTA banner, but we love the value offer, too. They know their brand is more (way more) than a cool website and sleek logo. So they’re creating a differentiator by adding educational whitepapers in their signature. By doing so, they get more eyes on the content. And (more importantly) their contacts get nine tips and tactics to improve their own email strategy.
Of course the design is amazing. But what the reader gets when they click is applicable help for their email strategy. The whitepaper is actionable, not to mention well written and meaty. And, the 250ok crew keyed up a value add in every, single email they sent for a month by injecting the “must-read” piece of content into their signature.
Sigstr Shout-Out is a series that features the insanely talented and creatively driven Sigstr customer campaigns so you can see simple email signature best practices in action – and who’s nailing them.
Since November, the Sigstr office has been blaring kitschy holiday tunes and tempting visitors with a steady supply of Christmas treats. Nothing puts us in the spirit more than Mariah Carey and a few extra pounds around the middle! Now that Christmas is weeks away, we’re kicking it into high gear and using any excuse to spread the Christmas cheer to all those far and near.
Our affection for the holiday season explains our focus on the holiday email template, specifically the email signature. After all, if Harry Potter has an email signature, Santa should too! When approaching the topic, the only dilemma was selecting which Christmas characters to feature. With so many to pick from, how do you choose?
Buddy the Elf
Buddy’s Christmas cheer puts the Sigstr office to shame. With his childlike humor and zest for life, it’s easy to see why Buddy the Elf is a Christmas favorite. On a quest to find his father, Buddy unearthed answers to life’s most interesting questions and discovered truths he never imagined. His most memorable inquiry, however, was left unanswered…
Frosty
I think we can all agree that Frosty’s story is one of the most tragic Christmas tales. Not only does the poor fella have eyes made out of coal, but he’s slowly melting away! With this holiday email template, perhaps there could be a different ending – one where Frosty lives happily ever after all year round!
Rudolph
Does anyone know why Rudolph has a shiny red nose? No, but that’s not the point. Rudolph is the Christmas poster child for overcoming adversity and (reindeer) bullying. After that famous foggy Christmas Eve when Rudolph saved the day, he used his story to inspire the world.
Bumble, The Abominable Snow Monster
You can’t name Rudolph without including his adversary, Bumble, the Abominable Snow Monster. If there’s ever been a Christmas miracle, it’s the fact that the 1964 Claymation film is still televised on a yearly basis. Video production has come a long way since the 60s, but there’s nothing like the classics! Nostalgia aside, Bumble is a Sigstr favorite. He did help with that star, after all.
The Grinch
We’re not sure where Whoville is, but we’d like to relocate the Sigstr office there immediately. The Whos are warm hearted and welcoming and their houses are downright adorable. It’s no wonder the Grinch eventually gave in to their holiday cheer! This Christmas, Professor Grinch is likely cuddling with Max and listening to “Welcome Christmas” on repeat.
Scrooge
Much like the Grinch, Ebenezer Scrooge despised Christmas and all those that celebrated it. Thank goodness for the Ghosts of Past, Present, and Yet to Come that showed him the error in his ways. These days, Ebenezer runs a non-profit with his partner, Tiny Tim, which is promoted in this holiday email template.
Kevin McCallister
Has there ever been a cooler character than Kevin McCallister? His addiction to junk food and ability to outwit grown-ups make him a Christmas stand-out. There are not many 8-year-olds that can single-handedly take on the likes of two woeful burglars. It’s no surprise Kevin honed his talents in adulthood.
Santa
He sees you when you’re sleeping. He knows when you’re awake. Sound familiar? Well, this year, you can do a little spying of your own. Contrary to popular belief, Santa is a pretty hip guy. He keeps up with the latest tech trends and recently introduced The Santa Radar. Mrs. Claus is relieved that she finally has a way to keep tabs on the man.
There is no better Christmas character to end on than Santa! Don’t want the fun to end? Feel free to check out the email signatures of Parks and Rec or Back to the Future! (Each of which are best enjoyed with a plate full of frosted Christmas cookies and a side of spiked eggnog.)
This post is from our partners at Contactually, a virtual assistant software for your email that discovers opportunities in your inbox by proactively suggesting next steps. Read the original here.
If you’ve ever worked in sales, you probably had to cold call prospects. And if you have ever had to cold call your prospects, you probably hated it.
Those of us in sales are constantly looking for ways to work smarter instead of harder. With new technology emerging daily and a strategic focus on inbound marketing tactics, outbound efforts have the potential to be reduced significantly without compromising growth or revenue. Can you imagine only having hot leads?
Making dials down a random list of cold prospects can often be a massive waste of time. Ask any sales manager what type of leads they would prefer their team work with, and they will say inbound every single time. Ask any real estate professional the types of leads they would prefer and they will tell you “referrals.” The quality of a lead matters. Every minute in a salesperson’s workday matters. Being mindful of where leads are coming from is the new form of smart outreach.
With a strategic plan and a focus on relationships, inbound leads will be your entire dial list. Effective inbound marketing tactics create an influx of leads without requiring the outbound outreach that every sales person dreads.
6 Ways to get better leads and avoid cold calling:
We know what you’re thinking. How can I grow my business without outbound efforts?Where do I turn for leads if not through cold calling? Below are a few inbound marketing tactics that are sure to land you or your team batches of hot, quality leads.
1. Referrals
Past sales and clients are your best referral sources. A referral is a hotter lead than any you could have prospected on your own. A current customer or past client has vouched for you. As your prospect walks through the door or picks up the phone, he or she already has higher level of trust for you simply because of their friend’s relationship with you.
Not maximizing potential referrals or allowing referrals to slip through the cracks is a mistake many sales professionals make. Staying top-of-mind with your current and past customers is essential for generating referrals. Providing great customer service and closing the sale professionally is usually not enough to maximize your referrals, either.
You should learn to ask your prospects if they know anyone else who may be interested in your services. Actively seek out referrals, because someone who just closed on a home and is getting ready to move in, doesn’t quite have referrals on the brain. They may need a gentle push or reminder in that direction.
2. Networking
In the age of technology, we tend to forget what actually drives revenue: people. Having a solid network and proactively attending events to meet people can be extremely beneficial in landing new leads. Carry business cards with you and make a point to start conversations. Mention your business without throwing a sales pitch.
Marketing can be just as powerful in person as it is online. Get to know local business owners or other real estate agents who could potentially refer you business, don’t underestimate the power of having a good business relationship with other professionals!
3. Revisit old leads
Some leads will pass on the purchase and then revisit the idea later down the road. Sift through your old leads and shoot them an email. Are they happy with the solution they chose? Or are they in need of your services again? This is your chance to rekindle the relationship because often, old leads are hotter than cold leads, and sometimes can pan out. Take advantage of the inbound marketing tactics you have already put in place.
4. Establish an online presence
Do you blog? You should. Do you have a professional website? You should. Establishing an online presence is essential for generating leads. When you make it easy to share your name and your business, more people will do it.
Engaging with your potential clients online (be it social media or elsewhere) can have a profound effect on you staying top of mind. If you are consistently maintaining a professional online presence, leads will begin to come to you.Plus, thanks to social media, you can connect on a more personal level with your leads and clients, building up that crucial trusting relationship.
5. Become a guest contributor
Do you know someone with a podcast or blog where you can guest-star? Maybe you know someone who sponsors a local event. Can you snag a speaking engagement locally? Establishing yourself as an expert in your field will most likely bring you leads. Reach out to the local newspaper, do they need a columnist or want one in your area of expertise? Check out blogs or news sites where they take submissions of articles and get writing!
6. Start giving referrals
In order to receive referrals, you need to give some, right? Try it out yourself by building up your network of professionals and others that you can refer your clients to. A strong list of referral partners is a key part to your inbound marketing tactics. Building relationships with other business professionals that you respect and trust can lead to a partnership for both parties. Giving a referral is appreciated by all and can truly aide in strengthening your own referral base.
Qualified leads are better leads
The next time you block off an hour to call down a list of cold prospects, ask yourself: could I be mining my own network for referrals? Could I be building a blog to establish thought leadership around my craft? Could I be speaking at a local event to generate interest in my business? If the answer is yes, there are still hot leads out there. You just have to look for them.
Every email we send is meant to be opened. To make sure that happens, countless hours have been spent decoding the best day, the right time, the funniest subject lines, the ideal length and the right amount of customization needed to get human-to-human emails opened.
We know, for example, emails are typically received with the best response when they’re chalk-full of customer-centric messaging and sent around 10 a.m. on Tuesdays. Of course that depends on your content, industry and the list you’ve uploaded. But for the most part, the guidelines work really well all year.
Until the holidays.
Every year, from November until January email behavior changes. Our metrics plummet and our carefully crafted email strategies are left useless in our holiday email marketing sends.
People care before Christmas
A 2015 study from Hubspot looked at more than 4.5 million emails sent over the previous holiday season. They found while almost 54,000 emails were sent daily through their platform alone, few were actually opened. And even fewer were responded to.
The exception? The week before Christmas. In fact, the five days leading into Christmas showed open rates for 1:1 holiday email marketing campaigns were up by 6 percent over average. But the spike didn’t last long, as the study found a 42 percent drop in opens on Christmas Eve and a steep 72 percent decline on Christmas Day. And it makes sense – between opening toys and enjoying family, there’s not a ton of time (or desire) to be checking our email.
But the bustle is over on December 26, right? We head back to the office and we’re ready to get back to the grind. We’re rested and prepped to tackle our to-do lists, aren’t we?
Of course not! At least I’m not. People aren’t quite ready to come out of their egg-nog-induced stupor. And so your email just isn’t a priority to them. Open rates sit at 33 percent and 35 percent lower than average on the two workdays immediately after the holiday, respectively.
Let’s talk next year
People stay in their jovial daze from Christmas until the new year. Some may be vacationing; others are simply taking time off to spend with their families. Still others will be in the office, but they’re not focused on your emails. These workers typically fall into one of two categories: Either they’re there because they’re buried under mountains of work to finish before the end of the year, or they’re out of vacation days.
Recipients don’t have the time to care about your emails before the new year. Almost 60 percent fewer than average emails are opened on New Year’s Eve. And 62 percent less are seen on New Year’s Day.
The drop off is brief, though. When workers show up to the office after the ball drops, they’re ready to start working. The Hubspot data showed a record number of opens four days after New Year’s Day.
Wait, what? Let’s Review
To get your one-to-one human emails opened by your business connections:
Do:
Send in the five working days before Christmas
Send emails four days after New Year’s Day
Don’t:
Send emails on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day
Send emails on New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day
Optimize your human-to-human connection
So we know when to send emails this season, but how do we create meaningful and engaging conversations? We make the message about them.
Writing for email is one of the most difficult jobs in marketing. Different recipients, different segments each call for different messaging. And because so many people are concentrating on account-based and even people-based marketing, you have to be authentic and tailor your messaging. Oh and you have to think about the devices your recipient is using, too. What’s helpful on a desktop may be overly strenuous on mobile.
And subject lines? Yikes! Too often left as an afterthought in your email send, these few short words are supposed to convey the importance of your message and intrigue your reader into opening.
In the messaging, we need to offer focus to direct our recipient without wasting their time. Before we start writing, we need to know the one thing we’re trying to convey. It should only be one thing. Don’t have three or four calls-to-action. Have one. Be succinct and customer-centric.
Once you have a clear idea what it is you’re trying to say, craft a short message around why it’s important to your recipient.
What about the rest of the year?
A report from Coschedule sampled 10 studies looking at the best days and times to send business emails outside of your one-to-one holiday email marketing. The results, culled from studies of billions of emails, case studies and round ups, were diverse, but there were common threads to figure out your own best practices.
According to the report, Tuesdays are still the best day to send. Thursdays are great for follow ups while Wednesdays snag third place in open rates. Late morning send times are, in general, the most popular with 10 a.m. being the best time noted. The second favorite open time is between 8 p.m. and midnight, likely because people are checking email before bed.
Use this as an outline, but test your days and times to send and analyze the data to see when you receive the most opens.
Pacers promote ticket sales and add value to corporate partnerships with new digital channel
OPPORTUNITY
Sponsorship sales is a hard concept to grasp. The benefits tend to be ambiguous and intangible, and too often become something that’s not easily communicated. And sure, having a team on the rise helps with conversations, and sometimes makes it easier to get a prospective partner on the phone. But it doesn’t lock in a sale.
Partnering logos are starting to pay close attention to fan data. They care more about social reach and how the property’s business strategy grows audience, engages fans and reports the data. The Indiana Pacers have been looking for a way to up proven value and ROI for their corporate partnerships.
“The real struggle these days in selling corporate partnerships is finding the right mix of elements and benefits to drive the impact each individual partner is looking for. With an individualized approach, the success rate is higher and we’re able to offer our partner a tailored path to own.”
– Michael Lake, Corporate Partnership Sales Director
SOLUTION
Corporate Partnership Sales Director Michael Lake redesigned the Pacers’ sponsorship strategy to focus on hyper-customized plans that don’t hinge on the team’s performance, but rather measure the sponsor’s impact. To capitalize on their targeted audience, Lake implemented 175 users from the Pacers property onto Sigstr in April of 2015. He also enlisted the help of the Sigstr customer success team. By including a campaign design services package to create new designs each month, he’s driving new engagement.
As a value add-on for their corporate partnership, Lake had the Sigstr design team include the 2016 Opening Night game sponsor, Kroger, in their clickable call-to-action banner for the October tip-off.
The Pacers Sports and Entertainment Group saw fast results with the sleek design! In six days, the campaign was seen on every implemented employee’s 1:1 human email. Because of the exposure, they raked in 53,000 views and 228 clicks from an audience hand-selected by the NBA team.
By offering up concrete metrics, Sigstr allowed the Pacers to take measurable returns back to the sponsor. Sigstr helped identify the link between the investment and corporate KPIs for Kroger. And that correlation prompted the partner to sign an agreement, on the spot, to retain sponsorship of Opening Night for the 2017-2018 season next year.
CAMPAIGN RESULTS
OTHER CAMPAIGN DESIGNS
VISION
The Pacers implemented nine more campaigns in two months after ending their Opening Night Campaign, snagging another 300,000 views and 1,300 clicks.
The group’s use of Sigstr to accompany promotional advertising goes beyond the email signature. It’s also bringing content to a targeted audience selected by the brand.
Sigstr has improved productivity through the corporate sponsorship sales strategy because it facilitates the metrics to prove return. Sponsors value Sigstr’s dynamic nature, which updates the call-to-action banners automatically, even in messages sent prior to the update. And brands see, in real time, when their campaigns are viewed and interacted with. That insight offers up greater visibility and control throughout the engagement.
“We were able to show Kroger the exact number of impressions on each email, and to use this in tandem with the numerous other places we were highlighting their game night sponsorship. It was a huge value for us – and for them!”
– Michael Lake, Corporate Partnership Sales Director
The Pacers Sports and Entertainment Group continues to use the Sigstr design services to create tailored content and align promotions for each property within the organization. From the Indiana Pacers, to the Fever and Mad Ants to Bankers Life Fieldhouse as an event venue, the group has offered a value-add for corporate partnerships with tangible returns using Sigstr specifically for each property.
To view the full printable PDF version of this case study, click below!
Today’s tech-enabled world thrives on content, distributed through social, digital and mobile channels. These one-time fads have evolved from digital marketing trends to mainstays and they’ve redesigned the modern marketing landscape.
As these mainstays continue to evolve, they spur trends of their own. Some are simply a natural evolution of staples in traditional marketing while others underscore the changing scene of B2B marketing and the continued emergence of new and advanced marketing technology.
So what digital marketing trends are here to stay? Here’s a list to implement now:
1. Visual Storytelling through Video
Telling a digital marketer that video is important today is like boasting to a blogger 10 years ago that, “words are really helpful.” Thank you, Captain Obvious. Video, when done right, is both engaging and rewarding – bringing in real ROI. Snackable videos (like live streams, video blogs, client testimonials) are preferred by consumers as much as four times more than text content. Video is the most thoroughly consumed content format.
But, as this digital marketing trend becomes more and more a part of our strategy, we need to look at how people best engage. Stories surprise and delight us. They engage us. They put flesh on the dry bones of data and add narrative to your solutions. Stories help us navigate the world around us, they help show us the potential of what we can become.
Philip Pullman, speaking in a Carnegie Medal acceptance speech, once said, “We need stories so much that we’re even willing to read bad books to get them, if the good books won’t supply them. We all need stories, but children are more frank about it.”
But stories must be lifted off the pages of your strategy. Don’t get me wrong, writing is still a vital part of your content marketing strategy, but video stories, visual engagement will boost conversions.
2. Native Advertising
Ad blockers and a general foul flavor left in the mouths of consumers after too many pop-ups and display ads are making it hard to reach customers with a hard sell. Push advertising is fading, soon to be replaced completely by native advertising.
Native ads are sort of the hipsters of ads. They’re the “I’m not an ad” of advertising. They look and feel natural in their environment. And they’re are favored over the “in-your-face” tactics by consumers. These ads unobtrusively deliver content that could almost be mistaken for organic posts, yet are clearly marked by brands as sponsored. Consumers love ‘em because they’re not an annoyance, or a distraction in their daily lives. And digital marketers are becoming obsessed with them because they fit almost anywhere, so they’re perfect for multi-channel marketing. Consumers digest them easier – about 53 percent better than display ads, according to a recent study by Sharethrough.
3. Customer-Centric Turned Customer-Obsessive
In our race to become more customer-centric, we’ve already toed the line bordering on obsessive. And we’re about to jump over with both feet. But can you blame us? We’re finally at a point in the digital marketing trends where we’re not being swallowed up by wave after wave of big data. We can use the information we’ve collected.
We can turn our data into actionable, meaningful interactions.
Digital marketers who put insanely personalized campaigns into motion will drive better results. The benefits of personalization are hefty – higher response, better conversion rates, brand loyalty, repeat customers, amplified reach, boosted relevance, I could really go on all day.
No company sells to another company – they sell to another human who works for another company. So market to that person.
4. Email Marketing
Email is one of the oldest internet applications, it’s died a million-and-one deaths and still proves to be an integral part of how we communicate. More than 205 billion human-emails are exchanged every day. But email’s been labeled the black sheep of marketing for the last 20 years. The internet’s red-headed stepchild, left neglected and taken for granted.
But open rates for email are steadily increasing. Seventy-two percent of adults say they’d opt to talk with companies via email While 91 percent say they’d like to see promotional emails from the companies they do business with. In the B2B space, 73 percent of companies agree email marketing is a core part of their marketing strategy. And a quarter of them rate email as their top channel in terms of ROI.
5. Content Distribution
Marketing teams are tapping into every resource they can get their hands on to have the time, brainpower and budget to create new, engaging content. And as content marketing begins the path to maturation, we need to figure out how to stand out.
We’re left with mountains of mediocre content tangling the interwebs, making it almost laughable to just put your work into the world with the hopes of it getting seen. The way we distribute our content needs to be more strategic. We need to get smarter if we want people to see through the clutter what we have to offer. Sure we’ll keep hitting up the usual activities. We’ll share to our social platforms and send out an email campaign to our already-collected list of loyal followers. Then we’ll encourage our employees to share. But what about new visitors?
New channels like email signature marketing puts your most relevant content in front of your most important contacts through human email. The average worker sends 40 business emails every day, according to a study by the Radicati Group. That’s more than 10,000 emails per employee, or more than five million emails a year for a company of 500. That’s five million emails which can deliver branded content tailored to who’s going to see it.
There’s no doubting Larry Bird’s pure talent. By adding smarts and most importantly grit, Larry became a legend.
Talent + Smarts + Grit = Legend.
Like every Hoosier, I grew up with a hoop in my driveway. Every day after school I’d play, trying to imitate Larry’s best moves. Of his top 10 plays, some emphasized talent – like the turnaround jumper over Jordan. Others pinpointed his creativity – like his bounce pass to Parish between the defender’s legs, or the time he swished a shot from behind the hoop.
But most of his top 10s, including number one, was a product of Larry’s hustle, heart and grit.
Unfortunately for my basketball career, I’m 5-10 and couldn’t shoot my way out of a paper bag. Hustle + smarts can get you onto the Freshman Team in high school, but that was my zenith without the talent.
Warning: Here’s the part where I make the cliché (but appropriate) analogy from sports to business. To become successful in anything, you’ll need talent and smarts. But you’ll never be legendary without grit.
Larry’s gritty play has made him the unofficial Sigstr mascot (read: role model), and I’m honored that via our customer the Indiana Pacers, Larry Bird uses Sigstr.
Below, I’ve included an excerpt from a recent Larry Bird interview where he talks about his approach to every game. To him, he treated each game as though it were the last. He gave the same effort in game 22 of the regular season as he did in the finals.
At Sigstr, we have another saying emphasizing grit: “If you’re a man (or woman) by night, you’re a man (or woman) by day”. (Credit to Brooksource). Meaning, whatever happened yesterday, should have no impact on your effort today. Prior to a game with the Hawks, it was rumored, Larry stayed out pretty late the prior night. The Hawks thought it could be an advantage. But Larry was a man that day. He scored 60.
We will all make mistakes. When our talent or smarts let us down, it’s effort and determination, our grit, that we always control. With Larry, you knew you were getting his best effort every night.
Legend. Thanks for being an inspiration to me and to the Sigstr crew, Larry!
Legendary excerpt printed by the Indianapolis Star:
Boston Celtics legend and Indiana Pacers President Larry Bird was warned during his second year in the NBA that if he continued doing what he was doing to his body, he wouldn’t be long for the league.
“I remember my second year in the league,” Bird said in a recent Q&A with ESPN’s Baxter Holmes, “we were in the All-Star Game in New Jersey, and Artis Gilmore told me, ‘Man, you’re really a good player, Larry. You’re going to be great. But if you keep playing the way you’re playing, you’re not going to last long.’ I said, ‘I can’t play any other way. That’s the way I play.
“I think it was how hard I was playing. He never worked out. But I knew it. I knew I wasn’t going to last long. I knew I was breaking down. It was just the way it is. I had this desire to win every game and the only way I felt, in my mind, that I could do that was to be in the best condition.
“…my thoughts were always that that night was the most important game in the world. Everybody in the world was watching that one game. And I had to be the best player on the court and win that game that night. That was my mentality, and it stuck with me all the way through my career. But knowing that, I knew that I was going to pay for it in a hard way. That’s probably why, when I retired, after the press conference, I probably felt relief.”
This post is from our partners at Salesloft, a sales development software company designed to boost engagement by building, sharing and tracking sales cadences. Interested in getting a better look? Sign up for a trial to see how it works.
A traditional B2B marketing strategy – you know, the inbound lead generation, targeted demographics and psychographics, or detailed analyzation of carefully calculated metrics can still be risky business. They’re sort of like sowing a field of wheat. A farmer works countless hours, dawn-til-dusk, to cover as much acreage as possible. He’s planting with some abandonment in hopes of harvesting a bumper crop of the highest-quality produce, rooted in richness and saturated in potential.
Mr. Farmer, of course, has taken great care to make sure his conditions are favorable for success, but because of the unknowns – like the weather, the actual seed germination, vigour and size or soil health – success may never come.
Account-based marketing, though, is a more selective B2B marketing strategy. It’s a master gardener carefully nurturing an exotic plumeria in a meticulously controlled environment, and then watching his full-sized celadine flowers bloom just the way he knew it would.
The traditional B2B marketing strategy aims to fill the sales funnel as much as possible. With it, we’re jamming as many prospects inside their proxy of the funnel, whether they really fit or not. ABM, on the other hand, looks to flip the funnel, reaching fewer, but more qualified prospects. We’re limiting the leads in, sure. But on the other hand, the quality of the potential is higher because of the individual care.
According to ITSMA, the team credited with coining ABM, by shifting the funnel, the traditional roles of the sales and marketing teams become relaxed. Boundaries are blurred and collaboration between departments work to provide value – real, tangible value. Teams work together to help clients reach their goals.
If sales and marketing teams are client-first focused, the end result is success for the client and success for your company. So, what ABM principles should you be taking into into 2017 to pump up your B2B marketing strategy?
1. Play well with others.
Sales and marketing must be aligned. Period. They have to share knowledge, information, insights and they have to work together to understand the client’s needs to create a solution that works for the client and drives revenue for their company. Win-win. This focus works to boost revenue in your B2B marketing strategy from existing clients and adding new clients who’ve been carefully identified and qualified.
2. Know your customer. And talk directly to him with the information he wants (and needs).
Good data will give marketers the information they need to tag key accounts to focus on, instead of adopting a shotgun approach to fill a sales funnel with all manner of potential clients.
Who’s searching for your product? What do they need it for? What’s their business objective? What stage of the buying cycle are they in? Analytics will provide insightful information for identifying the customer.
Once identified, the customer can be targeted with specific messaging. Connect with them through direct mail, digital ads, on social media or video, or any channel that resonates. If you’re talking directly to a client, giving them the information they need now, you’re establishing a relationship they’ll value.
3. Technology is your friend.
With sales automation tools available today, marketers can identify key customers at any stage of the buying cycle.
In a cio.com report released last spring, Noah Elkin, painted the picture of how technology can empower ABM. “Automation enables marketers to do ABM at scale, with software tools for managing leads and relationships, scoring leads, providing predictive analysis and delivering targeted content creation, coupled with programmatic advertising techniques that let marketers target identified accounts and individuals at whatever stage of the buying process they’re in.”
Technology tools to manage data culled from web analytics, lead generation or email tracking, let marketers to identify prospects. And they can deliver a customized message based on real data to an individual client.
You know who your customer is because you have technology and data to give that information to you.
As content marketing continues to shape the B2B marketing landscape, marketers have loosened their purse strings to make more room for it in the new fiscal year. A report from PulsePoint and Digiday found that by next year, content marketing will grow by 59 percent from last year – potentially outpacing seach and social budgets.
Here are a few must-haves in our digital marketing budget. Each of these tactics can help you bolster your reporting, close the loop between marketing and sales and prove ROI on your 2017 digital marketing budget.
1. Content Marketing
It’s not exactly news to say content marketing should dominate your brand’s digital marketing budget and strategy in 2017. But the way marketers are approaching content needs to mature next year. With 88 percent of B2B marketers in North America already relying on some form of content marketing, it’s no surprise people are experiencing a sort of content shock. They’ve become almost numb to the mountains of content surrounding them.
No longer can we just create an onslaught of mediocre content designed to boost search results. We’re competing with everything that’s ever been published in the history of the internet. Quality matters a whole lot more now than quantity. Around 39 percent of marketers are upping spending on the trend in 2017 to stand out.
2. Video Marketing (and Live Streaming)
It doesn’t take Chewbacca Mom to show us how important visual storytelling has become. Consumers like to watch video – as many as four times as many consumers prefer to digest video over text. But video is hard. When you add in no ability to edit, limited consistency and a lack of strategy you’ve created a recipe for disaster to your brand. Scott Stratten of UnMarketing said Live Video is just content marketing’s latest shiny object. “Content shouldn’t be a training bra,” he said to those jumping in to the “Live” trend with both feet without a clear plan ahead.
But that doesn’t mean live stream videos will dissolve. In fact, we can expect the trend to go from novelty to marketing mainstream in the new year. Technology will allow the “consumer as voyeur” model to grow. Add in a sense of urgency to watch now or miss out, and we’ve hooked consumers – even in the B2B space.
3. Strategy Creation
Creating content for the sake of pushing something out the door is not a content marketing strategy. A slew of mediocre content stemming from a lack of commitment to your content strategy will hurt your brand far more than doing no content at all. Most (around 90 percent) businesses use some sort of content marketing and 78 percent of CMOs see custom content as the way of the future.
But here’s the problem, most B2B content marketers don’t have a written strategy. According to the 2017 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends report from Content Marketing Institute, only 37 percent of B2B marketers have a written strategy. It’s time to slow down and figure out why we’re creating – not just how. Be strategic and find your content marketing mission. Figure out who you’re trying to reach, what your goals are, when and where you can deliver content at any given stage of the buyer’s journey, and most importantly, why does it matter? Spend the time and put the resources to nail your strategy into your digital marketing budget.
4. Content Distribution
“If you build it, they will come” is a myth in content marketing.
In a world where 13 Potatoes That Look Like Channing Tatum is viral-worthy content, is good writing worth the effort? You bet. But good content is only noticed if sharing it is an integral piece of your marketing effort.
If you want to give your content a fighting chance, you need an engine to drive it. We can’t afford to create content projects without them ever seeing the light of day anymore. We need a way to get information in front of our most important contacts. Marketers are looking to decentralize content, according to Hubspot’s State of Inbound 2016 Report. Many are experimenting with taking their content to new channels to see what resonates with their audience.
Paid content can give you a small boost, but 90 percent of social clicks go to organic content and on Google, organic content commands 80 percent of clicks. Before we spend the time creating a piece of content, we need to ask ourselves, “Who cares” Then figure out why and build a network to amplify your work.
5. IoT
The Internet of Things means content, marketing and analytics are everywhere, from our mobile phones to our internet-enabled refrigerators. Experts are predicting a giant network of connected “things” to generate in the not so distant future. Anything that can be connected, will be connected.
IoT is a whole new world of endless opportunities to connect with consumers. The uber-network of connectivity will offer up more data in 2017 that can be turned into meaningful and actionable marketing strategies. And, it’ll lead way to more specific insight on consumer habits and preferences – equipping marketers to target their audience more accurately.
6. Cross-Device Marketing Strategies
The average consumer is connected through five addressable devices. That means as marketers, we’re looking at five times the work to make sure the content you’ve created is fit for consumption on all different platforms – even entirely new channels (like wearable devices) you need to account for in your digital marketing budget.
7. Invest in Social (But Focus on the Analytics)
Social media is still in its infancy. According to a DMA report, fewer than a third of businesses are collecting data from social media. Add that to a marketing spend expected to jump from 10.7 percent of your digital marketing budget to 23.8 percent in 2021, and we’ve still got a lot of learning left to do.
8. Account-Based Marketing
There’s been a seismic shift in consultant marketing that’s seriously looked at new customer-obsessed approaches that team up marketing and sales to gain long-term, high engagement revenue relationships with key accounts. ABM is flipping your lead funnel – concentrating on the best fit customers for your brand first, then giving marketing teams more stake in post-sale customer experience (CX) and ultimately driving advocate marketing as a key process for success.
According to Demand Gen Report, 69 percent of B2B buyers say the most influential aspect of a company’s website is content that speaks directly to their needs. Marketing needs to pinpoint to a specific persona, and talk to their pains. Technologies like Salesloft and Salesforce (among others) help tag a list of companies that fit our best-fit customer criteria, so stack them into your digital marketing budget.
9. SEO
SEO is, has been, and will remain, the lifeblood of online business. And now we need to look at SEO and content marketing as BFFs. But the shifting algorithms and changing search patterns are about as easy to master as a giant Rubik’s cube. And according to data released by SEMrush in July, most websites aren’t doing SEO well. Around 50 percent of websites host duplicate content while 45 percent have missing ALT attributions.
In 2017, we’ll expect to see an increase in quality content and content density – or content’s “per word” value. And UX is going to be an integral part of the SEO puzzle. The expectations from consumers are higher than they were five years ago. Sites with faster load speeds, mobile optimization and low bounce rates are going to be rewarded next year.
10. Email and Marketing Automation
Email needs a better PR agency. Everyone uses it, but if you listen to the tech pundits who’ve created the “next big <whatever it is>,” email is dead. Again.
Disclaimer: You can’t code creativity and you can’t program publishing. If you don’t have a sound strategy in place, no matter what technology you have, you won’t see maximum success.
With that out of the way, we just need to look at what technology and which tools to choose. There is no one-stack-fits-all approach. With somewhere around 4,000 marketing technology tools available, as highlighted in Scott Brinker’s mammoth marketing technology infographic, evaluating your options is the first step. We’re moving from a futuristic look to a reality of artificial intelligence and machine learning. Expect the unexpected technologies to solve problems you don’t know you have, and allocate for them in your digital marketing budget.
12. Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing creates word-of-mouth advertising. It’s tapping into the network of people who are trusted in specific circles. Influential people say they like your brand, building your image, authenticity and credibility in the minds of their followers. According to a study from Nielsen, around 92 percent of consumers admit to valuing an endorsement from word-of-mouth recommendations over any form of branded content they’re served up.
Brands are looking to invest more time and resources to identify and align with the right influencers who believe in their brand and can amplify their message to the right audience.
Writing a follow up email is hard. You’re working to snag the attention of a prospect who has an inbox full of droning provocations and unsolicited gloom, laden with demanding sales folks prodding them to take action they’d, more often than not, rather skip. Emails with real value tend to slip through the cracks.
The “Delete” response on cold emails is so fast today. An average buyer gets somewhere around +100 emails a day, but only opens 23 percent of them, according to a study by Tellwise. Moreover, that buyer is only clicking on 2 percent of them. But, according to SiriusDecisions, the average sales person only makes two attempts to reach a prospect.
And I get it. You don’t want to be a pain in the keister. We all want to avoid being annoying at the risk of having to face rejection. But it’s our job to make sure we’re aligned with what our prospects want and need. The trick is to make your follow up email creative and useful so it doesn’t feel like a follow up. Here’s how:
1. Know who you’re talking to.
Do a little research on who you’re dealing with in your email. Understand your persona so you can figure out how best to relate to them in your follow up email.
To get a heat check on your prospect, hit their social channels like LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook to see what kind of content they’re responding to and how they’re responding to it. These channels will help you gauge what tone you can use to approach someone without offending them.
Humanize your approach. Talk to your prospect like a person, not just a number on the spreadsheet. Personalized emails improve click-through rates by 14 percent and boost conversion rates by as much as 10 percent, according to the Aberdeen Group.
2. Nail the subject line.
According to our friend Jay Baer over at Convince and Convert, some 33 percent of email recipients decide whether or not to open an email based on the subject line alone. It might seem like a tiny afterthought for your follow up email, but the subject line is the first impression you have on your recipients.
Creating a subject line is cinch. But creating a subject line that gets read? That’s a lot harder. Too many people lack creativity and end with a product like this:
Hello. My name is Annie of Arendelle. I’m with company XYZ. We specialize in…I can save you…for free!
If you’re going to be wasting your time and the prospects, then please continue sending opening lines like this. Nothing spells SPAM quite like a subject line with words like “free,” “trial,” “quick,” “limited,” or “save.” So skip those trigger words. If you’re following up on a cold email, keep it short and sweet. If you’ve had a previous conversation, inject part of your conversation into the header. The moment I read a subject line linking prior communication, I know it’s legit and not offering up a timeshare in the Bahamas. Your subject line counts, so don’t knee-jerk it.
3. Make the prospect your story’s hero.
Stop making your follow up email all about you. I know you can help solve a pain point and add value. You’re just trying to make an impact and <insert buzzword>. But if you can’t get their attention, you’ll end up with a fate no different than any of your competitors (hello, trash bin).
No one has to read your email.
Ask yourself why a prospect should care about what you have to offer. Shift the focus from what your product is to a solution answering their problem. Like Joanna Wiebe of Copy Hackers said, don’t amplify the act of progressing, amplify the value of it. Be customer-centric, look at what they need, what they want. And slide in your solution.
4. Get to the point. (And get there fast.)
In general, I think brevity always rules. As our friend Ann Handley said in Everybody Writes, if you can say something more simply, then you should. Skip the open-ended questions and be proactively specific in your messaging. If your goal is to schedule a meeting, then ask for it. Don’t waste the time of your recipient by beating around the bush.
People skim emails looking for the main highlights. Short paragraphs and bullets are great ways to make sure your key points are front and center. You have only a few seconds (8.5 seconds to be specific) to catch your reader’s attention. Get to the most important points, and get there fast.
5. Position your follow up email and value alignment.
The solution your company provides solves a real pain point for your prospect. You’re not selling something frivolous, you have something that will really help your prospect increase revenue. If only you can get them to listen and understand.
Some 70 percent of prospects make purchasing decisions to solve problems, while 30 percent make the decision to gain something. So reach out with confidence to align your product or service with their needs or wants.
6. Be human (and unexpected).
Most follow up email messages are straightforward and serious (and seriously boring). Mix in a little twist to craft the unexpected and get noticed. If you’ve done your research on the prospect and think they can handle it, throw in a little (tasteful) humor to mix things up. Get a pulse of their personality through their Twitter or Facebook – see what they’re talking about and what resonates with them.
Be aware, but not overly cautious. In general, if a prospect is ignoring you no matter what, sending a funny, unexpected message to show you’re still waiting on the other end is a great last-ditch effort.
And, bonus: According to Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to be More Persuasive, business people who send a funny, inoffensive cartoon to their negotiation partners before negotiating creates higher levels of trust and 15 percent larger profits than those who didn’t send a cartoon.
When a life raft of happiness in the form of something funny comes along, people are quick to get on board. But to paraphrase Shakespeare, too much of a good thing can be too much of a good thing. Try not to overuse humor in the sales process. It can become annoying or off-putting at a certain point.
7. Be relevant.
Stay up-to-date with your prospect’s LinkedIn profile. You never know if you can find a little tidbit of information that’s relevant to your geographic location, education or job history that can make the world a little smaller.
Tools like Google alerts can also keep you updated with the industry and a specific company. Mention and compliment their current content – like a blog post, ebook or case study. This shows you’re researching them and you actually care about the thought leadership your prospect brings to the table. Relevant emails drive 18 times more revenue than broadcast emails. Every business has data. Make it meaningful and actionable to tailor your messaging.
If you decided to click and read more, you might be expecting a humorous and facetious blog post. But the reality is, I am being dead serious. We can learn a lot from the Yukon Gold Miners. Stick with me as I share a this short story. As sales professionals, we often see the defining moment of a deal cycle as the negotiation of terms. Whether you embrace it or fear it, this sales negotiation can have a lasting impact on the success of your “to be determined” partnership.
Last week, I was unwinding after a whirlwind trip in Boston at Inbound16 and catching up on one of my favorite shows, Gold Rush. (Short side bar, what an incredible conference HubSpot put on. Great company, great city and great attendees.) Back to the very timely topic at hand – sales negotiation tips to close in deals Q4 like a Yukon Gold Miner. In this particular episode, young mine boss, Parker, was attempting to renegotiate the terms of his lease agreement with Yukon legend Tony.
This is probably a good opportunity to provide a few important background details:
Parker has leased two plots of land from Tony but is currently only mining on one of those plots
Parker has been leasing from Tony for the past three years
The current lease increases royalties Parker owes Tony from 15 percent to 25 percent when production reached 3,000 ounces of gold.
Last year, Parker produced 3,000 ounces of gold from one plot of land
Tony expects Parker to increase production YOY
Parker slimmed down his crew to be more efficient and equal last year’s production, not increase it.
The past two seasons, Parker has tried to renegotiate terms with Tony.
Now that you’re up to speed, let’s dig into last week’s episode and discuss how it relates to sales. Parker was heading in for his first meeting (think one-on-one) of the new mining season with Tony. The agenda: Discuss this year’s goals and negotiate the lease terms.
He drove his Ford Raptor onto Tony’s claim and entered the office, full of hope. After a few pleasantries the two get down to business. As Parker began to outline his season’s plan immediately began to Tony challenge them. Parker expressed willingness to increase his goals in exchange for more favorable lease terms. In typical Tony-fashion — direct, abrasive but practical, he scoffed, “A deal’s a deal, Parker.” The conversation was short and both walked away dissatisfied.
As had happened in each of the last 2 seasons, Parker’s attempt was unsuccessful. Despite the opportunity and the mutual desire to find more gold, the two were unable to find a solution. “Worth a try,” said a dejected Parker as he traipsed back to his truck.
Does this sound familiar to any of your sales cycles? You’ve gained alignment around a common goal or interest yet you’re unable to solidify partnership?
How often do you get a deal here and then plummet on sales negotiation?
Everything is buttoned up, except the final price. Inevitably, in a sales negotiation like Parker and Tony’s, there will always be a winner and loser. One side gives up something, and the exchange creates an imbalance in the relationship. This asymmetry opens the door to resentment and leads to a lack of trust. Not exactly where you want to be after you’ve worked weeks or even months to build confidence, earn trust and outline business impact.
So how do you avoid a sales negotiation ending in a winner and a loser?
Develop a framework around interests, options and legitimacy. Use this framework to create an outcome that increases the overall value as opposed to focusing on how you “share” the current value. It’s surprising how often opportunity exists to “grow the pie.”
Let’s spend a bit of time looking at each element in this sales negotiation structure:
Interests: Take out a piece of paper and draw two columns. In the first, write out what your prospect needs out of the deal to make your product or service a success. Then, in the second column, dissect what’d make the deal a win on your end. What are the common threads?
Options: Think differently! Explore a solution for each interest on the list. Create the options first, and evaluate them after. List out all the options that could lead to success. Leave out nothing. After all of the possible options have been listed, go over each and figure out if they’re really solving the problem for both of you.
Legitimacy: Take yourself out of the situation as best as you can, and look at the options at hand. Are they fair to your prospect? How about to you? Can you prove the legitimacy of the option? Figure out acceptable standards of fairness and talk about them to reach an equally beneficial resolution.
Looks simple here, right? But anytime you have high stakes and emotions to manage, things get challenging.
Let’s take a look back to our friends Parker and Tony. As Parker was pulling away, Tony ran out of his make-shift office and did something unexpected – he proposed a solution. He set aside his emotional, ego-driven “need to win,” and instead focused on creating more value. In his proposal, he looked for a way to increase the value of the pair’s relationship without restructuring the lease agreement. He focused on their mutual interests, not finding a “balance.” Let’s look at those interests:
Parker wants to mine more than 3,000 ounces.
Tony wants Parker to mine more than 3,000 ounces.
Tony did what we should be doing as sales professionals.
He found a solution that was right under his nose that met their mutual interests while maintaining the integrity of the lease agreement. What did he offer? And how did this result in a superior partnership?
He offered Parker to opportunity start a second operation, using a different crew, different equipment and separate royalty structure on the second plot of land Parker had previously leased but was not currently working.
In doing so, he allowed Parker to mine gold at 15 percent from the two separate operations instead of aggregating it and forcing the increased royalty.
The result is what we all strive for in our professional relationships. Collaboration that increased the overall value of the partnership. Isn’t that what partnership is all about anyway? Generating additional value than you could alone.
Tony is now going to get 15 percent on 4,000 ounces, or an incremental $180k
Parker get’s to mine an additional 1,000 ounces worth roughly $1.2million
It’s amazing what two miners, one at age 19 and the other at 56 – living thousands of miles away from a major business hub, can accomplish.
Will every deal work out like Tony and Parker’s? Probably not. It takes a willingness to adjust personal perspective, from both sides. It took Parker and Tony three years to find this working relationship. As sales professionals, most of us don’t have three years to get it right with monthly, quarterly and annual quotas.
But when it does work out, when you experience this rare and beautiful kind of mutual sales negotiation, deals can become truly precious to your organization. Negotiating with a goal of deriving a higher value and then using a framework of joint interests to develop your options will end in better partnerships and bigger deals.
This series has quickly become one of our favorites here at Sigstr. And it was only a matter of time before we conjured up a host of funny email signatures for our favorite Harry Potter characters. Considering last night’s premiere of the ninth cinematic installment in the Wizarding World of J.K. Rowling, timing couldn’t be more perfect.
It’s been nearly 20 years (next year) since our world was first introduced to the Harry Potter universe. And a decade and a half from the time the “boy who lived,” hit the big screen for the first time. If you’ve been living under a rock for these last 20 years, be advised: Spoilers ahead.
Those we love:
For the characters we loved, we envisioned a life for them post-Deathly Hallows Pt. II.
Harry Potter
Harry was always exceptionally talented at the defense against the dark arts. He rose to the occasion in the era of Dolores Umbridge to teach his peers charms and spells to protect themselves. It seemed only fitting that, after he saved the world, he’d go on to teach the students of Hogwarts. Hopefully his tenure is much, much longer than the average Defense Against the Dark Arts professor.
Ronald Weasley
The realms most beloved ginger. Now that he is not chasing horcruxes around the world with Harry and Hermione, Ron has had the time to get back into his favorite hobby: wizard’s chess. He’s won two back-to-back world championships since Voldemort kicked the can. The match he is most proud of has been turned into a book, thanks to the help of his uber-successful fiancee , Hermione. (If you forget the life-size version Harry, Hermione & Ron played to retrieve the Sorcerer’s Stone from the grips of Quirinus Quirrell masked as Voldemort, here’s the highlight reel.) Ron has also joined his brother George as the sales manager of Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes in Fred’s absence.
Hermione Granger
Hermione has been widely known as the smartest, nerdiest book-worm that’s ever walked the halls of Hogwarts. After the Horcrux hunt ceased, Hermione had plenty of time to put her brilliant brain to good use. Through the use of her time-turner, Hermione was able to discover the science behind the temporal paradox. She reached the breakthrough necessary to make time-travel possible for muggles! And was given the Nobel Prize for her discovery. She wrote a book about her studies, which received a Pulitzer and earned her a spot on the New York Times Bestseller list. And it landed her a gig as a speaker in the TED video series.
Luna Lovegood
Luna has always been the most enigmatic and fortuitous character in the series. Was there any surprise that Luna’s patronus was a bunny rabbit? Outsiders think she’s a bit of a lunatic, but those closest to her know that she is delightfully optimistic and just a bit quirky. Her fascination with the mythical and mysterious earned her a position as the new editor-in-chief of her father’s beloved Quibbler. She is able to write about all the odd conspiracies, imaginary creatures and kooky topics that she likes.
Neville Longbottom
From the time he was a shy, nervous and slightly portly little boy who stood up against his friends to protect the Gryffindor reputation, he’s been a crowd fave. Neville was lovable in his adorable attempts at wizardry as a neophyte, but has transformed into the humble hero. Thanks, mostly to Harry’s teachings in the defense against the dark arts, Neville honed his skills and put them to good use in the Battle of Hogwarts. Neville was honored for serving up the final blow to Voldemort’s horcrux-hosting snake, Nagini. The strike weakened the dark lord, letting Harry halt his reign. It also didn’t hurt when Neville hit puberty. Whoa. Adulthood looks good on him. After the battle, Neville has taken up a career in personal training, helping others snag the same transformation he did.
Those we lost
For the characters that we lost, we gave them funny email signatures tied to how we last saw them.
Dobby
Suffering the hand of the Malfoy family for ages before Harry tricked Lucius Malfoy into freeing the house elf by hiding a sock in a book, Dobby’s declaration of freedom was one of the most heartwarming scenes in a 90s kid’s childhood. His positivity radiates and his unwavering loyalty to Harry Potter – and the entire mission of the Order of the Phoenix – secured him a slot on our top loveables list.
Fred & George Weasley
OK so Fred’s still alive – we know that. But poor George was one of the most unfortunate casualties in the Battle of Hogwarts. We can only imagine considering Fred and George’s relationship that they would share one email. They’re using their email signature to promote their pride and joy: Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes. Their store boasts a plethora of fun-filled items used to surprise and delight. Best known for their extendable ears, practical joke products that allowed students to eat a lolly and fake sick well enough to skip class, magical fireworks and love potions.
Lord Voldemort
Lord Voldemort sucked – good riddance. We are happy he’s gone. We only included him because we know he would have the most heinous looking email signature. If Voldemort were to have an email signature, he would want it to evoke some kind of horrible and annoying feeling.
Now showing: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is the story behind Harry Potter universe. With five films already planned, this is mostly a stand-alone adventure that just happens to be set in the same world. Now that you’ve been prepped with these funny email signatures, we’ll see you at the theater this weekend!
Last week, a cool 19,000 marketers hung out in Boston at HubSpot’s 2016 inbound marketing conference. And I was one of them. My time was divided, mostly spent bouncing between Club Inbound (where my sales team was headquartered), and geeking out in the breakout sessions where I was left ferociously jotting down notes and listening to dozens of the marketing masterminds.
Some sessions were tactical – figuring out the how-to’s and why-to’s. Others were aspirational, evoking an excitement I thought had lost in a sea of mundane Mondays. A healthy dose of both left the marketers at the inbound marketing conference walking away with renewed urgency and motivation for greatness. Through the week, I was reminded to take time to structure and build a quality strategy. It’s just as important (if not more so) than the everyday execution and grind. You must have both to power an inbound and content marketing machine. But one comes before the other.
Here are three takeaways from last week’s inbound marketing conference:
1. Goals and Benchmarks
Yes, your marketing team is scrambling everyday to pump out content and build your brand. But, what’s the ultimate goal they’re working toward to help the bottom line of the company? Yearly, quarterly, monthly and even weekly goals are important for marketing teams to determine before the work starts. These incremental goals help your team to stay on task and stay focused. And they serve as a framework to answer the questions of how and where to spend time.
With the million-and-a-half requests, ideas and projects that pile up on a marketing team’s plate, goals can also help you say no to some tasks. Or at least, “Not right now…I’ll add it to our backlog of requests.” And, they can be used to explain why other priorities (like generating qualified leads with content) are more important.
2. Content and Keywords
Content is important, yet it’s up to you and your team to make sure it’s effective. Remember, no one has to read what you write. What you create must resonate. You’ve got to respect your audience’s time so you really must to understand what your readers what to know. And you know you’ve got to use the right keywords to help your content get found, but what are they?
Be picky with your keyword selection and eliminate irrelevant search queries using negative keywords. Figure out which keywords are too hard, too broad or just irrelevant to your audience before you spend 20+ hours writing and designing your next ebook or white paper.
Producing quality content takes time and resources. For a small marketing team supporting ambitious company goals, that time and those resources need to be allocated to the right priorities (because you can’t afford to waste either with sub-par content).
3. Understanding Your Buyer and Targeting Personas
Sure, casting a wide net may generate a few hundred leads for your sales team and gives your marketing team a warm and fuzzy feeling. But, those leads may never convert to qualified opportunities or closed/won business. Why? Because none of those prospects were your ideal buyer.
A sales and marketing team can start to understand their ideal prospect by analyzing their current customers (or past qualified prospects) and forming personas. Is “Mary the Digital Marketer” the type of prospect who will see value in your product or service and helps influence the decision making process? Yeah? Great! She should be one of your targeted personas for your next marketing campaign.
#INBOUND16 was incredibly valuable, entertaining and exhausting for my whole team (did someone say coffee?). These three keys I’ve brought will bring a renewed focus for this quarter (and then some). Want to know the best part of #INBOUND16? With hundreds of breakout sessions ranging across barrage subjects, someone else has brought home three entirely different takeaways.
On behalf of the entire Sigstr team, a sincere thanks to everyone (both familiar faces and new friends) who stopped by the Sigstr booth and spent time with us. Not only was I saturated with the valuable knowledge from the breakout sessions, but I also gained so much just by talking to marketing leaders on the Club Inbound floor and listening to their strategies, goals and challenges.
Let us know what your main takeaways from this inbound marketing conference by tweeting @SigstrApp! Until next year, Inbound!
It’s INBOUND season! HubSpot’s signature inbound marketing conference has brought more than 14,000 attendees, from across the world, to Boston to hear a boss line up of keynotes and session speakers. Featuring Anna Kendrick, Alec Baldwin, Serena Williams, Gary Vaynerchuk and others, sales and marketing teams are getting real-world best practices. While, at the same time, sessions with HubSpot pros like Matthew Barby and Jordan Benjamin and marketing masterminds like Ann Handley (YESS!) and Tesla’s Jon McNeill give attendees hands-on practice.
INBOUND 2016 is an industry event that fuels the movement. While there, learners hear the newest strategies and techniques for content and content marketing. Plus it helps with sales and marketing alignment and pushes teams to move faster, while becoming more in sync.
It’s not a HubSpot user conference, per se, but rather it’s an event chock-full of stellar speakers, content and entertainment for all marketers. (Though, HubSpot is the conference’s largest sponsor.) So, as a part of their marketing strategy for the event, HubSpot used Sigstr as a new marketing channel to drive engagement and registrations with their custom email signature.
HubSpot on-boarded members of their marketing team with clickable call-to-action banners for their first INBOUND 2016 custom email signature in September. The engagement spiked as the group targeted messaging for their end recipients.
WHAT WE LOVE:
Of course we love the custom email signature design! That’s a no brainer. The HubSpot pros know what they’re doing. They used no more than three focal colors for any campaign. And then they added a captivating (and clear) call-to-action. HubSpot designers also kept a consistent logo and placement for brand recognition for all of their campaigns prior to Inbound.
But what we really love is the way they used their campaigns.
The group used three different signature banners during the promotion of Inbound 2016. The first one focused on learning more about the event. It was the initial push for registrations, and injected onto the marketing team’s signature and a few in HR. This campaign was received more than 210,000 times.
Then, the company implemented an additional campaign, similar in design, that included a call-to-action for discounted tickets. This campaign was used, primarily for the sales team.
And as soon as the event kicked off, HubSpot changed their email signature design to promote their live stream on Facebook. Every email sent prior to the start of the event dynamically updated to display the current campaign. In the first two days, the latest campaign has been seen more than 16,000 times.
Sigstr Shout-Out is a series that features the insanely talented and creatively driven Sigstr customer campaigns so you can see custom email signature best practices in action – and who’s nailing them.
The day has finally come! We’ve arrived at INBOUND 2016, HubSpot’s annual event for marketing and sales pros. The event is following up last year’s slate of headline speakers like Amy Schumer and Aziz Ansari with Serena Williams, Anna Kendrick, Alec Baldwin, journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates and the creators of the Netflix documentary “Making a Murderer.”
Last week, we talked about how excited we were about Club INBOUND, the expo hall with its own DJ, snacks, food truck lunches, drinks and refuel stations. Oh and a ton of stellar sponsors (like us) to make awesome conference connections! As we said last week, any expo hall that is referred to as a “club” is definitely something we want to get involved in.
Club INBOUND does not disappoint!
We are totally and completely blown away by the atmosphere here. It really has become a trip to the mecca of inbound marketing. HubSpot has created an electric vibe at every intersection. Their employees are accommodating and truly helpful. They want to make sure each of the 14,000 visitors has an amazing week.
This movement HubSpot has driven through Inbound has created a community unlike anything we’ve ever been a part of. The conference connections we’ve made already, on day one, has made this one of the greatest networking events for business folks and marketing minds from across the globe.
With this many brilliant marketers in one mega-sized, HubSpot-coated conference center, it was bound to happen (<<see what we did there?)
Inbound 2016 is a marketer’s bliss. Through innovation and some truly excellent marketing puns (see: the pitchbox – which will give winning startups more than $30,000 in prizes and a fantastic laugh), the convention center is abound with conference connections and pure creativity. We’ve been served up camaraderie with a side of brainstorming. In fact, we’ve had marketers come by our booth, hoping to get a look into Sigstr yet have walked away teaching us something (oh and they’re definitely learning the best in email signatures, too). We’re sharing ideas how we can market Sigstr, and then collaborating how we can help them market their brand.
The marketing brainpower in Club INBOUND is unrivaled.
Not to mention, the entertainment!
The DJ has brought the heat in providing a fun and energizing environment. They’re spinning tracks from Jackson 5 to Billy Joel. And then Bruno Mars to Nelly. We haven’t stopped dancing.
We’ve never been more excited to be a part of something.
It’s only day one and we’re already geeking out. Stay tuned to learn more about these Seaport Parties happening tonight. Like we said last week, we’re not entirely sure what these are, and what they entail, but we are absolutely sure we can’t wait to find out.
Are you at #INBOUND16 this week? If so, come visit our booth! And if not, follow along with the excitement on Twitter @SigstrApp!
What’s your visual style? In the B2B space, brands have become visual storytellers, creating content with a greater emphasis put on style and design to create a more compelling visual storyline. Through telling your story with design, it’s become a marketer’s marvel that lends a lighthearted visual punch line to a story that may have otherwise lost its lure. It’s happening on visual platforms like Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and it’s been applied to ebooks and case studies. Now, we’re helping you to incorporate design to craft creative email signatures as a way to drive marketing ROI.
But how do you know what works? What images are the most eye-catching? Which colors resonate with a viewer best. What kind of files should you use? Where should the CTA go? How do campaigns work in the email signature? What does success look like?
Tune into our webinar to learn how to design a creative email signature that will drive engagement and produce real marketing ROI.
Presenters: Michael Auer & Kolby Coy
When: Wed., Nov. 16, 2016, 2 P.M.
Length: 60 minutes
In this webinar, you’ll learn the secrets to designing Sigstr campaign banners like a pro, from our pros, to help your content resonate with your audience. From understanding the elements of a successful campaign to managing a campaign strategy, you’ll walk away with ideas to create salient styles to put into your human-readable emails (read: not your just your email marketing campaign).
Presenters:
Michael Auer is the lead designer at Sigstr. He’s the mastermind behind our design services and brings together content, web design and digital events to engage audiences through visual storytelling. Michael designs creative email signatures and campaigns with, and for, customers daily. And he’s produced more than 1000 campaign designs in the last 11 months. Take a look at his design process, and check out his post on Back to the Future for some of his most recent designs.
Kolby Coy is a senior customer success manager at Sigstr. She works with customers every day to make sure they hit the mark with their creative email signatures every time. She collaborates with marketing teams to shout their messaging through a digital microphone in the signature space and customize success in campaign strategies. Before coming to Sigstr, Kolby was a Global Marketing Strategist, which helps her to understand to a marketer’s dilemma in content distribution.
Who Should Attend?
Bring in your content marketers, directors of marketing, designers, product managers and email marketing managers. And don’t forget any marketer who is interested in stepping up their design game.
What Will You Learn?
At the end of the webinar you’ll:
Understand the elements of creative email signatures and campaigns
Know how to apply the best practices while designing campaign banners
You’ll know how to create a campaign design in Sketch (don’t use Sketch? That’s okay, the techniques translate well to Photoshop and other design application platforms.)
Find out how to manage a campaign strategy
See our favorite campaigns and use cases for design inspiration
How to Register:
Whether you’re looking to brush up your design skills or are looking into crafting creative email signatures for the first time, this webinar will help you hone your content distribution strategy through visual design.
Here at Sigstr, we love our fictional characters and enjoy imagining what their email signatures would look like. That said, we’re back with another post about movie characters and their email signatures. I love Back to the Future – it’s undoubtedly the best film franchise of all time. When I was asked to contribute to Sigstr’s blog, I knew exactly what I wanted to write. I know, for a fact, if these folks were alive in 2016 they’d each have a pretty cool email signature.
Doctor Emmett Brown
Doc, the unsung hero of Hill Valley, just finished up his latest time traveling adventures with his family and was invited to Harvard to talk about some of his research. This cool email signature is oddly eclectic, yet calculated.
Strickland
Strickland is an enigma to the students of Hill Valley High. He’s always acting grumpy and calling students “Slackers.” He also seemingly hasn’t aged a day in the last 30 years. Strickland has a “Nickel’s worth of free advice” for everyone which is why he’s written a guest editorial for the Telegraph. His email signature is clean and dull – just like himself, apart from that painful disclaimer. Are we surprised that Strickland would have one of those off putting and highly unnecessary disclaimers in his email signature?
Biff Tannen
Biff is an all around butt-head. He and his gang call the shots at Hill Valley High School, so getting on their bad side is not the best idea. He’s using his email signature to find some new cronies. Biff doesn’t use correct capitalization or spelling – his writing is… not good (George does all his homework).
George McFly
George McFly has found success in writing Sci-Fi novels including the book everybody’s raving about – A Match Made In Space. This week, he’s stopping by Cafe 80’s for an exclusive book signing. Tickets are going fast – get yours today! George keeps it simple with his cool email signature, touting his acclamation and advertising his mailing list.
“Goldie” Wilson
After working in a diner for several years, Goldie went to night school and worked his butt off to become “The Most Powerful Man In Hill Valley.” He proved everyone wrong by becoming the mayor, and now he’s running for re-election. A vote for Goldie is a vote for honesty, decency and integrity! Goldie has quite a few calls-to-action here, including a personal story and a call-to-arms for volunteers, all in addition to his campaign. Goldie is big on building brand awareness!
Marty McFly
Oh Marty. This slacker, wannabe rockstar and amateur time traveler just can’t seem to catch a break. After bombing out of the Hill Valley Battle of the Bands, Marty is turning to the road as a means to get famous. Marty’s email signature says it all. He wants you – to book The Pinheads at your next party. They’re “pretty darn loud” as Huey Lewis once told him but they’re pretty darn good, too.
Let us know if you think we got their email signatures right and what you would add! Better yet, you could make your own Back to the Future Email Signature or Campaign and send it to us. We’d love to see them!
For more email signature samples (the good and the bad) or tips on how to roll email signatures out to your entire company, request a demo or check out our most recent resource below.
Every flight I take, I go into it with such good intentions. “I’ve got hours of uninterrupted time, out of the office and no internet access to distract me,” I think to myself. “I’ll get so much done!” Then we board. And my intentions, met with no plan to actually get anything done, are left somewhere on the tarmac.
I’ve realized I need to be strategic and thoughtful if I’m going to make the most of my time in the air. Here are a few tips to increase your marketing productivity in flight:
For Productivity
1. Board last
A productive flight can start before you even step foot on the plane. Skip the hectic hustle of the long lines and flying elbows and hang back until the crowds have made their way on board. You’ll have more time to stretch out in the airport, you’ll avoid the unnecessary anxiety of the wait and you’ll be able to work a little longer in comfort.
2. Recognize your mindset
What does marketing productivity look like for you? How do you plan to achieve productivity on this trip? Remember, the mind creates the experience. Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck’s research on a growth mindset shows evidence our realities are shaped by how our minds approach the situation. So be thoughtful and deliberate.
3. Chat with your neighbors
Headed to a digital marketing event or conference? Prime your networking game up for success by striking up a conversation with the stranger next to you. By practicing the art of making conversation with little to no information about a person will let you leave the plane with more confidence and ready to take on the crowds at your event! Plus you never know, you may find them as a helpful contact to have down the road.
4. Write down the top five goals you hope to accomplish with the trip
Write down the top five goals you hope to accomplish as you head off on your trip, and then reassess them on your trip home. Putting clear goals down on paper will help you create an action plan to make sure they get done.
5. Check your social
If you have Wi-Fi, take a look at your online profiles and make sure they’re all up to date. If you’re headed to a conference, you’ll be meeting hundreds of new faces and they’re all going to want to check out your details on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and the like. So make sure you’re putting your best image on display.
6. Download and listen to a new podcast
Download as many as you can (here’s one of our favorites). Listening to podcasts uses less battery than watching a movie and are considerably more distracting than music. Grab a pair of noise canceling head phones and you’ll be set for the whole flight.
7. Plan ahead
Brainstorm your agenda for the trip when you’re on board. You’ve figured out what you want to accomplish during the trip. Now spend some time on making a plan to get it done. Be strategic and thoughtful, but keep your expectations realistic and manageable.
8. Stay hydrated
The low-humidity environment can cause headaches, stomach problems, cramps, fatigue and the like, but drinking plenty of water or sports drinks with electrolytes can help keep it at bay. Bonus, it’ll help your natural immune mechanisms to function better, helping you to avoid a cold when you get back home.
A good rule of thumb is to drink around eight ounces of water for every hour you’re in the air.
9. Relax
Take a nap. Meditate. Watch that cheesy chick-flick you’ve been eyeing. Just chill out. Whether your flight is two hours or 12, you can’t work nonstop. Remember, the human body is hardwired to pulse, moving through 90-minute rhythms during the day. We need off time to produce a better on time.
10. Keep your devices charged
As you travel from point A to B, it’s easy to forget that your laptop (with everything you need on it) is going to need a way to stay alive. So put your devices in airplane mode to save battery and travel with your device chargers. If you have a mobile power strip, slide that guy into your carry on.
11. Read
Grab a business book you’ve been meaning to read but haven’t had the time. Don’t have any on your reading list? Check out Content Rules by Ann Handley and C.C. Chapman or Welcome to the Funnel by the head of global content and social initiatives for LinkedIn Marketing Solutions, Jason Miller.
For Fun
12. Brown paper bag lunch
Let’s be honest, eating is (almost) always fun. But airplane food can leave a little to be desired. So pack yourself a meal and some snacks that you know will keep you going. Plus, you can make fun art on the bag!
13. Make up mad libs
Keep your team’s content creation skills on point by getting creative with clever mad lib games. Grab an activity book at the airport, print some out ahead of time or just open up your Sky Mall Magazine. Then go to town on the descriptions.
14. Get competitive
Bring some scrap paper in your carry-on and have a paper plane competition with your neighbor. Ask the flight attendant to be the judge and loser buys a round of drinks either in flight or when you land.
15. Go for a walk
Flight staff frown on gathering in the galley ways, but there’s no rule against walking on the airplane. The low air pressure in the cabin can slow your circulation which can lead to blood clots. Just try to avoid getting up when the food cart is coming your way.
16. Grab a cheap coloring book and go to town
Digital marketers are creative by nature, so pass the time by letting your creative juices flow right onto the pages of a coloring book. Coloring is mindless, therapeutic and, frankly, it’s just a lot of fun. And just because you’re a “grown-up” doesn’t mean you need to color inside the lines. But in case turning Queen Else into a hipster with full-rim glasses and a tie-dyed skirt isn’t quite your style, there are tons of coloring books made just for “adults,” too.
17. Whip out some airplane Bingo
Traveling with coworkers? Awesome! Find a Bingo board online and keep an eye out for five in a row. Use peanuts or pretzels to mark your winners. Make a few copies ahead of the flight so you can change out the squares with new things to spot, you know, for variety’s sake.
Heading off to Inbound 2016 next week? Swing by the Sigstr booth and say hi! Sign up for a demo and get a sweet t-shirt!
Next week, over 14,000 people will converge on the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center for Inbound 2016. One of the largest marketing events put on by the masters of inbound marketing at Hubspot, the digital marketing conference is a chance to collaborate with the smartest minds in the field.
In a marketing scene as ephemeral as Twitter, the opportunity to sharpen our skills with face-to-face training, killer content and hands-on learning (not to mention tons of networking), attending conferences is one of our top priorities every year. But at each conference, we tend to see similar personas filling the convention centers.
Check out the 11 personalities we’re psyched to see next week:
1. The Networker
The Networker wants to meet everyone and make lasting connections. This person is mixing and mingling, forming new relationships and strengthening existing ones. He’s charming you into meeting up for coffee, lunch or cocktails. And, he seems to be talking with someone new every time you turn around. The Networker is making real-time LinkedIn connections, handing out business cards and making friends with all the thought leaders.
After the sessions, you can find The Networker chatting up a multitude of different groups during the happy hour, then hitting the clubs with the right connections. Then somehow, after being the life of the party until 4 a.m., he arrives to each session, early, looking impossibly fresh and ready to take on a new day of connecting (oh and a little learning, too).
2. The Entrepreneur
Find The Entrepreneur walking around the convention center suited up in their cool startup t-shirt and blazer. They have a million and one things to do, people to pitch, t-shirts to give away. What’s that you say? You want to invest?
The Entrepreneur is attending in part to buddy up with The Networker and on the other hand looking to get inspired for their next brilliant product release.
3. The Salesman
Operation: Close-a-Deal is in full effect. The Salesman is slick, smart, cool and ready to pitch you with whatever they’ve got at a moment’s notice. The Salesman has a knack for finding and schmoozing the decision-makers of every pack. He’s making the right contacts and impressing the new-found brand champions so the group is ready to sign on the dotted line as soon as they get back from the digital marketing conference.
4. The Valedictorian
Soaking up as much information as possible, The Valedictorian is taking diligent notes, detailed enough to perform the session in its entirety when she goes home. She’s taking notes, live-tweeting the hot topics and actually listening all at the same time. The Valedictorian is quiet – you might not even know she’s there until she begins asking a barrage of well-thought out questions during the Q&A.
Don’t plan to see her hitting up the happy hour after hours. Instead she’ll be locked away in her hotel room, ordering room service (hey, it’s on the company, right?) and studying up on tomorrow’s sessions. She might be shy, so give her a quick smile and maybe a hand carrying her notebooks, laptop, smartphone and iPad to the next session and she’ll definitely let you copy her notes.
5. The Collector
Did someone say free shirt? The Collector’s whole purpose (or so they think) for being at the digital marketing conference is to collect all the free swag. You can spot them bouncing from booth to booth grabbing all the goodies they can carry. Free pen? Need it. Can Koozie? Want it! Mobile phone chargers? Gotta have it!
Of course this guy is picking up a few knowledge pointers in the sessions, too. But they’re not going to skip out on the Tchotskies.
(Yes, we’ll be handing out some sweet t-shirts at INBOUND next week when you register for a demo. Aww yeah!)
6. The Social Media Guru
No one really knows what the Social Media Guru looks like because they’ve not yet looked up from their phone. From Tweets to Snaps and a few posts, too, this person is #Social. In fact, they just added you on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook.
The Social Media Guru wants the @world to know their every move in hopes it’ll generate brand excitement for their company.
7. The Fan Girl
OMG! ANN HANDLEY IS GOING TO BE AT INBOUND16! The Fan Girl is attending the digital marketing conference on a mission to meet the keynote speakers. If there’s even the slightest chance to meet the speaker, at say a book signing or a VIP sponsor event, count her in. And she’ll be live-journaling the entire experience so she can relive it over and over (and over).
Spot The Fan Girl by watching for the person who’s forgotten how to breathe, is hyperventilating and is shaking or crying upon seeing their idol.
(Note: The Fan Girl is not limited to only females. I see you, brah, struggling to keep your cool when Anna Kendrick enters the stage.)
8. The Leslie Knope
The Leslie Knope carries a binder with notes for each session. She’s wired a little tight, but you can’t help but love her. She operates on a carefully timed out schedule, and carries along maps with the fastest route to each lecture room in the conference hall laid out.
The Leslie Knope knows how to let loose and have fun with the crew, partying it up during happy hour. But she’s also insanely responsible, so she’ll be the first to call it a night.
Oh and she’s all over the waffle line at breakfast.
9. The Model
The Model is in front of the booth displaying the latest and greatest products his company has to offer. He may not know the ins and outs of the product as well as he should, but no one seems to notice – they’ll be too busy staring to care. He books a record number of demos and gives out all of the swag. On the first day.
10. The Spy
In an effort to check out the competition, The Spy goes undercover through the vendor booths with a list of detailed questions. Who are they? What are they doing? Why do they beat out the competitors?
After the digital marketing conference is over, this guy takes the intel he’s gathered back to HQ to be analyzed. Then he uses it to create an action plan to reposition the company’s differentiators and move deals across the finish line.
11. The Partier
The Partier is ready to play! He listens all day, and engages with each session he attends. But come nightfall, he’s the first to lead the charge to Happy Hour. He’s the guy that makes friends with everyone, and knows how to talk shop and have fun.
The Partier knows how fun conferences are and wants to make it exciting and productive for everyone he meets.
Whatever your persona is at a digital marketing conference, we can’t wait to chat with you at Inbound 2016! Schedule a demo and get a sweet Sigstr t-shirt while you’re there.
Once upon a time, image was everything. Big ad budgets helped you cast a wider net and swanky façades made the brand appear new and shiny. But now, in an always-on social scene, the mask has been lifted. The porticos and polish that once made the brand shine have been stripped away. Leaving behind just the core and beautiful heart of a brand. If you’re not ready to bare that to your customers, you’ll never earn their full trust.
We all know honesty is the best policy. But the trouble is, we too often believe it in theory rather than in practice. When we feel backed into a corner, stuck in a situation that’s uncomfortable either because you didn’t do what you said you would or you can’t do what they want you to in the time they want you to do it, we think lying, or withholding the truth is a better policy.
But we’re wrong.
Truth breeds trust, especially when there are problems. Sure, people won’t always like what they hear when you tell them the truth, but they’ll respect that you had the courage to own it.
Don’t be a seller of stuff, be a reliable resource.
People say they do business with people they like, but really, they do business with people they trust. The more trust you can create, the more a prospect will share with you. You’ll be in a position to earn the right to know their pain points. And, they’ll be more apt to share their hopes and needs so you can help them make their job easier, make them more efficient, get the raise they’re after. You’ll be able to help them do whatever it is they do, only better.
And when you know their needs, you can make a realistic judgement call whether what you have to offer is actually a good fit. When you’re honest enough to turn down a potential sale, you’re actually building a customer for life. They’re still going to tell their friends all about you and they’ll want to want what you have.
Harbor a community of honesty to lead the customer’s journey.
The key to ignited sales it to create trust through honesty. But creating trust takes time. It takes sales and marketing alignment to guide a deal from awareness to action. And it should be marketing’s goal to build relationships over time. Then, when it’s time to make the sale, prospects will already trust your brand and their ready to sign on the dotted line.
Build a trusting community by being worthy of trust over time. When a person first agrees to show interest in your brand, to read the blog your marketing department has posted online or watch your latest promotional video, they’re taking a leap of faith. They’re wary of you. You’re a new voice in the marketplace (at least to them). But they take a chance and put trust in you anyway because their interest has been piqued.
When they’re interested, prospects dig a little deeper. According to the 2014 State of B2B Procurement study from the Acquity Group, 94 percent of business buyers do some form of research online. So if your company is marketing consistently as an honest brand, and showing their integrity, it’s a good guess prospects will already feel more comfortable working with the sales team.
Trust builds business, but honesty builds trust.
In a world of increasing transparency, authenticity, honesty and integrity are the only means to success. The best sales teams are honest. They’re willing to speak up if conditions aren’t favorable for the customer, even if it’ll cost them the deal. They’re willing to lose the sale if selling would mean violating their word, their values or their principles.
Sell with your heart and your soul, with honesty and integrity all wrapped up in a warm blanket of trust.
Set and meet (or exceed) realistic expectations for your prospects as they enter the funnel. When expectations aren’t met, trust is broken. And broken trust leads to missed opportunities. All despite the countless hours of hard work you’d already put into almost making something happen.
HubSpot’s Inbound conference is just around the corner and we could not be more excited. We have a rockstar crew heading out to Boston to rub elbows with the best and brightest in sales and marketing. As you may already know, we are big fans of HubSpot. We cannot wait to see what the marketing automation geniuses drum up at their biggest event of the year.
Here are the top eight things we’re most pumped about:
This is how we feel about Serena Williams being one of the keynote speakers at this year’s Inbound conference.
Serena is touted as the Best Female Athlete of All Time. But when handed the title, she quipped “Why not the greatest athlete of all time?” We can only hope she brings this level of bad-assery to the stage for her keynote. Having won 22 Grand Slams in singles, 14 Grand Slams in doubles, 775 career wins, 4 Olympic Gold Medals and a spot in Beyonce’s “Sorry” music video, we think Serena is more than qualified to speak on the topics of hard work, dedication and success.
All-star Line Up
Alec Baldwin, Gary Vaynerchuk, Anna Kendrick, Michael Strahan, Sarah Silverman, Leslie Odom Jr., the list goes on. HubSpot has brought the heat with the all-star line up of A-list speakers and celebs. We cannot wait to learn from some of the smartest in the business, laugh with some of the funniest and dance along with some of the most talented around.
Oysters and Lobster Rolls
Yum. This is one of our favorite parts about being in Boston. The oysters are unbeatable. There are a plethora of oyster bars that claim to have the best oysters in Boston, so to make it easier for you we found the list of the top 10 oyster bars you can charm your top customers or prospects with.
If you’re looking for a quick getaway lunch before heading back into a session, we have to recommend grabbing a lobster roll. They compete with the quality you will find in Maine. Be prepared to spend a bit more on the rolls than you would on an average work lunch. But don’t worry, it’s totally worth it. Here are the top 8 spots for you to grab a quick roll, with the Yankee Lobster Co being the closest walk from the conference center.
Club INBOUND
Any conference that refers to the expo hall as a “club” is a conference we would like to get involved with. Club Inbound will host it’s own DJ, snacks, food truck lunches, drinks and refuel stations, not to mention dozens of killer sponsors(Sigstr being one of them). We cannot wait to hang out in Club Inbound and network with other smart sales and marketing folks.
Boston
Boston is lovely in the fall. Truly, truly beautiful. As a group of Midwesterners, from a city that didn’t hit the map for 40 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, it’s incredible to be in a city laced with so much history. When we were in Boston back in August for #FlipMyFunnel, we had dinner at the Lincoln Tavern & Restaurant. The back wall of the tavern boasted a gigantic American flag faded and shredded by time and war. A bar had a flag that flew in the Civil War. If you have a few moments (or hours) to spare while you are in Boston, see if you can check out one of these Top 10 Most Historic Sites.
Seaport Parties
Ain’t no party like a Boston Seaport party. We read that somewhere once. We’re not 100 percent sure what that means, but we are 120 percent excited about them! After working, learning and networking all day, you will have earned that seaport party.
Inbound ROCKS
The final evening of the nearly week-long inbound conference brings the biggest night of them all: Inbound ROCKS. Inbound ROCKS features comedians Sarah Silverman and Ali Wong. Sarah Silverman boasts a quick wit and politically-incorrect humor. Where Ali Wong has been a breakout star in the comedic realm when a section of her stand-up went viral. Ali brings light-hearted humor to the feminist movement while being incredibly awesome. And she’s a writer for the critically acclaimed hit, Fresh off the Boat. ABC’s new comedy on a Chinese family trying to live the American dream. And, obviously, we’re pumped for the after party, too.
These Awesome Sessions
This inbound conference provides a massive learning opportunity for innovative and curious marketers. We can’t wait to soak up all that marketing knowledge. Here are just four awesome sessions you should for sure be signing up for:
Ann Handley
ASAP (As Slow As Possible)
Jordan Benjamin
How Professional Athletes Train Their Brains for Peak Performance & How Sales Pros Can To
Jill Rowley
One Team, One Goal – Aligning Marketing & Sales for Successful Social Selling
Doug Davidoff and Doug Kessler
How to Swear in your F*^%$! Marketing
Oh, and we almost forgot! The ninth thing you should be pumped about is the opportunity to hang out with the Sigstr crew. Want to meet up with us? Let us know here! We will be the goofy group in green. The map up above will help you find us!
Something wicked this way comes. Tis All Hallow’s Eve and we’re feeling the spook!
As I sit watching the 90s-style cult classic Hocus Pocus for the dozenth time (this year), I can’t help but let my marketer mind leak a bit.
The Disney flick has been a perennial Halloween favorite, scaring up a new batch of youngsters every year since 1993. Starring Bette Midler, Kathy Najimy and Sarah Jessica Parker as a trio of evil witches, the film is a kitschy gem. The witches, known as the Sanderson Sisters, turn the tacky up to 11 through the film, becoming the scary movie for a generation of kids.
The witches are evil, that’s clear, but they’re pretty clever, too. There might even be a few killer marketing ideas I can get from them. Here are five reasons they’d make killer digital marketers:
1. They always try to rejuvenate their look
In the midst of the 1693 Salem witch trials, Thackery Binx watches as his little sister, Emily Binx, wandered off into the cottage of the Sanderson Sisters. There the Sisters, Winni, Mary and Sarah cast a spell on Emily to absorb her youth in an effort to regain their own. Winni’s potion will supposedly give them eternal life, as long as they have a continual supply of children.
While there is no secret potion that’ll dish out an endless supply of killer marketing ideas, we can learn a thing or two from the sisters in revamping our look. When your marketing goes stale, so does your business. The tough reality is, at some point in our careers, the world will change. And consumers will look for an experience that’s markedly different from what the company has been offering. Your company may be the first name in pagers, but now you’re dealing in a marketplace that no longer needs them.
If you can’t craft your own secret sauce to keep up with the changing times, you’re fated to turn to dust at daylight.
2. Loyalty wins
The Sanderson Sisters are witches from 17th century Salem, Massachusetts. When they died (the first time) there were no paved roads, or cars. They didn’t have lighters, or sprinkler systems. So on the one night they were to find the children and suck out their souls, they were met with unforeseen challenges. Throughout their adventures, they stuck together to help each other through the confusing situations.
Having a close-knit community is key in digital marketing because loyal customers and brand addicts will advocate on your team. They’ll help you to navigate the changing landscape of digital marketing and offer up killer marketing ideas to expand your network.
Don’t be afraid to be loyal to your friends and colleagues in the industry that have hung by your side, and remember to show them the love as much as you can.
3. They’re not afraid of the uncomfortable
Things didn’t go well for the Sanderson sisters on Halloween night in 1693. And, while they were uncomfortable, they didn’t shy away from their fate. Instead, they created an action plan – to return when a virgin lit the black flame candle under a full moon. The conditions had to meet a predetermined set of standards, but they knew it’d be worth the wait to get it right.
Marketing, in general, is uncomfortable. We’re tasked with pushing the limits of acceptable marketing. There’s a fine line between edgy and sarcastic and downright offensive, or worse yet, boring marketing. To get our message to resonate with our audiences we have to create action plans and act strategically. Even when that means we’re waiting for a while until conditions are just right.
4. They’re not pigeonholed
The witches have a target audience. They’re after the children of Salem. Sarah Sanderson sings her bewitching chant and lures the youngsters from their beds throughout the city, but they don’t only speak to the children. They party with the adults of Salem, casting a spell to make them dance.
And their language is decidedly retargeted from the days you watched the cult classic cuddled up between your parents as a child. The generation who grew up watching it can relive the adventure every October. And we can finally understand the too-adult-themed jokes that laced the dialogue. These jokes are hidden gems that provide the unexpected, and allow the movie to grow with you.
Have a holistic focus on your target audience, but don’t neglect other demographics. Killer marketing ideas only take legs when they’re relatable and unexpected.
5. They dare to learn new things
The world has changed dramatically from the 17th century to 1993, when the movie came out. Their perspectives are dated and the tactics they used to lure children are tired and ineffective. We watch the Sisters struggle to learn the nuances of technology in today’s Salem.
Just because something has worked for you in the past, doesn’t mean that it will still work. Go to conferences and industry events (like Hubspot’s Inbound next week – we’ll see ya there!) and continue learning the latest in marketing and in technology. It’ll help you stay ahead of your competitors and come off as professional and up-to-date to your customers.
The Sanderson Sisters are kooky evil served up with a side of nostalgia and a few killer marketing ideas. So, go sit on your couch with a plastic jack-o-lanter full of candy and turn on the cheesy 90s glory!
Halloween is Monday, and the pressure is on to figure out what to wear for your office party. Relax! Finding office halloween costumes doesn’t have to be stressful nor expensive. And you don’t have to admit creative defeat by grabbing a run of the mill costume found at every local party store. There’s still plenty of time to make use of your creativity and whip up the DIY costume of your dreams.
12 Costumes for Your Halloween Party – tomorrow
1. Fantasy Football
Grab your favorite team’s jersey and a pair of leggings, add on a wizard hat and beard and you’re the physical manifestation of your company’s fantasy football league!
2. Internet Explorer
Ah internet explorer, oh how we love to hate you. Put on your blue shorts, 1990s-style blue sweatbands on your wrists and head, and the classic Internet Explorer “e” logo. Bonus: move at a slower pace all day 🙂
3. Safari
In the spirit of Apple’s web browser, use the fun play on words and grab your finest beige blends. Khaki and beige mesh well with the colors of the savanna, so find your cargo pants or shorts and sturdy boots. Wear a pair of long white or neutral-colored socks with your boots if you’re in shorts. Put on a fishing vest over a white or beige button-down shirt. Add an Apple logo to the vest to complete the look.
4. Google Chrome
Find all the chrome! Wear a gray t-shirt with a Chrome logo attached. Hit up the hardware store and find the flex pipe and go nuts. And if people don’t get it by your appearance, just start rifling through all of their stuff for personal information (just kidding, please don’t do that!)
5. BSoD (Blue Screen of Death)
The scariest costume on the list (to Windows users, anyway), the Blue Screen of Death may be the easiest, too. All you need is a blue long-sleeved t-shirt, blue pants, and a massive, attached blue BSoD poster with white text. Customize the costume by editing the content of your BSoD with some witty text. You’ll be sure to give everyone in the office chills.
6. White Space
Designers know the importance of whitespace, and love the application. Don the look by dressing in all white. Paint your face white. Pull out your white shoes, and throw on a white wig if you’re ultra-committed.
7. Formal Apology
Take advantage of this punnerific costume, and put on your finest formalwear, like a tux or gown. Then with some construction paper and a Sharpie make a sign that says, “I’m sorry.” Tape the sign onto your outfit (or just carry it around) and Boom! You’re a Formal Apology.
8. Twitter
The social network has millions of users, but forces each one to communicate in messages of 140 characters or less, turning every last thought into tiny, unavoidable bullets of information. Cover yourself in tidbits by making use of that post-it stack on your desk.
9. Ghostwriter
A play on a classic, throw on a white sheet and cut a hole for your eyes and arms. Soak the bottom in black ink (Sharpies anyone?), and carry a notebook and pen. You’re a ghostwriter.
10. Adobe Creative Cloud
Did the whole marketing department procrastinate on their costumes? Dress as the Adobe Creative Cloud package. Marketing Director, you’re making a cloud out of white poster board and some string. Others in your posse can be the products. A light blue Placard against a navy background makes a Photoshop costume – go a step further and make a lasso tool out of painted wire. Another should dress in the Ai orange for Illustrator. You get the idea.
11. Snapchat
Another group costume to pay tribute to our favorite filters! Dress up as the butterfly filter, the flower crown or add some cat and dog ears made out of felt, hot glue and a cheap headband. Use costume makeup to draw the details of the face.
12. Candy Crush
Create a full jumpsuit emulating the Candy Crush board. Find a solid color jumpsuit or matching shirt and pants and cut out different shapes from felt you can get at the dollar store’s craft section. A little hot glue and you’re set.
What did we miss? Tweet us @SigstrApp and share your office halloween costumes! From the Sigstr team to yours, have a wonderful Halloween weekend!
Businesses pour an incredible amount of time and money into creating a positive chatter on social media. And while business development reps and account execs see a boost in return, marketing is stuck spending time and money figuring out the what and how. Should we create an ebook? Maybe a video? Will that fit well on the blog? Should we distribute this on social? Through email? Ads in the yellow pages? (Just kidding on that last one.)
But what if there were people, who knew your company better than anyone else, who actually craved the chance to spread your message?
Employee engagement ideas create employee advocates. Advocates become addicted to your brand. And brand addicts scream your message across their many social platforms online – organically spreading your marketing reach to all of their friends, family, neighbors and, really, anyone else who’ll listen.
On average, your employees have around 10 times more connections on social media than your brand has alone, according to a study from Social Chorus. That means your company with 250 employees on payroll can easily reach some 2,500 more people than your marketing department alone by creating brand advocates. A wider audience offers up a larger interest and a stronger start into the sales funnel. And, extra reach is helpful in creating a brand impression fueled by authenticity.
And getting the people who know your brand best to talk about it, in their own language, at their own free will, creates a better connection for prospects. In a 2015 Hinge Research Institute and Social Media Today survey, more than 79 percent of respondents with employee advocacy programs in place reported boosted brand visibility. And 65 percent saw improved brand recognition, while 33.7 percent had stronger brand loyalty. Your people are powerful. They have reach and they have influence. So help them become addicted to your brand with a list of employee engagement ideas.
5 Steps to creating a brand addiction
1. Culture
Like my friend Jay Baersays, advocacy is born from culture. It doesn’t come from new technology or your latest marketing venture. Instead, it’s rooted in your employees’ wants and needs. Forget about the company and its shareholders for just a second, and you’ll see the people. It’s about finding their individual motivators.
The culture should be natural and authentic. Don’t try too hard. Offering up required tweets or posts is not advocacy and does not create brand addicts. It’ll signal that you don’t trust your employees enough to find something to share on their own. And it’ll show you care more about amplifying the message through them instead of nurturing their part in the company’s overall success.
Create a culture so your employees are impassioned and excited about their company’s products, environment and workplace and they’ll want to talk to others about it. They’ll be proud of their contribution to your company and encourage others to buy your products or to apply for a job.
2. Stand out
Clearly define your brand standards and offer up employee engagement ideas to encourage participation in an advocacy program. You can spend countless hours and resources developing and promoting your brand to your customers, but how well do your employees really know their company brand?
In a 2013 State of the American Workforce report from Gallup, only 41 percent of employees said they knew what the brand was or how it was different from competitors. If you expect your employees to become advocates for their company, they have to passionately believe their brand is top dog. And how can they do that if they don’t fully understand what the company stands for and how to present it to the world?
Figure out what the most confusing parts of the brand are, then formally define the brand by aligning the mission statement, core values and key message of the company. Go a step further and identify the differentiators in your company. What makes you stand out?
3. Co-create guidelines
Guidelines encourage participation in advocacy. Be clear, but not too restrictive to counteract the culture of trust and freedom you’re trying to cultivate. Shy away from actually imposing guidelines, instead opting to crowdsource them if you can. Make employee engagement ideas easy to understand and easy to stick to.
Your guidelines should enable your employee brand addicts. Offer up advice on what to share and how. Give employees an idea of where to put content and an outline of the incentives that employees can benefit from sharing.
Remember, first and foremost, what your employees want to share is entirely up to them. Whether you want them to share your latest blog post, hottest specials or company culture tidbits, it needs to be something they feel is relevant to them and to their followers. If they don’t think your content is relevant, it’s a good chance they’re going to skip sharing it. Create content to share that supports your brand, has a viral spark, and has real, authentic value.
4. Set them up with the right tools
People may be posting already, with no incentives. But you have no way to measure the impact because it’s happening irregularly. Provide them with a reason and the means to discuss something on social media – then reward them for doing so. Give them the right content, at the right time (Sigstr can help with distribution), and offer up the right rewards.
Show employees their Like, Tweet and Share are important, and let them see their own value. According to theAmerican Psychological Association, 91 percent of employees who felt valued said they were motivated to do their best work, compared to just 37 percent of employees who did not feel valued. And, 85 percent of valued employees said they’d recommend their workplace to others. Where only 15 percent of non-valued workers would.
See the impact your employees have. If your business is anticipating a new product release, or a hiring event, create a plan for communicating it internally first. Then, depending on what you’ve chosen as your primary business goal for the campaign, create employee engagement ideas to support it. If you’re looking to make the trending topics on Twitter, make a hashtag. If you’re target is share of voice, reward employees who’ve used multiple platforms in their messaging.
5. Co-create the experience
When you walk into an Apple store, an experience is immediately engaged by a T-shirt clad genius surrounded by the latest technologies. Or when a Lululemon addict shows up there for a yoga class. When a 30-something professional scans the barcode on a designer outfit at Burberry and it triggers a video of the designer storytelling about the materials and inspiration for the design – these are all co-created neurological addictive experiences.
They’re addictive because every time a customer co-creates the experience with the brand, they’re shaping the brand into the mood of the moment.
So co-create the same kinds of experiences when thinking of employee engagement ideas. It takes more than just a once-a-year holiday party to create an experience. Team outings – even for lunch. Or maybe a speaker series. Maybe it’s perks like a company yoga class. These experiences have value to your employees. They feel good, and because they feel good, your employees crave more. And they’ll share more, and more authentically.
Have you ever tried to corral information about a product you already own – maybe your dish washer’s owner’s manual or that warranty on your heat pump? Not always easy, right?
Lumavate, a SaaS application technology, was created to help by giving a digital voice to your products. It allows content to send through text, QR code or NFC directly from your product’s label or sticker to your smart phone at the exact moment you need it. Anyone from industrial drill operators to a standard homeowner can scan the equipment label to instantly access troubleshooting videos, manuals or even order product-specific parts.
The technology provides manufacturers a real-time, captive channel to reach customers to offer up relevant and helpful information. It solves customer’s most complex challenges while decreasing the manufacturer’s support costs and boosting revenue after the sale.
Finally! A way to decode the mystery language of manufacturers, in real-time, without the panicked Google search that returns results like, “10 ways you know your heat pump is going to blow-up tomorrow.”
Lumavate’s entire platform is built to provide companies a resource to improve customer loyalty by offering the right resources at the right time. So it makes sense they wanted to do the same for their customers.
Lumavate launched their first campaign at the end of July. Since then, they’ve added three more campaigns surrounding content resources like new ebooks and their blog. The group has added 30K brand-consistent impressions and they’ve seen an average .66 percent click-through rate.
Their team has created each of their four campaigns, then worked with our team to optimize design, reach and branding.
What we love [Campaign]:
Using resources like our email signature campaign best practices and our customer success team, the Lumavate team has knocked their design and branding out of the park with each new campaign. Our favorite, though, directed 1:1 email recipients to their (stellar) blog.
The first thing to shout out is their incessant desire to help their customers. Lumavate is a brand that screams brand loyalty and customer service. And the quickest way to a customer’s heart is to share a resource. They show they’re eager to provide value through education, instruction and support – all found in their blog.
Using the on-brand Lumavate orange as the primary color, the bold banner immediately becomes a focal point in the simple email signature. The designers kept the messaging clean and tight, using only three colors for visual interest while avoiding becoming too busy.
The Campaign’s call-to-action stands out, asking recipients to “click here” to read the latest and greatest blog posts from Lumavate. Which proved effective in application, gathering more than 14K impressions and a 0.66 percent click-through rate.
We also love how the group changes things up frequently. They refuse to become stale. This campaign ran for about a month before they switched up the campaign to promote their new ebook.
What we love [Signature]:
We talk with the Lumavate team almost weekly to make sure their Signature is the best representation of their brand. They’ve opted to use the simple email signature space to host the logo, creating consistent branding. And furthermore, the simplicity in the design keeps the visuals attractive.
They’ve used just two fonts, at varying weights. And only one color in the text and adding their signature orange in the logo.
The simple email signature style stayed consistent with their branding. Lumavate is a small but mighty SaaS team with insane potential and lofty growth goals. As they continue adding to their team, the Signature is scalable and consistent across the company to create cohesive branding.
What’s next:
Our customer success team will continue working with the Lumavate team as they add more names to their roll-call. The high growth market the team works in creates an ideal opportunity to leverage employee email as an owned marketing channel.
Sigstr Shout-Out is a series that features the insanely talented and creatively driven Sigstr customer campaigns so you can see simple email signature best practices in action – and who’s nailing them.
It’s not too early to get excited about Game of Thrones season seven. With the HBO hit’s sixth run now over, thoughts have inevitably turned to next year. I. Can’t. Wait.
Like most, I too have a nerdy obsession with Game Of Thrones. My colleague even called me out for it in his own nerdy post about Parks and Rec Characters and their email signatures. If you read the first post about Game of Thrones and email signatures, thank you and welcome back to part two! Why Game of Thrones again? Because we have been catching glimpses of the season seven hype posters and frankly, we’re dying to get back to alittle GoT to remedy the Sunday scaries.
WARNING: As with the last post, spoilers ahead.
CERSEI LANNISTER
We all join together in this wishy-washy state of loving or loathing the newly appointed HBIC (if you don’t understand the acronym, here’s some help from Urban Dictionary). She is both simultaneously the worst and best character in the series. Aside from being a total weirdo and being in love with her brother, Cersei has been consistently in a state of complete and utter lack of giving any cares in the world which makes her a freaking awesome leader of the new girl power movement happening in the series.
The only three things that kept her human and frankly, humane, were her children. The woman once said “the more people you love, the weaker you are.” Foreshadowing? Now that they’re all gone, we expect some pretty seriously powerful, badass acts of revenge by part of Queen Cersei.
She’s already off to a killer (pun intended) started with the nun that led the march in her Shame walk and the Sparrow and Margaery Tyrell, who burned along with about 100 other visitors of the Great Sept of Baelor deemed “collateral damage” by the Queen.
As you may have heard, we recently launched our Dynamic Campaigns feature that sends content based on your end-recipient (think internal communications versus externally facing sales emails). Cersei’s external signature is no-nonsense, just like her. No frills, no cool fonts, no quotes. All business. Cersei keeps her cards close to her chest, and doesn’t want anyone to think she has even an ounce of weakness.
Cersei’s internal signature reflects what only those closest to her know – underneath all of that toughness and hatred is a girly human that just loves wearing the color blue and braiding her beautiful blonde hair. It also shares a message she only wants those who work with her to know and needs the utmost surety the message remains internal (which is why she used Sigstr’s Dynamic Campaigns – shameless plug)
EXTERNAL
INTERNAL
SANSA STARK
Sansa has been dealt the worst deck of cards. The worst. Unfortunately, Sansa hasn’t been known for fighting that deck of cards or showing any toughness or grit. Lest we not forget when this girl thought she was in love with Joffrey and even said “he was the only thing she ever wanted in her life.” Puh-lease.
We didn’t see a glimpse into any hint of fire in Sansa until she finally bucked-up and fed Ramsay to his hounds. That hauntingly perfect speech followed by the Sansa-smirk-walk-away at the end of “The Battle of The Bastards” was the stuff of legends. Girl, finally. We have been waiting for this moment since Season 1 Episode 9 when your almost husband had your dad executed. Sansa is finally in a safer, much happier Winterfell.
Sansa’s up for a comeback, hence why we dubbed her “the Comeback Queen”. While Lady Lyanna Mormont (who we idolize, by the way) packed all of her support behind Jon Snow as the King in the North, we can’t help but think Sansa’s up to something. She already pulled the sneakiest move ever when she enlisted the help of Littlefinger (yuck) to ride in and save Jon Snow and his wildling army. Flashback to season one when Sansa quips that a “trueborn will always have the stronger claim.” Hmm. Sansa’s email signature is a nod to this thought and what we can only assume to be her character development in the upcoming season.
TYRION LANNISTER
Tyrion is another Lannister who is both loved and loathed. Why? His quick wit, sarcasm, undying honesty and affinity for women and wine. Tyrion knows and accepts it. “That is what I do. I drink and I know things.”
He befriends some of the most putrid characters, i.e. Varys the Eunuch. Varys has betrayed nearly every character throughout the show. Let’s review where he left off: He was with Cersei and the little late King Tommen in King’s Landing. Then, Daenerys and Tyrion at the Great Pyramid, before deciding he needed to take off to Dorne. Cersei just brutally murdered Queen Margaery Tyrell and her brother Loras. So, we can only assume her grandmother is out for blood. And guess who Varys meets in Dorne? Grandma Tyrell. We can’t begin to imagine the horror they are cooking up. I digress.
Back to Tyrion. He has been a key player since we first met him. Season 7 is going to be a great season for Tyrion (I think). We ended last season with Tyrion tearfully accepting Daenerys’ request that he become right hand to the Queen, her most trusted advisor. Tyrion has gained the trust of the lady with hundreds of ships, thousands of notoriously dangerous warriors and three gigantic, blood-thirsty dragons. Safe to say he’s on the right side of this, less can be said for his brilliantly evil sister. His new title, paired with his unabashed passion for wine, made his email signature all too easy to create.
BRIENNE OF TARTH
We are just going to come right out and say it: Brienne is a badass. This cannot be denied. She faced the Hound, arguably the greatest and most intimidating warrior in the Seven Kingdoms, and walked away smiling. How?! Brienne is unwavering in her loyalty to whomever she serves.
She may be best known for her size and strength, but I can’t ignore her dedication to honor. She has sworn service to countless fallen leaders throughout the series until she eventually falls into oath to protect Sansa. I’m hoping this is going to be a much longer term of service than those prior for Miss Brienne.
Winterfell is already treating her well. This is where she meets Tormund Giantsbane, the red bearded wildling. Brienne has, for her entire life, dealt with men sneering at her, mocking her size and disposition. When Brienne first rides through the gates at Winterfell though, Tormund can’t stop staring.
Brienne’s absolutely not used to the attention, so I’m anxious to see how this silent and slightly-awkward love story unfolds. You can’t deny there’s some sort of romantic tension between Brienne and Jaime Lannister. Brienne has an obvious crush on the Kingslayer. Now we’re left to figure out if Jaime feels the same. He certainly cares about here. Maybe we’ll see an all-out brawl between Tormund and Jaime for her heart? We can only hope. Brienne’s email signature is a not to her devotion to all-things honorable – and her crush on the best looking dude in the show.
TORMUND GIANTSBANE
Tormund is my absolute favorite addition to the show. We first met Tormund in the third season and he’s been an unpredictable spitfire ever since. We have gone from being extremely wary of him, to being downright scared of him, to adoring him. He’s a wildly effective and dangerous warrior, while also being a total goof and adorably uncomfortable flirter.
At this point, Tormund is a trusted ally and friend to Jon Snow. But let’s rewind a bit to the days we were still wary of him. When Tormund and his wildling warband catch wind the men of the Night’s Watch betrayed Snow and brutally murdered him, they attacked Castle Black. More proof Tormund is now a loyal friend to Jon.
Tormund’s loyalty doesn’t end there. His performance at the Battle of the Bastards was mind-blowingly awesome. He BITES Lord Smalljon’s THROAT OUT. Tormund has somehow found himself as the Right Hand to the King in the North. I don’t think he’s totally realized what he has gotten himself into.
His email signature reflects the unsurety that exists in how he is going to deal with this new development. Remember, in the Great Hall when Jon is proclaimed the King in the North, Tormund is one of the only not to bend his knee and hail the King.
Get fired-up, while the debut is later than usual, writers have set the stage for a disastrously beautiful season seven. It’ll be worth the wait.
If you thought Cersei’s Dynamic Campaigns were the bomb, you can read more about our newest update here:
We work tirelessly day-in and day-out to create that piece of content. You know the one, that piece we hope will go viral and produce a bajillion qualified leads for our sales and marketing strategy. It’s a grind, but us marketers, we live for days like those and will do whatever it takes to make it happen.
We want to be the hero. We want to be the guy who cooked up that genius campaign and brought in a gazillion qualified leads, put them on a silver platter for the sales team (who eventually bring it home and close the deal), then present a report to our boss showing an agglomeration of closed/won deals sourced from marketing efforts (after which we get a promotion, generous raise and sail off into the sunset).
But, reality says it doesn’t always go that way.
Sure, you may produce killer content and run an awesome campaign that brings in qualified leads for your sales team, but what happens after that? After a few follow-ups, the prospect never replies and your sales development rep or account executive moves on, and now you have a stale lead that isn’t being nurtured. I guess onto the next bajillion leads, right?
You worked hard to generate those leads – it’s what your team is measured on. But at the end of the day, the most critical metric around a sales and marketing strategy is the bottom line. But what if you, Mr. Marketing Director, still had some control after those leads were passed? Some control or influence on how they progress through the funnel all the way to closed/won business?
Sounds pretty good, right? Before I dig into that, let’s first take a step back and review the stereotypical relationship between sales and marketing.
The Classic Debate: Marketing vs. Sales
“I gave you 1,000 qualified leads. Why haven’t they closed or converted yet?” vs. “I don’t have enough qualified leads to fill my pipeline.” We’re all familiar with this back and forth. Winning cures all, and makes for the best company culture. But when deals aren’t closing, both sides will start feeling the pressure (and most likely start the “blame game”).
“Well, I did my job. It’s your job to close the deal.” True, in some sense, for the marketer to have this thought. However, it’s an attitude that’s ultimately ineffective to the overall success of a sales and marketing strategy. We’re all on the same team here.
Both groups need to shift their mindset and start thinking about how they can help each other. When both sides work together, good things happen and deals close (and each team makes the other side look good).
Marketing: think creatively about how your team can contribute past the lead to demo stage.
Sales: work with the marketing team to educate your prospects with the right content at the right time.
The Sales/Marketing Funnel
When thinking about a standard sales and marketing funnel, and which metrics are used to measure the success of a sales and marketing strategy, let’s keep it pretty straight-forward for the sake of this post’s word count. In its simplest form, our own sales/marketing team focuses on three main metrics: qualified leads generated, demos scheduled (and executed) and closed/won business. That’s it. That’s our formula for success.
Of course there are additional benchmarks, conversion rates and strategies that revolve around this funnel. But, all of these circulating benchmarks can become complicated, so it’s always nice to be able to refer back to a core set of metrics and goals.
The Right Content at the Right Time
Think of this funnel not only for metrics and goals, but also as a framework to determine which content to share and appropriate timing. After a prospect has been identified as a qualified lead, what content should she pay attention to next?
If they’re still a fresh lead towards the top of the funnel, blog posts, ebooks or whitepapers will keep the momentum building and peak their interest. Continue to be a helpful resource while also progressing them to the next stage (scheduling a demo or meeting).
For identified opportunities that are further into the sales cycle, point them to content that solidifies your credibility as a trusted partner. Case studies, testimonials or use cases that demonstrate your value prop in action, can help nudge them across the finish line (a signed proposal).
Example: Convert Qualified Leads to Demos
How is your sales development team following up with qualified leads? Beyond a few triggered emails and/or phone calls, 1:1 email (think gmail or outlook) is probably the most popular option.
Personalization is important here. Being helpful and sharing content that’s relevant to that particular prospect will help build value and gain trust. Having a call-to-action for the “next step” is even more crucial. Use each 1:1 email interaction to educate the prospect on your product or service, but also use each email as an opportunity to lead them into the next step.
End the message with a call-to-action to schedule a demo. Marketers, if you don’t work directly with your sales development team or if you don’t have time to review each follow-up message, ensure this next step is being communicated with simple, centralized control over your company’s email signature.
Example: Convert Demos to Closed/Won Business
For prospects that have already seen a demo, the messaging should be different. By now, they’ve read through a few resources and are familiar with the value prop. They might be reviewing the proposal, getting approval on pricing or weighing all options (and checking out your competitors).
It’s time to show them how others are seeing ROI. Share a case study, specific use case or testimonial. Show them how others (ideally customer logos they respect or can relate to) use your product or service to boost their business.
Create a Winning Culture Across the Entire Sales/Marketing Funnel
If sales wins, then marketings wins. And vice versa. Help each other convert leads into demos and demos into new business. Use content to your advantage by sharing the right resource at the right time (1:1 email and Sigstr can help).
What does your sales and marketing strategy look like? Do you keep it simple, or does it include multiple stages and detailed conversion metrics? We’d love to hear your feedback and how your team works together to increase conversions. Start a conversation on twitter (@SigstrApp) or drop us a line at interact@sigstr.com.
Dynamic Campaigns by Sigstr is a new, intuitive way to align internal communications with HR and marketing – offering up the most relevant content in every employee email, based on the end recipient.
You said you loved using email to communicate at work, but wanted a way to get targeted marketing content out without overloading a recipient’s inbox. We listened and gave you Sigstr. Then you said you loved the way you could use Sigstr to drive ROI by distributing content, boosting event registrations and upping website traffic, but wanted to put it into your email cadence. So we created a host of Sigstr Integrations.
Then you said you loved the reach of the owned marketing channel, but wanted to use it to rally employee engagement while keeping your marketing content distribution on point. We pretended we didn’t hear you, but today we gave in.
Introducing: Dynamic Campaigns by Sigstr. (Disclaimer: We were not ignoring you! In fact, we’ve been working really, really hard on this product.)
What are Dynamic Campaigns?
More than 82 percent of U.S. business leaders have called internal communications and employee engagement a top strategic priority, according to a 2015 TalentKeepers survey. And it makes sense because the strategy is linked to improved company productivity, profitability and customer engagement. Engaged workers support innovation, growth and increased revenue their company needs for success.
Yet, employee engagement has consistently averaged less than 33 percent over the last four years, according to a 2015 Gallup survey.
But today we’re introducing a new product that helps you share the content most relevant to the audience you’re emailing, whether it’s your next prospect, current customer or your office buddy Julie from customer success. By offering up relevant content, to the right audience at the right time, you’re creating an environment of authentic engagement.
Dynamic Campaigns by Sigstr sends content based on your end-recipient, without any extra work from you. (And without any extra emails hitting the inbox!) It allows you to roll out internal communications, like open enrollment dates for benefits or Employee of the Week campaigns while, at the same time, sending targeted marketing campaigns to contacts outside of your domain.
Using Dynamic Campaigns for internal communications
A 2015 survey by Waggl Human Capital Pulse found 97 percent of the business leaders, HR leaders and consultants among the 500,000 interviewed said listening to employees and incorporating their ideas was critical to an organization’s success. But how are you creating an environment of authentic trust?
Make employee engagement, well, engaging.
Dynamic Campaigns distribute engaging and relevant content that can help your co-workers. It lets you give them content that shows you know their value. If they feel good about the brand, they’ll feel good about their work. And by showing them they’re important to the company, they’ll be less likely to leave if another opportunity comes up. And frankly, they’ll do better work because they’ll be proud of it.
Here are a few ways to use Dynamic Campaigns for employee engagement:
Community involvement: Does your company host volunteer hours? Maybe you’re in a community corporate challenge? Dynamic Campaigns gives your employees a quick, easy and always-present way to get involved!
Events & Fundraising: Here at Sigstr, our team likes to go out and about together. To wrap up Q3, the whole crew went bowling for our company outing. To make it easy for our co-workers to get involved, we’re able to use an internal campaign that’ll give all the details on what’s happening and make it easy to sign up.
Employee Recognition: Employee engagement can turn your co-workers into company advocates, which will help create a genuine love for the product and service your company provides. Let them feel cared for and involved through recognition programs. Give them a way to nominate and vote for their co-workers. Then give a shout-out to your standout performers every month.
Content Distribution: Have training materials that need to go out? Maybe a new white paper or use-case study your co-workers will get value in reading? Inject your messaging into your email signature and make it easier for them to dig deeper.
Keep Marketing
When we created Sigstr, we set out to solve a very real pain-point felt in our own lives as marketers. We help you create consistency and take control over the email signature. We’ve helped you unlock a channel that’s been under your nose all along as a new, owned marketing avenue. And you’re nailing it!
So while HR has internal communications they’re promoting, you’re still able to roll-out your new content for marketing. At the same time.
Requirements
Dynamic Campaigns are available as a part of the Target Package. Want to check out Sigstr? Then sign up for a free trial here. Already a customer? (Good!) Customer Success (customersuccess@sigstr.com) can get you the details on how to opt-in.
Back in July, my colleague wrote a post about Game of Thrones characters and what might their email signatures look like in the professional business world. Why? Because she loves watching Game of Thrones and found a way to combine this nerdy obsession with her everyday duties (sharing email signature samples and Marketing Sigstr). Our readers loved it and it quickly became our most popular blog post so far this year.
So here I am, challenging myself to do the same, and displaying my own nerdy obsession with the show Parks and Rec. For those of you late to the party, Parks and Rec was an NBC hit series from 2009 to 2015 that snagged 15 Emmy nominations and a Golden Globe. Plus it takes place in the fictional town of Pawnee, IN (Sigstr is headquartered in Indianapolis so we particularly love this fun fact).
The more episodes you watch, the more you appreciate the quirky personality traits of each character. So, I decided to apply my overflowing appreciation to the question, “If Parks and Rec characters had email signatures, what would they look like?”
Donna Meagle
We’ll start with Donna, who likes to keep it cool and straight forward. She shows a little flash with her go-to color palette of pink and black, and lets her email audience know where they can find her on social media. Her sophisticated and luxurious Campaign banner was designed by her cousin, Ginuwine, and promotes her new book, “The Ultimate Guide on How to Treat Yo Self” (co-authored by Tom Haverford).
Ben Wyatt
Ben is a smart dude, a caring husband to Leslie and overall great guy. But he’s also a nerd, sort of awkward and sometimes boring. The same can be said for his email signature. The Indiana State flag shows a sense of professionalism, which we love, but is canceled out by his dorky Campaign banner and love for Cones of Dunshire.
Chris Traeger
Of all the email signature samples, this is LITERALLY the best one. If Chris were to express his enthusiasm about this email signature (and everything else), this is exactly what he would say. Chris calls everyone by their first and last name, so obviously his full name in this “digital business card” is a must. Overly positive and a little corny – both the signature and Campaign banner here fits his personality perfectly.
Ann Perkins
Ah, Ann Perkins (Chris Traeger voice). Her enduring companionship with best friend Leslie and concern for the town of Pawnee’s overall health makes her a fan favorite on the show. She’s sometimes awkward in social situations (and her professional headshot) and is secretly one of the funnier characters on the show. Say no to Sweetums Sodas!
Jerry Gergich
Classic Jerry. When Leslie sent a note out to the entire Parks and Rec Department, providing overly detailed steps on how to add an email signature in their settings, guess who forgot to do it? Dang it, Jerry/Larry/Terry/Barry/Gerry!
April Ludgate
As you can imagine, negativity and disinterest oozes out of April’s signature. A halloween font used for her name lets email contacts know she has a dark side. She doesn’t have an appreciation for phones, or the internet, but her warm side comes out in a Campaign banner that promotes the Pawnee Animal Shelter. Although she hates people, she loves Andy, and animals, and the email signature is a great place to promote what you’re passionate about.
Andy Dwyer
Andy Dwyer is a special kind of human being and one of my favorite characters on the show. He is clumsy, forgetful (he once forgot to brush his teeth for five weeks straight) and not quite “fit” for an office job. But he means well, is always willing to help and has a musical talent (and an appreciation for Dave Matthews Band). Unprofessional, but entertaining, is exactly what you see in his email signature (Comic Sans, cringe).
Ron Swanson
I strive to be like Ron Swanson (but admit sometimes I’m more of a Ben Wyatt or Tom Haverford). He likes to keep things simple and enjoys a nice glass of bourbon. He’s a man’s man with a secret love for jazz. Times New Roman font, minimal color variation and zero contact information makes for a perfect Ron Swanson email signature. Now that the secret is out about Duke Silver, Ron took advantage of this untapped digital real estate to promote his new documentary.
Tom Haverford
The swaggiest of swaggy office administrators, he wears pink “for the cool effect.” Always scheming a business plan, invention or company, Tom is an ambitious fella with an appreciation for luxurious living and music (aka “bangers”). Sometimes over the top and distracting? Yes. However, I respect the fact that he models his email signature much like his pitch presentations to investors: All flash. (Although we don’t recommend it).
Leslie Knope
I saved the best (and most overwhelming) for last. Leslie Knope, the crew’s fearless leader, has an unmatched passion both for her professional career and fostered friendships. Overdone, excessive, sometimes obnoxious, but always thoughtful. Leslie’s binders, political campaigns, gifts and love for waffles make her the most entertaining character on the show. Her email signature definitely lives up to the hype. Vote for Knope!
There you have it – ten of the best email signatures we recommend no one adopt as their own (just sit back and laugh instead). Hopefully this brought some comic relief to your workday, but also opened up your eyes to how employee email can be used to make a lasting brand impression and promote your most important initiatives.
For more email signature samples (the good and the bad) or tips on how to roll email signatures out to your entire company, request a demo or check out our most recent resource below.
They are the most credible voices on the plethora of topics surrounding your brand. They’re the experts on your company’s work environment, integrity, innovation and they’re the face behind the day-to-day grind. You value the work they do, otherwise they wouldn’t still be on your payroll.
Some 90 percent of brands have put an internal communication plan in place to pursue employee advocacy, according to the Altimeter Group. If your employees aren’t your biggest fans, you have bigger problems in your company, to paraphrase my friend Jay Baer.
Employees, he said, have an authentic perspective. They should genuinely love your brand, and love the work they do for your brand. Using them as another piece to your marketing strategy will boost morale and, ultimately business.
Your employees are a trusted source to customers, contacts and prospects. So create a desire to allow them to use their social posts to push your marketing messages. Creating a brand advocate in your employee can increase your marketing reach by 561 percent.
But how?
Humans are driven by purpose. Offering up a clear purpose and mission for your brand is the only way to get sincere emotional investment into what you do. And while everyone loves a little extra cash in their pocket, studies have shown financial incentives don’t work long term. People need to feel relevant and important. They need to feel needed.
But employee advocacy isn’t just sending out an email asking staffers to share your latest company news through their social profiles. We’ve all seen it – a single employee retweeting a company update verbatim, or sending out a clearly pre-drafted message is not an advocacy program.
What you need is your staff sharing information because they actually want to.
Starting your advocacy program at the point of distribution is like starting a political campaign on election day. It’s unprepared, unengaging and, likely, not going to win many fans. An advocacy program should start way before your content plan. To really succeed, you need to build an internal communication plan that provides your employees a culture of passion.
It sounds both idealistic and unrealistic at the same time. But the idea behind an employee advocacy strategy is to enable your staff to get involved. And, show off their professional expertise. Everyone likes to brag on themselves at least a little, right? Give your staff a reason to get involved. Make them want to share the message about their awesome company.
Daily engagement boosts advocacy 87 percent more than no engagement, while weekly engagement builds it 64 percent more and monthly engagement builds in by 49 percent, according to Strativity, a research and consulting firm. And you’re already emailing your staff every day, right, so try injecting empowering content into your internal communication plan.
Here are a few ways to empower your employees through your internal email signature.
(click on the infographic to enlarge)
What’s this?
Dynamic Campaigns allow for customizable picture thumbnails to appear in your email signatures (based on the end recipient).
In plain speak, it’s allowing contacts who have the same email domain (@yourcompany.com) to see one message (like the above), while at the same time, giving people outside of your domain your external-facing campaign.
Have you ever had a customer you knew was going to be a blast to work with? The customer that just “gets” what you’re doing, and knocks it out of the park on their first campaign. That’s the customer success story of Invoca.
Invoca is a call tracking and analytics company that helps users drive, track and automate inbound calls. The platform delivers personalized customer experiences across devices and channels and has been implemented at the New York Times, Salesforce and Mitsubishi to name a few.
With their Call Intelligence Summit 2016 on the calendar for the end of this month in Santa Barbara, California, they’ve been working to generate registrations through employee email.
The Summit will feature Yong Su Kim, VP Americas at a little place called Google. Maybe you’ve heard of them? They’ve also locked in Collin Colburn, a researcher at Forrester; Mitch Gray, the head of programmatic display advertising at Microsoft and Anthony Maroon, a product strategy lead at Google. This kind of line up means the company is going full throttle on marketing efforts to drive registrations through the roof.
Invoca fully implemented in September, and has since racked up more than 85k Campaign views with 85 employees on-boarded. They’ve seen a .25 percent click-through rate and they’re killing it with registrations.
Their team created their first campaign on theme with their Summit design while they worked with the Sigstr customer success crew to nail down a sweet (and consistent) signature.
What we love [Campaign]:
The Invoca team hit up our email signature best practices and our Sigstr customer success team then led the way with a stand-out design. The design team used a bold graphic while keeping the wording tight. It’s aesthetically eye-catching and easy to read, which bodes well for the engagement rates.
By using three core colors in the design, they created variation and visual interest, while preventing a design that got too busy. The Campaign used on-brand colors for the Summit and show a peak at Santa Barbara coast, which is fully revealed on their website. By using a gray-scaled graphic, the design color can be associated with neutrality and practicality.
Bonus, the awesome designers at Invoca were able to include the logo in the Campaign.
The group amped up the value-add by sharing information about their upcoming Summit while making it crazy easy to register. The “Register Now” call-to-action is front and center (literally) of the design and leads directly to the Summit site.
The signature and Campaign have become an extension of the Invoca brand, and they’ve used it rather effectively in conjunction with their full marketing strategy for the conference.
What we love [Signature]:
We spent a good chunk of time with the team at Invoca on the signature design. It was important to create an on-brand experience, but sans the logo as it was already in the campaign.
And, we wanted to make sure the team stayed consistent across the board(room).
Invoca kept the text in their sigs short and sweet, including relevant information and nixing the fluff. (For instance, cutting out an email address). They built it with fields that their recipients actually wanted to have access to.
They used one color, and applied different weights to the font, making it easy for recipients to scan and understand.
The signature style stayed on par with their branding. Invoca is a SaaS company with a lot of personality and insane talent. To pay nod to their innovative minds, they skipped a corporate-centric design in favor of a soft, but edgy text.
What’s next:
Our customer success team is working to create their next Campaign, which will be debuted after registrations are closed. The sheer volume of emails this group sends (they’ve increased their Campaign views by about 2000 in the last three hours) has created a unique opportunity to leverage employee email as an owned marketing channel.
Sigstr Shout-Out is a series that features the insanely talented and creatively driven Sigstr customer campaigns so you can see email signature best practices in action – and who’s nailing them.
How you close an email leaves a lasting brand impression. What if you could create brand consistency, share content or give your officemates the heads up about Hawaiian shirt day next week with just one click?
Sigstr unlocks employee email as an owned marketing channel. And we love to create resources our clients will actually find value in. Which is exactly why we decided to make another video! This time we’re giving you the how-to on creating powerful email signatures in 45-seconds.
Check it out below (and keep scrolling to get a look at the behind-the-scenes and video brief)!
Behind the video:
The roster of design talent involved the makers of our Sigstr in :60 promotional video, plus a few new creative masterminds. The work on this project echoed the techniques used for the former. It’s a gritty kind of animation that pans over a landscape of rising and falling illustrations. I worked really tight in the first round with Sigstr in :60, so it was important to add in new faces for this production.
Our team has been working to create a strong visual identity for our brand, separated from the usual tech-talk companies. This new style has provided a new life and, ultimately, a different language to the visualization of Sigstr.
Everything we created was based on a set of illustrations that transcended the simplicity of creating powerful email signatures. But to say the visualization was simple to create – well, that’d just be a bold-faced lie. It was fun, but it was hard. How do we get these themes across? How do we show people how easy it is to leverage and turn it into real dollars that add to your bottom line?
It was an insanely personal process, but we had fun with it. I’d create a rough storyboard, and we’d work together to edit it, then I’d go back to my drawing board and after about a dozen Sharpies (yes the pens, I’m obsessed), I’d have another draft.
We learned no idea is precious, every idea is a good idea, but some can be great when it comes from someone with a fresh perspective.
Video brief:
After creating Sigstr in :60 to describe the point to Sigstr and why it’s a marketer’s bff, we wanted to make something to show you how to use it. The idea was to find a way to show the build-add-launch-optimize process. Then, show you how to tell your story to your most important contacts with powerful email signatures.
Tone:
We stuck with a modern, friendly, professional and clean tone. Clean and crisp – like Baked Lays minus the salt residue.
Background:
One of the biggest differentiators about Sigstr is our services. We hold your hand through the entire process to create the most powerful email signatures based on analytics that’ll translate into real ROI. We build confidence into your Sigstr admin to take ownership, and we help to navigate the map of this owned marketing medium.
And, as a high-growth mar-tech company, we shift fast. And we’re able to extend use and functionality to align with customer wants and needs. So in the last several months, based on customer feedback, we created a way to bundle campaigns and on-brand signatures, a change we wanted to talk about in our newest video.
Opportunities:
The challenge at hand was to figure out how to honor the original social media while telling a bigger story on how Sigstr helps. We don’t always talk about email as a social channel like Facebook or Twitter, but in reality, it’s the original. (Don’t pretend like you don’t remember getting your first AOL CD in the mail and spamming your friends with kick-ass content).
We also wanted to pay nod to the analog world because email is, in its truest form, simply human connection. We needed to find a way to create a visualization for the connection. That’s where our tiles came in.
Throughout design school, I’d always been fascinated with the tiled approach for illustration. I really wanted to find a way to fit it into our new brand standards, which launched with the video. The illustrated tiles fit perfectly with the idea of saving time and energy – the idea behind Sigstr.
To bring that look to life, we created a sequence built around animated illustrations showing the functions of Sigstr. We show marketing teams how to take ownership of their brand and use email as an owned marketing channel.
Empathy is one of those words that’s quickly earned a slot on your sales office’s Buzzword Bingo card. It’s sales psychology that is overused and too often abused in the wrong way. But empathy is at the heart of trust – and people buy from people they trust.
The more trust you can create, the more a prospect will share their pain points, hopes and needs with you. When you know their needs, you can make a realistic judgement call to decide if your product or service is, in fact, a good fit. When you’re honest enough to turn down a potential sale, you’re actually building a customer for life – they’ll still refer you, they’ll want to want your product or service.
The first step to building trust is to be perceived as on the customer’s side, to show you understand them on an emotional level and that you’re working proactively to solve their problems. People care about what your product or service can do for them.
Frame your conversation – and the bigger story – in a way that offers real value to the customer. Create empathy and create a better customer experience. Here are six sales psychology tips to show empathy:
1. Slow your roll
When you head into a conversation, of course you’re going to want to have your talk track ready, but slow it down. Allow the exchange to develop organically. Listen to what your prospect says. And, pay attention to what they’re not saying. If you sense some hesitation or they offer you a cue into their pain points, pause the conversation and probe a bit more. Be respectful of their time, but ask questions and get them talking.
Do a little research ahead of the conversation so you can ask the right questions about their company and their role. Slowing down gives you a chance to hear their real struggles and positions you to offer up a real solution to a problem they’ve encountered. Letting a prospect know you care about them, and you understand them, can help to build rapport and show empathy. It develops a sense of trust in you, and innately in your product.
2. Say “I hear you” (and actually hearing them)
Buying is emotional, right? So listen to their emotions and get a grasp on their feelings. What is your prospect struggling with today? What are they afraid of/ What are their frustrations?
Saying “I hear you,” validates their emotions. Hearing their words alone isn’t adequate, though, in sales psychology. Work to understand their position and their perspective. Figure out what their struggles are and how you can help. Asking how you can help can give you a clear picture of the prospects specific pains and lead them down a path of strategizing a fix. This allows you to move the conversation forward as you develop a solution to their problems.
3. Say “I’m sorry to hear that”
You don’t need to be in the wrong to say you’re sorry. Empathize with your prospect’s pain and allow them an opportunity to vent if they need to. But be careful in your tone. Avoid coming across as sympathetic, which could create distance between you and your prospect. A sympathetic tone transfers blame of their situation (or at least the feelings toward their situation) onto your shoulders. With empathy you show an actually understanding of their feelings at an emotional level. And, it’ll strengthen your bond, creating a deeper sense of authentic trust in your relationship.
Pair saying “I’m sorry to hear that,” with active reflecting for maximum impact. Once you’ve listened and understood their pain points, now you can connect with them. It shows your prospects you understand and know them – and it creates a deeper connection. And, the beauty of reflecting is you don’t have to be right. Checking and correcting your understanding is empathy, and it helps you to get to know the person better.
4. Say nothing (listening is fun too, guys)
In my early 20s, I assumed the world was more interested in me than I was in it, so I spent most of my time talking, usually in a particularly uninformed way. I’d spout my insights on whoever would listen, rushing to be clever, thinking about what I was going to say next to someone rather than listening to what they were saying.
The real fascination lies in the conversation you’re having with someone else. What can you learn from them? What are they frustrated with? Listening with empathy is the most effective way to process someone else’s perspective. You’re offering up a shoulder to lean on for the prospect, and it helps them develop a sense of trust with you, giving them the confidence to share more – giving you a better understanding of how best to serve and help the buyer.
5. Practice perspective-taking
Do more than just put yourself in your prospect’s shoes. Be in their socks, shirts, pants, hats, and gloves, and walk around in ‘em for a while. Create a deep understanding of your prospect with sales psychology – know their problems, their hopes and their dreams.
Think about what you would do in their position. Have you been in a similar situation? Imagine the implications if the prospect brought your product to their goals and situations. How would you feel? What’d be your reaction? Use your imagination, then sit in their shoes for as long as you need to help them.
6. Watch your signals
Be aware of your own emotions and how you’re responding. Assure your prospect listening has occurred and encourage continued communication. By giving appropriate replies through verbal acknowledgements, deep and clarifying questions and active reflecting. Be fully engaged with the sales psychology and the conversation at hand.
Do you want to make this sale? Of course! But thinking past the short-term could be beneficial for both sides. Your long-term goals are to help the client and build a lasting relationship.
In our always-on, agile, tech-obsessed society, we want what we want and we want it yesterday. We depend on fatter pipelines, fuller funnels and more prospects. And the only way to meet the rising demand is to work longer hours, without breaks, and stay connected at all times.
Every time we hear the chirp of our smartphone singing in a new email, we jump to respond. We check it in bed, at the dinner table, in the park with the kiddos, on family vacations. A 2012 study by the Center for Creative Leadership found 60 percent of smartphone-using professionals were connected to the office for an average of 72 hours a week.
We’ve become narcissistic drones, we’re told, lacking the will-power to look away from the soft glow of our iPhone 7s. We’re desperate to stay at the center of attention, and frantic to remain reachable at all times.
And it’s absolutely true many of us can probably chill with the social media frenzy. No one needs to know what you had for lunch, second lunch, dinner, snack or your 2 a.m. fridge-raid. But it’s becoming overtly clear the workplace demands propel a huge portion of the anxiety-induced phone-glancing.
When we slow down, we’re labeled a slacker. We’re led to believe we’re doomed to get less done. We slow down but the world races forward, leaving us in the dust.
But staying in the perpetual “on” position is completely contrary to everything we know about what makes it possible for humans to perform at their highest level.
The science of a slow down
The human body is hardwired to pulse – moving naturally through periods of higher and lower alertness. Nathaniel Kleitman, the sleep researcher who figured out the basic rest-activity cycle more than 50 years ago, said we move progressively through five stages of sleep each night, each lasting around 90-minutes. But did you know he also found our bodies operate by the same 90-minute rhythm during the day – and not just physically, but also mentally and emotionally?
Our bodies send us physiological signs when we need a break – like fidgetiness, hunger, drowsiness and loss of focus. But in general, we tend to hush them. Instead finding artificial ways to pump up our energy through caffeine, sugary snacks and even our body’s own stress hormones – adrenalin, noradrenalin and cortisol.
The cycle of success
The modern model for success is broken. The idea of hunkering down for hours in front of a computer screen, plugging away all day, answering emails immediately, even late into the night, and working until you drop isn’t helping you get more done. What are you giving up by working so continuously? Are you able to think as clearly and creatively? Do you produce the same quality of work in the tenth or twelfth hour of a work day as you do in the second or fourth?
Our bodies are designed to cycle. The patterns of organic labor are meant to shape our email productivity. Burned-out, neurotic employees who can’t unplug are neither productive nor creative. We need “off” time to produce a better “on” time. “On” is impossible without “off.”
Sprint and rest
The paradox isn’t in the sprint, but rather the rest. While it seems almost counterintuitive, the secret to sustainable greatness in email productivity is incorporating rests into your work day.
Work in sprints – highly focused for short periods of time, with breaks built in, instead of being partially focused for longer periods of time. Slow down. Think about what you’re doing, and how you’re doing it to produce a higher quality result.
We all know your inbox is the mortal enemy to email productivity, but use it to increase your productivity. Work in 90-minute sprints, punctuated by 10- to 15-minute rests in your inbox. But insist on predictable time off, as well – evenings and weekend periods where you’re out of bounds.
Set boundaries
Set firm boundaries to avoid allowing your email to become a sprinting rest. Email is incredibly addictive, and when you’re in it, it’s possible to get sucked into it for the rest of the day. Just as you should for your sprints, create a hard stop in your schedule for your rests.
Want more tips and trick to email productivity? Check out our newest ebook!
The success of your company is fundamentally entwined with the success of your customers. If your customer is a rock star using your product, they’ll keep using it and, in turn, you will succeed. At its core, that’s what we do as customer success managers. We make sure our customers are able to nail their next big event, boost lead-generation, improve conversions, get the promotion they’ve been pining after, go on the family vacation they’ve been saving for, pay for their kid’s ballet lessons. Customer success is exactly as it sounds, it’s creating success in partnership with our customers.
So as a customer success manager, what can I do to help drive home the message of achievement to my client list? I spend a large chunk of my day in my email chatting back and forth with my customers. I’m their point of content when putting out fires. When implementing our solution, sharing new marketing materials and updating them on new features and functionalities within our platform.
Because I’m already talking with them, I’m able to use my own product to connect deeper. Sigstr campaigns are another touch-point for customer success managers when you’re distributing pivotal content to an audience you’re already reaching on a daily basis.
While thedesign of a campaign is important, the content and effective CTA’s are what drive my customers’ interest to get them what I know they need to see. I’ve found, as a customer success manager, there are three themes to the core content my team has the most success with in a campaign: training, education and inspiration.
This trifecta of content empowers our customers to use our solution at a higher level and helps in creating an open line of constant communication.
Training
The better trained your customers are, the more efficient they become in their jobs. As customer success managers, we’re tasked with holding our customers accountable in understanding the application and implementation of our solution.
We teach our customers to fish so they can feed themselves for a lifetime.
By teaching a customer how to do something once, they’re able to repeat the action again and again. Our goal is to help influence our customers to become self-sufficient, and ultimately more efficient. Customers should still lean on us for guidance in tricky circumstances, but it’s our job to empower them. And to help them to feel more comfortable taking the reins.
By including effective CTA’s to tutorials, webinars, how-to content and instructional marketing material, customers are becoming more informed on how to use our application. This creates a feeling of partnership as we work hand-in-hand to meet and exceed their business expectations. And, it helps cut the amount of service requests we’re fielding, allowing us to help them with the trickier problems better and faster.
Educate
I use campaigns to highlight product, service and industry news. It’s my job to make sure they’re using the application to its fullest capabilities, and they’re fully in-the-know when new product release information is available. And, putting effective CTA’s into my email signature means they’re able to see it without the content getting lost.
Creating campaigns highlighting services allows customers to see offerings they’re not aware of yet, like design or implementation packages. And adding industry news or information can help customers to keep their business in perspective to the ever-changing industry standards. The better we educate customers on applications they’re using, the more value they’ll see in its use. The more value I can provide, the better they can do their job.
Inspire
Inspiring your audience should always be a theme as you are working to create your effective CTA’s. If you are not inspiring your customers in some fashion, what is the point? You’ll fail to reach them on an emotional level, and you’ll see less engagement.
Think about the problems you are solving for your customers, then align your content strategy to close their gaps. Show examples of other customers’ designs (as long as they’re not competitors!) that are performing exceptionally well, link them over to a particularly innovative blog post.
If you can encourage your audience to do more in partnership with your business, the better served they are. And, the more likely you will see conversion.
When McDonald’s lifted the once-ironclad 10:30 a.m. cut-off for tardy breakfast-goers late last year, customers hit the chain in droves, lured by the simple novelty of being able to chow down on an Egg McMuffin any time they want.
The idea is so simple! The chain is using an avenue they already own, but in a new way – and it’s working! In Q4 of 2015, the fast-food joint saw same store sales jump by 5.7 percent and pushed growth into territory the global company hadn’t seen in more than four years.
So what if we thought about employee email like McDonald’s thinks about breakfast?
You already send a ton of business emails every day. It’s a channel you own – you dictate the message and the recipient. But are you using the channel to its fullest potential? Here are five things your custom email signature can learn from the all-day breakfast menu.
1. Beat the crowd
McDonald’s snags most of their revenue during the lunch and dinner hours – hamburgers are just more expensive than hotcakes. Breakfast has, traditionally, been something of an afterthought for the entire fast food industry. But it’s taken on an enormous importance as of late. First-meal sales have jumped by almost 5 percent year-over-year for the fast food behemoth from 2007-2012, where the traditional marque meals, lunch and dinner, have remained flat according to The Motley Fool.
To sustain growth in the overly-crowded fast-casual restaurant sphere (where the money-spenders are looking to go), McDonald’s execs realized it was going to be near impossible to find new ways boost sales during the typical peak hours with the same marketing and advertising initiatives they’ve relied on in the past. Instead, the Golden Arches poured a huge effort into expanding the potential of a hit they already had grips on.
Now look at your custom email signature. Often an afterthought, it has this enormous potential to break through the overly-noisy marketing industry by opening a new, owned distribution channel. No longer can you just buy more advertising and expect to see more results.
So change up your game and play in a space you already control. In 2015, more than 205 billion emails were sent every day, according to The Radicati Group. And that number is expected to continue growing, reaching 246 billion emails by the end of 2019.
You’re in your email. Your customers are in their email – 122 business emails are sent and received every day. Rethink how you’re using the space and inject marketing messages when you create a custom email signature.
2. Be convenient
Mickey-Ds is insanely convenient when you’re on the go. The company grabs around 70 percent of their sales through the drive-thru. They make it crazy easy to get your hands on bacon, egg and cheese sandwiched between an English muffin, still steaming, at any time day or night.
And sure, you can make a similar Egg McMuffin at home with a little extra time and effort. But do you want to give some deliciousness to your whole family? Plan to be in the kitchen for a while. It’s going to take more time, more effort, and you know as well as I do your four-year-old is going to start whining about the cornmeal on your store bought muffins, refusing to eat it.
Now shift to the office. Deliver convenience to your contacts by adding a call-to-action in your custom email signature. Offering up content through your CTA lets you break through the noise to reach your custom audience.
Plus your CTA could be anything! Direct people to a new case study, send them to a registration page for your next big event. Deliver your content to your audience and make it easy and convenient.
3. Speak your customer’s language
McDonald’s has, in recent years, put a concentrated focus in bringing healthier options to the table. More than a year ago, they moved to use real butter over the preservative-laden margarine in their Egg McMuffins. They’re sourcing chicken raised without antibiotics and are in the process of transitioning to use only cage-free eggs. The chain is cutting the fat by using grass-fed beef and ditching artificial preservatives in the sausage, omelet-style and scrambled eggs. And, in several markets they’ve worked to expand their gourmet coffee options.
Why are they doing this now, in conjunction with their all-day breakfast plan? In a word: Millennials. The millennial generation has been wooed by fast-casual restaurants, like Panera Bread and Starbucks, who put a focus on where their food comes from and what it does to your body. And the craft coffee offering brews a top concern of customization for the largest generation since the Baby Boomers.
But up until now, Millennials have failed to become loyal patrons of McDonald’s. So to compete, the company is in the process of making a significant shift toward healthier and better food that will change the perception of the chain in the fast-casual market segment.
The chain is working to fit in where their customers already are. They’re talking their talk, walking their walk and feeding them how they want to be fed. And they’re doing it without being a distraction, instead offering it up all day, every day.
Feed your customers how they want to be fed. Hit their inbox, without driving fluff-mail. Use your custom email signature to drive engagement. Skip using distracted Franken-speak, and instead use clear CTAs in the signature space.
In your sign-off, don’t use repetitive language (like your email address, coming from an email from your email address). Stick to the basics of what you need to include – name, phone number and a link to your website. Graphics are great, too, but don’t overdo it. Attract new visitors, new leads and drive conversions by using a space that’s been under your nose since the beginning of time (or at least since 1995, when AOL hit the scene).
4. Be flexible
McDonald’s totally changed the breakfast game last year when they started serving breakfast items all day. But diners gave the initiative a lukewarm reception when they realized the extreme regulations to the menu. No location would serve both biscuit-based and English muffin-based breakfast sandwiches after 10:30 a.m. But now, after nearly a year of limitations, the national nightmare is over! The Golden Arches announced last month an expansion of their all-day breakfast menu as an answer to their customers’ requests.
They were flexible. They found an avenue that worked in breakfast. And they pushed it to work harder with all-day breakfast, now they’re working it smarter with an expanded menu.
Be flexible in your custom email signature. Find a way that works, and tweak it to work better, to work harder for you. Testing is the secret sauce for any digital marketing program. Compare the performance of several different campaigns over time to help you figure out which graphics, images and CTAs increase your conversion rates.
5. All-day strategy is only a piece of a bigger pie
The breakfast frenzy gave a badly-needed sales jolt to a lumbering fast-food giant that had long been struggling to boost a sagging sales trend. But all-day hotcakes and McMuffins aren’t the only approach the chain is using to jump sales. Less-talked-about initiatives, like the company’s McPick 2 program which offers diners two items from a select, limited menu, have effectively replaced the Dollar Menu. And the drive-thru, where the company makes up a huge majority of their sales, is working to be faster and more accurate, even going so far as to adjust the font size on the order screen to prevent cooks from misreading the order.
“We don’t want to be a single initiative turn-around plan,” said CEO Steve Easterbrook in an interview with Buzzfeed. “So we continued investment in food quality. The development of this value platform. And as we continue to reinvest in the fabric of our restaurants, we’re confident the in-store experience will continue to improve.”
Your own marketing plan is fluid. It’s ever-changing and multi-faceted. You’re using paid, earned and owned channels to get your brand in front of the customer, right? So use them more efficiently. Use your custom email signature to promote your latest blog, push a case study, a new product release, look for registrations for an event. Opening a new marketing channel doesn’t mean you’re neglecting your current marketing efforts, it allows you to expand them.
This post is from our partners at FormAssembly, a form creation and data collection tool that helps organizations of all types gather important information and streamline workflows. Interested in creating the forms we’ll discuss below? Sign up for a free trial of FormAssembly to see how it works.
At FormAssembly, we believe you can make forms for just about any purpose. But after you’ve created a form, you need people to fill it out. What’s the best way to get your form sent out to as many potential respondents as possible, you may ask? Email. Sixty-four percent of companies consider email marketing their top channel in terms of effectiveness; and VentureBeat data shows that email marketing yields an ROI as high as 222 percent.
Put customer satisfaction, donation and survey forms into your email signature and get it noticed. Here are some examples (with screenshots of a few of our templates) of forms that work well through modern email signatures.
Customer Service Ratings
If you miss the chance to snag your customer’s feedback on your website, give it another go through an email. Linking a campaign to a quick customer service form in your email signature can be just the reminder your customers need to deliver their feedback.
Something to think about, though, if your goal is to increase feedback response, realize your customers are probably short on time. I know I’m guilty of replying “No” when even one of my favorite apps asks me if I want leave feedback. Even the shortest of customer feedback surveys can seem like a chore. Combat this by highlighting how quick and easy the form is to fill out with copy like, “Fill out this 2-question survey!” or “Do you have 45 seconds? Let us know what you think of our customer service team!”
Surveys
Your audience is a huge source of valuable data. Conducting surveys can help you uncover insights about your customers and help you to create a stronger product or more targeted service. When conducting a survey, you should consider a variety of promotion tactics so that you take all opportunities to get it in front of your customers. Email and email signatures should definitely be included in these tactics.
Another piece of advice on making the most out of surveys? Keep them short.Concise surveys are less intimidating to your customers and they can force you to choose more focused, strategic questions that will ultimately deliver more useful data.
Special Offers
Gated content is a pretty popular tactic in inbound marketing. It’s content that users can access in exchange for their email addresses and other information. Using an employee email signature service like Sigstr, try including a link to your company’s latest content offering. That way, you can get it in front of more people and have the opportunity to capture more lead information.
You could also include a link to the content and the related form in an email that’s part of a lead nurturing campaign. HubSpot’s research shows lead nurturing emails had nearly three times (8 percent as opposed to 3 percent) the clickthrough rate of other marketing emails sent.
The form below is a simple contact form that could be modified for gated content. Ask for specific information and deliver a file download after it’s been submitted.
Donations
A well-crafted donation request email with a link to a donation form can be an effective fundraising tactic. Be sure to give potential donors a good reason to donate by using your email as a vehicle to explain your mission and giving examples of what kind of impact a potential donor’s contribution could have.
With any form, make it as simple as possible for your customers to take action and fill it out. Donation forms present a unique challenge, but there are several things you can do to improve the experience of payment forms and increase conversion:
Simplify the design for a better user experience.
Allow easy donation by offering more than one way to pay.
Organize and break up long forms into multiple pages.
Enable SSL to put visitors at ease.
Be clear, concise and direct in any copy.
Effective form creation is tough, that’s no secret. It involves just about equal parts psychology, copywriting and technical skills, plus an eye for design. Don’t let your hard work go to waste. Use email, and modern email signatures, as an owned channel to promote your forms and increase conversions.
We’re facing an industry shift, no longer is publishing alone good enough to drive more traffic to your site and leads into your funnel. But what comes next in the content marketing lifecycle?
Content marketing has been lingering in the awkward adolescent stage a little too long, it’s been unsure of how to mature into the next phase of its evolving life. Marketers have had ideas, both good and bad, on how to make it better, but has it worked? Maybe? Sometimes? Sorta?
It’s time content marketing grows up. Move out of its parents’ basement, stop spending their money on crazy experimental theories that may, or may not, have been a good idea at the time (go ahead, content marketing, try to explain how that last social campaign helped your branding and ROI). It’s time content marketing ends the pattern of immaturity, loses the short-sided and (sometimes) lazy attitude in its “strategy.” Content marketing needs to stop talking so much about itself and think about what the customers need, and what they want to hear.
It’s time content marketing stops publishing for the sake of publishing – stop valuing quantity over quality.
Sure, quantity is important – companies who publish 16 or more blog posts each month see around 4.5x more leads than those that publish between 0-4 monthly posts, according to a study from Hubspot. But as we mature in the field of content marketing, more just isn’t enough.
Why More Won’t Win the Battle Alone
Content marketing is the only marketing that matters. Your department is investing more time and money into content than ever before – you’ve found robots with algorithms to write your posts, tools to optimize them and technology with viral mics to amplify them. The more you publish, the more traffic you’ll see, right? The theory has held so far, though you can’t really explain why.
But something’s wrong! Chugging out post after mediocre post isn’t delivering the same high traffic results anymore. More is no longer enough.
From its highest to lowest points last year, the output of content per brand increased by more than 35 percent per channel. Nearly every brand in existence has bought into content marketing. Around 78 percent of the world’s CMOs recognized the tactic as the way of the future. But while output spiked in 2015, consumer engagement took a sharp downturn, dropping by 17 percent according to TrackMaven, a marketing analytics software.
Content absorption is a finite resource. There’s a limit to how much can be consumed, liked, shared, pinned, retweeted, posted, etc., and brands are in competition against each other for their share of the eyes (and buys). The fight to be heard in the increasingly cluttered landscape is merciless.
No longer can you solve your marketing woes through buying more advertising space – the space is just too crowded. A mature b2b content marketing strategy uses preparation, planning and promotion. It’s authentic and simple, though not simplistic. It listens to customer needs and solves their challenges as they face them. It predicts their questions, and proactively seeks to share the knowledge without the direct aim of benefitting the company over the consumer. If content solves consumer problems, they’ll talk about it, telling others about your product or service and bringing more traffic (read: more leads) to you.
Mature Content Isn’t Short-Sided (or shorthanded)
Creating ridiculously good content isn’t enough alone, either. If you put all of your energy into producing the highest quality content, but only publish it once in a blue moon, no one will find it. You can’t bank on content that succeeds only in a bubble. Google looks for, and actively rewards, sites with relevant, useful and consistent content.
Mid- to large-sized companies that publish 11+ blogs a month see almost twice as much traffic to their sites in comparison to their counterparts publishing one or fewer pieces of content each month, the Hubspot researchers found. And, posting new content daily leads to a 5x jump in site traffic over posting just once a week.
Compiling a rich catalogue of content helps your SEO rankings because there’s more for a search engine to look through and it gives your visitors more to click through. B2B companies that have an index of more than 401 posts generate almost three times more leads as a b2b content marketing strategy that has under 200 total posts.
Moral of the story: Blog early, blog often – as long as you can do it well.
Doing Content Better
High quality content is a must to build a strong, trustworthy rap online. And, keeping a hefty stash of posts uploaded to your site keeps visitors happy and coming back for more.
As a b2b content marketing strategy matures, it should focus on becoming more strategic – more real. It needs to look at planning, processes, strategy, frameworks, creativity, relatability, usefulness and metrics.
Posts that dig into a single topic significantly outperform their vague counterparts, according to an SEO analysis report from Backlinko. The study suggests pushing out focused content, to a focused audience, helps SEO rankings and boosts traffic.
A b2b content marketing strategy is more than blogs, though. Visual content boosts site viewership by about 94 percent. Videos on a landing page bumps conversions by around of 86 percent. And infographics are liked and shared on social media up to 4x more often than other content.
The grown-up b2b content marketing strategy is holistic. It’s strategic, with laser focus on relevancy and consistency. No longer can it choose either quantity or quality. It must see both as the tactic to succeed. Content marketing is maturing – are you ready?
In today’s digitally-obsessed world, content is king. Google’s search algorithms look for and actively reward frequency and relevance of content, it helps brands develop awareness and authority in a saturated marketplace and it provides fuel to your social media fire. But as we jump into the informational age of marketing, are we making the most of our content?
In a marketing scene as ephemeral as Snapchat, one where 140 characters equals fully-formed thought processes, the idea of repurposing content in its entirety is tired and ineffective. Atomizing your content – or breaking it down into smaller pieces (you know, like atoms) – makes your amazing piece more searchable, more findable and allows the content to be consumed more.
Ann Handley, who co-penned the book Content Rules with C.C. Chapman, said it best, explaining the concept of taking one big idea and creating multiple executions from it increases efficiency, exposure and meets today’s consumer needs.
“We recommend that businesses reimagine their content, but that they don’t recycle it,” said Handley. “It’s not about taking a blog post and just putting it on Pinterest and on Facebook and on LinkedIn. You’re just filling links that way. It’s important to reimagine it completely. Take something and create something new out of it.”
It’s time to work smarter, not harder.
One of the hardest pieces of today’s content-focused marketing industry, though, is the practice of actually developing really good content. According toAltimeter, 70 percent of B2B marketers struggle with creating valuable content. It’s hard! It takes time, money, effort, attention span and, usually, at least some form of collaboration with your peers. This is where repurposing content comes in.
Take your brilliant ideas and use them with a cohesive strategy. I’m not suggesting more ideas or even a ton of additional work. Rather, take your already awesome idea and turn it into several smaller ideas. Stop creating the “mother of all” whatever it is and instead take on the larger number of less massive content executions.
Content atomization can’t be an option anymore.
Repurposing content has to be part of your strategy for success. Atomization isn’t a new concept; marketers have been using it for generations. Charles Dickens, for example, was one hell of a content marketer. He published every one of his novels in serial form, shifting between weekly and monthly episodic fiction. Breaking his content down into bits made his work more accessible to the masses.
Fast-forward to today, we have infinitely more avenues to create accessible content. Through blogs, social media, email signatures (we know a thing or two about those!), websites, ebooks, podcasts, video, audio, visuals; our users are no more than the push of a button away. But somewhere between Dickens and Kardashian, the marketing industry shifted to a “bigger is better” mindset. Consumers are looking to see the pendulum swing the other way again, creating a need for repurposing content. By breaking down stellar content into bits we’re able to cover more ground, reach more people, create hyper-relevant content, and amplify our reach.
Think small to reach big.
Mammoth companies like Disney are feeding the atomization machine, capitalizing on identifying where their consumers are in marketing process and delivering content to their fingertips. Take the record-shattering success of the latest Star Wars film, for instance. Obviously, the fan in me was engrossed by the movie, but as I stood in line opening night, some of my marketer-mind started leaking out. I was intrigued, I know Star Wars is revolutionary, but this crowd was insane! How’d they do it? How did Disney create such an intense and relevant hype about this release?
From the day Disney signed the deal to acquire Lucasfilm in 2012, they began releasing limited bits of information about Star Wars: The Force Awakens. The first teaser (88-seconds of mind-blowing brilliance) was released more than a year ahead of the 2015 opening. A second teasers was out nine months prior and the official trailer debuted about two months before the film’s release. From October until opening week in December, it seemed like new content was surfacing every few days. And, the marketing team at Disney hardly limited their efforts to visual engagement. New information was released in bits (read: atoms) on their website and on social media. With each new release on every platform anticipation grew and left you wanting more.
Classic atomization.
Right, but how?
So I’ve sold you on why you should do it, but now you need to know how. Let me paint you a picture: You’ve spent hours and hours researching data, and you’ve created a detailed whitepaper that addresses the behemoth of topics for your clients. It has several sections of information in it and is backed by a hefty amount of data, it has quotes from your customers, measured ROI analysis, a lifelike pictorial of Ryan Reynolds doing his daily 5 miles, you get the picture. You publish it on your website, but then what?
Repurposing content is the name of the game. Each section offers opportunity to be the subject of a blog post. With some creativity and a touch of graphic design you can maneuver it into several infographics. Social posts are a given, too.
Another space to break it down and spread your knowledge is in your email signature. On average you send around 10,000 emails a year to your most important contacts. Including a call-to-action for your new ebook adds a new marketing channel. Sigstr, an email signature generator, helps you cut through the noise and share your most important initiatives automatically through your signature block.
Need more ideas to use your email signature block design for marketing? We know a thing or two on the subject. Check out this handy resource:
Last week, our Sigstr CEO, Dan Hanrahan chatted with Joel Book and Heike Young on the Salesforce Marketing Cloudcast – a marketing podcast that dials into the minds of today’s thought leaders, practitioners, authors and innovators on the trends, technologies and topics of tomorrow.
Covering ground from employee email to leadership idols, Book and Young scaled the gamut of marketing topics with Dan to uncover how – and why – employee email signatures are your brand’s secret weapon.
Listen in to the full 30-minute episode, and check out a list of our most notable takeaways from this marketing podcast.
Key Takeaways
1. Finding a new, untapped marketing channel that’s not paid, not earned, but already owned is insanely rare. And, Book said, while some of today’s savviest marketers have already thought about the concept – to use employee email (think Gmail or Outlook) to promote event registrations, new products and the like, industry standards have been inefficient at best.
But Sigstr swings the pendulum the other way, Dan said. The channel provides centralized control of your branding and injects customized calls-to-action through your employee email. And it does it all without depending on anyone else in the company.
2. Employee email signatures should be part of your owned media presence. You own this medium, Young said. Just like your website, your blog and social channels, you have control over the employee email space. You have the power over who your emails will reach – and all marketing starts with reach, Dan said.
We already know we spend a ton of time in our email. The average employee sends around 10,000 emails each year, if you break that off and have, say, 100 employees, that’s a million emails a year! That reach is huge. And, your audience is hand-selected by the people who matter most to your brand. Your employees. Other channels, paid, earned and even other owned channels take time to build a list to scale and to get the results you want and need for success. But you’re already using employee email every day. You already have a full inbox and bulky output.
3. Employees are brands’ new marketers. They’re the marketers who create the story, the people who make the most relevant content possible, said Dan. And, your employees are the most consistent and frequent touch point with your customers. They influence current customers and prospects alike, representing your company with each and every connection.
Employees are your brand. Sigstr gives them a way to align sales and marketing without interrupting daily operations (meaning they’re more efficient) and they’re on brand every time.
4. New marketing is content driven. But according to SiriusDecisions, around 65 percent of all content goes unseen. You’re pouring your blood, sweat and tears into this content, Dan said. But how in the world do you get people to notice it?
Sure you can post it on your blog, but will people find it?
You can pay to promote it on social media. Or send another email, but your audience is already bombarded with content from so many different areas. Or, you can use the little slice of digital real estate at the end of every email you already send. I might be bias, but it’s really a no brainer here, guys.
5. More and more marketers embracing the idea content is the way of the future. And they’re using Sigstr as a new channel for distribution, Young said. But how do we measure it? And how can we track conversions and ROI?
Conversions, of course, can mean a ton of different things, Dan said. But in terms of dollars and cents, he pointed to a use case from A&A Logistics. With 90 employees signed on to Sigstr, they closed a $10,000 deal with a new customer in the first month. That was a 20x ROI on their spend on Sigstr for the year.
Sigstr is for marketers, from marketers. We’ve gone through the regiment of sending the 6-step copy and paste signature updates. We want you to be able to use our channel, prove ROI and get expand your brand, expand your impact, solve a problem, get a promotion or sell a product.
Want more from this marketing podcast? Check out the Salesforce Blog!
Some days, it’s you against the world. Errr, well, maybe your team against the world in the case of marketers. Marketing teams are scrappy. But we have to be able to squeeze every last morsel out of campaigns for maximum value. Getting the most bang for your buck is the holy grail for marketers, who are consistently known for spending the majority of a company’s expenditure budget.
With this reputation on the line, we need to be absolutely sure our selected digital marketing channels will bring in the maximum impressions, clicks and conversions without breaking the bank. Many times marketers will turn to under-the-radar campaigns like social media promotions or risky high-dollar programs with third parties. What some marketers tend to forget, however, is your employees are emailing thousands of important contact each and every day – thousands of valuable individuals who are right there in the palm of your hand.
Using employee email as an owned channel is cheaper, and more effective, than traditional paid digital marketing channels that may have half the outcomes at twice the cost. In this post, we’ve outlined some comparison rates to help illustrate how employee email stacks up against the rest of your digital marketing toolbox.
Employee Email Vs. Pay-Per-Click
One of the biggest misconceptions about pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns is high visibility doesn’t always mean high conversions. In order for a PPC campaign to work effectively, it must target a clear set of keywords that people are actually searching. Then there is the additional hassle of optimizing your ad or landing page and making it compelling enough for your searchers to click. On top of this, every click costs money so it won’t take long for non-converting searchers to get pretty expensive.
Compare this to employee email, which is an owned channel with minimum risk. Your audience is hand-picked to be high-converting and your messaging is already compelling. Looking at PPC from a purely cost-per-lead perspective, email is an exponentially better bet when comparing the number of emails sent per employee per day to the number of non-converting searchers per day.
Employee Email Vs. Display Ads
The sad truth is most people actually ignore display ads. Can you remember the last time you clicked on one? The average display ad click-through rate is a meager 0.06 percent. Hootsuite even said you’re more likely to complete Navy SEAL training than click on a banner ad. Not to mention your team fails to retain 100 percent in control of where your ads appear, leaving room for error and missteps.
Employee email signatures, on the other hand, have a click-through rate of around .5 percent. Plus, most have a very hard time ignoring all emails that come through their inbox, especially ones from those they interact with regularly. Employee email is seen as a low-spam risk channel compared to banner ads which today are often blocked thanks to plugins and widgets. That’s a whole lotta money to spend on a campaign that might not even be seen.
Only 37 percent of marketers can measure the results of their social digital marketing channels
35 percent say they are really not sure if they are measuring ROI properly
28 percent of marketers say they don’t know how to measure social media marketing ROI at all
For a marketing channel that is so widely used, there is little in the way of metrics that can sustain this as a scalable distribution effort. Without the ability to track leads back to certain social campaigns, marketing teams can expect to see their social advertising budgets dwindle.
Employee email, on the other hand, can be easily tracked and monitored. Open rates and delivery rates can be gathered with little manual effort to determine the effectiveness of campaigns. Leveraging an employee email signature solution, such as Sigstr, means built-in analytics that calculate click-through-rates, content conversion rates, and overall campaign effectiveness.
Employee Email Vs. Retargeting Campaigns
Retargeting is when your website visitors are ‘cookied’ and then served product advertisements as they search the internet or browse their favorite sites. This marketing channel often makes prospects leery and can make it seem like you are ‘following’ their every move on the internet. Highly-segmented retargeting campaigns are often exorbitantly expensive and can come off as abrasive, which can lead to fewer clicks and even fewer conversions.
Employee email, on the other hand, posts a friendly vibe that counteracts any scary stalker awkwardness. Plus, if someone is opening an email, they are already predispositioned to click on the links or image provided in the signature area. Your audience is already segmented based on your employee email patterns, which means your message is right 100 percent of the time.
Ready for a new addition to your mix of digital marketing channels? Request a demo of Sigstr today to see how employee email can help you make the most of the channel already used most often.
Think about all the emails you receive every day. How often do you notice something that is so irritating that you can’t even read on? What started out as a promising email exchange quickly spoiled, and the convo hit your Trash. It’s bad email etiquette we experience daily, but have you ever thought that maybe, just maybe, you could be guilty of these email faux pas as well?
1. Blast the “eblast”
Gone are the days of a one-size-fits-all approach to email. Crafting just one message and blasting it off to your entire list every week, hoping it resonates with the multiple personalities you service just doesn’t work. There are few things more annoying than receiving a batch email only to realize any prior communication with the company meant nothing – you’re just a number on a spreadsheet.
The MarketingProfs post, “Six Email Habits That Are Alienating Your Customers,” puts eblasts and the concept of “Batch-and-Blast” right at the top of the list of email etiquette practices that grate on our nerves. Here’s why they hate it:
“…think about the impression you’re making with customers who also have relationships with merchants that more fully understand their needs and desires. Customers who sense you don’t care will delete, ignore, or unsubscribe, so focus on sending the right email at the right time for the right reason.”
2. Short-sided segmentation
Today’s technology allows us to get a closer look at our audience, which is so handy in the micro-fragmenting world in which we live. Contacts have been trained to expect to be grouped into simple segments (think your standard demographic charts). If you’re not segmenting by age, gender, location and the like, it’s really no wonder your open rates could…err…use improvement.
But that’s just the tip of the segmentation iceberg. Group your audience by buying behaviors, use dynamic content, allow subscribers to let you know which topics pique their interest. Know your buyer personas, identify your ideal consumers as they stand as individual personas. Then break down your groups to drive a more relevant message. Relevance ramps up revenue.
3. Rambling about nothing
It’s tough to take anyone seriously when they’re rambling on and on about “client user group A” or their “customer advocacy programs,” when there’s really no point to what they’re saying. The best way to get, and keep, a customer’s attention is to get right down to business. And get there fast. Brevity and clarity matter now more than ever.
Take as long as you need to get to the point in your messaging, but take no longer. Ann Handley, the human-powered content engine who literally wrote the book on writing, said brevity isn’t stripping your content down to its skivvies, but rather taking the time to tell the story without the fluff.
“The notion of brevity has more to do with cutting fat, bloat and things that indulge the writer and don’t respect the reader’s time,” she said. “Keep it tight.”
We’re living in an era of low trust in society as a whole. Just 18 percent of consumers say they trust business leaders today. At its core, business is human. No business actually sells to another business; we sell to a person who happens to work at another business. Consumers want to do business with those they can relate to. They want to buy from people who have been in their shoes and have found the hidden key to success. They want to work with, and spend money on, companies that are honest, authentic and dependable.
5. No clear CTA
Make sure you have clear calls-to-action that are easy to see and simple to understand. Your customers shouldn’t be left wondering what you want them to do or how they should do it. Basic email etiquette says every note should include a CTA, whether it’s a simple reply back, a resource download or a link to watch your newest video. Clear CTAs can also lead to higher click-through rates and customer engagement.
6. Failure to fine-tune
Most email marketers spend about 80 percent of their days in the office creating campaigns, so it’s easy see why monitoring and measuring often fall by the wayside. Consider this stat from MarketingProfs: Only 29 percent of marketers look at ROI metrics to evaluate email effectiveness, according to the DMA (UK), and one in five have limited to no skills in email testing. But without measuring and monitoring, you’ll never truly understand what’s the best email etiquette. Easy fixes include testing dynamic variables within your emails (subject lines, sign-offs, etc.) and tracking your deliverability, open and click-through rates. Just making these small changes can help your team make strategic decisions that show customers you truly understand what they want.
7. Crazy email add-ons
Picture this: After an email sign-off, but before the signature, you see a two-paragraph text block detailing the company background, mission and vision. Where do you focus? No where – and the email hits the trash bin faster than Usain Bolt hit the pavement in Rio.
Don’t be that guy.
Cut back on the frivolous definitions and unneeded text for maximum value. Add in a couple hyperlinks that take customers to your social pages or website to highlight your vision and mission.
8. Simple slipups
Just thinking about all the times I’ve had to send the dreaded, “Oops, attachment actually included,” email makes me cringe. Little mistakes like this can add up over time and annoy your customers.
Pay attention to your subject line: 63 percent of people will delete or ignore an email after reading the subject line, according to the DMA.
Pick a friendly “From” or sender name so that your subscriber doesn’t dismiss your email as spam. And please be sure to set aside time to catch typos – the fastest way for an email to be disregarded is a misspelling.
9. Irrelevant timing
You’ve honed your message, you’ve gotten into the mind of your buyer and you’re ready to hit send. But when you deliver your message is just as important as what you’re saying. So optimize it.
Triggered emails based on the information you already have on your buyer (Is it their birthday? Did they just buy something? Do they have something sitting in their cart?) makes your timing more relevant and increases engagement. Use a Welcome Program to find out the inner-workings of your clientele and their email etiquette.
The Epsilon Email Marketing Research Center said triggered emails have an open rate of 46-53 percent and click-through rates that range between 9 and 11 percent. People listen, if they hear the right message at the right time.
10. Lack of contact information
This one should be a no-brainer, but we threw it on here to remind everyone how important this often-overlooked email aspect is. Your email signature not only tells the recipient who the email is from, but it can also help re-establish your relationship with your customers and promote your brand and messaging to your clients. At Sigstr, we recommend including social media handles as well so people can follow the latest news and updates – this can feel like a special personal touch, especially to customers.
Looking for more ways to improve your email etiquette and add value to your customer conversations? Request your demo to see Sigstr in action and learn why employee email may be the answer you’re looking for.
Imagine being able to earn a Ph.D, but not able to pick up a pencil. Being a mother of four and not able to hear your children call your name.
Imagine serving your country in combat and now being unable to turn on a light. Assistance dogs from Canine Companions can do all of this, and so much more, for people with disabilities.
Stefan’s Story
Five months into his deployment in Afghanistan, US Army veteran Sgt. Stefan LeRoy stepped on an improvised explosive device while trying to carry a fellow soldier to a medevac helicopter. He lost his legs and his platoon member in an instant. Fast-forward to February 2016, when Stefan gained a four-legged battle buddy named Knoxville from Canine Companions for Independence.
Knox is trained to retrieve dropped items, turn lights on and off, open doors and even bring Stefan his prostheses. “I have Canine Companions Service Dog Knox to help me go further. He knows 40 commands to make life easier. In situations where I don’t feel comfortable with my disability, Knoxville makes me feel more comfortable.”
The 411 on Canine Companions
Canine Companions for Independence breeds and trains highly-skilled assistance dogs for adults, children and veterans with disabilities. Since their founding in 1975, Canine Companions has matched over 5,100 exceptional dogs like Knoxville with people with disabilities like Stefan, entirely free of charge. Each remarkable assistance dog costs approximately $50,000 to breed, raise, train and support, funded solely by private donations.
Sigstr is a part of transforming lives every day. With Campaign banners and Sigstr’s email signature editor, every email communication from Canine Companions for Independence connects the public to their stories.
The clickable banners not only raise funds to place assistance dogs like Knoxville, but also spread awareness around Canine Companions. Whether it’s a call-to-action to make every day Independence Day or to change a life four paws at a time, the Sigstr email signature editor is being used to make a difference. It’s helping give the gift of independence to a person with a disability.
Hollister Visits the Sigstr Office
The coolest part? We had the opportunity to hang out with one of their assistance dogs (Hollister) last Friday. We quickly learned that Hollister is a fun-loving dude that enjoys being around people. Needless to say, he was a big hit at the Sigstr office.
Thanks again to Canine Companions for letting us tell their story. If you’d like to learn more, or make a donation, be sure to visit their website.
You’re addicted to referrals – to the allure of trusting your clients to pass word along over creating a new business strategy, with new hires, new ideas, new practices, to generate leads.
I get it, leads that stem from referrals convert at a higher rate, and tend to have a higher lifetime value, than any other lead source for an agency. About 90 percent of ad professionals rely mainly on their referral pipeline to drive new business.
Plus, new business programs are hard. They’re hard to create, hard to maintain, hard to hire for, hard to keep up with, and frankly, most digital marketing agencies just aren’t very good at developing them. You’re already fully engulfed in the intricacies of marketing, creative, design, digital, social and content development. And new business is, well, new. It’s different. You just don’t get it. The “normal” rules simply don’t apply.
So, inevitably, referrals become the backbone to your new business generation, which isn’t all bad, but it’s certainly some risky business (cue an underwear-clad Tom Cruise sliding in to a little Bob Seger).
Referrals definitely have their place, but a singular focus is not a strategy. What happens when your lead-gen cycle starts to run dry? Leads aren’t quite up to snub for your agency, and you’re stuck dumping hours into their success while your profitability takes a hit? What other new business programs should be on your radar as your agency aims toward growth?
Referrals are great – until they’re not.
If you build it, they might come.
If you do good work, good leads (might) follow. Referrals deliver social proof. It means someone has used your services and are clearly happy. If they’re happy, they offer up a referral. The referral gives you a warm lead, an approachable lead.
It makes sense to logic, but can I let you in on a little secret? Prospects don’t give a damn about logic. We all know about hundreds of phenomenal digital marketing agencies with top-notch talent and happy clients that have gone under simply because their lead-gen pool ran dry.
Trusting your clients to pass along new business is just bad business. It puts an enormous amount of control over your company, your growth, into the hands of someone other than you. What happens when you hit an economic stumble? Or your network is left parched?
I’m sure he’s a nice guy, but…
We’ve all been there. Let’s set the scene: your friend is giddy with excitement, “I’ve found the perfect guy for you!” she squeals. He’s the typical tall, dark and handsome type, with a great job and an affinity for buying his mom flowers.
He sounds like a great guy, but after a few dates, the fit just isn’t right.
Now, imagine that in your referral program. A client sends you a prospect who comes from a fantastic company, but the relationship just isn’t a good fit. Maybe they don’t meet your minimum, or there’s a disconnect in expectations or even personalities. Absent of a polite way out – and always looking to up your ARR – a sense of obligation kicks in and you take the client.
“They’re a small account,” you rationalize, “it’s not going to be that bad.” And sure, the arrangement might work for a while. And you’ll bring in (a few) dollars that weren’t there before, so that’s something.
But now you’re stuck investing time and draining resources you could be using to invest in your best relationships. You’re squashing productivity because you’re forced to focus on “fixing” the fit to maintain a relationship with your new client and, usually more importantly, the reference. It’s a dangerous, and expensive, game you’re playing just to keep them happy.
Referrals aren’t a consistent or scalable source.
In an industry that makes its living on selling marketing services, why do so many digital marketing agencies miss the mark when they’re marketing themselves?
Referrals are insanely important. Referral clients have around a 25 percent higher lifetime value than non-referred clients, and are about 25 percent more profitable per year. And, they provide social proof, which warms up a prospect’s psychology into spending.
If you don’t have a process to drive referrals, go make one. NOW!
With that said, though, it’s dangerous to rely solely on referrals. They’re not a consistent or scalable source for new business generation. Referrals come from relationships, and unless you keep feeding your relationship pool with new contacts, the referrals will dry up. Sooner or later, you’ll run out of leads in your pipeline and it might be too late to change the tide.
So what’s New Business Development look like?
New business is more competitive than ever right now. More digital marketing agencies are fighting for the same volume of new business. Larger agencies are looking to smaller accounts just to keep growing. Their smaller counterparts are becoming more aggressive in the search for business outside of their typical domain.
As the economy slowly improves, the feeding frenzy will only continue. Consumers are spending more, driving an upturn in demand, and more demand means more opportunities to sell. Those who sell want to be heard. The sheer number of digital marketing agencies trying to get a piece of the action is just insane – somewhere around a half million across the globe.
And marketers are just loving it. They’re working to up agency competition and drive down costs. You’re left falling into the trap of under-charging and over-delivering just to stay in the game.
Now get this: 66 percent of agencies report they don’t have a business development plan. What?!
To get started, conduct a brand review to make sure your current brand, story and service offerings create market differentiation. Create your buyer personas to know exactly who you’re selling to and how they want to be sold. Remember, people hate to be sold, but love to buy.
Then create a compelling brand story, driven by your history, services, offerings and most importantly your personality. Be authentic and empathetic to your ideal client.
Need some ideas on brand-building and connecting with your clients? Check out our newest resource!
It’s time to face the facts: Marketing is expensive. It’s one of the largest expenditures a company will dish out. And, despite our collective industry obsession with metrics, marketers still struggle to prove ROI with their marketing budget plan. Almost two-thirds of today’s CMOs have trouble quantitatively proving the impact of their efforts. What’s more, nearly three out of four CEOs agree, saying marketers are constantly on the ask for more dollars, but rarely can explain how much incremental business the money will create.
On the flip-side, though, CEOs are looking to their marketing departments now more than ever to help fuel growth. Marketing spend reports are including engagement rates, audience type, click-through rates and view, but can they tell the CEO (and CFO) what kind of boost in lead-gen those dollars are creating?
Unfortunately, according to Harvard Business Review, around half of paid media impressions fail to reach the targeted audience. This means that half of those dollars from your marketing budget plan are essentially wasted.
A Better Way to Segment & Target Your Audience
Thankfully, there are marketing solutions designed specifically to address how you segment, target and speak to your fragmenting audiences. Sigstr’s email signature marketing solution ensures that your audience is always hand-picked.
Your employees are the most knowledgable group when it comes to your target customer, and they’re emailing these individuals each and every day.
By using the employee email signature, marketers have the ability to not only create specific campaigns to promote conferences, resource downloads, or demo registrations, but can also segment users into designated groups. By harnessing employee knowledge and your marketing savvy, your team can send the right message to the right audience 100 percent of the time.
If your Client Services team, for example, emails regularly with existing clients, they might want to promote content that has higher engagement rates with clients:
Your Business Development team, which targets prospective customers versus existing customers, can highlight upcoming webinars, conferences and other educational events that their audience – early stage or cold prospects – are more likely to interact with:
With detailed analytics available through Sigstr dashboards, your team can track what’s working. You’re able to see which content is being clicked on and read. You can use this newfound knowledge to replicate those campaigns that are performing well and scale back on those that may not be as effective.
Because Sigstr leverages the power of employee email signatures and enhances the communications your teams are already sending out to their most valuable contacts, it becomes the perfect tool to reach a targeted audience (and get more out of your marketing budget plan). You can learn more about Sigstr’s email signature marketing solution by checking out our latest resource below, or request a demo.
Finding new ways to distribute content can be one of the most daunting tasks of any marketing team. Not only does this mean some of your go-to campaigns are running stale (looking at you, drip campaigns) but it also means that you now need to tap into the creative minds of your teammates and come up with some new and exciting ways to spread your message.
But how do you actually know you need to find new content marketing tools? Luckily, your friends at Sigstr (that’s us!) want to help you skip a couple steps and get right to the brainstorming. We put together a list of five signs it’s time to find new ways to get your content noticed:
1. The numbers just aren’t adding up
You’ve signed a contract, your content is proofed and your campaign is ready to go. No matter what traditional marketing efforts you’re planning, if you spend money on a campaign and aren’t pulling in the corresponding number of leads, something is up. Instead of taking the easy way out (“Why don’t you give us a discount on this send and we can try again next month”) it may be time to reconsider your options.
The best place to start is research. What types of campaigns are you running? How much are you spending per campaign? Per lead? Start gathering information from all of your current content marketing tools so you can make informed decisions when it comes time to create budgets and marketing calendars.
2. Conversion rates are dropping
Let’s say you have a tried-and-true direct mail campaign. Your team can confidently send out a batch once a month and see measurable results every time. Then, out of nowhere, your conversions hit a wall. Nobody is responding, and your business development team is calling upon deaf ears. It’s finally happened – your brilliant idea is no longer ‘brilliant’. Creative ideas do, unfortunately, almost always eventually become stale and overused.
Think of how many marketing emails, mailers and calls you receive daily. Your prospects easily receive that many or more. Your message is just one of many in the pile on their desk or in their inbox and you need to be constantly competing with these unseen opponents.
3. Your lists are slowly dwindling
This is one of my most anxiety-driving nightmares! You work so hard to gather names and vet prospects, just to see them slip away over time into marketing purgatory. Obviously, the only way to combat this ‘list fatigue’ to to backfill with new names over time. But what if you hit a wall with those new names?
Sometimes, a new distribution avenue opens up an entirely new audience. Do you attend multiple tradeshows? Try sending follow up emails to people you didn’t meet with at the conference and highlight some of the things they might have missed at your booth. Finding new content marketing tools can help re-engage silent prospects and uncover new ones.
4. Your best-performing content just isn’t cutting it anymore
We all have our ‘best of the best’ content that is guaranteed to bring in the clicks. It can be a go-to whitepaper, a stat-heavy case study, or a credibility-boosting press release. Whatever it is, your team turns to it like an old friend when there is a lag in new leads. But what if it doesn’t work? Your secret weapon suddenly fails you, and your team has nowhere else to turn.
You can fiddle around with subject lines, HTML layouts and templates all you want, but sometimes the truth is in the packaging – your campaigns just aren’t cutting it. Your best content is the best for a reason, and people respond to it for a reason. Come up with new and exciting ways to get this content in front of your prospects and it will be back on top in no time.
5. The team is feeling the burn
This is a pretty common problem across marketing teams. Scrambling to figure out why your campaigns are lagging, or why your numbers aren’t where they should be is a huge indicator that it’s time to find new content marketing tools. Hopefully your marketing team is full of smart, qualified creatives – if they’re struggling to find answers that aren’t there it might be time to take a step back.
As marketers, sometimes our heads can get too bogged down in day-to-day execution. Re-evaluating processes and procedures from a distance can help expose underused areas or uncover new distribution channels. Maybe it’s time for a team offsite where you can take a step back and brainstorm new ideas.
Has your team ever thought of leveraging employee email as a new channel for content distribution? Request your demo to see Sigstr in action and learn why employee email may be the answer you’re looking for.
Terminus, an account based marketing platform, has created the ABM Cloud, a partner program for the top ABM tech providers that help you design, integrate and scale your existing marketing ecosystem. We are proud to announce Sigstr has joined the ranks of more than 30 elite solutions, extending a partnership with Terminus to open email signature marketing to ABM Cloud users.
For those of you wondering what this could mean for you, we’ve answered some FAQ’s below:
What Exactly is Account Based Marketing?
Account based marketing, or ABM, is a fancy term for a 1:1 personalized marketing strategy. Individual prospects and accounts are thought of as single “markets,” aiming for hyper-personalization in messaging and strategies, and individualized solutions and products. ABM campaigns are usually used by organizations looking to “land-and-expand” within large accounts.
At Terminus, strategic ABM efforts help marketing teams target the most-qualified prospective accounts, engage decision-makers and influencers across the organization, and accelerate the marketing and sales pipeline for continued growth.
Why is ABM Important to Marketers?
In your marketing role, you’re already well aware of the difficulties in nudging prospects across the finish line into customer territory. In reality, less than 1 percent of leads turn into customers. Marketing teams are constantly looking for new, exciting and cost-effective ways to convert leads into closed-won opportunities.
ABM opens the door for marketing teams to engage decision-makers and influencers on their own terms, moving the needle and accelerating their sales pipeline velocity at scale.
Tell Me About the Account Based Marketing Cloud
An invite-only partner program, the ABM Cloud gives marketers a toolbox of technologies that support account-based marketing strategies at scale. With 35 best-in-class ABM technology providers signed-on for integration into your favorite CRM, you can build the perfect tech stack to optimize your business processes.
The ABM Cloud is a game changer at every stage of the B2B marketing lifecycle, from demand generation to pipeline acceleration and onto later-stage support. Cloud users are also given the framework for a comprehensive ABM strategy framework to help plan and execute campaigns, each solution aligning into one of the five core components of ABM: identify, expand, engage, advocate and measure.
How Does Employee Email Fit Into the Mix?
As one of these integration partners, Sigstr adds email signature marketing to your ABM campaigns. Metrics and analytics are seamlessly integrated into your CRM for a holistic picture of your marketing operations.
Every email an employee sends (over 10,000 a year!) has the power to grow relationships, inspire action and leave a lasting brand impression. Sigstr’s email signature marketing ensures an on-brand close with every email sent – seamlessly adding a personalized touch that is so important in account-based marketing campaigns. Add in Sigstr’s interactive call-to-action banners, customized for specific campaigns and individual departments, and realize email signature marketing just might be the missing piece in your current ABM strategy.
What’s Next?
So glad you asked! You can request your free demo of Sigstr today to see how you can optimize the amazing potential of employee email in your ABM efforts. You can also sign up here to receive more information on the ABM Cloud as soon as it becomes available.
Want more information now? Check out our latest resource below:
Think of the most common thing you do during the work day.
If sending email isn’t the first thing you thought of, I bet it is at least in your top three. While the body of your emails should already be used to the fullest potential, oftentimes one difference-making section can be overlooked: the email signature.
It’s no secret the team members here at Sigstr are true believers in the ever-versatile office email signature. We love seeing our industry colleagues share our enthusiasm! When we saw Glenn Leibowitz’s Inc.com op-ed, How a Simple Tweak Can Turn Your Email Into a Powerful Marketing Weapon, we just couldn’t hush our excitement! Leibowitz gave a detailed look at email signature marketing, calling on our very own Sigstr founder and CEO Dan Hanrahan for advice on best practices.
Leibowitz, who is currently the head of communications at a global management consulting firm and recently named by LinkedIn as a “Top Voice in marketing and social media,” used the article to highlight six easy and creative ways to take the office email signature to the next level. We agree with these steps, so much that we outlined his recommendations below:
1. Include a CTA That Changes Frequently
Include CTAs in your email signatures so your team can gather more information on your audience and readers. You’ll also be able to track who is clicking on what links to turn your email audience into potential customers. Keep your CTAs updated and change them often enough so the content doesn’t get stale.
2. Use Graphics…But Not Too Many
As Leibowitz pointed out, graphics can bring an otherwise dull (read: text-only) email signature to life. But he agreed with Dan Hanrahan, your graphics shouldn’t overwhelm your message – keep them to a max height of 100 pixels. Plus, some email providers strip away all images automatically, so make sure you have backup text options in place, just in case.
3. Include Social Icons
Your social media channels are the voice of your organization and, therefore, are often the best place for potential customers to get to know who you are and what you do. Pick your top two or three platforms and highlight the icons in your signature for maximum impact – and maximum followers.
4. Minimize Variety of Colors & Fonts
Keep your color palette limited to your brand’s most recognizable colors, and only pick a few to highlight. Also stick to one or two fonts in your email signature to keep it looking clean and professional. Your email recipients should be able to understand your message and pick up on your CTA quickly without wading through a mess of colors and fonts.
5. Use Design Hierarchy to Catch Your Reader’s Eyes
What’s the most important part of your email signature? Is it your name? Your company logo? Your CTA? Use design hierarchy rules such as font size, color and line weight to draw your reader’s eyes and attention to what matters most in your signature.
6. Stick to the Basics
Leibowitz saved the best for last here. Don’t try to push out too much information – stick to your name, contact info, social icons and a clear CTA for maximum interactions and engagement.
Need Some Email Sigspiration?
Here are a few examples of great email signatures that our team loves, and we think you will too:
Ready to put your office email signature to work at your organization? Schedule your Sigstr demotoday to see how you can kick-start the “marketing secret weapon” that is employee email signatures.
As a top digital marketing agency, you’re tasked with positioning brands to create an intuitive and relevant customer experience. By watching trends and finding new ways to educate, entertain and inspire your clients’ consumers, you forecast the connected age of tomorrow. Sigstr helps to define your branding standards through employee email.
Employees are your agency’s greatest asset, representing your brand in every exchange they make. They’re sending thousands of emails each year, casting your identity on each of their contacts. In fact, on average, a single employee will send 10,000 emails annually. Offer them a vehicle to shift employee email to an owned marketing channel while you create another avenue to boost your brand identity as a top digital marketing agency and stay on the cusp of marketing technology.
Your Agency Can Use Employee Email to Promote:
Content (resources, ebook, case studies, articles)
Service offerings (current or new)
Consultation, audit or assessment
Rebrand
Newsletter
Events, podcasts or webinars
Career opportunities
How Sigstr Works:
Every employee email sent should close with a branded email signature driving real marketing ROI. Sigstr unlocks this owned channel by providing simple, central control over your company’s email signatures.
On-brand signatures: With a simple installation and centralized control, every email sent from your employees will have an on-brand and consistent signature.
Dynamic campaigns: Tailor your content delivery on a human-to-human level with a clickable call-to-action that highlights your latest content.
Examples From Other Agencies:
Direct Feedback:
Ready to Learn More?
Our team would love the opportunity to help your agency open up employee email as a new owned channel. Get started by scheduling a demo or access a few additional resources below:
A week ago, after traveling some 1600 miles (give or take a layover or two) from the terminals of the Indianapolis International Airport out to Boston, then back, I’d just finished a whirlwind day at #FlipMyFunnel – Boston, an account-based marketing conference put on by Terminus. The entire conference was dedicated to the new ideas surrounding ABM. Okay, I realize traditional sales methods have pointed toward ABM for most of recent history – and definitely all of my sales career, but the sales funnel, the idea of attracting those accounts, making the most of the customer’s journey, is upside-down.
The traditional B2B sales and marketing funnel is lead-based. It’s based on the idea leads come in at the top of the funnel then follow a straight path from awareness through purchase. It starts untargeted with the goal to grab as many leads as possible at the top, then drop them into an email cadence. It totally overlooks deeper engagement through the customer journey and ignores the psychology of customers.
#FlipMyFunnel
The #FlipMyFunnel conference, though, turned the funnel on its head. The idea is to find, first, the best-fit customers, then expand reach, engage prospects and then create advocates. It’s redesigning lead generation by introducing marketing technologies to engage contacts at scale.
Calls and emails can only go so far, Terminus CMO Sangram Vajre said in his recap of the movement. Instead of blasting a single, monotonous message to thousands of people, we can optimize content and campaigns for the right accounts.
Today’s new sales staff is socially active, digitally savvy and creates their own content to catch the attention of buyers. Marketing has the keys to these targeted accounts’ attention span, but all stakeholders have to be aligned to reach company goals.
Realigning your ABM strategy,Vajre said, has the power to surge your consumer engagement – just like Invoca’s Julia Stead did last year. A certified ABM Superhero, Stead targeted the right accounts and upped engagement by 200 percent.
Breaking out into sessions, I was caught up-to-date on the 2016 State of B2B Marketing, a discussion led by Vala Afshar, the chief digital evangelist at Salesforce.
Each touchpoint with your brand is a chance for a customer to strengthen their engagement with your logo, he said. But it’s time to flip the scenario. Every time a customer touches your brand, learn from them. Each contact, no matter through which medium, should drive holistic erudition from your customers’ needs. In turn, you’ll be able to create a strategy to more efficiently market, serve, build and sell to your marketplace.
This year, he added, more than 50,000,000 B2B emails are sent each day. But marketers struggle to gain insight through the channel. They just don’t have control of it, which means they’re wrestling to deliver an elite brand experience through it.
Of course, I couldn’t help thinking how much we help marketers take ownership of this until-now elusive channel. Sigstr is opening the door to employee email as an owned marketing channel – it’s giving companies control of an overlooked marketing opportunity. Want proof? Check out our new eBook.
Matt Senatore is boss.
I have serious respect for Matt Senatore. He’s the Service Director of Account Based Marketing at SiriusDecisions, a top research and advisory firm in the B2B space. His keynote hit on the alignment of marketing and sales in his clients’ strategies, and specifically EMC.
Brave enough to bring up his fandom of the New York Yankees on stage at a conference in downtown Boston, even going so far as to clearly note their win from the night prior, his contagious personality was still irresistible. Post-presentation, in a candid one-on-one I unabashedly explained my life goal: To be him. Next. I look at the knowledge he has, the leadership he’s earned and the authority he’s created. I want that.
You should have seen the look on his face! Shock served up with a side of awe, he admitted this was a first. But I’m a firm believer, nothing beats an honest, personal touch when you’re meeting new people.
I wasn’t alone on the trip, a few of my esteemed colleagues were on hand at the conference, too. Here’s what they had to say about the experience:
Michelle Baques, Sigstr
In the sales world, we’re constantly challenged with breaking through the noise and getting time with our most important prospects. In Tyler Lessard’s breakout, “How to Make Your Target Accounts Love the Fact You’re Targeting Them,” I learned new, creative ways to prospect. Lessard, who is the CMO at Vidyard said it’s time to get personal. Not just “personal,” but really personal. By using hyper-personalization and direct mail, you can create an experience your prospects will actually look forward to hearing from you.
While Vidyard is focused primarily on video, Lessard shared several other ways to get connected that make others in your prospect’s network want to be prospected by you, too. Everything from personalized videos that call out your name, totoasters that toast your face on bread.
Vidyard, you can prospect me anytime you want!
Bailey Roberts, Sigstr
The sales and marketing SaaS platform world is exclusive. Through our partnerships with Salesloft and Terminus, Sigstr has quickly been initiated into this illustrious group. #FlipMyFunnel marketed the official launch of the Terminus + Sigstr partnership after the announcement of Terminus’ ABM Cloud.
When we arrived at #FlipMyFunnel, we had a moment of appreciation for the company we keep. Looking around the sponsorship hall, we saw some familiar faces, and many new ones – each insanely successful in the ABM and mar-tech world. Our sponsorship table, where I was stationed, was set-up two booths away from Act-On, where we had a blast learning how to juggle with members of their team (using the kick-ass light up balls they handed out throughout the day).
Hanging out at our Sigstr booth, we saw more than just standard conference elbow-rubbing, but instead a sort of reunion. Our community has become a family. Even as a newcomer to this space, we were able to reconnect with awesome people we met in March at Salesloft’s Rainmaker event in Atlanta.
Despite the airline losing the luggage with all of our promo items, the day was a resounding success. We used the break between the conference and the FlipMyFunnel Birthday Party to celebrate our team, and dream about what’s next. We went to Lincoln, a local restaurant that has an old Civil War flag mounted on their back wall (next time you’re in Boston, be SURE to check this place out, it’s phenomenal!). We celebrated our first year anniversary with Sigstr. It was an incredible way to end the day and reflect. We ended the night dancing to some killer violin covers by Rhett Price.
For more on Sigstr and how it can help with your ABM efforts, check out our latest resource:
When you’re creating Sigstr Campaigns, it’s easy to get stuck in a rut. With so many marketing mediums at play, it’s difficult to be continuously innovative in emerging channels, like employee email. Oftentimes, design resources are allocated to long-time players like search, social and paid advertising. Meanwhile, channels like Sigstr and your email signature block receive far less attention.
Unfortunately, the aforementioned situation presents a missed opportunity. Your most important prospects, customers and partners receive emails from your employees. This audience of influencers are more likely to view your email signature (and the clickable call-to-action banner located underneath) than any other piece of marketing collateral. With this level of exposure, it’s imperative to make sure the signature designs you’re promoting make a lasting impression.
If you’re a Sigstr user, you may have the sudden urge to rethink your entire creative strategy. It’s totally normal (and easier than it sounds)! To get started, step one is to review Campaign best practices. Once you are familiar with the basics, you can move on to exploring more complicated design elements. Below, we’ve highlighted three design principles that turns Campaigns from mundane to extraordinary.
Think Beyond the Box
Who says Sigstr Campaigns have to mimic traditional marketing banners? Feel free to use subtractive space to make design elements pop or ditch the rectangular shape altogether. Four straight lines do not need to dictate your entire creative process.
Create Dimension with Layers
There is nothing more uninteresting than a Campaign made with just blocks of color and text. Create the illusion of depth by layering images, abstract shapes, color overlays and patterns. A multi-dimensional Campaign pulls the viewer in and encourages conversion.
Tell a Story with Illustrations
It’s true what they say – a picture is worth a thousand words. Campaign illustrations are an effective tool in creating brand identity. Instead of filling your Campaign space with lengthy text, use illustrations to catch your audience’s attention and make them feel connected to your brand.
Your employee email signature block is prime marketing real estate. Don’t waste the opportunity to promote your latest marketing initiatives by leveraging an unmemorable Campaign. Create content that stands out and entices viewers to take action.
For more email signature and Campaign banner inspiration, check out our latest resource below:
At Sigstr, we focus on unlocking employee email as a new owned marketing channel. Sigstr Campaign banners, placed within the employee email signature, allow you to put your content in front of your daily email contacts and bring attention to relevant resources, events or efforts.
Our primary focus is on our customers, and helping them create the best email signatures possible. This includes designing Campaign banners both internally and through our Services offerings. With that said, we thought we’d share a few insights after A/B testing some of our own Campaign designs.
Promoting a Case Study
First, we wanted to test two different variations of a Campaign banner, each promoting the exact same resource (for this we chose the Angie’s List case study). Although the 2nd Campaign was live for a longer period of time, we found that more color with a clear call-to-action (in a bold color) performed better overall.
CAMPAIGN BANNER #1
Views: 4,987 Clicks: 19 Click rate: 0.38%
CAMPAIGN BANNER #2
Views: 14,179 Clicks: 74 Click rate: 0.52%
CTA’s and Picking the Right Color
We recommend your Campaign design include a clear call-to-action with a bold or bright color. A part of the Sigstr brand color palette, peach and green are a few of our favorite colors to use for CTA’s. Here is how each color performed:
PEACH
Views: 29,175 Clicks: 295 Click rate: 1.01%
Views: 13,872 Clicks: 72 Click rate: 0.52%
GREEN
Views: 13,221 Clicks: 44 Click rate: 0.33%
Views: 6,809 Clicks: 31 Click rate: 0.45%
A Few More Best Practices
File Type: PNG files are recommended.
Size: We suggest an image size of 295-450 pixels wide x 60-100 pixels tall. Sigstr accepts images up to 600 pixels wide, but a mobile optimized version will be shrunk to 295 pixels.
Preview: In the Sigstr app, be sure to toggle between the mobile and desktop previews of your campaign. The previews are located on the right half of the “Add Campaign” screen.
Resolution: Until Sigstr supports high resolution displays, please upload images at 72 dpi.
Strategy:
Use a call-to-action
Help the customer first (think product guides, tips, tricks or release notes)
Test, test and test again
The best email signature design includes eye-catching images
Get the word out (promote your newest ebook, case study or video)
Keep it fresh (we switch out our Campaigns once a week)
Divide and conquer (assign different Campaigns to different groups)
We Want to Hear Your Feedback
What works best for you and your company’s email signatures? How do your metrics compare? Does your company have the best email signature design? We’d love to hear more about how your team is using employee email to distribute your content and promote important company initiatives. Tweet @SigstrApp and show us your Campaign banner designs!
For more on Sigstr, check out our latest resource below:
81% of marketers invest in content marketing, making it the top marketing investment of 2016, according to the recent B2B Customer Experience Benchmark Report from Kapost. That’s a shockingly high number, right? The reason is simple, content builds authority in a subject matter, helping brands cut through the clutter of traditional advertisements and marketing by providing true value. That’s probably why you and your team are investing in content distribution, right?
Content marketing has become so important that marketers should consider these key stats from a recent Business2Community article:
67 percent of the typical B2B buyer’s journey is now done digitally, and 9 out of 10 B2B buyers say online content has a moderate to major effect on their purchasing decisions. (Lenati)
80 percent of business decision-makers prefer to get company information in a series of articles over an advertisement. (Stratabeat)
Content between 3,000 and 10,000 words receives the most social shares—even though publishers are producing 16 times more short-form content than long. (ClickZ)
The two most popular types of brand content for consumers/buyers are images (22 percent) and video (15 percent). Ebooks and white papers are least favored (at 3 percent each). (SocialTimes)
Traditional digital content mediums still work best for reaching global business leaders. 85 percent prefer text-based articles (vs. 5 percent for video) for helping to make business decisions. (MarketingSherpa)
But that won’t last forever. Nearly half of all B2B researchers are Millennials, and already, 42 percent of total B2B searches are via mobile. (Branding Bricks)
Marketers truly believe content distribution can produce great results for their businesses, which is why they’re investing so much time, energy and resources into creating incredible content. But consider this last important statistic by Business2Community:
Brands spend 25-43 percent of their marketing budget on content, yet only 23 percent of CMOs feel they are producing the right information for the right audience, and delivering it at the right time and correct format.
Consistency across content, teams and channels is the backbone of an effective customer experience.
Key internal stakeholders agree that inconsistency across content and messaging has a negative impact on the customer experience
“Consistency across content is the final milestone marketers should aim to achieve to successfully deliver an effective customer experience. But first, B2B organizations have a lot of work to do to overcome process inefficiencies and internal misalignment, the two biggest barriers to content consistency,” the article said.
Revenue is Priority
Organizations that are spending significant resources – whether time or money – want to see a return on their investment in content marketing. While it may take months or even years to fully realize the value from the investment, the measurement is of extreme importance. CMOs and marketing leaders need to know the resources they are spending on marketing, and specifically content marketing, are making a direct and measurable impact on the bottom line.
“Content conversions between sales stages are the most important metrics to measure for a complete performance review of the end-to-end customer experience.” Kapost explained. “Marketing organizations that have the right infrastructure to accurately track content conversions at every stage of the buyer’s journey have a clearer view of how content works and are better positioned to identify opportunities for optimization.”
Which Metric is Most Important to You?
Every organization is different and has various goals and processes, so it’s important to first understand what the most important metric for content is at your organization. Content distribution? Conversions? Something else entirely? The Kapost article asked the question, and the results include:
Understanding how content impacts metrics is “critical for organizations aiming to deliver, measure and optimize great customer experiences.”
How Are You Putting Content to Work?
Whether you’re a digital marketer, content marketer or both, conversion rate metrics are near and dear to your heart. It helps you determine what’s working, not working and the overall impact a call-to-action or design can have on that particular marketing campaign.
Explainer videos, storytelling, a/b testing, overall design and marketing campaign software can all help boost your conversion rates so you and your team generate more qualified leads that translate to closed/won business for your sales team.
Use these recommendations to get started and find out what works best for your team. And if you’d like to use employee email for content distribution, we’d love to help! Check out the latest Sigstr resource to learn more:
We all love a good party – and in our sphere of marketing, we love events! They’re just big parties with top-notch swag, engaging speakers and tons of networking opportunities. When we’re planning an event (or thinking of creative ways to promote an event), our enthusiasm should be contagious. Our excitement should create more than a desire in potential attendees, but rather spur a burning need to be there, for fear of missing out. But how can we drive registrations and boost attendance to our next corporate party, reception or conference? Open your eyes, and your emails.
Email is a powerhouse in 1:1 connections. It’s one of the only marketing channels you can truly personalize for a specific audience, making it the perfect tool to build momentum around an event. Employee email helps you to convey your brand’s message and voice across a large audience, and it’s surprisingly easy to use the channel for your next event invite.
Engaging Your Audience
Recently, our friends at Litmus published a creative guide on How to Use Email Marketing to Support Your Next Event, which outlined some creative ways to promote an event. While the obvious ones (who, what & where) can be easy to put down on paper, it can sometimes take a little extra umph to engage your audience to the point of registering (or RSVPing) for your event. Here are a few highlights on what they said:
Get straight to the point
Yes, the 5 W’s are easy to articulate on paper, but this is one place you don’t want to ramble on. Answer those questions quickly and efficiently, ideally in less than a paragraph. What type of event is this? Who are the guest speakers? Where is it? The more information your audience has right out of the gate, the faster they can make their decision on whether or not to attend.
Create clear CTAs that jump off the page
Setting your call-to-action apart from other content on the page helps draw the eye away from the “noise” and towards the “main event.” This makes it explicitly clear to readers what action they should take, without any questions around how to get there. Making it easy for people to RSVP for your event means more conversions and, ultimately, more attendees.
Highlight video recaps or blog posts on past events
Offering readers a glimpse at secondary content, like a video, blog post or infographic, can help build excitement and suspense for your upcoming event. Showing individuals what they missed last year (or reminding them what they saw) reinforces the value of your event and reminds viewers why they wanted to attend in the first place.
Spell out what attendees can expect to learn or who they can expect to see
Building urgency around your event helps drive registration and attendance. Marketing emails can reveal the agenda and keynote speakers or featured guests to drum up excitement surrounding an event. Associating your organization with big names in your specific industry can also help strengthen credibility and build brand strength.
Promote Your Next Event in Employee Email Signatures
When thinking about creative ways to promote an event, consider the email signature and why it’s the ideal place to take all of the above tips into account for effective event marketing. You can highlight the key details (date, time, location, etc.), drive RSVPs or registrations with an easy-to-locate CTA, and build urgency with a photo of past events or by promoting a featured speaker. Here are a few awesome examples of great event invitations we love to give you a little Sigspiration (get it?):
Sigstr’s email signatures are specifically designed to relay quick, exciting messages with clear CTAs. And just think: the average person sends 41 emails per day at work, making the email signature one of the most-viewed marketing channels in the book. With that kind of promotion power already working for you, Sigstr transforms these emails into highly effective marketing opportunities, driving registrations, RSVPs and brand awareness.
Request a demotoday to see how Sigstr works and why it should be on your list of creative ways to promote an event. Or, learn more by checking out our latest resource below:
This post was originally written by Katharina Cavano, the content strategist at Contactually. You can read that post here. Contactuallyis a virtual assistant for your email that discovers opportunities in your inbox by proactively suggesting next steps to take with your most important contacts.
When was the last time you made an ask of your contacts within an email? Whether you wanted them to sign up for your latest webinar or check out a blog post you were featured in, you probably created some sort of call-to-action, or CTA. How effective was your CTA? How many of your contacts actually followed through on the action you asked of them? If the number is low, it may be time for you to reassess how you create your CTAs and even what they look like.
Better yet, think about the last time you got a promotional email in your inbox. It had a compelling enough subject line to get you to open it, and once you opened it, did you click through to shop or open their website or sign up? Or did you open and close it back out in quick succession?
That compelling CTA – or not so compelling one – is a great starting point for creating your own call to actions in your emails. Keep in mind the three factors that go into creating a successful CTA: color, message and placement in your email.
Creating a more effective call-to-action
Before you start your CTA creation, think about what you want your contact to do. It’s a call to action, and you want your contact to take immediate action, so what’s going to get them to do that? Because, we’ll bet that the basic ‘click here’ won’t entice too many folks in to actually clicking there. You need to give them a reason to click, so what will they get out of it if they do go ahead and click?
Perfecting your message
Your CTA should provide your contacts with direction and be clear on what you want them to do or what they’ll get out of it when they do click.
Three factors to keep in mind while writing your CTA message: does it convey value, meaning what will your contact gain by clicking on the button? If you want them to subscribe to your newsletter, you could just use the verb subscribe, but you could also convey the value they’ll get out of your newsletter with words like ‘learn’ or ‘discover.’
There’s always the enticing factor of creating some sort of urgency behind the action because you likely want to get your contacts to act now. This is especially useful for sales or last minute webinar sign-ups. Create the urgency with timing or the fact that there’s not many spots left, and leave your contacts wanting to grab what you’re offering before it’s too late.
Take a look through your own inbox, was there a particular email that grabbed you and made you feel the urgency of making a purchase or checking out a sale right away? Test out that language or try to invoke that emotion you had within your own contacts.
When all else fails, be direct. Ask yourself, what’s the catch here? There’s no room for you to be unclear, and you don’t want to give your contact a moment of doubt as they take a look at your button. It’s too easy for them to close out of the email and keep scrolling through their inbox, leaving you and your CTA in the dust. If you’re looking to book up your next webinar, then your direct message should be along the lines of ‘reserve your seat today.’
Your contacts will know exactly what they’re getting when they click on that button and won’t face that moment of confusion or doubt that could lead them away from your email.
If you’re inviting your leads to your latest open house, doesn’t the CTA “Find Your New Home Tomorrow” sound better than “Sign Up For This Open House?” Be colorful and if possible, invoke some real emotions with your words here.
Using the right color
There’s a lot of debate around the subject of the best color used for a call-to-action button and plenty of studies done around it as well. While there’s not one definitive answer on the best color for a CTA, there’s some color psychology that we can use to assess whether your button choice will express the purpose of your action.
A lot of the psychology around color can be fairly subjective or personal, but across the board, there are particular emotions evoked by these basic colors of the rainbow that can be used for getting your contacts to take notice and action.
Certain well-known brands often exude a particular emotion simply based on their choice of color for logos and branding. And while it may be an assumption that ‘green for go’ would be the perfect choice for a call-to-action button, green has been found to be more associated with feelings like ‘peace’ and ‘health’ rather than something more action-oriented.
Instead, it’s blue and orange that often win out in the color ‘wars’ of CTA and isn’t that interesting considering that within most websites and emails that a hyperlink out to another page is automatically in a blue font?
If you’re able to include a button in your email and go above and beyond the hyperlink that may appear hidden within the text of the email, then by all means, do it. Keep it simple but make it stand out. A pop of color is one of the best ways to get your contacts’ attention right within the email.
Depending on your button color, use either black or white text for the message – don’t use two bright conflicting colors for both the button and the text. When you’re picking your CTA color, keep in mind the emotion or action you want your contacts to feel or do and ensure that it won’t get lost on the page. You want it to be clear where they should click, and leave them with no questions.
Asking at just the right point
Where do you put your button or link within the body of your email? If you’re making an ask of your contacts, generally you should be pretty upfront about it and place it near the beginning of the email, lest your contact lose interest and not make it till the end of the email. But CTAs can be tricky, if you want your network to sign up for a webinar, you wouldn’t put that CTA first thing without any explanation, right? While you want to draw their attention to the call-to-action, you also want to build up to it as they work their way down the page or down the body of the email.
When you’re placing a CTA on a landing page or website, you have a lot of options for where exactly you’ll put it, in an email you don’t have as much room or real estate to play with. Because of this, you have few choices and a small time frame to get the clicks within. As of 2015, the average human has an attention span of about 8 seconds.
This is a great illustration of how it’s better to get to your point in a succinct fashion and make it clear what you’re asking from the email. Your CTA should be towards the top, but not the first thing your contacts see they’ll need a little context in order for you to get them to click after all!
You’ll be action-oriented in no time
What’s the takeaway here? Overall, keep it simple and actionable. The last thing you want is to overwhelm or confuse your contacts within the email and leave them with that moment of doubt where they can choose to close out the email and take no action at all. Use strong action-oriented words, and enticing colors to draw them in and get that click.
There’s no shame in getting inspiration from all those promotional emails sitting in your inbox right now. Scroll through those emails and see what catches your eye, even better…what gets you to click on it. Is it the ‘Shop Now’ button placed midway through the email? Or maybe it was the ‘Watch the Video’ button that enticed you after you read the subject line. Luckily, most of us send a lot of emails, which leaves a lot of room for testing.
Try out the new button color or placement on the page. Does the 72 word trick work or do you find that a CTA on the bottom of the page works best? There’s always room for testing and further improvement when it comes to your calls-to-action, because once you find what works, you may be hard pressed to change it up anytime soon.
For more on effective CTA’s within employee email signatures, check out our latest resource below:
Ever wonder how to make the most of every piece of content your marketing team creates for your company? You’re not alone.
That’s exactly the question the Content Journey seeks to address in its webinar entitled, “How to Make the Most of Every Piece of Content You Create”. You’ve probably noticed by now that our team at Sigstr talks a LOT about leveraging your content across marketing channels. Why? Because 81 percent of marketers invest in content marketing, making it the top marketing investment of 2016. Content is an incredibly important topic for marketers in today’s digital world, so our team wants to ensure your content is put to use in the most effective and measurable ways possible.
We really enjoyed listening to the Content Journey’s webinar about making the most of every piece of content, so we wanted to share just a few of the highlights we learned, and add a few thoughts of our own. In the below recap, we’ll highlight the discussion on the complete content journey with two industry experts: Boaz Grinvald, Founder and CEO of BrightInfo and Daniel Kushner, Co-Founder and CEO of Oktopost. Want to learn more about what Boaz and Daniel have to say? Check out the entire webinar to watch and learn for yourself! Let’s dig into our highlights:
Ready to Make the Most of Every Piece of Content?
Content Strategy – What should you be writing about?
The most important key to consider when creating new content is ensuring the proper amount of thought and consideration goes into the planning process. No matter how brilliant you think your idea is, write it down noting the main topic points on a piece of paper and walk away from it. Consider what the content will look like and determine whether or not it matches your strategy. Will it help you move the needle? Will it help you create more conversions? Start by asking these questions:
Who is your target audience?
Why are you writing?
What are you trying to achieve?
Where is it going to be published?
What are the keywords and terms you need to write about?
If you’re going to make the effort to write the content, ensure you maximize the future benefit by using the tools above to make sure the content hits the mark. Here’s some feedback we saw from the attendees:
Content Creation – How do you write killer content?
First of all, create an outline before you start writing. What are the questions that you want to address throughout the post? Make a skeleton outline that incorporates all of the points you want the post to achieve. The goal for your post is to be concise and to the point without going on and on about irrelevant topics. In short, get to the point.
Next, personalize your content to the audience in mind. It’s unlikely that every individual or persona involved in your company’s sales process can be addressed in a single post. Some may be more geared towards decision-makers, financial buyers, end users and etc. Write with the end audience in mind to make sure you hit the mark with your post. Consider creating a variety of different pieces of content to address the various personas involved in the buying process.
Last, when writing, provide context and examples throughout your piece and always back up statistics with data and relevant examples. It’s also tempting to include as many keywords as possible for SEO and organic search purposes, but avoid forcing keywords and terms where it doesn’t make sense – your readers will catch on (and so will Google’s site crawlers, docking points for user-experience in their search algorithm).
Balanced Blogging – Where should you write and to whom?
Your blog is an asset to your marketing and sales funnel. The main purpose of a blog for many companies is to be discovered by your ideal audience for the first time. If your readers get to know and like you, they may visit your website, and if they’re the right audience for your company’s product or service, then maybe you begin doing business with them. The blog is important because it’s where you typically share content for the first time.
Be careful not to create content that’s all about your product and why your audience should work with you – it may actually turn them off from your company. An ideal mix includes more content types – not just the type that is self promotional, but rather what’s important for your customers, such as: industry trends, professional development and so on. Keep in mind that your audience isn’t single-minded and they want to learn about a variety of topics.
Distribution – How do you get readers to actually read your content?
Distributing your content is perhaps the most important part of a content strategy. You need to ensure what you create is activated through the channels your audience will see. Otherwise, why spend the time and resources to produce great content if it won’t be found by your target audience?
Below are a few examples of distribution channels to consider for your external audience:
Thanks again to Boaz and Daniel for a great webinar topic on content marketing! They showed us how to create, in their words, “well-written, well-reasoned and well-distributed blog posts that can prove to be valuable and increase traffic, engagement and conversion.”
If you’re in need of a solution for your personal email signature or company-wide email signatures, Sigstr can help. Learn more by scheduling a demo.
Did the title grab your attention? It’s crazy how much as marketers we often spin in circles. Marketers spend a significant amount of time thinking about marketing budget allocation, but when it comes to executing, measuring and optimizing, marketers sometimes fall short. It’s difficult to get out of the trap of spending budget on what “should work” and not lining up marketing budget allocation on what’s proven.
What’s even more difficult for marketers is every industry, and each organization within every industry, operates differently. The same programs and marketing tactics that work incredibly well for one organization can be downright duds for another. That doesn’t mean your organization is doing it wrong, but it could mean that your audience wants something different altogether.
The Data Around Digital Ads
Take for instance, digital ads. Because we’re all obsessed with the internet, craving constant emersion in technology, marketers assume the expanded reach will create an expanded audience. But in reality, according to a post by Marketing Week, only 9 percent of digital ads are actually absorbed.
A study by research firm Lumen, they said, used laptop-mounted eye tracking cameras on 300 consumers’ laptops to snag information on what they noticed while online. During the study, which was run in partnership with Nectar-owner Aimia, 30,000 minutes of data was collected, with around 15,000 minutes relating to digital ads.
“It found that only 44 percent of digital display ads received any views at all. And, of those, only 9 percent of ads received more than a second’s worth of attention. Only 4 percent of ads, meanwhile, received more than 2 seconds of engagement.”
Wow! If marketers aren’t basing their marketing budget allocation beyond open rates and click rates, statistics like these are going to come as quite the surprise. But what’s even more staggering is by using data from its ‘pressomnibus’ – a lab that tracks how readers view newspaper content – the article compared digital display to print display. “It found that a full-page ad in a paper the same size as the tabloid in the New York Daily News will be viewed by 88 percent of readers, for an average time of 2.8 seconds. In comparison, a billboard format ad on a website will get 38 percent of people looking for just 1.5 seconds.” But what’s most shocking is this: “On the whole, almost half (40 percent) of press ads are viewed for more than one second, compared to just 9 percent of digital ads, according to the Lumen study. A quarter of print are viewed for more than two seconds, nearly six times the rate of digital.”
Why Are Most Digital Ads Less Effective?
Mike Follett, managing director of Lumen, said it’s time to stop being so fancy. The consumers are over complex designs, preferring instead simplicity.
“The best digital ads do get looked at – but they tend to be simple, elegant, beautiful ads that a creative department would be proud of, rather than moving direct mail pieces.”
Marketers who are used to creating big and bold digital ads may need to rethink their strategies Follett said, advising designers to think about display ads “like a poster.”
People spend so much of their day online but have limited time to interact with digital ads – and often times have little desire to do so. Why? Because their time is so limited and so precious, and unless your ad is giving them insight or providing them valuable information they don’t have otherwise, they likely won’t interact with the ad at all. Or if they do, will navigate away almost immediately, as the stats above so clearly articulate.
What’s the bottom line? The better the quality and the more important to the viewer, the greater chance of a higher “dwell” time and a greater chance they will interact.
Need Another Way? Try Employee Email Signatures
Unlike huge full-page or half-page digital ads, the small area at the end of an email can provide an incredible (and much less expensive) form of digital advertising in the form of email signature marketing.
Simple and elegant call-to-action banners in email signatures (as shown in the illustration below) can play an instrumental role in getting higher dwell time and interaction with the content your marketing team works hard to create. These interactive banners can include important company initiatives in the hundreds (or thousands) of the emails your employees are sending every single day. Turn your email signature into a conversation starter to help your company’s most important contacts feel further connected to your brand via every single employee email sent.
Use Employee Email as a New Owned Marketing Channel
Request a demo today to see why email signature marketing should be in the conversation for marketing budget allocation. Or, click below to access our latest resource:
As a marketer, you know just how important your content distribution strategy is to your marketing goals and generating revenue for the bottom line of the business. Without content, what programs can you run and what can you promote? Smart marketers have found that when they give away really useful and meaningful information in the form of content, like ebooks, blog posts, case studies, infographics, one-pagers, even videos, they get much better results than a standalone sales message.
The Marketer’s Dilemma
But what does the ideal content distribution strategy look like? Are you like the many marketers who have so much on their plate that they use the “spray and pray” approach to sharing content? They don’t have a strategic plan for how to get the most from the content their team members create, so when a piece is ready for prime time, they might post it to social media, send a link to the sales team and maybe write a blog post about it. But what good is that if it’s not measured and not consistent? Are you missing activation channels that are available to you?
That’s why we’ve created an ebook to help your marketing team get the most from the incredible content you work so hard to create.
In this ebook you will learn:
Why 65 percent of content goes unused in most B2B organizations, and how that equates to wasted time and money
Overlooked digital marketing channels that can help with your content distribution strategy
Metrics to focus on, based on your marketing team’s goals
Which channels are most effective, including employee email
Underutilized content and overlooked distribution channels can be a major problem for marketers, but Sigstr is here to help. Download your complimentary copy of the ebook, “The Marketer’s Dilemma: Underutilized Content & Overlooked Distribution Channels” as a guide to help you put to use new and innovative digital channels to help your content cut through the noise. Get inspired by new channels you might be missing, and see how they should play a role in your marketing strategy.
Let us know what you think – we’d love to hear your feedback! We always enjoy listening to new ideas and seeing cool designs. And if we can help in any way, feel free to reach out! Request a demo here.
As a team of digital marketing enthusiasts, we’re always on the hunt for great new content to share with our audience. One of the concepts that keeps resurfacing is the idea of “employee advocacy”. What exactly is it? Our friends at DynamicSignal define employee advocacy as:
“Employees sharing their support for a company’s brand, product or service, on their personal social networks. The goal is to inform, educate and engage the workforce, thus keeping them in the know, and allowing them to become brand ambassadors.”
Employee Email + Employee Advocacy = Opportunity
At Sigstr, we’re big believers in the power of employee email. You may have seen us share the statistic in previous posts that employees send an average of 10,000 emails to their most important contacts every single year. From customers to prospective customers, thought leaders and influencers to vendors and partners; employee email represents a personal communication method that reaches a vast audience. And when you combine the power of email and the audience that those emails reach, you have a pretty incredible marketing opportunity.
Employee Advocacy Starts with Engagement
In a recent DynamicSignal blog post entitled, “Effective Employee Advocacy Opens The Door For Influencer Engagement”, author Lionel Menchaca shared his perspective on the power of employee advocacy as an influencer engagement channel. We loved reading the article, so we’ll share a few key learnings and add-in a few thoughts of our own. Let’s get to it:
According to Menchaca’s post, “Brands understand that potential customers trust information from employees they know personally more than when it comes from executives or from the brand itself. But brands that focus on pushing content are missing the best part: developing and empowering the internal subject matter experts (SMEs).”
Your employee communications are an effective way to share important company or marketing information as these communications establish a trust that may not otherwise be present. Think about this from a personal perspective, would you be more trusting of a corporate marketing message, or a valuable resource sent along by a trusted peer?
Real Benefits Happen When Brands Identify Internal SMEs
The post goes on to explain, “Enlisting employee advocates to share content is a good first step. No question that it helps drive awareness and attention to content that brands produce. But in my experience, the real benefits happen when brands take the time to identify their own internal Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) and empower them to connect to topic influencers outside the company. In other words, while all employee advocates are valuable, not all are created equal. No question sharers make up the biggest base of employee advocates. But, there is value in moving employee advocates up the hierarchy.”
In our experience at Sigstr, we couldn’t agree more. The concept of employee advocacy has become increasingly more important as a trusted avenue to help brands cut through the “marketing noise” while sharing important pieces of content or news. The power of employee advocacy through Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) – especially via the owned employee email channel from our perspective – can be an effective way to empower content creators and content sharers across the organization.
Menchaca shared a graphic we think effectively visualizes this idea of empowering employees to take an active role in marketing – regardless of their department, team or role.
The Power of Employee Email as an Owned Channel
The first step of creating content is a critical component, but how should your employees share it with their email recipients once it’s finalized? Will employees actually take the time to attach a PDF or an image to each email they send? Probably not – and they shouldn’t anyways. And even if they did, extra effort is also required for the recipient and can cause storage and virus concerns.
With Sigstr, every single employee email sent closes with a branded email signature and drives real marketing ROI. Easily add clickable call-to-action banners to your email signatures. After initial setup, these banners update automatically across your entire organization (or to a designated department or group) anytime a new campaign is activated.
Sigstr unlocks employee email as a new owned marketing channel. For marketers, that means promoting the newest piece of content, an upcoming webinar or important event, or a company initiative in a visually compelling way that’s displayed with every single employee email sent. Empower your SMEs to create incredible content, and allow your sharers to incorporate the latest marketing content into each email. Want to determine what content appears based on employee’s department, team or group? No problem! See for yourself in the below examples how the power of Sigstr can help build employee advocates and turn employee email into a valuable owned marketing channel:
Ready to start including compelling imagery through your employees’ html email signatures? Request a free demo today.
Want more information first? Check our latest resource below:
If you’re a marketer at a small business, then you need every tool and solution you can get your hands on that makes you more efficient, more effective, or helps you make smarter decisions. As part of a small business, you likely have a limited marketing team – or may be doing it all yourself, which only increases the challenge. You have limited capacity to execute on programs and marketing ideas, and you probably have a limited budget, too.
But as Neil Patel, a contributor at Forbes, shared in a recent article:
“Marketing a small business is incredibly exhilarating. In a small business context, it’s much easier to see the immediate impact of a marketing initiative.”
Isn’t that so true? As marketers, we need to execute quickly and need to be incredibly effective with the resources we do have. But don’t we also want to see the direct impact of the work we’re doing? That’s part of the glory of being a marketer at a small business – you get to call the shots AND see the results almost immediately.
Small Business Marketing Tools
Recently, Sigstr was featured in an article by David Cummings entitled, “SaaS Products For the Marketing Department”. In his post, David shares that some small business marketing departments use up to 27 products. While that number may be on the high side, he suggests that, “As a small business marketer, you should look for the number of marketing department apps to grow over time as more useful point solutions come on the market.”
Our team at Sigstr would be lost without many of the small business marketing tools we rely on every single day. We use SaaS products to market, measure, sell, optimize, serve, grow, and so much more – all in a day’s work. In fact, we love our SaaS partners so much that we’re going to share a few with you from David’s list that you should check out immediately for your small business marketing department.
Here’s Our Favorites:
Salesloft: Sales development (inbound response reps on the marketing team use SalesLoft to respond to leads)
Is your team already using some of the small business marketing tools we listed above? Let us know which are your favorites and why!
And while you’re at it, learn more about how Sigstr can help your small business marketing team by scheduling a quick demo or check out our latest email signature marketing resource below:
When it comes to your customers, there are tons of touch points that came into play when you earned their business. And just because they signed a contract with your company doesn’t mean that you can stop earning their business every single day. In fact, earning their business is a daily practice that includes SaaS customer support strategies, educating them on your products and services and making sure they feel like a valued part of your company.
Once your customers see additional value in what your product or service can provide, they’ll often share more of their pain or challenges to see if your offerings can help their bottom line. Building a relationship comes with time, but in these valued customer conversations it’s important to keep them up-to-date with the latest information across marketing, product, sales and so on. SaaS customer support representatives should share product notes, case studies, blogs and articles to earn credibility, yes, but also to ensure your valued customers are aware of important product updates or industry changes.
Customer Happiness = More Revenue
Prominent SaaS companies would tell you that roughly 80% of their new customers are referred from their existing customers. The true value of SaaS customer support is not just from the lifelong value of those businesses, but from word of mouth and engagement with customers’ peers and referrals. These conversations can often be started by sharing stories of another similar customer that has found success using your product or services. When it comes time to share these case studies, product updates, thought leadership pieces, or other relevant information, how do you engage your customer success reps without causing them to lose focus?
Educate Customers With Every Email Send
Consider this statistic: an individual employee sends on average 10,000 emails each year, which means 28 percent of their day is spent in the inbox. These personal, relationship-building emails are already representing your brand, but think about the email signature as an opportunity for up-to-date marketing, sales and product content to be distributed in the same context – with no extra effort on the part of the customer success representative or other customer-facing employees.
Call-to-action banners in email signatures (as shown in the illustration to the right) can play an instrumental role in customer success. These interactive banners can include important company initiatives in the hundreds (or thousands) of the emails your customer success representatives and other customer-facing employees are sending every single day. Turn your email signature into a conversation starter to help customers feel further connected to your brand. Take, for example, a few of the use cases below of how several Sigstr customers are educating their customers through the power of email signatures:
Start Educating Customers With Employee Email Today
Request a demo today to see how Sigstr can help build on your customers’ success. Or, click below to access our latest helpful resource:
Last Friday, our CEO Dan was featured on Episode 20 of #ThePawdcast. This digital marketing podcast focuses on entrepreneurship, startups, creativity, innovation and more. In an overview of Dan’s episode, the hosts mentioned their favorite part of the show is hearing what makes people tick, what they are most passionate about and why they do what they do.
The show is hosted by Joshua Davidson, the 22-year-old tycoon that heads up ChopDawg, a marketing & design studio that helps entrepreneurs turn their great app ideas into reality. We had the privilege, nay the pleasure, of speaking with Joshua and Captain Eddie Contento (if you watch the episode on YouTube, you’ll understand why this is funny), ChopDawg’s Executive Branding Director.
The recording is a little over an hour, so we compiled a list of our key takeaways for those of you who would prefer a 10-minute read to a 60-minute listen.
Key Takeaways:
1. The best business models are the ones that are “Duh” ideas. If you have a brain blast moment, and when you share your story with people and they give you the “duh, why didn’t anyone think of this before?!” know that you are onto something big.
2. In order to build a business, you have to do three things: sell the product, build the product and support your customer. We hired a kick-ass VP of Sales, VP of Product and VP of Customer Success right away and then built a team around them.
3. How did Sigstr win its first customers? Dan called every marketer that he knew and pitched the idea. He asked if he went out and built the product, would they buy it? For everyone that said yes – when the product had been built he reached back out. He was able to gauge the interest of the ideal audience before making the investment in a solution.
4. A majority of big marketing technology purchases (think ESP or CRM) have a slower implementation process and a longer timeline to see success. Marketers are looking for “quick wins” that are impactful in a meaningful way. Sigstr is a quick win – we come in at a low price point, we can be implemented within minutes and we make a quick impact.
5. Email has, according to some, been dying for decades. But in terms of external communications, nothing has come close to replacing the need for email. Internally, we understand that Slack and HipChat are taking over the form of communication. This allows businesses to really focus on the most critical use of email – your communications with your prospects, customers, partners, investors and other important contacts.
6. At Sigstr, we change our campaigns weekly. We pump out new content constantly. While this is what we do, the rate at which you update your campaigns is dependent upon your content marketing strategy. What is most important to you? What provides the most value to your audience? Once you hone in on that, you can have a better idea as to what Sigstr campaigns you should create and how frequently it needs to be updated.
7. The number one most crucial piece of building a startup from the ground up is hiring the right people. Hire people you trust. Every single Sigstr employee to this point has been found through a referral. When you are an entrepreneur starting out on your own, you try to do everything. But ask for help with hiring – your people are your biggest asset and you want to get that right the first time.
8. Revision:Dan said that his biggest “failure” from his first venture was hiring a contractor because he didn’t know how to manage expectations, what was important to him, and the contractor wasn’t an equity partner. Upon further reflection, Dan wants to share how critically important consultants are at the right stageof a startup. It is important to understand your MVP (minimum viable product), the point in which your product is developed with sufficient enough features to satisfy early adopters, before you take the step to hire a contractor.
If you want to hear more from the guys behind this digital marketing podcast, follow Chop Dawg Studios, Joshua and Eddie on Twitter.
Need another digital marketing podcast to listen to? Here are a few others Sigstr has been featured on this year:
Terminus, the driving force behind the Account-Based Marketing (ABM) movement, brings us FlipMyFunnel, the ABM Roadshow. What is the #FlipMyFunnel conference all about? Don’t listen, watch:
Join the Sigstr team in Boston for a day of learning and celebration that will empower you to accelerate your pipeline and grow revenue. We want to meet you there! So much so that we are willing to help you out with your ticket – if you use the promo code SIGSTR50, you will receive 50% off!
Here are 7 reasons you and your team should attend the FlipMyFunnel conference in Boston on August 11th:
1. Incredible speaker lineup
Hear from incredible speakers and thought leaders like Vala Afshar, Chief Digital Evangelist at Salesforce.com, Matt Heinz, President of Heinz Marketing, Kevin Bobowski, CMO at Act-On, Kipp Bodnar, CMO at Hubspot, Elle Woulfe, VP of Marketing at LookBookHQ, Joe Chernov, VP of Marketing at InsightSquared, and many more, including industry moderators and panelists.
2. Learn how to Flip your Funnel with ABM
You will learn from thought leaders on the new revolutionary marketing trend and programs for digital marketers and sales leaders alike. The program is chock full of great content including topics like account-based marketing, sales development techniques, and case studies from brands you admire.
3. Catch up with the Sigstr squad
In celebration of #FlipMyFunnel Boston and the 1st birthday of the event, we are hosting a “tailgate”. The Sigstr booth will be tailgate themed, so keep your eyes out for the Sigstr flag! We will be handing out koozies, cigars and Buffalo Wild Wings (more affectionately known as “BDubs”) gift cards for all of those who stick around for a demo!
4. #FlipMyFunnel’s 1st Birthday Party
The August 11th event marks #FlipMyFunnel’s 1st birthday, and the FMF team plans on celebrating in a big way. They’re throwing a party at Laugh Boston, Boston’s premier comedy club, that starts at 8:30 PM and doesn’t stop until midnight. Drinks and hors d’oeuvres will be served and the viral sensation responsible for this rendition of Fetty Wap’s “Trap Queen”, violinist Rhett Prett, will be performing!
5. Meet the kickass sponsors & exhibitors
The #FlipMyFunnel conference has an incredible set of sponsors and exhibitors that make the conference possible. A few of the representing companies include Terminus, G2 Crowd, Act-On, BrightFunnel, Sigstr, along with many other rockstar companies. Conferences are a great time to talk with vendors you already use and even strike up a conversation (and see a demo) for a software that might be beneficial for your marketing or sales team.
6. Meet prospective customers
If you’re a marketer that sells to other marketers or sales representatives, then #FlipMyFunnel is the place to meet prospective customers. Connect with attendees and learn about their needs and goals. If there’s a good fit, then perhaps they’ll be your next customer.
7. Explore Boston
Boston is an incredible city – especially in the summer! Take some time to explore one of the most historic cities in the United States, and take in some exceptional seafood while exploring neighborhoods like Downtown, Back Bay, Fenway, Hyde Park, Mission Hill, and so many other fun areas.
We could keep going, but hopefully we’ve listed out enough reasons to convince you to register for the FlipMyFunnelBoston conference kicking off in just a couple of short weeks. The Sigstr team will be looking for you! We hope to see ya on the flip side (get it?)!
So your team has amazing content, huh? Awesome! Creating compelling content that your audience finds valuable can be really challenging, which you probably know from firsthand experience. But after your team spends hours creating and designing that great content, you’re only halfway there. Getting your content out and onto the computer screens or into the hands of your audience is the hardest part. After all, great content doesn’t matter unless it finds its way to your audience – right?
Distributing Your Content
We live in the digital age where there are literally thousands of channel options across paid, owned, earned and shared media that can be utilized to distribute content. But we’re guessing that doesn’t make you feel better. The sheer number of channels and ways to get content out there can be daunting. So what are the best content distributions channels to use?
In a recent post by Contently, author Joe Lazauskas addresses this question head on. We liked his article so much that we’re outlining some of his suggestions (with one of our own, too):
Tip #1: Put Email Newsletters to Use
Joe explains that the email newsletter will serve as the foundation for your entire content marketing program, and if you don’t get it right, you’re screwed. “Unlike social or SEO, it’s a direct line to your audience that you control. And it’s the easiest way to build a devoted readership that comes back every day.”
According to Joe, “The beauty of the email newsletter is that it doesn’t just drive reader engagement and traffic in a vacuum. Instead, it sets off a waterfall of traffic that spreads across social networks.”
Tip #2: Examine Where Your Audience Shares Content
Next, examine where folks share your content, Joe explains. “Those are the social networks where your company should be most active. There are a million different strategies for social, but for now, let’s just focus on sharing links to your stories. Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are requisites for most companies.”
In addition, you also probably want to invest in paid content distribution. “If you’re going to spend $400 on an article, spending an extra $50 to ensure that twice as many people see that article just makes sense, assuming that traffic is high quality. And the best way to buy high-quality readers is through Facebook.”
Joe goes on to explain that, “The beautiful thing about paid content distribution is that you buy a lot more than just clicks. If your content is good, a lot of those new readers will become loyal email subscribers and organically share your content with their networks.”
Tip #3: Get Beyond the Blog
Joe concludes his content distribution tips by urging marketers to go beyond the blog. “Once you get these owned content fundamentals in order, it’s time to start thinking about going beyond the blog and getting into distributed content—the modern media term for creating content that’s made specifically for social platforms,” said Joe. “Think Facebook Instant Articles and auto-play videos, Instagram video, Snapchat, YouTube, Medium, LinkedIn Pulse, and other platforms that let you reach tons of people.”
(Bonus) Tip #4: Use Employee Email to Your Advantage
Your employees send thousands of emails each day. Use email signature marketing to ensure that your content marketing efforts don’t go to waste, but are instead highlighted in the email signature area of every employee email sent. Email signature marketing also ensures that company branding is consistent across each employee – no matter what.
Without an email signature template in place, your employees will create their own email signatures, attach ad hoc PDFs of marketing materials, or include off-brand calls-to-action to download your newest piece of content. Use email signature marketing to empower your employees to share exciting content marketing updates without the hassle?
Make the Most of Your Content
Ready to see how employee email can used as an owned marketing channel? Schedule a quick demo or check out our latest helpful email signature marketing resource below.
Going on 5 months as a Sales Development Representative (SDR) at Sigstr, not a day goes by that I don’t learn something new. Last week was no exception.
TechPoint, an organization that promotes and accelerates the growth of Indiana’s tech community, gave 17 individuals the opportunity to shadow SDRs (sales development representatives) from 4 tech companies around Indianapolis. Officially, that program is called “Sales Bootcamp”, and it provides an opportunity for these 17 individuals to jump right in and experience the everyday life of a SDR.
A Recap of the Week
Sigstr was lucky enough to be 1 of these 4 tech companies, and hosted the 17 “campers” last week. Since Sigstr currently has 3 full-time SDR’s (including myself), we divided the 17 campers into 3 teams. Each of us served as the team leader for these 3 groups, and overlooked 6 individuals that have never been in sales. We introduced them to the tools we use and best practices when prospecting.
The week kicked off with a crash course on how to operate Sigstr’s 2 main prospecting tools, Datanyze and SalesLoft. They received a better understanding of how to make cold calls, form their own Sigstr sales message, and how to respond to interested prospects via phone and/or email.
This took a lot of trial and error throughout the week, but we were perfectly fine with that. We learn by trial and error everyday, as a SDR team and as a high growth company. Even though the sales pitches weren’t perfect at first, we made a huge amount of progress throughout the week (and even scheduled some demos). The week long bootcamp was for the campers, but it’s safe to say that the Sigstr SDR team may have learned more from this experience.
A Learning Experience for Both Sides
Fresh out of college, I would never expect to oversee 7 individuals that are considering a career in sales. To be honest, as of right now, I’m not even sure sales is for me and my future. I’m continuing to figure it out (which I’ve learned is perfectly okay). As said before, I’m learning something new everyday in order to excel in my position and contribute to Sigstr’s success the best way I can.
At Sigstr, we pride ourselves on being curious and always learning. That mindset helped me with my 7 campers, answering their questions (the same questions I had 5 months ago when I first started) and using what I have learned to help my team.
Last week gave me a sense of where I’m at in sales and how much I have to grow. Not only in my position, but as a person that would like to lead others in the future. It was great to see all of the campers’ progress during their time here at Sigstr. On behalf of the SDR team, and everyone here at Sigstr, we wish the best for all 17 campers. Thanks for working hard and making the week fun. Cheers!
The B2B SaaS industry is no stranger to buzzwords. Every article, tweet, webpage, blog post, webinar, podcast and blab is littered with a litany of in-your-face industry jargon. It is unescapable. We live in a world of newness – new applications, new platforms, new concepts, new solutions for old problems. Along with all of the new technology, comes a new set of words that, when used appropriately, can help you sound more knowledgeable on your topic. With this ever-evolving climate, it is difficult to stay up to date on all the latest buzzwords. As a tech company focusing on email signature management, Sigstr is an offender in the buzzword game.
Here is a list of our most frequently used buzzwords, heard in and around the Sigstr office, and their meanings:
1. “Bandwidth”
Use:“I don’t have the bandwidth to get that done this week.”
What it means:Bandwidth is associated with your workload. Saying “I don’t have the bandwidth” is a nicer way of saying “I am too busy”.
2. “Tee up”
Use:“I would like to tee up a discussion with ‘x’ on how Sigstr can help streamline brand consistency in their employee email signatures.”
What it means:Plan, organize or carry out an event. Basically, you are just trying to schedule a conversation to learn more about Sigstr.
3. “Low hanging fruit”
Use:“We need to go after the low hanging fruit before we tackle x project.”
What it means:Tasks or goals that are easily achievable. This can refer to either “easy win” business or simple tasks to complete.
4. “Sync”
Use:“Let’s sync up on this before the end of the week.”
What it means:To coordinate something with someone else to make sure all parties are on the same page and operating on the same level.
5. “We’ll talk offline”
Use:“We’ll talk offline about this later.”
What it means: This one really cracks me up for several reasons. The first being, it sounds silly. Aren’t all in-person conversations technically offline? The term essentially means you want to discuss the topic in a smaller group at a later date. The second being, the antithesis of the phrase alludes to the classic scene in “The Internship” as Vince Vaughn’s character continually refers to being online as “on the line”.
6. “Take your temperature”
Use: “I want to take your temperature on this.”
What it means:This is a softer ask than “gauge your interest” in the sales process. It is frequently used at the end of a call in place of “well what did you think?”
7. “Dig in”
Use:“We’re always happy to dig in and see what we can do to help.”
What it means:To dig in implies to take time to learn more from both parties. The sales representative wants to learn more about the prospective client’s problems, wants and needs, and the prospective client wants to learn more about the sales representatives company/service.
8. “In real-time”
Use: “Once a campaign is activated or email signature is changed, signatures are instantly updated company-wide in real time.”
What it means:This is another one that cracked me up the first time I heard it. “Real-time as opposed to what, fake time?” In real-time is used to reference the instantaneous nature of our signature marketing platform’s updates.
9. “Optimize”
Use:“Signatures and campaigns are optimized across desktop and mobile devices.”
What it means:I hear this word 10 times a day around the office. From the marketing team (guilty as charged), from sales representatives as they are on calls and in reference to copy on the site or in blog posts. To optimize is to make the best of or make the most effective use of ____. We optimize your email signature.
10. “Leverage”
Use: “Leverage Direct Communication”
What it means:This was pulled directly from the top line of our “Product” page on the site. In Giant. Bold. Letters. This is one of the most frequently used words in reference to Sigstr’s value proposition. Leverage is to use some quality or advantage to achieve a desired effect or result.
11. “Streamline”
Use:“…and help you streamline your branding and content distribution via the employee email signature.”
What it means:To streamline is to make an organization or system more efficient and effective by employing faster or simpler working methods. This word is used in multiple contexts. Yesterday, I said I wanted to “streamline the decision making process” in reference to deciding where to go to lunch.
There they are. The first step is acceptance, right? We’re guilty of using each and every one of these, and we aren’t afraid to admit it. However, we know there are more. What is missing from our list? Tweet us your most used buzzwords at @SigstrApp.
And if you want to see more unique aspects of the Sigstr culture and our email signature management app, read these related blog posts:
A picture is worth a thousand words, so the saying goes. While us marketers love a good infographic or chart, the saying holds true in almost every context. In a recent article on JeffBullas.com, author Savannah Louie says “words aren’t enough any more.” And we agree with her! In fact, 27,000,000 pieces of content are shared each day, according to an Aol & Nielsen content sharing study. Wow, that’s a TON of content consumers have access to view. How do they decide what to dig into and what to skip?
As marketers, we need to be increasingly more and more intentional about standing out from the crowd. While words can be incredibly powerful, we need to capture the attention of our followers in new, graphic-centric ways that give us an edge. The article authored by Savannah goes on to say that, “With the increase of photo, video, infographics and screenshots – today’s marketers are discovering the power behind imagery in content marketing.”
Why Images Are King in Content
“Communication coupled with imagery – photographs or video – is easier to process and more entertaining than words on a blank canvas,” says Savannah. Forbes Insight reports that nearly 60% of senior executives prefer to watch video instead of reading text, if both are available on the same page.
Still skeptical? Check out these interesting stats from an Inc. article:
The average person gets distracted in 8 seconds, though a mere 2.8 seconds is enough to distract some people
People form a first impression in a mere 50 milliseconds
An estimated 84 percent of communications will be visual by 2018
An estimated 79 percent of internet traffic will be video content by 2018
Posts that include images produce 650 percent higher engagement than text-only posts
People are 85 percent more likely to buy a product after viewing a product video
Posts with videos attract 3X more links than text-only posts
“People remember 80% of what they see or do, versus 20% of what they read. Imagery in content marketing is a “must” if marketers want to make a lasting impression on consumers.”
3 Tips to Creating Powerful Visual Content
In Savannah’s article, she points out 3 tips to make content more powerful using visuals:
1. Pick the right type of content
“Stock photos may be an easy way to add a visual element to a blog post, but there are better ways to execute visual marketing,” said Savannah. “Adding an infographic or a short video outlining key points can make content much more meaningful to the consumer.”
“However, if your hands are tied and you’re at a loss for original images, using a relevant stock photo is better than completely foregoing a visual element. Reports show that 40% of people respond better to text coupled with visuals than plain text. Although stock photos may not be ideal or original, these images will garner more attention than no visuals at all.”
2. Make a call-to-action
Savannah also shares that, “Visual marketing can be an asset because of its ability to inspire consumers to take action. Marketers should ensure that they are taking advantage of this capability by including a call-to-action (CTA) with their visual marketing.”
“Not all CTA’s have to be obvious. By drafting creative, stimulating content, consumers will feel compelled to share your work with others. By simply providing a solid piece of imagery, you can inspire your audience to advocate for you without actually having to ask.”
3. Be aware of omnichannel marketing
“You can tweet the best video content with links to landing pages on your website… But if your site is not optimized for mobile, this means nothing to the consumer trying to access your site from their smartphone,” commented Savannah.
“Consumers should be able to access all touch points of your company without a hitch. Encountering an incorrectly linked landing page or receiving conflicting messages across two separate platforms can be a major turnoff for consumers. Ensure that you are producing seamless content with omnichannel marketing to avoid confusing or frustrating customers.”
The Power of Imagery in Employee Email
Want another opportunity for your marketing and content to cut through the noise? Your employees send thousands of emails every single day, each with an opportunity to be visually appealing. Use Sigstr for your html email signatures so company branding is consistent, and employee email becomes an owned channel for marketing and employee communications.
Easily add clickable call-to-action banners to your html email signatures. After initial setup, these banners update automatically across your entire organization anytime a new campaign is activated.
Sigstr’s email signature generator allows your employees to use the power of imagery in html email signatures. For marketers, that means promoting the newest piece of content, an upcoming webinar or important event, or a company initiative in a visually compelling way that’s displayed with every single employee email sent.
Need Some “Sigspiration”? (see what we did there?)
Check out a few of our favorite examples below.
Ready to start including compelling imagery through your employees’ html email signatures? Request a free demo today.
Want more information first? Check out our latest helpful resources:
Employee email signatures – something that is usually viewed as a pain to facilitate rather than an opportunity. Sigstr helps organizations leverage employee email as an owned channel for Marketing and employee communications. This is why Sigstr exists – we show Marketers the hidden potential of employee email (and the simple but powerful effects of centrally managed email signatures).
We love telling this story, the story of “why Sigstr”. The best way to tell this story is in a 60-second video, and we’re proud to be releasing that new video this week.
Be sure to check it out below, and scroll further down for the video brief!
Tone:
Modern, friendly, professional, and clean.
Script:
Sending an email, it’s a small task with enormous potential. In fact, the average employee sends 10,000 emails every year, and each of those emails has the power to grow relationships, inspire action, and leave a lasting brand impression. As your company expands, so do the opportunities to tell your story, opportunities to build something great. Sigstr was founded on this belief. We offer simple, centralized control of employee email signatures, ensuring an on-brand close with every sent email. And, interactive banners customized for specific Campaigns and individual departments. Unlock an entirely new Marketing channel. With Sigstr, every employee in your organization leverages and promotes the incredible content you pour your heart into. Request a free demo today – and magnify the incredible potential of employee email with Sigstr.
Goal:
This video should explain why consistent email signatures can benefit organizations of all sizes. It is a brief overview of the Sigstr email signature platform and illustrates the hidden potential of employee email and how it can be used as an owned channel for Marketing and employee communications. It also portrays the simple but powerful effects of centrally managed employee email signatures.
Target Audience:
Marketers, owners of a company’s brand, and IT managers.
TechPoint, an Indianapolis-based group that is dedicated to promoting and accelerating the growth of our local tech community, has released the 2nd Annual Tech 25 Class to recognize the movers and shakers of the Indianapolis tech world.
“The Tech 25 is a prestigious selection of twenty-five individuals who are critical and exceptional performers helping to grow our community’s tech and tech-enabled companies, but who — not being the CEO or other top executives — don’t get celebrated publicly as often as they deserve.”
We are extremely proud to announce that our VP of Customer Success, Dave Duke, has been recognized as a member of this prestigious group. If you have ever had the pleasure of meeting Dave Duke, you understand why this recognition is not only very well earned, but it’s about dang time. We got a laugh out of this tweet from Zylo CEO, Eric Christopher:
If you have not met Dave, here is a brief look into why he is so deserving of this award:
Dave’s title says it all: Customer Success. If you make your customers more successful, your business will thrive. Dave’s unwavering dedication to the success of others has in turn fueled his own extraordinary professional success. Greg Kraios, who previously worked with Dave at ExactTarget and is currently the Founder and CEO of 250ok, gave this glowing review:
“Dave was an Account Manager who focused on our SMB clients during my tenure at ExactTarget. Although this entailed him having to be responsible for a high volume of clients, he was able to give each one his personal attention and care. His passion for their success was unparalleled. In addition to being a tremendous asset to the company, Dave is a great guy to have around. Always smiling, happy and positive.”
Dave spent over a decade at ExactTarget/Salesforce ensuring the success of customers before joining Sigstr as one of our first hires. At ExactTarget, Dave grew from an Account Manager to a Director of Customer Success, and along the way, he learned what it takes to scale Customer Success for one of the world’s premier marketing technology companies.
Dave has brought that knowledge to Sigstr. But more importantly, he is a catalyst behind the energy, empathy, and curiosity that has fueled Sigstr’s growth. Dave’s passion for the success of others overflows into the workplace. If you spend time with Dave, you come away happy you did so. He wants to know what’s most important to you and then works to help you move that forward. He fuels the creative fire for marketing. Every week, Dave makes time to sit down with his team to make sure they are happy. Not to make sure they are on track for their metrics, or they are being productive, just to make sure they are happy.
Sigstr is unbelievably lucky to have Dave Duke and we are so proud that he is receiving this recognition. No one is more deserving.
Congrats, Dave!
(Dave is also a key author on our blog – check out some of his posts below)
Dr. Seuss once wrote, “A person is a person, no matter how small.” At Sigstr, we believe that a win is a win, no matter how small. Every win deserves to be celebrated. Some wins merit leaving the office for celebratory Kilroy’s pitchers or Nada margaritas (2 of our favorite go-to watering holes in downtown Indy). Others simply require a Sigstr celebration staple: the walk-up song.
Background & History:
The walk-up song originated in the very beginning, with the original 3 man team of BDRs (business development reps). We have a demo whiteboard in the office that keeps track of how many demos (a meeting with a prospect where we walk them through our email signature app) have been scheduled by each rep. Walking up to the board to record your newest scheduled demo is a celebration in and of itself, but our VP of Product, Sam Smith, upped the ante with the introduction of the concept of a walk-up song (side note: this isn’t the first Sigstr tradition Sam has started, read more about that here).
As each BDR would triumphantly sashay up to the board to add to their demo tally, Sam would play that team members walk-up song. It. Is. Awesome. And this tradition has carried on from when we were a 7 person company all the way to now.
Every member of the sales team has a designated song to be played when they get a win. Sales Development reps get their walk-up songs played when they schedule demos, our AE’s get their songs played when they close deals and our VP of Sales, Kevin Vanes, and CEO, Dan Hanrahan, get their songs played when a partnership opportunity has been agreed upon or they have helped close business. You can see (and make fun of) our sales team’s walk-up songs below.
Celebratory traditions are not limited to the sales team, they exist in every division of Sigstr. The marketing team plays the rap air horn any time we make advancements on the influencer front or a MQL (marketing qualified lead) comes through. If you’re not familiar with the rap air horn, check out this app. Due to an extraordinarily overenthusiastic keeper of the rap air horn (me), we have reached a point that any time we play the horn everyone stops what they are doing and shouts “hot lead, hot lead!”
The product team celebrates new releases and product launches by bringing our DOMO robot to life. Product launches are especially exciting and important to celebrate. Every new launch makes our email signature app better, faster, stronger. The DOMO robot’s dancing can be seen in the GIF to the right.
Like we said, a win is a win, no matter how small. We truly celebrate everything in our own little ways and make sure each team member feels appreciated for their hard work. It is vital to the success of our email signature app and the team. A start-up mentality and sales-driven culture with an office environment that’s exciting and fun to be a part of everyday – we are a 24 man wolf pack and every single one of us is critically important to Sigstr’s success. We celebrate the little wins because everyone’s little wins amount to big wins for Sigstr.
What’s Your Celebratory Tradition?
Do you have unique celebration traditions like we do? We want to hear about them! Tweet us at @SigstrApp and let us know how you celebrate your wolf pack and their accomplishments!
Or better yet, let us know what your walk up song would be!
If you’re a marketer, then surely you’ve heard the statement: “Email is Dead” many times over in the past few years. In fact, just last year an article appearing on Inc Magazine entitled, “Why Email Will Be Obsolete By 2020”, John Brandon made the following statement, “I’m predicting that a new communication channel will replace email by 2020. In fact, there are already signs that business is starting to move away from email as a primary form of digital communication. We have so many alternatives. You can send a text message or a DM on Twitter. You can drop someone a note on Facebook or start a chat.”
Sure, it’s true that the email channel is changing – and that’s a great thing, isn’t it? As the world of technology evolves, so do the options for how we can communicate with our co-workers, families, and friends. We’re sure glad we’re still not mailing letters or picking up the landline phone whenever we need to connect with someone. Calling and sending mail through the postal service certainly has it’s place – just like email does and always will. New channels are being added on a regular basis, and those channels add value in certain areas. Take Slack for instance: the value it adds to internal teams is incredible.
But is that it? Email is dying because other channels are coming on to the scene and adding value, too? Let’s dig in further.
Email Is Alive & Well
If email is dead, then why do we see the volume and opportunity growing with each passing year? According to a recent TechCrunch article entitled, “You Can’t Kill Email”, the channel has never been more alive and well. The article states that,
“Radicati’s most recent Email Statistics Report estimates that by 2019, the number of worldwide email users will exceed 2.9 billion — that’s up 10 percent from 2015. Additionally, the number of business emails sent and received per user per day is also projected to increase, suggesting global email will rise 14 percent over the same period.”
Why is email still growing so fast, even if other prominent communication channels like Slack and Facebook and even Twitter DMs are being added to our list of options? The article states that, “The truth is our use of email is only increasing, because the way we use it is evolving to help us better manage the everyday to-do lists in our work and personal lives. Email is still an integral part of the way we communicate today, and the reasons are many.”
We couldn’t agree more with that statement. None of us communicate via email the way we did when it was first introduced as a channel (and thank goodness!). We can use email as a formal channel, an informal channel, and even a transactional or marketing channel. The uses of email are across the board and will continue to evolve in the future.
Does your team use Slack? Or a project management platform? Ironically, Slack sends an email to you whenever you miss a direct mention. How about Salesforce? Have you noticed that the CRM platform, which tried to eliminate email in the sales process, eventually added Outlook plug-ins to accommodate for email needs?
Take Advantage of Email Volume
If you can’t beat them, join them. Email isn’t going away anytime soon, so how can your organization take advantage of this growing channel and its many benefits?
Consider this statistic:on average, an employee will send approximately 10,000 emails each year, so a company of 100 employees will send 1M emails per year and a company of 500 employees will send 5M emails a year! Can you see how this channel can play an important role in your marketing mix? According to a recent article by OfficeTeam, it may be one of the most overlooked marketing channels.
Sigstr’s email signature generator was created to tap into the enormous marketing opportunity that lives in the email signature layout. The email signature has been getting much more attention over the past year as marketers and companies of all shapes and sizes are beginning to see email signatures as an important marketing asset. The employee email signature is quite possibly the #1 place where your company’s brand is viewed most often – maybe even more than your company website.
Why not use this high powered channel to promote your newsletter, success stories, past projects, events and job fairs, trade shows, and new diverse service or product offerings? In addition to promoting your company’s most important initiatives, use Sigstr Signatures to ensure that every employee’s email signature layout meets brand standards and formatting requirements. Email is a powerful engine for companies of all kinds – use it for your brand’s advantage. And not only that, it’s a channel that can be measured meticulously and improved upon almost immediately.
Here are a few of our favorite email signature layout examples:
Request a demo today to see how Sigstr can help with your company’s email signature layout. Or, click below to access our latest resource:
It’s a question asked frequently by prospects. With so many marketing mediums already at play, it can be difficult to imagine adding another channel to the mix. After all, isn’t leveraging a company website, blog, and countless social profiles enough?
The truth of the matter is that we live in the digital era and new ways of engagement emerge every day. In order to stay relevant, businesses have to embrace a multi-channel marketing strategy to create a cohesive and impactful brand identity. Instead of shying away from new medias, marketers must embrace the opportunity to capture an audience’s attention in innovative ways.
Finding the perfect balance of mediums can be complicated. When evaluating a new channel, like Sigstr and your work email signature, it’s important to understand channel strengths and weaknesses in relation to your overall marketing strategy. There are a variety of factors to consider. Many owned medias like websites and social accounts give you the benefit of control and cost efficiency, but have no guarantees. Paid media such as display ads are easy to scale, but suffer from declining response rates. Earned media is the most credible, but can be hard to control. Marketers are tasked with finding the perfect channel combination to create an effective and memorable audience experience.
Sigstr is unique in the fact that it is an owned channel that is utilized by individual employees during one-to-one interactions. Most owned medias like websites, blogs, and social profiles are promoted from a single source and the audience consumes the content at a single location. Sigstr provides the opportunity to promote content during thousands of individual email interactions with prospects, customers, partners, and important stakeholders. Therefore, every single employee using Sigstr in their work email signature is a brand advocate and promoter of the company’s most important marketing initiatives. The added bonus is that leveraging direct relationships to distribute content establishes a level of trust uncommon in owned media.
So, IS Sigstr a needed marketing component? The answer depends on your goals and objectives. At the end of the day, marketing channels must work together to create a compelling story. Individuals consume content in a variety of ways and it takes repetition for a message to resonate. If you’re not seeing the response you’d like from current marketing efforts, you may need to revamp your channel strategy to include the addition of new medias like Sigstr.
Check out these helpful resources to learn more about Sigstr and how your work email signature can be used to distribute your content:
It’s hard work building up a company’s brand. Left to marketing alone, it can take years to grow a brand into something valuable – not to mention a significant amount of resources.
How many individuals work at your company? Whether your company has 10 employees or 10,000 employees, each of those unique individuals have their own voice, their own audiences, and their own preferences and interests. Especially in today’s technology-filled world where work and personal lives intersect, your employees want to feel empowered to use the resources available to them to be an advocate for their company or brand and help it grow. In today’s world, this is a new concept called “Employee Advocacy”.
Are not filtered by social networks the same way that corporate messages are
Thus, according to the article, employee advocacy gives you Authenticity, Trustworthiness, and Reach.
Employee Advocacy and Social Media
Companies often think of social media as a way to achieve employee advocacy. Social media is all around us and employees engage in social media activities (whether it’s work related or not) all throughout their days. In fact, according to a survey shared by Forbes, 64% of employees visit non-work related websites every day at work.
Companies like Oktopost have built a B2B social media management solution because of these statistics. According to a recent blog post on the Oktopost site,
“It can take months, or even years, for a marketing team to build up a company’s presence, reputation, and credibility online. This is exactly why employee advocacy is so powerful. Every post published by an employee on social media reaches hundreds of new connections, which the marketing team would not be able to gain exposure to on its own. While helping your employees become thought-leaders within their communities, by sharing insightful and educational content.”
The Oktopost article goes on to say, “The opportunity to engage so many fresh audiences is unparalleled, and of course, can either be immensely helpful – or hurtful, to a brand. It’s the responsibility of a company’s leadership to create a culture, environment and projects that employees will want to favorably post about.”
Going Beyond Social Media
At Sigstr, we use a saying around the office that goes like this: “Every one of us is a marketer”. Not just the marketing team or the sales team or even the customer success team. No, everyone in departments from product to administration to sales is a marketer, each with a different voice and different audience, as we discussed in the beginning of this post. Companies that haven’t realized that their employees can be their company’s biggest brand building asset (beyond actually just doing their jobs well) are missing out on a giant opportunity for their employees to be huge advocates in their respective circles.
But does it stop at social media? Absolutely not! Sigstr’s email signature generator was built upon the idea that each employee sends approximately 10,000 emails annually, each including a simple email signature. So for a company of just 100 employees, that’s 1M unique emails sent to an engaged audience of prospects, customers, partners, thought leaders, potential employees, and so on.
What if every single one of those employee email communications from across all company departments contained a unique call-to-action pointing the recipient to an important marketing or company message? Just like employees can be an advocate to your brand via social media sharing, a simple email signature can present a similar opportunity (if not greater because of the huge volume of emails sent each and every day).
Employee Email Signatures
Your employees send thousands of emails each day. Similar to social media advocacy solutions, an email signature creatorlike Sigstr ensures that company branding is consistent, and the most relevant campaign across all employees is highlighted in every email sent.
High-Impact Campaigns
Easily add clickable call-to-action banners to your simple email signature. After initial setup, these banners update automatically across your entire organization anytime a new campaign is activated.
Centrally Managed Signatures
Updating employee email signatures is notoriously time-consuming and unpredictable. Sigstr helps companies maintain consistent branding, manage contact information and ensure compliance within the simple email signature.
Without an email signature generator in place, your employees will create their own email signatures, attach ad hoc PDFs of marketing materials, or include off-brand invitations to events, webinars, or product demos. Why not use a solution that empowers your employees to share exciting company or marketing updates without the hassle, and relevant to their own department or group?
Start Empowering Employees to be Email Advocates
Ready to start distributing content through your employees’ email signatures? Start a free trial today and give Sigstr a whirl.
Want more information first? Check out our latest helpful resource:
If you’re anything like the Sigstr team, for the last 40 hours you’ve been mourning the end of the best television show in history, Game of Thrones. This season has received mixed reviews, but whatever your feelings are towards the storyline, you have to admit that these past eight seasons have been a wild and exciting ride. We at Sigstr have been fans since the beginning. In fact, we kicked off our most popular blog series dedicated to fictional email signatures three years ago with a post about our favorite GOT characters! In seems only fitting that we close out this story by theorizing what those email signatures would look all these years later.
It goes without saying, but SPOILERS AHEAD.
Tormund
Thank goodness for Tormund and his comedic relief. In a season that can best be described as bleak, it was a breath of fresh air to watch Tormund tell stories of giants, guzzle milk, and make countless passes at Brienne. It makes the heart happy to imagine him living his best life in the north with Jon and Ghost. Maybe he’ll find another Big Woman to make his heart whole.
Theon
Talk about a character arc. Fans went from being annoyed by Theon, to hating Theon, to feeling sorry for Theon, and finally, to rooting for Theon. His heartfelt moments with Sansa and Bran this season brought many to tears. He may not have been the most popular character on GOT, but in the end, he was “a good man”.
Jorah
Jorah defied death on many occasions over the years, but his time finally ran up. For that reason, it wasn’t much of a surprise that he didn’t make it through the Battle of Winterfell. Out of all the deaths this season, his was one of the best. His singular purpose was to love and protect Daenerys and that’s exactly what he did until his last breath.
The Hound
The Hound showed us a little more of his softer side this season. His crude remarks were perfectly offset by the tender moments he shared with Sansa and Arya. The fact that he died taking out his brother was bittersweet. His journey started and ended with fire.
Lord Varys
Hot Take: Varys was the most underrated character on Game of Thrones. He was the only person whose intentions were pure when it came to who ended up on the Iron Throne. He may have been manipulative and ruthless, but everything he did, he did for the common good. Rest in Peace, Varys. You deserved better.
Arya
This season, Arya brought a new level of badassery. Cheers were heard around the world when she defeated the Night King. Did any other character do anything of importance? We didn’t notice. Thank you to Arya Stark, and Arya Stark only.
Jon Snow
As soon as you saw Jon Snow’s reaction to the destruction in King’s Landing, you knew it was about to go down. It’s hard to believe that the honorable Jon Snow had it in him to kill Daenerys, but he was always the person to do the right thing, no matter what. His journey ending in the north wasn’t what we were expecting, but we can all rest a little easier knowing that Ghost finally got the pets he deserved.
Daenerys Targaryen
Every time a Targaryen is born, the gods flip a coin. Unfortunately for us (and for King’s Landing), Dany’s coin fell on the wrong side. Even though she always said she would take back what was hers with fire and blood, nobody thought she meant that literally. She turned mad in the end, but can you really blame her? She lost her greatest advisors, nobody is Westeros believed in her, and the man she loved turned out to be her nephew. Those are a few tough breaks.
Looking for a scathing review of her final storyline? We’re too positive for that at Sigstr. Please refer to Reddit.
Sansa Stark
If looks could kill, Sansa’s death toll would outnumber any other character’s. It was a great joy watching Sansa grow into a political powerhouse over the course of the last few seasons. If people (aka Jon Snow) had listened to her a bit more, some major bloodshed could have been avoided. All hail the Queen of the North!
Cersei Lannister
Cersei Lannister was the villain to end all villains. She was evil in every definition of the word, while at the same time insanely clever and complicated. We may have been expecting a more gruesome death for the beloved Cersei, but her end was poetic.
Jaimie Lannister
Oh, Jaimie. In the words of Tyra Banks, we were all rooting for you! His brief stint with Brienne gave us false hope that he had chosen to leave Cersei behind for good. We should have known that a happy ending wasn’t in the cards. Jaimie said way back in Season 5 that he wanted to die in the arms of the woman he loved. Wish granted.
Ser Brienne of Tarth
Brienne getting knighted might just be the best thing that happened this season. The moment was made that much more poignant by everything that happened after. She helped defeat the army of the dead, fell into the arms of Jaimie, lost Jaimie to Cersei, and took her place on the Great Council.
Tyrion
Tyrion’s intelligence seemed to slip these past two seasons. Trusting Cersei? Betraying Lord Varys? Blindly following Daenerys? He started to let his emotions get the best of him. Up until Daenerys torched Kings Landing to the ground, he believed she was Westeros’s savior. Thankfully he came to his senses in the end. He will go down as one of the most beloved characters in television history. Period.
Gendry
Gendry’s biggest mistake this season was asking Arya be his lady. Did he learn nothing from her repeated claims that she would never be any such thing? Other than that slip up, Gendry was always kind, honorable, and fair. Perhaps now that the post-war dust has settled, he can put his rowing skills to use once more and follow Arya to the edge of Westeros.
Bran
It seems a major miss that nobody asked for Bran’s advice this season until the very end. Doesn’t it seem like a good idea to gain a few tips from the guy who sees oh, I don’t know, EVERYTHING? I guess in a show about dragons, incestual relationships, and red witches, that’s not the most unbelievable thing that’s ever happened, but it’s close. His rise to the iron throne may not have been what everyone was hoping for, but alas, Game of Thrones loves to surprise.
The end of Game of Thrones is the end of an era. Let’s just hope that the rumors about a few different spinoff series are true. In the meantime, request a demo of Sigstr to see what your team can accomplish with your own email signature campaigns!
Note: this post has been recently updated after the conclusion of season eight. Scroll below to find the original email signatures we created before season seven .
Hodor
We had to honor Hodor, the most genuine and sincerely sweet character we have yet to meet in all the seasons of GoT. This season brought a devastating end to this gentle giant. The revelation that Hodor’s nomicker, and token phrase, originated from Bran’s travel through time and the desperate plea to “Hold the Door” made for the most devastating and painful death. Hodor’s Sigstr signature, we believe, is exactly as he would have made it.
Ramsay Bolton
In a very stark contrasting character review from the former, we hated Ramsay Bolton. Who didn’t? The horribly deranged and sadistic Bolton is a death that we have long been not only imagining but wishing for. Never before have we been so enraged by a character, all kudos to the extraordinary acting of Iwan Rheon (can we put in a bid for his Emmy Award now?) Ramsay made the list because we cannot possibly be happier that he’s dead and gone. Ramsay’s overwhelming obsession with his hounds, and the cataclysmic hunting trips they embark on, makes his death all the more epic. As Leslie Jones says in this hysterical video, “we are rewarded here in Game of Thrones.” Sansa deservingly deals the final blow. It’s the season of girl power, and the Sansa-smirk-walk-away at the end of “The Battle of The Bastards” had me leaping off my couch to give her a hard-earned round of applause. Ramsay has boring fonts in his email signature design because that’s all he deserves.
Daenerys Targaryen
This has been a tumultuous season for our favorite, and longest title-bearing, power queen. Khaleesi has formed a special bond with Drogon, the eldest and largest of her three, winged offspring. She had a very frightening bout with the Masters of Meereen and their vigilantes, the Dothraki and her own freed people. In spite of this all, Khaleesi has formed a crucial bond in this season. While she has had extraordinary success as a conqueror, her ruling skills are lackluster. In comes Tyrion Lannister, the wickedly smart and calculative man that has brought control to chaos. At the end of the season, Tyrion is appointed as Daenerys’ right hand. With his wisdom of all things Westeros, we expect some pretty big things for the Queen of Meereen in season 7. Khaleesi reigns supreme and ends this season looking like a total bada– leading a fleet of a thousand ships, with three nearly fully grown dragons, in towe.
Arya Stark
Arya earned this spot only after her rousing performance in which she confronts Jaqen H’ghar, the horribly annoying long locked man from the House of Black and White. When Jaqen tries to imply she has finally become No One, she claps back with “a girl is Arya Stark of Winterfell, and I’m going home.” YES. FINALLY. Arya has had certainly the worst and most roundabout journey back to Winterfell. She has proven herself time and time again that she has become a masterful swordsman and a fearless fighter. Her long overduerevenge of the Red Wedding solidified her spot in our top 5. Arya makes fighting like a girl cool, which is why it was almost too easy to craft her email signature.
Jon Snow
We could not make this list and not include arguably the biggest comeback kid in GoT history (rivaled only by the Hound and possibly his blue-headed half-dead brother, the Mountain). Jon had a heck of a season. He started off dead, murdered by his own men. By this point, nearly all of his family has been murdered. His first love is killed in front of his eyes. He nearly dies at least a dozen times at The Battle of The Bastards. He has believed himself to be an unloved bastard son to a murdered king. Through all this, Jon has come back swinging. He literally came back to life. He served as Lord Commander. He gained the unwavering affection and loyalty of the wildlings (most notably the giant and the guy with the red beard). Most importantly:Little Lady Lyanna Mormont gives a rousing speech in front of a full room of lords and leaders in which she declares Jon as the rightful and deserving King of the North. Jon Snow got the email signature design fit for a king – he earned it.
Cersei Lannister
We all join together in this wishy-washy state of loving or loathing the newly appointed HBIC (if you don’t understand the acronym, here’s some help from Urban Dictionary). She is both simultaneously the worst and best character in the series. Aside from being a total weirdo and being in love with her brother, Cersei has been consistently in a state of complete and utter lack of giving any cares in the world which makes her a freaking awesome leader of the new girl power movement happening in the series.
The only three things that kept her human and frankly, humane, were her children. The woman once said “the more people you love, the weaker you are.” Foreshadowing? Now that they’re all gone, we expect some pretty seriously powerful, badass acts of revenge by part of Queen Cersei.
She’s already off to a killer (pun intended) started with the nun that led the march in her Shame walk and the Sparrow and Margaery Tyrell, who burned along with about 100 other visitors of the Great Sept of Baelor deemed “collateral damage” by the Queen.
As you may have heard, we recently launched our Dynamic Campaigns feature that sends content based on your end-recipient (think internal communications versus externally facing sales emails). Cersei’s external signature is no-nonsense, just like her. No frills, no cool fonts, no quotes. All business. Cersei keeps her cards close to her chest, and doesn’t want anyone to think she has even an ounce of weakness.
Cersei’s internal signature reflects what only those closest to her know – underneath all of that toughness and hatred is a girly human that just loves wearing the color blue and braiding her beautiful blonde hair. It also shares a message she only wants those who work with her to know and needs the utmost surety the message remains internal (which is why she used Sigstr’s Dynamic Campaigns – shameless plug)
EXTERNAL
INTERNAL
Sansa Stark
Sansa has been dealt the worst deck of cards. The worst. Unfortunately, Sansa hasn’t been known for fighting that deck of cards or showing any toughness or grit. Lest we not forget when this girl thought she was in love with Joffrey and even said “he was the only thing she ever wanted in her life.”
We didn’t see a glimpse into any hint of fire in Sansa until she finally bucked-up and fed Ramsay to his hounds. That hauntingly perfect speech followed by the Sansa-smirk-walk-away at the end of “The Battle of The Bastards” was the stuff of legends. Girl, finally. We have been waiting for this moment since Season 1 Episode 9 when your almost husband had your dad executed. Sansa is finally in a safer, much happier Winterfell.
Sansa’s up for a comeback, hence why we dubbed her “the Comeback Queen”. While Lady Lyanna Mormont (who we idolize, by the way) packed all of her support behind Jon Snow as the King in the North, we can’t help but think Sansa’s up to something. She already pulled the sneakiest move ever when she enlisted the help of Littlefinger (yuck) to ride in and save Jon Snow and his wildling army. Flashback to season one when Sansa quips that a “trueborn will always have the stronger claim.” Hmm. Sansa’s email signature is a nod to this thought and what we can only assume to be her character development in the upcoming season.
Tyrion Lannister
Tyrion is another Lannister who is both loved and loathed. Why? His quick wit, sarcasm, undying honesty and affinity for women and wine. Tyrion knows and accepts it. “That is what I do. I drink and I know things.”
He befriends some of the most putrid characters, i.e. Varys the Eunuch. Varys has betrayed nearly every character throughout the show. Let’s review where he left off: He was with Cersei and the little late King Tommen in King’s Landing. Then, Daenerys and Tyrion at the Great Pyramid, before deciding he needed to take off to Dorne. Cersei just brutally murdered Queen Margaery Tyrell and her brother Loras. So, we can only assume her grandmother is out for blood. And guess who Varys meets in Dorne? Grandma Tyrell. We can’t begin to imagine the horror they are cooking up. I digress.
Back to Tyrion. He has been a key player since we first met him. Season 7 is going to be a great season for Tyrion (I think). We ended last season with Tyrion tearfully accepting Daenerys’ request that he become right hand to the Queen, her most trusted advisor. Tyrion has gained the trust of the lady with hundreds of ships, thousands of notoriously dangerous warriors and three gigantic, blood-thirsty dragons. Safe to say he’s on the right side of this, less can be said for his brilliantly evil sister. His new title, paired with his unabashed passion for wine, made his email signature all too easy to create.
Brienne of Tarth
We are just going to come right out and say it: Brienne is a badass. This cannot be denied. She faced the Hound, arguably the greatest and most intimidating warrior in the Seven Kingdoms, and walked away smiling. How?! Brienne is unwavering in her loyalty to whomever she serves.
She may be best known for her size and strength, but I can’t ignore her dedication to honor. She has sworn service to countless fallen leaders throughout the series until she eventually falls into oath to protect Sansa. I’m hoping this is going to be a much longer term of service than those prior for Miss Brienne.
Winterfell is already treating her well. This is where she meets Tormund Giantsbane, the red bearded wildling. Brienne has, for her entire life, dealt with men sneering at her, mocking her size and disposition. When Brienne first rides through the gates at Winterfell though, Tormund can’t stop staring.
Brienne’s absolutely not used to the attention, so I’m anxious to see how this silent and slightly-awkward love story unfolds. You can’t deny there’s some sort of romantic tension between Brienne and Jaime Lannister. Brienne has an obvious crush on the Kingslayer. Now we’re left to figure out if Jaime feels the same. He certainly cares about here. Maybe we’ll see an all-out brawl between Tormund and Jaime for her heart? We can only hope. Brienne’s email signature is a not to her devotion to all-things honorable – and her crush on the best looking dude in the show.
Tormund Giantsbane
Tormund is my absolute favorite addition to the show. We first met Tormund in the third season and he’s been an unpredictable spitfire ever since. We have gone from being extremely wary of him, to being downright scared of him, to adoring him. He’s a wildly effective and dangerous warrior, while also being a total goof and adorably uncomfortable flirter.
At this point, Tormund is a trusted ally and friend to Jon Snow. But let’s rewind a bit to the days we were still wary of him. When Tormund and his wildling warband catch wind the men of the Night’s Watch betrayed Snow and brutally murdered him, they attacked Castle Black. More proof Tormund is now a loyal friend to Jon.
Tormund’s loyalty doesn’t end there. His performance at the Battle of the Bastards was mind-blowingly awesome. He BITES Lord Smalljon’s THROAT OUT. Tormund has somehow found himself as the Right Hand to the King in the North. I don’t think he’s totally realized what he has gotten himself into.
His email signature reflects the unsurety that exists in how he is going to deal with this new development. Remember, in the Great Hall when Jon is proclaimed the King in the North, Tormund is one of the only not to bend his knee and hail the King.
Events rock. Conferences are the best place to learn from and rub elbows with the best and brightest marketing thought leaders in the business. Finding the right events for your company to attend can be a tall task, as there are hundreds of thousands of conferences put on in the U.S. each year. We love events. Good things happen when we have face-to-face time in front of our most important prospects, showing them tips and tricks with their html email signature template. It’s a big part of our marketing strategy, so we put a lot of time and effort into identifying where we need to be.
Below is a list of the top 16 Digital Marketing events we’ve compiled and put on our radar for the 2016 and 2017 year:
Is there an event we missed that you think should have made our list? Let us know! Tweet us at @SigstrApp and we will update the post accordingly!
And if you need a new creative way to promote an event your team will be exhibiting at, or hosting yourself, here is some inspiration for your html email signature template.
Well, what can I say? I graduated. It’s over. I did it.
I know most of you are saying, “Hey, any idiot could do that.”
“Well, it was tough for me. So back off!” (Billy Madison, anyone?)
There are three things that will be imprinted in my mind in relation to graduating from the greatest college out there (Indiana University – Go Hoosiers!) and starting my career. Surprisingly, it does not include walking across the stage and receiving my diploma.
Taking my last college final (it took me 12 minutes) and the pure nirvana I felt subsequently
The palate-pleasing beer and its name (Nefarious Nectar) I shared with my girlfriend right after that last college final
Receiving a call from Sigstr‘s VP of Sales, Kevin Vanes, with an offer to join the Sigstr team as a Business Development Representative
I interviewed with over ten different companies and received four job offers. This being said not to stroke my ego or toot my own horn, but to point out the amount of opportunities I sorted through to find the perfect one. This was also pretty tough, as I was commuting back and forth to IU’s campus in Bloomington four times a week and working between ten and twenty hours on the weekend at St. Joseph’s Brewery. Adding job interviews into that schedule was difficult to manage. Note to self: breathe, it’s over.
I talked with Kevin for about ten minutes on the phone and promised him that I was ready to learn and ultimately come in and work my little hiney off. I consider myself to have a decent amount of Sales experience for my age after an internship with the Indiana Pacers (side note: a Sigstr customer with some cool email signatures) and a few other “Sales” jobs throughout college. However, at the time, if you asked me to define marketing, buyer personas, or lead nurturing in an intelligent manner, it would result in a prompt answer of “uhhhhh”.
My job title is “Sales” or a “Business Development Representative” depending on who you ask, but really I like to look at it as a hybrid between Sales and Marketing. Drew Kelley (that tall guy pictured above) introduced me to Sigstr, and likes to define us as “smarketers”. See what we did there? My goal everyday is to help Marketers drive brand consistency and unlock an unused Marketing channel through cool email signatures.
Today marks my one-month anniversary here at Sigstr. During that time, I’ve gone through a crash course on Marketing, Sales, tech, how to iron a shirt, and everything else in between to prepare myself and close the knowledge gap. Google searches included (but were not limited to):
“What is demand generation?”
“100 Marketing terms that every Marketer should know”
“What do cool email signatures look like?”
“How to be an adult”
Everyday, I learn something new. Everyday is an opportunity to gain knowledge and get better at my craft.
Sigstr is a team of about twenty of the most hard-working, fun to be around, tech savvy, individuals that I have the opportunity to go shoulder to shoulder with (literally…we’re touching shoulders and need more office space…and its coming). Sigstr is a growing force to be reckoned with – which you can read more about in last week’s press release. Every army needs a general, and I can’t say enough good things about our leader. Dan Hanrahan, Sigstr CEO and Founder, has taught us all to work hard and celebrate our achievements (you can read more about that here).
We’re a scrappy group, helping marketers craft cool email signatures and open up a new digital Marketing channel. When you think about an email signature, you may question how something so simple can have a huge impact on a brand. That’s fair…I get it. But if you think about the average amount of emails one employee sends annually (10,000…yes 10,000), you can start to see the opportunity it presents as a new channel for your digital marketing toolbox.
With that, I’ll finish this post the same way I started it…with a quote. “If you think you are too small to be effective, you have never been in bed with a mosquito.”
What kind of marketer doesn’t like stats? It’s part of our DNA – we LOVE statistics about marketing in general: programs, channels, and every other stat under the sun that helps us do our jobs better. As marketers, we know that every dollar can (and should) be measured, every lead matters, and every new deal should be accounted for where it was originated. We measure conversion rates and open rates and click-through-rates and displays and… the list could literally go on forever.
But all of that marketing data can be paralyzing. If you try to measure everything, you really measure nothing at all, because it’s impossible to make changes and improve data points if everything is a focus.
So when our team ran across a new article entitled, “110 Digital Marketing Stats” via gShift, a company that’s built around content performance, we got excited. Our team at Sigstr identified our top 13 favorite digital marketing stats from the post, and we added 2 extras as a bonus under “employee email”.
Let’s dig into the stats:
SEO
60% of all organic clicks go to the top 3 organic search results (Hubspot)
Those involved in the B2B buying process are already 57% of the way down the path to a decision before they’ll actually perform an action on your site (Think With Google)
MOBILE
51.7% of emails were opened on Smartphones and 15% were opened on Tablets, with 33.3% opened on desktop/laptop computers according to Movable Ink’s US Consumer Device Preference Report for Q3 2015 (Movable Ink)
Users spent on average 1.8 hours on their smartphones every day and apps account for 89% of their mobile media time (Social Media Today)
CONTENT MARKETING
On average, 75% of ideas are turned into a content asset, published once and never reused or repurposed again (Kapost)
72% of marketers worldwide said relevant content creation was the most effective SEO tactic (MarketingProfs)
94% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn as part of their content strategy. Other popular platforms include Twitter (87%), Facebook (84%), YouTube (74%) and Google+ (62%) (Content Marketing Institute)
INFLUENCER MARKETING
59% of marketers are planning to increase their influencer marketing budgets over the next 12 months (Tomoson)
1 in 3 people come to a brand through a recommendation (Brandon Murphy)
SOCIAL
Buffer reported for its user base, tweets with images received 150% more retweets than tweets without images (Kiss Metrics)
ANALYTICS & REPORTING
27%of B2B marketers say they are effectively tracking content utilization metrics (Aberdeen)
GENERAL MARKETING
33%of marketers were not sure which digital channel makes the biggest positive impact on revenue (MarketingProfs)
Gartner’s 2015-2016 CMO report shows that 98% of marketers believe digital and offline marketing are merging and marketing strategies will need to reflect this (Gartner)
EMPLOYEE EMAIL
In 2015, the number of worldwide email users will be nearly 2.6 billion. By the end of 2019, the number of worldwide email users will increase to over 2.9 billion (Radicati)
In 2015, the number of business emails sent and received per user per day totals 122 emails per day (Radicati)
No matter what kind of marketer you are, your role is rooted in statistics: what’s working, what’s not working, where should you and your team be spending your time and budget? Maybe you weren’t considering it, but employee email could be a necessary addition to your digital marketing mix. The statistics around volume are hard to overlook – so why not take advantage of it?
Try pulling your own numbers for some of the above benchmark statistics and learn what channels and programs work best for your team. And if you’d like to see how examples of the best email signatures and how they can help your Marketing team distribute content (and boost your metrics), we’d love to help!
Sign up for a free demo today to see Sigstr’s best email signatures or click below to access our latest resource:
As a marketer, you know just how important content is to your marketing strategy, your goals, and generating revenue for the bottom line of the business. For many companies – especially those in the technology or cloud software space – content marketing is a fundamental piece of the marketing puzzle. Without content, what programs can you run and what can you promote? Sure, you can always put out a sales message or a demo call-to-action, but companies have found that when they give away really useful and meaningful information in the form of content, such as ebooks, blog posts, case studies, infographics, one-pagers, and even videos, they get much better results.
According to the Altimeter Group, 57% of marketers reported custom content was their top marketing priority for 2014.
Why is that? Prospective and current customers want to learn – they want to partner with a company that cares about education. So marketers use content to drive programs, which in turn (or in theory) create qualified leads, opportunities, and eventually closed business. And another thing that’s so great about content: it’s measurable! Marketers can gain incredibly useful insights into click-through-rates, landing page visits, conversion rates, and so much more.
Hold on – it’s not so simple.
If creating content and putting it behind a landing page or up on the blog is so easy and guarantees such great results, then why hasn’t every company mastered content marketing? And why isn’t every company seeing huge results from the content they do produce? Or why don’t companies pour all of their marketing resources into content, since it’s such a golden opportunity?
“Every role within marketing has its own tools, content types, and channels to manage, each responsible for different aspects of the content and buyer lifecycle. Without a strategy in place for coordinating all of these pieces, seeing the big picture of your marketing impact is almost impossible. Not to mention, adhoc content creation across departments leads to duplicate, off-brand, or unnecessary content. That’s why 65% of content goes unused in B2B organizations, representing a massive cost center directly located within marketing.”
65%! That’s an astounding amount of content that goes unused. Just imagine how much time and how many resources go into creating just one piece of content.
Just for example sake:Say the average piece of content takes 5 hours to write. For a blog post, that’s a high number, but for an ebook, research report, or even a case study, that’s a very low number. So, 5 hours to create the average piece of content for a content marketer whose salary is $60,000 per year (source: Marketing Land). That piece of content is costing your business about $150.00. Most content marketers create about 1 piece of content per day, so the per weekly content cost (not including any graphic design, branding, or interactive elements) for just one content marketer is $750. Now multiply that number by how many members are creating content in a given organization, and then multiply that number by 52 (the number of weeks in a year).
That’s a LOT of content, and the time, cost, and resources that support that content adds up very quickly for many organizations.
What’s the root of the problem?
According to the Forrester Wave: Content Marketing Platforms, 2015 report, “The upshot of every marketing team being a de facto publisher is colloquially known as ‘content chaos’—a scenario of overlapping, invisible, and underused brand assets and collaterals.”
There is so much content being created by so many individuals across Marketing, Product Marketing, Segment Marketing, and the list goes on… that getting use out of every single piece is incredibly difficult. Your audience sees hundreds if not thousands of marketing messages every single day, so ensuring your content call-to-action stands out is difficult to achieve. If your team uses the same channels and messages as your competitors, how is your content differentiated?
Not only that, but the Marketing team must educate the Sales team and other departments on the value of the piece and then help them understand how to use it in prospective or current customer conversations. But with everything else that Sales and Customer Success teams have on their plates, using marketing content – no matter how valuable it may be – often falls to the wayside.
How your employees’ email signature block can help.
If there’s one communication channel your employees live by, it’s email. On average, an employee will send about 10,000 emails annually to their most important contacts, whether they be prospective customers, current customers, job candidates, partners, vendors, or industry influencers. Your employees send email all throughout the day, sometimes even at night, on the weekends, or while they’re on vacation. The channel literally never stops.
Sigstr, an email signature generator, was created to help marketers cut through the noise and share the company’s most important initiatives automatically via the employee email signature block. Email signatures have been getting much more attention over the past year as marketers and companies of all shapes and sizes are beginning to see the email signature block as an important marketing asset. The employee email signature is quite possibly the #1 place where your company’s brand is viewed most often – maybe even more than your company website!
What’s Sigstr?
Smart marketing through email signatures – that’s what Sigstr is all about. Simple management for the employee email signature block that ensures a consistently branded email signature for employees and unlocks a powerful marketing channel with clickable call-to-action banners.
How does it work?
With a few clicks in Sigstr, marketers can automatically inject a clickable image, called a Campaign, to the Outlook and Gmail email signature block. The Sigstr admin can also change the format, fonts, and allowable text found in the employee signature lines. These Campaigns or signatures are updated automatically across all employees and can be filtered by groups. And best of all? No need to involve IT or interrupt the end user.
Need more inspiration for your email signature block design and how you can use it to distribute content? We have you covered. Check out our newest resource below:
Sigstr is excited to announce our plan to invest $1.4M in order to create 100 jobs right here in Indianapolis over the next 5 years, thanks to the award of $1M in EDGE Tax Credits. We’ve grown from 1 to 20 employees in just the last 12 months, and plan to hire over 100 more individuals across all areas of the business in the next 5 years as we aggressively expand operations to support our team and market opportunity.
The Sigstr team is incredibly grateful to the Indiana Economic Development Corporation (IEDC) for supporting our growth in such a significant way. In the words of Sigstr’s Founder and CEO, Dan Hanrahan,
“Employee email represents a tremendous, and largely untapped, opportunity for marketers, and we are just getting started unlocking that potential. We can’t imagine being better positioned for the future, and the decision to scale our business in Indianapolis is a huge part of our competitive advantage.”
We now serve over 175 customers and we’ve built a team of 20+ professionals, dedicated to helping marketers leverage the power of employee email signatures. We are continuing to aggressively hire top-level talent to support all functions of the business. For more information on open positions or to learn how your organization can put employee email signatures to use, visit: https://www.sigstr.com/company.
Interested in reading the entire press release?Access it here.
And a big “THANK YOU” to the local Indianapolis media for helping us share our news throughout the day!
I blankly stared at the woman who just asked me that question. The Dan she was referring to is Sigstrs CEO and Founder, Dan Hanrahan.
This was during a morning coffee networking opportunity. Our conversation up until this point had been fairly standard and surface level. Where are you from? Where did you go to school? What did you major in? Did you see that last episode of Game of Thrones?
This new question threw me for a loop. How do I describe what its like working for Dan and being a part of the Sigstr team? For some reason, it reminded me of a conversation that I had with my father when I was 14.
One of my dads closest lifelong friends has been his high school baseball coach. When it dawned on me that Coach B was quite a bit older than my father, I asked my dad about their friendship. Sort of taken back by the question, he paused before going into this explanation:
Coach B is the kind of coach that made you work hard. If you committed to working hard, he was your biggest advocate. If you worked hard for him, he worked hard for you. He is the kind of coach that makes you want to run through walls for him. It made him not only a great coach, but a great guy and now a great friend.
This recollection brings me back to the moment when I was asked, So whats it like working for Dan? Dan is the type of CEO that makes you want to run through walls for him. His passion and voracity for making Sigstr successful in-turn impresses a passion and voracity to work hard in all of us.
Personal Goals + Sigstr Goals
At the start of my career at Sigstr, Dan had me write down all my goals for this year, the next 3 years and beyond. He asks each new employee to do this within their first few days at Sigstr. We met at Patachou (which if you have NOT been, I highly recommend the Cuban Breakfast) and exchanged our printed list of goals. We talked through each point extensively – Dan genuinely interested in each point on my goal list, no-matter how ludicrous the ambition (i.e. walking the red carpet). Dans ending note on our goal conversation was that Sigstr would enable us to reach those goals.
I left our breakfast with a newfound sense of confidence that these goals were within reach. Any time I was feeling downtrodden by my (then) Business Development role (Business Development being a fancy term conjured to sugarcoat the number of prospect calls and emails being sent to gauge interest), Dan would bring up one of my goals. He would remind me that everything that I was doing was helping me get one step closer to my goal. Every time we reach milestones here at Sigstr, we are greeted by an alarmingly forceful high five or beer (or in my case an Angry Orchard).
Working Hard + Celebrating Achievements
Dan expects hard work. He wants Sigstr to succeed and help marketers save time and energy managing employee signatures for email. He wants Sigstr to give us the means to accomplish all the goals we shared with him and more. At the same time, Dan also expects us to participate in Friday late afternoon Beer:30s. He has one rule about out of office company bonding and it is that each adventure must end at a local Irish pub, which is met with no complaints (and if you want to understand why Dan is so passionate about Irish pubs, read this post).
Another Sigstr team member, Kolby, recently wrote a blog post that reiterates our work hard, play hard mentality:Life at a Tech Start-Up: Three Truths and One Lie. As said best, The benefit, or perhaps consequence, of being part of a small team is that everyone is expected to contribute in a big way.
We all work hard for our big wins, and celebrate when we accomplish them. Dan lives by the age old boss man proverb, if youre a man by night, youre a man by day. I can only interpret this as a more sophisticated way of saying you can play hard if you work hard.
The Sigstr team is growing and were looking for more rockstars to join our work hard, play hard culture. If youre looking for an opportunity in a high-growth Marketing SaaS company, wed love to meet you. Learn more about our opportunities at: www.sigstr.com/company
Evercontact is a tool that helps you keep your address book up-to-date by automatically analyzing email signatures in your incoming email and adding new contacts and updating your existing address book without creating duplicates.
While their tool certainly comes in handy (I mean – who actually enjoys manually updating their address book? Nope.), the content they create is also killer.
A few years back, the company published an infographic entitled, “The Anatomy of an Email Signature”. Since 2011, Evercontact has analyzed over 700 million emails to extract valuable information about professionals’ email habits, so they know a thing or two about employee email.
As our company, Sigstr, is built on managing creative email signatures, we had to share this infographic and some of the key learnings with our readers. Below is a rundown on Evercontact’s take on the anatomy of an email signature.
What do professionals include in their creative email signatures?
How does social media fit into creative email signatures?
While Twitter leads the way at just over 7% inclusion on email signatures, overall social media is lacking from the signature area of professionals. We assume this is because professionals don’t want to overwhelm their email recipients with tons of links and information (and we agree!), and therefore leave out social media information like Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook. However, including LinkedIn information (traditionally more of a professional social network), can be beneficial.
What are the top 5 Do’s & Don’ts?
Think twice about adding social media profile links if it doesn’t blend well with professional goals
Separate your email signature from the email body with the accepted form “–”
NEVER use an entire image as your email signature as it often becomes an attachment and your info won’t be clickable
If you’d like to try using an image in your email signature, try an email signature generator to ensure your images are automatically updated and always render properly
Do provide an international prefix (like +1 for the United States) if your audience is global
Want to take your email signature to the next level?
Sigstr offers marketers complete brand control of employee email signatures with fonts, formatting, color, social links and more through its integration with Gmail and Microsoft Outlook. Insert a Sigstr Campaign (graphical call-to-action) into the email signature template to utilize every employee’s email signature as a targeted marketing opportunity. Sigstr gives marketers the opportunity to promote the company’s most important initiatives or content, such as events, press, case studies, ebooks, job openings and much more.
See Sigstr in action by requesting a demo. Or, if you’d like to learn more, check out our latest resource:
Weve recently enjoyed following along with Zero to Scales podcast, which is all about bootstrapping startups to $100k monthly recurring revenue and beyond. The hosts of the podcast are Greg Hickman and Justin McGill. Greg and Justin, both entrepreneurs, tackle subjects like:
Handling early traction
Growth hacking strategies
New products they use to grow their businesses
And so on
For Sigstr, the podcast is beyond applicable as our company is quickly accelerating our product offerings as well as growing our team. But it just so happened that Greg and Justin highlighted Sigstrs product on episode #117 entitled, Planning the Next Product Offering and Launching Key Integrations. In this blog post, well give you the cliff notes version of what Justin had to say about Sigstr and his personal email signature.
In Justin McGills words, Sigstr is one of his favorite marketing assets. He explains what value he sees:
Basically what [Sigstr] allows you to do is set up your whole team with email signatures. And I can go in and create a new campaign, and it will update each personal email signature for all of our employees and everything. So, it allows you to track open rates and click through rates and everything on a banner image. You can put address, phone number, URL, all kinds of different things, your social media links and everything.”
Listen to the full podcast recording below, and tune into the 34 minute markto hear the guys talk about Sigstr.
We love Justins enthusiasm about the simplicity of Sigstr and also the benefits of measuring the marketing impact of email signatures, which is supremely important for marketers. Whether youre a digital marketer, content marketer, or both, measuring the impact of campaigns and programs is near and dear to your heart as the insights help you determine whats working, not working, and the overall impact of a call-to-action or design.
Justin goes on to comment that Sigstr is a great asset for his team:
Sigstr ensures that your team members all have a standard email signature. But at the same time the solution allows me to see important statistics such as Sigstr Views, campaign impressions, and click through rates. The solution and its capabilities are sweet, and its a great tool.
Justin explained that Sigstrs email signature generator has been on his mind since last August when he initially saw the solution listed on Product Hunt. But it was when Sigstr announced its Google Apps integration that Justin knew he and his team had to begin using the tool. Sigstr also recently announced integrations with Outlook and HubSpots marketing platform, in addition to Google Apps, which you can learn more about in our recent post.
Thanks again to Justin and Greg for highlighting Sigstr in Zero to Scales podcast episode #117. Well keep listening, and hope you will too!
If you’re in need of a solution for your personal email signature or company-wide signatures, Sigstr can help. Learn more by scheduling a demo.
Email continues to be a mission-critical tool for businesses across the world. While in the past some have predicted the certain death of email, the opposite is happening. Even with products like Slack and other internal communication tools prevalent in the market, email is still the backbone of communication. In fact, email usage is expected to increase over 6% each year for the foreseeable future.
According to email experts at the Radicati Group, it’s estimated that each employee sends about 28 emails every day, or about 10,000 emails every year. This huge volume of emails (up to 1M emails a year for a company of just 100 employees) proposes a huge untapped marketing channel. Because every single email an employee sends contains an email signature, smart marketers are using that signature area to promote their most important initiatives (like content or upcoming events) to the targeted audience that receives those emails: prospects, customers, partners, vendors, and influencers.
While marketers are now using employee email signatures to distribute their most important content, what about other departments across the company? Can they use great email signatures to promote what they care most about, too? Absolutely. Need some ideas on how to leverage employee email signatures across your entire organization? Here are 3 examples of how other departments can use great email signatures to promote what their departments care about most:
Sales
If Marketing’s primary objective is to drive engagement with the brand, then Sales wants you to engage with the process. Sales, whether it be pre-sales or getting the final contracts signed, cares a lot about the process and making sure prospects see the true value of what they’re providing. Marketers want the prospects to be engaged with every email and every part of the process – no matter how short or long the sales cycle is.
Your company wants customers to be eager to learn as much as possible about what you can provide them by way of the products or services offered. You want them to see the value of what you offer and understand the benefits of deciding to work with your company rather than the competition. And they want all of that to happen with minimal investment and in the most efficient way possible. What if you could let your email signatures do the work for you? What if with every email you guided your prospects on a journey? A journey where with one click of a button they could interact with the process by requesting a demo, seeing a product video or tour, viewing pricing and product features, or calculating the impact your product or service could provide with an ROI calculator. With each click and interaction, they understand your product or service offerings better – all with zero effort from the sales rep.
Now every email can help your prospects feel more and more confident about moving through the sales process.
Allow prospects to interact with resources like:
Demo requests and product videos
Pricing and feature guides
ROI Calculators
Human Resources
The HR department is focused on finding great talent and equipping talent to be successful in the workplace. But finding candidates in today’s competitive market can be incredibly challenging. Human Resource departments need to find clever ways to showcase how their company is different and how their culture is attractive to those who may be job searching.
Because HR department employees send emails to many potential employees or partners that may be interested in working for their company, their email signatures offer a prime opportunity to showcase open positions – either specific jobs or a blanket “we’re hiring” – and showcase the company’s unique culture, all through HR employees’ great email signatures.
Give prospective employees a glimpse into your company with:
Video footage of the office or with the CEO
A culture showcase and “meet the team”
A call-to-action with current open positions
Company X-Factors and stats
Customer Success & Customer Support
If Marketers want you to interact with the brand, and Sales wants you to engage with the process, then Customer Support and Customer Success want their customers to learn more about the product, services and value the company offers. Customer Support and Customer Success exist to help customers feel more confident about the product and services being provided. They want their customers to understand not only how to get their questions answered, but how to best troubleshoot and solve problems for themselves and continue the learning journey well beyond signing on as a new customer.
Customer Support and Customer Success want customers to understand the products and services you offer so intimately that they become dedicated advocates of the company, product, services, and people – resulting in greater satisfaction and more referrals.
Promoting product materials or a referral landing page doesn’t mean replacing an existing portal or community, but rather great email signatures with clickable call-to-action banners that serve as a constant reminder of the tools and resources that are available for those customers and urges them to join the conversation.
Customers can be one of your company’s biggest asset. It all starts with education and empowerment.
Give customers information such as:
Service and support phone numbers and contact info
Latest product release notes
Community sign-in or sign-up page
Overview of new product/services
Landing page to suggest referrals
What about your Channel team promoting new partnerships? If you work for a professional sports team or athletic department, why not use great email signatures to promote ticket sales? The options are endless, and best of all, a single admin on the Marketing team can create the Campaigns and assign to various groups or departments, so your departmental employees can simply keep sending emails… all of which automatically update with the latest Sigstr Campaign.
Each department within your organization is important. They each impact the entire business in different ways, and each have a different story to tell. Employee email signatures and the Sigstr Groups feature can help amplify that message, whatever it may be, from that particular employee, department, or entire company.
Our team at Sigstr is always on the lookout for great articles, posts, podcasts and helpful information for digital marketers. So when we ran across this post from Technorian entitled, “Conversion Rate Optimization: Secrets as Revealed by 54 Industry Experts”, we had to write about it and share it with our readers. Digital marketers have a tough job. Not only do they have to keep up with their competitors, but perhaps more than any other role across a company, their digital marketing tools and marketing campaign software of choice evolve and change on a weekly basis.
In this article the author, Adnan Afzal, interviewed 54 industry experts about how to increase conversion rates. We’ll share a few of our favorites below, plus one more that we believe is an important addition to digital marketers’ toolboxes: employee email signatures.
“One of the best ways to improve in your conversion rate optimization is to have an explainer video on your site that tells your audience why your site or service is for them. If you ever take a look at the top selling products on ClickBank, you will notice that nearly all of them are using explainer videos on their landing page. Extremely long sales pages worked well in the past, now it’s all about the sales video. Make it engaging, interactive and of course ending with a call to action for your target audience. Be sure to check out my how to create killer explainer videos article for how to create one for your site.”
“Storytell. It’s one of the most powerful tools you can use to improve conversion rate. Tell me why you started your business. Tell me how you are using your products. Tell me what your customers are gaining from working with you. Let me feel your pride and emotion. If I don’t feel something on an emotional level when I visit your website, then I’m just going to compare on price and then you lose. Storytell more for improving conversion rate optimization.”
“Constantly test different colors for your call to actions in an a/b test environment. I remember Google tested over 50 shades of blue before they found the best converting blue for their organic search results. Keep testing until you find the best that works for you.”
“I recommend investing in great visuals for improving your conversion optimization rate. The prospective customer has to be able to visualize using the product, and if you have gorgeous visuals and video, you help the customer break the buying barrier. Research indicates products on a white background work better than a busy background. Investing in great visuals is beneficial for both sales and website conversion.”
“Whether your marketing department produces great content, case studies, videos, or product descriptions, getting your marketing message through to your target audience is critical. Each company employee is estimated to send about 28 emails per day or 10,000 emails per year, and each of those emails contains an email signature. Smart digital marketers are using the email signature’s untapped potential to promote their most important products or initiatives within the signature area of each email. Put the email signature to use with marketing campaign software that helps your company brand employee signatures with approved fonts, formats, colors, and even social media channels, while also promoting the company’s most important content or initiatives via clickable images called campaigns.”
Main Takeaway
Whether you’re a digital marketer, content marketer, or both, conversion rate metrics are near and dear to your heart. It helps you determine what’s working, not working, and the overall impact a call-to-action or design can have on that particular marketing campaign.
Explainer videos, storytelling, a/b testing, overall design, and marketing campaign software. These can all help boost your conversion rates so you and your team generate more qualified leads that translate to closed/won business for your sales team.
Use these recommendations to get started and find out what works best for your team. And if you’d like to test marketing campaign software for your employees’ email signatures, we’d love to help! Check out the latest Sigstr resource to learn more:
Our mission at Sigstr is to make marketers look amazing. We’re hard at work unlocking the incredible marketing ROI in employee email, and we wanted to share 3 breakthroughs you can use for your email signature template:
Analytics
You’ll notice “Sigstr Views” have replaced “Displays” in your campaign analytics. Sigstr Views will not tally a view when an employee composes a message, yielding more meaningful campaign impression counts and click-through-rates.
3rd Party Integrations
We realize that individual customer and prospect interactions go beyond corporate email. That’s why we’ve made 3rd party integrations a top priority and are proud to feature new partnerships with Salesloft and HubSpot. Here’s what you need to know:
The SalesLoft Integration enhances your marketing efforts within the SalesLoft Cadence application by appending a Sigstr signature and campaign to your Cadence email communications.
Your input determines what integrations we build next. Drop us a note if you have suggestions!
Automatic Installation
Sigstr has released an automatic installation method for Gmail users: Gmail Signature Sync. The new process removes the need for employees to install Sigstr individually. Now, the Sigstr administrator has the ability to push campaign and signature updates to each employee’s email signature template through the application portal. Watch the two minute video to learn how you can start leveraging this powerful functionality!
We are committed to making Sigstr an invaluable component to your marketing strategy. Feel free to send us feedback about your experience and let us know what kind of features you would like to see added. All opinions are welcomed!
Thank you for believing in our mission and for being a supporter of Sigstr! If you’d like to stay in the loop with announcements like these, be sure to subscribe to our newsletter!
The Next Web, commonly referred to as TNW, has been sharing, inventing and advancing tech developments since 2006. The website offers a wealth of information for tech companies of all shapes and sizes, and has become a trusted source for how-tos, tech updates, and much more.
We recently ran across a TNW article, authored by Ritika Puri, entitled, “5 content distribution channels you might be overlooking”. In today’s B2B SaaS world – and for many tech companies in general – content has become king. For companies to survive and grow in today’s market, they must be seen as trusted advisors and thought leaders in their space, producing genuine content that helps the user or executive not only understand the product or service, but the industry as a whole.
According to a recent study conducted by The Guardian, 41% of people (and 33% of millennials, those aged 18-34 years old) claim to feel overwhelmed by the sheer wealth of choice on the internet. According to another study, the average attention span in 2012 was eight seconds. Even goldfish are easier to engage. Their attention spans? Nine seconds. In today’s digital work with so much content being produced by thousands of companies each day, the difficult part of content marketing (besides, of course, creating incredible content in the first place), is finding channels where your content will be noticed by your target audience.
In this TNW article, Ritika outlines 5 content distribution channels you might be missing. Ready to check them out?
1. Sales and Customer Success teams
According to Ritika, “Client managers and deal-closers are the crucial link between your company and the outside world. These team members are constantly in the field, solving your customers’ most crucial problems.”
“Sales reps and account managers spend the bulk of their days building relationships and fielding inbound questions,” says Ritika. She explains that content can help by providing the ultimate conversation starter.
Marketers can work with their companies’ sales masterminds to:
Pinpoint content ideas from incoming questions.
Distribute material: Build content into ongoing conversations such as the email signature (which we’ll touch on in the next “Email” section) — this process facilitates relationship-building at scale.
2. Email
Company blogs are everywhere, so it’s highly unlikely that your audience will be checking your blog each day for updates.
But according to Ritika, email is an invaluable channel for reaching — and engaging these audiences 1:1. “When you publish a blog post, send your audience a short and sweet notification,” she explains. “You can monitor peaks in unsubscribe rates to avoid spamming people.”
There’s no need to worry about visuals or an over-the-top newsletter. Just prioritize the basics in the form of:
Your great content.
A link back to the entire article on your block.
Useful Tip: In addition to using email to communicate content, also think about the email signature. Email signatures have been getting much more attention over the past year as marketers and companies of all shapes and sizes are beginning to see email signatures examples as an important marketing asset. The employee email signature is quite possibly the #1 place where your company’s brand is viewed most often – maybe even more than your company website!
Consider this statistic: on average, an employee will send approximately 10,000 emails each year, so a company of 100 employees will send 1M emails per year and a company of 500 employees will send 5M emails a year! Can you see how this channel can play an important role in your marketing mix? According to a recent article by OfficeTeam, it may be one of the most overlooked marketing channels.
Here’s one of many email signatures examples that can be found promoting content:
3. Content syndication
“Is your blog audience relatively small?” Ritika asks. “As a new content marketer, you may feel overwhelmed by the challenge of building a reader-base from the ground up.”
Ritika explains that one solution is to amplify the reach of your content by syndicating it with other blogs or media channels:
Step 1:Build relationships with relevant blogs, brands, or publishers
Step 2:Pitch content regularly
Step 3:Return the favor – exchange value for value
Ritika explains that, “It’s important not to syndicate just for the sake of getting your post out there, but target it to the audience that will benefit most from your content.”
4. Good old fashioned networks
Don’t have a social media following? Don’t worry about it. “It’s likely that you’re involved with organizations — alumni groups, business associations, or networking events — that are distribution hubs,” says Ritika.
One solution is to reach out to these connections and ask them to support your content via social media. “Make sure to emphasize why this content would be valuable or inspirational to the group’s audience,” she says.
5. LinkedIn influencers
LinkedIn recently released its influencer program to the public. Today, it’s possible for any member to self-publish, syndicate, and distribute content on the platform, or even use LinkedIn Sponsored Updates as a paid content promotion channel.
Here’s a recent example of how Sigstr uses the LinkedIn Updates features to share content:
The Major Takeaway:
Find new channels for content distribution that aren’t widely used by others in your industry. If you simply promote your content the way every other company does, it will be nearly impossible to ensure your content is noticed.
Thanks again to Ritika for sharing great examples of how companies can cut through the content marketing clutter.
For more email signatures examples, check out our latest resource below:
As someone who spent the first several years of her career working in a corporate cubicle, the idea of joining a start-up was intriguing. Like many, I wondered if Hollywood’s depiction of the quintessential start-up had any truth to it. In fact, the week before I joined Sigstr, I remember watching an episode of Silicon Valley and thinking it couldn’t possibly be realistic. As it turns out, the start-up perception isn’t that far from reality. Read on to discover three truths and one lie the world has been told about life at a tech start-up.
TRUTH: Offices are open and casual
The Sigstr office is completely open, adorned with a bright green wall, trendy artwork, and an assortment of desks that are frequently rearranged to make room for our growing team. The thought of cubicles lining our walls is almost laughable. Personal space is not a concept we are particularly familiar with.From my seat, I can easily communicate with anyone in any department. While distractions are frequent, we benefit immensely from the increased level of collaboration.
Scattered about the office, there are a number of items that give the place “character”.In the last few months, almost the entire team has invested in standing desks – partially because we care about out health and partially to fit in. We also own a basketball hoop, popcorn machine, nose whistle, and desk elliptical. Our attire? Take a peak in the dev room and there’s a 100% chance at least one person is wearing a tech tee. In short, we have mastered the “tech” look and are proud of it.
TRUTH: Business is fast-paced and ever-changing
The biggest adjustment I had when moving from a large corporation to a start-up was the pace. Change is rapid at Sigstr, especially in relation to the technology behind our email signature generator. Instead of having to tell customers features won’t be available until next year, we make monumental improvements to the Sigstr application every single day. It’s exciting, overwhelming, and highly satisfying.
To keep up with our evolving email signature generator, employee roles and the Sigstr business model constantly adjust as well. We all wear multiple hats. For example, I’m a Customer Success Manager, but I frequently join sales calls, create product marketing content, and write articles for our blog. As a Sigstr employee, there are endless opportunities to gain experience in a variety of areas.
TRUTH: Every employee matters
The benefit, or perhaps consequence, of being part of a small team is that everyone is expected to contribute in a big way. In a large company, it’s easy to get lost in the shuffle. At a start-up, every employee has a voice and every individual has the potential to make a lasting impression. It may sound like a line out of an HR pamphlet, but at Sigstr, everyone matters.
To drive the point home, employee impact isn’t limited to each individual’s functional area. There has been multiple scenarios where I’ve suggested application updates to our Product Team and they’ve taken my opinion into consideration. There’s no red tape. No bureaucracy. Just team members working together to create a better email signature generator.
LIE: It’s all fun and games
At the end of last quarter, Sigstr hosted our first ever Sigstr Field Day. The company spent half of a Friday playing whiffle ball and other miscellaneous games. It was glorious. That evening, I told a friend about my day at work. She rolled her eyes and joked about the “difficulty” of my job. While the teasing was lighthearted, the problem was that my friend didn’t know the whole story. Sigstr Field Day was created in celebration of the fact that we had exceeded quarterly goals. Ironically, the day was the RESULT of hard work and dedication. The Sigstr team may have a lot of fun, but the company’s success is always our number one priority.
Beyond the hard work, there’s also a high level of uncertainty in working for a start-up. Sigstr has proven it is a viable business, however, there is a certain level of ambiguity in ongoing strategy and direction. Hard-hitting questions are asked every day. What’s our next step? What features are the most important? Are we targeting the right people? Should we go in a new direction? As a result, big decisions are made that impact the whole team. Anxiety certainly ensues. The only solace is to have faith in the vision and experience of our leadership team.
At the end of the day, working for a start-up is an incredibly challenging, yet rewarding experience. I feel confident in saying that all of my teammates feel lucky to be contributing to the success and growth of Sigstr and our email signature generator. For anyone looking to work hard, diversify their skill-set, and make an impact, the start-up lifestyle might just be the golden ticket.
Interested in joining the Sigstr team? We’re hiring! Check out our open positions here.
B2B Growth is a podcast dedicated to helping B2B executives achieve explosive growth. Run by Sweet Fish Media, which executes B2B sales processes on companies’ behalf, the B2B Growth Podcast hits on relevant topics including “Email List Building or Segmentation?”, “Sales Call Horror Stories”, “Account-based Intelligence”, and many more topics important to B2B executives.
Did you know the average employee sends 10,000 emails per year? That’s 28 emails per day, or 28 daily impressions that prospects, customers, and users are having with your brand. Email signature etiquetteis massively important and an easy win to tackle. In this post, we’ll highlight some of Dan’s key points, but be sure to check out the entire podcast to learn more. Let’s hear what Dan has to say:
How is Email Signature Marketing Defined?
According to Dan, “Anything in terms of marketing starts with the audience and reach. The most frequent touchpoint prospects and customers have with a brand is through the email channel. The average employee sends at least 28 emails a day, so an organization of just 100 employees will send about 1M emails to their most important audience. And what does every email include? An email signature.”
Dan explains that there are 2 critical components to email signature etiquette:
An on-brand experience across every employee, which includes traditional information like name, company, and contact information.
A meaningful call-to-action that takes advantage of the white space that’s underutilized to promote your company’s most important initiatives. Marketers can inject content into that area that gives them the ability to update employee email signatures without bugging employees and taking them away from their day-to-day work.
Awesome Customer Stories
SalesLoft: “One of the best use cases for Sigstr has traditionally been event marketing,” explained Dan. “As SalesLoft was preparing for its upcoming annual conference, all employees included a Sigstr Campaign which promoted Rainmaker. The team was already pouring their hearts into the event, so it was easy to integrate Sigstr in the marketing mix.”
Lesson.ly: “The hard part about sales is getting the attention of prospects,” Dan explained. “Often times Lesson.ly doesn’t even meet the customer’s team in-person before they come on board. Lesson.ly has an incredible culture that’s fun, energetic, and pretty unique, but often times their customers don’t get to experience that. The Sigstr Campaign for Lesson.ly includes a fun ‘Meet the Team’ image, which points to a blog post that talks about the Lesson.ly culture and how important that is to their mission. Just a few weeks after launching the Campaign, the sales team already had 3 companies raise their hand for that initial conversation, as tracked via the Sigstr Campaign. From those 3 opportunities alone, the team was able to track $30,000 in new business dollars generated by the campaign.”
How Can the Entire Company Become Marketers?
“At Sigstr, we believe each role across the company has a marketing responsibility,” explained Dan. “Whether you’re on the HR team recruiting for a career fair or on the sales team promoting a new video or case study, everyone is involved. With Sigstr, the marketer can determine which Campaigns should be associated to which groups or departments so employees always have a Sigstr Campaign promoting something they care about.”
What Advice Do You Have For Companies Experimenting?
“Start experimenting now, whether you invest in a tool or not,” recommended Dan. “Why not try standardizing your email signature etiquette and including an image and call-to-action? First and foremost, find out if it works for your company. The best thing you can do is experiment and try out various Campaigns.”
Click herefor the full rundown of the podcast (including the recording).
In conjunction with the theme ofa recent postfrom our CEO, Dan Hanrahan, featuring Sigstr’s very first product launch dubbed “Tequila Cinco”, and the beginning of frozen margarita season (otherwise referred to as “summer”), I thought this topic was not only warranted but necessary.
I digress.
Why are email signatures similar to tequila?
Let’s say that you had one bad experience with it and now you never want anything to do with it ever again. Sound familiar?
Why? Let’s explore what could have caused a poor first experience and see how we can remedy your aversion to tequila (and email signatures).
1. You went with the cheap stuff.
If you are looking for a pain-free experience, you need to stick with top shelf products. In a recent blog post by George Easton entitled “Make Gmail Company Signatures Easy with Sigstr”, Easton states that Sigstr’s “simplicity, more full-featured marketing Campaigns, and excellent phone support with a personal touch” makes Sigstr a top shelf product in the professional email signature templates realm.
2. You did too much too fast.
A simple Google search for “cool email signatures”, “best email signatures” or “email signature examples” will yield upwards of 800,000 results. If you take inspiration from several different examples, you may end up with an email signature with multiple fonts, cursive sign offs, inspirational quotes, social icons, logos, images and hyperlinks, which are overwhelming when used all together. We have created a best practices document that will have you setting up professional email signature templates in no time.
3. You didn’t ask for help.
I am no stranger to the “I must do everything myself” logic. I have never read a manual or a “how to” guide. Learn by doing. I get it.
However, do not leave your organization’s email signatures up to chance. Our goal is to simplify the process and provide our customers with consistently branded, rock star email signatures.Updating employee signatures is notoriously time-consuming and compliance is not guaranteed. Sigstr has built a powerful tool to maintain consistent branding, manage all contact information and ensure total compliance. In addition, we have assembled a team of absolute customer success savants (bartenders) to assist in the creation and management of your professional email signatures templates (top shelf tequila).
Our client success team exists to help you pick out the perfect tequila for you that best compliments your specific wants and needs (and help you finish the bottle, too, if you so choose to share). We have our very own Email Signature Designer, Michael, that will help you find the best format for your brand and build out incredible, eye-catching call-to-action campaigns that unlock the powerful marketing potential your employees emails hold. You can check out some of Michaels incredible designs here.
4. You forgot the lime and salt.
Email signatures by themselves are like tequila without the lime and salt. For us, our lime and salt is our Campaign piece. Sigstr Campaigns allow you to highlight your latest marketing content in every touch point your employees have with your customers, prospects, peers and vendors alike through your most vital channel of communication: 1 to 1 emails. Sigstr, much like the combination of tequila + lime + salt, is the perfect combination of a cohesively branded signature and an engaging call-to-action campaign. After initial setup, any Campaign you create will automatically update across your entire organization anytime a new Campaign is activated. Need some Campaign inspiration? Here are some of my favorites:
So when you’re contemplating taking another sip of email signature marketing, remember this:
Spend the extra cash and invest in a top shelf product. It will save you the headache and you will feel better about your decision tomorrow when your entire organization has beautiful, consistently branded professional email signature templates.
Don’t overindulge – skip the Comic Sans and the hot pink inspirational quote. Keep your signature sleek and simple.
Ask for help – our client success team can help you build out a comprehensive email signature design that works best for your team.
Don’t forget the lime and salt. An eye-catching call-to-action design transforms your email signature from a place holder to a new marketing channel. Capitalize on this previously unused space by implementing Sigstr Campaigns.
See how organizations like A&A have achieved 20x ROI after implementing professional email signature templates with Sigstr:check out their case study here.
And if you need a new recipe for your next tequila drink, check out the “Sigstrita”.
With email being one of the most prominent (if not the most prominent) forms of communication today, it’s easy to take for granted. Often times we use the email channel as a quick method of communicating and responding, and forget that email isn’t the same as having a face to face conversation with someone. Take this scenario from a recent HubSpot article for example:
Imagine the following conversation at a party:
Person 1: Cool party, huh? My name’s Scott.
Person 2: Hey man, nice to meet you.
Person 1: Do you work around here?
Person 2: Yeah, right by the bay actually.
Person 1: Nice, well I’m going to say hi to the host.
Person 2: Catch you around!
Person 1: You too. My name’s Scott.
… ?
Scott Tousley, the article’s author, points out that Person 2 is probably thinking, you just introduced yourself, and now you’re ending the conversation by introducing yourself again? This weird interaction is what Scott pictures in his head every time he sees someone include their email address in their email signature. He points out that it couldn’t possibly be good email etiquette… right?
This is just one of the many email signature mistakes we all make all too often. So what are the rest? We’re glad you asked, because we’ll uncover some favorites from HubSpot’s email mistakes post:
1. Including your email address
According to Scott, including your email address in the signature is the ultimate insult. We completely agree. It’s hard enough to condense down the email signature, so why add unnecessary items? You might as well say:
p.s. Just in case you’re totally oblivious to how email works, here is my email address at the bottom of my email from the email address you just received this email from.
Thanks,
Captain Redundancy
2. Including a fax number
This probably doesn’t even need an explanation. When was the last time you actually used a fax machine? According to Scott, most people aren’t still living in 1994 and sending faxes. Or 1894 and riding horses to work. Enough said.
3. Leaving “Sent from my iPhone” as the default signature
We love Scott’s explanation here, and couldn’t agree more. To mobile phone users, this means “Yes, I’m capable of grammar and spell checking. But I’m on my iPhone, so that means rules don’t apply to me. Oh yeah and if I call you jerk instead of Jack, yes, that’s my AutoCorrect. Deal with it!”
Instead, proofread (at least once or twice) as you would on a desktop computer and eliminate the need to call out that you’re sending from an iPhone.
4. Listing every social media profile
It’s true that listing too many social media profiles is overdone. Scott comments that, “No one is going to click every single social media icon. Instead, focus only on the accounts that matter most to growing your business or building your personal brand.”
5. Not including your phone number
There are two professional ways to get in touch with people, according to Scott:
Email
Phone
They obviously have the first because they are receiving your email, but don’t forget the second.
6. Forgetting an international prefix if you have international clients
If you work with international folks, Scott recommends including the prefix for your country’s code. For example, the United States code is +1. The code for Brazil is +55.
7. Using a corny quote
We see this all too often, and apparently Scott does, too. “Keep the inspirational quotes on Pinterest and Tumblr, not in email signatures.” Well said, Scott!
Are you guilty of some of these email signature crimes? It’s okay, we can help.
For marketers, keeping the brand consistent across all employees can be a major struggle. Sigstr‘s html email signature generator helps marketers create the best email signatures for their employees, which can be easily implemented and automatically updated.
Sigstr offers marketers complete brand control of employee email signatures with fonts, formatting, color, social links and more through its integration with Gmail and Microsoft Outlook. Insert a Sigstr Campaign (graphical call-to-action) into the html email signature generator to utilize every employee’s email signature as a targeted marketing opportunity. Sigstr gives marketers the opportunity to promote the company’s most important initiatives or content, such as events, press, case studies, ebooks, job openings and much more.
Ready to get started with the power of an html email signature generator to help you and your company eliminate these common mistakes? Check out the most recent Sigstr resource:
HubSpot has built an amazing business around the power of inbound. The power of creating helpful content to power inbound leads. Today, marketers pour their hearts (and budgets) into creating incredible content, and Sigstr injects that content into your employee email signature – the most frequent point of interaction with customers and prospects.
Back in April, I wrote a blog post about how to pump Sigstr metrics into HubSpot to measure the overall impact a Sigstr campaign has on your company’s objectives. Objectives like driving more traffic to your website or increasing exposure to a specific piece of content. And then even generating more leads for a Marketing campaign.
Yes, I am a Sigstr team member (so I may be biased in that regard), but first and foremost I’m a digital marketer. From that perspective, I can tell you this is something I use everyday because of its impact.
At Sigstr, we’re all about making life easy. We use employee email – which reaches a higher volume of targeted contacts than any other medium – and then take advantage of otherwise unused real estate inside, your marketing is organically exposed to thousands more impressions. And the metrics in Sigstr measure the effectiveness, so you can make changes based on science, not on “feeling.” Pumping your Sigstr metrics into HubSpot helps you, as a marketer, see how your prospects, contacts or even current customers are interacting with your brand through employee email.
It’s amazing what my team and I’ve been able to do by using Sigstr + HubSpot together. After mentioning this to our Product team, they realized the overlap between the two and decided to productize it.
In my first post, I gave you a quick rundown on how to manually connect Sigstr to HubSpot. Now, it’s even easier and the connection can be made in Sigstr!
Here’s how it works:
1. After clicking “Create Campaign”, uploading my image, and appropriately labeling my Sigstr campaign, I then clicked on “Connect To Platform”.
2. After clicking “Connect To Platform,” a box popped up asking if I would like to connect to HubSpot.
3. Then, I logged into my HubSpot account and clicked “Grant Access.”
4. Now I can see HubSpot goodness flowing right into Sigstr. In the Sigstr campaign, I can access the full list of landing pages I’ve created in HubSpot.
5. Rather than manually copying/pasting in my HubSpot landing page URL, it automatically populates within my Sigstr campaign.
Remember that image of the funnel at the top of this post? Here are the first two parts. Track total email signature displays and clicks within Sigstr.
Track unique landing page visits, contacts gained, and customers won within HubSpot. With these three metrics, along with your metrics in Sigstr, you have a full picture of how prospects, contacts and customers are interacting with your professional email signature format and just how much impact this can have as an additional digital marketing channel.
The awesome people at HubSpot preach the importance of landing pages and how each one should be connected to a HubSpot campaign – which is what we do here at Sigstr. And so, by connecting my Sigstr campaign to the right HubSpot landing page, I can connect the two and see the impact of employee email signatures within a specific HubSpot campaign.
Investing in simple tools that help make your life easier is important to digital marketers. We like things easy, efficient and effective. So tracking metrics to prove that it’s working is important, too. (And effective marketing makes you look good in front of your boss.)
Sigstr helps you (easily) manage your professional email signature format and opens up a new channel to promote your content. From attracting visitors to closing customers, HubSpot brings your entire marketing funnel together. Put these two together and some pretty cool things can happen.
Want to see more? Here’s a tutorial video that walks you through each step:
Risking it all at an incredible speed. Why go 245 mph, weaving in and out of other cars, and inches away from a concrete wall? For the incredible reward. For the thrill of the ride (and hopefully a nice glass of milk after it’s over).
It’s May. It’s Indianapolis. It’s the largest single day sporting event in the world (350,000 fans), the Indy 500. Growing up with superheroes like Rahal Andretti, Unser, and Hinchcliffe (my son’s hero) makes Indy natives admire those that risk it all for huge rewards. It’s in our DNA, and a part of the reason why Indy has a thriving marketing tech start-up world.
The risks are different, no doubt. But the principles of joining a SaaS startup are similar. Calculated risk, going really fast, trusting your team, and believing that the journey and ultimate reward are worth it. Thanks to the Sigstr team who believe in the journey and that we will ultimately finish first.
The best drivers have the best teachers. It’s why there are multiple generations of Andretti’s and Unser’s. Thanks to our investors and advisors who meet with us, guide us, and support the Sigstr family.
I’d like to dish out a few more thanks. First, to the Indiana Pacers, for being a great Sigstr customer and hosting my Dad and I at the speedway for a practice day.
Thanks to another Sigstr customer, Arrow Electronics, for sponsoring James Hinchcliffe (and for creating awesome email signatures)!
Thanks to the Indy 500 for giving us superheroes and injecting the fascination of speed and big rewards into our DNA.
As a company or organization in the business services realm, you have a unique challenge as you don’t have a physical product. Instead, you have superior services or solutions and you rely heavily on the relationships that your sales and customer success teams build. You have created a successful company on your people and your brand and both of these are very important to you.
We wrote an ebook that covers 7 clever tips to boost your business services brand with an email signature builder, and today we’ll highlight the last tip, #7.
What will make customers or clients select your company versus your competitors? Most choose the service provider that offers the greatest value for their money. In many competitive markets, theres price parity among the principal players. So the best way to win business is not to cut your prices or rates, but instead add products or services that elevate your offer (making it too good to resist). This is called bundling.
Take time to develop a service bundle that you know will appeal to your best prospects. You may need to test various offers until you find a winning combination; then modify your offer periodically to keep your incentives fresh.
Ready for the Clever Tip?
When was the last time you received a well packaged, branded box with useful information and beneficial tools inside? Our point exactly. While online advertising can be effective, many companies have completely forgotten about the time-tested offline methods such as direct mail marketing. Heres why your business services company should give it a try:
According to a study conducted by DMA, when direct mail is sent to an existing customer the response rate is 3.4%. The response rate for email is 0.12%.
This week’s clever tip is brought to you by Sigstr. Ready to get started with the power of an email signature builder? Sign up for Sigstr and start your free 30-day trial today.
The average worker will send more than 10,000 emails this year. And next year. And probably more the one after that. That means your company of 200 employees is sending over two million emails each year. Usually, when you’re doing something that often, you want to make sure you’re actually doing it right. But as we work to hone our messaging – adding the right amount of humor paired with an amped up value prop – we’re forgetting to optimize one crucial piece: the employee email signature.
This is one of the most visible representations of your brand – likely even more so than your company’s website. So why are we allowing our this digital real estate to include cheesy quotes and bad avatar photos?
Our Role in Marketing is Changing
We’re creating ideas (on and offline), executing them through fruition, measuring our analytics, optimizing our programs and improving conversion rates. And if that’s not enough on our plate, now we’re tasked with managing how every employee across our company represents the brand image we’ve worked so hard to create. And because social media – especially Facebook – is so pervasive, that responsibility seems to increase daily.
To this fusion of responsibility, add a touch of technology which have made it easy for employees to share your branded messages. One-to-one human email, for instance, has been on the up and up for years. Last year, more than 215.3 billion emails were exchanged every single day. And research predicts we’ll be exchanging 257.7 billion emails a day by 2020. The email signature is more important and more valuable than ever.
Proper Etiquette for Your Email Signature
In your workplace tech toolbox, your email signature is often taken for granted. So many first impressions are made through email, and your email signature is your chance to shape that impression. OfficeTeam’s overview, Email Signature Etiquette: The Good, The Bad & The Unnecessary, sits on par with our own best practices.
The Good
According to business etiquette expert Jacqueline Whitmore, a sender’s contact information is the most important part of the email signature. Your recipient needs the ability to quickly access ways to reach you. And they need direction on what it is you want them to do. To ensure your information is always available include these:
Your full name
Your phone number (office or mobile)
A single, clear call-to-action
The following information is also helpful, but not always necessary:
Your company name & website
Your firm’s mailing address
Social media links to either your company or personal accounts
When it comes to your email signature, less is often more. Nix an abundance of flare from your signature to cut clutter and make your information standout and readily available. Here are a few elements to cut from your signature:
Inconsistent fonts and colors: Avoid too many colors and font styles. An abundance of varying typography in your email signature can undermine your credibility as a serious professional.
Inspirational quotes: Inspirational quotes are a fantastic way to show your personality – on your Pinterest board. Some may give off a conflicting message from your brand’s stance, while others just simply make you cringe after reading it.
Additional messages: “Please consider the environment before printing this email,” is a nice sentiment, but it just clogs up a space you could be using to inspire your recipient to act. And it doesn’t do a ton of good when someone’s reading a print of your email. Not to mention, the default, “Sent from my iPhone,” signature is showing your recipient you’re just too lazy to proofread.
Sigstr turns your company’s email into a targeted marketing channel that help drive event registrations, distribute content, execute account-based marketing, and more. Side note: If you book a quick demo with one of our team members, we’ll send you some sweet Sigstr sticker goodness.
Business services companies all face the unique challenge of not having a physical product. Instead, they offer superior services or solutions and rely heavily on the relationships that their sales and customer success teams build. They have created a successful company on their people and brand, and as such, their brand is incredibly important to them.
Sigstr created an ebook that walks through 7 clever ways to boost the business services brand with a polished html email signature template, and today we’ll highlight clever tip #6.
Clever Tip #6: Keep the Relationships Alive With Communication
It costs considerably less to keep a customer than to win a new one, so it’s smart to maintain a campaign to upsell or resell to existing customers. In fact if you’re not communicating with your customer database at least every four to six weeks, you’re missing opportunities to grow your business. Use a combination of sales and marketing tactics to stay in touch, such as alternating sales calls with email and direct mail. Even with the best of offers, you can burn out your list if you pitch customers too often. So rather than sending only communications with hard-sell offers, intersperse them with e-newsletters that contain case studies or other soft-sell but relevant and valuable information.
Make a habit of periodically using your marketing communications to ask for referrals. You can email a success story, for example, and ask the recipients to forward it to friends or peers who would like to achieve similar results. Or, promote your referral program in your html email signature template (a little more on that later). By providing deep information about your company for new customers and ongoing offers and communications with existing customers, you’ll create a synergistic campaign that builds strong and lasting relationships.
Ready for the Clever Tip?
Consider adopting a simple marketing automation software platform designed for marketing departments and organizations to more effectively market on multiple channels online (such as email, social media, website, and etc) and automate repetitive tasks. Marketing departments benefit by specifying criteria and outcomes for tasks and processes which increases efficiency and reduces human error. The use of a marketing automation platform is to streamline sales and marketing organizations by replacing high-touch, repetitive manual processes with automated solutions.
Sales development representatives, sales reps, and account executives rely on email more than any other role in your organization. If your sales or SDR team uses SalesLoft Cadence for email communications, you may want to consider an integration with Sigstr.
SalesLoft Cadence drives incredible efficiencies and visibility to the SDR process. Sigstr helps you get more out of Cadence and every email your employees send. As with any email, Cadence messages often close with an email signature. Sigstr ensures every email signature in Cadence, Gmail, or Outlook is consistent and includes a demand generation call-to-action. Analytics within Sigstr help you see how prospects and contacts are interacting with your email signature examples.
The best part? The Sigstr + SalesLoft integration requires minimal configuration. Watch the video below to see how the magic happens:
Through the Sigstr API, SalesLoft aligns to your Sigstr account and user profiles. Using the user email address as the common identifier, SalesLoft applies an individual signature to his/her SalesLoft signature settings.
To enable the integration, first navigate to your SalesLoft settings. Then, to your integrations tab. Once in the integrations section, simply use the toggle button to activate the users. Once active, each user’s SalesLoft Cadence signature settings will automatically be updated with a Sigstr signature and campaign.
As you can see, this integration can make your email sending incredibly efficient. Personalized and sincere emails are key when communicating with prospects. Lesson.ly, a learning management platform, uses this integration as an integral part of their process. Sending hundreds of email per day through SalesLoft Cadence, Lesson.ly harnesses the power of Sigstr with no added effort. Once a Sigstr campaign is created, the administrator applies it to one or all members of Lesson.ly’s sales team, and the campaigns and signature instantly appear in Cadence.
Does your company rely on your employees to promote your most important initiatives, or to ensure their email signatures are always up-to-date with your brand standards? While some employees may be careful to curate the perfect message and will use the correct brand standards, that’s usually not the case. Asking employees to manually update their email signature template pulls them away from their primary job. It’s a distraction, and every update request costs your employees time and your company money. At the same time, your employees may not even know how or where to begin.
That’s why we’re taking you back to school with an ebook that’s focused on the math, history, and science of email signatures, ensuring your company is putting this valuable resource to use.
Math
A single employee will send (on average) 28 emails per day or 10,000 emails annually. Each of those emails represent an opportunity to drive brand awareness and engagement. Let’s say your company has just 100 employees – that’s 1 million impressions a year! What if your company has 500 employee or 5,000? The number of impressions pile up quickly.
Why not use your gmail signature template to promote your newsletter, success stories, past projects, events, or new diverse service or product offerings?
History
Most of us are familiar with the dreaded company-wide email that we’ve received far too many times. That email includes a list of items each employee in your company needs to do. On average, it likely takes your employees about 5 minutes each to update their email signatures. Add up your number of employees and that’s a lot of precious company time spent on just updating their email signatures. Maybe this process seems ridiculous to you, but for many companies, this is still how they have to operate.
According to this ChiefMarTech.com graphic, the marketing technology landscape is continuing to evolve and change. In just 5 years, it has become entirely different for the world of marketers. But some categories have remained the same – “Email Marketing” has grown significantly. This is a result of employee email continuing to be such a staple in today’s business world and this important business channel won’t be slowing down anytime soon (just ask Gary Vaynerchuk about it).
Science
We’ve all seen a few doozy email signatures, and maybe we’ve even been guilty of some of the no-no’s: Comic Sans font, multi-color rainbow colors, inspirational quotes, 10 links to social media accounts, etc. The science behind a great email signature is surprisingly simple. Here are some tips:
The Do’s
Keep it simple and to the point
Include basic contact information that’s not overwhelming
Use a clean, eye-catching design
The Don’ts
Inspirational quotes
A reiteration of the sender’s email address (often hyperlinked)
Too many fonts
Too much text, period
As you can see, a lot of thought and strategy can go into an email signature format. It can be overwhelming, but we’re to help! Download your complimentary copy of the ebook, “Back to School on Email Signatures” as a navigation guide through the world of professional email signatures. We think you’ll enjoy it. Maybe laugh at a few bad examples, and find some inspiration for your own email signature in our “trophy case”.
Let us know what you think – we’d love to hear your feedback! We always enjoy listening to new ideas and seeing cool designs. And if we can help in any way, feel free to reach out! Request a demo or sign up for a free trial here.
So, you’re a startup or company that’s scaling up with a Marketing team that wears 1,000 different hats. Your Marketing budget is small (but mighty!) and you need to fill the funnel with quality leads that can convert. Have no fear, Product Hunt just released the ultimate Marketing stack for startups. This list includes all the tools you need to build your best startup Marketing strategy – we recommend taking a look.
Here are a few of our favorites:
Pexels – Need free stock photos? Here is your new best friend
Lead Pages – Landing page generator built for conversions
If you’re not familiar with Product Hunt, here’s the lowdown:
Product Hunt surfaces the best new products, every day. It’s a place for product-loving enthusiasts to share and geek out about the latest mobile apps, website, hardware projects, and tech creations. Read more here.
We’re big fans and have been on Product Hunt for almost a year now. Our listing can be found here. As you can see, it’s a great platform for checking out recommendations from your peers. It’s also a way to interact and drive great discussions with your current customers.
Email signatures in your Marketing strategy
We’re also grateful to be included in their Marketing tech stack for startups. If you’re a startup, a company growing fast and scaling up, or even a bigger organization, Sigstr is a great way to ensure brand consistency and unlock a powerful marketing channel in your email signature design.
For a Marketing team that doesn’t have a lot of time in the day, Sigstr is simple to use and takes less than 5 minutes to set up. Easily update your email signature design and include a Campaign banner to highlight your latest marketing content or most important company initiatives. Sigstr prevents any headaches your Marketing Director may have over controlling the brand in employees’ email signatures (there’s always that one guy with the comic sans font and corny inspirational quote).
We recommend checking out all of the tools mentioned in Product Hunt’s Marketing tech stack. If email signatures are a part of your Marketing strategy, and how you can use them as a new channel for lead generation, let us know how we can help! Or, try it yourself for free with a 30-day free trial.
For more inspiration on your email signature design, check out this latest resource:
If you are a business services company, you have a unique challenge. You don’t have a physical product, instead you offer superior services or solutions and you rely heavily on the relationships that your sales and customer success teams build. Your company’s success was built on the people you recruited and brand you worked so hard to build, and as such, both are incredibly important to you.
We have created an ebook that details 7 clever ways to boost your business services brand with cool email signatures, and today we’ll highlight clever tip #5.
Good relationships are built on trust. So its natural that customers want to learn as much as they can about your company and the people that stand behind it. For instance, your customers tend to look for deeper information when deciding on which company or service to choose, and the vast majority do research on the web before making a purchase. Having a complete company website is a smart and affordable way to convey in-depth information about your service business.
Showcase your service benefits on the main page, just as you would in an effective company brochure. Include your companys story, photos, staff bios and affiliations. And show how well your company delivers on its promises by providing testimonials, case studies or work samples. Most importantly, give your visitors a way to reach out to your company. Include an info@ email address, forms where they can learn more about your services, and content they can download in exchange for a few pieces of information (such as name, company, and email address).
Ready for the Clever Tip?
Did you know 80% of buyers start their search online? It is and will be more vital than ever to have a compelling and appealing presence online. Many search engines display local search results allowing customers to connect to businesses locally; which is much easier than competing with major websites in the same industry. In addition, mobile applications are becoming more popular, with the ability to suggest businesses based upon your location or search results.
This week’s clever tip is brought to you by Sigstr. Ready to start creating your own cool email signatures? Sign up for Sigstr and start your free 30-day trial today.
Please excuse my typos. Not because I’m sending from my mobile (by the way…please consider removing that from your email signature :)) but because I might have had too good of a time last night. 3 hours of sleep…but a big smile on my face.
Why?
Opportunity. Salesforce Connections day 2 is getting started. I feel like day 1 ended a few minutes ago. Much obliged Stevie Wonder, Meehan’s Irish Pub, Gibney’s Irish Pub (are you sensing a theme here?).
For the 8 of us here from Sigstr, there is literally no place in the world we’d rather be.
Marketers create leverage by building incredible brands and creating useful content.
There are 5,000 of the world’s smartest digital marketers in Atlanta.
So for me, and for Sigstr, you might as well try to get 20 hours out of every day here. On day 1 alone:
3 hours later, the expo hall is waking up to Jimi Hendrix pumping on the sound system. It’s what happened in Indy at the ExactTarget Connections events (anyone remember 3am at Steak and Shake – thanks Scott Dorsey!)
In my first job out of college, I worked for a hard charging bulldog, Ryan Hasbrook, at a two man startup called Brooksource (now hundreds of employees and a Salesforce customer). I learned that many of the best opportunities happen at Irish pubs after midnight. I also learned that the other best opportunities happen at 7am the next morning.
“If you’re a man (or woman) by night, you’re a man (or woman) by day,” was what Ryan told me.
As a 22 year old, that meant an opportunity to jumpstart my career. Today, if I leave my family for 72 hours, you better believe I’m going to find the opportunity. With this many smart marketers in one place, one conversation can change everything.
Come say hi and see some professional email signature examples. Our team rocks, and you’ll be happy to know them.
Author: Scott Dorsey, Managing Partner of High Alpha
High Alpha is a venture studio that conceives, launches, and scales next-generation enterprise cloud and SaaS companies.
Good luck to Scott McCorkle and all of my friends with the Salesforce Marketing Cloud this week as they prepare to launch Connections 2016! I have always loved Connections – the conference brings together the best digital marketers in the world to learn, share, be inspired, innovate and celebrate together.
So many incredible highlights over the years – Subscribers Rule!, Malcolm Gladwell, Sir Richard Branson, Michael J. Fox, Dr. Condoleezza Rice, Soledad O’Brien, Jim Collins, Indianapolis Symphony, Train, The Fray, Steak and Shake at 3am, Imagine Dragons and many more.
This week, I am excited to see Sigstr (one of our newest High Alpha companies) exhibit at Connections and plug into this dynamic and vibrant marketing ecosystem. Sigstr is a next generation marketing tech company focused on the often-overlooked and very powerful channel of 1-to-1 employee email communications.
Sigstr enables marketers to standardize professional email signatures (so important for brand consistency) and leverage the precious real estate of 1-to-1 employee emails to promote events, white papers, job openings, new products and much more. Marketers can manage these campaigns with segmentation tools, powerful analytics and enterprise controls.
I am very excited to see what the best marketers in the world can do with the Sigstr technology!
Our VP of Product, Sam Smith, had only been at Sigstr for a few weeks. From what I remember, I believe he thought I was crazy. I liked Sam a lot, but I had no idea if he was writing code or just logging into Hacker Typer all day. This was one year ago today.
Sam’s first project was releasing groups into the Sigstr email signatures product. At that point, we had campaigns only and one size fits all. No control for email signature templates, very basic Outlook/Google integrations, no groups, limited UX, and so on. Groups was the #1 most requested feature from our first 25 customers, so we built it. It was a game changer (but at this point only in concept as Sam had not launched his first release).
On Quatro de Mayo, Scott Dorsey and Eric Tobias (our friends at High Alpha – at which point both High Alpha and Sigstr were brand new together) asked what we were doing to name the release. ExactTarget and iGoDigital were amazing companies these guys built and led. They always named their releases – it was a fun culture thing and helped as we talked about what happened in which release.
Sam quickly realized the next day was Cinco de Mayo. After approximately 8 seconds of deliberation, we had a nomenclature for our releases:
booze | number
1 second later, the release was dubbed Tequila Cinco. Clearly, that was the last time Scott or Eric ever suggested that we name a release.
Aside from the naming, and most importantly, the release itself was perfect. Game changing functionality that was exactly what our customers wanted. Fast forward to today and exactly one year later, Sigstr has a product that stands up branded email signature templates and unlocks marketing opportunities in every email employees send. And we do it for some of the world’s largest companies.
So here’s to Sam and our product team on the one year anniversary of Sam’s first release. You guys dominate, and pose for pictures like it’s the cover of a new Mumford and Sons album (here’s one below from our 1st ever Sigstr Field Day). We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for your hard work.
If you lead or are a part of a business services company, you have a unique challenge as you don’t have a physical product. Instead, you offer superior services or solutions and you rely heavily on the relationships that your sales and customer success teams build. You have created a successful company on your people and your brand, and as such, your brand is incredibly important to you.
We’ve created an ebook that details 7 clever ways to boost your business services brand with email signatures, and today we’ll highlight clever tip #3.
Sigstr created an ebook that details 7 clever ways to boost your business services brand with the best email signatures, and today we’ll highlight clever tip #4.
Clever Tip #4: Don’t Mass Market to Your Target Market
Product companies sell to the masses through large scale advertising efforts. Trying to follow in the footsteps of these companies, many service firms attempt to first build their brand by advertising through traditional channels like tv, radio, and billboards. But for a service brand, this can be a waste of time and money. It’s not targeted to your specific audience and it costs too much (given the likely return).
The dynamics of brand implementation are just different for service companies. Business service companies need consistent articulation of their value proposition across all touch points of the marketing and sales process.
While catchy jingles during primetime tv might work for a product company, they are simply inappropriate for a business services firm. But the right marketing program, that “touches” your prospects regularly with highly targeted messages will increase awareness and recognition. So the next time you call to schedule a meeting, they’re more likely to take it.
Ready for the Clever Tip?
Consider using a remarketing strategy (such as Google AdWords) for those that visit your website or landing pages. Because you are remarketing to people who have already shown an interest in your services, you get more bang for your advertising dollar. Each additional impression increases the chances that you will gain a new purchase, and even existing customers benefit from being regularly reminded about your business services brand.
This week’s clever tip is brought to you by Sigstr. We help you build the best email signatures that you can standardize across your entire oranization. Sign up now and start your free 30-day trial today to begin building professional email signatures.
Your employees hold the responsibility as a brand ambassador to your company. So in order to have a successful rebrand or brand refresh to update your company’s look, you need every single employee to embody your new corporate identity. That means following specific steps to ensure that each and every employee is using the right logos, templates, fonts, and colors in all internal and external facing communications.
A lot of careful consideration goes into determining what a new visual identity should look like – one that’s memorable, drives awareness and makes it easier for your sales team to win deals. Usually this sort of endeavor is months if not years in the making, and can take an army of team members to make it successful. But while the tactics of this are important, the true importance is embracing what you and your employees believe your company brand and values should represent, and facing the world as a united front.
At Sigstr, we understand that the process of pulling off a successful rebrand or brand refresh can be time consuming and challenging, so we’ve given you a head start by developing a quick checklist. Use this to ensure all of your t’s are crossed and i’s are dotted as you refresh your company’s identity, but add to it as you uncover more areas and document those for your next brand refresh (hopefully many years down the road)!
Suggested Phase 1:
Employee email signatures / email signature format
Website homepage & key website pages
Social media channels
Sales & company powerpoints
Product demo environments
Business cards
Company blog
Newsletter, customer communications, and marketing automation emails
As you’ll see from the checklist, one of the first items we suggest your company updates in your re-brand is employee email signatures. Why? The employee email signature is often the only interaction prospects have with your company, and each employee at your company likely sends about 10,000 emails per year to your company’s most valuable contacts. For a company of just 100 employees, that’s over 1M brand impressions just by email alone! And while in the past whenever your company updated a font or a color, you had to send an email out to all employees (like this), that doesn’t have to be the case.
Sigstr’s email signature generator solution combines a cohesive email signature format with engaging campaigns, all in one easy-to-use software platform, easily managed by a single administrator.
Sigstr Signatures:Individualized, employee-specific names and titles. Centrally controlled branding, content, and information.
Sigstr allows your company to gain control of employee’s email signatures to ensure proper formatting and branding on every single employee email signature. No longer will you have to worry about outdated signatures, formatting issues, or wrong uses of colors or fonts. And best of all, get the data to see what’s working!
How Does It Work?
With a few clicks in Sigstr, marketers can automatically inject a clickable image, called a campaign, to the Outlook and Gmail email signature format or change icons, fonts, and allowable text in employee signature lines. These campaigns or signatures are updated automatically across all employees and can be filtered by groups. And best of all? No IT or employee action required.
Sign up for Sigstr and start your free 30-day trial today to begin building your professional email signature format.
Today, Sigstr announced significant advances to its product announcing three important new product capabilities, including:
First, with central deployment capabilities, the install process removes the need for employees to install the application individually. The Sigstr admin now has the ability to push updates via the application portal.
Second, multi-brand companies can now utilize different signature templates for various subsets of employees now allowing several signatures to be simultaneously active across the organization.
Finally, Sigstr’s SalesLoft integration enhances marketing efforts within the SalesLoft Cadence application by appending a Sigstr Signature and Sigstr Campaign to Cadence email communications.
“Building an exceptional and easy-to-use product is incredibly important to the Sigstr team,” said Sam Smith, VP of Product at Sigstr. “Our customers are replacing their manual and time consuming ways of updating signatures, and we have built a product to make this process seamless. These new product updates are critical to our users, and we are hard at work building further integrations and product updates that will deliver incredible ROI and brand cohesion.”
In addition to the SalesLoft integration, Sigstr has a variety of integrations available for Microsoft and Google. Push Sigstr to all employees, or have each employee run a one-time Install. Don’t stop there! Consider Sigstr for any tool you use to send email:
Read More & Get Started with an Email Signature Creator
Want to learn more about Sigstr and its recent product announcements? View the entire press release here.
Ready to get started with the power of an email signature creator? Sign up for Sigstr and start your free 30-day trial today to begin building professional email signatures, or check out the most recent Sigstr resource:
Did you know that the average employee sends roughly 10,000 emails a year? In a company of 100, thats 1,000,000 emails! Because digital communication is so prominent in the workforce, youd think most professionals would be masters of proper email etiquette. Unfortunately, that is not always the case. If you want to ensure your emails are being well received, leverage the following four tips and join the emailing elite.
1. Keep it short and to the point
If you cant get your point across in a paragraph or less, revert back to the Stone Age and make a phone call. Contrary to popular belief, giving someone a call can save an extraordinary amount of time and effort. The added bonus is that speaking to someone directly means youll receive a response instantaneously. Imagine that!
2. Avoid the dreaded “reply all”
Weve all been victims. A well-intending colleague sends out a company-wide email about leftover pizza in the breakroom and all hell breaks loose. One person unintentionally asks the entire office if there is left-over pepperoni at the same time the office jokester replies with a GIF of stampeding elephants. All of a sudden, inboxes are full and everyone is annoyed, confused, or best case scenario, entertained. Whatever the situation, do not be tempted to reply-all to tell everyone else to stop replying-all. You are part of the problem.
3. Use emoticons wisely 🙂
Personally, Im a big fan of the smiley face. However, its worth remembering that Im a millennial who loves texting, open-office environments, and Gilmore Girls. Not everyone in the professional world is like me. If you cant imagine a day without a friendly semi-colon and parenthesis, opt to use emoticons in internal email threads instead of external communications. Your coworkers will be much more forgiving.
4. Represent your brand appropriately
If any email signatures in your company look like this, youre doing it all wrong.
First things first, inspirational quotes have no place in your email signature template. Furthermore, your digital signature does not need to mimic the styling of Lisa Frank or look like John Hancock designed it himself. Instead, use your companys branding guidelines to create an appropriately formatted email signature template. If the term branding guidelines conjures no understanding, your company may want to consider an email signature generator. Yes, this is a Sigstr plug.
Theres no question that email is a necessary and impactful communication tool in the professional world. With these four tips and a little common sense, youll be well on your way to becoming an email expert in no time!
Want to see more bad examples of email signature templates? Check out this recent blog post:
Last week, nearly a dozen of Indys smartest marketers gathered to contemplate the trials and triumphs of digital marketing. The event was hosted by Sigstr,a platform for email signatures, andwas the first of many future Digital Marketing Roundtables – an event conceived with learning and networking with the best and brightest in mind.
There is a constant debate as to who truly owns brand. From our discussion, we reached a simple conclusion: everyone. You can invest millions of dollars in fancy marketing campaigns and advertisements, but your people are your front line. No matter the size of your organization, your people are your brand. If you invest in culture and hire the right people, your brand will flourish. See how email signatures can also help with that in this recent blog post.
2. Marketing’s impact on the entire organization, including culture.
A strong company culture is a beautiful thing. If only celebrated internally, you have happy employees. If showcased to the world through the use of digital marketing, you have happy customers, prospects, and peers. Marketing can make a colossal impact on all aspects of an organization. Using the aforementioned example, showcasing culture can lead to higher interest in becoming a part of that culture and can impact the quality of talent in potential hires. There are a variety of channels that can be utilized to exhibit culture (including through your email signature template – Lesson.ly is the perfect example of this).
3. Budget breakdown.
With hosting a multitude of different organizations comes a multitude of opinions and theories on how to spend your budget. In the breakdown of digital vs. traditional marketing channels, several companies stated they allocate less than 20% of their total budgets to digital marketing efforts. Dan asked the group what they would do if they were given an additional $1 million in marketing budget. The unanimous decision was to invest in talent.
Perspective from Tim Kopp, General Partner, Hyde Park Venture Partners:
“The easiest way to fix culture is to win. Marketing helps you know how you are winning. Start measuring your efforts, setting goals, and ensuring each person knows what they are accountable for. I have never seen a losing organization with a winning culture, period. Setting a culture of performance helps motivate team members and create transparency. Marketing is a crucial player in fueling these efforts.”
Tim also recently published an entire post specific to marketing’s role in building genuine culture and the effect it has on talent attraction, development, and retention. You can check out the post here.
Perspective from Sigstr’s VP of Sales, Kevin Vanes:
“Yesterday my horizon was expanded and eyes opened. I had to the privilege to learn from the best and brightest marketers in Indianapolis. I learned how broad of a reach marketers have on their organization’s success. They impact culture, perpetuate brand halo, drive employee engagement and enablement, and of course deliver leads to the sales organization. For me, it spurred a subtle reminder that in the race to the sun every action and individual is impactful. We, you and I, have the responsibility to represent and promote our company’s passion as we work to develop and grow.”
We are very appreciative of the opportunity to host a room full of smart digital marketers. A big thank you to all of them for taking time out of their days to join us for the event. We walked away smarter and look forward to continuing to learn and grow at future events.
Dan Hanrahan, Sigstr Founder/CEO, provides a recap of the day in the video below:
“So, first and foremost, it’s mostly about giving back and adding value to the digital marketers in Indianapolis. It’s so hard to sort of get out in your community when you get buried in your work. So, to look around and see those connections and one-off conversations marketers have with one another, to help them connect, is really invaluable.
In theprocess of that, we (Sigstr) learn, and our job is to ask questions (hopefully smart questions) and sit back and listen to the smartest people in our community tell us about their opportunities and challenges. So, if we facilitate an environment along those lines and facilitate that discussion, and maybe even add a few beverages of choice, people tend to have a lot of fun and walk away with better connections that help them.
They’re all really facing the same sort of decisions and evaluating the same opportunities. It’s really interesting, there were all kinds of engaging conversations and we talked a lot about budget, strategy, and brand, and things along those lines. We asked this group, ‘If you had a 10% increase in budget that just showed up today, how would you spend it?’ and the entire room, almost without exception, said people.
It’s really clear (I think there were 3,400 logos of technologies you can buy in themarketing tech stack) that the marketer is sort oflimited with their time. They can only log in and do so much fromso many tools. And so, the marketer is really constrained in the tools that add value without requiring a lot of time, and those are the ones that tend to win.
We also talked a lot about the brand piece and how marketers show return on investment on brand. There were some really interesting conversations there. It’s a really hard thing to do, but we all agreed that, more than anybody in the organization, marketing cares about the brand. They can provide tools to enable the organization – but at the end of the day nothing creates a better culture or brand than winning. The brand stems from the people you place within the organization.
It was fascinating to sit back and understand what kinds of decisions these guys face everyday and how many different things are pulling them for time and what matters most. So for those of you that were here, thank you so much for spending the day with us. It was an incredible opportunity and very humbling to see so many busy and smart marketers spend some time with us. It won’t be the last we assemble a group of really smart digital marketers and we’ll continue to listen and build that feedback into the Sigstr email signature generator so we can help in the ways you need us to.
So thanks again for coming and we hope you join us again. For those that didn’t have a chance – please reach out we’d love to have you next time.” – Dan Hanrahan, Sigstr Founder/CEO
For more on email signatures, email signature templates, or professional email signatures, visitour Resources page.
As a business services company, you have a unique challenge as you don’t have a physical product. Instead, you offer superior services or solutions and you rely heavily on the relationships that your sales and customer success teams build. You have created a successful company on your people and your brand, and as such, your brand is incredibly important to you.
We’ve created an ebook that details 7 clever ways to boost your business services brand with email signatures, and today we’ll highlight clever tip #3.
Clever Tip #3: Focus on Relevance Over Differentiation
Differentiation is important to product companies. Most brand models (and business schools) argue the need to differentiate. However, it is rare for a business services brand to achieve complete categorical differentiation. Let’s face it, many service firms offer similar services. As such, it is difficult to actually own a unique market position. So forget about those product oriented, one-word descriptions.
Instead of attempting to be amazingly different from the rest, focus on being relevant. Specifically, relevance as it pertains to the client. The ideal service brand merges the needs, wants, and desires of the client with the character and values of the company.
The key lies in creating a space where customer needs meet company essence, an ideal combination of rational and emotional attributes that apply to both groups. This common ground approach develops a brand that not only resonates with the client by delivering what is important to them, but also develops a brand that is genuine, appropriate, and defensible by the company.
By staking the claim for what you stand for, communicating how you help your clients succeed, and proving how reliable you are in doing this, you’ll develop a unique identity. Most business service companies don’t have the stick-to-it ability to get this far, but if they do, they’ll stand out in the market.
Ready for the Clever Tip?
While content marketing can be extremely valuable to prospective customers and current customers alike, make sure that you are providing resources above and beyond for customers. This includes: training seminars, certification classes, how-to blogs, customer user groups, in-depth customer case studies via webinars, templates, hands-on learning guides, and more. Educational resources can help your customers become more familiar with your services and processes which will help them feel closer to your offering as well as to your people.
This week’s clever tip is brought to you by Sigstr. Ready to get started with the power of an email signature generator? Sign up for Sigstr and start your free 30-day trial today to begin building professional email signatures, or check out the most recent Sigstr resource:
At Sigstr, we help companies of all sizes see the potential of employee email as a new digital marketing channel. Your marketing and/or creative team spends valuable time and resources creating quality content that helps drive brand awareness and demand generation. As a company, all of your employees are already sending a ton of email to a handpicked audience. Why not marry the two and promote your latest content or most important company initiatives through your email signatures?
On average, an employee will send 28 emails/day. That’s 10,000 emails annually. For a 100 employee company, that’s 1,000,000 emails/year. The impact of adding this as a channel to your digital marketing mix is huge. And as a marketer, you probably want to measure the heck out of this to see just how big the impact can be. With that in mind, Sigstr offers analytics within its email signature generator to help you do just that. Impressions, clicks, average click-through rates, etc. We also understand, in some cases, marketers want to take it a step further with metrics such as leads generated, contacts added, and ultimately closed/won business.
Here at Sigstr, we make an effort to “eat our own dog food” (as some would call it). We pump Sigstr metrics into other tools that we use, such as Google Analytics (see the tutorial video) or HubSpot, to measure the impact a Sigstr campaign has on an overall company objective. Objectives like driving more traffic to your website, increasing exposure with a specific piece of content, or even number of leads generated within a specific marketing campaign. Effectively representing your brand and promoting content in your company’s email signatures can help with all of these.
Today we’ll focus on HubSpot, and how you can use Sigstr + HubSpot together to do some really cool things. There are two different ways to feed Sigstr metrics into HubSpot:
1. Create a Tracking URL
For us, we wanted to track how many visits a Sigstr campaign drove to a specific landing page promoting our new ebook.
Step 1: Generate a unique URL in HubSpot, label appropriately.
Step 2: Copy/paste your shiny new generated URL into your Sigstr campaign.
Step 3: Sit back, relax, and watch the metrics (in this case, visits to the landing page) flow into your campaign view within HubSpot.
2. Clone Your Landing Page in HubSpot; Rename Specifically for Sigstr Campaign
If you have a particular resource that is “gated”, meaning a visitor to your site will need to provide contact information and fill out a form before accessing, you can see how many contacts your Sigstr campaign generated. For us, we did this to take it one step further so we could see how many visits AND how many contacts our Sigstr Campaign drove when promoting our new ebook.
Step 1: Clone the landing page that is connected to the particular resource you want to promote and rename appropriately so you can quickly identify its relation to your Sigstr campaign. Also be sure to connect it to your desired campaign in HubSpot.
Step 2: Be sure to do the same with your form (clone and rename appropriately). Go to edit mode in the landing page, add in your new form. In the Campaign view within HubSpot, click on “Landing Pages” to view metrics on visits, contacts, and customers.
Step 3: You can now see this as an interaction (a prospect/contact clicking on your Sigstr campaign and downloading the resource) and how it relates to other touchpoints. This can be found in the specific contact view within HubSpot.
Bonus: View Sigstr Metrics within Salesforce
If you’re also using Salesforce as your CRM and have your Salesforce integration turned on within HubSpot, you can pinpoint specific interactions a lead or contact has had with your Sigstr campaign.
This can be found in the lead view within Salesforce. Scroll down and find the “HubSpot Intelligence” section, then see when that particular lead/contact interacted with your Sigstr Campaign in relation to other touch points.
Email Signatures + Sigstr + HubSpot = Your New Secret Weapon
At Sigstr, we’re all about making your life easier with employee email and taking advantage of this untapped digital marketing real estate. Metrics within Sigstr help measure the effectiveness of this. Pumping your Sigstr metrics into HubSpot or Salesforce helps you, as a marketer, see how your prospects, contacts, or even customers are interacting with your brand through employee email signatures. Add these all up and you now have a new secret weapon and new addition to your digital marketing mix.
For more on Sigstr, what to do with your email signature format, or best practices for your email signature template, check out our latest resource below:
Earlier this week, Sigstr was featured on a new episode of The Sales Evangelist’s podcast. See the full recording on “How to Use Your Email Signatures to Generate More Business” below:
First off, who is The Sales Evangelist?
Donald Kelly believes in keeping sales simple and mastering the fundamentals. He’s passionate about helping salespeople overcome the most challenging obstacles they are currently facing. So much so that he created a blog, podcast, and other publications around this central theme. His podcast, The Sales Evangelist, has been recognized by Entrepreneur Magazine, Huffington Post, Yahoo Finance, South Florida Business Journal and UpStart. Learn more about Donald here.
We are incredibly appreciative and grateful to have Donald as a supporter and fan. He even reps Sigstr in his own email signature template, which we were very excited to see.
New Episode: “How to Use Your Email Signatures to Generate More Business”
Donald and Sigstr Founder/CEO, Dan Hanrahan, talk about a new way to capitalize on employee emails as a marketing channel. Dan highlights 3 important features of a great email signature template:
1. Keep it simple
No need to include your address in your email signature
Have a link to your website
Think of the 3 or 4 things that have the most value and hone in on those
Skip things like address and fax numbers but make them easy to find on your website
2. Use images wisely
Be efficient
Reserve the images to what’s most important (logo, call-to-action)
3. Drive consistency to fuel brand
Provide a consistent experience across all formats of your brand
The major takeaway:
“Think about the massive reach and impact of employee email signatures. Whatever you do, make sure it’s a compelling brand experience because every single message can impact your brand positively or negatively.”
Thanks again to Donald for having us on the show and to the supporters of The Sales Evangelist for tuning in. A full recap of the episode can be found here.
For more on email signature examples and email signature templates, check out our latest resource:
As a business services company, you have a unique challenge as you don’t have a physical product. Instead, you offer superior services or solutions and you rely heavily on the relationships that your sales and customer success teams build. You have created a successful company on your people and your brand, and as such, your brand is incredibly important to you.
We’ve created an ebook that details 7 clever ways to boost your business services brand with email signatures, and today we’ll highlight clever tip #2.
Clever Tip #2: Worry About Growing Revenue, Not Your Market Share
Product companies are taught that they must be number one or two, in terms of market position, to be successful. Service brands, on the other hand, should concentrate on growing revenue (not gaining market share, as product companies do). This is especially true because many business services companies focus on specific geographies, such as a local city or state, rather than owning the entire market nation-wide (or even thinking about their global reach). Business services companies that focus on delivering results will see that revenue will grow naturally by ensuring happy, satisfied customers that are willing to share the results with peers in the marketplace.
In the business services industry, whether it be accounting, law, architecture, or consulting, local markets are usually fragmented and crowded with many successful firms generating considerable revenue from like-services. Instead of concerning yourself with your position in the market, focus your efforts on improving the bottom line and ensuring happy, satisfied customers – the rest will follow naturally.
Ready for the Clever Tip?
Consider implementing an account-based marketing approach as it is based on the collective decision-making process. It takes into account that most B2B buying decisions are not made by a single person, but rather by a collective group of people. This is where account-based targeting comes in handy. Since each company has its own dedicated IP address, it is easy to identify them collectively by looking at IP addresses. So if you want to target an account, you can target those IP addresses specifically, ensuring you are marketing to the correct group of people in the most efficient way possible.
This week’s clever tip is brought to you by Sigstr. Ready to get started with the power of an email signature generator? Sign up for Sigstr and start your free 30-day trial today to begin building professional email signatures, or check out the most recent Sigstr resource:
At Brooksource, their business is people. Relationships are at the center of what they do. A successful partnership is only as strong as the relationship built. Brooksource is a trusted partner for IT hiring, recruiting and staffing needs. For over 15 years, Brooksource has established and maintained relationships that are designed to meet IT staffing needs. Whether its contract, contract-to-hire, or permanent placement work, they customize their search based upon your company’s unique initiatives, culture and technologies. With their national team of recruiters placed at 20 major hubs around the nation, Brooksource finds the people best-suited for your business.
Brooksource has one simple philosophy: People come first. They know that quality service can only come from quality relationships. Thats why they are committed to understanding their clients cultures and needs and strive to continually strengthen their partnerships.
Brooksource began using Sigstr, a platform for managing employee email signatures, as one of the first pilot companies when Sigstr was in beta mode in 2014. In the past, Brooksource had challenges with cohesive imaging. According to Carlie Oakley, VP of Marketing and Brand Excellence at Brooksource, Everyone had their own look and feel, so we were trying to find a way to control the overall image from our Corporate office. The Brooksource team began using Sigstr as a way to increase their brand awareness and to ensure all employees had a consistent look and feel across their email signatures.
Sigstr lets Brooksource leverage the thousands of personal emails its 200+ employees send each and every day. By building an email signature template within Sigstr, Brooksource can now control portions (or all) of each employees email signatures to make sure each signature is individualized with employee-specific names and titles. A Brooksource administrator can then centrally manage branding, content, and information to make sure the signature is always on brand. In addition, with the Sigstr Campaigns product, Brooksource can automatically include a banner integration at the bottom of every single employee email, highlighting the latest marketing content with a compelling call-to-action, such as the below example.
Check out Brooksources most successful Sigstr Campaign to-date, which was created for their Internal Hiring Team, promoting Top Workplaces. This campaign was very attractive to students looking for their first full-time job after college and garnered a lot of attention, leading the students to the Brooksource website where they could learn more.
The Top Workplaces campaign generated a surge of visitors to their website and an increase in interested job applicants.
Carlie, an incredible partner to Sigstr who has been able to experiment with many different Sigstr campaigns, had this to say about the partnership:
Looking ahead, Carlie shares that, Brooksource has plans to activate a very targeted campaign that can drive client or contractor traffic to our website. Creating a compelling campaign to create interest outside of our normal marketing avenues will be a huge win in our book, and were excited for Sigstr to play an incredibly important role in that.
We look forward to seeing what results Brooksource will continue to experience with the power of an email signature generator. Want to do more with your organizations email signatures? Start your free 30-day trial here.
For more testimonials and case studies from other Business Services companies, check out our latest resource(with email signature examples):
As a business services company, you have a unique challenge as you don’t have a physical product. Instead, you offer superior services or solutions and you rely heavily on the relationships that your sales and customer success teams build. You have created a successful company on your people and your brand, and as such, your brand is incredibly important to you.
We’ve created an ebook that details 7 clever ways to boost your business services brand with email signatures, and today we’ll highlight clever tip #1.
Business service companies do not have a tangible display of products that you can see, touch, and test out before deciding to purchase. As a service firm, your brand is mostly comprised of your people. As such, don’t underestimate the internal components of brand development.
To create a collaborative culture, communicate your brand message to the troops so that each individual becomes a true brand ambassador. This helps to ensure that every sales call, every client interaction, and every elevator conversation delivers the brand as intended. Don’t attempt to be Big Brother, but do provide a rallying point for the entire organization, because “speaking in one voice” is far more important for service firms who rely on direct, one-to-one interaction with clients.
Often times for business services companies, email is the main channel for communication and where your company branding is viewed most often. A single employee will send, on average, 10,000 one-to-one emails annually, and each email represents an opportunity to drive brand awareness and engagement. Why not use this high powered channel to promote your newsletter, success stories, past projects, events and job fairs, trade shows, and new diverse offerings? Or win new logos by promoting a referral program to your happy existing customers.
Ready for the Clever Tip?
Email signatures are a key part of every email your employees send. Many business services companies have caught on to the fact that email is the lifeblood of their company, and a huge opportunity to drive incremental awareness and engagement with their marketing content, as mentioned above. By automatically appending calls to action to your newest piece of content directly within your email signature template, marketers are finally breaking down the barriers of the employee email, and leveraging it to gain millions of brand impressions. With an email signature generator like Sigstr, showcase your most important content or company initiatives to the most engaged audience (those your employees are emailing with directly). And best of all, get the data to see exactly what’s working!
Ready to get started with the power of an email signature generator? Sign up for Sigstr and start your free 30-day trial today to begin building professional email signatures, or check out the most recent Sigstr resource:
Springbuk is a nationally-recognized resource for population health. Their team has worked alongside more than 6,000 companies that represent 60 million employee lives. With visibility into the largest corporate wellness programs in North America, they have an uncommon understanding of the challenges, trends and solutions for today’s employer. The Springbuk product team is comprised of wellness, benefits consulting & human resources professionals that work on the front-line of population health.
The company began using Sigstr, a platform for managing employee email signatures, in August 2015 as a way to deliver a compelling and consistent marketing message. They also use their email signature template to showcase the success of Springbuk’s customers. Springbuk’s employees are sending thousands of emails per day to the company’s most valuable contacts, including prospective customers, vendors, partners, customers, thought leaders, and media. Now, Springbuk is able to include the latest and most current customer success stories and case studies in every employee email that is sent, leaving an incredible brand impression.
Sigstr lets Springbuk leverage the thousands of personal emails its employees send each and every day. A Springbuk administrator can centrally manage branding, content, and information across its employee base through the email signature template. In addition, with the Sigstr Campaigns product, Springbuk can automatically include a banner integration at the bottom of every single employee email, highlighting the latest case studies and customer success stories with a compelling call-to-action. With the email signature generator within Sigstr, Springbuk can now control portions (or all) of each employee’s email signatures to make sure each signature is individualized with employee-specific names and titles.
Check out Springbuk’s most successful Sigstr Campaign to-date promoting their newest downloadable resource, “Broker Roadmap”.
The campaign generated 24,800 displays, 131 clicks in just 3 months, which resulted in resource downloads and landing page traffic. Visitors had the opportunity to download the resource by providing a few pieces of information, allowing the Springbuk sales team to follow-up.
Phil Daniels, Sprinbuk’s Co-Founder & EVP of Marketing is a huge champion of Sigstr, saying this about the partnership:
We look forward to seeing what results Springbuk will continue to experience with the power of an email signature generator. Want to do more with your organization’s email signatures? Start your free 30-day trial here.
For more testimonials and case studies from other tech-focused companies, check out these resources (with email signature examples):
Ah, the dreaded company-wide email we’ve all received far too many times. It usually goes something like this:
“Hi everyone, it’s time to update our email signatures. We’ve made some adjustments to our font and company branding, and we would like our employees to also promote our upcoming [insert event, webinar, press release, or whatever it may be] in all of our emails for the next 2 weeks. PLEASE take just FIVE minutes to follow the very specific instructions below in the next THREE days. If you do not, we will find you! PLEASE!”
That email probably includes a list of items each employee in your company needs to do, like illustrated below.
On average, it likely takes your employees about 5 minutes each to update their email signatures (that is, if there aren’t any questions). And think about that time spent across a company that employs 100, 200, 1,000 or even 1M employees. For a company of just 100 employees, that’s 500 minutes or 8.3 hours of precious company time just updating their email signatures.
Ouch! Not to mention, who is the poor “email signature administrator” that has to chase down every employee and manage the process Every. Single. Time. the email signature needs to change? Not to mention respond to the emails of employees who are utterly confused or lost?
If this process is all too familiar, can we suggest scheduling a quick demo with Sigstr? Bonus: if you book a time we’ll send you a pack of Sigstr sticker goodness.
What’s Sigstr?
Sigstr turns your company’s email into a targeted marketing channel that helps deliver your content to the right audience, drive event registrations, execute account-based marketing, and more.
With email signature marketing, teams can dynamically insert targeted 1:1 ads in the email signature section of every email your employees send. Learn more in the overview video below:
How Does It Work?
Sigstr can identify the sender and recipient of every email sent by your employees, allowing teams to engage email recipient with a relevant call-to-action. You can bring the power of email signature marketing to all of your go-to sales and marketing tools. This includes HubSpot, Salesforce, Marketo, Eloqua, and more.
With Sigstr, marketers can run dozens of targeted banners at once, giving you control to:
Promote events by geography
Target current customers with up-sell opportunities
Promote your best content
Deliver training to your employees
Keep sales enablement top of mind
Target specific accounts and contacts
Request a demo today for more customer examples, features, functionality, and best-in-class use cases.
At Sigstr, we focus on email signatures.Sigstr Campaigns allow you to unlock the powerful marketing channel of employee email. Many of my day-to-day responsibilities revolve around designing these campaigns both internally and through our Services offerings where we design campaigns for our customers. That said, I thought Id share a few tips.
Step 1: Gather the Information
Every time I sit down to design a Sigstr campaign in the email signature template, I make sure I have all the information needed. Before I start digging in, I like to have brand assets (such as logos or brand colors), and if the campaign is promoting an event, a URL to the events landing page. Landing pages help provide context and guidelines to design around. Before I dive into the design, I take a step back and ask, ‘What is the main goal I want to accomplish with this graphic? or, What company initiative is this campaign helping promote?
These types of questions will only help your cause as you look to create the best email signature design that fits well with your company initiatives.
Step 2: Experiment with the Brand
Next, before I start laying out the information, I begin experimenting with the brand elements. This includes the color palette (in order to help me understand which colors would work better on top of others), the font, which colors work best with the font, and the logo. Understanding how your brands colors work together expedites the campaign design process immensely for your email signature generator.
Step 3: Putting the Pieces Together
The third and final step of my campaign design process is building out the format of the campaign. When I start to assemble my campaigns, I almost always start at 400 pixels by 96 pixels and adjust from there. I then take all the information that I know I want to include in the campaign and just throw it inside to see how much information I need to work with. Visual hierarchy is a huge part of how a campaign comes together for email signatures. Always be sure to prioritize the most information.
For example, I always start with the campaigns call to action being the brands boldest color. Here at Sigstr, we keep a close eye on the metrics we see within the app. Weve seen the best views to click ratio on campaigns with red call-to-action buttons.
Try including photography in your campaign. Images with overlaid brand colors at 60 – 80% opacity work really well as backgrounds (but be careful not to cause sensory overload). For the best results, combine your image with an on-brand accent color.
Sometimes with a campaign design I’ll find myself hitting a brick wall. Maybe the campaign just doesnt look right, or maybe Im missing some key details that need to be included. When I hit that point, I start asking coworkers what they think about the campaign. Receiving feedback is always the best for improving your campaigns.
Step 4: Next Steps?
So now youve got a fantastic looking campaign sitting in front of you. What do you do next? Try coming up with a second campaign design! Trust me, nine times out of ten the second campaign I end up designing is better than the first. Even if the second version isnt better, you now have some great optionsto choose from.
Hopefully these tips help you with your campaign designs. Here at Sigstr, we’re all about creating the best email signatures, and the campaign design is a big part of that. We’re here to help and be your source for inspiration! If you have any additional questions about your email signature, email us at interact@sigstr.com.
Also, don’t forget about our growing list of tutorial videos! These offer up some great tips and tricks and walk you through how to use certain features within Sigstr.
Its no secret that the marketing technology landscape is evolving (and fast). Marketers, especially those in the world of digital marketing, have the job of keeping up on the latest tech advancements (in addition to their own specific roles demands). And for anyone just getting started in digital marketing, the growth can be overwhelming and even daunting. How do you know what tools you need? Once you determine what tools you need, how do you determine the right partner? The search to find the perfect technology stack for your business is never-ending.
ChiefMarTec.com just released a graphic in conjunction with the 2016 MarTech USA Conference in San Francisco. And boy, this graphic is sure intimidating! The graphic depicts more than 3,800 technology vendors on a single slide. This is up from just 150 in 2011. So in just 5 years, the landscape has become entirely different for the world of marketers!
But no fear, marketers. While this graphic and information can be overwhelming, its important to know that many of the categories remain the same. For instance, the Email Marketing category has grown significantly. This isa result of employee email continuing to be such a staple in todays business world. In fact, did you know that each employee at your company will send approximately 10,000 emails per year? If your company has just 100 employees, then collectively youre sending over 1M emails per year to your most important contacts. Of course that category has grown – theres so much opportunity!
Thats why Sigstr exists. What does each of those 10,000 emails each of your employees are sending out include? Thats right: email signatures. Sigstr powers smart marketing through the thousands of email signatures displayed to your most important contacts (your prospects, customers, partners, vendors, investors, and friends). Sigstr’s email signature generatordrives brand compliance and unlocks the marketing potential of your employee email signatures. With Sigstr, every employee email includes a consistently branded email signature template and graphical call-to-action. Marketers can easily update signature campaigns to drive awareness and engagement for any of the following key initiatives that are important to your company or Marketing team:
Events or conferences
Case studies or ebooks
Product updates
Company culture or job opportunities
Ready to get started with the power of an email signature generator? Check out the most recent Sigstr resource:
When we saw the recent business.com article entitled, Leave a Good Impression: The Best & Worst Email Signatures of All Time, you better believe that we read it (and laughed a lot). And of course, we had to share it with our readers as it also offers up some great pointers, which well share below.
Weve all seen a few doozy email signatures, and maybe weve even been guilty of of some of the no-nos: Comic Sans font, multi-color rainbow colors, inspirational quotes, links to all 10 social media accounts or distorted headshots. But as the article reminds us, Email signatures are the John Hancocks of the digital age. Often times, your email recipients will never meet you face to face (at least in the business world), so every time you send an email, you are making an impression on that person. And the email signature template is the most consistent aspect of those touch points. What kind of impression are you leaving on your email recipients?
According to the article, heres a rundown on what not to include in your email signature format, along with some tips for creating the most efficient email signature template possible.
Run the Other Way From These Email Signature Examples
Inspirational Quotes
This is your professional email, not your high school yearbook, Ricardo Casas stated in the article. As such, its not the place to feature aphorisms like, Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant. A worthy piece of advice, to be sure, but the person reading your email most likely doesnt care.
A Reiteration of the Senders Email Address (Often Hyperlinked)
Kevin Zawacki at Slate.com likens this to, Placing two return address stickers on an envelope. First of all, it feels like youre beating your recipient over the head with your contact information.
And, from a practical standpoint, its completely redundant. The recipient already has your email address; if they want to respond to your email they simply have to hit Reply.
Too Many Fonts
According to Ricardo, Using more than two different fonts (particularly novelty ones) in your email signature is a recipe for a design headache. It looks cluttered and unprofessional.
Additionally, if youre creating a text signature and end up using a novelty font, you cant guarantee your recipient will have that same font installed on their computer, so the result could be a jumbled mess looking nothing like the way you intended it.
Too Much Text, Period
You may be familiar with these types of text signatures, full of information stacked line by individual line, said Ricardo. First, you have the senders name. Then their title. Then their work phone number, then their extension, then their email address, then their fax number, and so on.
A slight exaggeration perhaps (mostly), but the point is this: nobody likes to scroll and scroll to find the information theyre looking for. The key is to keep it simple.
Take Hints From This Awesome Email Signature Template
Simplicity
You dont need to bombard your recipients with a plethora of information, Ricardo advises. Stay short, sweet, and to-the-point. Give them only the information that really counts.
Just the Basics
As earlier stated, its unnecessary to restate your email address in your signature. Ask yourself what information is actually crucial, and what could be omitted for the sake of clarity, said Ricardo. Your phone number is almost always important to include, along with the name of your company. Your job title is also helpful so the recipient can have a better idea of your role in the company.
You may also find it helpful to provide links to your social media platforms, but only if they are relevant and there arent a hundred of them.
Clean, Eye-Catching Graphics
Ricardo explains that if youve chosen to use a customized graphic for your email signature, make sure its not a mess of fonts and colors. Its best to eliminate distractions by using only one or two colors (and as many fonts) in your signature graphic.
Introducing Sigstr for Email Signatures
For marketers, keeping the brand consistent across all employees can be a major struggle. Sigstr‘s email signature generator helpsmarketers create the bestemail signatures for their employees, which can be easilyimplemented and automatically updated.
Sigstr offers marketers complete brand control of employee email signatures withfonts, formatting, color, social links and more through its integration with Gmail and Microsoft Outlook. Insert a Sigstr Campaign (graphical call-to-action) into your email signature templateto utilize every employee’s email signature as a targeted marketing opportunity. Sigstr gives marketers the opportunity to promote the companys most important initiatives or content, such as events, press, case studies, ebooks, job openings and much more.
With Sigstr, marketers can be sure that every employee email signature formatis on brand and updated across the entire company with just a few clicks. Sign up for Sigstr and start your free 30-day trial today to begin experiencing the power of professional email signatures.
Last week, Gary Vaynerchuk shared a Snapchat story with his audience that detailed the importance of email signatures. And that simple Snapchat story sparked some great interaction on social media.
First of all, who is Gary Vaynerchuk?
Gary Vaynerchuk builds businesses. Fresh out of college he took his family wine business and grew it from a $3M to a $60M business in just five years. Now he runs VaynerMedia, one of the world’s hottest digital agencies. Along the way he became a prolific angel investor and venture capitalist, investing in companies like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Uber, and Birchbox before eventually co-founding VaynerRSE, a $25M investment fund.
In addition, Gary speaks at many events and is an all around super cool guy. And he believes in the power of a stellar email signature template – what could be better?
Gary’s Snapchat Story Success
Gary’s Snapshat story caused quite an outpouring of comments, feedback, and even support for Sigstr in the form of tweets, Snapchats and more.
What Gary Says About Email Signatures
“Snapchat secret. Your email signature…huge opportunity for a call-to-action. I change mine depending on what’s most important to me. The email signature is the easiest place to get full exposure continuously because you’re always using it and you’re interacting with business people and…there it is.” – Gary Vaynerchuk
That’s why Sigstr exists. Sigstr powers smart marketing through the thousands of email signatures displayed to your most important contacts (your prospects, customers, partners, vendors, investors, and friends). The best email signatures drive brand compliance and unlock the marketing potential of every employee email sent. With Sigtsr, every employee email includes a consistently branded email signature, and marketers can easily update signature campaigns to drive awareness and engagement for key events, case studies, product updates, news, and job opportunities.
In 2010, SteelHouse set out to change the eCommerce marketing space because they saw the obvious flaws in online advertising: channel confusion, a reactionary system to consumer trends, blind trust in black box algorithms, over-spending, waiting forever on creative and even longer to go live. And, of course, deciphering attribution for performance.
SteelHouse has one simple mission: To create performance marketing that actually performs. As a result, they have pioneered a cloud-based marketing platform that gives their customers complete control, access to marketing channels, and delivers audience, creative, and performance – all from one beautiful user interface.
The company began using Sigstr, a platform for managing employee email signatures, in July 2015 as a way to deliver a consistent marketing message to their most important contacts. This includes those who are receiving emails from SteelHouse employees, such as prospective customers, vendors, partners, customers, thought leaders, and media.
Sigstr lets SteelHouse leverage the thousands of personal emails its 185 employees send each and every day. By building an email signature template within Sigstr, SteelHouse can now control portions (or all) of each employee’s email signatures to make sure each signature is individualized with employee-specific names and titles. A Steelhouse administrator can then centrally manage branding, content, and information. In addition, with the Sigstr Campaigns product, SteelHouse can automatically include a banner integration at the bottom of every single employee email, highlighting the latest marketing content with a compelling call-to-action.
Check out SteelHouse’s most successful Sigstr Campaign to-date promoting their newest resource, “2015 Holiday Digital Marketing Guide”.
The campaign generated 1,839 clicks in 3 months, which resulted in an extreme surge of visitors to their website and an increase in downloads.
A true champion of the Sigstr platform, Christopher had this to say about the partnership:
We look forward to seeing what results SteelHouse will continue to experience with the power of an email signature generator. Want to do more with your organization’s email signatures? Start your free 30-day trial here.
For more testimonials and case studies from other Business Services companies, check out this recent resource (with email signature examples):
If youre a B2B Services company, then you know just how important your people are to your companys success. Dont get us wrong – employees are an important part of every business, no matter the industry. Without good people who do their job and treat customers well, your business will not be successful. But for a B2B Services company, your people are your product – theres just no way around it: you need to build the best team you can, or risk it all by having mediocre talent reflect poorly on your brand.
For B2B Services brands, such as design or ad agencies, executive recruiting firms, law firms, consultancies and others, company culture is likely a very important aspect of building a great team. How else do you attract good talent that will represent your brand well? Most of the time, good culture and great people are inseparable. So as a B2B Services company, you need to stand out from the crowd, showcase your culture in unique ways, and attract top-level talent by offering them something they cant get anywhere else.
Culture, People & The Power of Employee Email
What is something all of your employees do every single day without fail? Sometimes even on the weekends? You guessed it – they send email. A lot of email! On average, a single employee will send 10,000 emails per year. So if your B2B Services company has just 100 employees, simple math suggests your company is sending 1M emails per year! Thats a million brand impressions and engagement opportunities being sent out to your most important contacts: those your employees are emailing such as prospects, customers, partners, community members, and more.
Every one of those 1M emails can either be a positive or negative brand experience. And sometimes – especially for B2B Service companies – email and phone calls may be the only interactions your contacts will ever have with your employees. So every touchpoint matters a lot to your brands integrity.
Why not use this high powered channel to attract your dream team? Email is a powerful engine for business services companies use it for your brands advantage.
Here are a few examples of how your B2B Services brand can make the most of the employee email signature to promote your culture and attract your dream team:
1. Showcase Company Culture to Pique Interest
Do you have an amazing company culture where every opinion matters and every team member is expected to grow? Does your company have fun traditions or does your team volunteer for service opportunities around your community? How about an awesome CEO thats vocal about employee success? Use the email signature as a way to highlight your team and the rewarding culture youve created by sharing a video from your CEO, a picture of the team, or stories about serving the community.
2. Promote Specific Open Positions
Your company is always on the lookout for superstars – especially those that are already aware of your business and the unique services you offer. Why not use the email signature (which is already being viewed by your most important contacts: prospects, customers, partners and community members) to drive awareness for specific open positions?
3. Ask For Referrals
Your employee emails are far reaching, so include an email signature that incentivizes your contacts to refer their friends to open job positions. Point email recipients to a landing page where they can either browse the current job openings (like the Radious example below), or direct them to a landing page where they can nominate rockstars for your team – and get rewarded if their referral is hired!
For more information on how your business services company can attract incredible content and showcase culture, check out these recent Sigstr resources:
As a business services company, you have a unique challenge as you don’t have a physical product. Instead, you offer superior services or solutions and you rely heavily on the relationships that your sales and customer success teams build. You have created a successful company on your people and your brand, and as such, your brand is incredibly important to you. With that, brand consistency is equally important. Whether you business services brand offers accounting, banking, consulting, advertising, design, education, insurance, or whatever it may be, you’re always looking for new and innovative ways to give your brand and your reputation a boost.
According to a recent report in Select USA, a government agency, in 2012, the U.S. business services industry was comprised of about 760,000 firms with combined annual revenues of $1.5 trillion and employed 7.8 million Americans. The business services sector is growing rapidly. As a marketer promoting your services, it’s more important than ever to set your offerings apart.
We’re excited to share that, announced today, the Sigstr team has added Kevin Vanes as Vice President of Sales! Kevin will join the executive team, which now includes Dan Hanrahan, CEO, Dave Duke, Vice President of Customer Success, and Sam Smith, Vice President of Product. Sigstr has also doubled the size of its team making hires across marketing, product, sales, and customer success. It’s been a fast start to 2016 and we won’t be slowing down any time soon!
Our team is humbled to now serve over 100 customers and has a team of 20+ dedicated to the opportunity of email signatures. In order to keep up with our growing team, we’ve relocated to a new office overlooking Monument Circle in downtown Indianapolis.
We’re continuing to aggressively hire top-level talent to support all functions of the business. For more information on open positions, visit: https://www.sigstr.com/company.
Want to see the power of Sigstr firsthand and try it out at your company? Sign up and start your free 30-day trial today. Create your own email signature template and start experiencing the power of email signature marketing.
If you send a girl that loves fashion to a SaaS conference on sales development (this one being #Rainmaker16, hosted by our friends at SalesLoft), she’s going to walk away enamored by the fashion of the tech world. It all started with Kyle Porter’s light up shoes.
While Kyle’s flashy shoes lit up the main stage (please excuse the poor dad joke here), arguably one of the greatest things about a SaaS/tech conference is the garb. Following along with the Rainmaker theme of this conference, we chose to bring Sigstr branded umbrellas.
In the growing industry known by it’s shorthand moniker “SaaS” (Software-as-a-Service), the opportunities for goofy, borderline sophomoric, puns are hard to avoid. Most notably (and thanks mostly to pop culture’s recent love and affinity for booty) “Nice SaaS”, “Dat SaaS Tho”, and “So SaaSy” are some memorable ones. #Rainmaker16 (heldin Atlanta last week) was no stranger to the plethora of software-related humor.
Social123 brought awesome shirts with a hilariously placed hashtag (shown to the left below, thanks so much Carolyn Fieberman from the Everstring for the photo).
RingLead’s were also very clever (thanks to Ashley Darnell from Social123 for the pic)!
Lastly, I want to thank (but mostly apologize) to the Everstring team for putting up with me as I obsessed over their embroidered henleys!
I was so happy to have met all of these wonderful people and learn from the brilliant minds of the Sales Development Cloud. I already cannot wait for #Rainmaker17, and I can assure you that Sigstr will be back with some even cooler tees!
As a business services company, you have a unique challenge as you don’t have a physical product. Instead, you offer superior services or solutions and you rely heavily on the relationships that your sales and customer success teams build.
While many business services brands embrace the power of employee email to communicate with customers, many do not use those emails to their full potential. In fact, a single employee will send, on average, 10,000 one-to-one emails annually, and each email represents an opportunity to drive brand awareness and engagement. Why not use this high powered channel to promote your newsletter, success stories, past projects, events and job fairs, trade shows, and new diverse offerings? Or, win new logos by promoting a referral program to your happy existing customers. Email is a powerful engine for business services company – use it for your brand’s advantage.
To help business service companies fully take advantage of the thousands of emails its employees send each day, we’ve written the below post that’s full of information and tips to maximize every email your employees send.
So let’s get down to email business. Here’s a look at 4 ways that employee email can help your business services company accomplish its marketing goals. And surprise! All of these tips can be implemented in just a few minutes via your employee email signatures:
1. Attract Prospective Customers
Email can intrigue potential customers in a non-obtrusive way. Email isn’t pushy and doesn’t have that same feel as a cold call. Using the email signature area to introduce potential clients to your business is an attractive way for them to learn about what you do on their own terms. For example, include a visual call-to-action to learn more about your organization via a short video about your company or a 2-page overview about your service offerings.
2. Encourage Customer Action
Email is a great way to activate potential customers. You can encourage customers to get quotes, schedule a meeting and set up consultations all through the employee email. These messages should be designed to motivate potential customers into actual customers. In other words, you’re converting leads in paying clients. Try doing this by including a clickable call-to-action that promotes getting in touch with your company by prompting the prospect to “sign up for a webinar”, “set up a consultation”, or “hear a customer success story”. Giving the prospect a way to reach your team without having responding to a sales pitch can pay dividends to your bottom line.
3. Drive Web Traffic
Like many service-based businesses, your website is probably one of your main marketing tools. Rather than hoping your website shows up in search results, you can encourage potential customers to visit your website by promoting specific pages (such as customer success stories, pricing, or upcoming events) via the email signature.
Email is a great routing tool that can lead your customers to your website to learn more about your business and engage with your company. Just make sure you have the right things in place when they arrive so you don’t miss an opportunity.
4. Keep Customers Up-to-Date
Everyone gets busy, but well-timed employee emails can keep your audience informed even when life gets crazy. Emails that keep your clients informed or “in the know” keep your target audience engaged with your business and company. Informative emails can also update customers about upcoming deals, events, open job positions or changes to your service offerings.
Use the email signature as a way to keep your audience informed. Promote your newsletter, upcoming events where you’ll have a booth or a speaker, changes to your current product offerings, or even any recent awards or recognitions. Make sure the signature is always up-to-date so it’s a reliable source to your prospects and customers!
Along with promoting calls-to-action via the employee email signature, ensure that the signature area itself appropriately reflects your brand. For business services companies, your brand is the most important asset in the absence of a physical product. Make sure that all employee signatures have correct formatting, font, social media links, and colors to ensure your brand has its best foot forward when communicating with your company’s most important contacts.
For more information on how your business services company can use employee email (and more specifically, the email signature), check out these recent Sigstr resources:
Raidious is a content centric digital agency. They create all types of digital content for brands – everything from social graphics to video and blogging. Pretty much all of the “stuff” that makes digital marketing work – Raidious specializes in creating.
Through years of creating great content, the team has learned that the traditional methods of distributing content no longer deliver the same results that they used to. According to Craig Lile, Senior Director of Advancement at Raidious, “It’s a lot harder to get your content noticed – brands have fully bought in that content marketing is the way of the future, but getting content marketing to break through is a really tough task for brands to do.”
Raidious’ employees send email all day long to clients and prospects and vendors, and they saw these personal, one-to-one email communications as another way to create advocacy – another opportunity for up-sell and cross-sell within their clients.
“When I saw Sigstr, I thought ‘wow, what a great way to distribute content!’ – and it’s from people that are trusted. It gives our team an awesome way to serve content that has a high probability of getting digested because it’s from a trusted source – and best of all, we can measure everything and continually improve our campaigns”, said Craig.
Solution
Raidious began using Sigstr, an employee email signature management platform, in January of 2015 for their 25 employees. To date, Raidious has run 5 unique employee email signature marketing campaigns, including: hiring and open positions, video and expanded services, a general brand campaign promoting Raidious, and a very specific website campaign. Raidious has 2 default groups: Sales and Marketing, and split their campaigns accordingly.
Results
Raidious’ top 2 campaigns to date include a campaign centered around hiring new talent, and a “Welcome to Raidious” brand campaign:
The hiring campaign generated 26,000 displays and 41 clicks over a month long period, and helped Raidious fill its’ talent pool with well qualified applicants in the local Indianapolis area. The email signature marketing campaign was very targeted and helped bring visibility to the growing team at Raidious.
Meanwhile, the Raidious brand campaign, which was active for 3 months, generated 174,000 displays with 181 clicks and generated many new visitors to the website, along with increased brand visibility.
“The value of ~200,000 impressions is unparalleled,” commented Craig. “It’s a channel we already own promoting content we already have. You simply can’t find a better value for reaching this type of audience.”
Vision
In the future, Raidious plans to test out new Sigstr campaigns. First, the team plans to launch a campaign entitled “This Week in Raidious” highlighting all of the new content and announcements across the company for that particular week. They also plan to launch a culture-centered campaign highlighting the great work environment and promoting Raidious as a great place to work. In the future, they would also like to begin pushing relevant blog posts, as well as create specific guides, such as a social media guide, for their end recipients.
During my time at #Rainmaker16 this week, I had the opportunity to sit in on a breakout session that provided a unique perspective from the founders of 3 companies: Crystal, Datanyze, and Sigstr.
Drew D’Agostino: Founder & CEO of Crystal (helps professionals communicate more effectively with personality data). He previously co-founded and served as CTO of Attend.com (an event management software company in Boston).
Ben Sardella: Co-founder and CRO at Datanyze (an all-in-one sales intelligence platform that helps companies find and reach prospects). Ben previously served as VP of Sales at Kissmetrics.
Dan Hanrahan: Sigstr founder & CEO (previously lead go-to-market teams at iGoDigital and ExactTarget).
Alongside these 3 fine gentlemen, Sean Kester (VP of Product Strategy at SalesLoft) served as moderator and led the conversation.
The session started with how each founder uses their own solution to help their sales development teams, or more simply put, “eating your own dog food.” Each founder was then asked what they do to set up their SDR teams for success.
Ben: “We all want a lot. But we also want to be effective. I’ll take personalization over mass volume. Segment your audience into specific buckets, then build your templates around that and measure effectiveness.”
Dan: “Personalize content based on a specific vertical and equip your sales development team with that material.”
Drew: “Include screenshots of your solution and how it relates to the prospect by including their data. A strategy that is around personalization but that is also scalable goes a long way.”
Dan: “Look to your sales development team for feedback on what specific content will resonate best with that particular audience.”
Question from the moderator: “How has the landscape of a sales development team changed during your career?”
Drew: “The more you leave out the better (with email). It can come down to one line of information that triggers a response.”
Ben: “I’ve seen promotions and progressions into the most important titles of the company originate from the sales development team. Sean is a prime example of that.”
Question from the moderator: “What are some traits you look for when hiring for a SDR position?”
Dan: “Curious. Self-starter. A willingness to help. I’m looking for them to hit their activity benchmarks then do what interests them most.”
Question from the moderator: “What are you most excited about with SalesLoft’s announcement of the Sales Development Cloud?”
Ben: “The ability to use data to strategize your engagement.”
Drew: “It helps professional communicators accelerate their relationships.”
Question from the crowd: “What motivates you most as founders?”
Ben: “First off, I’m naturally just a competitive person. But I also want to make sure we’re doing all we can to ensure our sales development team (and any other team at Datanyze) is set up for success.”
Drew: “Relationships and people. To help people know others and to be known.”
Dan: “Seeing that growth of your team and seeing the culture form. It’s all about the people.”
A big thanks to all of the rockstars on the SalesLoft team for putting on such a great event. And thanks to all of those who stopped by our booth to say hello. The Sigstr team had a blast meeting many new friends and catching up with old ones. See you all next year!
About Datanyze: Find your perfect prospect information - Uncover, research, and connect with the right prospects and companies at the right time. Import target people and company profiles with one click into SalesLoft and create better alignment.
About Crystal: Communicate based on personality – Get access to millions of personality profiles and learn the best way to communicate with your customers. Use empathy and intentionality by tailoring your outbound messages to fit the context of the buyer.
As a business services company, you have a unique challenge as you don’t have a physical product – instead, you offer superior services or solutions and you rely heavily on the relationships that your sales and customer success teams build. You have created a successful company on your people and your brand, and as such, your brand is incredibly important to you – as is brand consistency.
Employee Email Is a Critical Branding Channel
Often times for business services companies, email is the main channel for communication and where your company branding is viewed most often. But are you leveraging the thousands of employee emails (sent from Gmail or Outlook) each of your employees sends directly to prospects, customers, industry influencers, and partners? A single employee will send, on average, 10,000 one-to-one emails annually, and each email represents an opportunity to drive brand awareness and engagement. Why not use this high powered channel to promote your newsletter, success stories, past projects, events and job fairs, trade shows, and new diverse offerings? Or win new logos by promoting a referral program to your happy existing customers. Email is a powerful engine for business services company – use it for your brand’s advantage.
How Sigstr Works
Leverage Employee Email Signature Marketing at Your Business Services Company
Referrals:
Referrals, both to recruit employees as well as attract new customers, are important to your business services company. With no physical product, you rely heavily on the relationships your team builds, why not put those thousands of employee emails to work and use the email signature as a referral engine?
Newsletters & Social Media:
For many business services companies, monthly newsletters and social media followings are important so customers and prospects alike can keep up with new content, service offerings, events, and news. Grow your subscriber list and your social media following by enticing email recipients to sign up by using the employee signature.
Events:
Does your business services company frequently attend or host events? How about webinars? Ensure your most important contacts are aware of where you’ll be and when so they can make plans to attend. And best of all, track their registration or clicks via the email signature campaign to determine which events are most attractive to your recipients.
Upsell/Cross-Sell:
It’s likely your business services company offers multiple service options – many of which your customers may not realize (or may have forgotten). Use the employee email signature as a way to introduce new solutions with a call-to-action to visit a landing page, video, or data sheet with more information. Why not encourage your most important contacts to understand more about your business?
Studio Science Use Case
Studio Science is a world-class team of designers, technologists and strategists. Studio Science recognized that their customers spend the majority of their days in email as well. When launching new initiatives, Studio Science needed another outlet to spread the word as quickly as possible.The team began to use Sigstr to promote the company’s most important initiatives and to reinforce its brand through a visual, clickable campaign allowing them to bring design and visuals to the forefront – and control the content and signature itself – with just a few clicks. The Periodic newsletter is an important focus for Studio Science and is promoted through a number of different outlets. In just 1 month of promoting the newsletter via the Sigstr campaign, Studio Science saw 71,052 impressions resulting in 26 clicks to the sign-ups page of the weekly newsletter from the email signature call-to-action alone.
The world of employee email is evolving and growing on a daily basis, and Sigstr is working hard to ensure our customers have a seamless experience using our email signature marketing platform. Email is a critical component in our daily lives and it’s our mission to make employee email signatures more powerful, more effective and now, more efficient. As many of our customers use Google to run their businesses, it has been a top priority for our product team to develop an incredible user experience for those using the Gmail email platform. And now, we’re excited to announce it’s here: Gmail Signature Sync!
Backed by a powerful integration with Google Apps, the Sigstr install process is simple and efficient. The integration removes the need for employees to install the application individually. Instead, the Sigstr administrator has the ability to push campaign and signature updates to each employee through the application portal.
Does your company use Gmail to run your employee email? If so, the Gmail Signature Sync is as easy as the 4 steps below. Once you’re logged into your Sigstr account, simply:
1. Select the tools menu.
2. Navigate the Connectors page.
3. Select Connect to Google Apps and enter your Google Apps Admin credentials.
4. After authenticating, click Sync Signatures Now to push your Sigstr content to all users. Alternatively, enable Auto-Sync to instantly push out changes to Google Apps users whenever content is updated in Sigstr. The sync will push any signature or user signature field changes straight to users on your Google Apps domain. It will only affect users who are already provisioned in Sigstr.
WARNING: Make sure you have uploaded all employee data and are ready for a live launch before syncing.
Yep, it really is just that easy! We even put together this video tutorial below to prove it!
Still on the fence about employee email signature marketing? No problem! Sign up for Sigstr and start your free 30-day trial today to experience firsthand the power of email signature marketing.
Still undecided? Check out the lastest Sigstr resources to learn more:
Emails are one of the most common forms of communication today. In fact, there are 2.6B email users worldwide, with each user holding more than 1 account. Just in the business setting alone, it’s estimated that each employee will send 10,000 emails annually! So for a 100 person company, that’s over 1M emails per year. And while the email signature may not seem all that important, think about how your company’s most important contacts are perceiving your employee’s signature: your prospects, customers, partners, vendors, influencers, thought leaders, and so many others. Often times, an email is the very first interaction an individual will have with your company directly (outside of perhaps your website, blog, or social channels managed by your marketing team).
So how can your employees represent your brand well, while also providing an opportunity for your company’s most valuable contacts to engage with your most important initiatives?
We ran across a recent infographic in a Business2Community post, authored by Danny Ashton and we love it so much we just have to share it.
First of all, we love Danny’s definition that so accurately describes what an email signature is:
“At its simplest, your email signature is an electronic business card: ‘here’s my message, and here’s how to reach me’. Identifying who you are and what you do is a no-brainer. Adding a professional-looking headshot (hi-res and appropriate to your brand) can be a nice personal touch – and potential memory-prompt to sometime acquaintances with handshake fatigue! Phone numbers and email addresses should be kept to a minimum (no more than one of each), and all this information should be neatly divided and spaced out so it’s easily accessible to your busy client.”
But more than that, according to Danny, your email signature can be a very powerful marketing tool:
“Brand consistency is a key element, whether you’re emailing on behalf of your own business or you’re part of a bigger organization. Ensuring the fonts, colours, and tone are aligned with that of your colleagues and your broader web and print marketing makes you easily identifiable and contributes to your company’s strong image.”
Danny lists out 7 ways to improve your email signature:
Make it simple – avoid the use of too many graphics, colors and fonts
Keep it short – include vital information and cut out needless information
Inform your recipients – include information on any upcoming promotions, product launches, events or latest blog posts that might be of interest to the recipient
Be consistent – your signature should reflect your company’s visual identity
Break it up – make use of pipes (|), colons (:) or dividers to condense the number of lines
Get social – include social media links to your company’s main accounts, unless you’re happy for people to reach out to you via your personal accounts
Include additional details – include additional details such as your title and department so your recipients know whom they’re talking with right away
Did you know that there is actually an entire company devoted to employee email signature marketing? Sigstr allows marketers to showcase the company’s most important initiatives via call-to-action campaigns to the most engaged audience – those your employees are emailing with directly. In addition, Sigstr allows your company to gain control of employee’s email signatures to ensure proper formatting and branding on every single employee email signature. No longer will you have to worry about outdated signatures, formatting issues, or wrong uses of colors or fonts. And best of all, get the data to see what’s working!
Ready to get started with the power of employee email signature marketing? Check out the most recent Sigstr resource:
Founded in 2012 and based in Detroit, LevelEleven is a sales performance platform used by VP’s of Sales & Marketing at tech companies and across many fast-growing industries where the sales role is fundamental.
Named by Salesforce as one of the “Top 8 Apps to Help Your Sales Soar,” the software helps sales teams sell more by keeping salespeople focused on the behaviors that matter. Sales managers simply identify key sales behaviors and set daily, weekly and monthly goals to motivate reps. When performance falls out of line, LevelEleven creates real-time, high-impact leaderboards to rapidly spike behavior and rally any team.
The LevelEleven team began using Sigstr as a way to promote the company’s most important initiatives through its own team by automatically including a call-to-action at the bottom of every single employee email sent (think Gmail). The platform gives Kristy Sharrow, LevelEleven’s Marketing Director, insight into how each Sigstr Campaign is performing so she can monitor the results in real-time and adjust accordingly for the next campaign. In addition, Kristy can divide Sigstr users into groups or departments and use different campaigns across sales, marketing, administration, customer success, and other departments.
Check out LevelEleven’s most recent Sigstr Campaign promoting their newest ebook, “Why Modern Sales Leaders Drive With KPIs”.
A true champion of the Sigstr platform, Kristy had this to say about the partnership:
We look forward to seeing what results LevelEleven will continue to experience with the power of email signature marketing! Want to try email signature marketing for your organization? Start your free 30-day trial here: https://app.sigstr.com/users/sign_up
For more testimonials and case studies from other SaaS companies, read more:
Every SaaS marketer understands the power of marketing as it relates to filling the funnel, progressing opportunities through the pipeline, and improving brand impressions. For several years, digital marketers have relied upon the trusty “paid, owned, earned, and shared” channels that have proven to be successful: boost website traffic with SEO, attend tradeshows and host field marketing events, use digital advertising and remarketing, implement a PR strategy, use social media, and on and on.
Digital marketers are open about sharing these tried and true channels with each other, and it’s true – they’ve proven successful and have gotten many SaaS companies to where they are today – along with a lot of hard work, trial and error, and sales velocity.
As a high growth SaaS company, your marketing team cares a LOT about retention and account growth for your current customers, as well as scaling your MRR and ARR growth rates of attracting new customers and logos. In order to accomplish your lofty goals each month, quarter and year, you’re likely investing heavily in the traditional channels above as a way to capture interest and educate your audience about your technology.
Check out our newest ebook and explore in depth 4 emerging channels every SaaS Digital Marketer should add to their marketing mix:
Email Signature Marketing (Owned Media)
LinkedIn Sponsored Updates (Paid Media)
Video Marketing & YouTube Video Cards (Earned/Shared Media)
Content Recommendations (Paid Media)
For more information on how your SaaS company can accelerate in the digital marketing age, check out these recent Sigstr resources:
For software as a service (SaaS) marketers, generating leads for the top of the funnel can often feel like the bane of their existence. Though SaaS marketers are also typically accountable for conversion rates, cost per lead, opportunities, and countless other metrics, the initial lead is critical as it’s usually the first real interaction with your company.
Often times, these SaaS marketers work alongside their sales counterparts to help craft messages and campaigns for the sales team to use in prospecting key accounts to open the door to conversations. As all of us in the SaaS business know, communicating via email (such as Gmail or Outlook) is perhaps one of the most commonly used methods of prospecting. In fact, the average employee of a company will send 10,000 emails annually! For a SaaS company with just 100 employees, that can quickly escalate to over 1M emails sent annually.
So for SaaS marketers, these email communications can be a prime opportunity for helping sales open the door by using the email signature to generate great, warm leads from those that have already had exposure and communication with your company. How? Here are 3 ways to get started:
1. Prompt Prospects to View a Product Demo Video
When prospecting an individual or a company that is likely unaware of what your company does, give them some easy to digest information in the form of a quick video. Include the call-to-action in the email signature for them to watch this 1-2 minute demo video to gain more of an understanding of what your product or service offers, what the benefits are, as well as quick customer success quotes or logos.
By giving your prospects this information right away, they can determine almost immediately if the product or service could be of use, opening the door to further conversations, rather than seeking to schedule a 30-minute demo out of the gate.
2. Share a Great Customer Success Story
Your customers love your product or service, so why not share some of the successes loud and proud? The email signature is a great place to showcase brands across industry, use case, problem they were solving and more. Use the email signature call-to-action to highlight the customer name and results, then direct the prospect to download the full case study to read more information about how the company achieved the results with your product or service.
Customer success stories are one of the greatest ways to accelerate a conversation – especially if your prospect is aware of the company that’s being discussed. Be proud of your customers and share their stories!
3. Promote a Conference or Event
Inviting your prospect to sign-up for an upcoming conference, tradeshow or field marketing event is a painless way of engaging. By offering something of value to the prospect by means of your email signature, you are showing how your company values education and resources. If your prospect signs up, you’ll have the opportunity to meet him or her face to face at the event or conference, and dive deeper into discovering their needs, goals, as well as have the opportunity to showcase your product or service by providing a personalized demo.
For more information on how your SaaS company can use email to generate leads, check out Sigstr’s latest free resource:
Congratulations, you’ve just completed an awesome new content resource for your company! SaaS marketers know that creating valuable content that will get shared, promoted, and downloaded is no easy task. But finishing the piece of content is just the beginning. How will you promote your newest piece of content in order to get the most leverage out of it and reach your prime audience?
As SaaS marketers ourselves, we know getting content out there can be a trick – but if you do it successfully, the content can pay dividends in terms of leads, opportunities, branding and exposure, and closed won business. From our experience, here are 5 ways SaaS marketers can promote content effectively:
1. Spread the Word With 3rd Party Relationships
Developing strong third party relationships can be incredibly valuable for your SaaS company – especially when it comes to partnering on events or content promotion. Relationships with those that offer a complimentary technology but don’t compete with your business can offer an expanded reach to individuals that will likely benefit from the content that’s shared.
Having trusted third party companies or thought leaders help spread the word about your newest piece of content can accomplish a few things: 1) When others share your content, it adds an additional “stamp of approval” for both companies participating 2) It creates brand exposure for both companies, as well as the potential for inbound leads that can be shared between the two companies 3) It create a 2-way relationship where the other company or thought leader may approach you for help in the future.
Third party relationships have many benefits, but perhaps the most powerful is the ability to help each other succeed and expand both audiences at the same time.
2. Leverage the Email Signature
Email signatures are a key part of every email your employees send. Several organizations have caught on to the fact that email is the lifeblood of their company (an average employee sends 10,000 emails a year), and a huge opportunity to drive incremental awareness and engagement with their marketing content. By automatically appending calls to actions to your newest piece of content directly to employee email signatures, marketers are finally breaking down the barriers of the employee email, and leveraging it to gain millions of brand impressions. Check out a free trial of Sigstr here.
3. Give LinkedIn Sponsored Updates a Try
If you haven’t used LinkedIn Sponsored Updates, give it a try. For SaaS marketers, it’s likely that your audience uses LinkedIn on a daily (if not hourly) basis. LinkedIn lets you post an update, then similar to other social media networks, you can sponsor the update and tailor the audience so it appears only to those that meet your criteria, such as: location, job title, education level, number of employees, and so on. In addition, you can use more characters than Twitter and can also include a catchy image to promote your newest piece of content. Once you define your audience, you can then “bid” on how much you’d like to spend on either individual clicks or overall impressions. Then, just set the campaign and watch the results come in once the update is approved! SaaS marketers loved LinkedIn for promoting content, so give it a try when you launch your next big piece.
4. Promote with Email Marketing & E-newsletters
Though email service providers (ESPs) such as ExactTarget, MailChimp and others have been around seemingly forever, email marketing is often forgot about as a channel for promotion of new content. SaaS marketers should leverage this easy way to send mass email to subscribers, especially since marketers can customize with dynamic information to target only those interested (such as Sales teams, Marketers, IT, etc). When using an ESP or Marketing Automation tool to send out emails to promote content, be sure to include a large image of the content, 3-4 key takeaways, and a quick summary – all “above the fold” so the information isn’t lost in the shuffle. But most importantly, include a call-to-action for the reader to download the content and share with peers.
5. Send Direct Mail Packages to Executives
Getting the attention of busy executives can be very challenging. While calling and emailing are always an important part of the prospecting mix, try breaking through to their desk by sending a direct mail box that includes the printed piece of content, a cover letter from the rep or an executive from your company, along with an object they can keep on their desk (hint: everyone loves a good coffee mug!). Once the package has arrived (be sure to use tracking), begin your follow-up process. Remember, follow-up is key! It’s unlikely that the executive will be the first to reach out, but since you took the time to send a package and tailor the note, you are likely to get a response – or even a shoutout on Twitter!
If you’re a SaaS marketer, what are some tips and tricks you use to promote your newest piece of content? What have you tried in the past that hasn’t worked?
For more information on how to promote your most important content and initiatives, check out these recent Sigstr resources:
Return Path is a global Data Solutions Provider that helps the world’s leading companies promote and protect their brands. Every minute of every day, their clients and partners trust their data and insights to help them build closer, safer, and smarter relationships with their customers.
Opportunity
As Return Path is a large, global organization, the company had a difficult time controlling employees’ email signatures. Return Path needed a solution that would allow one person to easily manage all employee signatures, while also tracking and optimizing the success of email signature marketing campaigns across all of their employees.
Solution
Return Path began using Sigstr, an employee email signature marketing platform, in February, 2015 as a way to control branding on all sales and marketing emails, as well as promote the company’s most important initiatives and content and measure the campaigns that are most effective. Allison Winkle, Digital Marketing Coordinator, took over as the Sigstr admin in July, 2015 and manages the platform across its 100 global employees in sales and marketing.
One of the first campaigns Allison ran was to promote the Return Path World Tour – Return Path hosted events taking place around the world. The Sigstr campaign directed those who clicked on the image to a specific landing page with further details about the events.
As a high growth SaaS company, you care a LOT about retention and account growth for your current customers, as well as scaling your MRR and ARR growth rates of attracting new customers and logos. In order to accomplish your lofty goals each month, quarter and year, you’re likely investing heavily in mass email marketing, digital marketing channels and event marketing as a way to capture interest and educate your audience about your technology. But how are you leveraging the thousands of one-to-one business emails (such as Gmail or Outlook) your employees are sending directly to prospects, customers, industry influencers, and technology partners?
Did you know each of your employees likely send about 10,000 one-to-one emails annually? Multiple that by how many employees you have, and that’s a LOT of personal email. And best yet, each email sent represents an opportunity to drive awareness and engagement for your events, content marketing assets, and marketing campaigns to your most engaged audience: those that are interacting with your employees on a 1:1 basis – not through a mass marketing play.
Top SaaS Brands Trust Sigstr to Power Email Signature Marketing:
Leverage Email Signature Marketing Campaigns at Your SaaS Company:
Account Growth & Retention:Keeping your current customers happy is key to success for SaaS companies.Use email signature marketing campaigns across your customer success, services and account management teams to shareproduct release notes, new product or service announcements, and inspiration and best practices on how to be successful using your SaaS product
New Customer & Logos:New customer acquisition is critical to your company – and every month and every quarter your targets keep increasing, but your number of sales reps may not be.Include email signature marketing campaigns for your new business sales and sales development teams to showcasenew customer case studies, ebooks and reports, upcoming educational webinars, infographics, and explainer Videos
Talent Recruitment:Your HR and talent recruitment teams are competing against many other SaaS companies – some maybe a lot larger than your company with a greater history of success. Your HR team is on the front-lines and need as many tools as possible to showcase your awesome company culture, growth, and vision for the future. Make sure your recruiting team is using their email signatures to showcase your brand, culture via a video by your CEO or other employees, and press releases and company growth stories.
As a SaaS company, you know how important events and relationship building is to your industry. You invest a lot of dollars and time into booths, hosting customer events, and putting on webinars. But none of that matters unless you’re able to connect with the right attendees. Did you know that the promotion of events is actually the highest converting kind of Sigstr campaign? We’ll show you how Return Path uses Sigstr to promote their important company events below, or check out the full case study.
Return Path Use Case:
Return Path needed a solution that would allow one person to easily manage all employee signatures, while also tracking and optimizing the success of email signature marketing campaigns. Return Path began using Sigstr as a way to control branding on all sales and marketing emails, as well as promote the company’s most important initiatives and content. One of the first campaigns promoted the Return Path World Tour – Return Path hosted events taking place around the world. The Sigstr campaign directed those who clicked on the image to a specific landing page with further details about the events. During the 3 months that Return Path promoted the events, the campaign was displayed over 150,000 times and resulted in over 1,900 clicks with several registrations a direct result of the Sigstr campaign!
Want to check out the power of employee signature marketing for your own SaaS company? Sign up for a free 30-day trial of Sigstr.
We’re big fans of the Lesson.ly team and their unique company culture. They’re a young, fun company that lives and breathes authenticity and sincerity to rocking learning software and taking good care of employees and customers alike.
They often compete with companies that are much older and bigger, which is why they have honed in on their biggest differentiator: its people. They use many channels (such as their website or blog) to share their culture and love for customers. With Sigstr, they found a way to capitalize on the hundreds of thousands of one-to-one business emails the 18 Lesson.ly employees send each year.
Mitch Causey, Lesson.ly’s Director of Marketing, uses Sigstr to drive engagement around PR, events, product releases, and of course the company culture. “The Sigstr platform is so easy to use – it’s so simple for me, as the administrator, to hop in and edit campaigns in a matter of seconds — and apply the campaigns to individuals, groups, or the entire company. It just does what it’s supposed to do. Sigstr allows me from a single point to manage everyone’s email, which we definitely didn’t have before.”
The “Meet the Team” campaign (pictured below on the left), which ran for 2 months, scored 70k impressions and 250 clicks for the Lesson.ly team. They also use Sigstr to promote their most recent accomplishments (pictured below to the right).
A&A is a leading provider of freight, warehousing and customs brokerage services with over 35 years of experience. A&A helps companies or individuals transport items such as goods, machinery, lumber, textiles, autos, retail and more.
Opportunity
In the past, A&A used hyperlinked text in the email signature to link to resources, FAQs, or new service announcements. The employees had to manually update the email signature in order to update the link. Marketing had no way to ensure the update happened, or that it was done correctly, and measuring results was near impossible. Did employees include the link in the signature? Did recipients click or engage?
Solution
In August 2015, A&A launched Sigstr as a simple way to utilize employee email for signature marketing campaigns. Every email an employee sends from Outlook now promotes new services and offers helpful resources, and ultimately drives traffic to their website. The company of 120 employees currently has 90 employees using the solution, which is easily managed by one individual, Trevor Carss, Marketing Manager, who uploads a visual campaign into Sigstr, and assigns the campaigns to specific groups across the organization. Trevor can log into Sigstr at any time to see how campaigns are performing.
In just 3 months of using Sigstr, A&A has experimented with several campaigns in order to test which messages resonate best with end recipients. Their campaigns have showcased their warehousing services, offered import/export knowledge for those shipping across borders, and promoted the new A&A website. Currently, the team is promoting their 4th campaign which is focused on customs brokerage services for the U.S. and Canada, as shown below:
Results
A&A began seeing immediate results after starting to use Sigstr – best of all, the team can now track the success of each campaign with definitive metrics, rather than guessing how each is perceived.The warehousing campaign, which was live for just under two months, yielded the team 193,000 displays with 318 clicks. Best of all, A&A now has the ability to track sourced deals that are generated from the employee email signature. Since launch, Sigstr is responsible for influencing approximately $10,000 in new business opportunities!
Want to read the entire A&A case study? Download your copy today and sign up for a free 30-day trial of Sigstr and experience the power of email signature marketing for yourself.
Karrie Wozniak is an expert on mobile fundraising. She is Vice President Marketing at 
Joshua Meyer brings over 14 years of fundraising, volunteer management, and marketing experience to his current role as the Director of Marketing for 
In this guest post, Cory Bray talks about how he sees email signature marketing fitting into the Sales Enablement Ecosystem, a framework that he and Hilmon Sorey outline in their book, 
Creed
Email is to your marketing department as Belle is to finding the Beast’s castle. It’s always been there, you’ve just been overlooking it as an advocacy channel. Your team is sending a LOT of email every day, to people who are actually interested in what you have to say. On average, each employee sends more than 10,000 emails a year. For that company of 250, that’s 2.5 million unique views on your content.
2. 
When thinking about a standard sales and marketing funnel, and which metrics are used to measure the success of a sales and marketing strategy, let’s keep it pretty straight-forward for the sake of this post’s word count. In its simplest form, our own sales/marketing team focuses on three main metrics: qualified leads generated, demos scheduled (and executed) and closed/won business. That’s it. That’s our formula for success.
The human body is hardwired to pulse – moving naturally through periods of higher and lower alertness. 
The modern model for success is broken. The idea of hunkering down for hours in front of a computer screen, plugging away all day, answering emails immediately, even late into the night, and working until you drop isn’t helping you get more done. What are you giving up by working so continuously? Are you able to think as clearly and creatively? Do you produce the same quality of work in the tenth or twelfth hour of a work day as you do in the second or fourth?
In the sales world, we’re constantly challenged with breaking through the noise and getting time with our most important prospects. In Tyler Lessard’s breakout, “How to Make Your Target Accounts Love the Fact You’re Targeting Them,” I learned new, creative ways to prospect. Lessard, who is the CMO at Vidyard said it’s time to get personal. Not just “personal,” but 
The sales and marketing SaaS platform world is exclusive. Through our partnerships with Salesloft and Terminus, Sigstr has quickly been initiated into this illustrious group. #FlipMyFunnel marketed the official launch of the Terminus + Sigstr partnership after the announcement of Terminus’ ABM Cloud.
Call-to-action banners in email signatures (as shown in the illustration to the right) can play an instrumental role in customer success. These interactive banners can include important company initiatives in the hundreds (or thousands) of the emails your customer success representatives and other customer-facing employees are sending every single day. Turn your email signature into a conversation starter to help customers feel further connected to your brand. Take, for example, a few of the use cases below of how several 
TechPoint
Want another opportunity for your marketing and content to cut through the noise? Your employees send thousands of emails every single day, each with an opportunity to be visually appealing. Use Sigstr for your html email signatures so
TechPoint
The product team celebrates new releases and product launches by bringing our DOMO robot to life. Product launches are especially exciting and important to celebrate. Every new launch makes our email signature app better, faster, stronger. The DOMO robot’s dancing can be seen in the GIF to the right.
Your employees send thousands of emails each day. Similar to social media advocacy solutions, an 
Well, what can I say? I graduated. It’s over. I did it.
Today marks my one-month anniversary here at Sigstr. During that time, I’ve gone through a crash course on Marketing, Sales, tech, how to iron a shirt, and everything else in between to prepare myself and close the knowledge gap. Google searches included (but were not limited to):
Smart marketing through email signatures – that’s what Sigstr is all about. Simple management for the employee email signature block that ensures a consistently branded email signature for employees and unlocks a powerful marketing channel with clickable call-to-action banners.
“Employee email represents a tremendous, and largely untapped, opportunity for marketers, and we are just getting started unlocking that potential. We can’t imagine being better positioned for the future, and the decision to scale our business in Indianapolis is a huge part of our competitive advantage.”
Evercontact
Weve recently enjoyed following along with 
“One of the best ways to improve in your conversion rate optimization is to have an explainer video on your site that tells your audience why your site or service is for them. If you ever take a look at the top selling products on ClickBank, you will notice that nearly all of them are using explainer videos on their landing page. Extremely long sales pages worked well in the past, now it’s all about the sales video. Make it engaging, interactive and of course ending with a call to action for your target audience. Be sure to check out my how to create killer explainer videos article for how to create one for your site.” 
“Storytell. It’s one of the most powerful tools you can use to improve conversion rate. Tell me why you started your business. Tell me how you are using your products. Tell me what your customers are gaining from working with you. Let me feel your pride and emotion. If I don’t feel something on an emotional level when I visit your website, then I’m just going to compare on price and then you lose. Storytell more for improving conversion rate optimization.”
Secret #3: Sean Smith (
“I recommend investing in great visuals for improving your conversion optimization rate. The prospective customer has to be able to visualize using the product, and if you have gorgeous visuals and video, you help the customer break the buying barrier. Research indicates products on a white background work better than a busy background. Investing in great visuals is beneficial for both sales and website conversion.” 
The Sigstr office is completely open, adorned with a bright green wall, trendy artwork, and an assortment of desks that are frequently rearranged to make room for our growing team. The thought of cubicles lining our walls is almost laughable. Personal space is not a concept we are particularly familiar with.From my seat, I can easily communicate with anyone in any department. While distractions are frequent, we benefit immensely from the increased level of collaboration.
At the end of last quarter, Sigstr hosted our first ever Sigstr Field Day. The company spent half of a Friday playing whiffle ball and other miscellaneous games. It was glorious. That evening, I told a friend about my day at work. She rolled her eyes and joked about the “difficulty” of my job. While the teasing was lighthearted, the problem was that my friend didn’t know the whole story. Sigstr Field Day was created in celebration of the fact that we had exceeded quarterly goals. Ironically, the day was the RESULT of hard work and dedication. The Sigstr team may have a lot of fun, but the company’s success is always our number one priority.
Beyond the hard work, there’s also a high level of uncertainty in working for a start-up. Sigstr has proven it is a viable business, however, there is a certain level of ambiguity in ongoing strategy and direction. Hard-hitting questions are asked every day. What’s our next step? What features are the most important? Are we targeting the right people? Should we go in a new direction? As a result, big decisions are made that impact the whole team. Anxiety certainly ensues. The only solace is to have faith in the vision and experience of our leadership team.
SalesLoft: “One of the best use cases for Sigstr has traditionally been event marketing,” explained Dan. “As 
The Sigstr Campaign for Lesson.ly includes a fun ‘Meet the Team’ image, which points to a blog post that talks about the Lesson.ly culture and how important that is to their mission. Just a few weeks after launching the Campaign, the sales team already had 3 companies raise their hand for that initial conversation, as tracked via the Sigstr Campaign.
Email signatures by themselves are like tequila without the lime and salt. For us, our lime and salt is our Campaign piece. 
The awesome people at HubSpot preach the importance of landing pages and how each one should be connected to a HubSpot campaign – which is what we do here at Sigstr. And so, by connecting my Sigstr campaign to the right HubSpot landing page, I can connect the two and see the impact of employee email signatures within a specific HubSpot campaign.
Thanks to another Sigstr customer, 
Author: Scott Dorsey, Managing Partner of 
“Building an exceptional and easy-to-use product is incredibly important to the Sigstr team,” said Sam Smith, VP of Product at Sigstr. “Our customers are replacing their manual and time consuming ways of updating signatures, and we have built a product to make this process seamless. These new product updates are critical to our users, and we are hard at work building further integrations and product updates that will deliver incredible ROI and brand cohesion.”
Weve all been victims. A well-intending colleague sends out a company-wide email about leftover pizza in the breakroom and all hell breaks loose. One person unintentionally asks the entire office if there is left-over pepperoni at the same time the office jokester replies with a GIF of stampeding elephants. All of a sudden, inboxes are full and everyone is annoyed, confused, or best case scenario, entertained. Whatever the situation, do not be tempted to reply-all to tell everyone else to stop replying-all. You are part of the problem.
If any email signatures in your company look like this, youre doing it all wrong.
The third and final step of my campaign design process is building out the format of the campaign. When I start to assemble my campaigns, I almost always start at 400 pixels by 96 pixels and adjust from there. I then take all the information that I know I want to include in the campaign and just throw it inside to see how much information I need to work with. Visual hierarchy is a huge part of how a campaign comes together for email signatures. Always be sure to prioritize the most information. 
For marketers, keeping the brand consistent across all employees can be a major struggle. 
Check out SteelHouse’s most successful Sigstr Campaign to-date promoting their newest resource, “2015 Holiday Digital Marketing Guide”.
If you send a girl that loves fashion to a SaaS conference on sales development (this one being 
Email signatures are a key part of every email your employees send. Several organizations have caught on to the fact that email is the lifeblood of their company (an average employee sends 10,000 emails a year), and a huge opportunity to drive incremental awareness and engagement with their marketing content. By automatically appending calls to actions to your newest piece of content directly to employee email signatures, marketers are finally breaking down the barriers of the employee email, and leveraging it to gain millions of brand impressions. 
Getting the attention of busy executives can be very challenging. While calling and emailing are always an important part of the prospecting mix, try breaking through to their desk by sending a direct mail box that includes the printed piece of content, a cover letter from the rep or an executive from your company, along with an object they can keep on their desk (hint: everyone loves a good coffee mug!). Once the package has arrived (be sure to use tracking), begin your follow-up process. Remember, follow-up is key! It’s unlikely that the executive will be the first to reach out, but since you took the time to send a package and tailor the note, you are likely to get a response – or even a shoutout on Twitter!
