Marcu Taylor's Blog, page 14

The Ultimate Guide to Web Form Optimisation

The average web form converts roughly 2.35% of users who click through to a landing. We’re really not fans of that statistic here are Venture harbour because we can tell you a 2.35% conversion rate from any of your lead generation forms is way lower than it should be.

We’re not saying the stat is inaccurate; we’re saying the average web form convert nowhere near as well as it should do.

That 2.35% average is for landing pages, too. But what about forms on your homepage, blog posts and pages that aren’t aggressively optimised for conversions – are you going to accept conversion rates lower than 2.35%?

No, of course you’re not.

You’re going to follow the steps in this ultimate guide to web form optimisation and walk all over the average conversion rates from underperforming web forms.

Designing forms that convert

It might be a cliche, but prevention is the best cure when it comes to crappy form conversion rates. Make no mistake about it, conversion optimisation is time-consuming, trick and a lot more difficult to make profitable than any of the CRO software providers will ever let on.

Designing forms that convert from day one is always better than optimising for performance later – so let’s start with this.

For a comprehensive look at form design and UX best practices, check out this blog post from earlier this year. In the meantime, here’s a quick summary of the essentials you need to know for designing high-converting forms from the get-go.

Multi-step forms outperform traditional designs

The single biggest takeaway we’ve had from testing forms over the past few years is that multi-step forms perform significantly better than traditional form designs – especially for important conversion goals or long forms.

More on this later.

Otherwise, stick to single column layouts

If you’re going for the traditional single-step form design, then stick to a single column layout. Aside from making them more legible and easier to comprehend, single-column layouts look less intimidating and they’re relatively simple to make responsive for different screen sizes.

The only exception I would suggest here is if your form has two or fewer fields (eg: email address and password) and a button. In this case, you might want to explore other layouts, such as horizontally stacking your fields above the CTA button.

*Note: This design from FreshBooks is using placeholders as field labels which is generally considered a UX bad practice (naughty, naughty)

Going back to single-column designs, here are some more guidelines for you to follow:

Place labels above fields and align them to the left
Make fields the same width and responsive
Make your CTA button the same width as your fields
Don’t use placeholders as labels*
Use placeholders to provide context where needed – eg: date formats
Avoid slicing fields for phone numbers, dates, etc.

You’ll also want to follow general best practices for readability in terms of font choices, text size, colour contrast and spacing.

Shorter forms are not always better

Most best practice guides will tell you to keep the number of form field to an absolute minimum. The logic is this: more fields mean more friction and more friction means fewer conversions – but this isn’t always the case. Countless tests by ourselves and other UX pros have found that shorter forms can actually hurt your conversion rates in many scenarios.

Sometimes more fields will get better results; other times fewer fields will do the trick.

We’ll show you how to do this later in this guide but, for now, don’t stress yourself over the number of fields on your forms. Ask for the info you need (think lead nurturing) and just avoid adding any unnecessary field.

Remove unnecessary fields

While you shouldn’t be afraid of asking for all the information you need from users, having unnecessary fields in your form is always going to add unwanted friction.

First of all, forget about asking people to retype their email addresses and passwords. It wasn’t cool in 2001 and it’s certainly not welcome now. Then, look at the fields in your form design and ask yourself Do we really need that piece of data from users now?

If the answer is no, then you’re probably looking at an unnecessary field that could be removed. You can always test variations with and without this field later to see if there’s an impact on conversions.

Another dead giveaway is when you find yourself putting required and non-required fields on your form. If that phone number field isn’t required then why is it there in the first place?

Don’t forget, you can get more data after form completion

The whole point of your form is to collect the info you need from users, but you don’t need to get it all right now. You can get more data from users after they’ve completed your initial form through your follow-up emails.

If you’re simply asking people to create an account, all you really need at this stage is their email address and a password. You can get the extra data you need later when they fill out their account details, removing any friction points before the initial conversion.

This isn’t going to work for every form or conversion type but it’s something to consider with each form design. Once again, ask yourself Do we really need that piece of data from users now?

Make your forms easy to complete

You can’t expect people to complete your forms if you make life difficult for them. It’s amazing how many web forms fail when it comes to basic usability principles like using the right HTML tags – don’t make these kinds of mistakes.

The HTML5 month input type brings up this month selector on Android devices

Use HTML5 input types: To make it easier for mobile users to enter email addresses, phone numbers, dates and other details.
Allow tab navigation: Make sure desktop users can navigate your form fields by using the tab key.
Use postcode lookups: To make filling out addresses faster.
Use predictive search: For fields with a lot of predefined options
Enable browser autofill: To save users retying the same old information time and again.
Don’t use CAPTCHAS: All you’re doing is advertising that you’ve got a spam problem and making life harder for your users.
Use plenty of contrast: Make sure people can see your forms in dull and harsh light, indoors and outdoors.
Use validation wisely: Validation should make it easier to fill out forms correctly, not more difficult.

Predictive search making it easier for users to type and choose a category answer

Before you start worrying about the number of form fields or the colour of your CTA buttons, make sure you understand the fundamentals of form usability. These will have far more of an impact on performance than tweaking the finer details.

Why best practices don’t always work

Earlier, we mentioned the popular form best practice principle that says shorter forms with fewer fields perform better than longer forms – and said this isn’t always the case.

There are multiple reasons for this:

Some conversion goals require more data
Sometimes users want to give you more information
Short forms can sometimes appear untrustworthy
Loss aversion makes longer forms more compelling
Longer forms tend to generate a higher quality of lead

Imagine a user who is looking for legal advice – are they going to hire a lawyer who only asks for their name and email address? Of course not. They want to hire a professional they can trust; someone who asks the right questions and a longer contact form is going to reassure this user they’re dealing with the legal advisor for them.

There are plenty of conversion goals like this: account registrations, insurance forms, loan applications, price comparisons, property searches and all kinds of other online actions.

The point is this: best practices are only general guidelines and it’s your job to find out which ones work for you and which ones don’t. Here are some of the form insights we’ve unveiled from optimising hundreds of forms over the past few years.

You won’t find these in your “best practice” guides.

Multistep forms get up to 300% more conversions

We touched on this earlier and said we’d have more details for you – so here they are. Our tests have revealed that multi-step forms increased conversions by up to 300% for major brands like Expedia and HP, as well as startups like Crew. These brands are now generating thousands of extra leads every month after switching to multi-step lead generation forms.

So how did we discover this? Well, it was with a little bit of luck mixed in with a whole bunch of psychological science and design savvy.

Friction is psychological

In terms of physics, friction is a force – something you can feel, hear and sometimes even smell (think burning rubber of tarmac). When it comes to conversions, though, friction is entirely psychological and this means you don’t need to remove friction points if you can change people’s perception of them.

When a user sees a long form stuffed with fields, they understandably feel unenthusiastic about filling it out. When the same user completes a multistep form with the exact same questions, they never see that long list of fields and they never feel that sense of dread before starting.

You haven’t reduced the friction, you’ve simply repackaged it in a way that it doesn’t stir negative emotions. Now, you’ve got all the data you need for your conversion goals and your users didn’t even blink.

Friction isn’t always a bad thing

Imagine a travel comparison app that seeks out the best deal on flight tickets. Users have spent a just over a minute filling out their search criteria and then they hit the “find my flights” button.

All the data this app needs to instantly return a list of the cheapest available flights is already there – so why do comparison sites leave users waiting with those progress bars for a few needless seconds?

It’s because users have just spent time filling out a form and they want to receive some kind of perceived value. They want to feel like the app is doing a whole bunch of hard work on their behalf. They don’t want to see results load instantly; they want to see the app work up a sweat, watch that progress bar struggle for a moment and then receive their well-earned list of results.

Remove this friction and the perceived value of the app is reduced.

Once again, there are countless other examples of when friction can be a good thing. Slack stops you from sending messages to people in the early hours of the morning, ActiveCampaign stops you from deleting automations with one click and Pinterest forces new users to follow at least five interests so they can deliver more relevant content.

Progress bars make it difficult to quit your forms

Users think progress bars are there to tell them how much work is left to do, but they’re not. Progress bars are actually there to tell them how much work they’ve already completed and this is because users are unlikely to quit a form after they invested time in filling half of it out.

This is due to a psychological phenomenon known as loss aversion. Essentially, people feel like they’ll be losing the time they’ve already invested in filling out your forms to this stage and be compelled to finish the job.

So make sure you have progress indicators of some kind on your multistep forms.

Reduce typing to a minimum

Reducing the number of fields in your forms can have a positive impact but we’ve found that reducing the amount of typing users need to do is far more important.

Make sure you allow autofill (users can turn it off if they want), never ask users to fill out the same info more than once and use auto-complete where appropriate. This is especially important on mobile because typing on phones is still a major drag.

Also, replace traditional form fields with selectable images where possible. These things make a huge difference to field and form completion rates.

Selectable images are among the most engaging question type

Instead of radio buttons and checkboxes, we’ve found that clickable image icons are the most engaging way to ask users to choose between defined options. This is especially true for mobile users who can simply tap the screen without worrying about accidentally selecting the wrong option.

Psychologically speaking, selectable images look nothing like the radio buttons and checkboxes that easily overwhelm users – even though they’re essentially the same thing, just designed differently.

Once again, it’s not so much the number or type of fields in your form but how you present them that really matters.

Conditional logic turns long forms into engaging experiences

Conditional logic adapts the fields users see in your forms based on how they complete previous fields. So, instead of showing all your fields to every user, you can remove all of the questions directed at small business owners when they’ve already confirmed they’re an enterprise brand, for example.

Aside from hiding irrelevant fields from each user, this increases the relevance of every field they say, creating shorter and more engaging form experiences. Combine this with multistep form designs and even the longest forms can hit the most ambitious of conversion targets.

More importantly, you can use this tactic to segment leads instantly on your website and this is one of the biggest ways Leadformly has transformed the way we generate and nurture leads.

More on this later.

Analysing the performance of your forms

With your forms designed to convert from the get-go, your next move is to analyse their performance to make sure you’re hitting targets and spot room for improvement.

This is where form analytics is crucial and you’re going to need to look beyond conversion rates to see where things are going right/wrong. You’re going to need a dedicated form analytics tool that helps you diagnose specific issues with your web forms and fix or remove them.

Form analytics: looking beyond conversion rates

Conversion rates are an important metric, of course, but you can’t just make changes to your forms and hope they’re going to have a positive impact. Profit is always more important than the volume of conversions and a profitable CRO strategy pinpoints specific problems instead of trying out design changes and hoping for the best.

With a dedicated form analytics tool, you get detailed insights into what users are doing with your forms – things like:

The percentage of users who start filling out your forms
The percentage of users who successfully complete your forms
How many users fail to complete your forms
How long it takes users to complete your form
How long it takes users to complete specific fields
The last field users attempt to complete before quitting the session

If people aren’t even starting to fill out your forms, this tells you your problems lie elsewhere: form location, page copy, UX issues, etc. While a low completion rate tells you something no your form is getting in the way and you can then pinpoint which fields are causing problems.

Stop wasting crucial time and budget on form optimisation tests that don’t yield a positive result. Get yourself a dedicated form analytics tool and pinpoint the exact issues that are getting in the way of conversions.

And remember, conversion rates aren’t the be all and end all. If your forms are generating a large number of leads but few of these are turning into profitable customers/users then you might need to optimise your pages and forms to generate leads that are more likely to open their wallets, even if this means lower conversion rates.

Look at performance across devices

Make sure you segment your form data by device and look at performance across mobile and desktop. Mobile form conversions are often lower than desktop for a number of reasons:

A lot of users turn to mobile for browsing/research and then switch to desktop before converting
Forms are often poorly optimised for mobile
Typing on mobile can be a chore
Forms can appear longer on smaller devices
Digital downloads can use precious mobile data

What you don’t want to do is optimise your forms for one device type and then throttle performance on the other – especially if your conversion goal is simply better suited to the other device type.

Ask users about your forms

Who better to tell you what’s wrong with your web forms than the users that fail to complete them? It’s amazing how many marketers I speak to that don’t reach out to users for feedback. Sure, you’re not always going the response you’re looking for and adding more friction after someone’s just failed to fill out your form seems like adding insult to injury – I get it.

Reality check: the damage is already done for users who fail to fill out your forms. These guys/girls are no good to you but it only take the right piece of feedback from one or a few of them to completely transform results with the users who matter most: the next few hundred or thousand.

Meanwhile, users who have failed to fill out your forms might appreciate you asking for feedback and asking the question gives you one last chance to turn this user into a valuable lead.

Hotjar‘s feedback features are one of the main reasons we still use the platform and there’s another great tool you can use to pinpoint problems with your forms.

Record user sessions to see what users are doing

This one is time-consuming but it can really pay to look at user session recordings to see what’s going wrong with your own eyes. This is another great feature you get from Hotjar and it’s helped us unearth some issues that data identify by itself.

Read our Hotjar review for more details about why we like it and where we think it could be improved.

Key things to look out for

As we say, your goal at this stage is to pinpoint specific issues that are preventing people from completing your forms, rather than blindly remove fields or test new buttons in the hope of better results.

Here are some of the most common form issues you should look out for:

Low start rates: Very few users are even starting to fill out your form.
Low completion rates: A low percentage of users who start filling out your forms successfully complete them.
Field abandonment: If a lot of users are quitting the session after hitting a specific field, you know this is causing problems.
Time in fields: Users spending a lot of time in fields that should be quick to fill out.
Corrections: Fields where users are regularly having to correct their entries.
Multiple corrections: When users need to correct the same field more than once.
Unsuccessful submissions: When a user hits the send button but your validation blocks the submission.
Missing data: When a user hits the send button but they haven’t entered a piece of required data and the submission is blocked.
Validation drop-offs: Where users quit the session instead of correcting entries flagged by validation.
Format issues: Where users enter the correct format but your validation doesn’t accept the format – eg: dates and phone numbers.
Creating account details: Where users have problems creating usernames and/or passwords that are available and pass your validation requirements.
Problems entering card details: One of the most common causes of cart abandonment.

All of these warning signs will help you narrow down on specific issues your users are having and test highly relevant fixes. This is essential if you want to achieve a high rate of successful tests and make form optimisation time-effective and profitable.

If you’re looking at low start rates (people aren’t even starting to fill out your forms), then you need to look at issues such as where your form is placed on the page, how effectively it stands out (eg: colour contrast), the content surrounding your form and UX issues that could prevent users from reaching your form – such as slow loading times.

All of the other issues on the list above point to specific completion issues between the moment a user starts filling out your form and seeing that successful submission message.

In most cases, putting a fix to these issues is going to involve removing troublesome fields, rewording your labels, providing more context to help users complete fields, optimising your validation or simply reducing the amount of typing users need to do.

How to run your form optimisation tests

With a wide range of A/B testing platforms available, it’s easier than ever to test changes on your website. The problem is they also means it easy to run unsuccessful tests that tell you nothing – or worse, give you false positives.

You need to know the changes you make actually have a positive impact, otherwise you can cause more harm than good.

A successful A/B test needs to have the following:

Opportunity: Weaknesses in your forms pinpointed with dedicated form analytics tool.
Data-driven changes: Design improvements based on data, not guesswork.
The right metrics and KPIs: How are you going to measure a positive impact?
Targets: What are your target metrics and KPIs?
Statistical significance: Enough data to “prove” your outcome is the result of your change, not random chance or other factors.

What you’re not going to do with form optimisation is just test random elements like background colours and see what happens. You’re going to pinpoint specific weaknesses with your form analytics tool so you’re fixing the problems that matter most and each of your tests have a higher chance of making a positive impact.

Wherever possible, test changes backed up by data instead of working on hunches. For example, if you’re removing a form field, what evidence do you have to suggest it will improve completion rates?

If the answer is none, then you’re more likely to run a test that yields negative results. This is going to happen at times but you want to reduce the amount of failed tests as much as possible and data-driven changes give you the best chance.

Finally, make sure your tests are statistically significant. This means running them for long enough that you can trust your result. This is one of the biggest CRO mistakes marketers make and it makes the entire process pointless.

Making form optimisation profitable

To make form optimisation profitable (or any kind of CRO), the positive impact from your tests needs to outweigh the time, cost and use of resources it takes to run them. Every test that yields a negative, inconclusive or insignificant result is another dent in your optimisation ROI.

The problem is negative, inconclusive and insignificant tests are very easy to run while positive and statistically significant test are far more difficult.

This is why it’s so important to have data backing up your choices at every stage of the process. I’m always amazed when I talk to marketers and UX designers about conversion optimisation, how many of them just dive in and start running tests on random elements without any data suggesting there’s a problem to begin with.

Are you sure users really care whether your CTA button says “get my quote” or “get your quote”?

In our experience, you’re going to get much better results by pinpointing genuine user issues, such as fields that are causing people to hesitate and testing direct fixes, such as added hints as placeholders.

Sure, there are times when you want to test out bigger variations, such as forms above the fold vs below the fold or long forms vs short forms – and you can’t start with data you don’t have. These are important design choices that are almost always going to have an impact on conversions and there’s nothing wrong with testing your way to the answer (as long as you achieve statistical significance, once again).

Just don’t start testing out different font styles when you’ve got no reason to believe users care whether you go for serif or sans-serif.

Optimising for post-form conversions

All of this talk about optimising forms for conversions makes it sound like the job is done once users hit the submit button. Of course, this isn’t true and there’s never enough talk in guides like these about how forms fit into your wider marketing strategy and optimising your funnels before and after forms.

First of all, most funnels are going to have multiple forms anyway: newsletter signups, account creations, logins, payment forms, contact forms, feedback forms and probably multiple different types of lead generation forms (free downloads, webinar signups, free trials, etc.).

All of these forms may be pointing towards the end goal of a sale but the journey users take can vary drastically and this is why you’re going to need a solid CRM to manage your leads as they work their way through your sales funnels.

We use ActiveCampaign because, aside from being a quality CRM platform, it also offers 90% of everything we need for email marketing and then you have its incredible automation features – all of which you’re going to need to manage large volumes of leads effectively.

Read our ActiveCampaign review to find out how it transformed our business.

With ActiveCampaign, Leadformly and SendinBlue (for transactional emails), we’ve got a fully-functional and almost entirely automated lead generation strategy that brings in potential customers for us, segments our leads into lists and sends out email responses based on the information each user provides us.

We’re not just looking at high-converting forms here; we’re looking at a system of forms built into an automated strategy that guide users from one conversion goal to the next and this is your ultimate aim with form optimisation.

It all starts with Leadformly and conditional logic – something we mentioned earlier in this guide. This allows us to segment leads instantly from our forms, based on the info users type in and this data is sent directly to ActiveCampaign, which automatically adds them to different marketing lists.

Next, ActiveCampaign automatically sends out response emails with messages we’ve tailored for each list. This way we can personalise content for every kind of lead we’re targeting and then subsequent messages based on how they respond to our messages.

So it’s not only our forms that we’re optimising for conversions but also the messages we send out to users and how we automate our processes after the initial form completion.

We also need to optimise each individual form with the rest of our marketing goals in mind. For example, if we’re not turning enough leads into paying customers with our forms at the end of our sales funnels, we may look at reducing the volume of conversions in our earlier forms while trying to increase the quality of those leads. so they’re more likely to make the final commitment.

When you have multiple forms in your sales funnels, you also need to optimise them collectively – as well as individually.

Get the right data, choose the right tests and build more profitable forms

The biggest mistake you can make with web forms is not designing them for conversions from day one. The second is not optimising for better performance but the third one is becoming increasingly common: trying to optimise forms and failing to make it profitable.

If you’re not making enough of a positive impact to justify the time, money and resources going into your CRO efforts, you’ve got a problem. The solution? Start with the right data, choose the right tests (based on this data) and give every test the best chance of delivering a positive result.

The post The Ultimate Guide to Web Form Optimisation appeared first on Venture Harbour.

21 Online Marketing AI & Machine Learning Tools You Can Try Today

There’s a lot of hype surrounding artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, but there’s no denying the technologies are going to shape the future of marketing. In fact, they’re already powering most of the tools we use today – even if we don’t realise it.

Google, Facebook and just about every platform we use to connect with consumers are knee-deep in these technologies and the list of marketing AI tools is rapidly growing.

Here are 21 Ai and machine learning tools you can try out today.

#1: Import.io

Import.io allows you to import data from any web page, even if the data you’re after is hidden behind login forms or other elements. You can then compile this data into spreadsheets, visualisations or machine learning algorithms. With this data on your side, you can do anything from competitor price research to analysing all of your customer reviews to pinpoint the most important areas for improvement.

A crazy amount of things are possible with Import.io so make sure this is one tool you take a look at.

#2: X.ai

X.ai is a perfect example of how simple and effective artificial intelligence can be – a refreshing break from many platforms that try to do too much. With X you’re simply looking at an AI scheduler that genuinely makes arranging meetings and other appointments effortless.

#3: Grammarly

Grammarly is another example of simple but effective AI – this time in the form of an intelligent proofreading tool. It’s not going to catch all of your writing errors but it’s an impressive piece of software and its integration with apps and browsers is incredible. It will flag up your typos as you write emails and blog posts in the browser and compile reports of your most common mistakes so you naturally become a better writer over time.

#4: Uberflip

Now we’re venturing into a more complex collection of AI tools, starting with Uberflip – an advanced content personalisation platform that helps you create unique experiences for each customer. Content personalisation remains one of the biggest challenges for brands and Uberflip makes it easier to execute at scale for enterprise brands with a large, diverse audience to work with.

#5: Acrolinx

Before you can personalise content, you need to be able to create it and Acrolinx helps you create highly-effective content at scale. Acrolinx claims to be the only software platform that can “read” your content, thanks to its advanced artificial intelligence engine that assesses your content, grades it and guides you to creating better content.

#6: Unmetric

Xia by Unmetric takes a different approach by helping you to analyse the content of other brands and discover new content ideas an opportunities. Xia will unlock the secrets of other brands’ content marketing success and point you in the direction of what kind of content should get similar results for your own business.

#7: Cortex

Cortex also offers competitor content analysis but the focus here is on their social media efforts. Once you’ve analysed your rivals’ social efforts the platform will help you create better content for your own strategy, optimised for your target audiences with its AI insights. Next, Cortex will decide when the most effective time to publish your posts is and schedule everything for you as it continues to assess your competitors and unveil new insights.

Not bad.

#8: BrightFunnel

Creating better content is going to help you generate more leads and a better quality of prospects but you still need to turn them into sales. This is where BrightFunnel wants to help by using its artificial intelligence to help you optimise your sales funnels, meaning you turn more of those hard-earned leads into easier-earned customers.

#9: Cogito

Cogito is a real-time conversation analysis and guidance system that detects human signals in your customers’ speech and predicts what kind of reaction your sales and support teams should provide. The end goal is to empower your team with “emotional intelligence” so they know when to listen, when to take the lead and when to show empathy in interactions with your customers and leads.

#10: Tact.ai

Tact.ai aims to fill the gap between human interactions with an AI sales assistant, so your sales teams can spend less time navigating inboxes and more time dealing with profitable leads. If you’ve ever found CRMs frustrating to use, you’ll be happy to hear Tact.ai is there to remove as much of the friction as possible. You can scan business cards to create new contacts, sync calls and meetings with Salesforce and handle just about everything from the mobile app.

Integrations with SAlesforce and LinkedIn is perfectly seamless and the all-round user experience make sit painfully obvious that CRM platforms generally have a lot of catching up to do.

#11: ManyChat

With chatbots taking over more of the sales process for brands across every industry, the need to create bots on the fly is increasing. ManyChat makes it about as easy as it can be to create Facebook Messenger chatbots with the platform’s drag-and-drop builder. Forget about the coding implications of building a Facebook bot because ManyChat’s got you covered and it throws in some hefty analytics and automation features for good measure.

#12: Chatfuel

Chatfuel also helps you create Facebook bots but there’s an even heavier emphasis on automating your inbox with this platform. The goal is to automate as much of the conversations with your clients, customers and leads as possible until handing them over to your team members at the crucial moment. The end result should be a sales process that’s able to handle a significantly large volume of customers without the cost of expanding your team.

#13: Aizimov

Aizimov is an interesting piece of AI software that scribbles custom, personalised messages on your behalf. The platform scrapes information from the web (mostly form social media, news sources and financial transcripts) to create accurate emails and messages for each of your target audiences.

IT’s AI system even analyses people’s psychological profile and takes this into account when it’s deciding what kind of message to create and how to word it. Not only that, but it chooses the best channel to contact each prospect (email, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.) and when to reach out.

#14: LivePerson

LivePerson takes artificial intelligence to the message apps your prospects are already using and creates a sales channel on the platforms they’re most comfortable with. Essentially, you’ve got AI-powered chatbots integrating with apps like WhatsApp, Line, Google Assistant and even your website – so you can have meaningful conversations wherever your prospects want to have them.

#15: Optmyzr

Paid marketing has probably benefited from AI, machine learning and automation more than any other marketing strategy – purely because most of the workload involves crunching data, optimising settings and adjusting bids based on a variety of factors.

This is where technologies like automation and machine learning shine, which is why Optmyzr is such an impressive tool. In fairness, it doesn’t do anything you can’t script into Google Ads yourself (assuming you’ve got the programming skills) but it makes essentials like bid adjustments, keyword management, A/B testing and other optimisations simple – without the programming requirements.

#16: Pathmatics

Pathmatics takes the opposite approach to Optmyzr and focuses on analysing the advertising performance of your competitors. It offers dedicated AI implementations for business, advertising agencies, publishers and ad tech firms – all designed to unveil new opportunities based on the best performers in your industry.

#17: Cortex

Cortex by Retention Science is an AI email marketing platform that constantly optimises its own automations for better results. It refines your subject lines, discovers the best times to send emails to individual users, tracks user responses and then uses engagement data to create better campaigns all-year round.

#18: Sensai

Sensai is an AI social marketing insights and recommendations platform that analyses the effectiveness of your social posts and guides you towards creating a strategy that hits bigger targets. The mobile app puts a social media expert in your pocket, powered by detailed analytics and data-driven recommendations that help you pinpoint what to post and when.

#19: Slackla

Visual content is crucial to just about any social media marketing campaign and Stackla helps you discover user-generated content (UGC) and turn it into content that really engages with people. Instead of creating corporate videos and images that reek of sales pitches, Slackla’s algorithms discover the content your target audience is already creating – and other members of the same audience are engaging with – so you can cut in on the action.

#20: GumGum

GumGum offers a number of AI-powered features for marketers, advertisers, sports brands and other niches. On the advertising side of things, it uses to AI to analyse the images as well as the content of pages so you can choose relevant sites to place your display ads. While Google Ads allows you to target sites topically, it’s difficult to guarantee your ad message doesn’t conflict with the content.

Imagine your ad for travel insurance showing on a news story about a plane crash. Ouch.

Then you have the social aspect, where GumGum analyses social content relevant to your brand and finds new spaces for you to get involved in the conversation.

#21: Emarsys

Emarsys is a fully-featured AI marketing system that promises to power your content, social, email, advertising and entire strategy with the latest technologies. We’re talking integrated personalisation across the board, sophisticated automations, predictive analytics and a single platform that streamlines your omnichannel marketing efforts.

Do more with less

Most of the AI marketing tools we’ve looked at in this list are actually quite simple, but they’re all designed to help you do more with the resources you already have (or less).

Essentially, it all comes down to automating tasks, crunching data at scale and spotting patterns you might otherwise miss – all in the name of creating a more efficient marketing process.

The post 21 Online Marketing AI & Machine Learning Tools You Can Try Today appeared first on Venture Harbour.

5 Best Email Marketing Tools if You Have a Large Contact List

Email marketing software tends to be priced based on the number of contacts you want to send mails to. Generally speaking, larger enterprise firms are going to have larger contact lists but this isn’t always the case – especially with the range of marketing automation tools available today.

Now, it’s more feasible than ever that smaller ventures can have large contact lists, but this doesn’t mean they necessarily have the enterprise budget to work with.

In this article, we’re looking at the best email marketing platforms for large contact lists – for every budget.

#1: ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign is seriously punching above its weight as an all-in-one email marketing, automation and CRM platform. In terms of features, it competes with the biggest names in the industry and its pricing is based on features, not the size of your contact list (like most software options).

This means you’re not held to ransom by the number of people you need to email and you simply pay for the features you need – precisely how it should be, as far as we’re concerned.

If you’ve got a large contact list and you need the full package of features, you’ll be glad to know the prices for the enterprise version of ActiveCampaign are very reasonable.

Sure, the likes of Adobe and Oracle have more machine learning power under the hood, but ActiveCampaign gives you 90% of everything you’ll need from a full marketing suite and charges a fraction of the price most software providers are demanding.

#2: GetResponse Enterprise

GetResponse is similar to ActiveCampaign in many ways although there are some feature differences you’ll want to look into. The quick answer is ActiveCampaign offers more but it really comes down to what you need from an email marketing platform.

You can find out more about the feature differences at Marketingautomationinsider.com but GetResponse Enterprise is a solid offering, either way.

In terms of having a large contact list, GetResponse Enterprise is priced on the number of contacts you have and prices climb quite steeply at the longer end. It still works out cheaper than many of the market leaders but it simply offers less than ActiveCampaign and works out slightly more expensive.

Still, if you prefer the interface or the specific feature offerings, this could be an option.

#3: Marketo

Marketo is a different kind of platform to ActiveCampaign and GetResponse. This time you’re looking at a collection of products that includes email marketing, marketing automation, social marketing, digital ads and various other management applications.

Marketo doesn’t really cater for SMEs and this is reflected in the structure of its software and the pricing. It’s the most expensive option we’ve looked at so far but it also offers the most advanced collection of features if you’re willing to pay for them – and you don’t need to worry about the size of your contact list.

For most businesses, Marketo is more than they’ll ever need and more than they should probably be paying for an email marketing platform. Then again, if you need to the features and can’t get them elsewhere, you know what you need to do.

#4: IBM Watson Campaign Automation

IBM’s Watson Campaign Automation is a true piece of B2B enterprise software, providing an all-in-one marketing automation system that includes advanced email marketing features. There isn’t much you can’t do with IBM’s offering and you know you’re getting some of the most advanced marketing and security technology with Watson Campaign Automation.

The only downsides are the pricing (ouch) and the general design/user experience of the platform itself. It’s not exactly easy on the eye and navigating the system can be clunky at times. This is often the case with the older, established tech giants such as IBM and Oracle who haven’t caught up with the slicker design principles that come naturally with the relative newcomers like ActiveCampaign and GetResponse.

#5: Oracle Eloqua

Much like IBM’s offering, Oracle’s Eloqua is geared towards enterprise B2B companies and it comes with many of the same benefits/compromises. It’s somewhat easier to use than IBM’s Watson Campaign Automation, though, thanks to a significantly more intuitive user interface that makes getting around the platform pretty easily.

It still looks out of date by a half a decade but the navigation and general UX essentials are fairly well put together – more so than most of the established tech names like IBM, Microsoft and Adobe have ever managed.

On features, Eloqua isn’t going to let you down although some of them will take time to get to grips with, such as the automation side of things. However, once you got this nailed, you’re good to go and then you have the platform’s standout feature.

Eloqua’s analytics system is pretty incredible, offering real-time reporting across multiple channels so you can see exactly how your email marketing strategy is contributing to your wider marketing efforts.

If you need the most powerful set of features and you have the enterprise budget to work with, Eloqua is a strong option.

Enterprise software is changing

While most email marketing platforms base their pricing on the size of your contact list, more innovative companies like ActiveCampaign are changing this. With automation powering your sales and marketing strategies, smaller ventures can do business like the big brands and this is reflected in the pricing models and feature sets of newer marketing and sales platforms.

The post 5 Best Email Marketing Tools if You Have a Large Contact List appeared first on Venture Harbour.

10 Best A/B Testing Tools in 2018

To get better business performance from your website, you need to test your way to success because best practices and the latest design trends aren’t always going to work for your users.

This means A/B testing and you’re going to need a few things to make this happen: the right KPIs, access the necessary data and the tools it takes to run successful tests. In this article, we’re going to help you with the last item on that list by running through the 10 best A/B testing tools in 2018.

#1: Google Analytics & Google Optimize
The free option for almost all of your A/B testing needs

Google Analytics and Google Optimize offer one of the best data collecting and A/B testing solutions around and you can get just about everything you need for free. Enterprise brands with large teams will probably want to sign up for the Google Analytics 360 suite – which includes Optimize 360 – but it’s amazing how much you can get done with the free versions of these tools.

In terms of features, there isn’t much you can’t do with Google’s offerings. In fact, they’re capable of far more than the other tools in this list, if you have the engineers on board who know how to set up advanced tracking.

This is the key downside to the Google option: You really need to know the platform and how to get the best out of it and this might be more technical than you’re interested in.

If you’re after a more straightforward A/B testing solution, keep reading.

#2: Optimizely
An affordable, simple but powerful set of A/B and CRO tools

Optimizely is one of the industry’s leading CRO platforms and it offers far more than A/B testing, which means you shouldn’t outgrow the platform as your conversion optimisation needs progress.

Optimizely actually offers a range of products but it’s Optimizely Web which provides the A/B testing and other features for optimising web pages. You can expand on this with Optimizely X Personalisation to deliver personalised messages to different audience segments and Recommendations for Amazon-style product and content recommendations.

You’ve got some seriously powerful tools at your hand with Optimizely and they’re all easy to implement without any of the development skills you need to do the same via Google Analytics and Optimize.

#3: VWO
A lot like Optimizely but with some important differences

VWO is probably Optimizely’s biggest competitor and these two platforms are very similar. Like, really similar. In terms of testing, there isn’t much between these two CRO tools but there are some feature differences elsewhere. For example, Optimizely has a dedicated mobile testing tool (which you have to pay extra for) while VWO allows you to get feedback from users (which you don’t have to pay for).

VWO also has the simpler pricing model and the all-round structure of its platform is more straightforward, too. If you want the simplest solution for A/B testing and conversion optimisation, it’s hard to beat VWO although Optimizely comes close and it may offer some vital features that you can’t get from VWO (or vice versa).

Know what you need – plus what you’ll need in the future – and choose the platform that can deliver.

#4: Adobe Target
A truly enterprise A/B testing and personalisation platform

Adobe Target is an enterprise personalisation platform and A/B testing comes as standard. You also get automated personalisation, mobile app optimisation and recommendations based on your customers’ behaviour and data.

The platform basically guides you through a three-step process for experimentation, where you create your variant, target your audience segment and then customise your goals and settings for the test.

The software itself isn’t particularly handsome or quite as straightforward as the likes of Optimizely and VWO but it’s the Target self-learning algorithms that make this a favourite platform with enterprise brands. Target continually and automatically adjusts itself to make associations between visitor behaviour and content in order to give you the best results possible, adapting your content in real-time to meet user needs.

Impressive stuff.

#5: Evergage
Real-time personalisation powered by machine learning

Evergage keeps us on the topic of experimentation and personalisation, powered by machine learning. If this is beyond your needs from an A/B testing tool then the likes of Adobe Target and Evergage might not be for you – and that’s ok.

That said, if you’re looking to create the best possible customer experiences, based on user behaviour and all the data at your disposal, then tools like Evergage are what you’re after.

Evergage empowers you to create unique customer experiences for individuals, across multiple platforms, to meet their specific needs and expectations. Once again, it’s calling upon the power of machine learning to crunch the vital data, track user actions and automate optimisations based on these patterns.

You get a highly advanced set of A/B testing features included and so much more with Evergage. This is one of the most advanced experimentation, personalisation and optimisation tools on the market – only you can decide whether you need all of that from a single platform.

#6: AB Tasty
Reasonably priced, intuitive and complete A/B testing and optimisation platform

AB Tasty brings us back to the reasonably-priced and simple side of conversion optimisation tools. As the name suggests, the focus is on A/B testing here and this is where the platform excels, even though it does include other features, such as heatmaps, page flow reports and basic personalisation.

One the testing side of things, you get the usual A/B, split and multivariate testing options, plus an interesting funnel testing feature that allows you to experiment with changes across multiple pages.

The best thing about AB Tasty, though, is the drag-and-drop editor that makes the platform so wonderful to work with. Sure, there are plenty of editors like this on the market now but AB Tasty’s editor just works without getting in the way of your workflow.

For building tests without the fuss, this is a great piece of software.

#7: Leadformly
Dedicated web form A/B testing from the best form builder in the industry

While all of the A/B testing tools we’ve looked at so far will give you 90% of what you need for running tests, they all fall short on testing some of the finer specifics on your pages. This is especially true when it comes to web forms and they simply don’t provide the depth of insights you need – for example, pinpointing which fields are causing users to abandon your forms and why.

To answer these questions, you’re going to need a tool like Leadformly which provides in-depth form analytics and A/B testing features to help you maximise conversions rates at the final hurdle.

There aren’t many conversions that can be completed without some kind of form, either. So make sure form optimisation is a key part of your CRO efforts.

#8: Unbounce
Landing page A/B testing from the most popular landing page builder in the game

Landing pages are another key component for maximising conversions and you’ve already got a landing page A/B testing tool if you’re using Unbounce. In fact, most of the top landing page builders include some kind of A/B testing features (some are better than others) and, while these aren’t as feature-rich as the other tools we’ve looked at, they make landing page testing incredibly easy.

So, if you’re after the simplest approach to A/B testing a combination of A/B Tasty, Leadfoormly and Unbouce could be the ideal place to start.

#9: Nelio AB Testing
The best A/B testing plugin for WordPress

With WordPress powering 30% of all websites on the internet, it would be dismissive to not include a WordPress plugin option for A/B testing on this list. Luckily, Nielo A/B Testing happens to have developed a plugin worthy of recommendation and it’s probably the only WordPress A/B testing plugin that I would recommend.

You can set up and manage your A/B tests from within the WordPress interface, view basic analytics feedback, check heatmaps and improve results without needing to leave WordPress. Nielo is also compatible with WooCommerce, if you’re running an ecommerce store with the plugin.

#10: Apptimize
The A/B testing and optimisation tool for mobile-centric experiences

Apptimize is an A/B testing tool designed for mobile-centric brands. If your business revolves around mobile apps and sites that prioritise the mobile experience, then Apptimize is tailored specifically to your testing needs.

You can run truly cross-platform experiments, create personalised experiences, roll out new products and features, as well as launch new versions and updates without hassle.

Tying all of these features together is Apptimise’s data system that collects insights from multiple platforms so you can see how behaviour on mobile affects decisions made on web and vice versa or how server-side changes impact the front-end mobile experience.

If you’re after the specialist A/B testing and optimisation solution for mobile, Apptimize is it.

Which is the A/B testing tool for you?

In this list, we’ve covered the top 10 A/B testing tools for just about every possible need you could have – from the free options, to fully enterprise solutions and the easiest-to-use optimisation tools available right now. All of these platforms are great in their own right but the best choice for you is going to depend on your specific needs.

Hopefully, we’ve pointed you in the right direction and making an informed choice for yourself will be easier after reading this. Let me know if you think any other A/B testing tools should have made this list.

The post 10 Best A/B Testing Tools in 2018 appeared first on Venture Harbour.

15 Twitter Business Statistics & Trends on Twitter Advertising

Did you know that 58% of the world’s top brands have more than 100,000 Twitter followers while 93% of people who follow an SMB on Twitter plan to buy from them in the future?

These are just some of the incredible stats that prove the power of Twitter for businesses of all sizes – not only as a social network but also as an advertising platform and customer service channel.

Check out these Twitter business statistics and see how they compare to your own social/advertising efforts.

#1: Twitter has over 336 million active monthly users – but tweets reach 1.6 billion people on third-party platforms

The latest figures from MAU put Twitter’s active monthly user count at more than 336 million. This doesn’t come close to the likes of Facebook (2.2 billion), YouTube (1.9 bn) or Instagram (1bn) but Twitter CFO Anthony Noto says the network’s reach far exceeds its monthly user base.

Noto says tweets reach around 1.6 billion unique users every month on third-party platforms like Google Search.

#2: The average Twitter user has 707 followers

This one comes courtesy of KickFactory although this doesn’t compare to the 100,000+ followers of the biggest brands on Twitter.

How does your list of followers stack up?

#3: 74% of Twitter users get their news fix from the network

Source: Journalism.org

Crucial to any social marketing strategy is understanding why people use a network to begin. In the case of Twitter, 74% turn to the blue bird as a primary source of news – far more than any of the other major networks.

#4: 93% of people who follow an SMB on Twitter plan to buy from them in the future

This is a big one. According to joint research from Twitter and Research Now, 93% of people who follow small and medium-size businesses on Twitter plan to buy from them. While 69% of users say they have already bought from SMBs because of content they saw on the network.

#5: 85% of SMB Twitter users say the network is an important part of their customer service strategy

One of the biggest developments in social media marketing has been the rise of social customer care and 85% of SMB Twitter users say the network is a crucial part of their customer service strategy.

The fast-paced nature of Twitter makes it the ideal place for customers to turn when they want a quick response – assuming you’re fast enough to provide it, of course.

#6: 92% of companies tweet more than once a day, 42% tweet 1-5 times per day

According to Simply Measured, 92% of companies using Twitter tweet more than once per day while 42% tweet 1-5 times per day and 19% tweet 6-10 times per day.

#7: The price of Twitter ads is declining

In Twitter’s Q3 2017 Letter to Shareholders, the network revealed that cost per engagement declined by 54% year-over-year in Q3 2017. Which means it’s costing businesses less to get results on the network and this comes at a time when engagement is also increasing.

#8: Twitter ad engagements increased 99% in Q3 2017

According to the same letter to shareholders, total ad engagements on Twitter increased by 99% year-over-year in Q3 2017. During the same period, daily active usage (DAU) grew by 14% and monthly active usage (MAU) grew by 4% year-on-year.

#9: 70% of Twitter users don’t find video ads intrusive

One of the biggest problems for social networks and marketers alike is dealing with the intrusive nature of ads on these platforms. However, it turns out 70% of Twitter users find video ads on the network are not intrusive to the user experience, according to a survey from IPG Mediabrands.

More specifically, 67% of users said Twitter Promoted Videos in the First View position (the first thing users see) aren’t intrusive, which is particularly interesting. While 73% of users said videos further downs their feeds aren’t intrusive with a majority of respondents saying video ads are generally informative.

#10: First View ads generate the strongest response from users

It’s good to hear user don’t find First View ads intrusive and it’s even better to see that one of Twitter’s latest ad innovations is generating the strongest response from users. User insights from the network reveal that First View video ads, which are seen by people as soon as they open the app, have more of an emotional impact upon users and prove to be more memorable than content seen further down their feeds.

#11: Videos get 6X more retweets than photos, 3X more than GIFs

According to Twitter stats, tweets with videos are six times more likely to be retweeted than tweets with photos and three times more likely than tweets with GIFs.

#12: Twitter is a powerful B2C platform too

Twitter is considered an essential channel for B2B marketers but it’s also a powerful place to engage with consumers. According to the tech company, “people on Twitter are savvy shoppers” with a majority of users being early adopters, affluent millennials and likely to influence the purchase decisions of others.

#13: Influential people use Twitter

With 92% of the world’s leaders using Twitter, as well as industry leaders, journalists, experts and journalists all sharing insights on the network, it’s no surprise that people’s buying decisions are influenced by the content they see on Twitter.

#14: 85.4% of Twitter users find Promoted Accounts useful for discovering new brands

Findings from Research Now show that 85.4% of Twitter users find Promoted Accounts useful for discovering new brands on the network. Once again, this tells us that Twitter’s advertising products are unintrusive and generally valued by its users.

#15: Major brands are seeing Twitter content influence buying decisions

Research from insights firm Nielsen shows that Twitter content is influencing consumer buying decisions for major brands and key industries. A recent study into US car purchases revealed that one in four new vehicle purchases involved Twitter as an influential platform.

Are you making the most of Twitter?

It’s easy to compare Twitter user stats with networks like Facebook and assume it’s an inferior marketing channel but impressions alone aren’t going to get results. The way people interact with content and brands on Twitter is entirely unique and their willingness to talk business means there’s less resistance to your ads from the outset.

This is reflected in the majority of Twitter users who feel ads on the network aren’t intrusive and generally offer valuable information.

Not many advertising channels can offer this kind of relationship with its users and this is what continues to make Twitter a valuable platform for businesses of all sizes.

The post 15 Twitter Business Statistics & Trends on Twitter Advertising appeared first on Venture Harbour.

10 Best Enterprise CRM Software Solutions

There are plenty of CRM platforms out there claiming to offer everything a business could need, regardless of size – but few of them can really provide what enterprise brands need to make the most of their relationships with customers.

Aside from being able to handle the number of leads you’re generating on a daily basis, your enterprise CRM needs to provide enough user profiles for your expansive sales and marketing teams. You also want a single solution that you can customise to meet your business needs, rather than having to adapt your workflow to software limitations.

These sound like basic requirements but it’s surprisingly difficult to find “enterprise” CRM platforms that deliver on the essentials for big businesses. So here’s our list of customer relationship management platforms that genuinely offer the enterprise package.

#1: ActiveCampaign

We’re going to start with ActiveCampaign as this is the CRM we use here at VentureHarbour and we chose it for good reason. As an agency that specialises in automating growth, we know how important it is to have a CRM on your side that’s not only going to help your business grow but also grow alongside it as your needs change.

One of the biggest problems we’ve found with CRMs that offer packages for small, medium and larger businesses is they tend to throttle features for the smaller brands and then hike up the prices for their enterprise platforms. We have a real problem with this because you’re essentially being held to ransom for your business success and this one problem you don’t have with ActiveCampaign.

Prices are reasonable across each version of the platform and relative to your business growth. You also don’t get stung with setup fees or other hidden costs, which just makes you feel more valued as an ActiveCampaign customer (kind of important for a CRM provider).

Besides that, ActiveCampaign combines a wicked mix of CRM, email marketing and automation features into an all-in-one business solution. It’s an incredible tool and you don’t get stung with outrageous fees simply because you’re an enterprise business.

#2: Salesforce

Salesforce is currently the market leader in CRM software and there’s a lot to like about the platform. As the most popular CRM, it’s easy to find reps who know the platform inside out and you find many more comprehensive CRM solutions on the market at this stage.

Unfortunately, you’re probably going to them because setting up and configuring Salesforce can be a bit of a pain. This is the price you pay for a highly customisable platform and you’ll need to decide how much of an issue this is for your team.

In terms of features, there’s nothing bad to say about Salesforce. The problem is you have to pay for add-ons to get the best of these features and this soon becomes frustrating as your total costs stack up.

Then you have the user interface, which is… well, let’s just say it’s not for us and this is one thing you can’t customise to suit your needs.

#3: Oracle on Demand CRM

Speaking of user interfaces, Oracle’s on Demand CRM hasn’t aged well over the years. The good news is, if you can get past the somewhat vulgar and very dated visual design, Oracle’s CRM is still a great piece of software for enterprise brands.

It’s kind of a case of if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it although they could have at least dressed it up a little prettier considering it isn’t 1992 anymore.

Superficial appearances aside, Oracle provides one of the most powerful CRMs on the market for enterprise brands and holds on to its reputation as an industry leader. You don’t have to worry about the complex setups many of its younger peers require and you get the confidence of dealing with one of the best tech firms for data security.

#4: Zoho CRM

Zoho is another CRM provider that aims to cater to businesses of all sizes and, for the most part, manages to pull it off. It’s a seriously easy platform to use – almost as intuitive as Hubspot – and it packs more than enough features and integrations for most brands.

That said, the feature list can be a bit thin for enterprise businesses. You don’t get anything in the shape of content personalisation, split testing, SMS marketing or bulk social media posting features.

Some of these are pretty basic features by today’s standards.

The other big gripe with Zoho’s CRM is it requires a lot of work to set it up. This is the price you pay for using a highly customisable CRM and this may or may not be a dealbreaker for you.

#5: Hubspot

I was hesitant to Hubspot in this list because I don’t like its pricing policy one bit. That said, as a pure CRM and marketing suite, it’s got a lot going for it, as long as you don’t mind paying a hefty price for features you can get much cheaper elsewhere.

Paying the premium Hubspot price tag does get you the best user experience you’ll find in a CRM platform right now. It’s a real pleasure to use Hubspot and full credit goes to the team for building a powerful, easy-to-use system that looks and feels good.

The only real gripe I have with Hubspot is the way its prices skyrocket as soon as you upgrade to a higher version. Then you’ve got the rather steep setup costs to think about (about $5,000 last time I checked for enterprise and a whopping $20,000 for onsite onboarding).

Hubspot is a great CRM; only you can decide whether it’s worth the price(s).

#6: Microsoft Dynamics 365

Microsoft Dynamics 365 essentially combines Microsoft’s ERP and CRM into a single cloud-based platform. If you’re Outlook/Exchange for email, the sync features are great and then you have the seamless integration with Skype, which is really handy.

Something else I really like about Dynamics is the social listening tool, which tells you what your customers are Tweeting about. Sure, you can get this elsewhere but it’s great to have this integrated with your CRM.

In terms of CRM features, Dynamics shines when it comes to intelligent insights, audience targeting and predictive forecasts. As far as data-driven customer management, you won’t be left wanting and you can always expand into Microsoft’s other platforms, such as Azure for more complex machine learning and automation features.

#7: SugarCRM

SugarCRM was one of the first end-to-end customer relationship management platforms on the market and it remains one of the most popular with enterprise brands. This has given the company a lot of time to add new features and refine its platform – all to good effect.

Sadly, there’s still some functionality missing on the reporting side of things and creating custom reports is time-consuming as a result. SugarCRM has also fallen behind the likes of ActiveCampaign when it comes to email marketing and this ruled it out for us.

Aside from that, there’s a lot to like about SugarCRM, especially since they redesigned the interface.

#8: bpm’online CRM

Aside from the awful name, bpm’online CRM is a great platform that includes a stack of business process management (BPM) features to help you improve your business and marketing activities. This makes for a highly complex piece of software – far more than most businesses need, to be honest – but it’s a wonderful platform if you need all of its functionality.

The downside is you have to know exactly what you want from the platform and how to explain this accurately to bpmonline team. Otherwise, you’re going to end up with a system that doesn’t meet your needs or find yourself drowned in features and settings you’ll never use.

#9: SAP CRM

SAP CRM is designed with ecommerce brands in mind with its features tailored to meet the uniquely demanding needs of online retailers. It’s a pretty intimidating piece of software though and I can’t fancy many small online retailers clicking with this. For enterprise ecommerce brands with a dedicated tech and sales team, SAP CRM is far more suitable but you’re still going to be in for something of a learning curve.

SAP was late to enter the cloud-based CRM game so it’s a good deal behind the likes of Salesforce in this regard but it’s done a great job of catching up.

Now, it actually offers a more complete end-to-end solution between its CRM and ERP offering (as you would hope for ecommerce) and you can adapt the platform in almost anyway you need to, with the right development skills.

#10: Copper (formerly ProsperWorks)

Formerly known as ProsperWorks, Copper is a fully-featured CRM designed for G Suite users (Gmail, Google Docs, Drive, Calendar, etc.). This gives you direct integration with Google applications without the need to use any third-party tools and the UI will feel very familiar to users and fans of the Google experience.

More importantly, this integration means there’s next to no data integration needed for G Suite users.

Does Copper have anything to offer other than playing nicely with Google, though? To be honest, this is the only real standout feature compared to other CRMs but Copper offers a very familiar set of features. In fact, Copper is taking a significant chunk of market share away from Salesforce, which tells you it must be doing something right. However, most of this is coming from the small-to-medium size business section rather than enterprise brands.

You can get a sense of this from using Copper; it feels a little more geared towards SMEs but this is something the company is working to improve upon.

One to watch with interest.

Verdict: Which is the best CRM for enterprise businesses?

A lot of software providers claim to offer enterprise packages but many of them fall short when it comes to delivering the features, integrations and security enterprise businesses depend on. This can be incredibly frustrating when you’re trying to find a CRM that packs everything you need into a platform that also manages to keep things simple.

We chose ActiveCampaign because it packs 90% of the features other CRM and marketing automation platforms offer into a single system – for less than you pay elsewhere and with all the same (or better) quality.

That said, all of the CRMs we’ve looked at in this article are genuine contenders for enterprise brands and I’m confident you’ll find the customer relationship management platform your enterprise needs here.

If you decide another platform is better suited for your enterprise business, please get in touch to let me know why.

The post 10 Best Enterprise CRM Software Solutions appeared first on Venture Harbour.

10 Small Business Automation Tools to Save Time & Increase Profit

Business automation is transforming the way brands operate, allowing them to do more with less and scale in ways never before possible. In theory, this means business size doesn’t matter so much and automation can actually give the advantage to smaller brands that are often able to react to new trends faster than their larger rivals.

The only problem is most of the automation tools on the market are still geared toward medium and larger businesses – but not all of them.

In this article, we’ve got a selection of some of the best business automation tools designed with smaller brands in mind and helping you take your venture to the next level.

#1: Zapier

Zapier is a simple automation platform that every business can use to save time and money while boosting productivity. This is about as straightforward as automation comes, allowing you to create automated actions between essential applications used by businesses in every industry.

Want to automatically save attachments in Gmail to Google Drive? Or how about Tweeting all of your blog posts to Twitter as soon as you hit the publish button? Perhaps you want to save all new Google Docs files to OneDrive and then back them up in Dropbox.

With Zapier you can set up thousands of automations like these to cut out repetitive manual tasks, allowing you to spend your time on more profitable actions.

#2: IFTTT

IFTTT is very similar to Zapier and the general idea is the same. You’re going to use this to create basic automations between different apps to save you bouncing between different platforms to repeat the same menial tasks.

The key difference is that IFTTT offers a significantly better free version than Zapier. The main downside is you can only have one account, which means it’s not particularly suitable for teams. Another key difference is that IFTTT automations run instantly, as soon as the trigger action happens. Meanwhile, Zaps either run every 15 minutes or five minutes depending on which version of the software you’re using.

The key advantage with Zapier is that you can set up Multi-Step Zaps with any of the paid versions. This allows you to set multiple automations from the same trigger action – something you can’t do with any version of IFTTT.

#3: ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign is much more than a marketing automation platform, combining advanced email marketing features and an enterprise standard CRM into a serious piece of business software. ActiveCampaign isn’t the only platform of its kind but it’s the only one we know of that’s optimised equally well for businesses of all sizes.

We spent a long time looking for the right CRM platform (you can read more about our journey here) and we kept running into the same problem. The basic packages are generally reasonably priced by features are throttled and the prices shoot up as soon as you outgrow your current version.

Aside from being one of the best all-in-one marketing automation tools in the industry, ActiveCampaign is the only one we found that was reasonably priced for every version of its software. Which means you don’t need to worry about being held to ransom if your business outgrows the version you start with.

This is pretty important considering growth is the whole point of business automation.

#4: Leadformly

As a small business, you’re going to need to automate your sales process so you can handle a higher volume of leads and turn more of them into sales – without building an entire sales team.

We’ve done precisely this by using Leadformly and ActiveCampaign to systemise the majority of our sales process.

Leadformly is designed to increase your form conversion rates but it also helps you segment your leads, directly on your web pages. It does this using conditional logic to ask users questions based on the info they type in and then sends this data to ActiveCampaign.

Now, you’ve got web pages that generate a higher volume of leads and you can automate your responses using ActiveCampaigns segmented email lists and automation features. This cuts out the majority of the early sales process and you can focus on dealing with leads that are close to making the final purchase.

#5: Hootsuite or Buffer

Social media is a business essential but it’s a major pain to run and manage campaigns across multiple platforms. Luckily, platforms like Hootsuite and Buffer make it easy to automate as much of your social media marketing efforts as you need to.

There isn’t a great deal between these two platforms but we went with Buffer because it’s the more intuitive piece of software and it offered the better scheduling options at the time we were comparing them.

#6: Grammarly

It’s amazing how much content modern businesses need to produce, even the smallest of enterprises in the most niche of sectors. All of those emails, blog posts and social antics have got to come from somewhere and the last thing you want is your marketing efforts to be held back by dodgy speeling, sorry… spelling.

Grammarly won’t make your writing foolproof but it does a surprisingly good job of saving you from those basic spelling and grammar mistakes (there vs their, etc.) that can leave people questioning the competence of your business.

#7: Google Ads

Okay, this doesn’t sound much like an automation platform but keep with me. Google Ads (recently rebranded from AdWords) is making a lot of changes designed to make it a more powerful platform for smaller businesses and automation is at the heart of this.

Check out its new responsive search ads (still in beta) for a preview of what’s to come.

You don’t need to wait for new features to automate your PPC strategy, though. Google Ads comes with a hist of automation features you can use to get better results – and they’re all free:

Bid rules: You set a number of bidding conditions (eg: increase your bids for ads that drop off the first page) and Google does the rest – find out more here.
Google Ads scrips: A collection of JavaScript snippets you can use to automate actions like generating reports into spreadsheets, adjusting bids and refining your keywords lists.
Google Ads API: The new version of the AdWords API, the Google Ads API is still in beta but promises to bring the same kind of automation options for you to build into your own applications.

Automation, machine learning and artificial intelligence are going to transform the way small businesses use platforms like Google Ads over the coming decade – and the shift has already begun.

Stay tuned.

#8: WordStream

While Google is making automation easier, there’s still a certain level of complexity that’s going to put a lot of small businesses off. I’m confident this won’t be the case for too much longer but there’s still space for third-party platforms like WordStream that simplify paid advertising for people who don’t want to get bogged down in complex settings.

The 20-minute working week feature will get you up and running with campaigns and basic management without breaking a sweat and you’ll gradually outgrow this feature as you become more used to advertising with Google Ads.

This is a great tool for getting to grips with PPC and the whole idea of delving into Google Ads settings will seem a lot more approachable after you’ve been using WordStream for a while.

#9: Calendly

Calendly is another simple automation tool that every business can make use of. Essentially, it cuts out the back-and-forth emails for arranging meetings, phone calls and other appointments.

You simply set your availability preferences in Calendly for the next meeting and embed a link in your email invitation. The recipient then chooses which time suits them and the event is automatically added to your calendar – done.

#10: Xero

The bigger your business gets, the more accounting it requires and this is always a barrier when resources are tight. Xero helps minimise the workload of accounting with features like automated invoices, scheduled payments and cash flow management – plus a whole bunch more.

You get a lot of features crammed into this piece of software and they’re all designed to make managing money easier for small businesses.

Automate your way to bigger things

Automation isn’t reserved for the big businesses out there and the selection of tools designed for smaller enterprises is only going to increase over the next few years.

Get yourself started with the platforms we’ve looked at in this article and by the time you’ve made the most of them, there’ll be a new suite of tools ready for you to take the next jump – and it won’t be long before your building your own automations to suit your needs.

The post 10 Small Business Automation Tools to Save Time & Increase Profit appeared first on Venture Harbour.

10 Actionable Inbound Marketing Statistics for 2018

Inbound marketing continues to be the lead generation priority of modern brands but the nature of this broad strategy is constantly changing. New platforms are always emerging, the technology powering them is advancing at an increasing rate and the way your target audience interacts and buys from brands like you is evolving every year.

In this article, we’ve got 10 actionable inbound marketing statistics for you that are going to impact your success in 2018 and beyond. We’re not talking about superficial numbers here, but key findings and what this means for your inbound marketing efforts over the coming years.

#1: Search has overtaken social as the main source of referral traffic (34.8% vs 25.6%) – Shareaholic

Image source: Shareaholic

This is a big one. In 2017, search overtook social media as the main source of traffic for the first time since 2014. This is a major reversal of priorities for inbound marketers who have been focusing on social media as their main source of traffic – something that needs to change in 2018.

According to research from Shareaholic, 34.8% of traffic came from search in 2017, compared to 25.6% from social.

Pinpointing why this has happened will take time but one reason could be Google’s move to include social content in search results and the drive of AMP content as a news source. Either way, it’s important for marketers to keep on top of their traffic sources and adjust their strategy to maximise incoming traffic.

Always aim to publish your content where it’s most effective and in the format that gets the best results on each platform.

#2: 65% of marketers say link building is the most difficult SEO strategy – Advanced Web Ranking

With search driving more traffic than social, there’s going to be a natural shift back towards search engine optimisation in 2018. One thing that hasn’t changed over the past four years is the importance of link building for SEO and 65% of marketers say this is the most difficult strategy in organic SEO, according to Advanced Web Ranking’s SEO stats report 2017.

If anything, link building has become more difficult over the years but the idea of building links (so to speak) doesn’t really cut it in 2018. Now, you have to earn links with content that people actually want to, you know… link to.

It’s not the quantity of links you have that really matters, either. It’s the quality of your link profile that tells search engines you’re a publisher that should be ranking highly. So focus your attention on producing content that has real value to offer and promote in the places where people are going to engage with it most – across search and social.

#3: 55% of marketers say blog content is their top inbound marketing priority – HubSpot

According to HubSpot’s State of Inbound 2018 report, 55% of marketers say blog content creation is their top inbound marketing priority. This reinforces the previous point about creating content that earns links (as well as likes and shares) to maximise your reach and bring in the volume of inbound leads you’re looking for.

#4: However, 75% of blog posts get zero links from other domains – Moz

Image source: Moz

At the same time, research from Moz tells us that that vast majority of blog posts get zero links from other domains. A quick look at the kind of content your competitors are producing and it won’t be a surprise to hear most of it isn’t earning any links from external sources.

Not a single link; nothing.

You need to make sure your content is good enough to be in the significant minority of stuff that’s earning multiple quality links from sites with a strong search presence and relevance to your brand.

#5: Which might be because 70% of marketers lack a consistent or integrated content strategy – Altimeter

There are a lot of reasons content might not generate the required number of links to add value but one thing that certainly won’t help is the fact that 70% of marketers lack a consistent or integrated content strategy – according to Altimeter.

#6: 87% of B2B buyers trust industry influencer content more – DemandGen Report

This is a big one: B2B overwhelmingly favour influencer content and this is a major trend for marketers in 2018. We also know this is applicable to B2C marketers as well, as proven by the rise and sustained success of influencer marketing on social media.

So, if you want your content to make an impact, get the influencers on board and feature them in your content. DemandGen’s 2017 Content Preferences Survey Report reveals a massive 87% of B2B buyers trust industry influencer content more than anything else. The study also shows, once again, that buyers (68%) give more credence to peer reviews, third-party publications, and user-generated feedback while 66% trust content authored by a third-party publication or analyst.

#7: LinkedIn is still the favourite network of B2B marketers (93%) – Smart Insights & Clutch

Image source: Smart Insights; Clutch

In terms of social marketing, LinkedIn is still the top choice for B2B marketers with 93% saying it’s the most valuable social platform, according to research from Smart Insights and Clutch. LinkedIn isn’t any slouch when it comes to B2C marketing with 74% of B2c marketers saying the platform is a valuable part of their social efforts.

#8: But Facebook isn’t far behind with 82% of B2B marketers choosing the network – Smart Insights & Clutch

According to the same study, 82% of B2B marketers say Facebook is an important platform for their inbound strategies. However, the network is still considered more valuable by B2C marketers with a massive 96% saying it’s a valuable source for lead generation.

These figures also suggest that social media marketing is valued more hight by B2C marketers than their B2B counterparts – make of that what you will.

#9: Only 5% of adults strongly trust the content they see on social media – Pew Research Center

Public trust in the content they see published on social media isn’t particularly high right now, largely thanks to fake news scandals and increased awareness of people being targeted with content based on political, ethnic and all kinds of other questionable content.

According to research by Pre Research Center, only 5% of adults strongly trust the content they see on social media. This isn’t only a political issue either; it’s a symptom of platforms emerging where brands and individuals can say or claim anything without needing to back it up.

People are becoming wiser to this and simply telling buyers that your products or services are great doesn’t cut it. You need to earn their trust by showing them the quality and this largely brings us back to the topics of influencer content, third-party reviews, user-generated content and other crucial trust signals.

#10: 84% of marketers say they will launch at least one influencer campaign in 2018 – Smart Insights

Given the increased need to earn buyer trust and the success of influencer content across B2B and B2C niches, it shouldn’t surprise us to hear that 84% of marketers say they will launch at least one influencer campaign in 2018. This is according to research from Smart Insights.

Influencer marketing isn’t necessarily as crude as paying some Instagram star to showcase your products or vouch for your services. It can be much bigger than that and the B2B arena, in particular, has a lot of room to develop this. Normally, it’s not the celebrities of social media icons that command attention in the business sector – it’s trusted industry voices and genuine business advice people want to hear.

Time to get your 2019 content strategies in order

We’re way past the halfway mark for 2018 but the inbound marketing statistics and trends we’ve highlighted are going to shape content marketing well into 2019 and beyond. So now is the time to get your strategy in place for next year and make any adjustments you need to adapt to the latest developments.

With search taking the lead in referral traffic once again, you’re going to want to pay extra attention to the changes happening in search right now – looking at ways to monetise the opportunities of voice search, the changing roles of publishing and advertising, plus the impact these have on user behaviour.

The post 10 Actionable Inbound Marketing Statistics for 2018 appeared first on Venture Harbour.

Funnel Optimisation 101: 5 Steps to Fixing a Leaky Marketing Funnel

As the consumer journey becomes a more complex network of interactions between brands and users, marketers need to work harder to keep leads moving towards the sale.

Your trusty marketing funnels are generally going to be the same as they were a few years ago but the number of touchpoints along the way has likely increased. At the same time, user expectations are evolving and your competitors are constantly offering a more tempting package to your target audience.

When this happens, leaks are inevitable and it’s not unusual to see the performance of sales funnels decline over time – even if they were performing excellently in the past. In more serious cases, your funnels may have never been performing to the level you needed.

Either way, you need to plug those leaks.

#1: Pinpoint your leaks

Before you can fix a leaky marketing funnel, you need to know where you’re losing leads. Pinpointing your leaks requires a certain amount of user data and tracking their movements along your funnel across various user sessions.

You need to pinpoint the final actions users are commonly taking before dropping out of your funnels.

For example, you may see a large portion of users take no further action after signing up for your newsletter – a common problem. Or you may find too many users are quitting the session before paying for the items in their shopping basket. You’ll probably also have less obvious leaks, though, such as a high number of users dropping off after visiting a specific page.

To spot these leaks, you’re going to need a platform that can track user behaviour across the consumer journey and provide the data you need to assess your sales funnel performance. This is where your CRM plays a vital role and this is one of the major roles ActiveCampaign plays for us (aside from its excellent email marketing and automation features)

With ActiveCampaign’s site and event tracking, we can pinpoint where users drop off from our sales funnels, based on their last action. And this tells us where we need to look in order to find out why they’re dropping off.

#2: Determine why you’re losing leads

Knowing where you’re losing leads is one thing but you’re not going to understand how to plug them unless you know why you’re losing leads in the first place – a different challenge entirely.

First, it’s important to know there are all kinds of reasons that a volume of leads drops off at any given stage of the sales funnel:

UX problems: For example, slow loading times, poor mobile optimisation or compatibility issues.
Conversion killers: Aside from UX problems, also pay attention to web forms, interruptions (such as popups or notifications) and page visits that suddenly kill your chances of converting.
Weak CTAs: If your calls to action aren’t compelling enough, leads are always going to leak.
Inactivity after conversions: You’re not following up conversions quickly or effectively enough – email confirmations, reminders, promotional offers, loyalty programmes, etc.
Low email engagement: It’s difficult to nurture leads if your main source of contacting them directly isn’t getting the engagement you need.
Low customer retention rate: Your work isn’t done once you convert a lead; your next mission is to turn this customer into a repeat buyer.

In terms of pinpoint why your leads are dropping out at certain stages of the consumer journey, you’re going to need to delve a little deeper into your data. If email engagement is a problem, find out which campaigns have performed well and compare them to the ones that are underperforming – what are you doing differently?

For conversion killers such as poor web form design, you’ll need the tools to access this kind of user data. Leadformly gives you web forms optimised for performance from the get-go but you also get its built-in form analytics features to help you see why users aren’t completing your forms.

In terms of weak CTAs and other on-page issues, this is where a good CRO tool like Hotjar pays for itself. With its heatmapping and user session recordings, you can determine which CTAs aren’t making the right impact.

You can read our Hotjar review to find out what we love about the platform, as well as what we’re not so keen about.

One of the other Hotjar features on our love list is its survey and feedback options, which make it easy to reach out to users and ask them why they haven’t taken a certain action.

Don’t be afraid to ask people directly.

#3: Plug the conversion killers

Once you know where and why users are dropping off, it’s time to plug the leaks in your marketing funnel. Hopefully, you have a good idea of what needs fixing at this stage (eg: you need a “better” call to action) but now you have to actually implement your changes – and this is going to require a little testing.

A/B testing to be more precise.

First, you need to know exactly what you’re trying to achieve and which metrics and KPIs best represent this. Sure, you want a better call to action but what does this actually mean – higher conversion rates, a better quality or targeting a more specific type of user?

Sometimes the best way to stop leads slipping away is to reduce conversions at the top of your sales funnel and focus on converting users who are most likely to buy from you. It’s generally better to have 1,000 quality leads than twice as many low-quality prospects – especially if you expend a lot of time and resources on trying to close each deal.

#4: Refine your lead nurturing strategy

The key to getting the most out of every conversion is an effective lead nurturing strategy and this is something you should periodically refine to improve performance.

If leads are slipping away between actions, you need to be doing something about it. One of the biggest mistakes brands make is failing to respond to leads quickly enough. We recently published an article explaining some research from Harvard Business Review that shows brands need to be responding to leads within 24 hours.

Leads turn cold much faster than most marketers want to believe and this is one of the biggest causes of leakage, particularly at the top of the funnel.

The same concept applies to later stages of the consumer journey as well, though. If your leads are slipping between different actions (eg: signing up for a free trial and upgrading to the paid version of your software platform), then you need to reach out and push them closer to taking the next step.

It could be something as simple as an email reminding people they haven’t signed in recently and showing them what they’re missing out on – eg: you could have made 300 extra sales this week, businesses like yours have saved an average of £34,000 this month, you’re wasting up to 6 hours every week, etc.

To manage these crucial interactions between different conversion goals, you’re going to need a solid CRM platform and this is where ActiveCampaign comes back into action for us.

First, we use Leadformly to qualify leads on our website by using forms built with conditional logic. This allows us to get more detailed information from users and determine what kind of followup message to send them.

Next, each lead is automatically assigned to a segmented list in ActiveCampaign, based on the info they type into our web forms and they’re sent a follow-up email that addresses their specific needs. From here, we can create a more complex network of automated email responses to make sure every lead is engaged throughout the entire consumer journey.

#5: Turn customers into repeat buyers

One of the biggest mistakes brands make with their marketing efforts is to pull their foot off the gas once they’ve got the sale. This is crazy considering the amount of time and resources you’ve invested in each sale and the fact that your existing customers are far more likely to buy from you again than fresh leads.

One-off customers are a good starting point but your goal should always be to turn them into repeat buyers. Otherwise, you’re never going to maximise the return on everything you invested to convert them in the first place. Not to mention the fact they’ll probably end up with one of your competitors if you’re not able to make them into regular customers.

Again, reaching out to customers after the sale is a crucial part of this but you also need to make sure your services are up to scratch – and this included the tricky topic of customer service. We mentioned earlier that response times are important and this is even more true when people run into problems with your products or services.

Giving customers incentive to buy from you again is important, too. It’s amazing what the occasional freebie or loyalty reward can do and the power of a discount for customers’ next purchase shouldn’t be overlooked. If you’re in the retail game, recommended products and notifications about seasonal promotions are important for teasing people into the next sale.

Once again, all of this can be automated with tools like ActiveCampaign and be sure to reach out to your customers with non-promotional content as well, so you don’t come across as a brand that’s always pushing for the sale. Figure out what kind of content is going to be genuinely useful to your audiences and give them plenty of reason to open your emails each time around.

Plug those leaky funnels

As marketing funnels become longer and more complex, it takes more work to plug the gaps and stop those leads from slipping away. You’re going to need access to the right data to help you spot these problems and solid automation platforms so you can respond to issues at scale, instantly.

This technology is now available for businesses of all sizes, at prices even the smallest enterprises can afford – besides the fact it all pays for itself once you turn automation into better performance and bigger profits. This is the entire point of everything we’ve covered in this article: making the most of the leads you’re already generating and maximising results.

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10 Content Personalisation Tools That’ll Boost Engagement & Sales

Personalisation is crucial to delivering the right message to users at the crucial moment, as their needs change throughout the consumer journey. If you’re looking to boost engagement and increase conversions (without increasing traffic) then personalisation is going to be a fundamental part of your CRO strategy.

The only problem is personalisation can be a tricky process – especially in the age of GDPR.

In this article, we’re looking at 10 of the best content personalisation tools that’ll boost engagement and sales. Whether you’re in ecommerce/retail, the travel industry or B2B marketing, you’ll find the right platform to create richer experiences for your users and turn more of them into paying customers.

#1: RightMessage

RightMessage is a behavioural personalisation platform that makes it easy to adapt your page content based on which ad users clicked, the site they came from and a range of user actions that don’t demand personal information – ideal for simple GDPR-compliant personalisation.

Once users are progressing through your sales funnels, you can also display CTAs based on their previous actions, hide signup forms for people already on your email list, show testimonial and case studies based on their industry and adapt your pages with more relevant messages.

RightMessage comes with a collection of recipes so you can create campaigns in no time and there’s also a drag-and-drop builder that makes creating your own personalisations a breeze.

If you’re looking for a simple, easy-to-use personalisation tool that doesn’t require any programming or extensive data skills, this is a great place to start.

#2: OmniConvert

Omniconvert is a conversion rate optimisation (CRO) platform that combines surveys, A/B testing, popups, audience segmentation and personalisation features. As you’ll see from its case studies page, ecommerce and retail brands make up its highest-profile users but it also packs features designed specifically for digital agencies, SaaS companies and content publishers.

On the personalisation side of things, you can adapt your messages based on more than 40 data points – including user location and the local weather, users who have visited the same product or service page multiple times, the source of traffic and a range of actions they’ve taken on your site.

The platform focuses on three types of personalised messages: adapting the content on your web pages, creating personalised popups and targeting users with surveys. Compared to RightMessage, you can do a lot more with OmniConvert but this comes with a certain amount of added complexity, which may be a good or bad thing depending on your needs.

#3: Evergage

Evergage is a sophisticated personalisation platform that uses machine learning to create richer experiences for users. To make this happen, you’re going to need the right data and Evergage comes with a dedicated Customer Data Platform that creates profiles of your customers from different data sources – all of which you can use to create more relevant messages.

You also get behavioural tracking, segmentation, targeting, triggered messaging, recommendations, A/B testing and built-in Analytics and attribution features.

This gives you a lot of power to deliver personalised content to users on your site and in your emails. You can also use Evergage to create personalised search results based on their previous actions – a great feature for online retailers.

#4: Bunting

Bunting is designed with ecommerce brands in mind – especially those with an extensive catalogue of products to sell. If you’re in a constantly changing retail segment (think fashion where new seasons are always around the corner or consumer tech where new devices are constantly being released), this is the personalisation platform to check out first.

Product recommendations are a big part of the Buntin experience and the platform’s machine learning algorithms excel at this. Crucially, you can also use its point and click editor to design your own recommendation that fit in seamlessly with the design of your site.

You can also create content for different user segments and target first-time visitors with different messages to repeat visitors, existing customers and more.

You’ll also boost your email marketing efforts with personalised content and product recommendations based on recipients’ place along the consumer journey. This is a vital tool for turning one-time buyers into repeat customers and Bunting’s product recommendations are highly effective here, too.

#5: Venture Harbour’s WP Content Personalisation Plugin

Earlier this year, we decided to try something different with one of our blog posts. We asked users questions throughout the post and showed them personalised content based on their answers. The results were impressive (37.59% increase in average time on page; 12.9% reduction in bounce rate) so we decided to run with this idea.

All in all, we’ve seen an 88% increase in engagement by publishing these types of articles and we wanted to share the wealth.

So we created our own WordPress plugin that allows you to do precisely the same thing. You can see another example of this in action and get more information about the plugin by reading this article or head straight to the WordPress plugin page.

#6: Optimizely

Optimizely is one of the most popular CRO tools for B2B brands and major publishers. Aside from Web Experiments (testing), the platform also offers extensive Web Personalisation (content) and Web Recommendations (products, downloads, content, etc.).

You can personalise content based on their location and weather (fashion seasons, news events), previous purchases and a range of behaviours on your site.

Optimizely also has a dedicated recommendation service which goes beyond the usual product recommendations. You can also target users with recommended articles, downloads and other resources across your website. This is a great tool for personalising B2B content across your site and generating targeted leads based on user interests – something many personalisation tools overlook.

#7: Adobe Target

Much like Optimizely, Adobe Target is an enterprise level CRO platform that comes with advanced personalisation features. In fact, Adobe Target was kind of the industry leader in this regard before Optimizely expanded beyond conversion optimisation and now these are two of the top contenders for enterprise brands who want an all-in-one CRO, personalisation and automation platform.

Essentially, the goal of these two platforms is the same but they approach things very differently. For example, Optimizely is the more user-friendly platform for non-coders with plenty of WYSIWYG builders while Adobe offers more flexibility at the expense of added complexity.

If you’re looking for enterprise level personalisation, you’ll have to try these out and see which one works better for you – there isn’t enough between them to recommend one over the other. The only thing I can say is Optimizely is a little friendlier for smaller businesses and budgets even if it’s not what we would call an SME tool.

#8: BrightInfo

When BrightInfo says the likes of Cisco, HubSpot and Hosting.com are using its platform to increase conversions by up to 320%, you can’t help but pay attention. We’re talking about a more cost-effective option than Optimizely or Adobe Target, more along the lines of Evergage which we looked at earlier.

BrightInfo’s machine learning algos scan your web content, analysing your pages and resources. It also creates profiles of your target audiences and then turns these datasets into real-time personalisations.

The end result is a relatively simple personalisation platform that’s incredibly easy to use and makes a genuine impact. It doesn’t come with some of the more advanced features you’ll find on other platforms but it’s fully automated, which means you can pretty much set it up and let it do its thing.

If you want automated personalisation without the hassle, this could be the option for you.

#9: Pure 360

Pure360 combines email marketing with web and email personalisation, cart abandonment recovery and customer profiling. It’s designed for ecommerce, retail and travel brands (rather than B2B) more than anything and this is the focus of its feature set.

Personalisation is central to everything you do with Pure360, even down to targeting cart abandoners with personalised messages tempting them back to complete the purchase. You’re also looking at a pretty handy email marketing platform, too, with a solid set of automation features packed into the platform as well.

For retailers, Pure360 could be the all-in-one CRO, personalisation and email marketing platform.

#10: Episerver Personalization

Episerver is another platform aimed at ecommerce and retail brands but it steps away from the rule based automation approach most platforms adopt. Instead, it combines statistical analysis and machine learning to create personalised messages based on user behaviour. This means you spend less time creating rulesets and workflows so you can focus on getting results.

The downside is you get less control but this is the price you pay for a platform that cuts out a large chunk of the workflow for you. The good news is Episerver’s algorithms are highly capable and you get an extensive range of personalisation options.

Personalised search, email recommendations, behavioural triggers, web content personalisation and content sequencing are some of the platform’s best features and there are plenty more where they came from.

If you want advanced personalisation without having to set everything up yourself, check out Episerver.

Don’t let GDPR kill your personalisation strategy

GDPR doesn’t need to get in the way of your personalisation strategy although it may mean you need to take a slightly different approach. The tools we’ve looked at in this article give you all kinds of new options to explore if your old strategy isn’t GDPR-compliant. And, if you’re new to marketing personalisation, you’ll find everything you need to get started.

The post 10 Content Personalisation Tools That’ll Boost Engagement & Sales appeared first on Venture Harbour.