Having the right WordPress plugins on hand can do wonders for your business or online presence. WordPress offers a vast collection to choose from.

There are so many of them. However, finding those that get the best reviews and can do the most for you can be a challenge.

A plugin can give you additional functionality. It could otherwise be difficult or overly expensive to realize with your website by itself. A glance at the 10 top WordPress plugins described below can provide a powerful case in point.

Your website’s purpose or niche will usually dictate the types of essential WordPress plugins you would do well to invest in. The right ones can make your website a genuine powerhouse and, by extension, your business as well.

1. Amelia

Amelia is an excellent choice for beauty, healthcare, fitness, consulting, and businesses that might be saddled down with a manual or semi-manual booking system by saving them and their clients time while eliminating booking mistakes that often occur in those manual systems.

• Clients can book appointments online 24/7, change or cancel their appointments, and receive reminders of upcoming appointments and other notifications via SMS or email.
• Amelia enables business owners or department managers to track and manage employee schedules and time off.
• Amelia can manage bookings for appointments, book tickets for events, and manage group bookings, all at multiple locations. There are no limits on the number of appointments that can be managed.
• Booking forms can be customized to best serve a business’s needs and match its brand.

Amelia fully supports WooCommerce with PayPal, Stripe, Mollie, and RazorPay payments. Click on the banner to learn more about this time and money-saving plugin.

2. wpDataTables

wpDataTables is a premier WordPress table and chart building plugin that features virtually everything you are apt to need to build any table or chart you want.

Creating a table that is by any definition complex often requires tools that may not necessarily be easy to come by. wpDataTables uses four chart-building engines, one or more of which should suit you perfectly.

They are:

• Google Charts
• Highcharts
• Charts.js
• Apex Charts

For both table and chart building, wpDataTables can connect you to multiple database sources, including –

• MySQL
• MS SQL
• PostgreSQL

wpDataTables can process data that exists in the commonly used formats and features various sorting and filtering options that allow you to create a host of different table types.

Both tables and charts are editable and responsive and, thanks to the wpDataTables conditional formatting feature, can highlight and color-code critical information.

Click to learn more.

3. Site Kit by Google

While your website’s performance might exceed your wildest dreams, it is more likely that there are areas that need improvement before your wishes can be met. 

Determining those areas can be a challenge, but Site Kit offers a one-stop solution to deploy, manage, and get insights from critical Google tools to make your site a success by making those critical tools available to WordPress.

They provide:

• stats displayed on your WordPress dashboard from multiple Google tools
• quick Google tool setup without your having to edit your site’s source code  
• key metrics and insights for your entire site and individual posts, and
• easy-to-manage, granular permissions across WordPress and different Google products

Site Kit shows you how many people have found your site, how users navigate it, etc.

Click on the banner to learn more about what Site Kit could do for you.

4. Tablesome –  WordPress Table Plugin With Form Automation

Tablesome is a WordPress form database and form automation plugin that you can use to store entries from WordPress forms to a database. It can be integrated with popular forms – Contact Form 7 DB, WPForms entries, Forminator database, Elementor Form submissions, etc.

After saving, you can:

• Edit, auto-delete, and export entries to tools such as MailChimp, Google Sheets, Salesforce, etc.,
• Display WordPress form entries on frontend pages
• Automatically export contact data using the Mailchimp WordPress Integration

5. TheDock

TheDock eliminates the need to search for just the right WordPress theme by enabling you to create your own – which can be more fun anyway.

Among TheDock’s many features, a few key ones include –

• A comprehensive, option-rich Design System
• A responsive design system that ensures your site looks great on all screens.
• Designer, developer, and editing collaboration support. 
• Clean, readable code.

6. Slider Revolution

Beginners and mid-level designers can sometimes have difficulty finding ways to WOW their clients with professional-level visuals.

Slider Revolution changes all that by bridging the gap between what clients want and what you can provide with its –

• 200 designed-to-impress website and slider templates
• 25+ powerful addons and brand new WebGL slide animations
• ability to import dynamic content from WooCommerce and social media outlets.

7. LayerSlider

More than a simple slider-builder, LayerSlider is an animation and website-building tool you can use to improve any website’s look and feel through eye-catching animations, contemporary graphics, and interactive features.

This is made possible in part through the use of –

• 160+ website, slider, and popup templates
• LayerSlider’s modern and intuitive editing interface

Plus, you can count on professional one-on-one customer support.

8. Download Monitor

The Download Monitor plugin helps you sell your digital products by offering a ready solution for tracking file downloads, gating content to generate leads, build your audience, and ask users for personal information in exchange for valuable content.

Download Monitor lets you –

• add any type of file you need to your website
• link a page to all your channels and promote your social media networks
• place ads – and more.

9. Ads Pro – Multi-Purpose WordPress Ad Manager

The biggest ad manager for WordPress, Ads Pro gives you everything necessary to manage and sell ads.

Ads Pro’s admin panel makes managing ads straightforward for you and your users.

• Key ad features include 25+ ad templates and 20+ ad display options.
• CPC, CPM, CPD billing and PayPal, Stripe, and bank transfer payment methods are built-in.
• Geo-Targeting lets you show/hide ad spaces based on countries, provinces, cities, and Zip Codes.

10. Ultimate Membership Pro

If selling content is your objective, Ultimate Membership Pro is the tool you’ll want to take your website and convert it into a powerful content selling platform.

The Ultimate Membership Pro plugin enables you to –

• Create unlimited subscription levels, including free, trial, and paid member subscriptions
• Control customer access to content based on their subscriptions
• Send emails to welcome new members and send notifications and reminders to regular subscribers.

The WordPress plugin directory is already stuffed with almost 60,000 plugins. This guide has been published to narrow things down to 10 top WordPress plugins for your use.

We consulted with experts to create this list of excellent plugins for WordPress. It can help you with content strategy, SEO, site security, and even social media marketing.

Installing plugins and getting the functionality they provide can add immense value to your use of WordPress.

 

[- This is a sponsored post on behalf of BAW Media -]

Source

The post 10 Terrific WordPress Plugins You Should Be Using in 2022 first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

Creating a promotional video can seem complex, but it is not as challenging as you think. You can easily film, publish, and edit a video that becomes a valuable marketing tool, and you would require training or a large budget. You might hear the term promo video usually in the context of online commercial surroundings and upcoming events.

What is a promo video? How to film the perfect product promotion video for your business? What is the advantage of creating a promo video? How to best use such videos? Today, we’re going to answer everything in this article. So keep going through the article till the end to get all your doubts solved right away.

What is a Product Promotion Video?

Video used to promote a business product or service is called a product promotion video. This type of video is used to inspire, educate, and engage all types of customers, including existing or potential. Product promotional video is short videos that are primarily used to promote a product or inform the audience about the key advantages of a business product or service.

Call-to-action can also be included in the video that urges the targeted audience to take an essential step. This type of video content can be used for expressing the purpose of products, services, improving product sales, or any other. There are four different types of a promotional video that you can choose to create, these includes:

Introductory Video: For Authenticity

How-To Video: For Authority

Product Video: For Quality

Personal Video: For Personality

Benefits of Creation Product Promotion Video for Your Business

Searching the balance between the type of promotional videos might result in the difference between running a successful marketing strategy or one that leaves you shaking your head. Hence make sure to recognize what type of video can work for you in the most effective manner. Getting word-of-mouth about your business is crucial for your business growth and ROI.

Regardless, people need to know your brand exists, and this is where promotional videos come into existence. It helps to visually tell the success story of your business and product in a relatable and engaging way. The main purpose of a product promotion video is to promote a service, product, launch, or holiday sale, inspiring viewers to take action. Such video type is easily the most crucial type in which the business can invest. Let’s explore some of the crucial reasons that explain why you must film the product promotion video for your business.

Customers Prefer Video Compared to Text

Videos are one of the best and most effective ways to promote your product because it’s something that everyone is searching for, especially when they want to learn about a particular product or service. 

More than 72% of customers and around 59% of executives prefer learning about brands’ products by watching videos instead of reading the text. Videos can help display the products more contextually, efficiently, and engaging.

People can Retain Information Better from Videos

While promoting your product through video content, it becomes crucial for you to make sure that people are able to retain the information and message that you communicate to them, so they can search for it and also buy the same. With the right product promotion videos, viewers can retain around 95% of a message when they watch a video compared to 10% when reading a text.

Helps Humanize Your Business

When real people talk about the use of your business product in the promotional video, you can easily enable the audience to see a face that can be attached to the brand and its product as well. Displaying a strong element of humanization through product promotion can help customers to feel like they are buying and using products in their day-to-day lives.

Clearly Showcase Your Products

More than 97% of marketers believe that videos help users gain a clear understanding of the product. Product promo video gives businesses a chance to showcase the product and display all its features in the most effective manner. 

Even lots of images can’t show how well your product works which can easily be explained through a promotion video.

It makes it easier for you to provide a certain context to demonstrate how your product works and benefits customers. Looking at the product at work will definitely help you push your targeted audience to try the same.

When You Should Use Product Promotion Videos

Product promo videos are an excellent way to attract customers by creating awareness for your new products. If you are a startup and have launched a new product, having a product promotion video can help to introduce the brand by showing off your product.

These videos can work with your existing customers as well. You can draw them by reminding them how good your products are. It also helps create more reasons for your customers to believe in you.

What Do Your Product Promo Videos Need to Be Successful?

Now you might be knowing about why you need to film a product promo video. But do you know what your product promo videos need to be successful? Check the following points to know what can help you make a successful promo video.

1. Product promo videos need to be engaging and entertaining

2. Do focus on your product and how it can help individuals in their daily lives

3. Make sure to keep the videos short and sweet

4. Show your brand’s personality through promo videos

5. Include a call to action prompt in the video.

How to Create a Product Promo Video?

More than 51% of people agree that the main reason they use the internet is to stream; they use it to watch TV shows, movies, videos, and more. Your potential buyers are likely to watch videos online and might be exploring your competitor’s videos. Many businesses host different types of videos on the site and share them on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and many such.

Creating a video can help you expand your business reach to those who might not have heard about your brand before or meet your audience through the way they love the most. You can invest in a video streaming script that makes video management, upload, editing, and other work much easier and faster for you. But before all this, it becomes vital for you to learn to create promotional product videos for your brands. Explore the steps right here to know how to create engaging product promo videos.

Gear Up

You do not have to spend the kid’s inheritance making equipment to make an engaging promo video. All you need is:

• High-quality camera
• Tripod to ensure that shots are not shaky
• Editing equipment, including movie-making apps

Decide the Message

First of all, ensure to identify the main purpose of making a video and try to target the right audience before you start planning to create the video content. Know whether you are creating a video to improve the sales flow, introduce your product, or have any other purpose. Try to sum up the primary purpose of the promo video in a single sentence.

Create a Storyboard

This helps you ensure that you get the perfect shorts you need in as little time as possible. Without a storyboard, there is a certain chance that you miss shots that can be essential for a final edit, get distracted, and move off on tangents while filming.

Get permission

People often forget about the legal side of the video creating and promoting process. Before starting your journey, question yourself if you have completed all the legal processes. If not, then make sure to get all the necessary permission to avoid further issues.

Casting

It is a delicate process. You might be thinking that it’s an easy process, even when you want to film the CEO or other company members. You need to understand that everyone can’t act naturally in front of the camera; most people struggle to stiffen or look up. The primary purpose here is to ease whoever you are filming in the session.

Shoot and Edit

Now it’s time for the light, camera, and action—finally, film to make your vision come to life. Your storyboard and script should be as detailed as possible, ensure that specific visuals are filmed, and don’t get disappointed with the final result during the editing stage.

One important tip that you need to follow while editing your shot is to question the worth of each shot. Make sure to add more value to your footage and need to edit it out to make way for valuable content.

Ending Note

Product promo videos do not have to be blockbuster. No matter how big or small you want to film, you can choose to complete it within your budget. Nail the basics to ensure maximum engagement and effectiveness with your ideal audience. You can make your promo video work for you, not the other way better.

The post How to Film The Perfect Product Promotion Video for Your Business appeared first on noupe.

If your business is swamped with inquiries it would probably be a help to have a well-organized system of information accumulation, so that when the same queries come up repeatedly, situations can be dealt with in real-time. 

Even better if the user can find the solution to their issue themselves. Well, luckily, such a system exists. It’s called a Knowledge Management System.  

What Exactly Is a Knowledge Management System?

Data is becoming more highly valued. In fact, 85% of US companies are now increasing their focus on data. So, it makes sense to look at how best to structure this. 

In the most general sense, a Knowledge Management System is a way of storing and accessing the expertise and wisdom born from experience, so that the circulation of intelligence can flourish.  

These systems can find themselves in many guises and in a multitude of applications. It can be said, for instance, that every library on earth is a knowledge management system. As is a magnetic memo pad stuck on the side of the fridge.

Knowledge Management Systems can be broadly divided into internal and external. The former is intended to deliver benefit to the staff member needing answers to work-based queries like “how to record a phone conversation?” and requiring models of the business process. This can be very useful in employee training, for instance. The latter is focused on giving those outside the organization the information they need in a clear and reliable manner.

For the purposes of this article, we’ll concentrate primarily on the latter. We’ll cover the system used in client support, as this is an area of increasing interest to organizations wishing to improve customer care while saving money. 

Examples of a Knowledge Management System in Customer Support

Research shows that customers want more product information.

So, the aim of the game is to render the customer adequately informed. Here are a few ways Knowledge Management Systems can do this.  

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

An FAQ section is a feature that is used extremely widely. They can be said to be the very essence of a Knowledge Management System. As the name suggests, the question list therein is generated from the most common enquiries directed at the website or over a digital phone number over at a call center. The answers provided are gleaned from the expertise accumulated over time. 

This expertise is readily accessed by the enquirer, who is able to acquire satisfaction with little or no output in effort or time from any of your team. No wonder FAQs are such an internet mainstay. They’re a very significant way of improving the customer online experience, especially on sales channels.

Forums

These are a great way of harnessing user expertise and making it available for other users. A user’s perspective can unearth nuance that may have eluded the sales entity’s attention. It’s not so great though when overly critical material surfaces. This is of course the problem with accessing the voice of customer experience. For this reason, moderation is often required.

Tutorials

These can be very effective, especially for more complex processes. They do depend on a certain amount of commitment on the part of the user to see the job through to the end. Your organization can assist in the likelihood of success here by ensuring that the tutorial quality is sufficiently simple and compelling to result in fulfilment.

Case Studies

For detail and story value, a case study can be very useful. As long as the story of a company’s overcoming of a particular issue has relevance to the user reading it, it can provide the color and real-life aspect that is crucial in generating impact.

Reviews

Massively significant in terms of user value, reviews have a huge influence on sales. 

Beware negative reviews, though. Of special concern are bogus negative reviews posted by those with an interest in your commercial demise. This then is another area that will benefit from at least a little monitoring, with an eye to ensuring data integrity.

Knowledge Management System Benefits

New Customers Can be Attracted

Sales prospecting made easy. How? Customers exploring a new product or service will often wish to have a well-rounded portrait of what they’re looking at. For this purpose, the reviews, tutorials, and case studies found in your organization’s Knowledge Management System can be invaluable. 

More than this though, a customer wanting to see if your company has the agility and commitment to be able to respond effectively to customer concerns will find assurance in the presence of a good Knowledge Management System.   

A Happy Customer is a Retained Customer

More specifically, customers need to feel that a company cares about them.

When you can deliver this kind of benefit without committing expensive staff time you have a win.

Freeing Up

You and your staff can be liberated from more repetitive tasks such as dealing with the tenth instance of the same query that morning. If you can match this spare capacity with tasks requiring more creativity and spontaneity, you’ll probably have a happier and more fulfilled workforce.

Avoid Loss

When staff members leave, the expertise gap generated can be enormously damaging to a company’s collective competence. It could be that a departing member of staff knows all there is to know in many areas like knowing how to transfer phone calls to another phone or understanding what is HDFS file system. Some of this you will want to enshrine. 

Rather than having to gather this information once more, you can encapsulate it safely, thereby weathering the ups and downs of staff turnover more easily.

Creating a Knowledge Management System

The knowledge in your system is of two broad kinds; what are the questions people are asking? What are the answers to these questions?

User Questions

You’ll probably already have an excellent resource here. Your frontline staff will deal with user questions every day. Collate data from their accounts on what comes up most. 

Sensation bias (where the most eye-catching and colorful issues tend to be more readily recalled) can distort matters, so it’s good to pair this approach with a trawl through a section of your company’s support tickets. The information that will be available can be really helpful here.

Another tool you can use is ecommerce analytics: by studying what your site visitors are searching for, you can construct a good picture of customer interest. 

Finally, don’t forget to keep an eye on mentions your company may score on internet marketing software and social media. The frankness that characterizes social media will give you a great window into what users are currently feeling about your products and services.

Generating the Answers

Don’t assume you have all the best answers yourself. Your staff will have accumulated a wealth of information between them, so don’t be afraid to mine their expertise. Pair this with your own knowledge, plus product information from the manufacturers, and you will start to build a detailed information base.

It’s a wise move to go looking at other companies’ systems or check their affiliate marketing tools. You may find that some of the issues that you are seeking information on will already have been dealt with elsewhere. Just be sure to use the general information and not the exact wording. Commercial larceny makes for twitchy lawyers.

Making Answers Accessible

There is a dichotomy in Knowledge Management Systems thinking that can be characterized thus: storing knowledge vs sharing knowledge (or, on a similar note, codification vs personalization). Stored knowledge without any access facility is pretty much useless. 

Naturally, you’ll want to ensure security where necessary, but your fundamental goal is to enhance user learning. As previously mentioned, one of the advantages of a Knowledge Management System is being able to deliver this without a big staff spend. This is a key concern for businesses:

Which of the varieties of Knowledge Management System outlined earlier in this piece you decide to use depends on the size of your operation and your customer profile. Overall though, it’s a good idea to incorporate a blend of different approaches. Your priorities are threefold: make the information easy to find, readily understandable, and as definitive as you can manage. This is the way to bring about a better customer experience.

Making Your System Better

The importance of research into the user experience of knowledge bases is illustrated by how many times a pop-up will enquire about your satisfaction just as you leave the site. It’s best practice to combine this data with other approaches (such as time on page or bounce rate) in tandem.

The best way to make your system better is by regularly attending to its content to ensure that the information within is up to date and relevant. You also need to review pages to try to address parts that some users seem to have struggled with.

Finally, stay abreast of developments in technology so that your system can stay at the cutting edge of the game.

These are all ways you can be sure of improving data quality in your company.

Conclusion

By putting in place a decent Knowledge Management System, you can streamline activities for all concerned. Just don’t assume it’s a fire-and-forget solution.

Knowledge needs to be treated as a living entity to be of use to your company and your customers. It needs nurturing and feeding, it needs pruning and shaping: it needs regular attention from your wise hands.

The post The Ultimate Guide to Knowledge Management Systems appeared first on noupe.

According to Statista, there are more than 3.96 billion social media users around the globe. Why not make use of these users for your brand? If you use social media effectively, it will help you upscale your business. All you need is some time and consistent efforts to build your small business’s social media presence. 

Here are the top 7 reasons you should consider social media marketing for your small business? 

1. Building Brand Awareness 

A business can grow if it has built a strong brand around itself. With the help of social media, you can create a brand as it will enable you to tell your brand’s story to everyone around the world. Social media marketing is a golden opportunity to make your brand reach a wider audience. 

You don’t need anything fancy or expensive; start creating social media profiles on different platforms to get started. Post some quality content around your niche. It can either be an infographic post or a short video, images, etc. You need to understand different social media channels to be able to nail the game of social media marketing.

The content should be so engaging that people should stop scrolling and take their time to read or view it. Initially, ask your employees, friends, relatives, and people in your network to interact with the content that you are posting. All they have to do is share, like, and comment on your post. This will slowly get you started, and as more and more people begin to interact with your content, your brand awareness will likely go up.

2. Increased traffic to your website

If you have a website for your business, social media marketing will definitely help you increase the inbound traffic to your website. Sure, your target audience is using the exact keywords you are ranking for, but how do you plan to increase your customer base? 

Building a solid social media presence will help you reach out to various types of customers, helping you break the glass ceiling of your target audience. To put it in more simple words, it will help you grow your business to a wider variety of customers. 

Social media platforms will also enable you to share the content on your website, like blogs, articles, etc., with a broader set of people. The more people interact with your content, the more likely to increase the inbound traffic to your website.

3. Better Customer Satisfaction

One of the reasons why social media marketing is so effective it’s because businesses can personalize their brands. When a brand replies to comments and DMs and writes witty Instagram captions, these actions humanize the business. 

Customers will appreciate your efforts in acknowledging their comments. It will show how much you care about each customer. People always want to do business with other people rather than any business. Social media marketing is a great way to personify your business.  

Be it responding to a query, complaint, or a compliment, through social media; you can create a friendly and accessible path of communication for your customers, which results in better customer satisfaction.  

4. Increased Brand Loyalty and Brand Authority 

A brand will only become more authoritative when there is a high level of customer satisfaction and brand loyalty. When your brand has an interactive social media page or an account, people who follow you will likely start trusting your brand’s credibility. Satisfied customers will start talking about your brand to their family and friends, increasing their brand loyalty. 

People mentioning your brand on their social media will also advertise your brand to a new set of customers. It will bring new visitors to your page. Seeing your engagement with your followers will make a good impression on these new visitors. 

5. Building a niche community for your business 

If you use social media platforms correctly, they can help you build a community for your business. Building an online community will bring together other people who have the same interests as you do. If you lead and build a community, it will make you stand out. You would be known for your thought leadership in your niche community. 

For instance, if you have a business around SEO. You can create a Facebook group around it. Members of that group can mutually help each other. Facebook groups are just one example, and you can even use Reddit and Discord to build more niche communities. For building more B2B relationships, try using LinkedIn. 

The key is that everyone in the community should benefit and also, in return, add value to the overall community. Building a community on digital media will help you make more business partners across the world. If not anything, it will start a conversation around your brand. You will learn and interact with other people and business owners of your niche. It might even lead to some fruitful business collaborations. 

6. Cost-Effective

Social media marketing is possibly the most cost-effective marketing strategy. You can create free social media profiles on almost all social media platforms. But at the same time, you need to use your creativity, storytelling skills, and marketing skills to create an effective social media presence. 

You need to spend some time and make consistent efforts to build your social media. For instance, if you have an Instagram page, you can do polls, show them ‘behind-the-scenes’ of your business, and interact with your followers via polls; these activities are not monetized. You just have to be consistent and be as creative as you can, as these activities will help you increase the engagement rate and create a strong brand presence. 

Compared to any other form of marketing like print or television advertising, social media marketing seems to be cost-effective and beneficial for your brand in the long run. People will directly connect with your brand as social media allows the personalization of your brand.

7. Understanding and gaining marketplace insights

One of the main advantages of social media marketing is understanding and gaining insights about your customers. When customers comment, like, and share your posts, you can analyze their reactions. Customers can also sometimes write feedback in your comment sections and DMs. If you feel the feedback is valuable, you can incorporate it into your business strategy. 

Social media platforms allow you to communicate directly with customers. Take this opportunity to understand what a customer likes, what they dislike, etc. Once you have a good following on social media, you can use various social media tools to research and analyze the trends and demographics of your customers. 

You can even gain insights by going through your competitor’s social media accounts. Analyze what strategies they are following, how well people are reacting to their posts, and what kind of narrative they are trying to create around their brand. 

8. Increased Sales 

As discussed above, social media can help you boost brand awareness, credibility, and brand authority, resulting in increased sales. You can even set up an online store on social media platforms to sell your products. Instagram is the most favoured platform for small business owners to set up their online stores.

You can also collaborate with influencers and use their fan following to sell and advertise your products through social media. As the social media influencer has a loyal fan following and has attained certain credibility in a specific industry, you can use their followers for marketing your products. This is also called affiliate marketing. 

Conclusion

Social media is an integral part of everyone’s lives. People worldwide are buying products and services by scrolling their social media feeds. Small businesses should give social media marketing. It is not only cost-effective, but it also lets you create a strong brand around your business. It will help you to communicate better with your customers. 

You just have to be creative, give some time and make consistent efforts to build good social media for your brand.

The post Top 8 Reasons Why Social Media Marketing has Become so Important to Small Businesses appeared first on noupe.

Did you know that 80% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase when brands offer personalized experiences (HubSpot)? This means personalization in marketing is becoming more important than ever before, and it can help business owners increase their sales, grow their customer base, and more.

In this article, we’re going to outline some different ways you can incorporate more personalization into your marketing so you can reap these rewards, too. Let’s get started.

Use SMS marketing to send personalized discounts and product recommendations

Most consumers are used to receiving text messages from people close to them — this means that SMS marketing offers a great way to build stronger connections with your customers! This form of marketing involves sending sales notifications, deals, and more to your customers via short and snappy text messages. With people on their phones so often, it’s very likely people will open and engage with them — in fact, SMS marketing messages have an open rate of 99% (RedEye).

To personalize your SMS marketing campaigns, when collecting your customers’ contact details, you could provide them with the opportunity to opt into receiving certain types of messages based on their needs and interests. For instance, you could allow people to only receive notifications about sales, only get information about new products, or both! This is a great form of personalized marketing that will help ensure you’re only sending the right messages to the right people. You could also send birthday discounts or recommend products based on a customers’ past shopping behavior, which will help you further personalize their experience.

If you need help with your text marketing, consider using the services offered by Emotive. Their SMS marketing software is automated and allows for two-way responses, meaning you can communicate with your customers without having to give your team a lot more work. Additionally, the company promises a 5x return on your investment, so you don’t have anything to lose.

Supercharge your content marketing with personalization 

Content marketing should be a huge part of running your online business. It’s the process of publishing articles on a blog or knowledge base in order to educate your website visitors and build trust with them. This is ultimately a strategy that can make more sales!

Personalization can also help you supercharge your content marketing efforts. One easy strategy to implement is to add recommended articles and content to the end of each blog post. This will let you send more relevant content to people who are likely to be interested in it, personalizing their experience of reading your blog.

You can also show different types of content to different types of people. For instance, if someone is new to your website, you could send them a piece of content aimed at people new to your industry. This will help educate new customers and ensure they feel understood by your business, increasing their chances of shopping with you.

Tailor your paid advertising with retargeting

Retargeting is a paid advertising strategy that lets you catch the eye of people who have visited your website before. You can ensure they will be shown ads for your services or products on a platform like Google or Facebook, and you can show them items they’ve previously shown interest in, allowing you to personalize their browsing experience. Retargeting helps to keep your business top of mind for your prospective customers, which will encourage them to shop with you down the road. 

Whether you’re advertising on Instagram, the Google search results, or on another platform, you should have the option to set up a retargeting campaign. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn all have internal programs that can do most of the legwork for you. Additionally, here are a list of third-party options where you can launch retargeting campaigns:

• SharpSpring Ads: Lets you create retargeting ads and display them on websites, newsfeeds, and social platforms
• AdRoll: Shows retargeting ads to your prospective customers on websites they frequent
• Criterio: Uses data to place ads on channels where retargeting ads have been successful in the past

When setting up your own retargeting campaign, take a look at all of the options available to you and see how you want yours to be implemented.

Use customer behavior to personalize your email marketing 

Consumers are typically used to receiving and benefiting from email marketing, so this is a great channel to use. That being said, most people receive dozens of marketing emails per day, which means you’ll need to do something slightly different, and personalization offers a great way to stand out in a customer’s inbox and ensure your messages are opened. Furthermore, personalization can help your emails to avoid spam and promotions filters, thus improving your overall email deliverability rate. For more information on email deliverability, check out this resource from ActiveCampaign.

One way you can personalize your emails is to put the recipient’s name in the subject line or body of the email. Similar to how you set up your SMS marketing, you can also segment your email list in order to ensure that certain people are only receiving the emails they want from you. You can set up your email marketing in segments, allowing people to only subscribe to sales notifications, new blog content announcements, or product launch notifications, for instance.

You can also personalize your emails based on a customer’s past behavior with your business. For instance, if they leave something in their cart, you could send them a reminder email, perhaps with a small discount to push them closer to a purchase. Or, you could shoot them some post-purchase product recommendations, suggesting different products that complement the items they bought.

Chat with website visitors in real-time 

When people land on your website, they might have questions or concerns about the products or services that you offer. You can help personalize their experience and address their questions by chatting with them in real-time if they would like some support. 

One great way to do this is with a live chat option that pops up for website visitors. You can set up a live chatbot that answers basic questions about your business or products. If the query is more complex, you can give people the option to connect to a live agent. 

Pherrus Financial, a tax consulting firm, does a great job of providing a helpful live chat service on their website. As you can see in the image above, they have a chatbot that appears for all website visitors. If they’re not interested, a user can easily click away. If they do need some questions answered, however, they can provide some information about their situation and then be contacted by the firm. 

This is a great way for Pherrus Financial to personalize their website experience for the user. Different people who visit the website will have different needs and, by letting a user quickly and easily tell the live chat service what they need help with, Pherrus Financial can help encourage more people to become clients.

Consider offering a live chat on your website. Even if you don’t allow an option to connect to a live agent, a service like this can help make your website visitor’s experience easier and much more tailored to their individual needs.

Summary

Personalization is power — in this article, we outlined how you can incorporate more personalization into your marketing to increase your email deliverability, draw more people to your website, and ultimately secure more sales!

With our tips in mind, think about how personalization can help to improve your business, then get started!

The post 5 effective ways to incorporate more personalization into your marketing appeared first on noupe.

From ensuring that you hire the right people and are retaining employees, to onboarding long-term clients that will allow your business to grow, there’s no doubt that scaling any agency comes with its challenges. Once you reach a certain level in your agency, serving and managing multiple clients and their websites, things can get even more demanding. 

As a creative agency owner who has over 25 years of experience, I can sincerely say that scaling an agency while managing 2000 websites is no easy feat, but with the right know-how and tools, it is possible. 

Simplify the most important processes

When you’re managing a myriad of different elements, simplifying all areas of how your agency operates is essential. To achieve this, agencies must first begin by assessing which critical tasks are taking up the most time or require the most input from the large majority of their teams. Essentially, business owners need to strategically lower the impact that the most burdensome and important work has on the operations team. 

An agency specializing in designing websites, such as my own, will most likely realize that they need to understand their team’s strengths and design logistics to optimize the business. In my own business, we came to understand that we needed a software solution that would simplify and facilitate our agency’s ability to easily produce professional websites at a faster rate for our clients. Our thinking at the time was that if we reduced the effort and time it took to fulfill our most critical task, we could free up time and resources to onboard new clients and ultimately grow our business. 

Utilizing a low-code/no-code website building solution such as Duda helped us and will help growing agencies simplify the production and the workflow of their development, creative, and management teams. As a result, an agency’s core employees can rapidly create and finalize 10-page websites – which would normally take 20 hours to develop – within three to four hours. With up to 17 additional hours freed up, per website build, agencies that are just starting out can rapidly grow their business. More established agencies that manage many accounts will also benefit greatly from having additional hours to spare, as they can utilize these hours to manage even more clients and deliver even more products and services. For example, my agency only has one person in charge of maintaining 2,000 sites, because the website builder we use, Duda,  allows us to easily take care of updates and ensure modern websites that are constantly upgraded to the latest best practices.

Deliver a product that’s easy to use and unmatched in quality

The quality of the final product delivered to a client will greatly affect whether an agency will receive repeat business and word-of-mouth referrals. While spending money on marketing to bring in new clients is a great strategy in the short term, giving existing customers an incredible user experience and product will ensure that clients become free brand ambassadors, referring people to your business and plugging your service on social media.

Agencies that are managing a significant number of clients and want to drive high volumes of growth must utilize the most effective product support solutions to give their customers the best treatment. Pivoting to superior software, sooner, will help agencies deliver high-quality products and services. With a plethora of software solutions on the market, agencies must set aside time to investigate and test new software. Finding a solution that enhances the quality of the final product and makes the product easy to use might take time, but agencies should see this time as a necessary investment that will have good returns. 

Nurture revenue-building relationships with excellent support

Every relationship has the potential to be the key to an agency’s next big deal and growth. I’ll refer to my own agency as an example. In 2010, we started out with only eight clients. By keeping our clients happy, and with no sales or business development team, we grew to over 1,300 clients and counting. Clients who are well taken care of will reward you, and those who feel that your agency is not meeting their needs will warn their networks about your service. 

A major factor in maintaining a good relationship is the quality of support and communication they receive. When there is a request for their website to be updated, how long will it take for your agency to respond? If an average of a hundred service requests are received each week, can all requests be answered within two to three hours? Does your agency have a post-launch communication plan? These are the questions that agency owners need to ask themselves in order to assess the quality of their support. Agencies should never underestimate the power of calling clients regularly, solving their problems expeditiously, and sharing helpful information and insights without being prompted. 

Good service almost always leads to gaining a client’s trust. Once an agency has earned the trust of its clients, it is in a better position to offer additional services and will likely see clients remaining customers for a long time. While some may argue that retaining customers for a long period of time is insignificant, the reality, according to a survey conducted by conversion rate optimization experts Invesp, is that acquiring a new customer is five times more expensive than keeping an existing one. Mistreating or ignoring existing clients won’t get agencies any closer to actualizing their goal of scaling their business. 

A very important caveat is that not all clients are worth keeping. Most agencies will at some point encounter a client who cannot be satisfied, no matter what you do. To illustrate how we deal with high-stress clients in my own business, I’ll refer to a quarterly Board of Directors meeting which took in 2018. At the meeting, one of the Board members asked what our client turnover rate was, and I proudly replied: “less than one percent.” To my surprise, the entire Board was adamant that the client churn rate should be higher, as keeping difficult clients was bound to hinder the agency’s continuous growth. Today, we are able to identify which clients are worth keeping and which aren’t – a skill that all growing agencies should adopt. While we have only had to let go of about 10 to 15 clients, the shift in thinking resulted in increased productivity and, more importantly, a much better atmosphere in the workplace. No client is worth keeping if they bring unhappiness and unnecessary stress to an agency’s employees.

Quality begets quantity

Growing an agency while managing thousands of clients, while extremely challenging, is possible. Agencies that want to grow must simplify processes, deliver a high-quality service, and excel at customer support to effectively and seamlessly scale. When an agency specializes in a specific product offering, it’s critical to streamline the process of how the product is built. Quality will result in quantity: the higher the quality of the final product, the more revenue an agency will see. Furthermore, and most importantly, offering memorable and outstanding customer service will guarantee that clients spread the word and drive significant business growth.

The post How to scale an agency while managing 2,000 client websites appeared first on noupe.

Ahmad Shadeed — doing what he always does so well — provides an early look at the object-view-box property, something he describes as a native way to crop an image in the browser with CSS.

The use case? Well, Ahmad wastes no time showing how to use the property to accomplish what used to require either (1) a wrapping element with hidden overflow around an image that’s sized and positioned inside that element or (2) the background-image route.

But with object-view-box we can essentially draw the image boundaries as we can with an SVG’s viewbox. So, take a plain ol’ and call on object-view-box to trim the edges using an inset function. I’ll simply drop Ahmad’s pen in here:

Only supported in Chrome Canary for now, I’m afraid. But it’s (currently) planned to release in Chrome 104. Elsewhere:

• It’s in the CSS Images Level 4 specification (Editor’s Draft).
• Firefox says the property is worth prototyping.
• No signal yet from Safari.

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First Look At The CSS object-view-box Property originally published on CSS-Tricks. You should get the newsletter.

This month’s collection of the best new sites is a mixed bag. Positivity remains from last month’s edition, and what we’re seeing is designers being far more ambitious for the experiences they create.

We have a couple of sites helping to alleviate the damage of war, some unusual approaches to topics that are normally very dour, and some excellent portfolios to be jealous of. Enjoy!

Sarah Fatmi

Characterful illustration and desktop sideways scrolling make this portfolio site for illustrator Sarah Fatmi stand out.

Vestiaire Impact Report

Green is the new black, and fashion resale platform Vestiaire presents its green credentials in an informative and engaging way.

Houseplant

Houseplant is a collection of cannabis-related products designed by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg; this site is a lot classier than the average headshop.

FreshCut BarberShop

The site for FreshCut BarberShop is modern, bold, and gets its message across clearly, even if the user doesn’t read French.

Feed The 300

Feed the 300 is an appeal in aid of the animals in Ukraine’s zoos. It is very simple in concept and design, but endearing animated line drawings give it character.

Honeymoon Chicken

Luscious photography combined with surprisingly delicate illustrations makes Honeymoon Chicken very inviting.

Patachou Inc

Patachou Inc operates a group of eateries and the site does a good job of conveying both the very different individual brand identities of each establishment, and the common ethic behind all of them.

Living With OCD

Many design studios do showcase projects, and Living With OCD by designedbyla is one of the more publicly beneficial, and well-executed, examples around.

Aro

Aro is a product with a very simple concept — basically, a box to put away a phone, that also charges it — but this website does a great job of increasing the product’s desirability.

Kim Kniepp

The navigation on this site for Kim Kniepp’s design studio feels very interconnected, an effect heightened by the overlapping masonry grid.

Triniti

There is a calming, reassuring quality to the color used here for Pan-Baltic law firm Triniti. The perpetual motion style hero video adds a confident, soothing touch too.

Herezie

Creative agency Herezie uses saturation and gradual color changes to pleasing effect in this confident, assured website.

MetalColor

The color choices in this site for MetalColor, and how they are used, succeed in evoking what results the company could achieve without focusing on the less glamorous parts of the process.

Gras

Architecture and design studio Gras goes for a clean feel with an irregular grid layout and carefully curated images. The blog sidebar works well too.

Vendredi Society

Dark green and bright yellow make a strong statement in this portfolio site for brand strategists Vendredi Society.

HUB

HUB describes itself as a progressive property developer and this site does a great job of leaving behind the corporate image usually associated with property developers.

Nowhere Bakery

Nowhere Bakery makes vegan, paleo, gluten-free cookies, which don’t sound all that appealing on paper. This site manages to make them seem both really tasty and healthy.

Apotheke zur Triumphpforte

The botanical illustration style images on Apotheke zur Triumphpforte’s site help create an approachable brand identity while adding visual interest.

B!POD

A good balance of images, animation, and illustration combine to create an impactful presence for B!pod’s first product, a food vacuum storage system.

The New Exhibition

The New Exhibition is a showcase platform for Ukrainian creatives — type designers, illustrators, graphic designers, photographers, and others — whose ability to get work has been affected by war.

Source

The post 20 Best New Sites, June 2022 first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

Every day design fans submit incredible industry stories to our sister-site, Webdesigner News. Our colleagues sift through it, selecting the very best stories from the design, UX, tech, and development worlds and posting them live on the site.
The best way to keep up with the most important stories for web professionals is to subscribe to Webdesigner News or check out the site regularly. However, in case you missed a day this week, here’s a handy compilation of the top curated stories from the last seven days. Enjoy!”

Exciting New Tools for Designers, May 2022

HTMLrev – 50 Beautiful HTML Landing Page Templates Library

Cool Hover Effects that Use CSS Text Shadow

Designers’ Pick: Top Color Trends for 2022

:Where() :Is() :Has()? New CSS Selectors that Make your Life Easier

The Era of Rebellious Web Design is Here

Bootstrap 5.2.0 Beta

OptimizeImages Free Bulk Image Optimizer

2022 Craft Beer Branding and Package Design Trends

3D Avatar Library – Hundreds of 3D Avatars for your Designs

Shrink.media – Shrink the Size of your Images for Free

The WHY of Accessibility

Source

The post Popular Design News of the Week: May 16, 2022 – May 22, 2022 first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

Zeldman:

You may not know his name, but he played a huge part in creating the web you take for granted today. And he’s back—kind of.

That would be Glenn Davis and the Verevolf site Zeldman’s talking about. The site is a growing archive of Davis’s personal (and unvarnished) recollections pioneering the early web, like the one where he recounts the origin story of his uber-famous Cool Site of the Day.

Or the how an email he wrote out of frustration snowballed into the Web Standards Project.

Personal retellings of history can be fraught with emotion and Davis’s posts are no exception. What’s super cool is how his experiences augment other retellings, including Chapter 7 of our own Web History series where Jay Hoffman documents the evolution of web standards.

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Verevolf originally published on CSS-Tricks. You should get the newsletter.