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Hope Santa was good to you, and we wish you a Happy New Year from Inbox Hacking (5 days to go in 2023!).
Iâve got a slew of stats, facts, and Todayâs Hack is about New Yearâs and New Days. Plus, this weekâs feature story gives you a quick look at 11 marketing mistakes to steer clear of as we smash head-first into 2024. Letâs get to it because one of the mistakes never gets talked about (and avoiding it is a smart way to save money).
The Big 5 Marketing Mistakes to Avoid
#1 Believing AI will do even half the marketing work on your desk
#2 Depending on tired lead generation methods
#3 Making it easy to click away from your sign-up forms
#4 Not getting to the point fast as hell!
#5 Thinking everyone wants bite-sized info
Breaking Down Those 5 Marketing Mistakes
Yeah, artificial intelligence is cool. Gonna get cooler. So was a hammer once, but they didnât swing themselves, and ta-da, a house appeared. Ok, Iâm just a dumb country boy who doesnât get it, huh? Hide and watch. Better yet, test 5 new AI tools a week and get back to me on your letdown.
Next. There are 80 zillion free ebooks waiting for people to download. Get more creative with lead magnets (valuable tools > ebooks). And donât use top-right-X-to-close on your pop-ups. Closing those old forms is automatic, so use an alternative click-to-close text link.
Four and five. Some people like long-form content. So, provide it. The good news is you can get to the point with takeaways at the top of longer articles for bite-sized content lovers.
6 – 10 Marketing Mistakes to Avoid in 2024
#6 Not paying attention to the fine points of email deliverability
#7 Getting ripped off with click fraud
#8 Tossing offline marketing aside (even further)
#9 Not digging far enough into some marketing statistics
#10 Trying to be everywhere
Breakdown of 6 – 10 Marketing Mistakes
Email deliverability can be improved by well-known best practices. But many marketers donât realize their ESP of choice is affecting deliverability and inboxing. Another detail that doesnât get talked about? Not sending a welcome email the minute someone signs up for your email list. Waiting to send that welcome may mean it never gets opened, which means the next email wonât either.
Seven and eight go hand in hand. Online ads have a terrible fraud problem no one wants to address. This makes offline ads appealing in some industries, or at very least, running ads in a newsletter where you can see the ad actually running!
Check out How to Lie with Statistics, and always consider the source when reading marketing research. A social media tool provider benefits from studies showing social media helps you sell 71.3% more eyeliner widgets, right?
Back to AI⌠because it may help your brand be everywhere all at once. Ok, whoâs gonna sort through all the data that results from being everywhere? Scott the Bot that lacks context? Or Sam the Human who lacks bandwidth?
#11 Marketing Mistake to Beware in 2024
Last up? Paying too much for influencer marketing is an easily avoidable marketing mistake.
Be the Billy Bean of hiring influencers. Moneyball.
Catch an influencer on their way up so you get more bang for your buck.
Donât be like an NFL team that overpays for an All-Pro cornerback with his best days behind him.
Pay for upside. Just like the guy on Chris Guillebeauâs Side Hustle School podcast who traveled around getting baseballs signed by top high school prospects. Those autographs were free but would be worth big bucks once the player started hitting homers in the NCAA or MLB.
Read on for next-gen Lead Gen, the Knowledge Base, & fresh facts-n-stats.
𤯠New AI Lead Gen Tool Identifies Email Addresses of Anonymous Visitors
What if you could collect the email addresses of your anonymous website visitors?
A new AI-powered tool, Smart Recognition, has created the next evolution in lead generation.
Rather than getting only 5% of your traffic via an opt-in form, you can now target and email interested leads who usually bounce from your website without buying or subscribing!
Growing your email list and revenue just got faster!
Here are examples of how you can utilize Smart Recognition:
- Email an irresistible offer to prospects browsing your site
- Add these leads to your Welcome Email series
- Send abandoned cart emails to people who don’t complete checkout
- Add these email addresses to Meta remarketing audiences
Curious to see how much of your anonymous website traffic you can identify? Schedule a free demo of Smart Recognition and 10x your lead generation.
*sponsored
**US-only audiences & monthly traffic of around 15k
Knowledge Base
Knowledge is power, so is running away
Best emails of Dec. 2023 according to Litmus
B2B Marketingâ AI foundations & the future (video)
Icky email list? Hygiene tips here (video)
Q&A on customer experience learnings in 2023
Ready for Februaryâs new Gmail & Yahoo email rules?
Self Help
Best to prepare for all possible problems.
Pretty impossible though, since dominos are constantly falling all over our plans.
Only thing to do is prepare to accept those dominos, then set them back in place best we can.
* Inbox Hackers Shout-out:
đ˘Cedric at P&G (Procter & Gamble)
đ˘Ed at Diamond Law Center
Facts and Stats
- Average conversion rate across all industries is 3.9%, with B2B tech as low as 1.7% (Forbes 2023)
- Brides, Investopedia, & the Spruce, get over 80% of their traffic from Google (SimilarWeb)
- Brands spend around $500 billion a year on marketing and advertising, but only $9 billion on customer service (MarketingProfs)
Bonus: Good reason brands should steer clear of politics? More than half of Americans told Pew Research Center they feel “angry” always or often when they think about politics (65% feel exhausted by it)
Billions Sent
You learn a lot from sending billions of emails.
- Nearly 100% of people read email in a predictable pattern
- They delete unwanted emails then read all the remaining emails
- People only read emails when they make time for it
These learnings led to Inbox Mailersâ patent-pending trigger system. Triggered emails that hit your subscribersâ inbox while theyâre actively reading emails.
These emails land after unwanted emails are deleted. So, the triggered emails are in the perfect position to be read⌠because theyâre grouped with emails the subscriber purposely kept!
This produces 50%, 60%, even 70% open rates, higher click volume, and deliverability improvements in no time. Interested in these results? Demo Inbox Mailers and take advantage of their patent-pending triggered emails so your campaigns can benefit from higher engagement based on proven predictable inbox behavior.
âAct now to get 50% off your first month + 20,000 free credits. Hurry, offer ends December 31st (4 days left! Use code XMAS2023)âąď¸
*sponsored
Get Hacking
Donât underestimate the power of a New Year. Or New MonthâŚ
Studies show that people are more likely to commit to changes on New Yearâs Day, the first day of a new month, major birthdays, etc.
These new moments in time are your chance to gain new customers and clients. So mark your calendar and sprinkle in campaigns promoting âNew Startsâ on key days in 2024. And segment your list to use campaigns that catch subscribers headed into a fresh state of mind.
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