It solves problems. It’s unique and intuitive. It makes life better for people.

But when people search for products, your solution remains buried in the results beneath inferior imposters. 

It’s demoralizing. It feels completely unfair. But in today’s article – I’m going to show you exactly how to fix it!

What to Expect From Our Guide to Boosting your Amazon Ranking 

Amazon has become a cornerstone for eCommerce, boasting over 9.7 million sellers worldwide that range from household names to family up-starts. We’ve even seen a huge amount of eCommerce success stories from people who went from humble beginnings to becoming million-dollar entrepreneurs thanks to Amazon.

And while it is still very much possible to have your own Amazon success story, there’s no doubt that the level of competition in the marketplace is sky-high.

In this crowded market, it will take some serious dedication to cut through the noise and get your product in front of your target customer. This means that not only do you need a great product, you also need a comprehensive understanding of Amazon’s SEO.

Since the marketplace’s conception in 2000, its search algorithm has flourished to become one of the most advanced, fully-fledged search engines on the web. 

Amazon’s search engine is incredibly popular with shoppers, and for many, it is their first port of call when searching for what they need. So, it’s crucial that your product is optimized for Amazon’s search algorithm and ready to be matched with hot, wallet-out, ready-to-buy customers.

In this guide, we’ll be covering:

• The Basics: What is Amazon SEO?

• What is Amazon’s A10 algorithm?

• How to master the algorithm: 6 tips

• 8 Strategies for a successful product listing

• 4 FREE keyword research strategies to rank your Amazon product

• Summary: Ranking factors to own Amazon search results

The Basics: What is Amazon SEO?

For a newcomer to eCommerce, “Amazon SEO’ might be a completely alien concept. Hell, “SEO” itself might just sound like total tech jargon to you. But, if you want to sell on Amazon an understanding of SEO is going to be important. And we promise – once we break it down for you, it’s really easy to understand!

So, what is SEO?

SEO stands for search engine optimization, and it refers to the process of getting your website or product to rank higher on a search engine.

What is Amazon SEO?

Amazon SEO refers to the optimization of your product listing to get your product to appear at the top of customer searches.

When it comes to selling your products on Amazon, you want your products to be as visible as possible, to as many people as possible – and Amazon SEO is what makes this possible.

The SEO process involves improving the format, wording, and media included in your Amazon web page or product listing in order for it to fit the preferences of Amazon’s search algorithm.

Amazon’s A10 algorithm can be used strategically to allow your products to appear at the top of relevant searches – allowing you to make more sales.

Therefore, the first step to understanding Amazon SEO is to understand Amazon’s A10 algorithm.

What is Amazon’s A10 algorithm?

As we know, if a browser sees your product at the top of their search results, they will be more likely to buy it. Most buyers simply don’t have the time or attention span to trawl through page after page of search results. Furthermore, they are more likely to assume the products at the top of their search are more popular amongst other buyers.

For your products to soar to their prime place at the top of search results, you will need to make sure you are up-to-date on the algorithms.

Amazon A10 is the backbone of the Amazon marketplace’s search engine technology. In fact, Amazon A10 is a subsidiary company of Amazon that works from Palo Alto in California. Their algorithm was developed to match customer search queries to the most relevant products.

The A10 algorithm focuses on “revenue-per-click”. This means that Amazon is prioritizing making sales and revenue, and thinks that the best way to do this is to match customers with the right product for their search. This makes sense – a sale is more likely to be made if a customer is quickly and clearly presented with exactly the product they are looking for.

If you have been selling on Amazon for a while, you might be more familiar with the Amazon A9 algorithm of the past. A10 works in a similar way, but with some core differences.

How A10 differs from Amazon’s A9 algorithm

Amazon’s A10 algorithm offers some notable differences from the A9 algorithm of the past. Let’s take a look:

• Where the A9 algorithm prioritized products that would produce a higher profit, the current A10 algorithm prioritizes the most relevant products for the search query. For the Amazon seller, this means paying attention to the most relevant keywords for your products and incorporating the right keywords in your product listings.
• A10 gives less priority to Amazon PPC (pay-per-click), so you will need to be more calculating and strategic if you intend to do a PPC campaign via Amazon advertising. A sponsored product will still appear at the top of searches, but you shouldn’t rely too heavily on them.
• A10 prioritizes Amazon sellers that have authority and can be trusted. The more positive reviews a seller has, the higher they are likely to appear in the algorithm. So it is highly important for sellers to encourage their customers to leave a review.
• The algorithm also takes into account how big your shop is. The more items you have in your shop, the higher Amazon will place you in search rankings.
• Continuing from the previous point, the more product categories your inventory fits into, the more Amazon will prioritize you too.
• Another insightful characteristic of the A10 algorithm is the emphasis on customers learning about your products from elsewhere on the internet. This is because you are bringing new customers to the Amazon marketplace. So Amazon sellers should maintain a presence across other platforms on the web, and use their Amazon link to direct people to their products or shop.
• You will need a strong sales history. The higher your sales velocity, the higher Amazon will place you on the search results page. This means you need to stay active on top of your inventory, get rid of slow-moving stock, and not settle for anything less than quick-moving sales.
• Clicks, clicks, clicks! The more people that are clicking on your listings, the higher Amazon will rank you. You can increase your click-through rate by paying extra attention to your product images, product names, and sales copy!
  

6 Tips for Mastering Amazon’s Algorithm

1. Use eye-catching images

If you don’t already know that Amazon has a whole list of product image requirements, now would be a great time to get to know. These guidelines include everything from technical specifications like pixel dimensions to background colors and lighting.

Generally, your product images should include a clear, in-focus, professional-looking image of your item in front of a white background. No other objects should be included in the photo, and the product should fill 85% of the photo frame. 

The photo is usually the first part of your listing that catches the browser’s eye in search results, so it’s important that it makes your product stand out from the rest. An attractive photo will also ensure as many users are clicking on your listing as possible, boosting your click-through rate and enhancing your position in the A10 algorithm.

2. Write enticing sales copy

You want your sales copy to tell Amazon customers exactly what your product is, and include every detail of why it’s useful and will fulfill their needs. If you are selling a product you truly believe in, it probably won’t be too hard to write a glowing description of why it’s so good. However, there are a couple of things to be aware of here…

The first is to write clearly and concisely. Don’t go overboard with the salesmanship, instead focus on the facts of what your product is, product features, and how it works. The A10 algorithm should be working in your favor to draw the exact right people to your listing, so you know potential buyers are already looking for an item like yours. 

Secondly, your sales copy is where you need to include your keywords. Your keyword research (stay tuned, we tell you how to do this later in the article!) should’ve provided you with a list of important keywords and long-tail keywords. 

You should try and scatter a mixture of these throughout your product page while avoiding keyword stuffing. You want your sales copy to read naturally to the reader while still helping your position in the Amazon search engine.

3. Use keywords wisely

So we’ve explained that you should be using keywords in your sales copy, but you might still have a few questions about how best to do it.

When writing your product sales copy, ensure you have your list of keywords on hand. Simply place these keywords where they might naturally appear in a description of your product. 

For instance, if you’re selling iPhone charging cables, your keywords may already relate to the product specification – e.g. USB-C, 2M, Fast, iPhone 13, MFi certified. In which case, you can easily write these words into your copy naturally.

4. More off-site traffic

The A9 algorithm led to a lot of Amazon sellers using discounts and deals to rise to the top of search results, however, this is less of a priority for the A10 algorithm. Instead, focus on bringing traffic from other websites outside of Amazon to your product. 

Creating a portfolio of varied off-site traffic directing to your products will not only help you rank higher on Amazon, but it’ll also help you rank higher on a Google search. A great way of doing this is getting bloggers to review and recommend your product. ]

Browse the internet to find bloggers and micro-influencers in your niche and reach out to ask if they’d like to review your product. Make sure that they include your Amazon link in their review, and you’re sure to receive some valuable off-site traffic that will push you to the top of the rankings. 

5. Strategic pricing

Strategic pricing means that you are pricing your products competitively, but not with such unrealistic deals that it begins to look too good to be true. 

A smart way of doing this is to have a look at your competitors. If they are pricing a similar item to yours at $20, price yours at $19.99. You don’t have to lose out on profit in order to make sales, you just have to be visibly cheaper than your competitors in order to get clicks. 

6. Hustle for reviews

With the A10, positive reviews have never been so important to your position in the algorithm. The algorithm works by weighing up each seller’s metrics, how much they fulfill the needs of Amazon customers, and how highly their customers rate them after their purchase.

Be relentless in your chase to get customers to leave a review after their purchase, as the more reviews (especially 4-5 star ones) you receive, the more likely you are to be hitting the first page of search results. 

8 Strategies For a Successful Product Listing

Now that we are all clued up on how Amazon’s A10 algorithm works, and know the tips to rank higher in searches – it’s time we took a more in-depth look at how to create a successful product listing from the ground up.

You can even treat this list of 8 strategies as a step-by-step guide for making the most of Amazon search engine optimization in your listing and creating a best seller.

Strategy 1: Consider FBA

FBA stands for “Fulfillment By Amazon”, and it means that your items will be stocked in an Amazon warehouse, and Amazon will deliver your items for you.

FBA products appear at the top of customer searches, as Amazon is responsible for the delivery. FBA may also mean that your item is available for prime priority shipping, which will make it more attractive to potential customers.

If you want a quick and effective way to jump to a higher position in search results, using FBA is it.

Strategy 2: Use search terms in your Amazon SEO strategy (AKA back-end keywords)

So you’ve got your product ready to go, you’ve got your Amazon seller account set up, you’ve uploaded your product to your shop, and you’re ready to start making sales. But, before you start naming your product, writing your sales copy, or even writing the information for your store – you should get to grips with your search terms. 

Search terms are the queries that customers might use to find your products. In fact, Amazon Seller Central offers a list of guidelines for how to use search terms effectively in your listings. These guidelines emphasize that no search term should exceed 250 bytes, which is a limit that applies to a newly-registered or pre-existing ASIN.

Those who have a bit more SEO experience could think of these terms as “back-end keywords”. If you are an SEO professional who has cut your teeth in Google optimization, you will probably laugh when you see that Amazon allows backend keyword tagging for products.

Welcome back to SEO 1999-style, friends!

You can add these terms for your products by going to your “Inventory”, clicking “Manage Inventory”, then click “Edit” on the product you’d like to add search terms to, then click “Keywords”. Now you can write your search terms in the “Search Terms” box.

Now, when creating your Amazon search terms you will want to tick as many boxes on this checklist as possible:

• Keep search term length under 250 bytes.
• Use various synonyms for your product.
• Use several spelling variations.
• Use abbreviations.

These tips account for all of the different ways that a potential customer may search for your product. For instance, if you are selling USBs, you will also want to include the search terms “thumb drive”, “flash drive”, “jump drive”, and “memory stick”.

In addition to covering everything on the checklist above, you should also be cautious of the following checklist of what NOT to include:

• Don’t include punctuation.
• Don’t forget spaces between words.
• Don’t repeat words in the same search query.
• Don’t use stop words like :”a”,”an”, “the”, “by”, “and”, “with”.
• Don’t include your brand name or any brand name in your search terms.
• Don’t include any ASIN in search terms.
• Don’t use profanity or offensive words.
• Don’t use temporary words such as “sale”, “new”, or “fresh”.
• Don’t use words that have subjective connotations, such as “best”, “great”, or “cheapest”.

As an example, if you were selling an eco-friendly bamboo and plastic chopping board, good search terms would look like this:

chopping board butcher block cutting board wood bamboo eco-friendly food grade plastic polypropylene non-slip antimicrobial BPA free natural stain resistant

Strategy 3: Optimize your Amazon product listings

What is listing optimization and why is it important?

At the heart of it, Amazon SEO is not all that different than SEO on Google, Bing, or any other search engine.

• You have a select number of fields in your product listing that you need to add your keyword phrases.
• There are character count limits you cannot go over.
• Your title and descriptions need to inspire the searcher to take action on your listing.

But the strategies change a bit when you are doing SEO on Amazon because it is a product finder, not a webpage finder.

How to optimize your product listing

As we’ve established in this article, to master the A10 algorithm your product will need to have the perfect combination of quality and relevance. Furthermore, the algorithm pushes products that have a high click-through rate. So, your product listing will need to be put together in such a way that it’s:

• Clickable
• Looks high quality
• Meets the browser’s search criteria
• Converts browsers into buyers

This involves optimizing your photos, product titles, and product descriptions, and using the right keywords. Strategies 4, 5, and 6 all cover how to optimize your title, description, and images. While you can find out how to use a keyword research tool later in the article. 

Lastly, when it comes to optimizing your product listing, you should make sure that you have filled out every possible field on your product page. Many of these fields have been shown to influence your position in searches. 

Strategy 4: Get your product title right

Similar to search engine optimization, the product title is an incredibly relevant ranking signal for Amazon SEO. The length of your title tag will vary based on your product category, but here is a rundown of the prioritized order of items you will want to include in your title.

• Brand Name
• Feature
• Material
• Key Ingredient
• Product Type
• Model Number
• Size
• Package Count
• Color
• Flavor

Hat tip to the Amazon Product Page Style Guides for reference.

Here’s an example of a pretty effective product title.

As previously mentioned, Amazon is a product-finding search engine. Because of that, your brand name is much more important to your success on Amazon than it is in traditional search engines.

For every product you optimize for success on Amazon, make sure your brand name is correctly spelled. In general, this is just good practice. But doing this will also help Amazon associate the products you want to sell with other products produced by the same company and increase your exposure in brand filtered results.

Strategy 5: Optimizing your product description

Amazon offers two types of product descriptions: Enhanced Brand Content and regular product descriptions. Traditional search engines will index both of these content types, but for your Amazon SEO efforts, it’s best to focus on the regular description.

In short: let your copywriter tackle the enhanced brand while you optimize the regular description. Keyword optimization should be done on both, with priority for visibility in Amazon being placed on the regular description.

Use Bullet Points

For those of you who have done traditional SEO for years, think of your bullet points as having the same potential benefit as your H-tags. Word on the web is that Amazon indexes the content in your bullet points, so optimizing them can help improve relevance and drive up clicks from the results.

As a best practice, try to use 1 keyword phrase per bullet point. Don’t be spammy, it’ll turn off your potential customers.

Strategy 6: Why product images matter

For many customers, a product’s images are the first thing they’ll see when browsing the results of their search query. Therefore, you will want your product images to be as clickable and enticing as possible. 

As we mentioned previously, Amazon also has a set of guidelines for product images, and we’d advise sticking to these if you want Amazon to rank you on the first page of a relevant search. 

Now, you should also pay attention to any specific image requirements for the relevant product category. For example, some items may require an image of nutritional labels or safety warnings. Amazon likes to change these requirements from time to time, so make sure you continue to check on Seller Central.

Another factor to bear in mind is prioritizing your images. You may have uploaded 5 images that perfectly illustrate every aspect of your product – and that’s fantastic! However, you will need to ensure you have selected the right one to be the front page image that advertises your product. This image should show the entire product clearly in front of a white background.

Outside of your prioritized image, your other photos don’t need to have a boring white background. It’s a great idea to show your product in its realistic setting, especially if you’re selling something like clothes, accessories, or homeware. 

Along these lines, you are also allowed to include some images that serve as graphics that illustrate key information about your product. Is your product easy to put together? Illustrate that with an explanatory graphic! Maybe your product is small and portable, unlike other similar products in your niche? Show that with a comparison graphic!

Lastly, you are allowed to edit your photos to make them more eye-catching and vibrant. However, Amazon’s rules say that your images should always be truthful to how the product looks in real life. Therefore, do not edit your photos so that the colors look completely different and risk being dishonest to a customer. 

Strategy 7: Use brand names tactically

You may be able to help your ranking position on Amazon by using brand names tactically. If you are selling branded products on Amazon and your main keywords include that brand name, make sure you use it in your product title and product description. 

Therefore, those customers that are searching for a product specifically from that brand will be more likely to find your product.

Strategy 8: Optimize your seller name

Many Amazon business wizards theorize that you may be able to boost your organic rank and ultimately your Amazon sales by including main product keywords in your seller name. However, please note that this will only work if you are selling one specific genre of product that falls under the same main keywords. 

4 FREE Keyword Research Tools to Rank your Amazon Product(s)

For any SEO campaign, keyword research and selection is a critical first step. There are a ton of premium tools out there on the marketplace that charge a hefty fee to help you find the right keywords, however, we’re here to show you how to do it for free!

There are as many as 5 alternative strategies to doing Amazon keyword research without using paid SaaS solutions. Below are three of our favorites.

Amazon Search Autocomplete

Leveraging the autocomplete function of Amazon’s search box is easy and obvious but is often overlooked or misused.

In digital marketing, we all tend to complicate strategy because easy solutions feel “too good to be true.” But in the case of autocomplete, that’s hardly the case. The Amazon search box is the best place to begin your keyword research.

Amazon Autocomplete, by function, helps consumers find what they want. But it also helps marketers discover dynamic keywords.

Install Keywords Everywhere on your browser to increase the impact of your autocomplete research efforts.

Keywords Everywhere displays CPC stats and competitive data on keywords. It peppers your research with potent stats. You’ll be able to view CPC and search volume stats on suggested Amazon search terms.

Soovle – The Amazon Keyword Tool You’ve Missed

Whenever I bring up Soovle, people think I’m pushing a new cooking method. While many old-school keyword researchers know Soovle, it’s still a drastically overlooked tool.

Soovle offers a search engine autocomplete experience from over 15 search engines. It displays autocomplete search suggestions from platforms such as Amazon, Google, Bing, Overstock, Walmart, and Yahoo!.

You can combine Soovle with Keywords Everywhere to enhance the fruits of your labors with keyword volumes, too.

Hover To Uncover With Amazon Quick View

It may sound like I’m referencing an episode title from the hit Fox show, Bones, but I’m really talking about the benefits of installing Amazon Quick View in your browser.

Amazon Quick View works as a Chrome extension. AMZScout performs Amazon product research. You can nab their tool here.

AQV gives immediate access to imperative search data. To activate AQV display, you need only hover over the product. A small window will open up that displays a slew of related keywords.

The HOTH’s Keyword Extraction Tool

Shameless Plug: Try using our keyword tool to find even more keywords. This free tool is powered by SEMrush and helps you to easily locate the high-volume words and phrases you need.

To use our tool, simply enter a keyword related to your product in the search bar and hit the button that says “view keyword research”. You’ll then be given a whole host of related keywords, each one paired with data on search volume, competition, results for each keyword, the cost-per-click (CPC), and whether it’s trending up or down. 

It’s pretty genius – but we would say that, right?!

Paid Amazon SEO tools

Of course, if you don’t think those free keyword research tools offer what you need, you may want to explore paid options.

In which case, we’d recommend:

Keywordtool.io

Keywordtool.io is available for around $89-199 per month. For that price, it will provide you with data on keyword search volumes, cost-per-click, competition, and search volume trends. 

You can also filter out negative keywords so that you don’t see results that aren’t relevant to your product.

Sellics

Sellics will cost you between $198 to $599 dollars. Yep! That makes it one of the most expensive keyword research tools on the market. For that price, you will not only get all of the keyword research insights you need but also information to optimize your ad spend and manage reviews.

Jungle Scout

Jungle Scout is a service available for $49 to $129 per month. For that price, you will receive an Amazon SEO toolkit that includes a keyword research tool, a keyword performance tracker, an SEO product listing builder, a tool for requesting Amazon reviews, a promotion manager, and many more handy tools to boost your search rankings and bottom line.

Avoid These Common Mistakes

3 of the most common Amazon SEO mistakes are:

Writing inaccurate information

Amazon’s A10 algorithm values the trustworthiness of each seller and will blacklist those who appear as scammers. For this reason, make sure you are writing honestly in your product title and product description.

Overstocking and understocking

The algorithm takes into account your sales velocity, which means you will need to keep a close eye on your inventory. 

Not doing competitor research

Amazon is a highly competitive arena for sellers, as the best value products will appear higher in search rankings. Always watch what your competitors are doing, and make your business decisions accordingly.

The Amazon Sellers’ Checklist

Lastly, before you run away and turn all of your products into bestsellers, you might want to be sure you’ve done everything on our Amazon seller’s SEO checklist…

• You have a seller name that incorporates relevant keywords where possible.
• You have used FBA where possible.
• You have completed every applicable field in your product listing.
• You’ve written a product title that includes brand name, the main feature, material, key ingredient, product type, model number, size, package count, color, or flavor.
• You’ve written a product description that includes the relevant key terms and long-tail keywords.
• You have used bullet points in your product description.
• You’ve used search terms for each product in accordance with Amazon’s guidelines.
• You’ve uploaded product images in accordance with Amazon’s guidelines.
• You have prioritized the best image to appear in search results.
• You’ve made your sales copy honest yet enticing.
• You’ve established sources for off-site traffic.
• You have priced your products strategically against your competitors without detracting from their value.
• You’ve chased up all past customers for reviews, and have an active process in place to encourage reviews after each purchase.

We know, we know… It’s a lot! But if you manage to tick all of those boxes in the checklist above then you will be giving yourself and your product the highest chances possible of achieving success on Amazon. 

If you’re new to the life of an Amazon seller then certain aspects of the checklist will take time – such as getting positive reviews. But with all of the other factors in place and a product you believe in, once you make that precious first sale it should all fall into place.

Summary: Ranking factors to own Amazon search results

Don’t worry if you feel like that was a lot to take in. The thing about “ultimate guides” is that they really do cover everything! And that’s what the summary at the end of an article is for, right? If you’re interested in learning more about how we can help you achieve success on Amazon, why not give us a call? We’re here to help.

The post Amazon SEO: The Ultimate Guide To Amazon Optimization appeared first on The HOTH.

You certainly don’t want your subscribers to react this way to your emails.

That’s why you need to introduce some variety to your email campaigns and deliver value even if your audience isn’t ready to purchase from you yet.

If you don’t wow them, you lose them. 80% of customers set high standards for companies — and expect them to deliver not just high-quality products or services but also extraordinary experiences.

Let’s discuss how you can educate, surprise, inform, and amuse your audience using various types of emails.

Why Do Businesses Need to Use Different Types of Emails?

You probably know that you need to use different content types to address various customer needs and keep them moving down the sales funnel.

The same is true for email campaigns. When you send diverse and valuable emails, it benefits both you and your audience.

Here’s how it works:

1. Your recipients see various facets of your brand and get a chance to learn about your culture, mission, production, team, and so on.
2. Showcase your expertise through sharing valuable content such as videos, infographics, webinars, and long-form articles in your emails.
3. Boost customer loyalty by offering true value, not just promotional content.
4. Keep your subscribers in the loop by sending them important notifications and updates.
5. Nourish and educate new subscribers at a natural pace and give them time to develop a true interest in your offer.
6. Distinguish yourself from the competition by engaging in a meaningful conversation with your target audience.
7. Your subscribers are more likely to provide you with honest feedback when they see that you put real effort into your brand communications.
8. Continually re-engage your passive subscribers and put them in a buying mood using a variety of helpful emails.
9. Share customer endorsements and use social proof to finally close the sale.

It’s a win-win situation. When you create emotional bonds with your audience and show them that you’re not just here to profit off them and leave, they respond by paying more attention to your business.

10+ Types of Emails and How to Make Sense of Them

Now let’s dive into the most useful types of marketing emails — we’ll even share tips on how to incorporate them into your email strategy. For each type, we’ll show you relevant email marketing examples and discuss what makes them steal-worthy.

These types of emails aren’t niche-specific — an international SaaS company and a local clothing store can equally benefit from using them, as long as they tell their brand’s unique story.

#1. Welcome emails

Whenever you meet a new person, you usually greet them and get to know them before diving into a serious conversation. The same rule applies to your subscribers. Using welcome emails is the best way to make your new subscribers, customers, or community members feel at home.

The magic formula is simple:

1. Introduce your brand.
2. Explain what kind of information you’ll share with your subscribers.
3. Emphasize the value of your offer and how it’ll help your audience shop/work/live better.
4. Finish your email with a call to action.

This example from Adobe shows how it’s done.

(Image Source)

In this welcome email, Adobe encourages its new subscribers to participate in and contribute to the Lightroom community. The email copy is very user-centric, and the CTA at the bottom is helpful rather than pushy.

There are no generic images, just real photos made by real Lightroom users. The whole email is easy to scan — the recipient won’t miss a single bit of information even if they read it on the go.

#2. Promotional emails

The way you promote your products or services also matters. A promotional email shouldn’t be too promotional — try to sprinkle in a bit of playfulness, debunk common myths, or include some expert tips to provide more value.

Fleur & Bee, for example, prefers to educate its customers before sending them to a product page.

(Image Source)

This visual ingredient breakdown is extremely effective for two reasons. Firstly, it clearly shows what’s inside this particular product and why it’s better than any mass-market alternatives. Secondly, it captures user attention and inevitably makes them interested in this better-for-you cosmetic line.

There are multiple CTAs here, but they aren’t conflicting with each other, thanks to the visual contrast and white space. All in all, this is an effective yet minimalistic promotional email you can learn a lot from.

#3. Lead nurturing emails

When selling a complex product or service, you can’t expect your potential customers to just grab it and leave. You want to gradually educate them and help them purchase from you with confidence. If they understand how your product or service works, they’re more likely to use and enjoy it.

Lead nurturing emails help you achieve exactly that. You share useful content such as tutorials, reports, guides, infographics, and articles with your leads to help them ripen.

That’s the strategy supplement brand Ritual prefers.

(Image Source)

This email introduces the Ritual multivitamin formula and describes its advantages from a scientific viewpoint. Two intuitive illustrations show exactly how all those complex particles work together.

The recipient of this email may not be ready to purchase pricey supplements just yet. But they’ll certainly digest this useful info, and it’ll help them eventually reach the conclusion that there’s no better alternative on the market.

#4. Transactional emails

This “least exciting” type of email can suddenly become quite engaging if you take the right approach. You don’t have to make your transactional emails look like long, boring receipts — keep them easy to glance over. It’ll help your customers double-check it and make sure there’s nothing wrong with their order.

That’s what underwear brand MeUndies does.

(Image Source)

Transactional emails from this brand are packed full of useful links. In this example, the purchase hasn’t arrived yet, but the receiver already knows where they can get help with their order or how to get the next pair for free.

But perhaps the most effective form of transactional emails are abandoned cart emails. They help you re-engage potential customers who left items in their cart without purchasing them.

#5. Special offer emails

Black Friday, shop clearance, birthday discounts, college student deals, first purchase discounts — there’s no shortage of special offer ideas. But how do you convince your audience that it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity?

Special offer emails will help you get the message across. Let’s list their typical elements:

• Attention-grabbing headline
• Countdown timer
• List of benefits
• CTA

You can also follow this example and emphasize the value of your offer by using so-called strikethrough prices (the original retail price that’s temporarily reduced).

(Image Source)

The side-by-side comparison erases any lingering doubts. The recipient of this email can clearly see how Freshly’s offer stacks up against typical meal kits. Strategically placed CTA buttons, mouth-watering visuals, an eye-grabbing headline, and convincing copy — that’s what makes this special offer email work.

#6. Seasonal emails

Celebrate the autumn pumpkin craze, share Christmas gift ideas, or do a virtual Easter hunt to entertain and engage your subscribers. Sending festive seasonal emails is a great way to tap into your customers’ emotions without looking overly sentimental.

Your business doesn’t have to react to every imaginable awareness day or local event — you can simply choose occasions relevant to your niche and add them to your content plan.

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Here’s a seasonal email example from Lush featuring their spooky and witchy bath bombs. Witty email copy immediately puts the reader into the right mood, and the atmospheric background photo helps deliver the message.

You can send seasonal emails even if you don’t have any limited-edition products to feature in them. Think about introducing a seasonal promo code, running an end-of-season sale, or curating a themed collection of items, say, for Mother’s Day.

#7. Announcement emails

Keep your audience in the know by sending them milestone emails, important updates, and news and describing how those changes will affect their customer experience. This way, you’ll make your announcement emails about them, even though they are technically about your brand.

Let’s look at this announcement email from Allset:

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Allset takes a very customer-centric approach when describing its new features. This update email is informative, exciting, and fun to read — we immediately see what’s new and how to use it.

#8. Newsletter emails

Start sending regular curated emails where you share industry news, valuable insights, inspiration sources, expert advice, in-depth blog posts, videos, and so on. Not only will they hook your subscribers, but they’ll also help you strengthen your own authority in the field.

Email newsletters are way more shareable than any other commercial emails, so it’s also a surefire way to spark positive word-of-mouth.

Sketch follows this practice and shares tons of insights with its subscribers every month. Here’s just a snippet of it:

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If you want to share more useful content with your subscribers but don’t have enough capacity to produce new stuff every week, consider trying HOTH Blogger. We’ll deliver high-quality articles for your blog to boost your SEO and content marketing game. This way, you’ll never run out of fresh content.

#9. Feedback emails

Customer feedback is the driving force behind customer service improvement — you can’t make changes if you don’t know what’s missing. But customer feedback can also benefit your business directly, through positive testimonials.

To increase your response rate, make sure to mention in your survey email:

1. Why you are collecting feedback.
2. How long it’ll take to complete your survey.
3. What’s in it for your audience.

These simple details will prevent your emails from being ignored or marked as spam.

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Once again, customer empathy is a must here because your task is to convince your recipients to spend time answering your questions. Nokia checks all the boxes in this example by saying how long the survey takes and what it’s for.

#10. Thank-you emails

This type of email shouldn’t be brushed off — thank-you emails contribute to the overall shopping experience you provide. In this example from Classic Specs, we see an elegant thank-you email that contains everything a customer might need, from estimated delivery times to a customer service email address.

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You can also enrich your thank-you emails with an FAQ section or a couple of post-purchase tips.

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It’s the little things that make a big difference. By answering frequently asked questions, you’ll ease the burden on your customer service team and show your target audience that you want them to be satisfied with their purchases.

#11. Recommendation emails

Personalized recommendation emails can help you establish customer trust and increase their loyalty to your brand. It’s your way of showing that you are ready to go the extra mile to make them happy.

Brooks certainly knows a thing or two about creating genuine recommendation emails.

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You can also share additional tools or tips in your recommendation emails to help your customers find what’s right for them. Most email automation platforms have audience segmentation tools that can help you target the right contacts.

#12. Last-chance emails

No one likes having FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out), and your customers are no exception. Use last-chance emails to show them fantastic deals they can’t miss and encourage them to act before someone else outpaces them.

Here comes a spicy last-chance email example from Saxx:

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This email is witty and memorable, and it does create that sense of urgency all marketers are after. At the same time, it doesn’t look like clickbait, thanks to the tasteful product photos and clean design.

#13. Re-engagement emails

This type of email helps you remind your passive subscribers about your business and bring them “back to life.” The goal is to incentivize them to give your offer another try, and here’s how you can do that.

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Clear is a secure ID platform allowing travelers to go through airport security and venue entrances faster and safer — and that’s exactly what this re-engagement email illustrates.

In short, your recipient needs to see what they’re missing out on. Try to sum up all the recent positive changes your product or service has gone through, and top it with a powerful call to action. You can also send abandonment cart emails to re-engage buyers who didn’t proceed with their purchases.

Supercharge Your Email Marketing With More Variety

Going beyond promotional emails alone can help you engage with your prospects and build relationships that turn them into loyal customers in the long run.

If you need help building your list in the first place, we can provide you with engaging, SEO-optimized copy for your website so you can attract laser-targeted leads at scale.

HOTH Web Copy is our content-writing service created with busy marketers and business owners in mind. We can capture the essence of your brand and put it into professionally written copy search engines will love.

The post 13 Types of Emails Your Business Can’t Do Without appeared first on The HOTH.

Yet, you’ll probably have trouble finding a cost-effective way to introduce your brand to a new audience if you aren’t leveraging online search. 

Speaking of the internet, more and more consumers are turning to it as their primary source for finding new brands and products. As of 2021, there were 4.66 billion active internet users, 2.14 billion of whom made purchases online, which is up from 1.92 billion digital buyers in 2019. 

It’s clear that there’s massive potential for advertising online – and it’s only continuing to grow – but you want to make sure that you don’t break your budget in the process. After all, there are countless examples of PPC (pay-per-click) horror stories where online advertising went horribly wrong.

So how do you attract new customers with online ads on a limited budget that actually generates an ROI? 

You might want to consider using Google Search Ads, which generates an average return of $2 for every dollar spent. When done correctly, you can use Google Ads to attract new customers, earn more revenue, and scale your business.  

If that sounds interesting to you, here’s a guide showing you how to master Google Search Ads.

What are Search Ads?

A search ad is a form of digital advertisement driven by search queries or keywords. Search ads are particularly powerful because they reveal a customer’s search intent based on the keywords they use. 

As a quick example, a search ad tied to the keyword ‘dog food’ will display whenever someone searches for ‘dog food’ on Google. 

This is beneficial for the company because they know that people searching for the keyword ‘dog food’ are likely looking to make a purchase. As such, the ads are effectively only targeting interested users that are after a company’s product. 

If the dog food ad showed up no matter what the user searched – the ad would be far less effective. Someone searching for ‘skateboards’ probably isn’t looking to buy a bag of dog food; make sense? 

That’s why search ads are effective because they help you pinpoint your target audience through the use of keywords. 

The search terms people enter in their online queries determine which ads are displayed for them on a search engine results page (SERP), along with any related organic content. The businesses that placed the ads then pay a small fee to the search engine company every time somebody clicks on each ad.

As stated before, Google Ads boasts an average return of $2 for every dollar spent. That means you pay Google an average of $1 for each click and ideally end up making $2 back. 

Search advertising is also called pay-per-click advertising (PPC), paid search advertising (PSA), and search engine marketing (SEM).  

Search advertising is a great way to discover what your existing and potential customers want. By doing a little keyword research, you can uncover their search intent and buyer intent. From there, you can match their intent with your products, ensuring that you meet their needs. That’s what search advertising is all about in a nutshell.  

If your business has a website that has poor organic traffic, then search advertising can provide a much-needed boost. Not only that, but it can help turn them into conversions such as email signups, leads, and online sales.

If you’re in a business that offers products or services for urgent needs (plumbing, dental, electrical, and tire services) or for time-bound seasons (tourism and travel), search advertising is a perfect solution. Online users are constantly searching for local service providers and deals on airline tickets and hotels. 

What are Google Search Ads?

Currently, Google leads the fray in the world of search engines, as they have over 86% of the search market share. Naturally, they’re the #1 choice for most companies’ SEO and PPC marketing efforts. They have the most extensive user base and the most significant potential to help you reach your target audience. 

Google has long been on top of the search engine game. In fact, Google became the most popular website in the world way back in 1998. Two years later, they would launch Google Adwords – the predecessor to Google Search Ads. They would go through some rebranding in 2018 and change the name to what we know today. Search ads are also popularly known as Google Advertising, Google Search Ads, or simply Google Ads. 

These ads appear on the Google Search Network, which includes not only Google Search but also Google Play, Google Maps, Google Shopping, and Google partners across more than 2 million other websites which are part of the Google Display Network. Currently, Google has 3.5 billion daily searches per day and 1.2 trillion searches per year worldwide.

Every time an ad space is available, Google automatically sets up an auction to decide which ads will show at that moment in that space. Depending on your goals and campaign type, you bid at this auction when you publish your Google Ad.  

Most people starting out with Google Ads use cost-per-click (CPC) bidding by indicating the highest CPC amount they’re willing to pay for a click on their ad.

For example, if you set your CPC at $2, you’re letting Google know that you’re only interested in ads that cost $2 or less. If there’s a bid that exceeds that amount, you’ll automatically get removed from the auction. 

That helps you not exceed your PPC budget, so it’s wise to set your maximum CPC as soon as you get started with Google Search Ads. The last thing you want is to wind up spending $3 or more per click when you can’t afford it.  

What You Can Do with Google Search Ads

Google Search Ads will help you target your ads in terms of keywords, ad location, intended audience age, location, and language; days, times, and frequency your ad appears; and the types of devices your ad displays on. 

Google Search Ads has a lot more features than simply the ability to run ads. There are also analytics that can help you measure your success, budgeting tools to make sure you don’t overspend, and campaign management tools. It’s a robust platform that you can use to run ads, track their effectiveness, and implement new strategies. 

In short, it’s your secret weapon for developing effective ad campaigns that generate revenue and attract new customers. 

The Different Types of Google Ads 

You can choose from several paid search options for your display ads:  

Text Ads

As the name implies, these ads are text-only and can display throughout the Google Network. Text ads are affordable since there’s no need to create any visual content like images or graphics. They’re also great because they can work with any type of publisher, even ones that don’t accept certain formats. 

Text ads also offer the opportunity for simplified A/B testing. All you need for an ad is a little bit of copy and a link to your website/product page. 

As a result, adding different types of copy in a few ads is pretty easy to see which gets the best response. All you’re relying on is the copy here, so you won’t need to worry about creating differing images or graphics. After a few A/B tests, you’ll land on the copy that garners the most interest and responses. 

Another benefit is that text ads translate perfectly from mobile to desktop. Google uses mobile-first indexing now, so you’ll want to make sure that your ads work on mobile devices. A reliable way to ensure that is to invest in text-only ads so that your messaging stays consistent.

Responsive Search Ads

If you want to take the simple A/B testing mentioned above and supercharge it – you want a responsive search ad (RSA) on Google. Traditionally, you only get to write one headline and one body of static text in an online ad. An RSA places an innovative twist on this formula by allowing you to write up to 4 different descriptions and 15 different headlines.

Not only that, but the RSA can configure those headlines and descriptions into over 43,000 arrangements and test them automatically. 

That provides countless testing possibilities to refine and enhance your ads. After a while, your RSA will learn which version of the message is best based on a number of factors like:

• The user device (it will display the best message for mobile devices, PCs, and more)
• Search query 
• Past browsing behavior (tailoring copy for differing interests)
• Many other factors

As you can see, an RSA is constantly determining which permutation of your ad is best for any given situation. So how do these ads tend to perform? 

Well, according to Google, RSAs tend to result in 6% more clicks and a 5% higher click-through rate. It’s definitely a time-saving ad, as Google does all the testing for you with an RSA. That’s not to say that other forms of paid ads don’t have their place – as it will take some experimenting to uncover the best type of ad for your business.

Call-Only Ads

Does your business prioritize phone calls over website visits/membership sign-ups? If so, you’ll want to use call-only ads on Google. These ads will only appear on mobile devices and will automatically call your business when clicked. The ads do not contain any link to your website whatsoever – as they’re only for generating phone calls. 

These ads work wonders if you’re a local service provider such as a dentist, mechanic, or landscaper. 

These businesses thrive on phone calls instead of website visits. In fact, when users do visit their websites, they’re encouraged to pick up the phone and call. A call-only ad gets rid of the middle man so potential clients can call you straight from the search results page. 

Call-only ads work the same as PPC, except it’s pay-per-call instead of pay-per-click. 

As such, you’ll only incur charges if someone calls your business. 

Campaign-wise, you have two options for call-only ads. You can choose to incorporate them as part of a normal search campaign, or you can create a ‘call-only’ campaign. There’s a direct advantage to setting up a call-only campaign if you only plan on using call ads. It’s that you can set the max cost-per-call rate, just as you would set the cost-per-click (CPC) for PPC ads. So if you want direct control over the cost of each call – it’s best to use a call-only campaign. 

Dynamic Search Ads

Another intriguing form of Google ad is the dynamic search ad (DSA). It’s similar to an RSA but differs in one key area. Instead of selecting from a set number of headlines and body text that you wrote – the dynamic search ad will generate them both by crawling your site. In doing so, it matches content from your site with the search intent of the user. 

In a nutshell, a DSA will automatically generate ads for each user directly based on their search intent. 

It’s another time-saving ad that handles all the heavy lifting automatically. 

Companies tend to use dynamic search ads to fill in the gaps in their other search campaigns. They’re effective ways to capture users that enjoy casually searching the web. A DSA will find a unique search and then generate a relevant ad from your website content – all without you having to press a button. DSAs are great add-ons to any search campaign, and they can act as a fail-safe of sorts. 

Shopping Ads

If you operate an Ecommerce store, you can make use of shopping ads on Google. These show up on search queries that have a strong purchase intent. An example would be the keyword ‘best computer mouse to buy.’ 

It’s clear that the user has the intent to buy a computer mouse. In this scenario, a series of shopping ads will pop up at the top of the search engine results page. You’ve likely seen these types of advertisements if you’ve searched for something you wanted to buy online. 

They appear with:

• A clear picture of the product
• Its title with a hyperlink to the product page
• Its selling price
• A link to the business website 
• (optional) A star review rating 

These ads provide a quick and easy avenue for shoppers to find what they’re after. They can work wonders for Ecommerce stores – yet they tend to go underutilized. In fact, shopping ads only account for 20% of the paid retail ads online. 

The good news about that is you can use shopping ads to pounce ahead of the competition. 

A shopping ad will display at the very top of the SERP – meaning that users will see an image of your product even before laying eyes on the #1 organically-ranked page. That can translate into a huge advantage, especially if you’re selling an in-demand product. 

To set up shopping ads, you’ll first need a Google Merchant Center account. 

Why’s that?

It’s because Google needs information about the products you sell. Once you have a Merchant Center account, you’ll need to set up a shopping feed. It’s a spreadsheet that you’ll need to fill out with your product details. Once that’s done, you’re all set to start running shopping ads on Google.

Google’s Free Ad Extension Types 

Google Search Ads offers free ad extensions to give users additional information and reasons to interact with your website. They come in five distinct types:  

Sitelink Extensions 

Wouldn’t it be great if users could directly visit your Products page straight from the SERP? If that’s a goal of yours, then you’ll be happy to learn about sitelink extensions. Normally when a website shows up on Google, there’s only one link to the homepage. 

However, a sitelink extension lets you include links to more pages underneath. An example would be including links to your Products, Services, and About Us pages as extensions. 

They’re great because they give users the chance to jump to the specific page that they need without visiting your homepage first. 

Currently, there are two distinct types of sitelink extensions that you can use on Google. They are:

• Search campaign extensions. You’ll be able to add at least two extensions under search ads. You have up to 6 links on desktop and 8 links on mobile to use. 
• Video campaign extensions. YouTube ads can contain at least two sitelinks underneath the video, and the max limit is 4. 

If your website has a poor CTR, sitelink extensions are a great way to improve it. Since users have access to multiple pages on your site from the SERP, they’re more likely to click on at least one of them. 

Location Extensions 

Does your business have a brick-and-mortar location? Then a location extension on Google Ads is well worth it. A location extension will include your business address as a blue link underneath your ad. Other options for location extensions include:

• A Google Map link pinpointing your location for potential customers. 
• The current amount of distance the user’s location  

There’s also the option to use affiliate location extensions as well. These come in handy if you primarily sell your products through retail chains. An example would be selling original hair products in local hair salons in a particular town. In that scenario, the business owner doesn’t have a physical location – so they need to use the hair salon addresses instead. 

If your main goal with online advertising is to drive more foot traffic to your store – location extensions are a great way to go. 

It’s common for these types of business owners to combine location extension ads with call-only campaigns. That way, your online ads are generating footfall and calls to your brick-and-mortar stores. 

Call Extensions 

It’s crucial not to mix up call extensions with call-only ads – as the terms are not interchangeable. Rather, a call extension adds your business phone number to an existing search ad – which likely contains links to your website. 

A call-only ad, on the other hand, is a mobile-only ad that contains your business phone number and nothing else. There are no links to your website with a call-only ad. 

So if you want to include your phone number as well as hyperlinks to your website, you’ll want to use a call extension. As with call-only ads, you can add a direct call button to the ad. That will enable users to call your business directly from the SERP. At the same time, the search ad containing the call extension will have links to your website. 

In that sense, a call extension is the best of both worlds if you want to generate organic traffic and calls for your business. 

Promotional Extensions

If you’re running a huge sale or special promotion at your business, you can advertise it through Google Ads with a promotional extension. It works by adding a special blue link under your search ad informing users about a sale or promotion. You can let customers know about special occasions and holiday sales with ease. 

Promotional extensions on Google are fully customizable – so you can tweak them until they’re perfect for your needs. 

Prepare to keep it short with your copy, though, as you’ll only have 20 characters to work with in the extension. 

You can choose from 30 different holidays and special occasions through Google’s interface. If there’s no special occasion related to your promotion, you can select ‘none.’ Once that’s done, you’ll need to select a promotion type. Here are your options:

• Monetary discount: You can set a fixed amount to take off certain products. (i.e., $5 off tube socks)
• Percentage discount: Instead of a monetary amount, you set a percentage for the discount instead. (i.e., 5% off tube socks)

• Up-to monetary discount: This is a fixed discount amount that has a limit. (i.e., up to $5 off tube socks) 
• Up-to percentage discount: This is a fixed percentage amount with a limit. (i.e., up to 5% off tube socks) 

It’s up to you what you choose to use for your promotions – but Google Ads has all the bases covered no matter which route you go.  

App Extensions  

If your brand has a mobile app that you want to gain more downloads, an app extension on Google Ads can go a long way. They provide a direct link to your app on the App Store or Google Play Store in your search ad. That grants users the ability to download your app straight from the SERP page – which is a timesaver. 

As with other extensions, there will also be a regular link to your web address via the search ad headline. 

As such, an app extension is great for not only boosting app downloads but also generating organic traffic for your website. 

One of the best parts about an app extension is that it automatically detects the app store link each user needs. If an Apple user clicks on the link, it will take them to the App Store. If the user is on an Android device, they’ll get directed to the Google Play Store. That means you won’t have to worry about linking the incorrect app store – as the process is entirely automated. 

You’ll also receive detailed reporting from a search ad with an app extension. You’ll be able to closely track the number of clicks the headline got as well as the clicks on the app link. 

When you combine that with the in-place editing (the ability to make tweaks without resetting performance statistics), the effectiveness of this extension really starts to shine. 

Beyond these extensions, you can also use Google Ads for retargeting or remarketing to users who have previously engaged with your website but have not converted into customers yet. 

Generally, prospects need to see your ads at least seven times before they buy. Google Ads uses remarketing tracking cookies and conversion tracking cookies to follow users around the web and target relevant users with your ads.

Google Search Ads Campaign Types

All Google Ads begin with a goal and a campaign. Depending on your marketing goal, brand strategy, and how much time and money you can invest, you will be asked to choose from its 6 different campaign types:

1. Search campaigns. These campaigns focus on text-only ads where you bid on branded terms and queries. A search campaign is most useful for positioning yourself in front of customers who are ready to buy. The goal is to identify keywords related to your industry that have a strong buyer intent – and to create text ads centered around them. 

Since there are no visuals or extensions at play – a text ad will live and die by the strength of its copy. Do your best to create compelling copy that’s free of generic terms. You’ll want to be as specific as possible when writing the call to action for each ad to generate the most interest. 

1. Display campaigns. A display campaign grants you access to the vast Google Display Network. It contains more than 2 million websites, videos, and apps where display ads can show up. Rather than focusing on text, display ads focus on visuals. Display ads should feature strong images that entice users to find out more. 

The primary purpose of a display campaign is to build brand awareness. They’re effective for introducing your brand to potential clients that are early in the buying cycle. The goal is to display your ads in front of your target audience so they’ll get intrigued and want to learn more about your brand. 

1. Video campaigns. Kicking off a video campaign means you’ll use YouTube as your primary ad source. As such, you’ll need to create video ads that will air before, during, or after YouTube videos. These campaigns are excellent for advertising to a relevant audience. That’s because you can market to a specific audience based on age, gender, and interests. 

In other words, your video ads will only air to users that are likely to find them interesting. So if you want to get in front of the eyeballs of your target audience, starting a video campaign on Google Ads is a great way to do so. 

1. Shopping campaigns. For all the Ecommerce store owners out there, shopping campaigns are the way to go. They’re how you run shopping ads, which we already discussed before. They contain a picture of and link to your product, as well as listing the price and possibly a review. To start a shopping campaign, you’ll need a Google Merchant Center account. 
2. Local campaigns. These campaigns are for brick-and-mortar store owners looking to drive foot traffic. A local campaign will promote your ad through many localized channels – increasing your visibility in front of users in your area. Local campaigns will also highlight your nearby stores, list special promotions, and provide a rundown of your in-store inventory. 
3. Smart campaigns. Are you a small business owner that wears many hats and has little to no free time? If so, know that you’re not alone. Also, running a smart campaign on Google is a great choice for you. In short, a smart campaign will automate the entire process of running ads for you. A smart campaign will target ads and optimize them without you having to do anything at all. 

The Key to Attracting Potential Customers

Understanding your potential customers by viewing their search queries and intent is a foundational step in attracting them to your business and what you have to offer.

Since Google Search Ads begin with the keywords or search terms that people use when looking for what they need online, then you should also begin by identifying the keywords related to your business brand, products, and services and what your potential customers would probably type in their search engine queries.

Ideally, your keywords need to match searchers’ intent. Essentially, this is how keyword research works:

1. Brainstorm and draw up a list of potential keywords you want to use and make this list your starter keywords guide. 
2. Validate and expand on your keyword ideas with a keyword research tool like Google Keyword Planner and The HOTH Keyword Planner.
3. Select your keywords.

While you’re at it, consider also a list of negative keywords which are search terms you want to exclude when you launch your Google Search Ads campaign since these words are irrelevant to your target. These are keywords you absolutely don’t want Google to use for matching your ad.  

For example, if you are an optometrist whose potential customers might use “glasses” in their search terms aside from “eyeglasses”, you would use “wine glasses” and “drinking glasses” as negative keywords.

Take note, too, of keyword match types that you will need to instruct Google to use in creating your ad groups (one or more ads that share similar targets) for your search campaigns:

1. Broad match –  uses any word within your keyword phrase in any order (“yoga mats in Florida” will match “yoga mats” or “yoga Florida” or “mats Florida”)
2. Modified broad match – lets you lock in certain words within a keyword by adding a plus sign before the locked-in word (“+yoga mats in Florida” will match “yoga mats”, “yoga music”, “yoga retreats”)
3. Phrase match – matches queries that include your keyword phrase in the exact order but may have additional words before or after the phrase (“yoga mats in Florida” will match “purple yoga mats in Florida” or “yoga mats in Florida prices”)
4. Exact match – matches your keyword phrase as it is written in the exact order.

When you’re starting, a blend of these matches will help you get a cross-section together. You can then monitor the results and further narrow down or change keywords and match selections.

Your keywords guide will also help you in crafting your ad copy. It should match your searchers’ intent, address their pain points, and provide a solution in your ad headline and description.  

Is Your Website Ready for Potential Customers?

Google recommends using this 8-point checklist questions to assess whether your website is ready for attracting potential customers through Google Search Ads: 

1. Does it have a clear, eye-catching headline?
2. Does it load fast enough for mobile?
3. Does it clearly list the benefits your customer will get if they purchase your products or services?
4. Does it feature images or video?
5. Is there a clear call-to-action (CTA) on your website?
6. Is it easy to locate your business’ contact information?
7. What’s the most important thing you want people to see on your site?  Would a new visitor be able to locate it right away?
8. Does your business have an online presence other than your website (like a free Business Profile listing or social media site)?

If you answered “No” to any of these questions, Google recommends updating your website so you’ll be giving your customers a better user experience, and your business will be better positioned to make a Google Ads investment.

If you don’t want to be bothered by updating your website yourself or finding and managing the different people you need to do it for you, The HOTH can help you not only with taking control of your company’s image but also with content creation, link building, managed search engine optimization (SEO), managed pay-per-click (PPC), and managed Google Shopping.

Preparing for Your 1st Google Ads Campaign

In creating marketing campaigns through Google Search ads, you simply create a Google Ads account and click on its “Get Started” button. Then, Google Ads will take you through a streamlined process of creating your first campaign. Prepare for the following information it will ask for:

1. Your main business goal (get more calls, get more website sign-ups or sales, get more visits to your physical location, or get more YouTube views or engagement?);
2. Your business account or business name;
3. Where people go after they click on your website (what you’re advertising or the most relevant landing page of your website); 
4. Your ad copy (Headline 1, Headline 2, Headline 3, Description 1, and Description 2; remember to use your keywords here)
5. Your keyword themes (keywords, again); 
6. Whether you want to advertise near your business address or at specific zip codes, cities, or regions; and
7. Your daily budget or ad spend options.

Then, you will be asked to review your campaign for whether all information you indicated is correct, and if so, you will then be asked to make your payment.

You, Your Business, Google Search Ads, and The Digital Space

Google Search Ads is a great way for small businesses to serve their customers’ needs and wants based on their customers’ search queries and intents.  

It is also recommended for businesses whose websites already deliver a good customer experience but receive unsatisfactory website traffic.  

It is especially recommended for service businesses whose offerings are time-sensitive or time-bound. 

Learn more about engaging the digital space for your business at The HOTH’s Learning Hub for free resources on search engine optimization (SEO), digital marketing, and content marketing, as well as free SEO and other tools you can use for your business.

Streamline and Supercharge the Google Ads Process with The HOTH

As a business owner or manager, you also realize that you’re good at what you do because you’ve focused on on your core competency, which is running your business well. You might not have the time or energy anymore to add to the learning curve of embarking on a digital marketing journey with Google Search Ads and all that it entails. 

The HOTH can help you with its HOTH PPC Managed Service, where you only give a few details about your website, your products or services, and your competition, and we’ll do the rest for you. We’ll design your campaign, collaborate with you on our onboarding call, produce the campaign and track the results, and report everything to you in a timely manner.  

This way, you can focus on what you do best, and we’ll do the same to help you attract more potential customers and grow your business. Call now and see if we’re a good fit.

Start growing your traffic now.

The post How to Attract Potential Customers With Google Search Ads appeared first on The HOTH.

But, that doesn’t mean email marketing is easy. Marketers have tons of email metrics they can use to measure a campaign’s performance. Among the most important of these metrics is email deliverability.

This metric measures if your emails are reaching your subscribers’ inboxes or if they’re just ending up in spam folders.

To help you gain a better understanding of email deliverability, we break down exactly what it is, why it’s important, and how to improve your deliverability in this article.

What is Email Deliverability?

Email deliverability is the ability of your promotional emails to reach the recipient’s inbox. It’s a complex metric showing you the quality of your email lists and email campaigns.

You can measure your email deliverability by looking at your inbox placement rate. It’s the number of emails delivered to the inbox out of the total emails sent.

The terms email deliverability and email delivery rate are not interchangeable — an email may be delivered but marked as spam and thus discarded. Inbox placement rate gives a more accurate picture.

Less than 20% of marketers can brag about having a 90% or higher inbox placement rate. The rates of 89–69% are far more common. But the average spam rate is only 0.01%, so it’s not the picky users that don’t want to receive any commercial emails.

It’s marketers not ensuring their email deliverability before hitting “send.”

The three elements of email deliverability

There are several external and internal factors that influence your deliverability rate. It all boils down to what you are sending, how you are sending it, and who you are sending it to.

These are the three key elements of email deliverability:

• Relevant and optimized email content: Bulky or clickbaity emails have a lower chance of landing in the inbox and being opened.
• Safety and sender reputation: Email services flag or filter out emails from unauthenticated or compromised domains.
• Engaged audience: Your recipients have to express consent and be interested in getting emails from you. Otherwise, they’ll ignore or report your messages.

Now, let’s dig a bit deeper.

Why Should You Care About Email Deliverability?

It’s frustrating to pour your efforts into an email campaign just to find out that it was ghosted by your target audience. But there’s more to it than mere sentimentality. Improved email deliverability can benefit your business on many levels.

#1. Strengthen your customer relationships

Ensure smooth, interruption-free communication with your customers to boost their interest and loyalty to your business.

Did you know that 37% of consumers prefer hearing from their favorite brands over email? Also, more than half of shoppers say that they look for seamless and personalized interactions with businesses.

Combine these two, and you’ll get a solid chance to generate repeat customers and devoted brand fans who would enjoy regularly receiving your email campaigns.

#2. Beat your competitors

Email is considered one of the most competitive and valuable channels — nine out of ten marketers use it to distribute content.

So, businesses can’t afford to treat it casually. By working on your email deliverability, you prevent your competitors from outpacing you.

Mastering email deliverability doesn’t require big investments or highly technical skills — it’s more about paying attention to details. And by doing that, you can succeed where others may fall short.

#3. Get higher ROI

When your email deliverability is lagging behind, it’s slowly turning your email marketing into a money-sucking machine. You’re forced to spend time and money on developing and setting up campaigns, email tools, and content creation, but you don’t get your investments back.

Improving email deliverability means improving ROI and gradually freeing up the resources needed for growth. You get a clearer picture of how your core audience reacts to your emails and what you can do to monetize their interest.

Common Factors That Hurt Your Email Deliverability

Here’s a list of the factors that are extremely likely to harm your inbox placement rate:

• Single opt-ins: If visitors can just sign up to your list through the form without having to confirm their subscription, spammers and fake-email users will take advantage of it and ruin the quality of your email list.
• No dedicated sending domain: Sending emails from a general domain everyone in your company uses isn’t recommended since you can’t control your sender reputation.
• High bounce rates: A high number of rejected or flagged emails tells email service providers that you have a low-quality email list that may have been bought or stolen.
• No custom authentication: Email users and service providers prefer to deal with senders who care about safety and are ready to go the extra mile to prove their legitimacy.
• Unclear unsubscribe options: If you don’t leave your subscribers an option to stop receiving your campaigns in one click, they’ll feel cornered and most likely mark your emails as spam.
• Image-heavy emails: Spam filters don’t like suspiciously heavy emails because they are more likely to carry malicious attachments.
• Spikes in email traffic volume: An unnaturally high sending volume from a previously inactive domain is an absolute red flag — email services expect commercial senders to grow their numbers gradually.
• Lack of personalization: Customers grow weary of generic marketing emails that have nothing to do with their real needs and simply stop opening or engaging with them.
• Repeat complaints: If you keep sending emails your recipients mark unsolicited, email service providers will do everything to lower the number of inboxes your campaigns reach.
• Poor engagement: The fact that your current emails are being ignored by your audience can negatively influence the deliverability of your future campaigns.
• URL shorteners: Shrinked, hard-to-read URLs are often used by scammers — that’s why they can make an otherwise legit email end up in the spam folder.
• No-reply email address: If your customers see that they can’t reply to your emails, they’ll quickly lose interest in one-way communication with your business.

Chances are, you ticked at least one of the boxes. But there’s no need to worry — we’ll address these and other issues and discuss how to fix poor email deliverability.

How to Boost Your Email Deliverability

We’ve briefly touched on five key areas that impact email deliverability rates:

1. Sender reputation: What email service providers “think” of your sending domain.
2. Authentication: How you prove that your emails are authentic and not forged or spoofed.
3. Content: What you put in your emails and subject lines.
4. Logistics: How you deliver your messages.
5. Audience: How your recipients interact with your emails.

Just a heads up, all of these areas are interconnected — so by improving, say, your opt-in strategy, you’ll also positively influence your sending reputation.

Let’s unpack each of them and see how you can improve these areas, step by step.

#1. Sender reputation

Your ability to reach the inbox depends on the reputation of your domain and the IP addresses associated with it. Email services score them based on your sending volume, whether they’ve been blacklisted, and so on. High unsubscribe rates, spam reports, bounce rates, and engagement rates also play a big role.

Here are some tips to improve your sender reputation:

1. Regularly monitor your IP reputation using tools like SenderScore.
2. Adopt an email list hygiene routine and remove invalid addresses and subscribers who haven’t reacted to your emails for months.
3. Develop sending consistency over time and gradually increase your sending volume instead of taking an “all or nothing” approach.
4. Reduce spam complaints by making sure you send only solicited and personalized emails.
5. Avoid spam traps by validating new email addresses before starting sending them campaigns, especially if there’s a sudden surge in email subscriber conversions.
6. Prevent blacklisting by making sure everyone in your company vigorously sticks to these tips.

#2. Authentication

Authentication is your way of showing email service providers and your recipients that you are a trustworthy sender and that your emails aren’t forged or spoofed.

There are three ways to make it happen.

SPF

Verify your sending domain via SPF (Sender Policy Framework). This framework allows you to authenticate domains that you or your business own and control.

For that, you need to create an SPF record — a list of servers that can send emails from your domain and instructions on how to handle requests from your domain.

To find or create an SPF record, you need to follow the instructions from your email software provider. If you can’t find them, contact their support. Then, you’ll have to add that record to your domain TXT records. If you don’t know where your DNS records are located, reach out to the person that manages your website or email address for help.

By adding an SPF record, you vouch for your emails’ authenticity. That’s how you tell email services who’s allowed to send messages on your company’s behalf.

DKIM

Use DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) to digitally sign your emails in a way that can be verified by your recipients or, more precisely, their email services.

DKIM consists of two elements: the DKIM record, which is stored in your domain records, and the DKIM header, which is attached to the emails you send from that domain. You, as a sender, get a private key to sign your outgoing messages, and your recipient gets a public key to verify your signatures.

This signature verification process works like a seal — it helps both parties ensure that your emails have actually been sent by you or your company and have not been changed in transit.

Encryption

Commercial emails may contain sensitive customer data such as their contact information, address, or order details. To prevent email data breaches, check whether the email software of your choice supports email encryption.

More often than not, services like Zoho Mail or Sendinblue support TLS (Transport Layer Security) encryption that prevents unauthorized access to an email when it’s in transit, but only if the recipient server supports TLS.

If the other server doesn’t support TLS, your email will be delivered using a standard SMTP protocol.

#3. Content

When your email content doesn’t match your subscribers’ expectations and needs, you get a drop in engagement and, subsequently, lower email deliverability. Spam filters can also penalize you for sharing unsolicited or suspicious content — even if you had no intentions to spam.

Here are some potential cures:

1. Create personalized and relevant content. Use advanced audience segmentation and dynamic content in your email campaigns to press all the right buttons.
2. Perfect your email layout. Create a clear visual hierarchy, break your layout into easily scannable chunks, and sprinkle it with a moderate amount of CTA buttons.
3. Prioritize mobile-friendly design. Make sure your emails are easy to read, even during a hectic commute.
4. Go easy on large file attachments. Email service providers want to prevent their users’ inboxes from being overloaded, so they may filter out especially bulky emails.
5. Keep a reasonable text-to-image ratio. Fully image-based emails can also be considered spammy, even if they contain some text. It’s better to maintain a 60/40 ratio or something along those lines.
6. Avoid spammy subject lines and all caps. A clickbait-like message is an immediate red flag for any email service filtering system.
7. Run A/B testing. Test different images, layouts, and buttons to find the right formula and increase your open rate.

Need some help creating better content for your emails and website? HOTH Blogger can help.

#4. Logistics

The way you deliver your messages matters. Make sure to follow these tried-and-true practices if you want to give your email deliverability a boost.

Choose dedicated domains and IP addresses when you can

Use dedicated domains instead of free or personal email addresses. A custom domain immediately creates a professional impression, but it’s not just that. If your company sends all sorts of messages from the same domain, its reputation will eventually suffer.

When you use a dedicated domain for your marketing communications, only your practices determine your sending reputation. And you gain more control over your inbox placement rate. The same is true for IP addresses, although to a lesser extent.

A dedicated IP is easier to whitelist. Also, using it means having sole responsibility for DNS records. But you don’t need to invest in a dedicated IP if you are a very small business — mistakes will also cost you more, and there won’t be enough sending volume to even them out.

Include a plain text version

Provide your email subscribers with a great user experience in both your HTML and plain text emails — it’ll incentivize them to always open messages from you. Including a plain text version may also help your email avoid the spam folder since spam messages often don’t have a plain text version.

Plain text is more accessible to screen readers. It looks more natural, almost hand-written, which makes your email communications feel less commercial. Also, this format allows you to display all your links and paragraphs correctly if your recipient’s app can’t show the HTML version of your email.

Be wary of URL shorteners

Shortened links can harm your email deliverability, and here’s why. Scammers often use them to direct users to phishing websites and spread malware. Since all shortened links look somewhat similar, it’s harder for the user to figure out where such link leads.

Naturally, email users and providers grow suspicious of shortened URLs. It’s always better to let your subscribers know what to expect if they click your link. If you absolutely must use a shortened link, consider providing some context, or using your email marketing platform’s link shortening or tracking options.

Stay away from no-reply email addresses

For starters, your subscribers can simply auto-filter no-reply emails as spam in their inbox. This alone can dramatically affect your email deliverability rate. Also, emails from no-reply addresses are more likely to be caught by spam filters.

Besides, a no-reply email address indicates a lack of interest from your side, which is not something customers feel drawn to. What if a recipient tries to reply to your email? They’ll immediately see that your business isn’t approachable even though you do try to communicate with them. It will only confuse or annoy them.

Always use a real email address your subscribers can send a message to. It’ll empower them to engage with your emails in a more meaningful way. As a result, your email deliverability rate will go up.

Set up an email feedback loop

A feedback loop is when your email service provider notifies you whenever your recipient reports your email as spam. This process lets you clean and update your mailing list regularly and keep your sending reputation intact.

Some email services may send you the details of each spam complaint, while others provide more aggregate data that doesn’t say who specifically filed complaints.

You can find a third-party service that will do most of the work for you by checking the recipient’s email address and making sure it’s not on the so-called suppression list. If it is, the system will refuse to send them emails.

#5. Audience

This part is pretty straightforward. Treat your subscribers nicely, and you’ll get a natural email deliverability improvement over time because they won’t be able to get enough of your content.

Here are some details worth paying attention to:

1. Use double opt-ins to attract an interested, active audience and validate their addresses on the spot. Building your mailing list will take longer, but it’ll be a higher quality audience.
2. Segment your email campaigns to avoid overwhelming your subscribers with information they may not need.
3. Make the unsubscribe link visually accessible. It’ll help your recipients pause or stop your campaigns without having to block or report you.
4. Regularly “prune” your emails to get rid of inactive subscribers and avoid getting flagged for spam.

Improve Your Email Marketing Game

As you can see, creating a great email campaign is only half the battle. Taking care of email deliverability is just as important because that’s how you make sure your words reach your customers’ ears, or, in this case, eyes.

If you want to guarantee that your content is seen and heard well beyond your existing circle, consider trying HOTH Web Copy. That’s your one-stop shop for quality content that search engines love — we will create engaging copy for your website and landing pages to help you drive conversions and rank higher on Google.

The post Email Deliverability: The Ultimate Guide to Reach Your Customers in 2022 appeared first on The HOTH.

The same need for personalization applies to email marketing. Marketers have to cater to their specific audiences rather than sending generic, mass emails to everyone on their email list.

Targeted emails enable brands to provide relevant content to their audience, build a relationship with them, and improve brand credibility. This consequently can boost sales.

This article will explain what email targeting is, why marketers need targeted emails, and how you can build a targeted email campaign.

What Is Email Targeting?

Email targeting or targeted email marketing is the practice of sending personalized emails that are relevant to your target audience.

Marketers typically divide their audience into multiple segments based on demographics, buying habits, and other factors, and send emails that resonate with each segment.

Using this method, they ensure that they cater to their readers’ various preferences — so the chances of customers relating to and checking out a brand’s products or services increase greatly.

Email targeting aims to boost conversions, but brands can have smaller goals along the way, such as increasing click-through rates, improving email deliverability, or boosting email subscriber numbers.

Why Is Email Targeting Important?

Email marketing is one of the primary channels for communicating and building relationships with your customers. Here’s why most marketers personalize their email campaigns:

Address different kinds of customers

Brands often think of their customers as a homogeneous unit. Their buyer personas could be as vague as “men aged between 25 to 40 years.” Experienced marketers will know that even within that group, there are tons of different variables that affect purchases: career, interests, marital status, hobbies, location, and more.

Targeted email marketing calls for accurate audience segmentation and enables brands to actually connect with the different types of buyers they are sending emails to.

Address customers in various buyer lifecycle stages

You don’t want to send an introduction email to someone that has already completed multiple orders. It doesn’t make sense from the customer’s point of view.

With targeted email marketing, you can send the right messages to audiences in different stages of the buyer journey, be it a prospect, a lead, or a repeat customer.

Improve credibility

Sending poorly-crafted and generic emails to your subscribers ensures they don’t trust your brand, mark your emails as spam, and decreases any chances of a successful email marketing campaign.

But, with targeted emails, you can ensure that most of your subscribers are interested in what you’re sending to their email addresses. This builds credibility and brand reputation. So, even if they don’t make immediate purchases, they’ll continue to engage with your brand long-term.

Boost click-through rates

The average click-through rate across all industries is around 2.13%. While many factors affect this metric, targeted emails can encourage users to open the links in your email.

Email targeting ensures the links you send to different readers are of interest to them. For example, sending a limited-time offer to a buyer with multiple items saved on their wishlist can entice them to click through to claim the offer and complete the purchase.

Build customer relationships

Targeted emails help build a rapport with customers where they open and read what you’re sending, be it informative articles, discounts, or company updates.

Sending customers the right content at the right time builds trust. This trust is crucial for building and maintaining customer loyalty.

Better customer retention

All of the above factors keep customers coming back for more. When your email campaigns are targeted to address your audience’s specific needs, it shows you know what you’re doing.

Increased rapport and credibility make readers more willing to give your products or services a chance. One successful order and more great emails later, you have a repeat customer that believes in your brand.

How to Create an Effective Targeted Email Marketing Campaign

So, now that you know why you need to personalize your emails let’s focus on the how. Here is a 6-step guide to get you started:

#1. Collect the right data

To set up the foundation of a targeted email marketing campaign, you need to collect the right data sets. Typically, the data you collect will be a mix of general customer information and more detailed statistics about their buying habits.

Many brands struggle with data collection, with 43% admitting that getting accurate customer data for personalization is challenging.

(Image Source)

You can set up data collection via forms and surveys in emails, use tracking pixels on your website or eCommerce store, or set up social media listening.

You can also host contests or giveaways, where customers fill out a basic information form to enter the competition. You can also regularly send feedback surveys to current customers.

If you’re just starting out, then competitor analysis is also a great avenue. Analyzing the top performers in your niche and seeing who their customers are and how they behave can help you better understand your target audience.

The real trick here is to unify all these various data sources into a single email marketing platform or CRM that supports email automation and advanced personalizations.

CTA: Need some help figuring out your email marketing strategy? Schedule a free call with our digital marketing specialists today.

#2. Use data for audience segmentation

The first set of data you need is demographics — your customers’ average age, location, income, education level, gender, etc.

Then, you dive in deeper to understand their interests, the devices they prefer to shop on, when they’re more likely to open your emails, and the types of emails they like.

All of this data is combined to construct a buyer persona, a fictional customer that represents a group of buyers. So, for example, you can have a buyer persona representing “high-earning married women over 30”.

Most marketers create multiple personas for each section of their customer base. Once these personas are built, it’s easier to understand audience pain points and create content to address them.

The goal of audience segmentation is to create multiple versions of the same emails so that they appeal to a majority of your subscribers.

For example, office supplies and furniture brand Poppin segments emails by the income and tastes of their audience.

Here’s their email for the “$75 essentials”:

(Image Source)

And their email for “$500 essentials”:

(Image Source)

While the layout for both emails is the same, the language used is different. The first focuses on functionality and affordability, while the second is focused on helping customers build their dream work-from-home setup.

#3. Create relevant content for each segment

Content for marketing campaigns is based on keyword research, market research, the target audience, and overall content marketing goals.

You can use different types of emails across the customer journey to build relationships with new leads and repeat customers alike.

GetResponse estimates that triggered automated emails have the highest open rates.

(Image Source)

Automated emails, such as an abandoned cart or transactional ones, are personalized automatically, with the user’s added products or preferences. However, marketers send many other types of emails, including:

• Newsletters: A weekly or monthly newsletter with personalized content.
• Promotional emails: Emails with relevant offers to a specific audience segment.
• Informational emails: Company updates, product updates, etc.
• Feedback: Asking customers for feedback about a particular service or the entire company.

All of these emails must be crafted with the target audience in mind. For example, promotional offers for slim-fit skinny jeans may not be ideal for audience members over 50. Promotions geared towards older groups should feature language and items they will be interested in.

#4. Test your campaign

Before fully launching your campaign, test the emails to see if they work on every major device and resonate with the target audience.

Your emails need to look good on desktops, mobiles, and tablets while maintaining formatting and design.

A/B testing is the ideal method to test email layouts on multiple devices. In an A/B test, you create two versions of the same email and send each version to different subsets of your audience.

Each version can have different names, subject lines, preview text, body copy, images, and call-to-action buttons.

Track each version to measure relevant metrics. For example, if the goal of your email marketing campaign is to boost email marketing revenue, then click-through rates via the CTA buttons are what you need to compare.

Testing can also determine ideal email frequency, which days of the week have the best open and click-through rates, and more.

Test your emails before and during a marketing campaign to identify opportunities for optimization.

#5. Choose a powerful email marketing platform

An effective email marketing campaign requires the correct tools. You need software that helps you with research, email creation, distribution, automation, testing, and analytics at scale.

You can use all-in-one platforms like MailChimp, Litmus, or HubSpot to manage every element in a single place or rely on standalone tools that perform one function but do it really well. MailGenius, for example, is a free tool that analyzes your email for possible triggers that could send it to the spam folder.

If you’re not sure about your writing skills, you can outsource the copywriting to web content experts.

If you’re using an all-in-one platform, ensure it has integration and automation capabilities. Automation speeds up marketing campaigns by relieving marketers of repetitive, mundane work.

Triggered welcome and transactional emails are examples of how automation can help streamline your email marketing.

According to BlueShift, email triggers lead to a 468% higher click rate and a 525% higher conversion rate.

(Image Source)

#6. Monitor and optimize

Monitor your email marketing campaign to ensure you’re effectively targeting your audience.

Performance metrics like overall open rate and click-through rate can be helpful to measure progress towards the broader campaign goals, but you also need to see if your targeted emails are working.

If the emails you’re sending to a specific subset of your audience fail, then A/B testing should help you figure out the difference between the multiple versions and help you understand why metrics aren’t up to the mark.

In many cases, your open rates could be great, but click-through and conversion rates could be lower. In the first scenario, it indicates customers want to see content from your brand, but the content they’re seeing is not persuading them to make a purchase or visit your website.

Measuring conversion rates is more complicated since it also depends on each product, its pricing, and other external factors like shipping time or cost.

Based on A/B testing and performance metrics, you must optimize your campaign content and then test again to measure effectiveness.

Grow Your Customer Base and Increase Profits with Targeted Email Marketing

Email targeting is an effective way to boost email marketing revenue and profit. If done right, your emails will leave a happy impression on your audiences, build credibility, and encourage customer loyalty.

Of course, if you’ve got no one on your email list, that’s a different problem altogether. The HOTH’s marketing experts can help you create targeted SEO and PPC campaigns and high-converting landing pages to build your lists more effectively.

The post How to Increase Open Rates With Email Targeting appeared first on The HOTH.

Since then, it has grown beyond personal electronic mail to become an integral part of business and marketing strategy, offering all sorts of features to improve communications over the internet.

One of these is the email distribution list — allowing you to send the same email to multiple people in one click.

In this article, we’ll discuss email distribution lists and what they’re used for. Then, we’ll walk you through creating them on Microsoft Outlook, Gmail, and Apple Mail and go over some list management best practices.

What is an Email Distribution List?

An email distribution list is a group of email contacts you can create to address as a single recipient. This allows you to contact several people with one email.

According to Statista, there were 4 billion daily email users in 2020. That number’s estimated to grow to 4.6 billion by 2025.

That’s a lot of email users, making something like an email distribution list a handy tool.

Also, unlike carbon copy, you don’t have to enter each recipient’s email address manually. Writing to the distribution list sends the email to everyone on it automatically.

For instance, imagine you wanted to send regular emails to 50 people. Instead of writing 50 emails or writing one email and entering all 50 email addresses, you could add their address to an email distribution list.

Every time you want to email these individuals, just write to the distribution list, and they’ll all get the message. It’s perfect for internal communications like emailing teams or entire departments at your company.

Benefits of Email Distribution Lists

Unlike many forms of marketing, email is inherently personal. You’re showing up in someone’s private inbox.

A distribution list helps you maximize these benefits. Here are some ways it does so:

Saves time

The most obvious benefit of email lists is the time you save. You don’t have to add recipients manually every time you need to send a specific group of people an email.

Just pick the distribution list, write up your email, and click send.

Easy solution for contacting multiple team members at once

Email distribution lists are best suited for internal communications. They make it easy to send email messages to a whole team or department at once.

But you can also use them to contact different groups of customers or clients — although this becomes difficult at scale.

Teaches you about your customers

At first, you do some initial customer research to put together a representative buyer persona that can guide your marketing messaging.

But once you’re actually marketing to your customers, you’ll quickly learn what they’re really like — especially through email.

Since email inboxes feel more personal and private, recipients may respond to your emails. Aside from helping your deliverability, these responses can be a gold mine for learning their problems and goals if you notice patterns in what they talk about.

Then, you can return to the drawing board and adjust your persona and messaging based on these responses.

Increases ROI

Email marketing offers some of the highest ROI of all marketing channels.

In 2020, email marketing firm Litmus’s State of Email survey found that email earned an average ROI of $36 per dollar spent. That’s even higher than the $32 per dollar spent that many had cited before 2020.

It makes perfect sense: email does not necessarily take a massive investment of time or money. Sending an email message is virtually free in 2022 (since you’re not paying for each kilobyte of traffic). Yet, the personal nature of the channel helps persuade your list members to take action on your emails and click through.

Builds a personal connection

As mentioned, people generally see their email inboxes as private. It is, after all, a virtual mailbox.

Therefore, email distribution lists allow you to build a personal connection with each recipient.

The key is to make your emails seem like they come “from a friend” and that you have their best interests at heart. You don’t have to know the person on the other end, but writing to them as if you’re talking to a friend feels less like a sales message and enables real human connection.

Oh, and if list members respond, that’s your chance to further an individual connection and secure their loyalty and satisfaction.

An asset you own

Your social media accounts may seem secure, but you don’t “own” them. Your followers actually belong to Facebook, Twitter, or whatever platforms you use.

You never know if the platform will change its algorithm and bury your social content — or worse, ban you from the platform for some reason.

Email’s different because, like your web content, you own your list. Your recipients are yours. As long as they opted in and you take action to avoid the spam box, you have far more control over your list than most other assets.

How to Make an Email Distribution List (in Outlook, Gmail, and Apple Mail)

The exact process for making an email distribution list differs depending on the platform you’re using. That said, every platform makes it relatively easy.

Here’s how to create email distribution lists with Microsoft Outlook, Gmail, and Apple Mail.

Microsoft Outlook

Email distribution lists are no longer called that in Microsoft Outlook. Instead, they’re called contact groups — but they work the same way.

To make a contact group, you’ll first navigate to the admin center and click on the People menu. Once there, you’ll go to My Contacts and choose the folder you’d like to save the contact group in. In most cases, you’ll want to choose the Contacts folder.

Next, you’ll create the contact group by clicking the New Contact Group button. Name the group, select Add Members, and choose the contacts you want in the group.

If you don’t have someone’s email registered in Outlook, just enter their email manually.

Finally, click Save & Close, and your list is ready to go.

Alternatively, if you email the same large group of people all the time, you can create a contract group the same way, but copy and paste all the email addresses instead of adding contacts.

If you keep your contacts in Excel, you can even import the spreadsheet into Outlook to create a group.

Gmail

In Gmail, distribution lists are called contact groups — and you can create them using Gmail’s label system.

Once you log into your account and arrive at your inbox, click the Create Label plus sign button on the left of the screen. Give it a name, and click save.

Next, go to your contacts. Check the box next to each contact you want to add. Once you select the desired contacts, click Manage Labels at the top right and choose the label you want to add them to.

That’s it. From there, you can remove contacts or change the group name as needed.

Apple Mail

Apple Mail also calls distribution lists “groups.”

To make one, open the Contacts app on your Mac, then select File and navigate to the New Group option. Name your new group.

Make sure your groups are visible by clicking View>Show Groups if you can’t see them, then click All Contacts to display all your contacts in alphabetical order.

Drag and drop the contacts you want in the new group. It’ll use the most recently used email address if they have several.

If you need to add new contacts in the future, simply create a contact in the address book for them, then drag it to your group.

Email Distribution List Best Practices

Email distribution lists offer plenty of convenience and help you save time. But you have to create and use them the right way.

Make sure you follow these best practices when building and writing to your email distribution list.

Check your list before you send a message

The larger your list grows, the more you have to check over it and make sure the right messages are going to the right people.

For example, you don’t want to send a “thanks for buying” message or an upselling email to a distribution list of customers who haven’t bought yet.

Likewise, you don’t want to send welcome emails to people who have been on your list for a year.

So make sure you check who you’re sending each message to before clicking “send.”

Follow the law

Data privacy is huge nowadays, and nowhere is this more apparent than data usage regulations.

For example, the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation requires you to ask for an “affirmative opt-in.” There can’t be any pre-ticked opt-in boxes, and the user has to freely and clearly give consent, per the regulation.

It also requires you to offer an unsubscribe option in every email, and instructions for unsubscribing must be clear and easy.

Keep in mind that these laws can differ depending on jurisdiction.

Make it as easy as possible to leave your list

You should make leaving your list as simple as joining it. It sounds counterintuitive, but there are plenty of benefits.

First of all, as we’ve mentioned, there are legal ramifications if you mismanage personal data.

Beyond that, allowing an easy opt-out can build trust and satisfaction with recipients. You appear more honest and transparent because you’re letting them leave any time they please. You’re not pulling a “make it hard to unsubscribe” trick in the hopes they’ll give up on it.

Clean your list regularly

You can’t please everyone on your list. Some people go cold after signing up. Others respond to you with less-than-happy messages that you can’t rectify, no matter how hard you try. Dissatisfied or disengaged recipients can harm your opens, click-throughs, and other important stats. This can carry over to your deliverability.

That’s why regularly cleaning your email list is so important. This involves purging your list of inactive accounts and you may have to kick off the occasional angry person if you can’t resolve their problem and they continue to be rude.

Yes, shrinking your email list seems counterintuitive.

But the thing is, you want people on your list that’ll engage with your emails and take action. Anyone who’s not doing so is harming vital email metrics without helping your business in any way. Removing them can actually be helpful.

Even if it’s an in-house list of team emails, you need to remove employees that leave the team or company.

Avoid attachments

You might have the best intentions when sending attachments via email, but this can turn off many recipients if they don’t know you very well.

Attachments carry a perceived risk of a virus if the recipient were to download it. Email software is more likely to move it to the spam or trash folder or completely block your message.

Even if it gets through, the recipient is less likely to trust it unless they specifically asked for it — such as if they signed up for your list to grab a lead magnet you advertised.

Additionally, attached files increase the size of your message. Too large of a file can prevent you from sending the email at all.

With all that in mind, try to use links if possible to share information.

Use email marketing software instead where appropriate

If you have a small list, you may be able to get by just emailing them manually.

But if you plan on scaling your business and list, you need to take advantage of email marketing software.

Email software solutions contain all sorts of tools that make your life easier, such as:

• Painless, legal, and automated opt-in and opt-out for all lists.

• A/B testing: To split your list into a few segments and send different versions of the same campaign or email to each segment. This helps you see which version’s better.

• Analytics: To see how well campaigns are performing.

• Automations: To build email sequences that nurture leads and sell your products on autopilot.

• Landing page tools: To build your email signup page and other relevant pages.

• Templates and drag-and-drop email builders: To help you craft emails quickly, especially if you’re struggling with ideas.

• Segmentation: To split your list up by buying behavior, pain points, and other information so you can more effectively target certain members.

Maximize Your Email ROI With a Distribution list

Email is one of your most valuable marketing and communications assets.

Distribution lists help you maintain communications with a large number of subscribers without having to write each one individually — saving you time without sacrificing the ROI of email.

The thing is, you need consistent lead flow to continue growing your list, especially if you’re purging inactive subscribers regularly.

SEO and PPC are two of the most powerful lead gen methods for email lists, and The HOTH can help you do them right. Book a free consultation today to learn how we can help you.

The post How to Create an Email Distribution List and Use It Effectively appeared first on The HOTH.

With the 5 steps in this guide, you’ll learn how to optimize the SEO of your e-commerce store to start driving tons of relevant, free organic traffic to it!

In this guide, you’ll learn how to:

• 1. Optimize Your Site Structure with Shopify Collections
• 2. Write SEO Optimized Collection Descriptions that Sell
• 3. Perfect Your Shopify Product Pages
• 4. Blog to Get More Business to Your Shopify Store
• 5. Leverage Link Building for Shopify

Ready to make your store way more profitable with Shopify SEO?

Let’s get into it!

Why Do Shopify SEO?

Online shopping is growing at a breakneck pace with no signs of stopping:

40% of internet users in the United States make online purchases several times per month. 20% of U.S. internet users bought goods or services online weekly.

With the majority of this online shopping revenue going to Amazon and Walmart, SEO is more important than ever if you want to get your Shopify store discovered and compete with these behemoths.

You already know that you can get traffic to your eCommerce site by optimizing it for eCommerce SEO.

The latest data confirms that the top organic positions on Google still drive the majority of traffic for a given search.

With all that in mind: SEO is a proven method for getting recurring traffic to Shopify sites.

How? By taking advantage of the advanced SEO tools that Shopify provides: mobile responsive themes, built-in testing, and easy metadata editing.

Shopify has built-in SEO features to make it easier to manage your store. They automatically generate your website’s robots.txt files and sitemap.xml. On top of that, themes generate title tags featuring your store name.

Here’s the step-by-step SEO guide to learn how to drive more traffic to your store with SEO tips for Shopify.

Step 1: Set Up The Perfect Site Structure With Shopify Collections

Site architecture, otherwise known as site structure, is a critical component of Shopify SEO.

It involves everything from better internal linking, to increased organic search, to an easier user experience that keeps people coming back for more.

Shopify Collections are navigation elements on your Shopify store that help users find your products by grouping products into collections/categories:

(Image Source)

These categories could be anything from sale items, to men’s jeans, to clothing for women, etc.

Similar products can be grouped into a collection that makes it easy for potential customers to find what they’re looking for.

For instance, you can group your products into a few collections (“Men’s,” “Womens,” “Brands”) to funnel traffic into the right spot without a user having to explore their entire catalog.

You can always add more collections, they just need to make sense as the overarching categories for your range of products.

Hub pages are essentially collection pages on a given topic that internally link to multiple pages related to the original topic. It’s like a table of contents for your store.

The principle of being a “hub” works for this news article because they provided a central starting point for people interested in the World Cup to keep up on the latest news.

It will work for your store if you strive to be the hub for what your customers want. Your store’s collections provide this hub-like structure.

Depending on your product offering amount and spectrum of markets (men, women, children, etc.), your collections should start from simple categorizations and dive deeper once those are selected.

For example, when clicking on the women’s offering of Good As Gold, collections are broken down further into more specific categories:

Including these sub-categories of footwear, tops, dresses, etc. without the primary collection of “Women” would overwhelm users.

Starting small with generalized collections will help draw users in. The sub-categories guide them toward the actual product they want.

Watch Outfitters uses a similar content marketing strategy, simplifying its structure to make the experience as easy as possible:

Decision fatigue will kill your conversions! Make it easy for your customers to choose what they want by simplifying your shop’s structure in the collections section of your Shopify dashboard.

To set up your product collections, follow these steps:

Decision fatigue will kill your conversions! Make it easy for your customers to choose what they want by simplifying your shop’s structure in the collections section of your Shopify dashboard.

To set up your product collections, follow these steps:

1. Navigate to “Collections” page under Products in your Shopify admin.

2. Click “Create Collection” to set up either an automated or manual collection.

You’ll arrive at this page, where you can set up all aspects of your collection.

In the “Collection type” section, click manual or automated.

As its name suggests: an automated collection allows you to save time by having the Shopify app add products automatically to collections that pertain to them.

Stores with a lot of different stock can take advantage of automated collections to help streamline the process of adding new products.

Manual collections are a better choice for small or personally curated collections.

For example, you can put items that are part of a special one-time discount or other promotion into a manual collection to make sure the discount applies only to products in that collection.

Keep in mind that once you make an automated or manual collection, you can’t go back and change it to the other type.

Here is the proper way to set up each type of collection:

3. Automated Collections

Once you set up an automated collection, associating conditions with that collection will cause products containing those conditions to automatically get placed in it.

Product conditions are essentially just “tags” associated with the product, such as color, length, the season of wear, etc. You can determine the condition in any way you want.

As you can see in the screenshot, there is a general “product tag” to allow you to choose anything as the condition. Or you can use the other pre-loaded conditions in the drop-down that would be relevant for your stock of goods:

The other drop-down with “is equal to” as the default allows you to set a secondary guideline for automatically grouped products:

The combination you choose will depend on your variety of goods and how you’d like them to be grouped together.

Once you’ve got the conditions set up, future products can be automatically added to the right collection when tagging conditions on the products.

The one thing about automated collections is that in order for them to be “automatic” you have to make sure to edit a product’s details to match those conditions.

Likewise, you need to remove those conditions from the product if you want it removed from the collection.

4. Manual Collections

As you might guess, a manual collection includes only individual products that you select to add to it.

Once you’ve clicked “Manual” as the collection type, click save.

In the Products section, click on “Add products” to designate which products you want in that collection.

Here is another video tutorial from Shopify, this time walking you through how to set up a Manual collection:

5. Once you’ve set up either a manual or automatic collection:

1. Set the sort order for how you want your products to appear. Click the drop-down list next to “Sort” and pick a sort order. It can be manually ordered or sorted by best selling, product title, highest/lowest price, or newest and oldest products.
2. Go to the “Sales Channels” section and choose which active sales channel you want the collection to be available in.
3. Upload an image to the Collection image section.
4. Check the Search engine listing preview to see how the collection will be displayed in the search engine results. If it could look better, click “Edit website SEO” to change the way it will appear.

Note that Shopify does not let you edit the URL and handle because they are part of your store’s URL structure.

Finally, be sure to add a link to the collection you just made in your store’s navigation menu. To do this:

1. From your Shopify admin, click Online Store > Navigation > Menu > Menu items > Add menu item.
2. Enter the collection name as you’d like it to display to customers in the “Name” field.
3. Go to the Link list and select “Collection”, then select the collection that you’re adding a link for.
4. Click “Add”
5. Click “Save menu”

And you’re done! While this may seem like a fair number of steps, it’s really not that bad and can be done in a matter of minutes if you know what you’re inputting.

Remember, taking the time to set up your collections can really help to organize your store and ensure a great user experience for any shoppers who come across it.

Step 2: Use Shopify SEO Apps

Digital marketing using Shopify can be confusing if you’re unacquainted with code or templates. To make things easier for store owners, Shopify offers paid Apps that can assist you in modifying your site without adjusting the code manually. These are similar to WordPress plugins in functionality. 

Here are some useful Shopify apps for improving SEO:

1. Schema App Total Schema Markup: This is an app used for site managers to add custom structured data to your Shopify store. You can use it to get rich snippets.
2. Smart SEO: This app automatically generates alt tags, meta tags, fixes broken links, and helps you manage your Shopify store’s sitemap.
3. SEO Manager: Recommended as an all-around great Shopify tool to increase your store rankings. It allows you to create keywords, descriptions, titles, meta tags, and feedback on how each of these is performing on your site.
4. Image Optimizer: This tool provides you with SEO image optimization by setting the alt text automatically, compressing current and new images and files to reduce file size.

Step 3: Understand Unique Shopify SEO Adjustments

Duplicate content

Duplicate content in Shopify happens when there’s similar content existing in two separate URLs, causing an issue for search engines as they won’t be able to determine which is the canonical version of two pages. 

To better understand this, try to search the category page on a Shopify site. This will display the product listings and a list of links associated with the category page. Click on any of these pages and you’ll be redirected to a product page with the collections & products in the URL path.

When you observe the canonical tag of this page, however, you’ll find that the tag is referencing a different URL, presenting you with a duplicate of the original page listing.

In other words, every product page that’s listed on your website’s category pages is classified as duplicate content.

Duplicate content harms your site structure and prevents your URLs from ranking on Google. 

You can fix this by adjusting your Shopify theme files and adjusting the code on all of your category pages.

Set up Google Search Console

After spending so much time setting up your Shopify store to look the very best, you wouldn’t want your shop to be invisible to search engines. 

There are two files that provide search engine bots with the information they require to be indexed and crawled. These are the robots.txt file and the XML sitemap.

The robots.txt file is a text file found in the root directory of your Shopify website, and it provides search engine bots the information of what pages to crawl and not to crawl. This is crucial for ranking, as without this file being available, your site won’t rank.

On the other hand, the XML sitemap file contains the list of all available web pages on your site and their metadata. To locate your sitemap URL, type in the following URL into a search engine browser, replacing ‘example’ with the name of your domain: http://www.example.com/sitemap.xml.

If you find the sitemap, then that means it’s available there. If not, then you’ll most likely receive a 404 error. 

Should you get the error, then you can generate the sitemap yourself.

The process for the robots.txt file is the same. This time, you can type in: http://www.example.com/robots.txt, where once again ‘example’ is your domain name.

Once you have both files ready, set up a Google Search Console by creating a Google Webmaster account.

The next step is to submit your site to Google Search Console so that it can be indexed.

To do this, submit the automatically generated sitemap file to Google through your Google Webmaster account. 

Google Webmaster tools can help you identify any crawling errors. Search engines index websites using bots that crawl a website and its pages, and a crawling error happens when a bot tries to reach a specific site but fails. 

After setting up Google Search Console, you should also create a Bing Webmaster Tools account to show up in the search engine. You can create a free account by registering on their sign-up page and repeating the process for the Google Webmaster account.

Step 3: Write SEO-Optimized Collection Descriptions that Sell

At this point, I’m probably hitting you on the head with this: but user experience really matters if you want to maximize your sales and increase search volume.

So: write long and useful descriptions for your collections page rather than just letting the products speak for themselves.

100% Pure masters this tactic with beautiful customer-focused descriptions in their Shopify collections.

Here’s the description for their “Face Makeup” collection:

For each collection, like “Face Makeup,” they write a solid description explaining that particular product collection and what you can expect from it.

This has a dual use for user experience and SEO.

The description helps that page to appear relevant both for customers looking at it and for the keywords that it’s trying to rank for. In this case, the keyword is “natural face makeup.”

Internal links are another important component of on-page SEO for your Shopify store. To this end, 100 Percent Pure also links out to a related blog post on their collections page to keep people interested and learning more.

Doing internal linking like this is a great way to increase SEO strength, relevance and to keep users on-site longer.

Shopify’s platform provides spaces for optimizing various components of on-page SEO. So in your collections, be sure to edit the meta description, title and URL as well:

Optimize your site structure by keeping it simple. Remember that social media links don’t count towards your page ranking.

Group alike products into collections and use those collections as a chance to write engaging content, produce internal links and improve on-site navigation.

Step 4: Optimize Your Shopify Product Pages

So your collections are made and you’ve just put up some new products on your Shopify store.

You added some wonderful images, descriptions, videos, alt text, and HTML titles for each product, right?

But how do you optimize your products for SEO? Are there more steps you can take other than a good image and description? Does it really even matter?

It absolutely does! Especially with Shopify’s SEO-friendly features.

Let’s get into the mindset behind how great product descriptions drive sales:

The Nielsen Norman Group conducted a major study on e-commerce user experiences, finding that 20% of failures to complete a purchase were due to bad product descriptions.

Here is what they said regarding the effect of bad product descriptions:

“Leaving shoppers’ questions unanswered can derail a sale or even worse, make shoppers abandon not just the purchase, but the site as well.” 

As you can see, product descriptions are important to keep people’s attention. Not only that, product descriptions are one of the greatest ways to communicate everything about the product.

Product description pages:

• Answer questions.
• Address pain points and problems.
• Provide your product as the solution!

Rather than just describing the product and the features it has, you should strive to write product descriptions filled with end-user benefits.

For example, nobody cares if your sunglasses are “made from carbon fiber with a chiseled outer frame.” They care about whether it will survive a drop or being stepped on.

A perfect example of this is Sperry Top-Sider. Looking at each product, they give thorough product descriptions and even detailed graphics explaining not just the product features but the direct benefits those features provide:

Rather than just mentioning the features, Sperry is spelling out exactly how those features improve your experience while wearing the shoes by telling you what benefits you can expect. (Such as comfort and durability.)

“Minimal pattern allows less piercing, which means more comfort against your foot.”

The minimal pattern is the feature. More comfort is the benefit.

“Genuine handsewn moccasin construction helps to provide stability, comfort and superior fit.”

Being genuine handsewn moccasins is the feature. Stability, comfort, and superior fit are the benefits.

On top of a benefit-focused description, you should get to the point ASAP. Don’t write product descriptions for the sake of filling out text for search engines rankings.

While content helps improve search engine rankings, content for the sake of length might cause SEO issues.

You don’t want users to get distracted or overwhelmed, leading to a bounce and no sale.

Keep it short, sweet, and to the point. Bad user experiences are a recipe for disaster, while good user experience has them adding products to their cart.

For example, look at how simple yet straightforward the product descriptions are for this Shopify-hosted orange juice brand:

Using black checkmarks, the focus is immediately drawn to what a customer would actually care about:

“Never concentrated, 11 oranges per bottle, one serving of fruit.” The things people really want to know.

Shopify merchant Leesa optimizes their product page with high-quality long-form content, structuring it so that they don’t overwhelm users or bore them if they don’t want to read about the product.

This works to provide context and content for SEO and solve user problems.

Landing on their product pages, you will first see their product images and a small description:

If you want more information, scrolling below the fold showcases a detailed description:

Each factor of the product is broken down into multiple related topics that searchers are looking for. From memory foam to support and technical specifications:

With these best practices in mind, you can head over to your products dashboard on Shopify and start to craft optimized descriptions that will improve time on site and conversions.

1. Select Your Products

First, click on “All products” in your Shopify admin:

2. Add your descriptions

Keep benefits in mind before features. While editing product descriptions, you can use preset, diverse customization options or even enter your own coding:

A few other things to keep in mind when writing product descriptions:

Take advantage of bullet points, checklists, and ways to simplify information for online readers. People skim, and it’s crucial to cater to their reading patterns.

Additionally, when writing descriptions, try to layer in LSI keywords to add context and relevance. Using the LSI Graph, you can enter your product name or general product type to generate a list of related keywords to enhance your on-page SEO. Remember to monitor your keywords’ performance metrics in Google Analytics.

To come up with higher ranking keywords that increase click-through rates, you can use a keyword research tool like the Ahrefs keyword generator. 

See our guide on keyword research to obtain more ideas on how to increase your conversion rate by expanding your Shopify keyword list.

3. Optimize your title and meta tags

After writing a great product description with your keywords and LSI keywords, it’s time to optimize your meta descriptions and titles for search engines again.

Why? Because if you don’t, Google will pull information from your page to fill it, resulting in copy that doesn’t compel someone to click.

People will look at the description in Google before even clicking on your website, so check out how the Search engine listing preview looks:

Remember: keep the title and URL simple, including your product name/keyword. Meta descriptions should be enticing and loaded with click-inducing benefits.

For instance, take a look at that example meta description from Tactics online skate shop. Their title directly matches my keyword search of “Skate shoes,” and their description is loaded with reasons to click:

• Fast and free shipping
• No sales tax
• Leading brands to choose from

Are you currently running a promotion on your Shopify store?

Enhance your CTR by sharing your sale information right in the meta description.

Fill your descriptions with benefits, sales and any other reasons for someone to click your product instead of on the competition’s product.

The Power Of Video

While product descriptions play a very important role, one additional way to make your product pages even more engaging is to incorporate video. Using video is one of the best ways to improve your users’ experience on your site.

For consumers, one of the biggest risks of shopping online is the possibility of receiving a product that does not accurately resemble the product description and images shown on the website.

Product videos completely eliminate this problem by giving an in-depth look at your product. These videos provide a 360° view of your product while also highlighting all of the features that make it unique.

By presenting your products in a video format, consumers are nearly twice as likely to purchase after watching!

Here are some other reasons to consider adding product videos to your e-commerce website:

• Customers will spend approximately 88% more time on a website with video content. More time on your website equates to higher Google rankings and an increased likelihood of making sales.
• Your customers are asking for it! According to a study from Animoto, 84% of consumers want to see MORE product videos on Amazon and other e-commerce platforms!

Step 4: Add a Blog on Shopify (And Why You Need One)

When it comes to your SEO strategy, tagging and optimizing products and pages on your site is the first step.

But that’s not going to be enough to bring in traffic from multiple funnel stages.

You can’t rely on products to drive all of your traffic. Especially not in such a competitive landscape.

Specific, product-based search terms indicate that users are very deep in the buyer’s journey. Here are the basic stages of the buyer’s journey:

(Image Source)

During the awareness or early stages of problem realization, users aren’t searching for products just yet. At least not specific or even branded ones. Instead, they are likely looking for more information.

For instance, someone early in the buyer’s journey might be searching for “best TVs of 2018” to review multiple products:

They are likely still comparing, rather than searching for “60 inch HDTV.”

Meaning your product page optimization can only bring in so much traffic.

And you can’t always bank on bottom-of-the-funnel traffic to convert on a dime or their first visit.

Something to remember: 98% of people don’t convert on their first visit. So how will you get them the next time around?

You might get a few people to convert here and there on direct product pages, but warming up your traffic with content can help build brand awareness in your space and drive more traffic.

E-commerce is brutally competitive, and you need content to drive visits from non-brand-aware users.

If people don’t know your brand, the likelihood of finding you is significantly lower.

So, what is the best way to drive more organic traffic to your Shopify store?

By adding a blog!

There are a lot of mid-buyer cycle topics that people want to know about (and are searching for!) including:

• Questions about your products (How does X work?)
• Product comparisons (Which is better: Product A vs Product B)
• How To Type Articles (How to make X with this product, how to achieve x result)
• Etc

For example, Shopify merchant and shaving company Oui Shave uses blog posts about their safety razor products.

For example:

• “How to prevent razor burn and razor bumps”
• “An epic guide to treating and preventing ingrown hairs”
• “Your razor may be the cause of your ingrown hairs” 

All these articles support what they sell, and attract their target customer.

Oui Shave themselves said, “It takes 7+ times before they actually build trust in you enough to part with their hard-earned money.”

This is a general principle of advertising that in the context of a blog, translates to building trust through each exposure to your brand through an informative or entertaining blog post.

To adapt to this reality, Oui Shave used their blog to establish themselves as thought leaders in the realm of safety razors for women, producing content on the top problems and pain points in their industry:

While it would seem hard to blog about shaving products for women, they do, and Oui Shave dominates their market (safety razors for women).

Believe it or not, for every B2C product there are content opportunities to bring in searchers:

HubSpot’s blogging frequency benchmarks show that B2C blogging is critical for driving more traffic.

(Image Source)

In fact, blogging 11+ times each month generates more traffic in the B2C space than it does for B2B!

According to HubSpot, “…companies that blogged 11+ times per month had almost 3X more traffic than those blogging 0 – 1 times per month.”

Not only do you drive more traffic with blogging, but companies that blog 11 or more times per month get 4x the amount of leads compared to companies blogging 4-5 times a month.

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The key takeaway? More blog posts on your site results in more traffic:

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Why? Because you have more indexed pages covering more diverse topics that cater to different audiences and interests.

This allows you to capture more traffic that can turn into leads and store sales. You’re essentially casting a wider net by pushing more opportunities for your store to be found in search results.

Ready to create some amazing blog posts for your Shopify store to drive more traffic? Here’s how to set up a blog in just a few minutes.

1. Set up Your Blog

First, head to your Shopify store dashboard and click on “Online Store” to pull up more menu options. From here, select “Blog posts.”

2. Create A Post

Next, select “Create blog post” to start writing and editing your first post:

Immediately you can begin to start writing your blog post, crafting a catchy title and setting the publish date:

The most impactful blog posts to increase traffic and rankings are long-form posts. Shoot for at least 1,890 words for each blog post. While this may seem difficult, it allows you to craft blog posts that are all-encompassing.

For topic ideas, let Google auto-suggest do the work:

This can help you generate multiple topics that you can include in a single post.

For instance, tips for beginners, technical skills to practice and a how-to section to ride properly.

Those three sub-sections could easily make up 2,000 words on your next post.

After writing your blog post, you can optimize the SEO for it at the bottom of the page:

Want some more ideas for your blog? Check out our post on 50+ blog post ideas.

3. Optimize Your Meta Tags For SEO

Click “Edit website SEO,” and you can craft a compelling title and meta description to drive more clicks from your search engine listings:

While page titles, meta descriptions, and URLs (permalinks) aren’t direct ranking factors, they can influence CTR which can increase rankings.

Keep your title simple, using the keyword or an LSI keyword to provide context. Repeat that keyword in your meta description, but use the meta description as your chance to convince people to click.

Your URL should be simple and include your keyword. Backlinko found that shorter URL strings rank higher in organic SERPs:

(Image Source)

For instance, if you are writing a blog post about summer fashion for women, your URL string could be:

www.yoursite.com/womens-summer-fashion-tips

Keeping it simple and including a keyword will help you build relevance and increase your organic clicks.

Use a tool like the Keyword Density Checker to ensure that your content is properly optimized before hitting publish.

Step 5: Link Building on Shopify

Now that you’ve optimized your site structure, product pages, and blog, it’s time to build links.

Link building is just as important as content, according to Google.

Link building to your Shopify store will help you drive relevant traffic and build your domain authority by driving good signals from other high authority sites.

Shopify Merchant Emazing Group cited backlinks as being critical to generating traffic and sales, switching to Shopify to better manage links and URL strings, increasing revenue by 227%.

For Shopify specifically, link building will revolve around your products and your blog. The more blog content you create, the easier it will be to get links in your space, as sites will refer to you for content.

Here are a few ways to get links to your store!

1. Get Reviews From Bloggers In Your Niche

If you were to get a link on a popular review site like CNET, you would likely drive tons of traffic.

Why? People are clicking the links to explore products and will visit your site to learn more about your brand’s product.

In their comparison posts, CNET links to each product they talk about. And if those products drive interest from a visitor, you can bet that they will be clicking on it to learn more.

Note that in this example, the products belong to major brands and are directed to GE, Samsung, or Whirlpool’s product pages.

This is to show that your own brand and products can be similarly linked to within a review article.

The best way to get linked to in a review article like this is to seek out websites with a nice domain authority that are already reviewing products in your industry.

Then you can reach out and suggest they review your product in a new article or add a review of it to an existing article.

Your chances of being successful at this could be improved by offering a sample of your product to the reviewer in exchange for an honest review on their part.

2. Guest Post On Authority Sites

You can also offer to write a guest post on a topic that would be interesting for a website to post on their blog.

If they accept, include one or two links to a product, blog post, or homepage in your Shopify store where it’s natural to do so in the text.

Let’s say you sell women’s apparel, for instance. Famous fashion blogger Caro Daur reviews women’s fashion on her website where she links back to specific products that she uses and gets sent by other companies.

Using a basic Google parameter for your search, like…

top [industry] bloggers

…can help you return large lists of the most popular bloggers and review sites in your industry/niche:

In every industry, there will be blogs talking about your space, products, and tips. You can leverage these sites to get backlinks to both your blog and products.

For instance, if a site is talking about tennis, you can use cold outreach to pitch products that they can talk about or link back to for users, or even drive them to an affiliate program where they can make money from linking to your products.

With a few tricks, you can easily find anyone’s email, making cold outreach a breeze. For example, using a tool like Voila Norbert or direct LinkedIn plugins like ContactOut:

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You can then take those emails and start a new cold outreach campaign, offering to send your products to them for no charge or asking for reviews.

Targeting blogs in your space will help you develop great product-specific backlinks that will boost your Shopify SEO.

3. Start an affiliate program

Another great way to build links on Shopify is to establish an affiliate program where others can link to your products and services, driving traffic and sales for a minor portion of your sale profit.

With a Shopify integration like Refersion, you can keep track of all of your Shopify store affiliates.

You can approve or disapprove people who apply, selecting only the users who have popular websites that can help you easily build direct product backlinks!

Optimize Your SEO Web Page to Rank Higher

Performing technical SEO for optimizing your Shopify store will help you drive tons of organic traffic that you can turn into sales.

By focusing on your site structure and user flow, you can create a seamless, wonderful experience for new users who land on your site.

A great website experience combined with great products for sale: that is what will help convert visitors to your Shopify store.

Staying up to date with Google algorithm changes can be challenging for Shopify site managers. Schedule a call with us to better learn how to optimize your Shopify SEO.

The post Shopify SEO: 5 Killer Ways To Optimize Your Store To Get More Traffic! appeared first on The HOTH.

Maybe you have only one sale per day and want ten? Or perhaps you have one thousand orders per day and want to multiply it by 10?

Whatever your goal is, stick around—I am going to break down one of the most influential and successful paid platforms for e-commerce stores.

Welcome to the world of Google Shopping.

What Is Google Shopping?

First things first—we need to cover the basics of Google Shopping and what it is exactly.

Google Shopping allows the consumer to view paid ads that feature your products on the Google Search platform.

It also provides a specific placement found on the Google Advertising platform, primarily shown through Google Search.

In the image below, you’ll see an example of the Google Shopping section from search results.

There is also a Shopping tab below the search bar, which shows both paid (sponsored) and free (organic) listings.

In fact, Google Shopping ads now drive 76.4% of retail searches and win over 85% of all clicks!

Once a user sees the Shopping ads and clicks on them, they’re taken directly to the product page.

In the example below, I clicked on the Apple product I was most interested in and was taken to the exact product page.

You might be asking yourself, “how is this different from search ads?”

Well, traditional text ads do not include the same information as a Google Shopping ad. These ads include a product photo, cost, and can even include customer reviews.

When a consumer sees the product, cost, and reviews right away, they are more prone to purchase.

Google Shopping Examples

Now that we all know what Google Shopping is and how consumers engage with it, let’s get into more examples of Google Shopping Ads.

Google Shopping Placements

As a Google advertiser you have the option of placing your ads on one of the following:

• Google Search
• Google Search Partners
• Google Shopping (Free Listings)
• Gmail, Youtube, and Display Sites

Can Google Shopping Be Built for Any Store?

Yes, The HOTH can actually help grow your e-commerce business with Google Shopping by utilizing most major platforms including WordPress, Woocommerce, Shopify, Magento, and Bigcommerce.

Benefits of Google Shopping

There are other benefits to using Google Shopping for your business, such as connecting with the right customers and saving money on ad campaigns.

Buyer Mindset

The biggest benefit of running Google Shopping campaigns is that you’re driving consumers to your store with a buyer mindset.

In Google’s recent studies, 51% of shoppers surveyed said they use Google to research a purchase they plan to make online.

Lower CPC

You’ll also find your budget going further with Google Shopping. On average, we find the cost per click is 30% lower than the average click for a traditional text ad.

In the example below, you can see that the shopping campaign is outperforming the search campaign. The cost per click is lower, the cost per conversion is cut down by 40%, and the return on ad spend is much higher.

Vetted Traffic 

One of my favorite benefits of Google Shopping campaigns is that you’re spending your money on pre-vetted traffic. This means the consumer saw the price of your product beforehand and still decided to click. This gives you a high probability of that user purchasing instead of bouncing off the page. 

In the example below, you will see a test we ran based on a Google Shopping campaign versus a traditional search campaign. Inside the search campaign, we focused solely on their best selling products. 

The shopping campaign outperformed the search campaign. 

Google Shopping Best Practices

If you’re ready to start using Google Shopping for your business, here are some best practices to follow.

E-Commerce Store Checklist

Before spending a dime on Google Shopping ads we always recommend you have the core components of a high converting store.

When I make a mental checklist for a store, I usually follow the Amazon model. They have been a leader in e-commerce for many years and know what consumers are looking for.

You need to address these elements first:

• Descriptive Product Titles & Product Descriptions
• Easy To Read Bullet Points
• High-Quality Images or Videos
• Pricing, Financing & Discounts Available
• Reviews
• Shipping, Returns & Warranty Information
• Website Load Speed

Ensure your store is fully optimized before investing in new ads.

Mobile-Optimized

A study by Google shows that 80% of smartphone users are more likely to purchase from companies with mobile sites or apps that help them easily answer their questions.

Meaning, you need to make sure you have the right components in the right places for your store to convert.

From the examples above, we looked at Apple’s Macbooks and how they were advertising on mobile.

Notice how they enhanced their mobile experience with a simple and easy to skim layout.

Data Feed & Ad Optimization

The components mentioned above are important to have long before customers even start clicking on your products. Let me explain why.

We have to create a Data Feed that sends all of your product data from your website over to Google.

In this feed, it carries all of your product information from product titles, images, descriptions to shipping, and tax information. Essentially this is the line of communication between your website and Google.

Once the feed is created it then gets uploaded to Google Merchant Center and then linked to your Google Ad account.

The Data Feed and store components are crucial for getting eyes on your ads and ultimately winning the click.

Your images will make you stand out from your competitors.

In this example below, you’ll see a few different repair manuals that appeared after I typed in “Lexus RX330 Car Repair Manual.”

As a consumer, I may not know what manual brand I need, but I do know what my car looks like. I will gravitate towards the one that looks like my car.

Once I clicked on the ad, I was not brought to an Amazon type layout. However, I found most of the components I was looking for: a relevant title, clear image, product description, reviews, pricing, and call to action.

Running an effective Google Shopping campaign requires us to regularly test the waters. For every client, we always start with a Smart Shopping and Standard Shopping campaign. 

A Smart Shopping campaign is one that is built using the Data Feed we setup before. But, it also optimizes itself based on Google’s algorithm. Inside of this campaign, you’ll find much less control. Yet compared to a Smart Search campaign, we find they have a lot more success. 

A Standard Shopping campaign also uses our Data Feed but is more hands-on and requires a lot of manual work. 

We test these campaigns against each other for 100 to 200 clicks and then will cut off the losing campaign. 

Once we have narrowed it down to one campaign, our budgets are adjusted accordingly and then we focus on the highest and lowest performing products. 

Although we added all of our products inside the Data Feed, we still have complete control over which products we advertise on. 

When optimizing our campaigns we can focus on products that bring in the most sales or have the best margins, or BOTH if wanted. It’s really based on the client’s goals. 

You can see in the example below that unlike traditional lead generation we’re not so focused on conversion rate versus conversion value or revenue. 

Product 16659, for instance, only has a conversion rate of 0.31% while our campaign average is 1.75%. If this was a keyword in a search campaign, it would have been paused weeks ago. But with shopping, we must take a different approach.

This ultimately would be a product we would keep running and continue monitoring further down the road.

However, a product like 13314 is currently losing money. It cost us $448 and only generated $399.99 in revenue.

Measuring a Successful Campaign

Measuring the success of a shopping campaign depends on the numbers. The ultimate goal is to make money and spend less than you earn.

Simple right!?

Yes, but it’s also understanding how to calculate the performance. In this article, I discussed two success metrics: return on investment (ROI) and return on ad spend (ROAS).

When it comes to shopping campaigns we typically focus on ROAS. To calculate ROAS you can use our free tool here at The HOTH.

Anything above 100% ROAS means you’re making money based on your ad spend.

On average we see a 200% to 1,500% ROAS. You can see how it’s a wide-scale. The reason for this is because niche and store are so different.

Here’s a pro tip: the most profitable campaigns are ones that have well-built stores, thorough market research, and strong attention to detail.

For your first three months, I’d recommend only focusing on breaking even. Once everything is rolling smoothly you can worry about becoming profitable.

Why? Well, most of your customers will be returning to your business and you’ll continue to reap the benefits of your advertising efforts long-term.

Conclusion

We hope you’ve learned a ton about Google Shopping in this article. Chances are you’ve seen it before while searching for your own items to buy. But now you have the knowledge to harness it for your own business.

Remember to start off by setting up and optimizing your store to be high-converting. That includes all of the components we mentioned above: effective product titles, bullet points, high-quality images, pricing, reviews, and more.

Interested in Google Shopping but don’t know where to start? HOTH PPC can help get your business set up to dominate on Google.

Schedule a call with us today and let’s talk about your goals!

The post What Is Google Shopping, and How Does it Work? appeared first on The HOTH.

Having been seven years since the last console war, both Microsoft and Sony are gearing up for a big battle this year as they prepare to enter the next generation of gaming with the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 consoles.

But which will come out on top? And why are we talking about this?

You can learn a lot from SEO and user search habits.

In this study, we analyzed the data to predict which console will come out on top.

XBox Series X vs PlayStation 5 Analysis

It’s been a close duel between the two console giants throughout 2020, with Microsoft taking an early lead thanks to a world premiere reveal of their new console on YouTube in December 2019.

Microsoft’s lead continued until the summer months until Sony overtook them by showcasing the PlayStation 5 a whole month before the Xbox Series X.

Throughout the rest of summer, interest remained fairly level, with the Xbox just edging in front before a price leak saw interest in the Xbox spiking. A week later, Sony jumped ahead with the reveal of the prices and pre-order options for the PlayStation 5 and the PlayStation 5 digital-only edition.

The latest data shows that Xbox is set to lead the way right into Christmas, thanks to some big announcements from Microsoft regarding the purchase of Bethesda game studios and the inclusion of EA games in their Xbox Game Pass subscription service.

Check out the graphs below to see a visualization of just how close the battle between the two has been so far and what it could look like come Christmas:

Clayton Johnson, CMO of The Hoth, said:

“It’s been seven years since the last console war and statistics indicate that Sony was by far and away the big winners selling twice as many PS4s as Microsoft did Xbox Ones. If this trend data is anything to go by, it looks like the pattern will be reversed, at least for the first Christmas, but as we know this can change in an instant!

With video games now one of the biggest forms of entertainment in the world, it is essential for us as an SEO firm to stay up to date with the latest video game trends, and I’m really excited to see what this new generation has in store and what the wider influence on society will be.”

Conclusion

Search data can reveal a lot about consumer habits, and even predict future outcomes.

Were you surprised by the findings? Let us know in the comments!

The post The Christmas Showdown: Xbox Series X vs PlayStation 5 appeared first on The HOTH.

You’ve probably tried some of the following tactics to increase conversions:

• Added high quality product photos
• Added a unique product description
• Optimized your website for ease of use
• Offered discounts or incentives

But, sometimes these tactics aren’t enough. If you’re still struggling to boost your conversion rates, you’ll need something to really grab your customers’ attention and make them click “buy now” right then and there.

And that’s where video comes in.

Unsurprisingly, video has become one of the best tools for digital marketing.

Many businesses are using this visual medium to spread brand awareness, advertise and even boost their SEO.

But one of the biggest opportunities for video content lies in the eCommerce industry, specifically in the format of eCommerce product videos.

Just take a look at some of these stats from an Animoto study on video:

• 42% of consumers want to see more product videos
• 64% of eBay shoppers want to see more product videos
• 84% of Amazon shoppers want to see more product videos

The demand is glaring. People want video, especially when it is involved in the online shopping process!

Consumers feel that video is the best way to explain a product and its features.

It makes them feel more confident about making a purchase because they get a full understanding of a product’s appearance and function.

These same consumers also say that brands using video content appear more trustworthy and more engaging – qualities that will undoubtedly help your brand and your sales.

And if consumer confidence isn’t enough to convince you, take a minute to consider these numbers:

• A product video makes a consumer nearly twice as likely to purchase
• Consumers spend 88% more time on a website with video content
• 96% of consumers find videos helpful in their purchase making decision

Now that we’ve got your attention, let’s dive into some of the features that make product videos so unique.

What is a Product Video?

A product video is a short clip that highlights the main features of a product and may even show it in use.

The purpose of a product video is to provide a potential customer with more information about a product.

If you’re trying to convince a customer to purchase your product, a video will be far more convincing than any photo or product description.

There are multiple ways you can approach a product video depending on your product and audience.

For some products, it may be best to show the product in action. These “lifestyle” product videos can be effective for niche products with a unique audience. If you know who your ideal customer is and what they will be using the product for, you can make a product video that is specific to the audience you are trying to reach.

One downside to lifestyle-type videos is that they often has a higher production cost than other styles, typically starting around $1,000 for a basic video. If you’ve got multiple products or unique production needs, this can get expensive fast.

If you’re looking for a better ROI when it comes to implementing product videos, the best way to do it is by adding a simple product overview video to your eCommerce product page.

Using a product video here can give them the extra push needed to convert. You don’t need anything flashy to do this, either. The most popular type of product video is a simple 360° view of the product that highlights some of its unique features.

I’m sure you’re itching to get started with product videos by this point. So, let’s take a look at how you can make product videos that stand out from the crowd.

How to Create Product Videos

Making high-quality product videos will take a certain level of skill, but they’re typically much easier to make than other types of videos.

If you have the right setup, a lot of the variables that can ruin your video will be completely removed from the equation. Here’s a quick rundown of the equipment you’ll need to get started:

Plain white or black background

You don’t want anything to distract viewers from your product. Shooting your product in front of a plain background will make sure that their eyes stay on your product the whole time. White backgrounds are usually recommended because they look clean and professional. A black background can sometimes help certain products pop!

Soft lighting

Lighting is an absolute must for any video shoot, and product videos are no different. You want the viewer to see every perfect detail of your product, and good lighting goes a long way. You’ll probably need multiple lights to eliminate any shadows.

Using soft lighting will also help with this. Soft lighting will give your products a subtle glow. Harsh or hard lighting can produce more shadows and give a more dramatic appearance to your product. While this may work for some products, soft lighting is usually the way to go.

Electric rotating turntable

In order to capture all the angles of your product, you’ll need one of these automatic lazy susan devices.

These will slowly rotate your product, allowing you to capture smooth, professional shots of your product in motion.

These shots are an important component of product videos, so this is a tool that can’t be overlooked.

Our advice: try matching the color of your turntable with your background. This will help keep all the focus on your product.

Camera and tripod

You’ll need a camera to get started, but you don’t need to drop thousands on high-end gear. Anything that can shoot 1080p HD will do!

We also recommend using a tripod to make sure your shots are smooth and steady. Camera shake is good for action movies, but not for selling your product!

Once you film your product, everything else is in the edit.

Again, by using the right equipment when you film, you can eliminate many of the issues often associated with the editing process.

Here are our tips on editing the perfect product video:

Limit your video to 30 seconds

People lose interest quickly, so your video needs to be short and to the point. Even though it might not sound like much, 30 seconds is plenty of time to introduce your product, describe its features and give a call to action.

Include a voiceover and/or text

The visual appeal of your product video is important, but a voiceover can provide additional information to your viewer during the video. Use a voiceover or text to draw attention to unique product features as they are being shown in the video.

Include a CTA

A CTA, or call to action, is a quick line at the end of your video that tells the viewer to do something specific. Saying something like “order yours today” can make a sizeable impact on your conversion rates.

Use your brand logo

Product videos are a great opportunity to continue exposing a viewer to your brand and build brand recognition. Try adding your logo at the beginning or end of the video, or as a watermark throughout the whole thing.

Conclusion

Product videos are an essential tool for marketing eCommerce products and increasing conversions.

And, they’re surprisingly easy to produce compared to other styles of video. With their efficacy and accessibility, product videos are a great entry point for any business looking to get started with video content.

Have you been incorporating video into your eCommerce marketing strategy?

We’d love to hear your approach in the comments!

The post Product Video Marketing: The Secret to E-Commerce Conversions appeared first on The HOTH.