One of the only things that stands between us wrapping up this insane year is what we’re all describing as an unprecedented holiday shopping season. Tons of survey data has been released, numerous predictions have been made, and marketers have been challenged to develop strategies and plans unlike any other plans for previous years.

This year’s holiday shopping season is not only about sales, but also about how brands can adapt to a rapidly changing retail landscape. It’s a test of agility and creativity for businesses, big and small.

While you’re thinking outside the box and finalizing your holiday email campaigns, I want to encourage you to revisit your standard preparation for this season as well.

Here are 5 things to check off your list:

Data Feeds

Ensure all data feeds and triggers are working as expected, especially those for remarketing campaigns or opting in customers. Also, keep an eye on your feeds and triggers throughout the holiday season.

Regular monitoring can help you adapt quickly to changing consumer behaviors and trends. A quick glance at send reports on a regular basis can help to catch issues early, and regular testing can ensure that all systems are running smoothly.

Deliverability

Check in on deliverability and work to mitigate concerns now. The last thing you want is for all your hard work to go to waste due to poor inbox placement. Remember, during the holidays, email servers are under extra strain, which might affect deliverability.

It’s also a good time to clean your email list, removing inactive or un-engaged subscribers to improve overall performance.

Campaign Design Audit

Audit your campaign designs within the inbox on desktop and mobile. According to Litmus, every email has 15,000 different rendering previews. Take a moment to validate templates are rendering correctly for an optimal customer experience including content display, links, and images.

Also, consider the accessibility of your emails, ensuring that they are easily navigable and readable for all users, including those with disabilities. Regular feedback from a sample of your audience can also help in refining the design for better engagement.

Targeting and Personalization

Increase targeting and personalization by using customer information and behavior data to stand out from the vast increase of messages during the holiday. This can be as simple as personalizing subject lines.

Go beyond the basics by segmenting your audience based on their past purchases and browsing behavior to create more relevant messages. Remember, a personalized experience can be the key differentiator in a crowded inbox.

This last one is something everyone hates to address. But I promise you, it’s the most important thing you can do to help yourself this holiday:

Be prepared!

Things happen: sites go down, promotion codes don’t work, products sell out… and the list goes on. Prepare your contingency plans now. Have offers approved and creative ready so that you can quickly pull the trigger to help mitigate customer dissatisfaction.

Also, ensure that your customer service team is well-prepared to handle increased inquiries and potential issues. Regularly updating your FAQs and having ready-made responses for common issues can also be a big help. Don’t forget to set up a social media landing page using Hihello app to showcase your social media creatives and content.

While the holiday season presents unique challenges, it also offers a tremendous opportunity to connect with your customers in meaningful ways.

By focusing on these five areas, you can ensure that your marketing efforts are not only effective but also resilient in the face of unforeseen challenges. Remember, preparation and adaptability are key to navigating this holiday season successfully.

Image by Jill Wellington from Pixabay

Many companies don’t do enough upfront work to qualify their new sales leads. They simply pass every single sales lead through to the sales team, even if the prospect is nowhere near ready to buy or is even a good fit for what the company sells.

According to statistics cited by HubSpot, 61 percent of B2B companies send all of their business leads directly to sales, even though only 27 percent of those leads will be qualified to count as “serious buyers.” Having too many unqualified sales leads wastes the time of the sales team and causes the company to miss out on legitimate sales opportunities. When your salespeople are bombarded with low-quality leads that aren’t a good fit for your product or service, they’re going to miss the chance to talk with prospects who are legitimately good sales opportunities.

If your company is chasing bad sales leads, the following strategies will help you better qualify your inbound sales inquiries upfront:

Create Content that Drives Sales

In B2B content creators have always keep their target DMU (decision making unit) in mind. Have you been doing the same when creating content for B2C?

Text Optimizer is a great intent optimization tool that helps you create content that meets your customers’ needs and expectations.

Ask Lead-Qualifying Questions

Not all sales leads are the same, so why would your company want to treat them all the same? After all, every single prospect is unique; they all have different problems and pain points and budgetary concerns, and they all have unique business needs that your solution has to address. But if your company is simply passing every sales lead along to the sales team without even asking any questions, you’re missing a big chance to learn more about the prospect.

Asking questions to qualify the sales leads is a simple step that you can take to start prioritizing and ranking your sales leads. By asking sales-related exploratory questions, you are starting to build trust and build a relationship, and you’re learning more about the larger picture of the customer’s business challenges.

Asking questions also helps you do “lead scoring” to rank your sales leads based on how likely they are to buy. This is somewhat of an inexact process, but with time, you’ll get better at deciphering the subtle clues and behaviors of prospects to see which ones are genuinely interested and which ones are just calling around to do research or get price quotes. Use an online form builder that gives you flexibility to verify your contact prior to registering is as a leader.

Ask Open-Ended Questions

Asking lead-qualifying questions is a subtle process that requires some skill and savvy. For example, you don’t want to be too direct or aggressive by asking questions such as, “Do you have a budget for this purchase?” or “Are you definitely in the market for a new solution?” or “Are you looking to buy sometime soon?” These questions tend to create sales pressure and make the prospect feel defensive.

Instead of putting the customer under pressure, start by asking open-ended questions that get them to talk about their overall business situation. For example, you could ask, “What challenges are you experiencing with your current solution?” This helps get the customer to open up a bit and share their frustrations that are causing them to seek a new vendor. Or you could ask, “How is your current solution impacting your overall business processes?” This is a great question, because it helps you analyze the overall picture at the prospect’s business and evaluate how urgently they might be looking to make a purchase decision.

Every lead-qualifying question is your chance to hear more from the customer. Get them to open up about their business challenges, and then really listen to what they say.

Follow Up By Phone

Other companies make the mistake of relying too much on automated systems. For example, when you get new inbound sales inquiries via your website or online advertising, you might have an automated email reply or online intake form that asks the prospect some questions about what they’re looking to buy. These automated tools can be helpful, but you can’t rely on a fully automated lead qualification process.

Instead, call people back. Get on the phone and have a detailed conversation that allows for the “human element” of relationship building and establishing trust. Even with the great technology we have today, you still need to get on the phone and talk with your customers.

Why? For one thing, the buyers who are most urgently looking to make a decision want to hear back from your company immediately, and from a real person. Motivated buyers are probably contacting several of your competitors, and according to HubSpot’s cited statistics, 35-50 percent of sales go to the vendor who responds first.

Some prospects are never going to be the right fit for what you sell, and not everyone is a “good” customer. But with better inbound lead qualification processes – one that includes asking good questions, sorting and ranking the sales leads and following up quickly – your company can turn more of your sales leads into big sales.

Without sounding terribly over-dramatic, social media burnout is a real thing – and something we should be watching out for.

Whether you’re using social media for work or for pleasure: it’s likely that it takes up a hefty chunk of your day. There is a limit to how much information we can process – and by flooding our brains with photos of our friends’ dinners, lists of celebrities that look like cats, advice to get us thinner doing ‘this one thing’…

It can get exhausting.

Literally. We can get cognitively overloaded from too much information, resulting in decision fatigue – which in turn, can have dramatic impact on our willpower.

So is Facebook driving you to eat that pack of cookies? May be… either way, many of us could benefit from taking a step back from our social media routine before burnout sets in.

Here are six tips for preventing social media burnout:

1) Niche down

If you can niche down with your target market, you can do the same with your social media followers. If there is one platform that is more popular with your ideal audience – go there, and take a breather from the others.

This ‘pick one’ strategy can be tough at first (good old FOMO) but it’s amazing what happens if you switch your focus to only one platform.

It doesn’t mean you have to stick to that one platform forever either – it might be a week or a month – and if things aren’t working, you can always switch your focus.

2) Consider your likes

No – not thumbs up likes. What do you – for real – like? If you’re a highly visual type, stick with Pinterest and Instagram.

If you enjoy writing, get behind Facebook and Linkedin. If you prefer quick, snackable bites of content – Twitter’s your platform. If you like being in front of the camera – get on Periscope.

3) Set SMART goals

You likely have come across the ‘SMART’ goal acronym before – a checklist to make sure your goals are: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Timely.

When applied to social media, you can set a goal (such as X number of followers by X date) and have something to work towards. When this is your only focus, you can stop stressing about all the other distractions. A solid social media marketing service can help you set up your goals and monitoring.

4) Schedule on/off time

It’s easy to say ‘I’ll take a break’ but how many times do we end up foregoing that break for just another 10 minutes of scrolling through our feed?

By having scheduled time to be online, you are more likely to make the most out of your session. If you’re working towards your SMART goal, this will be a huge benefit.

There are lots of apps that can help you stick to your schedule. I love Self Control (Mac OS X) for it’s simplicity, and Rescue Time is another great way to monitor your time spent online. There are a few great WordPress plugins for your business to get more effecient.

5) Automate

If you aren’t already using a scheduling app to automate your posts – get on it! Whether it’s Buffer, Hootsuite, Edgar – it’s a great way to get the bulk of the content you want to share sorted in one go.

It prevents the infamous rabbit-hole effect. You know: we go on social media to share one thing and then… 45 minutes have passed and our eyes have glazed over.

Taking an hour or two out to schedule a week’s worth of content also allows you to specify the best time to reach your audience are online.

6) Outsource

Finally, if you’re ready to take a break altogether from your social accounts, consider hiring someone to help you out. I wouldn’t recommend that for all of your posts – your audience are still going to want to hear your voice – and that isn’t easy for a freelancer to replicate!

But for scheduling shared posts and researching content, a freelancer from Upwork or Fiverr is a great investment.

Conclusion

If social media is feeling like a chore, or you’re not convinced your time is being spent well perusing your feeds; it could be worth taking a break. If you put into practice these tips, it should be an easy transition. Happy social media holiday!

Image source: Pixabay

Twitter gives businesses a unique marketing advantage compared to other social media platforms. Internet marketers who know what they are doing love the agility that Twitter provides.

I’m pertaining to the unique culture that only Twitter currently has. You see with Twitter, businesses can post multiple posts in a day without experiencing too many negative responses to it. It’s the norm in that exceptional community. Try doing that on Facebook and you will lose your fans or followers faster than you can delete your posts.

However, not all is able to take advantage of this wonderful culture. It requires a certain creativity because being to blunt and spontaneous without direction doesn’t do brands any good. Because you should know that branding and advertising go side by side. Hence, to make your posts fit your brand and still retain that agility we are talking about, you need to have plan.

Below are some of the best responses we got from the most influential Twitter marketers on how to proceed with this planning.

Plan for Specific Moments

I know it’s impossible to try and foresee events that hasn’t materialized yet. Nevertheless, what you can do is to tailor tweets that go well with events that will surely occur in the near future.

I’m talking about planning for events that are bound to happen like upcoming movies, Hollywood gossip, etc.… Doing this allows you tweet really quick responses to popular events.

People simply wouldn’t know that you’ve already made it witty and consistent with your branding; and that you’re just waiting for the right day to arrive. Other than people thinking that you’re impressive, they would surely think of it as worthy of a follow.

Use this advanced ad maker to create awesome graphics to use in your tweets.

Create A Content Calendar

Every large company I know has this. Small businesses on the other hand are more tedious to adopt. This tip is in connection with the first point. What you want to do is to create a content way in advance for events that would obviously take place along the year. Celebrations like Christmas, Labor Day, black Friday and most of the holidays should be on that calendar.

Don’t forget to adjust your landing page to match each particular campaign you are running on Twitter. This site offers a variety of online form templates to create seasonal CTAs and customize your landing page.

You should already be thinking about the perfect tweets that should generate more followers hopping into your company on those dates. What’s best about it is that since some of the events are far into the future that you have plenty of time to keep perfecting them.

Review What Your Competitors Have Been Up To

In this case, it is likewise true that experience is the best teacher. It’s best if you’ll look at some of the most popular tweets that went around during special days of the year.

Most likely, you’ll find the best ones from your competitors since you’re in the same niche. Their tweets will automatically apply to your business. However, you also have to be mindful not to copy the tweet so closely. There are lot of meticulous eyes on Twitter.

Stay alert!

All that planning will go down the drain if you’re not quick enough. Remember that no matter how witty your tweets are, they wouldn’t do much difference if you are late on the scene.

It will only get burrowed in the millions of tweets users do each day.

Image by Lerey Eric from Pixabay