Developing and launching an email campaign requires several steps. One of the most important is “affirmative consent”: the process of gaining explicit permission from your audience before you send them messages. By not fulfilling the requirements of affirmative consent, you run the risk of annoying your email recipients at best to violating compliance requirements at worst. Let’s talk about how you can gain this consent from your audience.
Demystifying affirmative consent
What does affirmative consent need to look like in practice? Primarily, it needs to be unambiguous. Affirmative consent consists of your recipient taking a clear, direct action to indicate that they want to receive further contact from you. Examples include checking a box, filling out an online form or putting a name and an email down on a contact sheet.
Self-serve subscriptions
Another part of affirmative consent is making it clear to your audience what they are signing up for. To do this, create a self-serve subscription page that people can navigate to and opt into the different types of messaging that you offer. Specify, in detail, what the mailing is and how often they should expect to receive it. You will also want to add a link to your data privacy page and instructions on how to opt-out.
Opt-out pages
Speaking of opt-outs, it’s important to have a page where your audience can go if they no longer want to receive communications from your agency. Here are some best practices:
Clarity and brevity: Get to the point as quickly as possible by listing how people can end their subscription to your email marketing.
Tailored options: You can provide the option for your readers to modify the type of content they are subscribed to and how often they receive it.
Automate where possible: Use your email software to set up an automated confirmation email that is sent to those who successfully unsubscribe. You should also automate the opt-out logging process. Recording and maintaining a history of opt-outs is an important part of CAN-SPAM Act compliance.
For additional guidance on setting up trigger emails, check out these resources from major marketing providers like MailChimp and Constant Contact.
Why it all matters
The consequences of not gaining affirmative consent are significant. They can range from getting banned from the inboxes of potential leads to receiving CAN-SPAM fines to the tune of over $50,000 per email.
Even if you set aside the consequences, however, you still would not want to start blasting emails to folks who have not given you permission. Why? It just isn’t very effective. Email marketing success hinges on sending the right messages to the right people at the right time. Emailing people who don’t want to hear from you probably won’t pay off. In the end, all it will do is alienate a potential audience.
The tortoise and the hare
In the story of the tortoise and the hare, we get a timeless lesson on the virtue of going slow and steady to win the race. That same idea holds true for email marketing.
While it can be tempting to send mass emails to any contacts you have, you simply shouldn’t do it. Instead, work toward gaining affirmative consent by building out the right infrastructure like subscription centers and opt-out pages. You’ll be glad you did once you start seeing improved results.
Harnessing the Power of AI for Better Antivirus Protection
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) is a next generation cyber security solution that provides more advanced and comprehensive protection for your devices compared with traditional, static antivirus applications that only address simple signature-based malware threats. While traditional antivirus programs detect and remove known malware, EDR is designed to detect and respond to more complex and sophisticated threats that often bypass or get through traditional antivirus protection. A good EDR solution can identify existing threats already hiding on a network, which is important as current threats are often undetected for several months. Since most malware intrusions originate at the end-user, it is critically important to have the very best antivirus protection on individual computers and laptops.
Here are some reasons to consider EDR as a preferred antivirus solution:
Smarter Detection: Traditional antivirus programs rely on pre-defined signatures to identify known threats. However, EDR takes a different approach. It uses behavioral analytics to detect suspicious activity in real-time, even if there are no known signatures. By monitoring file changes, registry modifications, and network traffic, EDR can detect and respond to the latest, advanced threats faster than traditional antivirus programs.
Complete Visibility: EDR provides security teams with a centralized management console to monitor and investigate activity across all devices in an organization. This makes it easier to deploy and manage security policies. Some vendors offer a fully managed model for businesses who cannot or do not want to deal with the administration or management of the EDR tool. With EDR, you don’t need to worry about manually updating antivirus software on individual devices. The central console ensures that the latest EDR protection is deployed, saving time and effort. In case of a security breach, EDR allows for a coordinated and rapid response to investigate and minimize the damage.
Real-time monitoring and continuous threat-hunting: EDR keeps a constant watch over servers, laptops, and mobile devices in real-time. It allows security teams to proactively identify and address threats before they can breach the system. By analyzing suspicious behavior, EDR can act before a breach occurs, reducing the risk of data loss or compromise.
Monitoring of servers, laptops, and mobile devices by EDR is critical to allow fast and effective solutions to threats before they breach, and in the event of a breach, to contain and solution the threat before there is contagion throughout the network. EDR has a proactive threat hunting feature that allows security teams to identify threats before they become an incident. Suspicious behavior is analyzed and reacted to before a breach occurs.
Forensic Capabilities: In the event of a security breach, EDR provides forensic capabilities that assist security teams to investigate and understand system events and scope of the attack. Detailed logs are available showing system events and user behavior. The logs may be used to identify the source of the attack, measure the extent of damage or intrusion, then develop a plan to prevent a future, similar attack. This is very useful to provide evidence of rapid response and the scope, extent, and timing of an event that is required with many state breach notification requirements.
Integration with other security solutions: EDR seamlessly integrates with other security solutions, enabling automated incident response workflows, event logging, and monitoring across multiple platforms. This integration enhances the overall effectiveness of your cybersecurity infrastructure.
With the rapid evolution of advanced threats and sophisticated malware, relying solely on traditional antivirus programs isn’t enough. Having a robust EDR solution provides the best available antivirus resource, deploying a tool that uses artificial intelligence to reiterate and continually evolve an endpoint defense. The combination of advanced detection, rapid response, real-time central monitoring, and enhanced forensic features provides a powerful tool to protect and secure your organization’s critical and sensitive data. Antivirus protection is a vital cyber-security shield on the frontline of defense, and it is imperative that defense is effective, today more than ever.
Interested in learning more about EDR? Notable companies that offer EDR solutions include SentinelOne, CrowdStrike, and Cisco. If you have questions about EDR and other tools and strategies to protect your networks and your business, feel free to contact me: tweyant@alliantnational.com
Don’t miss out on this unique marketing opportunity.
When thinking about how to market your agency, it can sometimes be helpful to take stock of your “digital real estate.” It’s simple. Every company has a certain amount of media that they “own.” Some well-known examples include social media feeds, websites and blogs. In any marketing campaign, maximizing your digital real estate is key, and that includes looking for marketing opportunities in unexpected places.
One opportunity that often goes overlooked is email, specifically your firm’s professional email signatures. More than 330 billion emails get sent every single day[i], and each one of these represents a chance to create a unique touchpoint with potential customers. Here is how you can start optimizing this part of your digital real estate and get your key messages in front of more people.
Make them complete and unified
The first and easiest way to optimize your staff email signatures is simply by including all relevant contact information. Typically, this includes:
Full name
Professional title
Email address
Work phone number
Company website
Company logo
Company social media feeds
Of course, it is not enough to merely include all relevant information; you also want to ensure that each staff member’s email signature is formatted uniformly. To achieve this, document each element of your agency’s email signature format and circulate it accordingly. Consider working with a graphic designer on a mockup that new employees can refer to as they onboard.
Fold this mockup into your firm’s style guide. Like any other piece of digital collateral, the signature needs to be aligned with and reflective of your overall brand.
The rationale for taking these steps is two-fold. You convey a stronger sense of professionalism. You also verify that interested prospects will have all information they need to connect with you and perhaps do business in the future.
Promote, promote, promote!
While completing your signature is a great first step, it is only one part of a larger process. Email signatures can be much more than basic contact information. They can also be a place to promote your events, products and special deals.
The best way to do this is by deploying a visual element like a logo, image or GIF. Typically, these visual elements appear in a long, rectangular format, often around 700×200 to be precise. Once again, working with a graphic designer can be helpful here, as they assist you in making sure your graphic is attention-grabbing, branded and sized correctly.
Get those clicks
Perhaps the best part of optimizing your email signature is that you can embed hyperlinks to achieve key marketing objectives. For example, if growing your social media following is an important goal for your agency, include logos for each social media site where you have an account and link them back to your firm’s profiles.
Repeat this process for other objectives. Want to expand your newsletter distribution list? Place a link in your signature. Running a promotion? Include a banner image and hyperlink it to a special landing page on your website.
The data suggests that taking these simple steps can pay off handsomely – with some figures showing an increase in your email marketing CTR (click-through-rate) of up to 10%.[ii]
Don’t leave money on the table
These days, every company must be on the hunt for untapped marketing opportunities. After all, finding innovative, appealing and unobtrusive ways to message your initiatives is essential to standing apart from the competition. Your firm’s email signature represents a golden opportunity to reinforce your brand’s professionalism and competency, and message your products and services. Doing anything less is leaving money on the table.
Participating in events is a shrewd way to promote your business. Here’s how to fully leverage your presence.
Despite the importance of digital marketing in today’s economy, sometimes the old ways are still best. Person-to-person marketing is often the most impactful method for spreading the word about your business. Participating in events or tradeshows is a great way to deploy this type of outreach. Here are a few tips for making the most out of these opportunities – before, during and after the event!
Before the Event
While participating in events is about person-to-person marketing, digital marketing still has an important role to play. Let’s be honest, if you don’t let people know your business will be at an event, people won’t seek you out and you won’t get a chance to have the type of conversations that can drive eventual business gains.
Start promoting your attendance at an event well in advance. First, determine your goals, audience, messages, channels and budget. Then, structure these items around a realistic timeline. Next, establish some effective strategies and tactics to get your message out, such as:
Creating a social media campaign communicating where you’ll be located at the event site and a value proposition for why attendees should visit your booth.
Putting notices about the event in your newsletter.
Establishing an email marketing campaign.
Connecting with the hosting organization behind the event to inquire about joint-promotional efforts or opportunities.
Writing related content like a blog entry.
As with any other marketing plan, you’ll want to ensure that you also attach evaluation metrics to the campaign to gauge your efforts. It’s difficult to over-emphasize how important this step is. Without metrics, you will be unable to make real-time adjustments to your marketing efforts or fully assess your ROI.
During the Event
One of the most important things to remember is that your marketing efforts don’t end once the event begins. When you’re on-site, you will have three new marketing priorities:
Continue to attract people to your booth
Leverage news from the event
Build prospects
Just because the event has started doesn’t mean you should stop building out and disseminating event-related content. Continue to use social media, blogs or emails to promote your participation in the event and to discuss its highlights to position yourself as a thought leader. Doing this will serve two purposes. In the short term, it will remind people to visit your booth while the event is going on. In the long term, it will enhance your firm’s standing for those who couldn’t attend but may be following via digital channels.
Once you have people paying attention to your presence at an event, however, there are other steps to take. Ensure your business is represented in a way that is professional and unified by creating a fully branded booth with consistent colors, logos and lettering. Including an interactive element is a great way to deepen the impact of your booth and your overall presence at the event. A photo backdrop is just one example of something you could do. Event attendees will be naturally drawn to your booth to commemorate their experience and may even share their photos on social – further extending your reach.
If you pull all of this off, you can effectively grow your business’s brand awareness. Best of all, if people have a positive experience visiting your booth, they will be more inclined to engage with you and share their contact details.
After the Event
Once an event has come and gone, it can be tempting to rest on your laurels; but you can’t stop just yet. After you’ve put away your booth and left the venue, you still need to do something with the contact information you’ve gained. All the business cards you’ve collected or email addresses you’ve compiled need to be sorted and organized.
The next step is to follow up with your new prospects. But before you start emailing contacts or calling them over the phone, just think for a moment. Is that the right approach? Where do people actually spend most of their time these days? Where do they feel the most comfortable interacting with acquaintances? Social media, that’s where! Seek them out on LinkedIn first and build authentic connections before you start marketing to them more directly. People are much more inclined to buy from you if they have a strong sense of who you are and what you can do for them.
Conclusion
Events require a lot of work, even if you are merely a participant and especially if you look at them as a golden opportunity to promote your business. But by adhering to best practices and solid marketing principles, you can fully leverage the unique platform offered by the event environment.
Before you can wow with your email copy, you must first hook your audience.
Email marketing can be hit or miss. While you can labor over your copy and toil over accompanying graphics, ultimately your message may still go unread. We’re all inundated with email these days. How can you best position your campaigns to break through the noise? Although sometimes treated as an afterthought, your email’s subject line is actually one of the most important tools you have for boosting open percentages and increasing your CTRs (click through rates). Let’s look at some of the ways you can optimize your subject lines to make your email campaigns more widely read and impactful.
Keep it Simple
It’s easy to overthink subject lines. Although it’s good to take a strategic approach, always remember simplicity. Generally, subject lines should be short and should not mislead or overpromise anything about your email’s contents. The consequences of not doing this can be dire, as you can annoy your audience or even alienate them from future campaigns.
Research and Wordsmithing
Because subject lines should be short, each word you select matters a great deal. You don’t want to leave anything to chance here, which means you’re going to need to do some keyword research. Whenever you write a subject line, use words that are relevant and align with your audience’s needs and intent. There are many different tools out there — both free and paid — to help marketers choose the right words. Find the one that will work for your organization and use it to look closely at several metrics, specifically search volume and search intent.
Personalization
As the world has gone digital-first over the past couple of decades, it has become ever easier to create and disseminate marketing campaigns. Yet while these changes have brought about an unprecedented level of convenience and productivity, personalization and human connection in marketing has become increasingly difficult. Still, there are ways you can add personalization and warmth to your subject lines:
You can insert your recipients’ names into the subject line.
You can refer to other types of personal information – such as the cities in which your recipients live.
Flip the focus of your personalization efforts back on yourself by personalizing your sender address.
Emojis and Numbers
Sometimes words, however pretty they may be, are simply not enough. To command your readers’ finite attention, you may also want to consider using emojis or numbers to break up text. This does carry a bit of a risk, however, as emojis may be considered inappropriate with certain audiences. That said, if you are writing a fun or celebratory-type email, leveraging emojis can enhance the impact of your email and encourage more people to open it.
Numbers function differently. If you can naturally weave figures like percentages into your subject lines, you may attract more people to open your emails. Numbers simply stand out more than additional text, and for many audience members, they may help them more quickly understand your email’s contents. Beware, however, of overloading your subject lines with numbers – as this can come off as “spammy.” And never include a misleading figure. Your audience will not appreciate the deceit, and you will appear untrustworthy and unprofessional as a result.
Follow the Tried-and-True
There are several tried-and-true marketing methods that you can build your email subject lines around, which, when paired with some of the other tactics here, can be especially powerful.
Scarcity: Few things motivate human beings more than the fear of missing out. By framing your email as containing something like a limited-time offer, you speak directly to that primal fear and can give your recipients the push they need to open your email and engage with your content.
Curiosity: Similarly, you can treat your subject line as a sort of teaser for the email’s contents. Give just enough information to spark interest with your target audience but allude that the truly valuable information lies within the message’s body copy.
Timeliness: Finally, there is always timeliness. By conveying that your email contents are time-sensitive, recipients are less likely to ignore it or tell themselves that they will circle back around later.
Toward More Effective Email Marketing
Raising brand awareness and forming valuable customer connections isn’t easy. In a competitive environment, businesses need to ensure they are maximizing the value of all their marketing methods and strategies. As we’ve written before, email marketing is still a viable, low-cost way to promote your products and services. But to gain positive ROI, its essential to optimize every aspect of your messaging. And that includes taking a hard look at your subject lines and doing everything you can to make them memorable.
