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Day: February 18, 2020

The Future of Ubersuggest

* Please read the whole post, I have some good news at the bottom, but it won’t make sense unless you read the whole post.

Do you know why I got into SEO?

Not many people know this, but I grew up in middle-class America, and I wanted a better life for me and my parents.

When I was 16 years old, I worked at a theme park called Knotts Berry Farm where I picked up trash, cleaned restrooms, and swept up vomit every single day.

I didn’t mind it because that’s life and I needed the money.

At 16, I realized I was too young to get a high paying job, so I did the next best thing… I started a business.

But making $5.75 an hour picking up trash wasn’t enough to market my business, though. The only solution that I could think of was SEO because if you put in the time and effort you can get the traffic for free.

It’s also the main reason I fell in love with it… it
gives the little guy a chance to compete with the big guys
.

And over the years I wanted to pay it forward and help out all of the entrepreneurs and small companies so they can do the same… succeed without having to spend a lot of money.

So, what did I do?

Well over the years, I’ve produced a ton of free content, videos, and guides that help entrepreneurs and marketers of all sizes succeed.

And in February 2017, I decided to take it to the next level by acquiring Ubersuggest for $120,000.

When I first bought it, I had the dream of creating an SEO tool that could compete with the big players that charged $100+ a month, but of course, offer it for free.

The developers that I had at that time estimated that I could do this for $30,000 to $45,000 a month. That was perfect as I had no issue losing that much money each month.

But as we got rolling and kept adding in more features, our
expenses continually climbed. Just look at what I spent in the last month…

I spent $89,930 on hosting so far in January with an estimated spend of $128,680 for February. But again, let’s stick with January…

My back-end development bill from Tryolabs was $47,885 for January.

My data feed from SEO Power Suite, Data For SEO, and Shared Count totaled $75,253 for January.

And of course, my front-end developers as well as my dev-ops team Netlabs, which ran me $22,700.

Then if you add on miscellaneous costs, such as support, design, and project management, I was out another $11,450.

All in all, I spent $247,218 during the month of January 2020.

Keep in mind that my costs are continually rising. As the tool gets more popular, it costs me more.

One of the big reasons for the server expenses is scrapers.

Believe it or not, a lot of companies are scraping our data and continually rotating up IPs and creating fake accounts, which increases our server expenses. Especially when you consider that they are researching vague SEO terms or domains that aren’t cached in our system.

Don’t feel bad for me

Now the purpose of this post wasn’t to make you feel bad or guilty (unless you are scraping me). I just wanted to be transparent about my situation.

Originally, I was hoping that I could convert a portion of the Ubersuggest customer base into agency clients but as we continually move upstream and work with bigger brands, the conversion rate from an Ubersuggest visitor to a paying consulting customer has been low.

As that didn’t work out the way I wanted, which I learned around 11 months ago, it became harder and harder for me to eat the costs as they continually grew and I didn’t have a way to pay for them other than to dip into my own savings.

So, I started searching for solutions, such as turning
Ubersuggest into a non-profit and raise money from foundations to help support
the cost. I tried that for 5 months and I didn’t gain much traction.

I also tried to see if I could get sponsors for the tool who would help cover the costs, but that didn’t work out well either. Instead, many of them offered to buy the company for millions of dollars (some in the 8 figures) but I didn’t want to sell it as I knew their goal would be to turn it into another $100-a-month tool, which didn’t sit well with me.

After running out of options, I had no choice but to make some changes to Ubersuggest (don’t worry it is not closing down). But you can guess what the changes are.

But don’t worry

First and foremost, my goal is still to give as much away for free as I can. Within Ubersuggest, you will still be able to do a lot for free…

Creating projects

You will always be able to create projects and track your rankings. And just like before you always have been limited on the number of keywords you can track and that, of course, is due to costs.

Keyword research

Within the app, you will still be able to see keyword research data.

You’ll see a chart with the latest few months’ traffic volume, data on mobile versus desktop search volume, demographic data, and even keyword recommendations.

And you can, of course, continually find new keywords to target.

Sure, some of the data is blocked, but did you know that
only 14.3% of people used to register for a free account to unlock that data.

In other words, most of you never even registered because the application shows you enough for free without needing to log in.

Content ideas

Similar to before, you can also see popular blog post suggestions for any given keyword.

You’ll also be able to see the top keywords a blog post
ranks for and the backlinks pointing to that URL.

Again, keep in mind the majority of you only looked at the
top 10 results as 14.3% of you registered for a free account to unlock more
data.

Traffic Analyzer

You will still be able to look up any domain and get stats
on it.

Historical data is blocked, but you can see the last few
months which is enough for most of you.

You’ll also be able to see the top pages for any domain and the keywords that page ranks for as well as backlinks.

The same goes for the keywords any domain ranks for.

Some of the data is blocked, but just like before only 14.3%
of you registered to view that data. Which means 85.7% of you are happy with
the free data.

SEO Analyzer

Not much has changed here, you can still analyze over 100 pages on your site and figure out which errors you have.

Here’s an interesting fact: Did you know the average site that goes through Ubersuggest only has 48 pages?

The median number of pages a site has in our system was similar at 43 pages.

And of course, there is the backlinks report, which now
shows new and lost links as well as historical link growth.

Similar to what I mentioned above, very few people really cared to see the blocked off information as only 14.3% of you registered.

My dream

My goal in life is to help people generate more traffic. And I believe Ubersuggest can get better results and give you a fighting chance.

I also want to continually make the tool better. For example, why can’t SEO be automated? If you can have self-driving cars, there is no reason why you can’t automate SEO through artificial intelligence and machine learning.

But with the rising expenses, I was left with 2 options… either shut the tool down (which isn’t an option for me) or figure out a way to cover my expenses.

In the long run, I can’t keep sustaining the loss of $247,218 a month forever, especially when that number is climbing (that’s roughly 3 million dollars a year).

My team and I came up with an interesting concept that we think is fair and hopefully, you won’t be upset about it.

Remember how I said only 14.3% of people register to view more data but 85.7% never register as they were happy with the free data?

Well, nothing will change for 85.7% of you.

As for the 14.3% who register to create projects and track keywords, you can still do that for free. But if you want to add more projects or track a lot more keywords, you can upgrade to a paid plan.

The same goes for keyword research. If you want to view even more data, you can pay for the blocked data. Or if you want to analyze thousands of pages on your site through the site audit, you can also upgrade.

Don’t worry though, I am still following my original
mission.

I promise to always keep Ubersuggest affordable (and mainly free). I decided to take the Netflix/Amazon approach and try to make the cost super affordable (as my goal is to only break-even).

On top of that, I made it a 7-day free trial.

You’ll also find that the pricing varies per country as my costs vary per country. In regions like India and Brazil when someone registers, creates a project and tracks keywords, my expenses are substantially lower than if someone from the United States registers and creates projects and tracks keywords.

The same goes for labor. My support team in India and other regions costs substantially less than the team in the United States or the United Kingdom.

If you also pay annually, you’ll get 2 months free so you can save even more money.

And as I mentioned above, I want to stick to the original mission, which is to help people generate more traffic without having to spend a lot of money.

There will always be a very generous free plan and I am hoping that I can break even by charging for a portion of the application.

What’s next?

Ubersuggest is going to continually get better.

To make things up to you, over the next month or two I am going to release a Chrome extension that will give you tons of insights for free. And of course, if you want a little bit more you can pay.

Here’s what the free extension will look like…

Whenever you perform a Google search you will be able to see
the volume for any search term in any major country. And if you click the “view
all” link you will see more data on that keyword.

You’ll also see the average domain score for any given
ranking page and the number of links you need to rank in the top 10.

As you scroll down and go through each of the ranking
results, you’ll see the domain score for each URL, social shares, and the
backlinks pointing to that search result.

You can even drill down and see the top links pointing to
each URL.

Now if you head over to the sidebar, you’ll see a list of
related keywords as well as data on the top 10 keyword recommendations.

If you scroll a bit more, you’ll see a graph that shows how many backlinks each result has so that way you can see how many backlinks again you roughly need to rank in the top 10.

At the very bottom of the search results, you’ll see data on related keywords.

As time goes on not only will you have the extension, but I
will continually add more and more features for free.

Conclusion

I’m sorry that I have to start covering my costs, but I hope
you understand at the same time.

From my projections, it will take me roughly 6 months to break even, so I am going to be out a decent amount of money over the next 6 months… but that’s life.

I am not looking to recuperate my original investment and I don’t mind that being a loss, but once I break even on a monthly basis I will continue to either open up more stuff for free or consider lowering the monthly pricing if possible.

Again, I am really sorry, but I hope you understand that it isn’t sustainable for me to spend $247,218 a month indefinitely.

I am open to hearing your thoughts or ideas. I also want to let you know I appreciate everything you have done to support Ubersuggest and my site.

The post The Future of Ubersuggest appeared first on Neil Patel.

23 Ways to Tag and Segment Your Subscribers in AWeber

The days of one-size-fits-all email marketing are long gone. To get better results, you need to send targeted, personalized emails.

By delivering hyper-relevant content to those who are most interested in it, your subscribers will open, click, and purchase more.

In this post, you’ll learn how to use tags to create more targeted segments (or groups) of subscribers and increase your engagement.

What are tags and why should you use them?

Tags are simple words or short phrases you use to categorize and group your subscribers based on their interests, behaviors, or other shared attributes.

They allow you to segment your audience, send targeted one-time broadcast emails, and trigger targeted, automated campaigns. This leads to better subscriber engagement, improved chances of hitting the inbox instead of the spam folder, and higher conversions.

Start getting more personal with your subscribers and try these 23 easy ways to tag your subscribers in AWeber.

1. Tag someone who fills out your AWeber sign up form.

The easiest way to tag a subscriber is when they opt in to your email list using a sign up form.

With AWeber, you can create unlimited sign up forms, and you can apply different tags to subscribers when they fill out different forms. This way, you’ll know exactly which form a subscriber used to sign up.

For example, if you offer a 7-day email course, weekly newsletter, and downloadable checklist as lead magnets, you can have three separate sign up forms that apply unique tags to your subscribers. This lets you see quickly which lead magnets they signed up for. Iff they opt in to all of them, all three tags get applied!

Related: How to tag an AWeber sign up form

2. Tag someone who completes a custom field on your sign up form.

Let’s say you want to know a bit more about your subscribers at the time they sign up, such as what topics they’re interested in, or their experience level in a particular skill you teach.

You can collect this additional information, beyond just their name and email address, using custom fields on your AWeber sign up form, and you can associate a tag with each custom choice.

This allows you to segment your subscribers from the time they join your list, and create personalized experiences for each of them.

Related: How to tag a custom field in an AWeber sign up form

3. Tag someone who fills out a sign up form on the AWeber Atom App.

Do you attend in-person events? Using the AWeber Atom App, you can create a sign up form on your mobile device to collect subscribers’ information in person, and use tags to remind you which event you met them at.

And if you attend multiple events, you can change which tags your Atom App sign up form applies. That way, you know where you met each particular subscriber.

You can even set up an automated welcome Campaign ahead of time that would go out to each new subscriber you met at that event.

Related: How to tag someone with the AWeber Atom App

4. Tag subscribers when you import them into AWeber.

Perhaps you have a list of new subscribers you’re migrating to AWeber. (Side note: We offer free migration support. Contact our experts to learn more!) You can easily import your list along with any existing tags or apply new tags.

You can also update existing subscribers’ tags when importing a list into AWeber. This will add any new tags in your import file to your existing subscribers.

Related: How to tag subscribers when importing into AWeber

5. Tag someone who fills out a sign up form on a landing page that integrates with AWeber.

You can use a landing page provider like Unbouce or Growtheme to invite your audience to subscribe to your email list, and tag them so you can send them the perfect email campaign based on the page or form they completed.

6. Tag someone who fills out a sign up form that integrates with AWeber.

Although AWeber enables you to create sign up forms in your account, you can also integrate your AWeber account with other sign up form providers, such as OptinMonster, Hello Bar, MailMunch or ConvertFlow. These providers support AWeber tags, allowing you to tag your new subscribers in your AWeber account.

7. Tag someone who makes a purchase.

Have a digital or physical product? Providers like Shopify, WooCommerce, ThriveCart, 3dcart, and DirectPay allow you to easily add your customers into your AWeber account and tag them so you know who purchased from you.

AWeber’s Shopify integration even allows you to apply unique tags for each product your subscribers purchase.

Related: Watch this demo to learn more about AWeber’s Shopify integration

8. Tag someone who abandons their shopping cart.

 With AWeber’s Shopify integration, you can tag a subscriber who left items in their cart and didn’t purchase them. You can send them an automated email to encourage them to finish their purchase.

You can apply a generic tag when someone abandons any purchase  , or you can apply unique tags based on the product that someone abandons.

Related: How to set up cart abandonment with Shopify

9. Tag someone who completes a quiz.

Quizzes are a great way to provide a fun, interactive, and educational experience for your audience. Tools like Interact and Quiz Cat allow you to create engaging quizzes and tag your subscribers in AWeber who complete your quiz.

10. Tag someone who registers for your webinar.

Webinars are a great way to engage your audience directly and provide educational content to your subscribers. Tools like EasyWebinar allow you to add your webinar registrants directly to AWeber, and tag them based on the webinar they signed up for.

Then, you can automate reminder emails and follow up with your registrants after the webinar to share the recording and special offers.

11. Tag someone who subscribes from a text message.

Using a tool like Call Loop allows you to invite your audience to text a number to join your email list. Using the Call Loop integration with AWeber, you can add these individuals automatically to your email list, and tag them.

12. Tag someone who enters your contest.

Contests are a great way to engage your community and grow your email list. Using tools like Gleam or ViralSweep, you can automatically add contest participants to your AWeber email list, and tag them based on the contest they joined.

13. Tag someone who uses an online calculator or requests a custom quote.

Do you offer quotes, online calculators, polls or chatbots as part of your business? Tools like Outgrow allow you to add your interested prospects automatically to your AWeber account, and tag them accordingly, so you know exactly who they are and what they expressed interest in.

14. Tag new contacts from your CRM.

Do you use a CRM to manage client relationships? With tools like Agile CRM, you can automatically add your client and prospect contacts to your AWeber account, tag them with specific categories, and automate emails to keep your contacts engaged.

15. Tag someone who begins your automated campaign.

One way to tag subscribers is when they begin a campaign. This is helpful if you want to easily identify subscribers who are currently going through a Campaign so you don’t send them your regular broadcast emails as well.

Once they complete the Campaign, you can automatically remove that tag.

Related: How to use tags at the beginning of a Campaign 

16. Tag someone who completes your automated campaign.

Another way to tag subscribers in a campaign is at the end of the series. This allows you to link campaigns together.

For example, you may have multiple welcome campaigns for different sign up forms, and you may want them all to flow into a general nurture campaign after each welcome campaign is complete. Simply apply the same tag at the end of each campaign, and then set the general nurture Campaign to start on that tag.

Related: How to use tags at the end of a Campaign

17. Tag someone at any point in your automated campaign.

Let’s say you have a welcome campaign where your first two emails welcome your new subscribers and introduce them to you and your business.

Then, for the rest of the campaign, you’re trying to sell them on your products or services. You can apply a tag before the sales emails begin so you know which subscribers are being actively sold to. With this data, you can assess the effectiveness of your offers and improve the sales copy.

Related: How to use tags in the middle of a Campaign

18. Tag someone who opens an email in your automated campaign.

Tags can also be used to record specific actions your subscribers take within your campaign. For example, you can tag subscribers when they open specific messages in your campaign.

This helps you identify subscribers who expressed an interest in the topic of the email by opening it.

Related: How to add a tag when someone opens a message in a Campaign

19. Tag someone who clicks a link in your automated campaign.

Similarly, you can tag subscribers when they click specific links within the messages of your campaigns. This is helpful when you’re trying to learn more about your subscriber’s preferences.

For example, in our blog welcome campaign, we ask what our subscribers are interested in learning, and we provide links within that email. Each link has a different tag, and it allows our subscribers to self-select their interests so we can better target them with relevant content.

Related: How to add a tag when someone clicks a link in a Campaign

20. Tag someone who opens a broadcast email.

You can also tag subscribers when they open one-time, broadcast emails. Similar to tagging subscribers who open your Campaign messages, this helps you identify who is interested in the topic of the email enough to want to open it.

Related: How to tag someone who opens a broadcast

21. Tag someone who clicks a link in your broadcast email.

If you’re promoting an upcoming webinar in a broadcast email, you can tag anyone who clicks the registration link and send them an automated email with the link to join the webinar. This improves the subscriber experience by eliminating the need to fill out another form to sign up for the webinar.

Related: How to tag someone who clicks a link in a broadcast

22. Manually tag an individual subscriber.

In addition to automatically tagging subscribers, there are times when you may want to manually apply tags to individual subscribers. 

Let’s say you meet someone at an event and they agree to join your email list, but you don’t have a sign up form handy. You can add them to your list manually, and apply a tag that indicates where you met them. You can also apply another tag that adds them to an automated email campaign.

Related: How to manually tag an individual subscriber

23. Manually tag a large group of subscribers.

Let’s say you want to launch a new automated email campaign to subscribers who are already on your list. You can create the campaign and set it to launch for subscribers with a certain tag. Then, identify which subscribers you’d like to add to the campaign, and apply a tag to them all at once.

Or, let’s say you’re launching a new course and want to promote it to subscribers who have expressed interest in the course topic in the past. You can search for those subscribers and bulk apply a tag to them. henThen, create a segment of subscribers with this tag and send a one-time email to them that promotes your new course.

Related: How to manually tag a group of subscribers

Start using tags today.

Using tags to organize your subscribers enables you to provide a more personalized experience for your subscribers and increase your engagement.

Not an AWeber customer yet? Start your free 30-day trial today and try AWeber’s tags today.

The post 23 Ways to Tag and Segment Your Subscribers in AWeber appeared first on Email Marketing Tips.

23 Ways to Tag and Segment Your Subscribers in AWeber

The days of one-size-fits-all email marketing are long gone. To get better results, you need to send targeted, personalized emails.

By delivering hyper-relevant content to those who are most interested in it, your subscribers will open, click, and purchase more.

In this post, you’ll learn how to use tags to create more targeted segments (or groups) of subscribers and increase your engagement.

What are tags and why should you use them?

Tags are simple words or short phrases you use to categorize and group your subscribers based on their interests, behaviors, or other shared attributes.

They allow you to segment your audience, send targeted one-time broadcast emails, and trigger targeted, automated campaigns. This leads to better subscriber engagement, improved chances of hitting the inbox instead of the spam folder, and higher conversions.

Start getting more personal with your subscribers and try these 23 easy ways to tag your subscribers in AWeber.

1. Tag someone who fills out your AWeber sign up form.

The easiest way to tag a subscriber is when they opt in to your email list using a sign up form.

With AWeber, you can create unlimited sign up forms, and you can apply different tags to subscribers when they fill out different forms. This way, you’ll know exactly which form a subscriber used to sign up.

For example, if you offer a 7-day email course, weekly newsletter, and downloadable checklist as lead magnets, you can have three separate sign up forms that apply unique tags to your subscribers. This lets you see quickly which lead magnets they signed up for. Iff they opt in to all of them, all three tags get applied!

Related: How to tag an AWeber sign up form

2. Tag someone who completes a custom field on your sign up form.

Let’s say you want to know a bit more about your subscribers at the time they sign up, such as what topics they’re interested in, or their experience level in a particular skill you teach.

You can collect this additional information, beyond just their name and email address, using custom fields on your AWeber sign up form, and you can associate a tag with each custom choice.

This allows you to segment your subscribers from the time they join your list, and create personalized experiences for each of them.

Related: How to tag a custom field in an AWeber sign up form

3. Tag someone who fills out a sign up form on the AWeber Atom App.

Do you attend in-person events? Using the AWeber Atom App, you can create a sign up form on your mobile device to collect subscribers’ information in person, and use tags to remind you which event you met them at.

And if you attend multiple events, you can change which tags your Atom App sign up form applies. That way, you know where you met each particular subscriber.

You can even set up an automated welcome Campaign ahead of time that would go out to each new subscriber you met at that event.

Related: How to tag someone with the AWeber Atom App

4. Tag subscribers when you import them into AWeber.

Perhaps you have a list of new subscribers you’re migrating to AWeber. (Side note: We offer free migration support. Contact our experts to learn more!) You can easily import your list along with any existing tags or apply new tags.

You can also update existing subscribers’ tags when importing a list into AWeber. This will add any new tags in your import file to your existing subscribers.

Related: How to tag subscribers when importing into AWeber

5. Tag someone who fills out a sign up form on a landing page that integrates with AWeber.

You can use a landing page provider like Unbouce or Growtheme to invite your audience to subscribe to your email list, and tag them so you can send them the perfect email campaign based on the page or form they completed.

6. Tag someone who fills out a sign up form that integrates with AWeber.

Although AWeber enables you to create sign up forms in your account, you can also integrate your AWeber account with other sign up form providers, such as OptinMonster, Hello Bar, MailMunch or ConvertFlow. These providers support AWeber tags, allowing you to tag your new subscribers in your AWeber account.

7. Tag someone who makes a purchase.

Have a digital or physical product? Providers like Shopify, WooCommerce, ThriveCart, 3dcart, and DirectPay allow you to easily add your customers into your AWeber account and tag them so you know who purchased from you.

AWeber’s Shopify integration even allows you to apply unique tags for each product your subscribers purchase.

Related: Watch this demo to learn more about AWeber’s Shopify integration

8. Tag someone who abandons their shopping cart.

 With AWeber’s Shopify integration, you can tag a subscriber who left items in their cart and didn’t purchase them. You can send them an automated email to encourage them to finish their purchase.

You can apply a generic tag when someone abandons any purchase  , or you can apply unique tags based on the product that someone abandons.

Related: How to set up cart abandonment with Shopify

9. Tag someone who completes a quiz.

Quizzes are a great way to provide a fun, interactive, and educational experience for your audience. Tools like Interact and Quiz Cat allow you to create engaging quizzes and tag your subscribers in AWeber who complete your quiz.

10. Tag someone who registers for your webinar.

Webinars are a great way to engage your audience directly and provide educational content to your subscribers. Tools like EasyWebinar allow you to add your webinar registrants directly to AWeber, and tag them based on the webinar they signed up for.

Then, you can automate reminder emails and follow up with your registrants after the webinar to share the recording and special offers.

11. Tag someone who subscribes from a text message.

Using a tool like Call Loop allows you to invite your audience to text a number to join your email list. Using the Call Loop integration with AWeber, you can add these individuals automatically to your email list, and tag them.

12. Tag someone who enters your contest.

Contests are a great way to engage your community and grow your email list. Using tools like Gleam or ViralSweep, you can automatically add contest participants to your AWeber email list, and tag them based on the contest they joined.

13. Tag someone who uses an online calculator or requests a custom quote.

Do you offer quotes, online calculators, polls or chatbots as part of your business? Tools like Outgrow allow you to add your interested prospects automatically to your AWeber account, and tag them accordingly, so you know exactly who they are and what they expressed interest in.

14. Tag new contacts from your CRM.

Do you use a CRM to manage client relationships? With tools like Agile CRM, you can automatically add your client and prospect contacts to your AWeber account, tag them with specific categories, and automate emails to keep your contacts engaged.

15. Tag someone who begins your automated campaign.

One way to tag subscribers is when they begin a campaign. This is helpful if you want to easily identify subscribers who are currently going through a Campaign so you don’t send them your regular broadcast emails as well.

Once they complete the Campaign, you can automatically remove that tag.

Related: How to use tags at the beginning of a Campaign 

16. Tag someone who completes your automated campaign.

Another way to tag subscribers in a campaign is at the end of the series. This allows you to link campaigns together.

For example, you may have multiple welcome campaigns for different sign up forms, and you may want them all to flow into a general nurture campaign after each welcome campaign is complete. Simply apply the same tag at the end of each campaign, and then set the general nurture Campaign to start on that tag.

Related: How to use tags at the end of a Campaign

17. Tag someone at any point in your automated campaign.

Let’s say you have a welcome campaign where your first two emails welcome your new subscribers and introduce them to you and your business.

Then, for the rest of the campaign, you’re trying to sell them on your products or services. You can apply a tag before the sales emails begin so you know which subscribers are being actively sold to. With this data, you can assess the effectiveness of your offers and improve the sales copy.

Related: How to use tags in the middle of a Campaign

18. Tag someone who opens an email in your automated campaign.

Tags can also be used to record specific actions your subscribers take within your campaign. For example, you can tag subscribers when they open specific messages in your campaign.

This helps you identify subscribers who expressed an interest in the topic of the email by opening it.

Related: How to add a tag when someone opens a message in a Campaign

19. Tag someone who clicks a link in your automated campaign.

Similarly, you can tag subscribers when they click specific links within the messages of your campaigns. This is helpful when you’re trying to learn more about your subscriber’s preferences.

For example, in our blog welcome campaign, we ask what our subscribers are interested in learning, and we provide links within that email. Each link has a different tag, and it allows our subscribers to self-select their interests so we can better target them with relevant content.

Related: How to add a tag when someone clicks a link in a Campaign

20. Tag someone who opens a broadcast email.

You can also tag subscribers when they open one-time, broadcast emails. Similar to tagging subscribers who open your Campaign messages, this helps you identify who is interested in the topic of the email enough to want to open it.

Related: How to tag someone who opens a broadcast

21. Tag someone who clicks a link in your broadcast email.

If you’re promoting an upcoming webinar in a broadcast email, you can tag anyone who clicks the registration link and send them an automated email with the link to join the webinar. This improves the subscriber experience by eliminating the need to fill out another form to sign up for the webinar.

Related: How to tag someone who clicks a link in a broadcast

22. Manually tag an individual subscriber.

In addition to automatically tagging subscribers, there are times when you may want to manually apply tags to individual subscribers. 

Let’s say you meet someone at an event and they agree to join your email list, but you don’t have a sign up form handy. You can add them to your list manually, and apply a tag that indicates where you met them. You can also apply another tag that adds them to an automated email campaign.

Related: How to manually tag an individual subscriber

23. Manually tag a large group of subscribers.

Let’s say you want to launch a new automated email campaign to subscribers who are already on your list. You can create the campaign and set it to launch for subscribers with a certain tag. Then, identify which subscribers you’d like to add to the campaign, and apply a tag to them all at once.

Or, let’s say you’re launching a new course and want to promote it to subscribers who have expressed interest in the course topic in the past. You can search for those subscribers and bulk apply a tag to them. henThen, create a segment of subscribers with this tag and send a one-time email to them that promotes your new course.

Related: How to manually tag a group of subscribers

Start using tags today.

Using tags to organize your subscribers enables you to provide a more personalized experience for your subscribers and increase your engagement.

Not an AWeber customer yet? Start your free 30-day trial today and try AWeber’s tags today.

The post 23 Ways to Tag and Segment Your Subscribers in AWeber appeared first on Email Marketing Tips.

23 Ways to Tag and Segment Your Subscribers in AWeber

The days of one-size-fits-all email marketing are long gone. To get better results, you need to send targeted, personalized emails.

By delivering hyper-relevant content to those who are most interested in it, your subscribers will open, click, and purchase more.

In this post, you’ll learn how to use tags to create more targeted segments (or groups) of subscribers and increase your engagement.

What are tags and why should you use them?

Tags are simple words or short phrases you use to categorize and group your subscribers based on their interests, behaviors, or other shared attributes.

They allow you to segment your audience, send targeted one-time broadcast emails, and trigger targeted, automated campaigns. This leads to better subscriber engagement, improved chances of hitting the inbox instead of the spam folder, and higher conversions.

Start getting more personal with your subscribers and try these 23 easy ways to tag your subscribers in AWeber.

1. Tag someone who fills out your AWeber sign up form.

The easiest way to tag a subscriber is when they opt in to your email list using a sign up form.

With AWeber, you can create unlimited sign up forms, and you can apply different tags to subscribers when they fill out different forms. This way, you’ll know exactly which form a subscriber used to sign up.

For example, if you offer a 7-day email course, weekly newsletter, and downloadable checklist as lead magnets, you can have three separate sign up forms that apply unique tags to your subscribers. This lets you see quickly which lead magnets they signed up for. Iff they opt in to all of them, all three tags get applied!

Related: How to tag an AWeber sign up form

2. Tag someone who completes a custom field on your sign up form.

Let’s say you want to know a bit more about your subscribers at the time they sign up, such as what topics they’re interested in, or their experience level in a particular skill you teach.

You can collect this additional information, beyond just their name and email address, using custom fields on your AWeber sign up form, and you can associate a tag with each custom choice.

This allows you to segment your subscribers from the time they join your list, and create personalized experiences for each of them.

Related: How to tag a custom field in an AWeber sign up form

3. Tag someone who fills out a sign up form on the AWeber Atom App.

Do you attend in-person events? Using the AWeber Atom App, you can create a sign up form on your mobile device to collect subscribers’ information in person, and use tags to remind you which event you met them at.

And if you attend multiple events, you can change which tags your Atom App sign up form applies. That way, you know where you met each particular subscriber.

You can even set up an automated welcome Campaign ahead of time that would go out to each new subscriber you met at that event.

Related: How to tag someone with the AWeber Atom App

4. Tag subscribers when you import them into AWeber.

Perhaps you have a list of new subscribers you’re migrating to AWeber. (Side note: We offer free migration support. Contact our experts to learn more!) You can easily import your list along with any existing tags or apply new tags.

You can also update existing subscribers’ tags when importing a list into AWeber. This will add any new tags in your import file to your existing subscribers.

Related: How to tag subscribers when importing into AWeber

5. Tag someone who fills out a sign up form on a landing page that integrates with AWeber.

You can use a landing page provider like Unbouce or Growtheme to invite your audience to subscribe to your email list, and tag them so you can send them the perfect email campaign based on the page or form they completed.

6. Tag someone who fills out a sign up form that integrates with AWeber.

Although AWeber enables you to create sign up forms in your account, you can also integrate your AWeber account with other sign up form providers, such as OptinMonster, Hello Bar, MailMunch or ConvertFlow. These providers support AWeber tags, allowing you to tag your new subscribers in your AWeber account.

7. Tag someone who makes a purchase.

Have a digital or physical product? Providers like Shopify, WooCommerce, ThriveCart, 3dcart, and DirectPay allow you to easily add your customers into your AWeber account and tag them so you know who purchased from you.

AWeber’s Shopify integration even allows you to apply unique tags for each product your subscribers purchase.

Related: Watch this demo to learn more about AWeber’s Shopify integration

8. Tag someone who abandons their shopping cart.

 With AWeber’s Shopify integration, you can tag a subscriber who left items in their cart and didn’t purchase them. You can send them an automated email to encourage them to finish their purchase.

You can apply a generic tag when someone abandons any purchase  , or you can apply unique tags based on the product that someone abandons.

Related: How to set up cart abandonment with Shopify

9. Tag someone who completes a quiz.

Quizzes are a great way to provide a fun, interactive, and educational experience for your audience. Tools like Interact and Quiz Cat allow you to create engaging quizzes and tag your subscribers in AWeber who complete your quiz.

10. Tag someone who registers for your webinar.

Webinars are a great way to engage your audience directly and provide educational content to your subscribers. Tools like EasyWebinar allow you to add your webinar registrants directly to AWeber, and tag them based on the webinar they signed up for.

Then, you can automate reminder emails and follow up with your registrants after the webinar to share the recording and special offers.

11. Tag someone who subscribes from a text message.

Using a tool like Call Loop allows you to invite your audience to text a number to join your email list. Using the Call Loop integration with AWeber, you can add these individuals automatically to your email list, and tag them.

12. Tag someone who enters your contest.

Contests are a great way to engage your community and grow your email list. Using tools like Gleam or ViralSweep, you can automatically add contest participants to your AWeber email list, and tag them based on the contest they joined.

13. Tag someone who uses an online calculator or requests a custom quote.

Do you offer quotes, online calculators, polls or chatbots as part of your business? Tools like Outgrow allow you to add your interested prospects automatically to your AWeber account, and tag them accordingly, so you know exactly who they are and what they expressed interest in.

14. Tag new contacts from your CRM.

Do you use a CRM to manage client relationships? With tools like Agile CRM, you can automatically add your client and prospect contacts to your AWeber account, tag them with specific categories, and automate emails to keep your contacts engaged.

15. Tag someone who begins your automated campaign.

One way to tag subscribers is when they begin a campaign. This is helpful if you want to easily identify subscribers who are currently going through a Campaign so you don’t send them your regular broadcast emails as well.

Once they complete the Campaign, you can automatically remove that tag.

Related: How to use tags at the beginning of a Campaign 

16. Tag someone who completes your automated campaign.

Another way to tag subscribers in a campaign is at the end of the series. This allows you to link campaigns together.

For example, you may have multiple welcome campaigns for different sign up forms, and you may want them all to flow into a general nurture campaign after each welcome campaign is complete. Simply apply the same tag at the end of each campaign, and then set the general nurture Campaign to start on that tag.

Related: How to use tags at the end of a Campaign

17. Tag someone at any point in your automated campaign.

Let’s say you have a welcome campaign where your first two emails welcome your new subscribers and introduce them to you and your business.

Then, for the rest of the campaign, you’re trying to sell them on your products or services. You can apply a tag before the sales emails begin so you know which subscribers are being actively sold to. With this data, you can assess the effectiveness of your offers and improve the sales copy.

Related: How to use tags in the middle of a Campaign

18. Tag someone who opens an email in your automated campaign.

Tags can also be used to record specific actions your subscribers take within your campaign. For example, you can tag subscribers when they open specific messages in your campaign.

This helps you identify subscribers who expressed an interest in the topic of the email by opening it.

Related: How to add a tag when someone opens a message in a Campaign

19. Tag someone who clicks a link in your automated campaign.

Similarly, you can tag subscribers when they click specific links within the messages of your campaigns. This is helpful when you’re trying to learn more about your subscriber’s preferences.

For example, in our blog welcome campaign, we ask what our subscribers are interested in learning, and we provide links within that email. Each link has a different tag, and it allows our subscribers to self-select their interests so we can better target them with relevant content.

Related: How to add a tag when someone clicks a link in a Campaign

20. Tag someone who opens a broadcast email.

You can also tag subscribers when they open one-time, broadcast emails. Similar to tagging subscribers who open your Campaign messages, this helps you identify who is interested in the topic of the email enough to want to open it.

Related: How to tag someone who opens a broadcast

21. Tag someone who clicks a link in your broadcast email.

If you’re promoting an upcoming webinar in a broadcast email, you can tag anyone who clicks the registration link and send them an automated email with the link to join the webinar. This improves the subscriber experience by eliminating the need to fill out another form to sign up for the webinar.

Related: How to tag someone who clicks a link in a broadcast

22. Manually tag an individual subscriber.

In addition to automatically tagging subscribers, there are times when you may want to manually apply tags to individual subscribers. 

Let’s say you meet someone at an event and they agree to join your email list, but you don’t have a sign up form handy. You can add them to your list manually, and apply a tag that indicates where you met them. You can also apply another tag that adds them to an automated email campaign.

Related: How to manually tag an individual subscriber

23. Manually tag a large group of subscribers.

Let’s say you want to launch a new automated email campaign to subscribers who are already on your list. You can create the campaign and set it to launch for subscribers with a certain tag. Then, identify which subscribers you’d like to add to the campaign, and apply a tag to them all at once.

Or, let’s say you’re launching a new course and want to promote it to subscribers who have expressed interest in the course topic in the past. You can search for those subscribers and bulk apply a tag to them. henThen, create a segment of subscribers with this tag and send a one-time email to them that promotes your new course.

Related: How to manually tag a group of subscribers

Start using tags today.

Using tags to organize your subscribers enables you to provide a more personalized experience for your subscribers and increase your engagement.

Not an AWeber customer yet? Start your free 30-day trial today and try AWeber’s tags today.

The post 23 Ways to Tag and Segment Your Subscribers in AWeber appeared first on Email Marketing Tips.

4 Ways to Use TikTok for Business

Wondering how to use TikTok for your business? Looking for tips to increase your TikTok success? In this article, you’ll discover four ways your business can succeed on TikTok. Is Your Audience on TikTok? TikTok is the newest trend in social media with more than 1.5 billion downloads on the App Store and Google Play and more than […]

The post 4 Ways to Use TikTok for Business appeared first on Social Media Marketing | Social Media Examiner.

Welcome to The New Decade of Marketing

Marketers, welcome to 2020.

This year begins the next decade of our profession. We can’t predict everything that will change in the next ten years, but we can take a look at what’s happening today and use it to better understand the change that is ahead of us.

Since 2010, the marketing world has changed … a lot. In the early 2010s, social networks were only starting to gain traction.

Facebook reached one billion users in late 2012. Instagram was launched in 2010. Snapchat didn’t exist until 2011.

Customer acquisition costs were low because we had new distribution platforms with hundreds of millions of users and only the early adopters within the marketing community trying to reach them.

Fast forward to 2020. Social networks have grown into a foundational aspect of our culture. Facebook has three billion active users. The competitive landscape is fierce — there are countless disruptions happening across every industry. The old guard is getting taken down by companies who provide a better experience from end to end.

Digital marketing channels are overflowing with noise — average customer acquisition costs have increased by 53% over the last five years.

Buyers have changed, too. Ten years ago, businesses won because they sold a product 10 times better than the competition.

Today, businesses win and lose because of their customer experience.

Whether it’s downloading a piece of educational content as a prospect or filing a support ticket as a customer, your buyers want their experience with your company to be simple. More than simple — frictionless.

As marketers, we’re the architects of this experience. Every touchpoint we have with buyers is an opportunity to gain trust. Yet many of us only focus on a small part of the customer journey.

Close to 40% of marketers list their top priority in 2020 as generating leads. Only 5% listed customer retention as a focus area.

Today’s businesses need marketing strategies that support the entire customer lifecycle. Increasingly vocal buyers, easily replicable products, and eroding trust in businesses mean that a delighted customer base is more influential in driving growth than any marketer or salesperson.

Focusing on acquisition at the expense of retention is just one way many of us are missing out on a huge growth opportunity.

Ten years ago, closed-loop reporting was impossible for many marketers. Today, rich attribution is available to all, but not quite yet the norm. Currently, only 52% of marketers use some form of attribution reporting. We expect that number to rise this year, as more companies embrace a platform approach to their software, enabling robust integrations between systems of record and systems of engagement.

We hope this enables marketers to make better business decisions. One of the most important metrics to track is the return on investment of marketing activities. Only 35% of our respondents replied that it is “very important” or “extremely important” to understand the ROI of any given campaign.

That’s low, but I don’t think the outstanding 65% is avoiding it. They’re facing a technology barrier that’s preventing them from measuring their work. Most software that’s built for frontline marketers isn’t quite powerful enough to capture this, and software that is sophisticated enough requires heavy IT or developer support. That is starting to change.

Ten years ago, having a content marketing strategy really meant that you had a blog. This year, for the first time, video content has surpassed blog posts as the top content marketing investment. Video-based platforms like YouTube show no signs of slowing growth––it was the only bright spot in Alphabet’s recent earnings report. Even so, I still see video being used mostly in the decision stage of the buyer’s journey.

Marketers create case study videos, product reviews, and videos for the sales team to use, whereas blogging still dominates acquisition strategies. I encourage marketers to think about how we can use videos as an awareness tool — it’s a massive opportunity.

As we enter the next decade of marketing, only one thing is certain: more change is coming. To help marketers everywhere get a head start this year, we sourced innovative strategies from marketing managers, directors, VPs, and CMOs, at HubSpot, Litmus, and Crayon, and surveyed over 3,400 marketers across the globe. The resulting report is an in-depth look at the current state of marketing.

It outlines our efforts to connect marketing to business growth. And it emphasizes our commitment to the entire customer experience across marketing, sales, and customer support.

It’s a scary and exciting time for marketers everywhere. As you’re planning for the future, questions are inevitable. This report is here to help you answer them.

There are plenty of State of Marketing Reports out there, but this isn’t one of them.

This is Not Another State of Marketing Report, by HubSpot.

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