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In the fast-paced world of modern digital business, a lack of coordination among a company's departments can result in inefficiencies, duplicate efforts, and missed opportunities. A combination like this can have a negative impact on the company's key business metrics, customer satisfaction, and harm its position in a highly competitive market. This is why departmental alignment and connectivity are critical for business success today. It is possible to achieve alignment through the clever use of CRM and marketing integration tools, as well as a data-driven approach, resulting in significantly streamlined processes, automation of routine tasks, and increased efficiency. In this article, I'll go over tools, techniques, and approaches for improving department interoperability, as well as share my experience connecting departments at a European big data startup. Tools and Technologies Streamlining your business operations by increasing departmental coordination necessitates the development of a unified system that will collect all work data in one location, bring transparency to daily operations, and automate some of the routine tasks to focus resources on development efforts. The following tools can assist in meeting these lofty objectives: CRM Software Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software can become a critical component of the company's coordination efforts. It is more than just software; it is an all-encompassing platform designed to centralize, streamline, and manage all interactions between a company and its customers. It compiles all customer data into a comprehensive but easily accessible database, allowing for the tracking of customer interactions, the provision of customer support, the execution of marketing campaigns, and the management of leads. CRM, in essence, becomes a solution that provides a 360-degree view of each customer relationship. With access to this solution, various departments, such as sales, marketing, and customer service, gain a unified view of the company's goals and begin to build interdepartmental interactions in order to achieve common goals. In addition, modern CRM systems include advanced features such as automation, artificial intelligence (AI), and integrations with other software tools. They can assist with a variety of tasks, from automatically sending follow-up emails to lead nurturing and scoring. These days, CRM systems like Salesforce, HubSpot, Zoho, and Microsoft Dynamics 365 are among the most popular. Salesforce is a market leader, offering an advanced automation tool called Process Builder, which allows for custom workflows and triggers. HubSpot CRM is a leader in inbound marketing automation, with features such as automated email sequences and lead nurturing campaigns. Zoho CRM's workflow and sequence automation features, as well as its Blueprint function, which maps out entire sales processes, provide multifaceted automation. Microsoft Dynamics 365 seamlessly integrates with other Microsoft products and provides rule-based workflow automation. A well-implemented CRM software can help synchronize the initiatives of sales, marketing, and customer service by providing a single, centralized hub for customer data and interactions. This not only improves efficiency but also allows for more personalized and targeted customer interactions. Marketing Automation Software Another crucial component in building a unified technological environment for shared use is marketing automation software. This multifaceted technology platform is designed to help marketers by leveraging various channels such as email, social media, and websites automatically. Features like lead scoring and nurturing, customer segmentation, analytics and reporting, social media management, and landing page creation are frequently included in this kind of software. Utilizing these features, this software manages multiple marketing functions and channels cohesively through a single interface to streamline the entire marketing process. In tandem with CRM systems and other software tools, marketing automation software can offer a more personalized and targeted approach to marketing. Businesses can also take advantage of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning algorithms to get predictive analytical data and develop more sophisticated personalization tactics. Overall, marketing automation software aims to simplify complex marketing activities, offering a centralized tool that can be used by various departments. The selection of the right platform should be based on an exhaustive analysis of organizational needs, customer behavior, and the peculiarities of the market niche. Some examples of prominent marketing automation software include integrated platforms like HubSpot and Salesforce Marketing Cloud, which offer a one-stop-shop solution. There are, however, solutions such as Pardot that are designed to meet the needs of specific industries or functionalities and leverage specialized feature sets to attract a specific customer base. By automating routine marketing tasks like email campaigns and social media posts, marketing automation software frees up staff to focus on more strategic activities. This technology can also be integrated with CRM and sales platforms, resulting in better sales and marketing department alignment. Integration Tools The primary goal of the alignment process is to ensure that diverse software solutions work together as one and efficiently. Integration tools, which can enable real-time data flow between a CRM and marketing automation systems, serve as the linchpin that connects these disparate systems. This reduces data latency and, as a result, creates a shared environment in which employees from various departments are not only aligned but interconnected. This effectively promotes faster decision-making and increased efficiency. Today's software market provides a wide range of integration solutions. For example, Zapier can serve as a link between CRM software such as Salesforce and marketing automation platforms such as HubSpot. Another tool, Microsoft Power Automate, enables you to create complex workflows involving multiple applications, such as SharePoint for document management and Microsoft Dynamics 365 for CRM tasks. Custom connections between disparate systems are also possible with API management solutions such as MuleSoft, allowing for a more unified and centralized data repository. Data-Driven Marketing Implementing the aforementioned software tools can assist you in running sophisticated marketing campaigns and meeting your ambitious goals by leveraging a wide range of diverse data that will provide you with insights about your customers and market trends. It entails the use of: Customer Data Understanding consumer behavior is fundamental for business success. Utilizing customer data, you can segment the market, personalize interactions, and predict client future behavior. This is critical for building a comprehensive strategy that aligns all consumer-facing departments towards a unified objective: customer satisfaction and long-term relationship building. Sales Data This is the primary source of information for the company's financial situation, as well as understanding purchasing trends, customer preferences, and sales cycles. Metrics such as lead generation, conversion rates, and revenue must be tracked not only for the sales department but also for inventory management, financial planning, and organizational strategy. A real-time understanding of these metrics can help to align different departments towards common financial goals. Website Data Monitoring website traffic, user behavior, and conversion rates can be beneficial to various departments, like marketing and product development. They can obtain this information by using an analyst's tool to gain a better understanding of customer needs and preferences. Case Study: Aligning Company Departments to Increase Efficiency To illustrate the implementation of the tools and practices I described above, I will tell you about the project I completed at a European company I will not name here. I was faced with the tricky task of transforming the sales pipeline to accelerate the conversion of contacts with high potential into finalized deals. In the process, I faced the tough conundrum of aligning the interests and workflows of sales, marketing, product, and development teams. To reach the objective, I integrated a suite of four cutting-edge tools, including ActiveCampaign, a utility similar to Zapier, a now-discontinued LinkedIn automation tool, and Zoho. This enabled me to seamlessly connect together teams, creating a cross-functional in-house team of roughly 20 individuals. As a result, I was able to streamline inter-departmental workflows and accelerate the sales engagement timeline by 20%. Further, the advanced automation implemented saved an estimated 100 man-hours each week. Conclusion Summarizing, connecting, and aligning departments greatly increases efficiency, with streamlined communication eradicating information silos and ensuring that everyone is on the same page. This aids in the development of a unified strategy and the achievement of common goals in close collaboration. To align the departments, conduct an internal audit to identify gaps and inefficiencies between departments, establish common objectives and key performance indicators (KPIs) with key stakeholders from each department, and then begin to implement integration tools such as CRM and marketing automation software. Do not hesitate to delve deeper into understanding the myriad of integration tools available, such as Zapier, Microsoft Power Automate, and MuleSoft, among others, as well as alignment techniques. More information can be found at: The Value Of Learning Through Alignment With Business Goals How do you align your department's objectives with the organization's strategy and vision? "Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World" by General Stanley McChrystal Photo by on Matt Artz Unsplash

How to Align Departments to Improve Efficiency: Tools, Techniques, and Approaches

Does Your SaaS Have a Positioning or Messaging Problem?

আপনার SaaS এর কি পজিশনিং বা মেসেজিং সমস্যা আছে?

Hat Ihr SaaS ein Positionierungs- oder Messaging-Problem?

¿Su SaaS tiene un problema de posicionamiento o mensajería?

Votre SaaS a-t-il un problème de positionnement ou de messagerie ?

क्या आपके सास को पोजिशनिंग या मैसेजिंग की समस्या है?

あなたの SaaS にはポジショニングまたはメッセージングの問題がありますか?

SaaS에 포지셔닝 또는 메시징 문제가 있습니까?

Seu SaaS tem um problema de posicionamento ou mensagens?

SaaS'ınızda Konumlandırma veya Mesajlaşma Sorunu Var mı?

SaaS của bạn có vấn đề về định vị hoặc nhắn tin không?

您的 SaaS 是否存在定位或消息传递问题？

Working for a regional ecom platform with tens of millions of visits each month phishing is our everyday reality. Looking into it in detail challenged some of my assumptions and helped me get a better idea of what one can do about it. I’m sharing some of my experience from the trenches about methods and tools we tried and the ways we were successful dampen phishing. If you thought protecting your organisation from phishing was hard wait till the users show up! All the usual technical and awareness measures are out the window when you are addressing millions of people. How can you detect them? The simplest and most effective step is to provide some generic information to your users about phishing on your website and give them an email address they can forward the phishing emails to. For us, it turned out to be useful to also provide some detail on how to forward emails, because these days people often view emails on their phones and will just send you a screenshot. Phishing reporting mailbox: An added benefit of having a phishing submission mailbox is that you will learn a lot about your regular communications to users. Whenever it is not on point, some will probably mistake it for phishing and report it back to you. The downside of this method is, that most likely by the time phishing emails are forwarded to you, some users will have given their credentials away. Additionally, since these days companies have few public email addresses, you will also receive quite a lot of unrelated questions. If you decide to handle these, depending on your customer service culture, answering/routing them will take considerable effort. When setting up the mailbox we looked at some of the more established companies dealing with similar issues. Most of them will specifically have auto-reply stating, that one will not receive specific feedback on submissions. In the beginning, we did answer them in detail, in hopes to raise awareness and boost submissions. Eventually, we stopped doing that without any noticeable side effects. What helped was rather, that some of the users who had gotten phished at one point did become avid forwarders of phishing emails later on. : The basic thing is, in case there is an active campaign against you, you could add an extra notification on your site, something that they see either straight after login or directly on your landing page. This is a great option because users fatigued by phishing spam will not trust or read your emails anymore. Awareness Eventually, we also sent some examples of actual phishing emails in a newsletter. Initially, I was very sceptical because we were literally sending phishing to our users, which I assumed would only add confusion, but it turned out great. We had a big uptick in submissions and password changes. Granted it is one data point but I’ll probably keep this in mind for the future. You can create some fake user accounts on your site and start dropping them in phishing pages to add them to the target list of attackers. After that, you can open a beer, kick back and see if anything comes up. Usually, these lists are shared/bought/sold and targeted by different phishing campaigns. Similarly, it can provide really valuable information about the behaviour and goals of the attackers if you have a baseline of a compromised account without any actual user interaction. Honey accounts: Attackers often set up phishing pages to load resources from your actual page. There, you will be able to find them by checking the referrer header for these resource loads because it will point to the phishing domain. Requires some work, but it is awesome because at the latest you will know about a new phishing site when one of your users is visiting it the first time. That said if the phishing attackers have proper opsec this will not work. You are giving them extra work though and if they are setting the phishing page up on a hacked site they might not be able to/want to change these settings. Referrer header: : You can look for recent DNS entries, domain registrations, or certificate transparency logs for recently acquired certificates. Most times if attackers set up a domain, which in our case is a fraction of all cases, they will try to set up something similar to yours. So look in a few character distance around your sender domains and brand names. Looking for domains There are a few more non-obvious tricks. I’m glad to share it if you reach out. I do not want to give away things that we have been effectively using to not harm our own operations. How Can I Make It More Painful For Them? Outright hacking the phishing sites is probably not legal or even advised but you could make it a bit more painful for them in ways that is legal in most jurisdictions. Obviously, this is not legal advice you should check it for yourself to make sure you don’t get into trouble. Sometimes it is worth looking around on the phishing site because there might be either the phishing kit available, that allows you access to the source code, or directory listing not disabled that will give you some pointers. Looking for the phish kit: Usually you will find the kit by taking the landing URL path and making it to zip: → .zip you can find collections of kits out there if you want to learn more about them: . If you get lucky you may find something to identify and prosecute the criminals conducting the phishing campaign. You can find out more for example with . http://fake.domain/fake/login.php http://fake.domain/fake https://github.com/cybercdh/phishfinder StalkPhish You can blast them with fake credentials for non existing users, hopefully poisoning their user lists and making it easier to notice their logins. More advanced option is to even have your login page give 200 for these users so you trick them when they do the validation. Most of the phishing kits we looked at will monitor source IP and user agent so keep this in mind when you are trying to give them trash. Sending fake credentials: What about technical measures : it was supposed to solve phishing but it doesn’t really and it has its own problems. What you may gain is that attackers cannot send emails where the from email shows up as yours. That said people usually only check the alias of the from email -or more just the subject- and not the email sender itself. Even if they did attackers can still set up on adjacent domains. DMARC Setting up DMARC is also not without its complications. DKIM says nobody tempered with the email, SPF says the email was sent by one of the whitelisted senders. Tldr: there are 2 parts to DMARC, which itself is just the reporting and enforcement mechanism. So you need to make sure all sending mechanisms you use can set these and be listed in SPF. Even when that is a given you will have some trouble for example when your users are forwarding emails (e.g. Gmail set up to forward all emails to Outlook will have a broken SPF since the sender is Google). This is not to say DMARC is useless, but it will not be straightforward and will not solve phishing. However, DMARC reports are even useful to tell you about delivery problems for example and you can set up DMARC in report only mode as well.We are using it, it just have not had any noticeable impact on phishing. making the credentials not be the only thing that users need to use to log in (or in case of step-up authentication used to do sensitive operations) is a great way to ratchet up the cost of attackers. The downside is that it will mean costs for you too: some friction for users, costs of SMS messages if you use them, and more complicated account resets upping customer service requirements. Add to that, that people that are willing to give away their credentials on random sites will probably have little overlap with the group that opts in for MFA and even if it is mandatory (which in most cases is a big step) might still give away their MFA codes as well. MFA/Step-up authentication: If you think I missed something or you want to collaborate on making the life of phishers harder, don’t hesitate to reach out! This article was first published here.

Biting Back Against Phishers

This Slogging thread by  and Arthur Tkachenko occurred in slogging's official #programming channel, and has been edited for readability. Arthur Tkachenko May 5, 2022, 6:49 AM #Together4Victory: List of Email Marketing tools Arthur Tkachenko May 5, 2022, 6:50 AM Today I'm collecting a list of email marketing service providers, aka Mailchimp alternatives. And I already find a lot of cool solutions for small businesses Arthur Tkachenko May 5, 2022, 6:52 AM Let's start with a list of cool articles that I find during researching on Zapier https://zapier.com/learn/email-marketing/ https://zapier.com/blog/mailchimp-integrations/ https://zapier.com/blog/automate-email-marketing/ https://zapier.com/learn/automation-for-small-businesses/email-marketing-automation/ https://zapier.com/learn/email-marketing/best-drip-email-marketing-apps/ https://zapier.com/learn/email-marketing/email-marketing-list-automation/ https://zapier.com/apps/email/integrations it was one of the easiest way to find a great and reliable service. if it's listed on Zapier, it's probably cool, right? Arthur Tkachenko May 5, 2022, 6:40 PM Sendy Sendfox TinyLetter Mailerlite BUTTONDOWN Upscribe Palabra Friendly Froged Moosend Mailjet UnderSend MailMeteor EmailOctopus NoCodeLetters BirdSend ActiveCampaign AWeber ConvertKit Constant Contact Omnisend Getresponse Sendinblue https://sendy.co/ https://sendfox.com/ http://tinyletter.com https://www.mailerlite.com/pricing https://buttondown.email/ https://www.upscribe.net/ https://palabra.io/ https://friendly.is/automate https://froged.com/ https://moosend.com/ https://www.mailjet.com/ https://undersend.com/ https://mailmeteor.com Customer.io https://customer.io/ https://emailoctopus.com/ https://nocodeletters.com/ https://birdsend.co/ https://www.activecampaign.com/ http://www.aweber.com http://convertkit.com http://www.constantcontact.com https://www.omnisend.com/ https://www.getresponse.com/ http://www.sendinblue.com Arthur Tkachenko May 5, 2022, 6:42 PM There a lot of things to take into consideration. And as marketing and email marketing is a huge market for services - its not about pricing or the number of emails. below is a set of options that can help to differentiate plans Arthur Tkachenko May 5, 2022, 6:43 PM - Email Builder - Email Templates - Landing Pages - Segmentation & Personalization - Retargeting Audience - Email Analytics - Dynamic Content - Marketing Calendar - Behavioral-based Automation - Custom-coded Templates - Lifetime Value - Surveys - Single-step Automation Rules - Multi-Step Workflows - A/B Testing - Multivariate Testing - Send Time Optimization - Phone Support Arthur Tkachenko May 6, 2022, 3:41 AM it is worth mentioning solutions, having different core values for example, the companies below work good with eCommerce Klaviyo https://www.klaviyo.com/ Campaign Monitor (listed before) Encharge https://encharge.io/ Newsletter2go https://docs.newsletter2go.com/ companies/services focused on marketing automation Aritic https://aritic.com/ ActiveCampaign Drip https://www.drip.com/ GetResponse Automizy https://automizy.com/ Sender https://www.sender.net/ MailPoet http://www.mailpoet.com/ Elastic Email https://elasticemail.com/ Woodpecker - http://woodpecker.co Zoho Campaigns and many more flodesk https://flodesk.com/ peopcampaigns https://pepocampaigns.com/ mailster https://mailster.co/ sparkpost https://www.sparkpost.com/ Jilt https://jilt.com/ Autopilot https://www.autopilothq.com/ Keap https://keap.com/ Arthur Tkachenko May 6, 2022, 3:41 AM I'll continue to extend this list later, thr source will be located in this repository: https://github.com/LLazyEmail/awesome-email-marketing

#Together4Victory: List of Email Marketing Tools

After defining what the RFM analysis is standing for, and how you can apply it to your Customer Base, I want to show you how to apply it on Shopify orders data. A brief introduction to anticipate some doubts, such as: Why should we use RFM analysis?What kind of information can be obtained by using it?How do I increase the Conversion Rate or AOV (Average Order Value) using customer segmentation and RFM analysis? I answered to some other questions, in an article that you can find it out by clicking on this link. Let's export orders from Shopify The data collected by Shopify are a pretty good starting point, but they need a little normalization to make them available for Recency, Frequency and Monetary analysis on excel. In order to extract all the orders, we need to go in the backend and , and follow some steps, described below. click on the "Orders" tab, from the side menu Use "Order" and "Filter" buttons, to filter all by and ( ).In the , click on the button, in the top left side. Payment Status, Paid Fulfilment status, Fulfilled you can find a detailed instructions on Shopify website Order page Export A modal window will open, showing some options. Select the option for .In the Export as section, leave the default selection. All orders Now you can click on button, to export the orders we have just filtered. Export orders The bigger the export, the more time it takes to do it. For example, an export with less than 100,000 items could be completed in less than one hour, while an export with 400,000 items could take about 4 hours. At the end of such a long export, Shopify will notify us by email, sending us a link to download the file. Side note Now that we have our file, let's import it into our Google Drive account, which will automatically turn it into a Sheet file. The file is made up by informations that Shopify keeps for our store; a lot of data is superfluous for our calculation and we'll go forward, in the next step, to clean them. Exported the data already filtered by we'll need to delete the superfluous columns. Financial Status, Paid and Fulfillment Status, Fulfilled First, we check that , otherwise we may have . all rows are correctly filled by "paid" and "fulfilled" inaccurate results Proceed sorting from A --> Z on the column "Fulfillment Status", and delete the rows that have a value other than "fulfilled". We delete all the columns, keeping only the fields shown in the following table, making sure that the currency field has the correct currency format. The , allowing us to display in Google Data Studio, the related emails when we'll going to filter on a specific customer segmentation. Email field will be our Customer ID - The selected segments exported can be used in Active Campaign to create targeted communications using email marketing automation. TIPS Normalizing values At this point, we need to normalize all values in the "Paid at" column, as the format exported by Shopify also handles the time zone. For the purpose of this example, one day variation can be allowed too, but if we wanted to apply the right conversion, we should apply a custom function in the Google Sheets scripts module, in order to convert correctly the date. ### Timezone conversion a Google spreadsheet *I suggest to use in `` `
/**
 * Converts a datetime string to a datetime string in a targe timezone.
 *
 *@param {"October 29, 2016 1:00 PM CDT"} datetimeString Date, time and timezone.
 *@param {"GMT"} timeZone Target timezone
 *@param {"YYYY-MM-dd hh:mm a z"} Datetime format
 *@customfunction
 */
function myFunction(datetimeString,timeZone,format) {
  var moment = new Date(datetimeString);
  return Utilities.formatDate(moment, timeZone, format)
}
` `` this .* function only for skilled Going forward to the next step, we can apply the =SPLIT function, as shown below: , where you can review all the singles steps, or if you prefer, download the ready-made Google Sheet file. Apply the RFM matrix calculation, as shown in this article Showing data in Google Data Studio Open Google Data Studio and create a new Report, as shown below: When creating a new report, you will be asked to associate a data source; select the sheet on which we have worked so far. When creating a new Report, it will be shown some different data source integrations; select the sheet on which we have worked so far. It'll create a simple table, which we'll update as following: The settings will allow us to view all email and RFM value for each our customers. Now, add a tree graph, that can help us to properly show how and how many clusters make up our customer database. Add the "Tree Map" graph and set its configuration as follows. At this point, several rectangles will be shown, representing our Customer Base clustered and sorted by size: the color becomes darker based on the sum of the emails. The 343, 344, 545 values, represent a very specific information of our customers, as you can read from the association table, . that I described in the final section of this article These graphs are a basic representation of our data, as you can see in the image below. Now, we can filter clicking by on these graphs, consequently updating in real time, the right side table with the related emails of the customers belonging to the clicked segment. - When we normalize the orders, there were other data too that we cleaned (e.g. products number for each order, cost per product and many other data). These columns could be interesting to keep and shown in Google Data Studio, while your filtering the cluster. PRO TIP In Google Data Studio, you can create a custom dashboard more suited at your specific needs. Here you'll find Datastudio Dashboard: it's a good starting point for building a more customized one. Articles Series I published an article series based on RFM matrix to explain different applicable actionable tactics to grow your business. In case you missed something, the series includes the following articles: – Applying RFM Customer Segmentation to Your Business right now — [ Step by Step Guide] Map Customer Segmentation using Google Analytics and Google Sheets – Segment Shopify Customer Base using Google Sheets e Google Data Studio

How To Segment Shopify Customer Base with Google Sheets and Google Data Studio

Who doesn’t like surveys? I’m a huge fan of them, as from the company side, it helps to understand your audience better. On the participant's hand, I can compare my replies with others; that is fun. So, I’ve decided to gather the best WordPress survey plugins in one place to discover their main features, possibilities, pros, and cons. I placed all plugins randomly, so don’t try to find the best from the tops. Tricky, agree? Before I start exploring each plugin, let’s figure out why we need WordPress survey plugins? [ ] WordPress plugin makes survey organizing simpler and easier [ ] Surveys help to engage with your audience and give them the impression that you care about your clients/audience [ ] With the WordPress survey plugin, you can export all data to analyze replies [ ] The embedded option helps to add surveys on any website page or popup Now, let’s go over each survey plugin to discover all features. Survey Maker Survey Maker is the dedicated survey plugin by Ays Pro extensions for collecting data via surveys. Highlights: User-friendly and beginner-friendly Responsive design 7 free questions types Mult-page surveys Real-time reporting Styling options (background, button text color, font size, etc.) Survey maker is primarily a free WordPress plugin. Still, you can buy the Pro: $39 one-time payment (without Stripe and PayPal integrations, no summary emails), or Developer License $99 one-time payment. Pricing: Pros: Clean and simple plugin Unlimited questions/surveys Cons: No conditional features in the free version It can be too simple for advanced solutions SurveyMonkey Momentive has created SurveyMonkey; this service helps create surveys and integrate them into your WordPress website. Highlights: Team collaboration (create surveys with your team) Templates & themes Unlimited number of surveys Recurring surveys Payments integrations Variety of survey features slider questions, matrix questions, rating questions, etc. SurveyMonkey has 2 plans for business and personal use. Personal plans start from $45 per month; business plans go from $35 per user/month. Pricing: Pros: Has enormous survey building options Customize and brand your surveys as you wish Cons: Limited free version works only with paid subscriptions Embedding to WordPress Typeform Typeform is one of the famous WordPress surveys plugins. With Typeform, you can create quizzes, surveys, forms, polls, or tests. Highlights: Ready-made templates Integrations with popular platforms are available Hidden field, calculator 10 questions per month / 10 responses per Typeform Export the data Unlimited typeforms You can try free or trial Typeform or proceed via pad plans, starting from $29 per month. Pricing: Pros: Clean design Interactive surveys Cons: Limited free version It needs to be with shortcode embedded in WordPress JetFormBuilder JetFormBuilder is a free Gutenberg plugin, created for surveys, forms, quizzes. Highlights: 19+ field types Multi-step surveys option Conditional logic & dynamic features Hidden fields and calculated content Spam protection Styling options Payment integrations JetFormBuilder is a free WordPress plugin, but you can buy Pro addons additionally (like User login, Stripe, Converkit, Hubspot, Mailpoet integrations, etc.) for $39 per year for one website, or $79 per year for unlimited websites. Pricing: Pros: Creating for native WordPress editor It can be embedded into any WordPress page builder plugin Cons: It can be confusing for Gutenberg beginners TotalPoll TotalPoll helps to design and build polls in WordPress. Highlights: Visualize survey data Export all replies Multiple questions, choice types Random votes generator 5 field types The free version is available, but if you want access Pro addons, premium supports, and one site activation, just proceed with $59 per year. Pricing: Pros: Easy-to-use dashboard Customization available Cons: Premium support isn’t included while using the free version Modal Survey ModalSurvey is a WordPress survey plugin from CodeCanyon marketplace. Highlights: Display results in a visual way (charts, graphs) Start and expiry survey time Export or import surveys Modal Survey plugin costs start from $39. Pricing: Pros: Simple to use Visual builder for building surveys Cons: No free version Quiz and Survey Master This WordPress plugin was created for tests or exams, quizzes, surveys. Highlights: Countdown timer Create customizable emails Integration with MailChimp, ActiveCampaign, and others There are a few plans available to buy Pro addons: basic (6 addons) for $129/year, plug (17 addons) for $179 per year, pro plan (34+ addons) for $199. Pricing: Pros: Unlimited surveys with free plugin Easy-to-use Cons: Expensive plans WP-Polls WP-Polls is a free WordPress plugin for creating surveys with templates and CSS styles. Lester Chan developed this plugin, and you can donate to help the plugin grow. Highlights: More than 90K installations Multiple selections of answers Open-source software Pros: AJAX poll system Simple plugin dashboard It can be confusing for beginners Cons: YOP Poll Add a survey to any post or page with YOP Poll WordPress plugin. Highlights: Surveys scheduling Custom fields option Limit voting by registered/login user If the free plugin isn’t enough, you can buy one of 3 available plans: personal ($17 for 1 site), plus ($27 for 3 sites), expert ($57 for 7 sites). Pricing: Pros: Easy-to-use WP plugin Customizable surveys Cons: It can be too simple for advanced solutions Crowdsignal This free poll WordPress plugin is created by Automattic and also has rating options. Highlights: 20 different styles Set the closing survey date Display results or not Pros: Unlimited polls Custom style Cons: Limited for advanced surveys Social Polls by OpinionStage Poll, survey, and quiz maker free plugin by Opinion Stage for WordPress will help you create surveys from scratch or with the help of a template. Highlights: Add images or videos to your surveys Add your logo Real-time survey results Social network integration Responsive design Pros: Easy-to-create surveys Report dashboard Cons: I haven’t found a conditional feature. Sum Up In conclusion, I would like to say that it is excellent to try the free survey WordPress plugin first. Kindly share in the comments below. Which software do you use for taking surveys?

11 Best WordPress Survey Plugins

Subscribers are like your buddies, amigos, the ones with whom you share your success, failures, updates, and what not! They are the peanut butter to your bread. Shaggy to your Scooby. Monica to your Rachel. Source: Giphy This is exactly why you must be loyal, friendly, add value, and make sure that you never let them go. This is important because, Subscribers can become your customers They help you build your brand They enable your brand to sustain So, here’s your handbook of building an authentic subscriber base which has 4 key mantras that you must swear by. Let’s begin. 4 Mantras To Swear By To Build An Authentic Subscriber Base 1. Be a thought leader: Go the depth when it comes to content creation Recollect some of the best content that you have subscribed to. As a marketer, my personal favorites are Hubspot, Copyblogger, and Content marketing institute newsletters because I get a lot of value from them. I get to learn something new every day and I get to follow the advice of industry experts! This is exactly what a good newsletter must do. Whenever you create content, understand that the subscribers are those who are already familiar with the industry. Source: Giphy The concepts are not alien to them. So, you should ensure that you don’t bore them with the basics and provide them with real value. You must go the extra mile while creating the content and also dive deep into the process. Create content that discusses New concepts and theories Explain a familiar concept in detail with minuscule details Publish findings from your research and experimentation Be a thought leader in whichever industry you belong to and make sure that you create diverse content - which we would be discussing next. 2. Diversify your content to resonate with every subscriber segment: The cross tree mantra Your subscribers are not like a one-pot meal. There’s no one-size-fits-all for all your subscribers. They vary immensely based on their demography, their interaction with your content, and their purchase patterns. This is why you must create clear segments for your subscribers and make sure that your newsletter resonates with them. Source: Giphy For example, if a subscriber has just discovered your brand, then, sending them a product demo in the first newsletter would be a bad choice. Similarly, if you have a subscriber who has been sticking around since your inception, then, writing to them about your brand may not be very relevant. This is why you must diversify your content and make sure that you segment and funnel your subscribers appropriately. The cross tree mantra of content creation and distribution: Educational and informational content >> blogs, infographics Promotional and apt for the buyer journey content >> web pages, product updates, feature announcements, company news, case studies, product demo videos Life long value add content >> webinars, ebooks, whitepapers, industry news, first-hand reports, etc. You must make sure that you segment your audience based on transactional, behavioral, and demographic basis and show the right content to the right subscriber at the right time. There are email marketing tools like BayEngage, Mailchimp, Klaviyo, and more that can help you with this. Whereas, tools like ActiveCampaign do not have this feature in which case you may want to consider some . ActiveCampaign alternatives 3. The magic of asking: Give your users an opportunity to subscribe -You might have done everything right. - Creating quality content. Check. - Mapping the right subscriber to the right content. Check. - Providing solid takeaways and making the visitors want to subscribe. Check. Source: Giphy But, what you might not be doing is helping your visitors subscribe to your content at ease without making it a hassle for them to hunt for that option. I have personally experienced this! Sometimes I instantly get hooked to a blog and would volunteer to subscribe to their content. But, the options to subscribe would not be apparent and I’d give up in a few attempts. So, it is always wiser to create opportunities rather than making your audience do all the hard work. How can you ask your visitors to subscribe? Leverage the power of well-timed pop-ups with attractive copies to make it irresistible for visitors to opt-in. This can be shown when they are about to exit your website, as soon as they land on your website, or after they spend some time You can also make use of real estate on your blog pages. Insert a catchy CTA in-between the paragraphs or make use of the spaces on the left, right, or below the article Social media channels can be a great way to identify your potential audience and ask them to subscribe to your newsletter 4. Sustain the growth and never let your subscribers down This is the most important mantra of all. You’ve done all it takes to build a strong subscriber base. But, if you are not consistent in your efforts to provide them value and keep them engaged, it might result in the demonic metric that you’d never want to see - unsubscribe. Source: Giphy Here are different ways in which you can ensure their loyalty to your brand Provide valuable content consistently Run contests and giveaways Make your content personalized and relevant Make your newsletters interactive (ask them questions, solve their concerns) The Final Mantra: Wrapping Up A strong subscriber base can do wonders for your brand. The key to building a strong subscriber base is in these four mantras. I hope this article is a handy guide that helps you navigate through your newsletter strategy. If you have any questions or would like to add something, feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.

4 Ways to Get More Authentic Email Newsletter Subscribers

Working with tech businesses of different sizes and located in different parts of the world, we noticed a recurring challenge: . get noticed by the right buyers If the growing competition was not enough, add the buyers’ need to research on their own and the need to receive the minimum amount of assistance possible in the process and you have a complete picture of the maze that is the marketing online today. Getting noticed and attracting the right clients has become , , and . more complicated lengthy time-consuming In all this whirl, how can a tech business, either product or service-oriented build a solid marketing plan that will make it stand out and increase its number of conversions? We have discovered that there are mainly four pillars that make a marketing plan sustainable in the long term: understanding your buyer persona(s), building content strategies for every buying stage, content distribution, and automation. Pillar #1: Understand your buyer persona(s) You probably already have an idea of the type of people who might buy from you. But oftentimes we fall into the trap of assuming we know our clients all too well, only because we do business with them. And we communicate what our CEO or what our sales team think the clients want to hear, and so on. Instead, the better choice is to sit down and speak to a few of your clients. You can follow an investigative journalist’s approach, asking your clients to go back in time to the day they decided to buy from your company: What was their context, what was happening in their life at that moment? What made them choose your company? What questions did they have prior to purchasing? What is something they wished they knew (related to their pain point) that no one told them about? What words do they use to describe their pain points? Such interviews are very insightful and you should come out of these meetings with , ideas of how to write , . content ideas copy for your value proposition copy for your landing pages Adding quantitative research can give you more data on where your clients are active, what social media sites they use the most, what publications they read. You can name your personas, make them as relatable as possible, understand where they spend their time and what they need. But this doesn’t stop here. Each client goes through what we call a . Your team must understand this and the differences between each stage because they might want to change their approach according to different steps. For example, a sales specialist shouldn’t try to sell too much if your client is in the first stage, where the customer has just discovered they have a problem. buyer journey Furthermore, a strong marketing plan consists of dedicated content for each buyer journey stage. This leads us to our second Pillar. Pillar #2: Have a content strategy for every buying stage A buyers’ online journey has become complex, with buyers twisting and turning through the buying funnel, looping back, and repeating one or more tasks in the buyer’s journey. To try to simplify the picture, think of the buying journey as having these stages: Awareness Consideration Decision No matter how you define them, each step comes with its specifics and you must be prepared to meet your potential customers’ needs and concerns. Awareness stage Potential customers are they face, so you can ask yourself: how can I help them in this discovery process? What are the topics and angles I can tackle to help them identify and name their problem? just becoming aware of a problem Thus, you might want to create articles, eBooks, webinars, podcasts, or interviews through which you can show your expertise, provide tips, build trust and authority. Consideration stage Potential clients now have a clear idea of the problem they want to solve and need to . They will start comparing various alternatives, looking for results, testimonials, reviews, or specifications. know what potential solutions are out there At this point, offering case studies, solutions comparisons, and showing them what other clients have to say about you (it is known that we are compelled to using solutions that were tried & tested by others before) is the right thing to do. Show them the added value you bring and results, and in which scenario your solution is the best fit. Decision stage Customers now . And perhaps can come back to buy again and even become brand ambassadors - given that you are there for them, offering quality services and also, customer support. have their minds set on a solution and are ready to select a vendor At this point, you’ll want to focus on your solution through demos, consultations, free trials, etc. Furthermore, it helps to have some hooks in places, such as return policies or free trials for a certain period. Reinforcing their decision is vital, so make sure the whole buying process is smooth and easy and that your customer service colleagues are ready to manage potential negative feedback. You can even send follow-up emails to show your desire to consult with them and possibly improve your service. The real challenge is that almost every company out there creates content, we are drawing in an ocean of information. So to stand out, you need to find a than everyone else, you want to challenge common knowledge. radically different angle Finding that angle comes from understanding your audience and their thinking, researching what competitors have done. And then take all that and try to see what can you challenge, what is a point of view that has never been addressed?  Studies based on your internal data or conducting industry research are two quick ideas to start producing original content. Pillar #3: Distribution of content When researching your ideal customer and creating your persona’s profile, you will also learn about the channels they use to communicate and connect with others. This will help you decide which ones are mandatory for you and your business and what format of content you should focus on. There is a wide beach of resources available, channels, formats that can support your marketing efforts: : Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Medium, own website, Whatsapp, Clubhouse Channels : remember that each platform dictates its preferred form of content, length, size: video, stories, carousels, articles Formats : being present on relevant blogs helps to build authority (companies even invest in media outlets to have more publishing space) Guest posting or press mentionings : many platforms support building communities (Facebook, LinkedIn, Slack to name a few), and having your own can position you as an authority in a field - be careful though not to turn a community into a space where you promote your products. You want to build a group around a concept or idea and to support content creation and connections and not sales Communities But organic posting is not enough to help you get your message out, you also need to complement it with paid media. To make the most of your budget, one good approach is to start with the cheapest channel (for most it’s Facebook) and test different variations of your ad (copy, title, visual). Once you’ve learned which version gets the most engagement, take that ad to a more expensive channel (perhaps LinkedIn) and run it there. Make use of warm audiences, retarget people who visited your website or that viewed other ads, instead of advertising to cold audiences only. Lead generation forms on both LinkedIn and Facebook are also worth a try, as well as conversational ads on LinkedIn. Creating great content is just half of the journey, bringing that content in front of the right people is the other half. Besides finding the right mix of channels, you also need to find supporters that will help you amplify your message: your colleagues, happy customers, micro-influencers. Pillar #4: Automation Marketing automation helps you segment your audience based on relevant criteria (industry, services needs, location, etc), personalize and sync your communication with relevant actions your leads take. It also helps you streamline processes that used to be made manually (changing leads status, sending notifications to team members, etc). Here are some tools we have tested and recommend: HubSpot ActiveCampaign SalesMango specifically for B2C companies There is no winning formula in marketing today, or at least we can’t think of one. It’s about testing and learning what works and what doesn't and iterating on those learning. But you need to build a solid foundation, to keep you focused on reaching and helping the right people and keep your marketing efforts organized. Building an ideal customer profile based on real customer interviews, putting a content creation and distribution strategy in place, and automating marketing processes are the pillars of that foundation. If you find yourself overwhelmed by the possibilities and need to regain clarity, we’re happy to and guide you in the right direction. have a conversation

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