Author: Bob Fladung

Don’t Be Offended By Opt-Outs

Posted by Bob Fladung

It’s easy to get disappointed when you notice a jump in your monthly unsubscribe numbers. Why would people, who once asked to receive your content, ask you to stop sending emails to them? You might be compelled to ask them, “why don’t you love me anymore?”

Of course, if you receive a large volume of unsubscribes in short time frame, you will want to dissect your email marketing strategy. Are you sending emails too often? Is the content you are sending of real value to the people in your database? Did you send out an email in a tone that is uncharacteristic of your company’s voice?

If you are guilty of one of the items above, fix it. But if you’re not, try not to take these unsubscribes too personally.

The number of emails that a customer, or a potential customer, receives presents a challenge in and of itself. A 2014 study by The Radicati Group, a California-based technology research firm, found that the average business user sends and receives an average of 120 emails per day. This is expected to grow to 140 emails a day by 2018*.

With that quantity of emails hitting someone’s inbox, people have a lot of messages to sift through and most days, your email just won’t make the cut. You might catch the user on a bad day where they feel bombarded by content and unsubscribe from many sending sources at once.

It is also possible that given someone’s life changes, your marketing message may no longer be relevant to them. 91% of people have unsubscribed from company emails they previously opted into**. People change their mind, people move on, and your database and blast numbers will reflect this natural cycle.

I recently stumbled upon an interesting article by Julie Knudson that shared tips on reducing opt-outs. Although the tips were simple, they propose solutions for the challenges of volume, relevancy, and engagement.

Through our marketing and lead-generation solutions, we can help you build your email lists, but it’s up to you to keep those subscribers. Although you may be able to use some techniques to reduce opt-outs, don’t be offended by natural attrition. It can and will happen, so keep calm and market on!

Best,


Bob Fladung
Director of Advertising
INO.com, Inc.

 

*http://www.radicati.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Email-Statistics-Report-2014-2018-Executive-Summary.pdf
** http://www.business2community.com/social-media/104-fascinating-social-media-marketing-statistics-2014-2015-01084935

Is your site mobile-ready?

Posted by Bob Fladung

One of the most wonderful and frustrating things about Google is that their search algorithms are always changing. They give kudos to sites that are ever-adapting to fit web trends, and they penalize sites that follow outdated practices.

Depending on your tech resources, you may applaud this system or you may curse it under your breath.

Google releases many updates every year. It may feel like you need dedicated manpower to simply follow and optimize for these updates.

In May of 2016, Google released the Mobile-Friendly 2 update. This adds ranking boosts to sites that are optimized for mobile when a user is searching on a mobile. Of course, this makes sense – why not show users the results of sites that are optimized for a device that they are currently on?

Smart Insights found in a study that mobile digital media time in the US is now significantly higher at 51% compared to desktop (42%). Given that mobile plays such a strong role in informational and transactional communication, it is important that sites are easy to read and navigate on mobile devices.

So with this new update, many sites have some homework. Do you?

Besides web-developer updates from Google, here is another resource to keep up with Google’s ceaseless updates.

Happy marketing,


Bob Fladung
Director of Advertising
INO.com, Inc.

Resources

2024 Mobile marketing statistics compilation

Where do you stand?

Posted by Bob Fladung

It is easy to get into the habit of judging your marketing campaigns based on your previous successes or failures. But, are you holding yourself to unrealistic goals? Are you not setting your bar high enough? It can be difficult to determine your effectiveness when just looking at inward efforts.

In the grand scheme of things when looking at your industry, what does your company’s open rate and CTR look like next to your competitors?

I wanted to share this great email marketing benchmark guide created by MailChimp.

This guide, updated 3/1/16, found that for the financial industry:

Average Open Rate – 21.49%
Average CTR – 2.77%
Average Soft Bounce – 0.72%

Although this guide is not the end all, be all, it is a resource you can use to take a big picture look and see how you measure up!

Have a wonderful week,


Bob Fladung
Director of Advertising
INO.com, Inc.

 

 

Something new, authentic and interesting is the only way to get people’s attention.

Posted by Bob Fladung

Founder and Chief Creative Officer, Arthur Ceria, of CreativeFeed said, “Risk – calculated risk – is key to success online. There’s no need for complicated metrics to prove this point. Logic tells us that with so much content clamoring for attention, offering something new, authentic and genuinely interesting is the only way to get people to pay attention.”

Is your offer new, authentic and truly interesting? You can have the best ad placement in the world, but unless your offer is truly meeting the needs of your audience, it doesn’t matter. The best campaigns that I have seen meet both the emotional and financial needs of our audience. They don’t come around too often, but when they do they knock it out of the park.

I’d love to work with you and see your new, genuine offer. I know that we can exceed your every expectation if you let us take your compelling campaign to our active and engaged audience.

Best,


Bob Fladung
Director of Advertising
INO.com, Inc.

 

 

Happy Customer Service Appreciation Week

Posted by Bob Fladung

I wanted to extend a genuine thank you to the Customer Service Team here at INO.com. Although they don’t work directly with my advertising clients, they are the ones in the trenches supporting our MarketClub Members.

Since today is Customer Service Appreciation Week, I thought they were very deserving of a big shout out! I know your job is not easy. I know that customers aren’t always pleasant and you do your best to help them with a smile. I know that responding to hundreds of emails and calls a day can be a bit overwhelming, but you do a great job.

A company can not be successful and efficiently operate without the hard work of each department. The Customer Service Team is a valuable resource here at INO.com.

Our job functions may not cross paths often, but I am grateful for the job you do! Happy Customer Service Appreciation Week.

If your company has a Customer Service Team, give them an extra pat on the back today.

Best,


Bob Fladung
Director of Advertising
INO.com, Inc.

New Ad Placement – Blog Alert Sponsorship

Posted by Bob Fladung

Ad Blog Placement 400We have received some great initial feedback for a relatively new ad placement. Our Blog Alert Sponsorship is a text-based slot prominently displayed in each of our Blog Alert emails. The alerts go out to approximately 66K traders who have requested an email every time we publish a blog post by INO.com founder, Adam Hewison, or any of our other distinguished traders and contributors.

As multiple alerts could be sent in a single day, this placement is priced on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis.

Specs:

Headline:     Max 60 characters with hyperlink
Body:            Max 360 characters
Link Line:    Max. 60 characters with hyperlink

Do you think this placement would be good fit for your offer? I’d love to talk with you about this position and discuss how we can help boost traffic and add volume to your lead-gen or sales campaigns.

Best,



Bob Fladung
Director of Advertising
INO.com, Inc.

When Financial & Mobile Marketing Collide

Posted by Bob Fladung

I wanted to share this great article that I found on The Financial Brand regarding millennials, mobile, and financial marketing.

With more than half of consumers’ time spent on mobile devices, it is imperative that financial companies are not only improving their mobile presence but also capitalizing on mobile ad opportunities.

Millennials, Mobile Channels & The Future of Financial Marketing – Read Me

This short, but interesting article, explores millennials’ use of their mobile device in relation to their interaction with financial services.

Can you believe that 92% of millennials (those born between 1981 to 1997) own smartphones and 43% own tablets? The way connectivity has changed in the last decade is astonishing, but we must change as technology changes!

When you prepare your mobile ads, it is also important to abide by the mobile phone creative guidelines set forth by the IAB. When your ads comply with the guidelines it will enhance user experience, load time, and should improve consumer response.

You can find a helpful mobile phone creative guideline cheat sheet here.

I’d love to hear how you are profiting from the mobile revolution. Please comment on this post or reach out to me via our contact page.

Best,


Bob Fladung
Director of Advertising
INO.com, Inc.

 

How to Market Financial Services to Millenials

Posted by Bob Fladung

Back in May, I read this great article about how to market financial services to millennials. Written by Jeff Fromm and Jason Parks, executive VPs at Barkley, this article suggests that the secret to marketing to this segment is the consideration of how exactly they grew up.

Fromm and Parks make a fantastic point. Out of the 80 million millennials in the U.S., half of the millennials have children and each day 10,000 millennial moms over the age of 25 give birth. Parenthood changes a person’s priorities. If you’re a parent, you know how true this is. While financial planning, estate planning, and insurance may not have been a hot topic for this “irresponsible” generation before, it sure will become an important subject as they plan and provide for their offspring.

Millennials are at a wealth disadvantage — they are making less money than their parents were at the same age. Although millennials have education, they also have debt as a result of that education. Fromm and Parks explained that although brand loyalty was high for millennials pre-kids, once they become parents, brand loyalty dramatically shifted to value brands like Dollar General and Wal-Mart. Given past events (dot-com bust, September 11th, housing crisis, Iraq and Afghanistan wars), millennials are “more likely than other generations to believe that working hard and saving/living frugally are the ways to achieve success.”

Fromm and Parks say that to win with Millennials in the marketing of financial services, companies must…

1. Embrace disruptive schemas that align to millennial values.

2. Create tools that simplify millennials’ life and financial planning needs.

3. Act in a more authentic and transparent way.

4. Curate content that helps millennials make more informed decisions.

5. Engage millennials as your brand partner by allowing them to co-create new products, customer delivery channels, and more.

Marketing financial services is not an easy thing, but marketing to millennials is even more challenging.

As marketing teams consider the millennials’ life experiences, they will be able to create more compelling campaigns and more valuable products.

Best,


Bob Fladung
Director of Advertising
INO.com, Inc.

5 Ways To Get Free (Or Nearly Free!) Financial Leads

Posted by Bob Fladung

One of the best ways to generate high-quality leads is to use a service like INO.com’s Standard Lead Generation program. Through this technology, we match your offer with select segments of our active trading audience. You can obtain a high volume of leads without sacrificing quality.

Although this is a cost-effective and efficient way to generate a high volume of leads for your financial product or service, you can also supplement your lead generation volume through campaigns that require relatively low manpower and cost.

5 ways to generate free (or nearly free!) leads…

1 – Good, Sharable Content

Does your content just beg to be shared? Having unique and interesting content can go a long way. What about publishing a review of online discount brokers, or maybe a free ebook with a new strategy to trade a specific stock sector?

If you produce something of value and encourage sharing, you could get your brand in front of a large volume of prospective customers.

An article by Web Marketing Today lists 7 tips to get people to share your content.

• Make it easy for people to share your content
• Ask people to share your content
• Use images
• Create “round-ups” as blog posts or other content
• Write listicles
• Write strong headlines
• Write long-form content

2 – Social Media

Social media is a very powerful tool that can help your lead generation and sales efforts.

Although marketers recognize the power of this medium, some argue that it is not always quantifiable.

While this has been true in the past, major platform players like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram have provided application updates that display, track and measure lead generation campaigns.

3 – Partnerships

Another great way to reach a new audience and generate new leads is through the establishment of a partnership and in turn, the establishment of a new relationship with their audience. Through this partnership, content sharing, email marketing swaps, and referrals can be executed with a mutual benefit as the focal point.

This strategy expands your reach, yet still keeps your target market tight!

4 – SEO

You will win big if people can find you on the web. Search engine optimization (SEO) can help people find you and your lead generation programs.

If you’re offering good content, content that people are interested in and actively searching for, then they will be delighted to enter into your lead funnel — that is if they can find you.

Read – 6 Ways to Improve Your Website’s SEO Right Now

• Get to know your customers
• Research and identify keywords
• Put your customer first
• Use links strategically
• Post new content frequently
• Give it time

5 – Be Generous!

With the right searching, you can find just about anything as free content. You need to beat i. You need to give visitors that little bit more to draw them in. Once they are in, you need to be generous with your time and interaction. You only have a small window of time to foster a deep relationship that could lead to a sale. Therefore, under promise and over deliver. By being generous with your interaction and content, you will beat your competitors and not only collect leads but monetize them. 

Generating high-quality leads can be as easy as a simple phone call with me, but there is no reason you can’t take your content and rework it to create a great low-cost, low-effort lead generation campaign. Keep in mind that there is a ton of free content out there, but truly determine what your potential customers really need and then match them up with the services you provide that can help fulfill that need.

Be generous in your offering and remember that your customer’s time is valuable. Then, through SEO, social media, and partnership campaigns, you can reach a valuable audience who will find you valuable as well.

Best,


Bob Fladung
Director of Advertising
INO.com, Inc.

My 5 Favorite SEO Blogs for 2015

Posted by Bob Fladung

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is always changing. When I say always, I mean always! By the time you think you have it figured out, the big search engines drop another algorithm update and you’re back to the drawing board. So, how do you keep up?

SEO blogs are one of my favorite resources when it comes to keeping up with the search engines and their constant overhauls. These awesome blogs are written by some of the most well-respected SEO experts. It’s their job to know everything about rankings and they will often give you great insight into this sometimes complicated and intimidating science.

Here are my 5 favorite SEO blogs:

The Google Blog – You’re getting info right from the search engine giant themselves. This blog is more than SEO news. The blog covers their new products, hiring info, and general communications for the company. Don’t expect this blog to give you any down and dirty tips, but it can give you a heads up on major changes which may impact your rankings.

Moz – This major SEO consulting company has been in the biz since 2004. They provide awesome resources for SEO beginners and will cover popular marketing topics like content and analytics.

Search Engine Watch – You can find two or more fantastic articles on Search Engine Watch every day. These articles cover paid and organic search, structuring campaigns, new platform features, and more. They have a great search feature that allows you to quickly filter all of their articles based on subject type.

Daily SEO Blog – Contributors specializing in social media, inbound marketing, content marketing, and SEO come together to create this blog which is heavy in listicles and easy-to-absorb infographics. Posts are also well-labeled to allow readers to narrow down to specific specialty topics.

Search Engine Guide – I have enjoyed this blog for some time, as it is simply structured and easy to navigate. Posts have been sparse in May of 2015, but overall are consistent and cover a wide array of paid and organic search issues.

For me, these blogs are a great resource for daily research. I don’t have to be in the dark with all of these incredible experts sharing their knowledge!

I hope you’ll find them just as useful.

Enjoy,


Bob Fladung
Director of Advertising
INO.com, Inc.